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The TOTEM Poll: Totally Off Topic, Everything Media
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Old October 6th, 2004, 02:53 PM   #1
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Who saw Session 9?

Last night, my girlfriend and I watched the movie Session 9. At first, I began picking the movie apart (as I usually do on impulse). I could not get over the thought that this movie had a huge "video" quality to it. I'm pretty sure it was shot on film after watching the making of short on the disc. But this raises many questions as to why a director would want to achieve a video look to his film. My guess is that home movies can sometimes have an eerily "real" look and feel to them, and the gentle shakiness of the film can make someone slightly uncomfortable. Mix this with the nerve-racking concept of working around asbestos (which I have done) and this movie piles up the psychological horrors one after the other. This film left me sick to my stomache and extremely unsettled. It was beautiful.

So what I'm asking is:

1) What were your thoughts overall about the film?

2) Did you notice the "videoish" feel to the film?

3) How did the film affect you?
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Old October 6th, 2004, 03:43 PM   #2
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Hi Christopher.

I worked for a week on "Session 9"; it was shot entirely with the Sony CineAlta in 24p for budgetary reasons.

As a viewer, I felt it worked extremely well. Very creepy, very atmospheric.

As a participant, you are right about the nerve-racking aspect of the asbestos and whatever else might have been floating around in the hospital. It was not a pretty work environment.

If you are wondering what the creative forces behind that film are up to now, director Brad Anderson's film "The Machinist" is about to be released (and looks pretty cool) and DP Uta Briesewitz, after working her 24p expertise on the first few seasons of "The Wire", is now doing the same on "LAX".
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Old October 6th, 2004, 04:11 PM   #3
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I liked it very much. I like the atmosphere, the creepy environment. I wasn't so enraptured by the end sum up of the story.

I've saw "The Machinist" last week at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Here's what I wrote about it:

THE MACHINIST - Brad Anderson's creepy and sometimes funny Hitchockian psychothriller about a machinist who hasn't slept for an entire year who becomes convinced that others are out to get him.
In a 'beyond the call of duty' physical performance by Christian Bale, the machinist is a skeletally thin man who still manages to keep his sense of humour at work, where he is part of an assembly line of metalworkers at "National Machine", and in his private life where he conducts a parallel relationship with a prostitute (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the waitress at an airport coffee bar. His life becomes unhinged when he is blamed for an accident in which a fellow worker has his arm ripped off in a lathe (YUCK). His life then becomes a steep spiral downwards as he pursues a strange new worker who no one else is able to see, convinced that everyone is persecuting him. It's hard to believe but at the end of the movie Bale's character looks even worse, beaten up, bleeding, even thinner. Bale's physical sufferings aside, The Machinist is a movie cooked in cool blue-green gels, giving everything a dark tone of a nightmare. Fair comparisons could be made to Mulholland Dr. Brad Anderson's Session 9 had the same feeling of a waking dream where characters wander in and out of miasma, but The Machinist has more overt Hitchockian influences and setups. The end does not come as a real hammer blow as it might have been intended but on the whole, The Machinist is well done and worth a look for its style and Bale's performance.

Charles, I'm a big fan of "The Wire". It has really tight direction I admire in urban crime dramas. Season three started three weeks ago and the first season's DVD will be available I think next week.
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Old October 6th, 2004, 05:06 PM   #4
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Holy crap, I didn't know you worked on "Session 9" Charles! That's fantastic. I'm constantly reminded how many serious people are right here in the forums. Thanks for the clarification on the camera used Charles, it looked very bulky for a video camera but they didn't give too many clear shots of it in the "making of" featurette.

Keith,
My girlfriend and I were waiting for the Machinist to come out for quite some time now. Thanks for the free review!
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Old October 6th, 2004, 10:47 PM   #5
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I don't think it's much of a date movie but your girlfriend might be really cool for all I know. Jennifer Jason Leigh is in it and she's always cool.
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Old October 7th, 2004, 01:14 AM   #6
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<<<-- Jennifer Jason Leigh is in it and she's always cool. -->>>

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