#2,175: Burden of Dreams

World 1-1 - ★★★☆☆
The part with the history of Activision was new to me.

Deep Web - ★★☆☆☆
A summary of the Silk Road case. Less in-depth than some NPR coverage you can listen to out there.

Fitzcarraldo - ★★★½☆
The story of a man with a superhuman ability to reframe his situation. There is no calamity, no defeat that cannot also be a victory! A long movie, but not a wasteful one.

On a side note, it appears to have been shot in English, but also badly dubbed into English? Weird. The sync sound in Burden of Dreams was fine and normal.

Burden of Dreams - ★★★☆☆
Documentaries about the making of movies are usually interesting to me, even though clever documentarians might be responsible for the cliché that movies are always about their own making.

Documentaries about movies that do NOT get made are something I don't think we need so much of, but I guess I want to complete the trilogy of movies about Jason Robards getting sick and quitting movies.

Shirtless Actors Prepare for PICNIC at Antaeus

 I also did some more work for the Antaeus Theatre Company this month.

Specifically, I edited this thing written and directed by Diani & Devine. 

Nintendo at San Diego Comic-Con 2015

I did more work with Nintendo this month. 

It's possible I also found time to play some Triforce Heroes and Super Mario Maker, and an overwhelming amount of streetpass games while I was transferring footage and prepping the edit.

Two videos went up from this event.  The Cosplay Choir and a Super Mario Maker promo.

#2,171: Inside Out

Mad Max: Fury Road - ★★★★☆
Still fun, easy to imagine how you'd end up watching this in years to come or as a frenetic background of some kind, but for this summer I'm maybe wearing down on it a little.

Terminator Genisys - ★★★☆☆
You think the first trailer gives away the big twist. Then you see the second trailer, which does give away the big twist. Then you start to think that's too big of a reveal, so it must be a fake-out. But it's not. Anyway, this is, I guess, my favorite non-canonical Terminator movie, and it wipes the slate clean for a whole new series of big budget Terminator fanfic.

The Terminator - ★★★★☆
When I was a kid I'd decided to tell people that they were going to make a sequel that was all about the future war. There was nothing to back up my story, and nobody in particular to tell it to, but the future segments just seemed so amazing. Of course, that's because all we get are glimpses, which are the correct amount. The movies about the future war are each a disaster.

I didn't realize, while watching T5, just how much of T1 they lifted. T1's still the better movie, of course. I love the look of movie lasers from the 80s.

Inside Out - ★★★★☆
I remember books that I read as a kid that were obviously, unambiguously fiction, and yet some explanation or concept from them stuck with me and became how I thought of or visualized a part of the real world. I don't know if this will become the most beloved of Pixar movies, but I do think this representation of the psyche is going to really stick with a lot of people. And I'm so happy that Pete Docter got to make another new movie. In 2016 we batten down the hatches and ride out wave after wave of sequels. (Okay, everybody loves the sequels, but I don't want them.)

#2,169: Jurassic World

Spy - ★★★☆☆
Better than I thought it'd be. It's like a good Mortdecai. I liked how the movie kind of pokes at the idea of how we typecast Melissa McCarthy by making all her disguises the kind of roles you'd expect her to be cast in instead of cool action spy, but then the movie still puts her in situations that seem like we're meant to laugh at her, not with her, so I'm not sure whether we've made any progress or not. I guess we're good for another three months until the next not-so-great spy comedy comes out.

The Wizard - ★★★☆☆
I don't think I'd ever seen this all the way through before, or realized that some of the internet jokes based on it were from this movie and not commercials. (A fine line, perhaps.)

Kind of fun to spot that it's shot by the guy who shot recent watches Spy and Love & Mercy, and stars Jenny Lewis whose name keeps popping up in movie theaters at the end of the ubiquitous Rikki and the Flash trailers. I mean, not very fun, but kind of.

Avengers: Age of Ultron - ★★★½☆
My original 5 stars was based on fan-wow, more or less the Harry Potter problem I described earlier. I did, and still do, want to see more of all of these heroes on the screen, but this is pretty cluttered.

Jurassic World - ★★☆☆☆
This reminds me of, like, Airport '77. It's a 70s disaster movie where we just cut away to the control tower to see people react to more bad news to help us understand that the news is bad. And we do that here because there's no character we care about. Nobody learns or grows or changes.

JP4 also makes me think of Birdman, because of the open contempt it has for audiences, who apparently love it.