Serenity

Just saw ‘Serenity’ with the kids. Too gory for my eight year-old, but otherwise a good old-fashioned adventure movie. Part Star Trek, part Indiana Jones, part Matrix and lots of Buffy. Witty, great special effects, and even a plot, though the “secret” is a bit of a letdown. Still, to see Summer Glau in the Buffy role, whirling and slicing in her two fight scenes, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the polite but deadly assassin is a lot of fun.

Before Sunset

I was watching ‘Alien vs Predator’ on HBO last night (disappointing: neither as frightening and clever as the Alien movies nor as funny and explosive as the Predator movies).

In any case, right after ‘AVP’ HBO showed ‘Before Sunset’ and I kept watching. This must be the third time I’ve seen it in the space of a year, and each time I’m enthralled. The quality of the dialogue between Hawke and Delpy is remarkable. Even the mis-steps somehow seem to work, to make it more realistic. When Delpy is lecturing Hawke on all that’s wrong with the world, it shows her lack of confidence yet that she and Hawke will connect as they did before in Vienna. When she uses American colloquialisms she should not know, even having lived in NY, it shows her relaxing around Hawke. And the manner in which the conversation evolves, from the trivial and the humorous, to the heartbreaking revelations they both make about their current relationships near the end, just seems utterly natural. It is also interesting to see Linklater and Hawke give the bulk of the dialogue to Delpy. Hawke plays off her superbly, but it is Delphy who has most of the crucial moments.

The simplicity of the camera work as it just backs away from the couple as they walk around Paris lends just enough structure to the movie without detracting at all from the dialogue. Hawke’s repeated movement to touch Delpy on the shoulder before resisting, and countless tiny gestures, capture the mixture of tentativeness and familiarity. I very much liked ‘Before Sunrise’ and in a lot of ways it is a better movie. But it is easier to craft a movie around discovery, and the first moments of a new relationship, than rediscovery, and the rekindling of an old relationship.

Downfall

I really thought someone had posted here about Downfall, but I can’t find the post. We saw this a couple of weeks ago. Riveting. Great performance by Bruno Ganz. There’s a lot of ways to look at this film: History is written by the winners, Hitler was a human being, blind devotion to power is scary, and – perhaps the most interesting – how innocent can an individual be of a government’s crime? I have a feeling we may be asking ourselves that a few times over the next few decades.

I don’t really want to go into it a whole lot, but it’s a fine movie. On another note, I had a dream last night I was in school, and had to do well in two classes, but they both had horrible teachers. One of the teacher’s was Hitler, and he was depressed, and wouldn’t teach us anything, and the class was held in the bunker. Man, Professor Hitler sucks.

A History of Violence

This isn’t a great film. The dialogue is stilted, the tone of certain scenes feels forced (particularly in the first half hour), many of the performances are excrutiatingly one-dimensional, and the film is visually flat (lacking the strong compositions and use of shadow and light in Spider and Crash, for example). What exactly did I expect from another graphic novel adaptation? But as a particular kind of American allegory, A History of Violence makes for an extremely potent piece of cinema (and there are scenes and moments that are just about as good as it gets). I can see why this was such a hit at Cannes. As I was watching, however, I wondered what David Lynch could have done with this material, and I guess that’s not such a great endorsement of Cronenberg’s work.

The Upside of Anger

Another one of Joan Allen’s flurry of good and overlooked films this year. This is more melodramatic than I am usually willing to sit through, but it’s well done. Nothing “stupid” happens in the plot, which I appreciate on one hand. However, I wonder how realistic it is that a mother and four daughters get abandoned by the father and none of them strike out at Kevin Costner, or do anything less than act like a grown-up. The mother is the least stable of the bunch, and that seems unlikely, though certainly possible; and even she deals with the obstacles thrown into her life in a mostly grown-up way (She does drink a lot, but so do I. Who am I to cast stones?) Continue reading The Upside of Anger

seen any good previews lately?

i mean for films that seem interesting*? something i watched last week had a preview of linklater’s philip k. dick adaptation. it uses the same technology/style he used in “waking life”. it may fit well with the mood of dick (quite apart from the ways in which it presumably frees him up from the laws of physics). but i can’t think of anything else. oh yes, the “narnia” trailer makes me want to read those books–then again unlike you cynics i am a fan of tolkien.

i continue to wait for someone to pick up my idea of a screen in a multiplex that only shows previews. i tell you, people would be willing to pay for that. i’d be willing to watch a whole series of previews like this one.

*though i suppose we could talk about the preview as genre as well, if we’re really bored, as we probably are.

about the comment editing thing

i have found a plugin that i can install which allows people to edit their own comments for a fixed period of time after they make it. sounds good? the problem is this: it works by ip address, not by login cookie. for those of you who might make comments from a university lab or on some other shared network this means a possibility that someone else who logs on to the network after you log off and gets assigned the same ip could potentially edit your comment within that time window. does this make sense? and if so, does it matter to you lot? it is a somewhat unlikely scenario i suspect, and we could make it more unlikely by setting the window to something as short as 15 minutes. this might be a good idea anyway, since it would be enough time to catch typos but would probably prevent the temptation to substantially alter a comment after the fact (and mess up the flow of the conversation).

let me know if you want me to install. i’ll wait to hear from those who complain about this the most: mauer, john, jeff and mike and then delete this topic so as to not give our external readership of 3 any ideas.

The Corpse Bride

When I wrote up something about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I said that I would have loved it if I saw it at 13. Well, if I had seen The Corpse Bride at 9, it would have opened up whole new realms to me. Not only would I have loved it, it would have been one of my favorite films ever. Yet, while Hitchhiker’s Guide disappointed me as a 35 year-old, Corpse Bride still amazed me, and was a load of fun. (The fact that it opened with a Bugs Bunny Cartoon only helped.)

This film had the mix of humor, gorgeous animated beauty, eroticism, fear, songs and gothic horrors that enraptured and terrified me watching Disney’s Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty and – especially – Snow White. Continue reading The Corpse Bride

Curb Your Enthusiasm/Extras

I’m wondering what people with HBO thought of the first episodes last night. I have always enjoyed CYE, primarily because it has this ur-Seinfeld quality of being downright painful to watch. Pairing it with Ricky Gervais ought to be inspired because that was the main quality of ‘The Office,” along with offering serious satire of what passes for employee relations and management-speak today. On the basis of the first episodes, I thought CYE was the weaker of the two. Perhaps familiarity is the problem. Larry David seemed to be going through the motions, with the storylines of scalping tickets for the synagogue and the squabble over the sandwich being a bit more contrived than usual. He may be setting something up for the rest of the season. The running gag about ‘The Producers’ climaxed perfectly at the end of the last season, so maybe the adoption storyline is heading in the same direction.

‘Extras’ was pitch-perfect. Gervais’s ability to alternate between being the life of the party and being an embarrassed git is as strong as ever. The material on religion was hysterical, and Kate Winslett nailed all her lines. It is interesting that, despite the fact that Gervais and the BBC must have known that ‘Extras’ would be shown in the US, a number of the references ought to be bewildering to any but a British audience. Who, outside of England, knows who Jeremy Clarkson is, or cares, for that matter? I sort of like that parochialism. It is early days, but the series is low-key enough that it should be able to survive on the limited premise of sitting around a film studio every week and commenting sarcastically on the star.