ben kaye

@thebenkaye

what he’s typed will be a window into his madness | writes about movies, theatre | bylines: Cine-File, Chicago Reader, The Spool, Newcity Stage, possibly you????? | chicago-based (they/he) thebenkaye.com

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ben kaye@thebenkaye· 19d

some words from me on James Benning's TEN SKIES for @cinefilechicago.bsky.social. playing this monday evening at the Siskel Center!

The cinema of James Benning rests upon patience above all else. Over the course of a half-century of filmmaking, he has drilled into and wrestled with the bonds between image and duration, and the ways in which time molds the world around us, and vice-versa. TEN SKIES exemplifies this ethos as perfectly as one can imagine, taking a daringly simple and symmetrical premise—ten shots of ten different skies, lasting ten minutes each—and providing the audience with the space to do with these moments what we will. Each segment carries a genuine sense of character and momentum, the formations of clouds and the various hues of blue and gray filling the frame with endless possibilities of time, place, and feeling. Though all of the skies, shot on 16mm film, were captured near the town Val Verde, California, one could perhaps imagine the second sky—fiery smoke consuming the atmosphere—in their own hometown, or the tenth sky—a nighttime scene accompanied by chirping crickets—in their own backyard, our own memories often punctuated by what the world above looked like at that particular moment. Benning’s juxtaposition of scenes brings a further jolt to the experience, the calm peaceful blues and fluffy clouds of the fourth sky veering drastically into the fifth sky, a vortex of dark clouds layered on top of one another with the sun fighting to break through the center. Each sky wields the simplest elements to convey such weight, be it a particular shade of blue or the force of a smoke stack billowing in the breeze or the bevy of imaginative shapes that a cloud can take on. Benning conceived of TEN SKIES as an anti-war film, saying he wanted the “peaceful and serene” shots to act as an antithesis to the “arrogance of the current administration and their violent so-called solutions.” More than twenty years on, our world, and the skies, sadly haven’t changed too much.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· 19d

welp!

four most recently watched films; IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, TEN SKIES, THE ODYSSEY, and THE INVITE.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· 20d

I love the real news @theonion.com

the latest issue of The Onion, with the headline ONE NATION OVER GOD

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jul 10

it’s happening!

a cut-out standee for TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jul 10

yep!

four most recently watched films; HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, EXIT 8, THE SHEEP DETECTIVES, and THE WILD PARTY.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jul 5

genuinely bewildered at Suzannah Herbert’s NATCHEZ (one of the year’s best documentaries) being available for free on YouTube under The Most Clickbaity Title I’ve Ever Seen. it’s got close to a million views, so hey, pandering works i guess!

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jun 30

stack.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jun 19

quite the week!

most four recently watched; HONEYJOON, DISCLOSURE DAY, YES, and DEERSKIN.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jun 17

a small-but-mighty haul from the recent @kinolorber.com sale.

stack of blu rays including SILENT AVANT-GARDE, Orson Welles’ MACBETH, and Oscar Micheaux: The Complete Collection.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jun 17

name a tv show you're positive no one remembers but you

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jun 13

grandpa simpson saying “just take down the damn letters!”

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jun 10

broadway priorities breakdown.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Jun 5

honestly one of my favorite weeks in movie-watching in recent memory.

four most recently watched; DEATH OF YAZDGERD, I LOVE BOOSTERS, BACKROOMS, and AHED'S KNEE.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 31

new top 4 dropped on the letterboxd

new favorites on letterboxd; THE WATERMELON WOMAN, EDWARD II, THE DOOM GENERATION, and FEMALE TROUBLE.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 19

Moe from the Simpsons saying "Oh, I guess it's back to good old-fashioned Bing."

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 18

briefly chatted about our shared love for Quentin Dupieux and then I scampered off. what a lovely thing.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 17

about to see John Waters. gonna be very chill about it, somehow.

an empty stage that is about to be presenting a talk with John Waters.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 15

I regret to inform you, Cat Stroller.

a very cute gray cat inside of a stroller outside.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 9

the Chicago premiere of Dave Malloy’s OCTET opened this week at Raven Theatre. it is undoubtedly one of the best pieces of theatre i’ve seen in quite some time. if you’re looking for something bold and spiritual and musically transcendent to shake you up, this is the one for you.

a production photo from the musical OCTET, with eight characters sitting at chairs in a meeting room.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 6

whatever’s happening in Canadian Film right now, we need to nurture it and keep it thriving for as long as possible.

poster for NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 5

happy Tony Awards Nominations Day for all who celebrate!

a promo image for ROB LAKE MAGIC WITH SPECIAL GUESTS THE MUPPETS

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 4

the thing is that Matt Johnson has only made great movies so I have no reason to believe this won't be, at the very least, pretty good.

a poster for the upcoming Anthony Bourdain film TONY directed by Matt Johnson. Dominic Sessa is posing as Bourdain and looks appropriately brooding.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 1

on @sophyromvari.bsky.social's BLUE HERON, for @cinefilechicago.bsky.social. now playing in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center. go see it!

Like a long-lost childhood memory, Sophy Romvari’s BLUE HERON exists within a series of flitting moments of comfort before shifting suddenly and revealing something entirely raw, pulling the rug out from under you in the process. Though this is her feature debut, Romvari has already made a name for herself with an array of short films that explore the uncanny marriage between media and memory. Her particular fascination, and the patient, anthropological methodology with which she explored it could have only culminated in something like BLUE HERON, a jarring yet kindhearted work whose efforts to prod nostalgia reveal nothing but a tender bruise in the aftermath. Romvari has oh-so slightly twisted and morphed her own biography to create the family at the center of the film, a Hungarian-Canadian quintet who have recently moved to a scenic new home on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s. The summer weeks that follow comprise the first half of the narrative, where brief, jutting memories emerge as revelatory moments within young minds. A young girl, Sasha, amusingly draws a mouse on Microsoft Paint while her two brothers play in the other room; an older brother, Jeremy, steals a bird keychain from a nature gift shop, while Mom peels potatoes, Dad develops photographs, and summer hours idle away. Romvari’s camera prefers static wide shots, entire canvases of nature bathed in cool tones providing the backdrop for a young family that is unknowingly in the midst of a personal crisis. Jeremy, the only child born from the mother’s previous relationship, has begun behaving in exponentially more aggressive ways, building to his own arrest for shoplifting, with his parents struggling to come to terms with their own inability to manage his social and emotional needs. The cast, comprised of both actors and nonactors (Edik Beddoes, playing Jeremy, was discovered from a clip Romvari had found of him talking about video games), move through these difficult spaces almost effortlessly, t…

ben kaye@thebenkaye· May 1

and what of it!

letterboxd four most recently watched: BLUE HERON, MOTHER MARY, FLASH GORDON, and THE CHRISTOPHERS

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Apr 24

squidward watching spongebob and patrick from the window

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Apr 17

all over the place recently.

letterboxd four most recently watched; CIELO, HAMLET, BOREALIS, and THE DRAMA.

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Apr 11

pretty sure I just saw Artemis’ descent from space out the window but didn’t grab a picture so as to be in the moment, so even posting about it without footage feels like this:

nathan fielder meme of him saying “out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. they’re all just out of frame, laughing too.”

ben kaye@thebenkaye· Apr 10