Category: Animation - Cartoons & Animation - Children - Family - Feature Film-comedy
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DVD Waking Life
Waking Life is a film that never settles down. Or maybe it never wakes up. Regardless, Richard Linklater's animated meditation seems to strike a perfect balance between the plotless meanderings of Slacker and the unquenchable knowledge-seeking of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. Any way you look at it, this is a weird, original movie.
As he attempts to figure out what separates dreams from reality, the protagonist (Dazed and Confused's Wiley Wiggins) hears an earful from everyone he stumbles upon. Ramblings range from the scholarly (Linklater's former college professor Robert C. Solomon gives a monologue) to the banal (of which there are plenty). Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Steven Soderbergh, and Adam Goldberg all get animated cameos, basically playing themselves. The dream-centered dialogues eventually grow mind-numbing, but that's OK; the animation steals the show. Each frame of the movie, which was first shot with live actors, was painted over, and the process renders a distorted and trippy collage of sights and sounds. Linklater's film is ultimately quite poignant, but, as with any good journey, you'll need to sit through some fairly tedious moments before reaching the destination. --Jason Verlinde
Amazing. Impossible to describe, you really must watch it. If you've ever seen 'What the Bleep Do We Know?' or have ever sat some while thinking about life and what it entails, then get this movie! GET IT.
I'm so stunned by what is discussed by it that I listen to the movie without watching it sometimes.
dreamy
This movie isn't to satisfy want for explosions or car chases, rather, it actually makes you think. The main character goes from 'interview' to 'interview' and the audience is presented with several points of view on life, death, and dreams. Then the lines of wakefulness and dreams begin to blur.
This is not a movie, it's art.
Waking Life is perhaps one of the most amazing "not-films" I've ever watched. Don't be decieved by the DVD box suggesting that it's a movie. It's a motion picture as art. This film lacks everything a film should have: story, characters, plot, conflict, climax, everything. Then why do I give it five stars? Because it's not about the story, it's about the experience. It's not about the characters, it's about the ideas expressed by the people on the screen. It's not about the plot, it's about being totally mesmerised by the innovative rotoscopy animation. The film is a 100 minute acid trip and you don't get any of the harmful side effects that real LSD poses. Simply just a prolonged disconnection from the world as we know it allowing us to escape from all of the pressures of everyday existence and just be and think and live as a worryless lump of matter for a short while. The worst part about the movie is that if you start watching, it reaches a point that it is over.
Director, Richard Linklater, takes us through a montage of of discussions from people on the screen about scores of philosophical, metaphysical and anthropoligical issues: existentialism, evolution, free will, language, dreams, death, life, reincarnation, pessimism, and so much more. This is not a traditional film. Throughout the whole run of the piece we are simply assaulted with philosophical monologue that may be boring or intellectually stimulating, pretentious or profound, tiresome or envigorating. Either way, I feel that it is a great way to just feel so disconnected and freed from the world for a little while. Among other elements of the film, the rotoscopy animation and the enchanting soundtrack by Tosca Tango Orchestra aids in this effect of disconnection, almost making the viewer feel like he or she is floating. It's important to understand the context of this film. It was released just after 9/11, when everyone needed a break from reality for a little while. Some may feel that presently we are all in need of a break from reality. Whatever the case may be, this is a film that may not be easily recieved by all people of all times. I gave this movie five stars. Covering every point that I just covered, I just as easily could have given it one. The only possible way that one can judge whether they will appreciate or scoff at this work of art is simply to experience it.
The word Baraka means "blessing" in several languages; watching this film, the viewer is blessed with a dazzling barrage of images that transcend language. Filmed in 24 countries and set to an ever-changing global soundtrack, the movie draws some surprising connections between various peoples and the spaces they inhabit, whether that space is a lonely mountaintop or a crowded cigarette factory. Some of these attempts at connection are more successful than others: for instance, an early sequence segues between the daily devotions of Tibetan monks, Orthodox Jews, and whirling dervishes, finding more similarity among these rituals than one might expect. And there are other amazing moments, as when sped-up footage of a busy Hong Kong intersection reveals a beautiful symmetry... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Ron Fricke DVD Release Date: Released the 25 September 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The unlikeliest cult hit of 2004 was What the (Bleep) Do We Know?, a lecture on mysticism and science mixed into a sort-of narrative. Marlee Matlin stars in the dramatic thread, about a sourpuss photographer who begins to question her perceptions. Interviews with quantum physics experts and New Age authors are cut into this story, offering a vaguely convincing (and certainly mind-provoking) theory about... well, actually, it sounds a lot like the Power of Positive Thinking, when you get down to it. Talking heads (not identified until film's end) include JZ Knight, who appears in the movie channeling Ramtha, the ancient sage she claims communicates through her (other speakers are also associated with Knight's organization). What she says actually makes pretty good common... More Info about this DVD Director(s): William Arntz - Betsy Chasse - Mark Vicente DVD Release Date: Released the 01 August 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Produced with assistance from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Dreams is an omnibus of eight short stories and parables that spell enchantment at every turn. The opening story, "Sun Under the Rain," emerges from director Akira Kurosawa's personal memories, as a child (whose house is modeled after Kurosawa's childhood home in Koishikawa) witnesses a fox's wedding ceremony in a magical forest. The Garden of Eden motif continues in "The Peach Orchard," while Lucas's ILM special effects group shines in the glorious "Crows" segment, in which an art admirer finds himself living within the paintings of Van Gogh (played with concentrated energy by Kurosawa enthusiast Martin Scorsese). In the idyllic closing fable, "The Village of the Watermills," a centenarian claims that "people... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Akira Terao - Mitsuko Baisho Director(s): Ishirô Honda - Akira Kurosawa DVD Release Date: Released the 18 March 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Whether your intellect is completely engaged or passively detached, any viewing of Naqoyqatsi is likely to provoke a fascinating response. You can view it as a magnificent, visually stimulating music video (as critic Roger Ebert suggested you should), or in context as the third and most unsettling film in director Godfrey Reggio's "qatsi" trilogy, each titled from the Hopi language, and preceded by Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi ("Life out of Balance" and "Life in Transformation," respectively). "Life as War" is the translation of this film's title, and Reggio's theme is not one of conventional warfare, but of daily life as warfare in the age of rapidly evolving technology. The entire trilogy views humankind as a blight on the pristine nature of Earth, but here the... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Godfrey Reggio DVD Release Date: Released the 14 October 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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