Scenes from past lives, 1

I recently invested in a new Canon scanner which has the necessary kit for scanning old 35mm slides. The results have generally been far better than I expected, even when enlarging to 5,000 pixels lengthwise. This meant I could dig out boxes and boxes of old photos from the 1990s, chuck out 95% of them and keep the good stuff. These are from a time when I wasn't nearly as serious about creating good photographs as I am today, so they're largely scenic shots.



white water
The view from a helicopter about 20m above the edge of the Brazilian side of Iguaçu Falls. ( 27 MAY 1995 )

( + 9... )

1990s SF film

Memory Run, 1996, USA   DIRECTED BY ALLAN A. GOLDSTEIN
This has a decent enough SF premise that is unfortunately rendered almost invisible behind the endless and seemingly obligatory action sequences. Rejuvenation has at last become possible in the Los Angeles of 2015, with the Life Corp having taken the place of the US Government, so America is now a tinpot totalitarian state. Life Corp's aim is to transplant the brains of the elderly rich into younger cloned bodies, and their first successful experiment took the brain of the rebel Union leader and put it in the head of his lover. Beneath the surface this film is a rather too obvious allegory for unchecked capitalism running rampant over human nature: the government is the Corporation, their opposition the Union; as expected, self-interested and dehumanised people have gained control and the rest just have to resist. A few heartfelt performances struggle to rise above the sound of macho gunfire, and any opportunities to explore some near-future gender issues are casually tossed aside. End result: disappointingly shallow, with the story served up as expected with no real twists, though one pleasant surprise was to see the late Barry Morse in such a prominent role despite him only being able to use as much of his considerable range as such a narrow screenplay would allow.