I’ve been catching up on last year’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, about which I have. It isn’t the masterpiece it once was, or perhaps (three episodes in) I see no gathering momentum, simply a solid funny half-hour of comedy. Its familiar rhythms and pacing and gags may not startle, but I’m still happy to see ’em.
I also either accepted the suckerbait or made an efficient decision, and ordered up the NBC promo disc for two new shows, available only on Netflix. Continue reading TV
Rather than continually posting in the old trailers thread, I thought I’d fire up a new one as finally there are some good movies on the horizon. For starters, I’m digging the trailer for the excellently titled The Last King of Scotland, which is of course about Idi Amin, and like everything in the 21st century, based on A True Story.
There are many things that depress me, and a good number of them feature prominently in Little Miss Sunshine.
Suicide attempts, people involved with self-actualization programs, bankruptcy, beauty pageants, watching helplessly as major embarassments roll slowly and unavoidably towards you…
Car troubles, depression, desperation, forced family activities, not talking, crushed teenage dreams, and 31 flavors of failure. I’m really not sure why anyone would call this a comedy, though I laughed enough times. And I can’t really fault any particular part of this film; it’s quite good in all respects from writing and acting down to the colors and composition of shots. I guess I had just expected it to be funnier, and when I read somewhere that it was a little overwhelming in its cynicism, I didn’t really expect that it would actually bother me. Continue reading Little Miss Sunshine / Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
does anyone know if there are any bootleg dvds or videos of stan brakhage’s 1990 film passage through?
i’ve been wanting to write about this for a bit, because i liked it a lot, but i wasn’t sure what to say. this is a film i educatedly suspect none of you has seen, but it’s the summer film i’ve easily liked best so far. this is not saying much, but i actually think this is quite good. the story is a neat rags-to-reaches fable, with plain girl who becomes beautiful, evil step-mother (meryl streep in superb form), prince charming, fake prince charming, evil step-sister who turns out to be all right after all, and evil twins. Continue reading the devil wears prada
I’ll say more about my thoughts on the film later, but I thought I’d just get things rolling with a couple of topics/questions.
1. I find Melville’s film to be devastatingly emotional, beneath the laconic dialogue and cool surfaces (or should I say, “because of?”). Do genre films–or let’s say films within genres that work as a kind of apotheosis of the genre–pack more of a punch emotionally because they are playing on a set of expectations? In other words, is the constraint of genre really a kind of freedom?
2. I particularly like the way the film quietly explodes the idea of a stoic masculinity–actions are not expressions of a philosophy where gesture supplants internal life, but messages from a vast unknown territory. Of course, I am a bit taken aback when I read that Melville describes his protagonist Costello as a “psychopath.” Do you agree? If so, the film might be part of the discussion with Straw Dogs and White.
Continue reading Clubland: Le Samourai
i hope someone will chime in with an erudite reading of badlands in the context of terrence malick’s whole production as a writer and as a director, or with some cool comments on its straddling different genres (the western, the psychopathic killer genre, the dissaffected youth genre, etc. — though, of course, these are genres that are often superimposed). i saw it two nights ago for the first time and i was most impressed. what a film. it would be cool to view this in our summer club, except the summer is almost over, if not astronomically, at least from the point of view of our employment (sigh). anyway, if you think this would be a good selection, read no further, otherwise, click here: Continue reading badlands
saw this yesterday with high expectations, because the miami herald gave it a resounding review, and one imagines the miami herald should know. but the miami herald, to which we are constantly cancelling our subscription in disgust and resuming it in desperation, knows nothing, least of all whether a movie allegedly about miami has anything at all to do with, er, miami. Continue reading miami vice
It’s fun just having that as a heading. Saw Richard Linklater’s very effective adaptation of Philip K.’s novel A Scanner Darkly.
Okay, in preparation for Michael’s contribution to the discussions, I re-watched Le Samourai. As it finished, I found myself still all revved up, so I stuck in Seijun Suzuki’s Youth of the Beast, which I’d never seen. It rocks. And now I’m in a mood that may lead me to see Mann’s Vice this afternoon.
The mood? Anomitastic. Nihilicentious. Aggressubilant. Without stepping all over Michael’s jump-start on Melville’s film, some quick thoughts on these flicks. Continue reading Mean Motherphilosophicking Tough Guys