Month: July 2010

the messenger

the messenger is, as one expects, replete with back-at-home war movie clichés, but i found it extremely affecting nonetheless, mostly because it’s about tender feelings, confusion, and mildness rather than blown-up warrior hurt and over-the-top drama. woody harrelson and ben foster play two soldiers assigned to the Casualty Notification Team, the folks who are in charge of telling next-of-kin that a soldier was killed in combat. woody’s character, capt. stone, was in desert storm but never got hurt; foster’s character, staff sergeant will montgomery, is just back from iraq where he was injured by the IED that killed a fellow soldier. ben foster is the kid who played claire fisher’s sort-of boyfriend in six feet under, but while in six feet he was weedy and scuzzy looking, here he’s buff, clean, strong, and surprisingly handsome. Continue reading the messenger

Crazy Stone

Ning Hao’s 2006 heist film was shot on dv for a song, but damn the film sings. The low-rent production and high-concept pitch (it’s Ocean’s Eleven in China) both fade from memory a few moments in. Yes, it’s a heist film–but it’s also a parody of heist films. Where Soderbergh’s slick cons run elaborate, high-tech scams on gangsters with deep pockets, here a rare jade (found during digging at a small-time factory) is guarded by a dedicated but woefully unresourced security chief, and sought by a couple of crews of generally half-assed thieves. (There is one high-profile expert jewel thief, and his smarts get him nowhere.)

The film is also technically devious–Ning often shows us an event, then cuts to another scene which we slowly realize is a rewind, bringing us back into the earlier event from another angle. There’s split-screen play, some loopy and glorious foot-chases. The filmmaking is joyous, the acting just as playful. I can’t recall how I came upon this, but it was great good fun, and I’m going to watch Ning’s earlier film and keep an eye out for those coming….

A Single Man

Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man follows one day — it is not a spoiler to say: the last day — in the life of George Falconer, a professor of English at UCLA (I think) in 1962. George is originally English, is gay, and the film opens with the death of Jim, his lover of sixteen years. Eight months after Jim’s death, George remains distraught, though it is now something that he has buried from the view of outsiders. Continue reading A Single Man

an idea

so, mike and i are passionately active on goodreads (in our different ways — mike is a superstar). goodreads, if you losers don’t know what it is, is this website where people talk about books. the wonderful thing about it is that discussions end up being pretty damn good and people bring to your attention books you would never have considered picking up. so i thought, how about we open this here blog a little, send an invite to those bonzer people over at goodreads we have come to know and like, and ask them to contribute to our threads and start threads of their own? this would involve:

1. removing the absurd block on commenting to people arnab hasn’t registered as legit commenters (arnab, wordpress is really, really good with spam).
2. giving people an easy way to register as contributors (arnab, wordpress has a contact box you can script in)
3. opening the website to search engines (hi arnab).

i realize that this also requires more administrative work, but since it’s not my problem i don’t care. please discuss.