Author: reynolds

Doing the pretentious thing and keeping the original Danish, for the sort-of-Dogme production Brothers. It’s a very well-meaning, very (very) well-acted melodrama in the Coming Home or Deer Hunter vein, where experiences in war (this time Afghanistan) bleed back into life at home. Which seems timely, except (given the fairly-obvious storyline and its unmissable echoes of such earlier films) it also seems kind of un- or out-of-timely. I liked it well enough, but I kept wondering… well, okay, and?

And on another note, the always-enlightening year-end discussion of movies is ongoing at Slate.

I could pitch my reactions to Neil Jordan’s glorious Breakfast on Pluto as yet another spin on the politics vs. personal desire/domesticity discussion, or as a glam-rock rejoinder (or alternative chorus) to Brokeback‘s mournful fiddle, or simply say:

It’s the most fun I have had at the movies all year. (Tied, if I’m totally honest, with Kung Fu Hustle, but its pleasures are very, very different.) The soundtrack is perfect, the images saturated with color, the performances stellar. And it’s moving, funny, thrilling. I’m torn between wanting to read the novel or just see the film again.

I dare Arnab to remove this. No, wait: I dare Arnab to leave this up. One of those dares is reverse psychology. The other is psychology.

I write a brief note to recommend the funniest book I’ve read in years. John Hodgman’s _The Areas of My Expertise_ keeps sidetracking my grading.

If only to read the Seven Hundred Hobo Names (Stick-Legs McOhio is my favorite) or “How to Win a Fight” (rule #2, “Go Ahead and Use Henchmen”). But perhaps for your spiritual health; perhaps for the health of us all.

By the by, David Edelstein calls Munich the best movie of the year. I think I’m going to try and catch it tomorrow.

Am I the first to see this, or the only one who cares to post?

First, I would pay to see Kong and Glick in a jelly-donut-eating contest. I did like Clifford, despite it being terrible, so I ought to give Jiminy a shot, too.

Second, I did enjoy Jackson’s film. The first hour is all glorious romanticized Hollywood-pictures-of-the-’30s crap–Black is manic, Watts is luminescent, the filmmakers glory in deep-focus recreations of NYC, there’s vaudeville depicted, there’s a vaudevillian tone. It’s fun. Then there are some amazing, exciting, even surprising action sequences on the island. And the ending does recapture some of the elegaic melancholy of the original. The graphics are what they’re cracked up to be; the film is certainly too long, maybe by a good hour; I wish it was loopier (more like early Jackson than LOTR-ambitious-Jackson). But it’s certainly fun in many ways at many times, and never dragged.

But. Continue reading Kong

Preston Sturges inspires the kind of rapturous drunkenly-exuberant logorrheic responses in critics that he depicts in his characters. There are moments of sublime confusion in most of his films–and a few (The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and Unfaithfully Yours are my favorites) never flag once they’ve set up the idiosyncrasies of characters and subplots: you get dizzying explosions of action and chatter, everyone overly-crammed into a shot, leaning and yelling over one another, as if but for the camera’s framing they’d fly off into all corners of a room. It can be exhilirating.

Continue reading Diddlebock

I posted some time ago about the new Sci-Fi network miniseries, but we just started watching season one of Battlestar Galactica, and it holds up to my cautious excitement. The third episode: as the fleet scurries to escape Cylon pursuit, the President (Mary McDonnell, playing a minor political functionary who becomes Pres because everyone higher up died in the massive destruction of humanity) and military commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) begin to fight behind the scenes for control; Cylons have infiltrated the ships disguised as humans–and have begun a series of terrorist attacks on the ships, including venting most of the fleet’s water supply to space; an insurrection on a prison ship opens up problems about who to call a ‘citizen’ of the fleet, how to envision the future of democracy during wartime, etc….

You get a small sense of the picture: it’s a by-god sociopolitical soap opera, with fascinating foci on issues of how actually to “run” a community with scarce resources, limited cohesion, attackers on all sides (and within). The allegorical connections to America’s current situation are not hyperbolically shouted, but hell they don’t need to be.

It’s amazing, but I think this is the most interesting “post-9/11” fiction I’ve yet seen. And it ranks up there with the best television science fiction. So far. But I am very hopeful….

1. They are good with bombs, beer, and whimsy. Make that and/or.

2. The older they get, the more likely they are to win the lottery. And, it goes without saying, our hearts.

3. Unwed mothers are irascible but firmly loving of their bastard children.

3a. Irish children are filthy.

4. The British are snooty, snotty, and humorless. No need for the and/or. (And, yes, this means you, Howell. And Stokes, if you still peep in.)
Continue reading What I’ve learned about the Irish from movies: