Author: gio

no one, except maybe the protagonists themselves (though memory can be deceitful), knows for sure what materazzi said to induce zidane to butt him in the chest during the final of the world cup. lip readers and zidane himself say that materazzi called zidane’s mother and possibly his sister bad names. anti-racism website proclaim confidently that he accused zidane’s poor mother of being a terrorist, even as materazzi proudly proclaims not to know what an islamic terrorist is (since italian soccer players don’t have a reputation for culture and sophisication, i’m inclined to believe him). in an interview released yesterday or the day before (depending on what time zone you live), zidane said that “as a man” he could not leave his mother’s (and sister’s) honor unprotected and unavenged. Continue reading your mother is a terrorist whore

even since i came to the US and met simon (the two things happened very near each other) i’ve been hearing about this allegedly fabulous australian tv show. it just about broke simon’s heart to leave england while the show was still running, and a week before he was due on his one-way flight to los angeles he runned himself ragged looking for a recording of the theme song all over london. only now do i realize how lucky i am that he didn’t find it.

i discovered that prisoner had been realeased on dvd (not the whole thing, just some choice episodes), so i bought it for him. i barely lasted through the first episode. does anyone know this show? can someone explain to me the allure of english tv? (this is australian, as i said, but whatever). the only bbc production i’ve ever liked is prime suspect, but the styles are so different, it’s as if british tv had learned a thing or two from its american counterpart in the decade that separates prisoner and prime suspect.

so i ask, what is it with the campiness and the cheesiness?

i want to write about two beautiful films i just saw. they are, among other things, about children, a subject that lends itself to sentimentalism. i generally avoid films about kids, and i was tempted to avoid these too, had they not been by directors i like very much. one is deepa mehta’s water, the other is hirokazu koreeda nobody knows (koreeda made the sublime afterlife). i think that, for the most part, the directors do a good job at staying away from sentimentalism. nobody knows is hardly sentimental at all, though the beautiful face of the protagonist, young Yûya Yagira (who won best actor at cannes), is tremendously captivating and sweet. deepa mehta’s young protagonist is not a “cute” child (i at least didn’t find her so), but the film does get a bit sentimental at points. i suspect this may be due to the genre, i.e. that fact that water is an indian film that is certainly indebted to bollywood esthetics. since i know absolutely nothing about bollywood, whose beauty i don’t quite get (sorrysorrysorry), i will leave it at this, hoping someone can fill in this specific connection for me. Continue reading incredible beauty, incredible sadness

i just saw spider, my second cronenberg exposure, and i need to ask: does cronenberg only do boring films?

this film made me think a little bit about the discussion people have been having about action images vs time images vs protracted, boring images (themselves a kind of time images, in their defiance of normative parameters of cinematic time and cinematic orientation). and the primary thought that gelled in my mind is the following: you can’t have it both ways. if you give us textual clues straining towards a resolution and you then delay the resolution by using loooong descriptive shots (in this case descriptive of mental decay through physical decay), you mess with the audience in an uncool, unproductive, uncreative way. if, furthermore, after all this watching and enduring, you give us a lame resolution, then you are a bad filmmaker and i’ll never watch your films again.

i have neither read nor seen the da vinci code. until i saw, and, for a change, paid attention to a trailer of the film earlier this week (i space out during trailers), i had no idea what the big brouhaha about DVC was. one more conspiracy film about the vatican? big deal. you must by now know what the heresy of DVC is. if you don’t [SPOILER], here it is: jesus and mary magdalene got married and had children; this fact was concealed by the church through systematic erasure of evidenciary documentation. i think it’s pretty much it, though i’m not sure. as i said, i haven’t read the book. Continue reading code red

in the last six months, i started to write this post some twenty times, nineteen of them in my head. today the pony and i went to see stick it and the post finally materialized in my mind. this is not the kind of movie i would normally see, but i am happy i went, though it is a far from perfect movie, or even a good movie. it is, however, a very interesting movie, especially if you like daring aesthetics and girl power movies. there are three genres of movies i’m an all-round sucker for: heist, con, and girl power. Continue reading girl power

1) why did curtis hanson make an unspeakably bad movie like in her shoes?

2) how does toni collette position herself in hollywood, being both not-beautiful and much in demand (she is always working)? or, to make the question more general, what is the place of non-beautiful women in mainstream american cinema, where beauty is constantly and explicitly presented as central?