The CJM Blog

The 3 Worlds of Gulliver "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And how many times have we had Clarke's Third Law cited by the pro-tech contingent? San Francisco has been at the epicenter of a new tech boom. When programming cultural events centered on technology for Bay Area arts organizations, it may be impossible not to consider the social and political issues surrounding it.

Image courtesy of the writer. As a prompt for an entry on The CJM's blog, your writer was asked to consider what makes a good movie. My usual short answer to this question is that a good, nay, a GREAT movie, allows multiple ways in. If a movie's creative team is firing on all cylinders, if the movie delivers on story, performances, design, mood, music, then you've got a classic on your hands. But even a movie that falters in one of these departments can be elevated by its other elements. Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (screening Thursday at The CJM as part of the CLEAT: Cinematic Lo-fi Experiments in Art and Technology) was intended to be Aronofsky's grandest, most ambitious work yet, telling the story of lovers whose relationship spans three time periods. But the movie wound up compromised by a halved budget (from $70 million to $35) that demanded radical changes to the scope and the story. With months to make a movie that had been years in the making, t...