Grassy ass

Hey, thanks for the recent spate of intriguing posts — especially John on EnSAHMbluuu Say Blahdiblooh (I couldn’t resist the French, but it was a great rec) and Chris on the Zidane thing. Chris also gets a demerit for even mentioning Bangkok Dangerous, which wasn’t good in the original Thai, so why did they…?

I have not seen much to crow about, having circled around some middling films which felt overcooked. Despite a great David Strathairn performance, the very indie The Sensation of Sight‘s very title should have warned me off–the flick has that new-degree-from-film-school smell, with often beautiful shots, a series of ambitious character studies that feel aggressively workshopped (and, alas, overdetermined), title cards in verse, black-and-white flashbacks, smalltown eccentricities and cruelties, and a sad-whimsy tone for which I am not constitutionally predisposed. I’m spending time on it simply because it deserves some attention — despite such flaws, there are all these flashes of intelligence and a gorgeous sense of style.

I loved the middling Son of Rambow. It’s also overdetermined, and sad-whimsical, maybe even crushingly sentimental… but I watched it after watching the RNC, with its romanticization of family and religion and the military, and I found this a great antidote: to see kids running around in fantasies of military excess, trying to find their way out from under misguidedly-idealized family romances and (overdetermined) religious zealotry, … and everyone makes it out alive, happier, with real friends, real connections. It was sweet, often funny. Unlike the RNC. Plus the RNC failed to show the cool kids in their own cool-kid afterschool hangout, listening to Siouxie and the Banshees, voguing all New Wave, guzzling pop rocks and soda. Keep your expectations low and it’s worth a gamble.

And the series Mad Men deserves its own post. It’s not in the same league as the HBO hall-of-famers (maybe add on a “… yet”)–but this series is far more than elaborate and lovely production design. The protagonist Don Draper (the great Jon Hamm) has emerged in startling complexity; we know enough now, halfway through season two, that some of the moments when we catch him reflecting quietly I have no sense whether he’s arrogantly judging events, fearfully wondering how to escape them, or savagely loathing his own participation in them. And while the show underlines, italicizes, amps up its quasi-critical/quasi-fascinated portrait of chainsmoking, drink-guzzling sexist men, it’s got a contingent of excellent women characters, particularly Draper’s wife Bets (the equally compelling January Jones). It’s just a damn good show.