{"id":18426,"date":"2026-02-26T21:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T02:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18426"},"modified":"2026-02-26T18:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T23:58:11","slug":"four-by-phil-solomon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18426","title":{"rendered":"Four by Phil Solomon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Psalm I: The Lateness of the Hour<\/em> (1999)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Blue flickers in the inky blackness, sometimes watery-reflective or anomene-textured, sometimes seemingly clips from other films with the <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/553\">Psalm III<\/a><\/em> edge-enhancement filter.  Apparently silent, so I played my own very groovy music, which was the highlight of the experience<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<br \/>\n<strong><em>Last Days in a Lonely Place<\/em> (2007)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>None of these movies have titles or credits, and these next two form a <em>Grand Theft Auto<\/em> trilogy along with <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/13615\">Rehearsals for Retirement<\/a><\/em> called <em>In Memoriam (Mark LaPore)<\/em>.  Predating the kids&#8217; craze for liminal spaces, Solomon finds meditative room in some low-res 3D game engine.  Yes it&#8217;s the dreaded machinima, but thank goodness that beyond these shorts and <em>Grand Theft Hamlet<\/em>, that craze never took off, so we can appreciate these as singular objects.  Ambient music with Humphrey Bogart clips.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/solomon1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<br \/>\n<strong><em>Still Raining, Still Dreaming<\/em> (2009)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mark LaPore codirected the short <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/13168\">Crossroad<\/a><\/em> with Solomon in tribute to <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/18294\">David Gatten<\/a>, and died that same year.  This one&#8217;s even more ambient and liminal than before, though slightly less greyscale.  Almst no movement except the shifting of digital daylight and video compression artifacts, the audio a bootleg Indian broadcast.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/solomon2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<br \/>\n<strong><em>Psalm IV: Valley of the Shadow<\/em> (2013)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>More ambient than ever, leans too hard on its audio track: the closing monologue of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/6023\">The Dead<\/a><\/em>, without any good video game visuals.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/solomon3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psalm I: The Lateness of the Hour (1999) Blue flickers in the inky blackness, sometimes watery-reflective or anomene-textured, sometimes seemingly clips from other films with the Psalm III edge-enhancement filter. Apparently silent, so I played my own very groovy music, which was the highlight of the experience &#8211; Last Days in a Lonely Place (2007) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,3469,2119,21],"class_list":["post-18426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-avant-garde","tag-machinima","tag-phil-solomon","tag-shorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18444,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18426\/revisions\/18444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}