Author: gio

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

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.

women’s films

just kidding. the embalmer, a 2002 italian movie by gomorrah‘s director matteo garrone, is a longing, brave, heartbreaking dirge to doomed desire. peppino, a dwarfish and very ungainly middle-aged neapolitan taxidermist played by a fabulous ernesto mahieux, falls in love with a spectacularly handsome young man who, too, has a passion for taxidermy. peppino convinces young valerio to come to work for him. but, then, who knows: maybe valerio doesn’t have a passion for taxidermy but simply a sense of the dead-endedness of what he’s currently doing. or maybe he’s just flattered that peppino should like him so much. this is only one of the multiple uncertainties on which this film so brilliantly pivots. Continue reading women’s films

Riparo

i’m going to waste some breath here on an italian film i just saw which no one on this blog will, and probably should, watch. It’s about a lesbian couple who, coming back from a lovely holiday in tunisia, finds hidden in the trunk a stowaway moroccan kid (17? 18?). in fact, this is not exactly what happens. it is one of the lovers, a conflicted and tender maria de medeiros, who sees the boy while looking for something in the trunk. she doesn’t tell her girlfriend mara until they are safely in italy and in a deserted place. in fact, she doesn’t tell her at all; she just darts to the back of the car and lets the poor kid, who’s by now cramped, sick, and dehydrated, out of the miserable tight spot in which he has spent at least 24 hours. Continue reading Riparo

XXY

really great, complex, and thoughtful movie about an intersex kid who, although not reassigned at birth, has been raised as a girl and given appropriate medication to develop as such. am not sure about the biological accuracy — at 15, alex has small but nonetheless existing breasts, a high-pitch, definitely feminine voice, and looks most certainly like a girl — but the issues this small film (from the film movement) raises are doubtlessly rich and, it seems to me, as true to reality as fiction can make them. Continue reading XXY

doubt

i don’t see anyone having posted on this (did i miss it? i don’t think so), and since it’s replete with Themes that Interest Me, i’ll give it a couple of lines. simon and i agreed it wasn’t a good movie, mostly because it was the development of a thesis, not a movie. but the thesis is interesting, and the topic in general is interesting, and philip seymour hoffman is genuinely great. i think the playwright wanted to address the sex abuse scandal in a dramatic/theological light, bringing both psychological and Continue reading doubt