Su Friedrich's "Sink or Swim"

Su Friedrich's "Sink or Swim" is by far the most emotional film that I have seen in class this semester. The feelings and emotions of that film is what involved me the most in this film, not its innovative and original structure. I could relate to it because of its emotional depth and complex story of a dysfunctional childhood of a girl and how she manages to deal with her dysfunctional dad when she becomes a woman. One of the themes that was pretty apparent was that "history repeats itself", at the time when the woman meets her half-sister. She sees that the damage that was done by the bad parenting of her father is affecting the life of her half-sister in the same way.

Hollis Frampton's "Nostalgia"

I greatly appreciated Hollis Frampton's film "Nostalgia" after watching it in class for the first time. It was a lot more complicated than what it seemed from the start, mostly thanks to its unorthodox narrative and disjointed photo description. At first, it did not seem more than his description of photographs that he has taken in the past, but as more and more photos came into the view I started realizing that the author was getting rid of important fragments from his past and all of those pictures meant a lot more to him than just photographs. Letting go of the past is a message that anyone can associate with.

3:10 to Yuma

3:10 To Yuma

Saw 3:10 to Yuma last night and I can already put it in the list of my recent favorites. It is not exactly an unbiased opinion, since I have been a closet western fan since I first started watching movies. In fact, I grew on the spaghetti westerns and films like Magnificent Seven, and Once Upon A Time In The West. My favorite actors of that time were Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef.
3:10 To Yuma is the remake of an old western from 1957, having seen the old version, I was a bit nervous about how this film will live up to the original, a universal concern for all remakes. I was very pleased to see that James Mangold and the crew turned this into a gritty, dark, and emotional film, that still has much of the same story and stayed true to the spirit of the original film. Every cast member delivered a great perfomance, especially Christian Bale, who has quietly become one of my favorite actors. The scenery in the film was picked out very well and matched the raw spirit of the movie. I certainly recommend this to any western fan like myself, all in all this is probably one of the best movies out right now.

Class Comments (10/22/07)

I was very surprised about the films that were shown during class. They combined chaotic feeling of teenage rebellious nature, acid trip, and messy painting. As entertaining as the visual part of the film was, the way the filmmaker chose to do the audio was a bit annoying, and made the films that much harder to follow.

P.S.: Ryan, the director, seemed pretty nervous since he used the world "like" about 40 times per sentence.

Interbeing by Alex Gray

"Interbeing" a painting by Alex Grey, one of my favorite artists.

Prison Tattoo Group Photo

Sitting on the right is Danzig Baldaev, the author of Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia.

Project Progress

Russian Prison Tattoos

Currently I am gathering information on the origins of Russian prison tattoos and their history. I am looking in to books and documentaries that provide necessary information.
My grandfather is another source of information since he knew many of his WWII comrades served time in prisons and gulags and came out branded with different symbols.