On the right Illustration Corner is featuring one of Katy Horan's pretty yet somehow terrifying illustrations - Spectre. I decided I'm going to have to mention featured illustrations in posts as otherwise (because they're just in the image gadget) they will disappear when I change the image.
My first movie review is below - dont worry no spoilers!
I went to see Meek's cutoff last night and I really liked it - alas in the IFI instead of the Lighthouse. I wanted to see it before reading Kelly Reichardt's article in last month's Sight and Sound (thanks for the tipoff, Anonymous Librarian!). The film does a great job of showcasing the hardships of frontier life for settlers in Oregon (and the American desert) in the nineteenth century. The sparseness and dustiness of the landscape and the silhouettes of parched plants and the small band of lost wanderers in the desert look wonderful against the vast rolling sky; daylit scenes are flooded with light and the nights, devoid of light, are black and eerie. You get a real sense of what it must have been like to venture into unmapped territory, without roadsigns or markers of any kind, electricity, water supplies, or technology. The movie will have its critics - it doesn't answer any questions conclusively (I heard somebody muttering about disappointment as they left the theatre) and Meek himself seems a little cartoonish - but I think it works very well as a dreamy snapshot of the frontier, and the heart of the film is in its penetrating look at people stripped down to their most vulnerable. A word of warning: bring a bottle of water!
