Enter The Void

Darren Aronofsky's first feature and still one of his weirdest, PI (or "π") is a B&W-shimmering orb providing a view to several convergent trends of the late 1990s: young independent directors scraping together a mainstream career; the use of obscure math and especially chaos theory in popular art; and the low-level burbling ambient electronic music of artists with names like Orbital and, well, The Orb. In this week's episode, Renan and Bill consider all of the above, and with it: pop mysticism and numerology, the whiter whites and blacker blacks of reversal film, the long arm of Gilliam and Serling's influence, and how PI compares to another ETV favorite, PRIMER (S1E2). Film links: Pi on IMDb Pi on Wikipedia Roger Ebert review AV Club on Pi and Primer Aronofsky + Gullette interview The Stygian Port on secret numbers in Pi Passwall on secret numbers in Pi James Gleick's Chaos on Wikipedia Tom Stoppard's Arcadia on Wikipedia YouTube: The Fibonacci in Lateralus Orblivion by The Orb on Spotify In Sides by O