Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

November 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 86

Total Comments: 48

Full Archive

The Wild Blue Yonder / UK/USA/GERMANY / 2005

Though it’s as strangely beautiful, quiet, confrontational, and weird as any of Herzog’s movies, Yonder doesn’t really seem finished. Basically, the film is composed with found footage of US astronauts doing everyday things in zero gravity, and found footage from an under-ice expedition in Antarctica, scored with intensely forboding strings. Oh, and then there’s an alien who describes the downfall of his planet, his voyage to Earth, and subsequent Earthen voyages to Andromeda. He stares directly at us for long periods of time, scenes from a dilapidated, abandoned town behind him.

None of it is transcendent, but the images are calm, relaxing. Or maybe that’s just me: I saw the movie last night at the IFC Theater on 6th Ave, which, unbeknown to me, was the street where New York City’s giant Halloween parade was happening. I fought through an indescribable mob to get to the theater, at one point envisioning myself in one of those rock concert scenarios where everyone is trying to get through the same exit because the pyrotechnics have gone out of control, and a dozen or so people get trampled to death. The sleeply, drawn-out images of floating and swimming were a welcome relief.

by Teddy Blanks | Source: 35mm Print
01 Nov 2006 8:04 PM | Comments (1)

Comments / 1 total / Submit Comment

  1. rob / 10 January 2007 / 8:35 PM / URL

    I searched the archives to see if anyone on this sight had watched this little gem…how I envy your having seen it in a theater (one I’m familiar with and love, no less). I watched it this evening (thank you, Netflix) and just had one of those once-every-year-or-so, life changing movie experiences. I swear, Herzog could just set music to image and that could be my entire life. I do like Darren Aronofsky’s uber-ambitious The Fountain, but to me, The Wild Blue Yonder acheived many of the same things Darren’s film wanted to, but on an astronomically higher level.

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