Category: well, okay

looking for shylock

last night: william shakespeare’s “the merchant of venice”

this is a handsome production which will likely finally be remembered only for pacino’s against all odds, restrained performance as shylock, giving us a hint of what might have become of him had scarface never happened. the film, of course, has a higher ambition than that and that is to take the play and make it about anti-semitism rather than a play shot through with the racism of its time from which only its poetry somewhat ambivalently rescues it (which is how i read it when i read it last). this sort of shift of emphasis in production is, i suppose, par for the course in the theater and i don’t really have a huge objection to it. but there are specific things that happen at the very beginning of the film that are not in the play, and which, while not huge, make me question if this is william shakespeare’s the merchant of venice. (and there are larger problems too–of which, more below.)
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hotel rwanda

one of the more effective sequences in hotel rwanda involves an apparently real radio broadcast: a number of rwandans taking shelter in the hotel listen to an u.s state department spokeswoman dance around the word “genocide”–she will say that “acts of genocide” have happened but she won’t use the word itself as a descriptor. the film to some extent is negotiating a similar problem in its own medium. it says “genocide” loud and clear but it shies away from actually showing too much of it. we get a few scenes–never close-up–of people being hacked to death and shot, we see the bodies of the recently killed but the enormity of what happened–close to a million dead, a staggering refugee crisis–largely eludes us until a screen-caption before the end credits tells us about it.

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vera drake

watched this last night. the performances, the cinematography, the rhythm of the film–all these things are very well done and the film comes together really well. what is less subtle, or adroit, is the film’s handling of class. there are basically three kinds of people in this film: hardcore working class, working class on the move, and upper class. everyone in the first category is a saint, everyone in the second category is a traitor, and everybody in the third category is either vicious or vaccuous. while the film presents itself as quiet social realism what it really is is quiet agit-prop. nothing wrong with agit-prop of course, but here it is mostly condescending to the people on whose behalf it is agitating.

hollywood shuffle

not much high art of late i’m afraid. we watched “shrek 2” a few nights ago and last night we watched “friday night lights”. “shrek 2” is entertaining enough–jennifer saunders and rupert everett are great, as are eddie murphy (of course) and antonio banderas. i find it funny that even in animation voiceover the black guy still plays the sidekick. but there’s not much else to say about this. don’t do what i did and watch “faraway idol” with simon cowell on the dvd extras.

we thought “friday night lights” was really quite good. it is a genre film through and through, and towards the end the conventions take over to a large extent but it is fairly affecting stuff–much closer to “hoop dreams” than to something like “varsity blues”. there’s some weird stuff with race towards the end and in general the film skips over dealing with the question of race in a small texas town in the late 80s but still worth a watch. the dvd extra interviews with the actual now grown-up players (this is very closely based on real events, or rather a non-fiction book about real events) are quite moving in parts, as you see what became of the guy who when the movie starts out seems destined for nfl stardom.

ray

we watched this last night. i found it to be curiously uninvolving. the parts that worked best were the musical performances (with ray charles singing). the rest was mostly trite psychologizing, shuffling around questions of history, and the occasional quincy jones sighting (which i think was supposed to stand in for charles’ relationship with 50s/60s jazz). and apparently there is nothing to say about ray charles after the 60s. there’s been a lot of talk about foxx’s performance; it is mostly a series of very good ray charles impressions mixed in with some scenes of very good acting–but i thought the impressions distracted (though the big-time critics disagree). too bad belushi died before getting to do a joe cocker biopic.

since this has been nominated for a best picture oscar i am forced to rate it “overrated”.

coffee and cigarettes

we watched this last night. a mixed bag.

really likey: blanchett; molina/coogan; the old codgers at the end

likey: waits/pop; the lees/buscemi; gza/rza/murray

not likey: wright/benigni–though this must have seemed like a great idea on paper

blah: everything else

amazing though that this was filmed over 17 years–even when it doesn’t work it holds together really well. does anyone know when the individual segments were shot? was the buscemi/lees elvis conversation shot during the filming of “mystery train”? looking forward to jarmusch’s next feature.

other stuff? 24 and more

er…are we allowed to discuss other (ahem) cultural items other than movies on this list or will that endanger its purity? I spit on your rules! since I live in out in the woods now I rarely see any movies except on DVD–and the movies I have seen lately at the cineplexes overrun by teenagers have run to the likes of Blade: Trinity, National Treasure and Aliens vs Predator rather than all this high-toned consequences of irresponsibility stuff I keep hearing about (by the way, the Predators win–apparently because they have cool dredlocks like Bob Marley and secretly dig humans. me, I’d rather have 3 sets of fangs and acid for blood. baby, then somebody would pay! since when did the predators become such sell-outs?). Anyhoo, I have been watching last season’s 24 on DVD, thanks to Netflix….and, er, I don’t know what point I have to make, except it’s cool when the helicopter blows up. oh wait, here it is, I think–it is a weird combination of slick dense overplotting with remarkably blatant “holes” in it–it makes me think of us and the dinosaurs. apparently they died when they became too specialized in evolution–then the slightest change became lethal because they were so adapted to current circumstances. a giant edifice of knowledge with a spot of stupidity, small but of stunning vulnerability. make cultural hay out of that! jesus, I’m tired…..