adrian is rad

I quite enjoyed Invictus, though it was a bit sentimental and sappy. I found the book better in the end.

The list of goofs in the movie is quite entertaining, though, particularly the level of detail of the errors noted.

• Factual errors: The rugby balls used in the Springboks matches are the current generic Gilbert Barbarian match balls with dark blue and green oval trims. The actual match balls used in 1995 World Cup were in fact grass green and sky blue and they all had a Rugby World Cup logo and the year 1995 printed on them. Also the kicking tee used by the All Blacks goal kicker in the film was a Gilbert Blue Tee; the actual kicking tee used by the player Andrew Mehrtens in the 1995 final was a yellow Simpkin Kicking Tee.

I’m sure many people were appalled by the latter inaccuracy.

This is really strange:

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I really like these vintage Japanese baseball cards.

Movies are <$4 is my local art house cinema (about a 5 minute walk) so I go see films sometimes. It reminds me of when I went to movies in Germany lots on Tuesdays because it was 4 Euro movie night.

Last week I saw Whatever Works, the latest Woody Allen film. It stars Larry David as a man who despises everyone and sees life in a very negative light. I laughed aloud a few times. Decent entertainment but not a great movie.

Today I saw Zombieland, a buddy road trip/ zombie comedy. I’m not a fan of zombie movies (despite the Pittsburgh tie) but this is really funny. I liked it a lot.

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I’m following along the Steelers game online. I hope they stop their recent slide here.

I watched last week’s game yesterday. They lost but I was pretty happy how our 3rd string QB played in his first start (and his first throw of the game was only his second NFL throw ever).

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There was a big party on Long St, about 10 minutes walk from my place, for the 2010 World Cup Draw which happened on Friday. It was packed but it was a good time.

In the draw, USA got England, Slovenia and Algeria. Not an amazingly tough group but there’ll be a couple competitive games in there.

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I head back to the States in a week and a half. I’m excited to see friends and family. I’m excited for some hat-and-gloves-and-seeing-your-breath weather.

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I have a bunch of things to do before I head back, probably the biggest of which is trying to find a car. I’m renting a car right now and I’m returning it right before I leave.

I love this clip. Among other reasons why, it reminds me of how great it is to just open up and sing along with gusto.

It should be noted that Mark Kozelek (of Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon and solo) is the first to start singing.

on my street earlier in the week

I watched part of a debate in Parliament today. It was pretty interesting. Members of Parliament were asking ministers questions. The Ministers of Justice, Police, Correctional Services, Home Affairs and International Relations were all there and answered questions while I was there. There were some light-hearted moments, but there were also some contentious ones as well, particularly ones between the Minister of Justice and members of the DA, during which the above quote was said.

I should note that I had to go through four metal detectors to get to the public gallery of the assembly, but my belt buckle made at least two of them go off; they waved me through all four.

in Salt River

This week has been a bit all-over-the-place. Yesterday I went to the SA National Gallery. It was pretty good and it cost $2 to get in. What’s the last time you’ve been to a museum for $2? Even the Pez Museum in Burlingame is $3! My one complaint about the museum is that there’s too much British stuff–lots of old portraits of generals and things from the 18th and 19th century. Why have portraits of an army someone whooped? (Also, there’s plenty better art from that and other time periods.)

On Sunday I went to the Long Street Baths (where I’ve been swimming) and went to their Turkish baths. I spent two hours in the sauna, steam room, cold plunge pool, etc. Wow that’s so ridiculously relaxing.

in Observatory

Some family is in town, or at least in the area. I’m heading to Stellenbosch tomorrow to see my uncle from the UK and over the weekend I’m heading to Hermanus, where my cousin will be. He and his wife have a cottage there that they’ll be at briefly. I haven’t been to Stellenbosch or Hermanus since 2004, I believe, so it’ll be a nice time.

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I saw Welcome to the Sticks the other day. It’s one of those fascicle French films, with some really funny moments. Basically the main character attempts to land a transfer to the Riviera by pretending to be disabled. Instead he’s found out and is transfer to the dreaded North instead. Thinking she won’t be able to handle the depressing North, his wife stays behind. The main guy ends up enjoying it, but when he tries to tell his wife this, she doesn’t believe him, so he lies and says its horrible. This seems to make her happy. Everything’s fine, until she decides to visit. Apparently it’s the most successful French film of all time? It’s a bit strange to me that that’s the case.

In the waning evening light, teenage boys are doing calisthenics on the soccer field. I know it’s a soccer practice—they’re on the field and there’s a ball in the center—but right now it looks more like some sort of synchronized dance.

The field is of the red dirt, clay really, that’s common in this part of the world and the the goals are each three thin logs nailed together, two sides and the top. I can see a woman walking along a dirt path with a water bucket balanced on her head. There’s something very Out of Africa about this. Except I’m not falling in love with someone that’s not my husband. Am I thinking of the right movie?

And aside from the fact that this is quite rural, I’m not blazing any trails. Others have come before me. I don’t have a rifle at my side to fend off wild beasts; I have to worry more about my laptop being stolen than a lion charging me.

It’s so still. Besides an occasional car on the one paved road to Ingwavuma, there’s just crickets, rustling leaves and voices of people in houses and huts down the hill and across the valley.

Of course I’ll get antsy—I get antsy in big cities too—but I think this will be good for me: the stillness, the simplicity.

It gets dark early here. The boys must not be playing any soccer today; it’s nearly dark and they’re doing sit-ups in a circle; someone’s counting them off in Zulu it sounds like.

I saw a few movies in the last few weeks.

Gran Torino I’m a big fan of later-era Clint Eastwood films, especially Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, and Unforgiven. They tend to have these great conflicted characters. Gran Torino is no different. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker and a Vietnam veteran living in a Detroit neighborhood that is becoming a Hmong neighborhood. Kowalski is set in his ways and doesn’t like his new neighbors. Hilarity ensues! Not really–but what unfolds as he gradually becomes involved in their lives (and they in his) is a pretty great story. It has still got me thinking.

Milk I’ve done my civic duty as a citizen of San Francisco and seen this movie. Sean Penn is good (of course) as Harvey Milk in this biopic. Gus Van Sant tells the story well. What stuck with me is that I didn’t know that Milk reluctantly got into politics and it was fairly late in life–he was already into his 40s.

Kenny This is an Australian movie about a guy who rents and services portable toilets. I got it because they had the following quote on the back of the box: “The Citizen Kane of romantic comedies about sewage.” Everyone puts hyperbolic quotes on the back of movie boxes but I thought I’d want to see a film whose makers were willing to put that quote on the back of the box. It was hilarious. Besides being laugh-out-loud funny for much of the film, the characters were also pretty endearing.

Here’s the trailer:

I saw Man on a Wire last night. In short it’s a documentary about Philippe Petit’s illegal tightrope walking between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974.

Can a 94 minute movie really fill those 94 minutes sufficiently? Yes. The answer is yes.

There are so many elements to this movie: it’s a thriller and a caper and an inspirational documentary all in one. Philippe is a fascinating individual. I was enthralled and I’d recommend it.

Watch out! Bad language!

just should narrate everything ever.

I learned on Friday about the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. Pretty much immediately after I found that some of the movies I most wanted to see (”Darjeeling Limited”, I’m Not There, Persepolis) were either sold out or at times that I couldn’t go to. Doh!

Another one that I was psyched to see (Ki-Duk Kim made the amazing “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring”) is only showing in Korean with Chinese subtitles.

However! Not all is lost. I did go to see Steve Buscemi’s Interview last night and I bought a ticket for the Sigur Ros movie. I’m still undecided about whether to see This is England or not.

I wasn’t actually expecting a ton from Interview, as it seemed like a pretentious indie two-person character piece, but it turned out to be alright. It was pretty engaging and well-written and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

I also found out that Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is showing in at least one regular theater here (not as part of the film festival, that is) so maybe I’ll go see that in the next few weeks.

David Cross is brilliant in She’s the Man.

Yoda was 900 years old and extremely wise, yet he wasn’t able to grasp basic English syntactical structure? I don’t buy it!

I don’t buy it! is a series in which I point out things I’m not buying.

This movie look great[1].

Here’s the soundtrack listing. Lots of Kimya Dawson and also Sonic Youth, Cat Power, and Belle & Sebastian as well as the old favorites Buddy Holly and Velvet Underground.

The song at the end of the trailer, if you were wondering, is All the Young Dudes by Mott the Hoople. Classic!

You can also check out four more clips from the movie.

[1] Hopefully it won’t be a Garden State-like great trailer, great trailer, okay movie situation.

Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson are strange.

Chuck Klosterman is strange.

So yesterday I spent a lot of the day staying near the bathroom. My body must have been purging something (perhaps salad washed in unfiltered water). Anyway, there was some hilarity to the day.

I need something to take care the of the situation, some Immodium AD. I didn’t have any and they don’t carry Immodium AD at the nearby pharmacies. I went to the pharmacy and they’re like “can I help you” turns out they don’t speak any more English than that I managed to indicate that ti’s a stomach problem so they start showing me medicines and pointing to the “English” on the packaging and looking at me expectantly. Well the “English” was stuff like “Zheng Way Pian”. I thought for a moment I might have suffered some sort of brain damage that makes normal English look like nonsensical words.

Turns out the medicine manufacturers simply don’t know English either.

I told the pharmacy girls, “yeah, that’s not English” and left. Eventually I got someone from the hotel to go down to the pharmacy with me (there are some benefits to staying in a schmancy hotel) and get me what I needed.

In other news, Hot Fuzz (which you can’t mention without saying it’s made by the Shaun of the Dead people) is really good. It’s a send-up of buddy cop movies, but it’s also a perfect buddy cop movie itself. And it’s really really funny. Highly recommended.

The family, at dinner.

Brother: I got a few movies from Netflix and we could watch one tonight. I got Melinda and Melinda—from Woody Allen—Before Sunset, To Be and to Have[1], and a Hitchcock movie: Two Men on a Train [sic]. [explains some of the plot of Strangers on a Train for a couple minutes.]

Dad: So which Hitchcock is that?

Me: Alfred. [laughs for eight minutes]

[1] This is one of the best films I’ve seen in the last five years. A really really good documentary.

7-11 has transformed eleven stores into Kwik-E-Marts as a promotion for the new Simpsons movie, even including Simpsons foods like the pink donut and squishees.

Luckily one of the 11 is near me, so I’ll stop by in the next month. I’m excited!

I saw Knocked Up on Friday night.

The basic plot is that a rather plain-looking slacker impregnates a beautiful go-getter during a one night stand. Hilarity ensues.

I thought it was really funny and worth seeing. Between all the laughs there is a bit of sappiness, but not bad sappiness. This is the least well-written review of anything ever. Sorry. I’m going to stop typing now.

Check out Cracked’s list of ‘that guys’. It’s a pretty good list; I recognized all of them but only knew the name of one of them.

Old Joy (wikipedia, trailer) is a minimalist story of two old friends who go camping for a weekend.

Kurt (Oldham’s character) is a free-floating and free-thinking friend who comes back into town and calls up Mark (Daniel London’s character) asking if he wants to check out some hot springs in the woods outside of town. Mark “asks” his pregnant wife(?)/ girlfriend (?) if he can go and then sets off. Kurt is that unreliable asshole friend that you have, the one that you love but you don’t count on for anything. Kurt gets them lost on the way to hot springs and delays the whole plan.

Friends change; that’s what this movie’s about. Mark is on the verge of fatherhood while Kurt has gone, it seems, from one hot spring and wild forest adventure to another. At the same time, it sort of shows you why those friends are still important even if the two don’t have that much in common.

Yo La Tengo’s soundtrack is great and works really well in the film. I must say, though, it didn’t quite floor me like their soundtrack to Junebug.

[1] “subtle” in critic-speak means the same thing as boring, but in a positive sense.

Last night I saw another film at the SFIFF: Bunny Chow (official site, wikipedia).

[Note: the film is named after a food popular primarily in Durban by the same name. Despite the description, it's not a sandwhich. It's hollowed out bread filled with curry.]

It’s a South African film (so I have an immediate bias) about three comedians and a random fourth guy who travel to a primarily music (but also comedy) festival together. It’s also about the comedy business and different approaches to women.

It’s a good film. It’s was a bit here-and-there, very conversational and, though it had an obvious plot, seemed like you were just watching friends hanging out a lot. I found it engaging. On the negative side, though I did laugh, I thought a film about stand up comedians would be funnier.

I’m fairly used to listening to various South African accents, but Gumbeaux had a hard time, he said. There were some parts that had subtitles even for English in the film (the Zulu and Afrikaans were obviously subtitled). I think the film could use subtitles throughout for American audiences.

Last night I saw Jonathan Richman perform live accompaniment to the 1921 Swedish silent movie Phantom Carriage at the Castro Theatre.

I haven’t been to the Castro Theatre in a couple years and as I went in and saw the beautiful molding and ornamentation in the theater, I remembered how amazing that place is. There was an interesting mix of people milling around and finding their seats: Jonathan Richman fans, silent movie aficionados, indie movie people, etc.

If you’ve never seen a silent film with live musical accompaniment, I’d recommend it. It’s usually a pretty good experience. The semi-improvisational nature of the music adds a lot of excitement to the movie.

The movie itself is pretty complex for the time. The plot’s based around a Swedish folktale. The idea goes that the last to die in a year that has bad things has to spend the rest of the year being Death’s carriage driver. It employed a few techniques that I was surprised were employed then, including non-linear story telling and some fairly good special effects techniques for the ghosts.

On now onto the music. I’d seen Jonathan Richman before. He’s really quirky live and has a lot of charisma and stage presence, so I was really curious how it’d end up when these things were taken away. The set up was Jonathan on (nylon string) guitar and pump organ. Other players were two hand bell players, a trumpet/ baritone player, a bass clarinet/ saxophone/ flute player, a violinist and a cellist. I thought their accompaniment was really good and all the players were very talented. It worked really well with the movie. The main characters had motifs and there were parts were these two motifs were almost colliding when two characters were talking or arguing. A daring move was during certain particularly intense moments in the movie there they left it completely silent; I think it paid off.

View the full photo album.

Update: I’ve noticed the bad justification to the text next to the photos. I have tried to fix it, but it’s stubborn. Sorry!

The 50th San Francisco International Film Festival starts later this week. Here are some of the ones I’m interested in seeing.

Bunny Chow A South African comedy. Despite the description, “bunny chow” is not a sandwhich and is not popular in Johannesburg (it’s a Durbs thing)

Phantom Carriage A classic Swedish silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jonathan Richman

The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music About the second best collection of American folk music and its effects.

Audience of One A documentary about an SF preacher that gets divine instructions to shoot a film and he goes about doing so on 70mm film.

Ghosts of Cite Soleil Documentary about Haitian gang rivals and rappers.

The Monastery Documentary about a former university librarian who wants to turn his ancestral home (a castle, actually) into a Russian Orthodox monastery.

Bamako An allegory about the Western World’s influence on Africa.

Third Monday in October A documentary about the heated battle for middle school president in a variety of schools in three states.

Once A rom-com (as I call them) about two Dublin musicians. I just love Irish musicians, alright?

Emma’s Bliss A German film about a man with terminal cancer and the woman whose pig farm he crashes his stolen car into.

Aqua About two swimmers in different parts of their careers. Minimalist and apparently good cinematography.

Eagle Vs. Shark quirky and compared to Napoleon Dynamite. I’m intrigued.

Rocket Science From the director of one of my favorite movies, Spellbound this is a feature film about a stuttering kid who joins the debate team to win over a girl.

Miranda July’s new website for her book No One Belongs Here More Than You is lo-fi (so to speak), reminding me, actually, of spultek’s old website which was scanned from a hand sketch. She made the entire website by taking photos of a “whiteboard.” It’s a good idea and great execution.

Miranda’s the same person who wrote, directed and acted in the quirky and funny 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know. I’d recommend it.

I noticed today when I logged in to Netflix that they had a new option “watch now.” They have a whole lot of movies that you can stream and it’s included in my subscription.

It’s a win for them (server bandwidth << shipping costs + wear/ depreciation of DVDs) and a win for me because I don’t have to wait…

except they don’t support mac.

Keep trying, Netflix.

Last night, Sulu and I saw the Last King of Scotland.

It’s the story of a Scottish doctor who goes to Uganda in the early 70s to escape his controlling father and to have a fun. He gets into the good graces of Idi Amin shortly after the coup that puts Amin in power and becomes his personal doctor.

The doctor is fictitious (though apparently based in part on Bob Astles) but Amin was unfortunately very real. As a story, it’s enthralling and gripping. As a historical perspective on Amin, it makes me want to learn more about Amin’s life and rule. He was a ruthless man.

That the doctor being taken in Amin’s character is a testament to the really impressive acting from Forest Whitaker, a role for which he won an Oscar. He completely takes on this role and it’s tough to see him as anything but Amin in the movie.

It’s really good overall. There is one obvious complaint, though. As some reviews have noted, this story is centered on a European and all of the bad that comes to him—it’s a human story, after all— but it obscures one’s view of what really was happening: hundreds of thousands of Ugandans dying. I guess you could explain that away, saying that it’s more a story of how reasonable people can be taken in by unreasonable but charming dictators. I’d recommend this, though, even if it’s just to see Whitaker’s performance.

After seeing some good reviews, Libs and I decided to see Into Great Silence (Die Grosse Stille auf Deutsch) (wikipedia/ imdb) on Sunday. Check out the trailer.

It’s a documentary about the Grande Cartreuse, the head monestary of the Carthusian Order. The wikipedia page on the Carthusians is very interesting and gives you a good overview of the Order, but the basics are that they speak only when necessary (not a vow of silence, per se, but they also don’t speak much) and spend much of the day in solitude praying or meditating or performing manual labor. They sometimes get together for communal meals (where they don’t talk, it appears) or other communal time, where they do talk.

There’s also no narration (or music).

And the film is close to 3 hours long.

A three hour film with little-to-no talking and no narration. Sounds like it could be boring, right?

This movie is strange, though. It’s boring, in a sense, but it’s also interesting and fascinating and extremely artistic. The movie goes in cycles; it sort of reminded me of the rondo form in classical music. The repeated elements give you a grounding and then new stuff comes up. It’s also visually very striking. There are many shots throughout the movie that would make great photographs. It also helps that the Grande Cartreuse is isolated in the beautiful French Alps.

Obviously, it’d be silly to say that watching a three hour movie is like living in a monestary for any length of time. But this movie does, in a way. At the end, you feel sort of serene and meditative.

The movie lacks plot in the most obvious ways, but it does have an arc, starting with the newest members and their initiation into being novitiates (I’m guessing) and going to some of the oldest members over the gradual course of the movie. (I’m totally stealing some of these ideas from Libs.) There are some particularly strong moments later in the movie with an old, blind and partially deaf monk talking about life and death.

The movie isn’t entirely made of serious moments, though. It has some moments where the entire theater laughed, particularly a very cute moment of these serious, usually silent monks laughing and sledding/ skidding down a snow-covered hillside.

There are some interesting things that I learned after the movie: the director, Philip Groening, asked the Grande Chartreuse about filming there. Their response was that it was too early, perhaps in 10 or 12 years. 15 years later they called. He spent 6 months living there and did all the filming himself over that time.

I’m catching up on a blogging backlog.

Last weekend I saw Das Leben der Anders (aka The Lives of Others).

It’s the story of a well regarded Stasi agent, Gerd Wiesler, in East Berlin (circa 1984) who starts spying on a playwright who they suspect might be a sympathizer. Wiesler learns that the real reason that they are spying on him is that the Minister of Culture, a high ranking official, wants the playwright out of the way so he can make advances on his girlfriend unencumbered. Wiesler becomes more sympathetic with the playwright because of this, even though he’s a strong party supporter.

It’s really an amazing film. The writing and direction (both by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck of the famed Henckel von Donnersmarcks) are both superb. The lead actor playing Wiesler, Ulrich Mühe, has a very Kevin Spacey quality to him, both in looks and some of the restrained, subtle acting he does.

It manages to be a lot of stories in one. It’s at least love story and a political thriller.

I saw Half Nelson tonight. Basically it’s a story of a gifted inner city teacher whose life is also falling apart and who has a massive drug problem. The teacher also develops an unusual (and at times inappropriate) relationship with a student.

Ryan Gosling (I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling. Two, no six, no twelve, BAKERS DOZEN.) plays the teacher, a role for which he was nominated for an Oscar (but did not win).

It’s a hard movie to watch;—umcomfortable enough that I physically squirmed at a few parts. But the acting and story are good. Gosling and Shareeka Epps, who played the student, both turn in stunning performances.

The ending seems to happen about five minutes too soon. The future is indicated, but weakly enough that there is still a hint of doubt.

My New Year’s Eve activities included seeing Pan’s Labyrinth and later the Light Footwork at the Hotel Utah.

I was intrigued by Pan’s Labyrinth because it had one of the highest ratings I’d seen for a movie on metacritic. It also has a pretty interesting description in some of the reviews: it’s a fantasy movie and a war movie and a love story and… It seems like there’d be a lot going on but while you’re watching it, it doesn’t. It’s a fairy tale of sorts, but it’s possibly the most gruesome fairy tale you’ll see this year.

Post-Spanish civil war, mid-World War II, Ofelia and her very pregnant mother travel to the mountains of Spain to join the new husband/ step-father. He is a captain whose mission is to eliminate the remaining resistance in the area. We quickly learn that he’s not a nice guy. Ofelia is fascinated with fairy tales. During her first night at the mill, a fairy comes and leads her to a labyrinth on the premises. A faun explains to her that she is the long lost daughter of the underground king and that to return to her throne she must complete three tasks before the full moon (in a few days).

The rest of the movie is her trying to complete these tasks, the struggle of the resistance, a love story between one of the resistors and one of the people working under the captain, the struggle between her and the captain, etc.

I still don’t know quite what to make of it. It’s still swimming around in my head. It’s a light fairy tail and, yet, it’s heavy and affecting.

Later in the evening, Gumbeaux and I went over to the Hotel Utah. I’ve known the guys from the Light Footwork for a while and recently heard them live for the first time. They were playing their first gig “out”. The Hotel Utah is small venue which has apparently been around forever.

They put on a fun set full of their signature indie pop songs. Lots of energy. The one area I think they could work on is the banter. (Without some talented DJ leading the banter, it fell a little flat.) Gums and I weren’t in the mood for more, so we left after the Light Footwork.

I saw Borat Cultural Learnings… on Friday at the Capitol Drive In in San Jose.

Hilarious, funny, awkward, causing of uproarious laughter. Worth seeing.

I was thinking about how I’d write that it wasn’t offensive—something I’ve heard describing the movie quite a bit, but then I realized I’ve gotten somewhat hard to offend. There are a lot of offensive things said in the movie, but by saying them, it’s pointing out that they’re rediculous and offensive, I think. Then there’s the naked man wrestling.

I saw and ad for a touring production of this the other day. Why? Why must ‘broadway’ (or the west end or theatre or whatever you want to call this in general) ruin everything. Check out the ‘video clips’ (sorry no direct link—stupid Flash) on that site if you have any doubt if it’ll be horrible.

Two questions:

1. Has there been any originality[1] on the stage since West Side Story[2]?
2. Does the public demand unoriginal copycat works or does the broadway establishment impose them on people?

[1] Even ‘good’ productions currently on Broadway (e.g. Spamalot, the Producers) are not original.
[2] I will maintain that this is the best musical every made and the movie version is a great movie. What other Broadway musical can hold its own, musically, with the best ‘classical’ works of the twentieth century (especially if you limit it to American classical works)?.

Despite liking the book and Clint Eastwood’s previous directorial work, I hadn’t been looking forward to Flags of our Fathers much. Maybe I just felt that the World War II movie had been played out or that Eastwood’s touch wouldn’t be as deft in a subject that tends to be done in an epic and over-the-top manner. But the critics seemed to be liking it, so I thought I’d catch a show yesterday at the new megaplex down in Redwood City.

It’s about the photo and the people in the photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima and more broadly about World War II, and “heros”. The book is written by one of the flag raisers’ sons and it goes through the story of each of the six flag raisers, the story of the flag raising, the history of the battle of Iwo Jima and other related topics.

I was surprised by how closely it stayed to the book. I was expecting that everything that wasn’t the battle of Iwo Jima would be stripped out. It’s not really a battle movie, as such, because of this because a lot of it takes place after the battle. The movie bounces back and forth between the post-battle scenes and the battle scenes; it might be a bit hard to follow for some, but I didn’t have much of a problem.

The cinematography has a very gritty quality to it for the battle scenes. It’s filmed in a way that it’s almost black-and-white for the battle scenes and, like similar scenes in Saving Private Ryan, it’s sometimes filmed in an unsteady manner such that it’s closer to what a soldier would have seen. The whole film is gritty too. Eastwood doesn’t sugar coat the situation or truth, here. It’s all here and laid out for you to see. He leaves out a lot of the feel good parts you might see in another war movie.

It’s good. Not amazing, but good. It is a film with some weight: it hits you and doesn’t leave immediately.

I was talking to a WWII veteran earlier in the same day who had served at Okinawa. He was 19 at the time and was in the campaign for 75 days. I don’t know about you but when I was 19 I couldn’t have handled that. I mean at 22 I lived in Germany for 75(ish) days and was marginally able to handle that. No killing people, no enemy combatants, no watching friends die. That was it, either: he was scheduled and was training to be in the second wave to invade Japan, if that had happened. And then they, for the most part, just went back to school or work and went about their lives. I always take the opportunity to talk to WWII vets when I have a chance. If you think about it, if a soldier was 18 when he was fighting in the last battles in 1945, then he’s 80 now. It’s a shrinking group of people, I imagine rapidly at this point.

I don’t know what it is about WWII, something gets me about it. All these young kids went off and fought, hopefully, the last war of that magnitude (110,000 Japanese died on Okinawa alone—the population of more than Menlo Park and Palo Alto put together died on one side during one battle). It was the whole country too. The whole country mobilized and supported the effort and sacrificied. (Interesting fact: we went to war with Japan because they attacked us. Why did the US go to war with Germany? They declared war on us.) I’m not saying anything for or against war here: just that the sacrafice of the WWII generation gets me.

I went to see Talladega Nights with andyl at the Capitol Drive In the other night.

We had a hilarious mix up with the screens (”How come the sound doesn’t match up to the screen? [rolling down window] Excuse me, what movie is this?” “Barnyard” “Oh crap, we’re at the wrong screen”) After that we got to the right screen and everything was sorted out.

The movie was pretty funny. It was no Little Miss Sunshine, but I laughed a lot. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly were both good. This movie isn’t going to make you smarter or a better person, but it’s entertaining.

Fin.

I saw Little Miss Sunshine last night at the Aquarius.

Let’s see, it’s a movie about a disfunctional family with parents that argue, a profanity-loving grandpa, a son that has taken a vow of silence, a suicide-attempting uncle and most importantly a beauty-pagent entering but somewhat plain daughter who all have to pile in a van together so that the daughter can enter the Little Miss Sunshine contest. It’s a roadtrip movie; it’s a family movie.

It’s also one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I laughed out loud so much and so loud. It also manages to have it’s heartfelt and touching moments. The writing, directing and acting are all very good.

(And any movie that accompanies a road trip in a van with a Sufjan song about a road trip in a van gets my vote.)

I highly recommend this movie.

[Update:: I had a few more thoughts on this movie. It's pretty amazing in its realness. Let me state this right: this movie has a contrived plot and is a farce, but within that the emotions and even many of the choices the characters make are real and true to those characters. Believablity within a farcicle shell.]

Last night I watched Being There and tonight I saw Wordplay.

Being There is an odd movie. I saw it a lot of years ago with my parents and for some reason was reminded about it recently. A simple-minded gardener who’s never left his employer’s house has to leave after the employer dies. After an accident he is taken into a house of wealthy family. Pretty soon, his slow way of speaking and talk of gardening are taken as great signs of wisdom deep metaphors. Pretty soon he’s on national TV.

It’s a pretty funny and clever movie. I was pretty entertained by it.

Wordplay is another weird-word competition documentaries, in lines with Spellpound (spelling bee) and Word Wars (scrabble). Wordplay is about cross word puzzles and cross word puzzlers. It not only covers the national competition but the history and famous cross worders (like Jon Steward, Clinton, etc.). It was an entertaining movie. I’d put it at better than Word Wars but not as good as Spellbound (but Spellbound’s pretty high on my list).

An additional note is that I’m pretty sure I saw 1.5 seconds of Dan Katz in Wordplay.

I saw Syriana the other night.

It’s a complex, multi-threaded plot about oil and the Middle East. You can read more at the wikipedia article linked above.

It’s got an ensemble cast and some great performances, including, of course, George Clooney as a CIA agent. It’s interesting.

But before we get to far, I’m just going to put this out there: complex doesn’t necessarily mean good. There are complex, multi-threaded movies that are good, amazing even, like Magnolia. But let’s not get confused with what makes a movie good. Engaging and compelling movies are good or great movies.

That said, this movie is good. It’s entertaining but I never found it fully engaging.

The other day I was surprised to find out that no only has Rick Sebak put some of his programs on DVD, but that Netflix carries some of them. Rick has made documentaries for many years. Originally they were all for WQED, one of Pittsburgh’s PBS affiliates (now it’s only PBS affiliate) and they were about Pittsburgh. A program about downtown Pittsburgh; another about the churches and places of worship in Pittsburgh (just about always shown on Christmas and Easter), another about the renowned Kennywood; a couple about things that used to be around and one specifically about things that are still there. I watched all of them, taped most of them off of TV during one of their pledge drives. When I first moved to the city they were a way to get into the culture pretty quickly. Later I just loved watching them. I remember when I first heard that he was going to do national programs and I was happy. Now I pop on the TV occasionally to see “Sandwhiches that you will Love” or the one about roadside attractions. They’re infectious. I want to go to the places that Rick shows and talk to the people he talks to.

I haven’t seen some of the newer programs, both the national ones and the Pittsburgh ones. I put Things We’ve Made into my queue and watched it on Friday.

This movie is probably mostly of interest to Pittsburghers or ex-Pittsburghs, but there is quite a lot of manufacturing processes shown, so geeky mechanical engineers or the like might also like it. One of the coolest parts is when they’re showing the Glenshaw Glass Company plant in which they made millions (billions) of beer bottles and how the machines cut up the molten glass into measured blobs and then pushed it into molds and out popped a bottle.

There’s still steel made in the Pittsburgh area—they visited the Clairton US Steel plant. I’d love to go there and take photographs. There’s this one shot in the movie where they’re in a semi-open area and there are these two giant cauldrons of molten steel being poured out and in the background there are the machine operators and a sign saying “House of Pain.” My goodness that could be an amazing photograph.

There were also quirky little things in there, like when they’re talking about All-Clad which is made in Canonsburg, really close to where I grew up and they’re talking about taking some of the new products to this restaurant and this chef to test. Well, that place, the Classroom in McMurray, is where I took my first girlfriend before the Homecoming dance and where my family at dinner on New Year’s Eve, 1999. I realize it’s just a local Pittsburgh movie, but given that it’s a movie out on DVD and that I got from Netflix it has enough separation that it seems weird to see this place on the screen.

Seriously, do you know how happy this movie makes me?

CNN/ AP reports there’s a real-life fight club in my town.

I saw the Apostle tonight. I’m not sure why I put it in my Netflix queue, but I did.

It’s a film about a southern preacher who puts his wife’s lover into a coma and then flees to rural Louisiana. Robert Duval wrote, directed and starred in it.

There are few performances where there is no explanation for the transformation from the actor to the character. Which is to say, Robert Duval does an absolutely amazing job as the preacher. He has all the stylistic elements down and acts this complex character very well.

I have a soft spot for the charasmatic southern preaching style and good southern gospel and it’s nice to see it done right in this movie.

Anyway, a well made and well-acted movie. Also, the DVD has a good “making of” feature, but it basically has spoilers in it, so only watch it after watching the movie.

A thoroughly blog-worthy weekend.

It started out with a pair of movies on Friday.

First, I saw Thank you for Smoking with Andyl. It’s a satire of Big Tobacco and lobbyists. It’s very very funny. I laughed aloud for much of the movie. Some rediculous scenes, but that’s sort of what you’d expect from a satire. I’d recommend it. My one complaint only comes after the fact: satires are supposed to make you think, otherwise it’s just a parody, right? I haven’t been absorbed in thoughts about Big Tobacco or lobbying.

I also saw Out of Africa a classic European-out-of-place-in-Africa story. It’s set in the first half of the century. A Danish barroness moves to Africa with her lover’s brother/ then husband. In the end this is a romance set in Africa, obviously with a lot of other stuff going on as well. I couldn’t help thinking of Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa) while I watched this movie. Nirgendwo owes a lot to Out of Africa, but in the end, I think Nirgendwo is a better movie with more substance and it makes you think more.

If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a pretty sweet video that a guy made recreating the bottom of the 10th of Game 6 of the World Series using Nintendo’s classic RBI Baseball. He even uses the real play-by-play. Apparently getting certain hits right took him up to 200 tries. My goodness! Also, apparently the maker of this managed to get a job out of it. The resume for the New Era.

Speaking of Game 6, has anyone seen the movie? Apparently it’s good.

I watched Match Point on Friday. It starts off like any other husband-cheating-on wife indie movie (think Closer) and it’s going along and it’s fairly interesting and then BAM it takes a hard left into more of a thriller territory.

I don’t really like thrillers. I tend to want to leave the room.

I still thought this one ended up being pretty good and it had some nice moments of everything coming full circle.

Not really a must-see, but more of a don’t-mind-if-you-see.

The SF International Film Festival is coming up in a couple weeks. I thought I’d make a list of films that I might want to see. Anyone else have any interest in any of these?

• The Bridge-documentary- about the Golden Gate Bridge and how its a hotspot for suicides
• Clouds of Yesterday-feature film- a boy in the 1930’s buries a reel of silent film. Now an old man, he tries to find it.
• Favela Rising-documentary- a drug trafficer turned socially conscious musician tries to change a tough area of Rio De Janeiro
• Half Nelson-feature film-a drug addicted public school teacher becomes chummy with one of his students
• Into Great Silence-documentary-a German documentary about a French monastery
• Lili and the Baobab-feature film-A french photographer goes to Senegal
• Strangers in a Neighborhood-documentary- pigeon racing and Dutch-Turkish tension
• Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela-documentary-self-describing title

After talking a lot about it, I finally saw Tsotsi, the Oscar winner for best foreign language film.

I liked it. The first thing I noticed was the cinematography. It’s got a moody darkness to it, like the Matrix construct except more red, less grey.

The acting is fantastic across the board. Expect big things from Presley Chweneyagae, who plays Tsotsi. His is the dynamic character. He transformation is astounding. The female lead, Terry Pheto, plays her role with such softness throughout.

The soundtrack is bumpin’ with kwaito. I think I should pick it up. I’m not sure I’ll like all kwaito (which appears to be more house-like rather than hip hop-like), but I liked the stuff in the film.

Hot dang. Junebug? good movie.

I liked it a lot.

[It's a Chicago city-dweller going to the South to visit her new husband's family, basically. A simple story with complex characters.]

I saw Dave Chapelle’’s Block Party last night with the roomies, Raag and Jesse. Good times!

Quick summary: Dave Chapelle gets signed to a $50 million contract, decides to blow some of it. He throws a block party in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn and invites a bunch of people from his current hometown in south west Ohio. (NOTE ANDY: he grew up in Silver Spring for part of his time!) He also found some decent hip-hop acts to come and preform (the Roots, Kanye, Mos Def, the Fugees, etc)

And also! he invited a marching band, once again proving that marching bands are cool.

It happens that Michel Gondry directs, but that doesn’t have much bearing on the situation. Dave Chapelle’s funny as it turns out. The music is pretty fantastic. I loved a lot of the performances. I’m not the most familiar with either mainstream or underground hip hop and I imagine most of you are more familiar so you might enjoy the music even more than I do.

I loved the scene of Kanye watching the marching band play his “Jesus Walks” with a huge smile on his face.

There are also little stories of people through out. The old woman from Ohio. The two kids from Ohio that are out of their mind that they get to go. The very very strange couple that lives in the most-abandoned house right where the block party is going to be held. The marching band director and members. The neighborhood pre-school director.

In the end I sort of wish I could have seen more of all of it: the humor, the music and the people stories.

It’s good and surprisingly uplifting. I vote yes.

South Africa brought home its first Oscar for Best Foreign Film yesterday for Tsotsi last night.

I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s going to be showing locally in a couple weeks so I will, but I read the book recently and it’s a good story.

Any ideas where to find video of the acceptance speach online? I missed it live. I’ve looked briefly but I couldn’t find anything.

1. drink
2. watch Lost in Translation
3. order crap online

it’s tradition.

Sometimes I get these movies from Netflix that just sit around for weeks. I start wondering why I got them. I start thinking that I’ll just send them back without watching them.

One such movie was the Edukators (German title: Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei). I decided I’d send it back on Monday regardless of whether I had watched it or not. It turns out I did watch it and I was glad that I did. I think I got it originally because it had Daniel Bruehl, who was the main kid in ostalgie-dripping Good Bye Lenin!

Three revolutionary friends in Berlin break into houses of rich people and rearrange the furniture, putting stereos into the fridge, the porcelain soldiers into the toilet and leave notes saying things like “The fat years are past” or “you have too much money.” Nothing is stolen or broken, simply rearranged.

It’s a lot of different movies. It starts out sort of counter-culture, FightClub-like; then it’s a love triangle story, a thriller, a discussion of opposing ideologies and ends up being a comment on human nature.

Overall a solid and enjoyable movie. It’s really odd in a way because the most suspense happens about a third of the way in. I really liked the twist ending. I’d recommend it.

I just finished watching the last of the DVDs of the 7Up! series. The documentary film series starts with fourteen participants of various backgrounds at the age of 7 in England and follows up with them every 7 years. Thus far, 7 Plus 7, 21 Up!, 28 Up!, 35 Up! and 42 Up! have been released on DVD. 49 Up! has been recorded and perhaps has aired, but hasn’t been released on DVD.

There are sort of two premises to these films. One is that Britain is a class society and a persons class determines their opportunities in life. The second is the Jesuit phrase “give me the child at the age of seven and I will give you the man. To an extent, both of these phrases are proven and to some extent not.

I liked this series a lot. I found watching these kids go through their lives in rapid succession (I watched these six documentaries in about two months) facinating. For the most part these are just normal people living their lives, but the comparisons over the years and between the various people are interesting.

These definitely take some patience to watch, but they’re worth it.

On Saturday I watched a couple spaghetti westerns with the lovely Laura, in what shall be dubbed as Spaghetti Western Fest 1. (I chose these by going down the IMDB Top 250 and finding the best-rated ones and also by looking at Sergio Leone movies.)

The first one that we saw was Once Upon a Time in the West. This is a complex story about a number of outlaws of mysterious backgrounds who all interact with a woman who has just moved out west from New Orleans to find that the husband she was moving out to live with has been killed along with his children. This one is long (2 hr 45 min) and deliberately paced at times. A lot of very intense scenes and a lot of characters to keep track of. It took some patience but I liked it.

The second was A Fistful of Dollars (part of the Man with No Name Trilogy with For a Few Dollars More and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly). This is a classic spaghetti western with Clint Eastwood. This has a pretty simple story about a rough newcomer to town playing off of two major warring gangs for monetary gain. Of course our man Clint turns out to not be completely ruthless. I found that this movie ended about half an hour after I expected it to; that is the happy ending came and then the movie continued on, so that it actually a much darker ending. I liked this too, but I think the better of these two is, if you have the patience, Once Upon a Time in the West.

I also had The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but Laura had already seen it, so we chose Fistful of Dollars as the second.

I’d never really seen any Spaghetti Westerns and, in fact, besides the excellent Unforgiven, I hadn’t seen any westerns. I think part of the attraction is in an environment with few laws, what you see is pretty primal, the fight between good and evil, the very base-level human nature comes out.

I saw the first part of Country Boys on PBS last night. It’s a documentary mini-series following two boys growing up in Floyd County, Kentucky, a very poor area of the Appalachians. Chris lives in a trailer in a “holler” and has trouble getting his work done at school, often missing school to take care of his alcoholic father. Cody is in a Christian metal band and has a girlfriend he talks about marrying.

I found it really interesting. It’s easy for people to make fun of people like this, but this is life. This is how a lot of people live their lives. Growing up in probably the biggest city in the Appalachians, I wasn’t far from people who lived in similar situations, but we still made fun of people from West Viriginia. I think in some ways these people are more America than a big city like San Francisco.

The challenge of watching a program like this is not simply not passing judgement, but trying to understand them. Or you could just say they’re a Red Stater, that they should be kept in the mountains or made a separate country called “Jesusland,” laugh your cynical laugh and go on feeling superior. Wait, which group is supposed to be the “open-minded” ones?

You can watch the first episode online and the next two episodes are tonight and tomorrow, I believe.

Actually tomorrow on PBS!

The movie is Yesterday.

PBS is showing it (without commercials, like PBS does) tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9pm. It doesn’t even come out on DVD until next Tuesday!

It’s a good movie about a woman with AIDs in the rural Zululand area of South Africa. It’s the first isiZulu feature-length movie.

As other people have noted, Walk the Line is a very good movie. The leads do a fantastic job.

Go see it!

I watched Raging Bull from Netflix on Friday and Jarhead yesterday.

I don’t quite remember why I put Raging Bull on my netflix queue. It’s apparently one of the best sports movies and best all around movies ever. Robert De Niro plays real life boxer Jack La Motta and Martin Scorsese directs. It was well-acted and directed well, but it just never engaged me.

Jarhead, on the other hand, I found engaging from just about minute one. It’s about a kid of 20, “Swoff”, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who has entered the Marine, trains as a sniper and goes to the Middle East in the first Gulf War conflict. There’s something about the characters that one can relate to.* In a way it’s not that political, echoing what one character says: “Fuck politics. We’re here [at war]. All the rest is bullshit.” It’s not the best movie ever, but I thought the direction (by Sam Mendes, who did American Beauty and Road to Perdition) was good, some great visuals. The acting by the principles was solid across the board and Peter Sargaard, I thought, put in a stand out perforamance as the guy who takes Jake’s character under his wing. Some war movies are all about the plot, the mission (the Great Escape, Saving Private Ryan), and some more about the psyche and the aftermath of war (Apocalyspe Now, for example). This one was more toward the later, but had enough of the former that it kept moving.

*I should note that I’ve always had a slight thing for the military. I even briefly thought about going to the Naval Academy… I certainly don’t like all or even most war movies, though.

Now that I’m catching up on all these posts, I’ll write about a couple movies I’ve seen in the last couple weeks that I had things to say about.

Rize is a documentary chronicling an inner city art (reminding me of Freestyle: the Art of Rhyme in that matter). This documents the rise of the “clowning” and “krumping” dance styles. These are amazingly fast moving dance styles. They’re hard to describe. The filming was mostly of pretty low production value, but in sort of an intimate way. There’s one section that filmed in gorgeous and very vivid color that’s just breathtaking for that but the rest is amazing for this dancing. It’s definitely worthwhile.

I saw The Weather Man last night with Andy. It’s a story of a weather man trying to juggle his career and family—his separated wife/ divorced (?) and kids. It’s about more than that as well. He’s a weather man; not a meterologist, just a weather man. This is the sort of movie I would expect to see in art house movie theaters, but it’s in major theaters and getting a good amount of promotion. It’s a subtle movie in some ways; it’s fairly slow paced and it’s not spelled out how you should feel for all the characters. Even the characters you like have visible flaws. It’s also funny in parts. Nicholas Cage is good in the lead and indie stalwart Hope Davis plays his ex. I’m not divorced or forty or a weather man but I related to Cage’s character some in the ways he is frustrated with life and figuring out how to live it.

What’s with soundtracks these days? There are some really good ones!

The latest is the Thumbsucker soundtrack. It’s got about 20 new songs from the Polyphonic Spree and three Elliott Smith songs, one of which (”Troubled” originally by Cat Stevens) is previously unreleased. Here’s the story of the soundtrack, how it came to be these two artists on the soundtrack.

On the first listen, it’s real good!

And by films I mean that in the literal sense, of captured, originally, on film.

And by documentary, I mean documenting real events.

I saw three recently:

1. NFL Film’s History of the Steelers NFL Films used to have a weekly show called “This is the NFL” and I would watch it many weeks, even before I was much of a football fan, just because they had beautiful footage and the sound, especially of the impacts, was incredible. There’s something about watching football on film that’s great. I liked this DVD a lot. I learned a bunch about the pre-70s Steelers and there were many interesting interviews with former players and coaches and whatnot. I also saw that there is quite a symbiotic relationship and feelings of duty and mutual respect between the Rooneys (the family that owns the Steelers) and the Team, the Team and the Fans, the Fans and the Rooneys. My one sort of complaint about the film was that it glossed over the big losses. An intricate part of the story of the Steelers, at least over the last decade, has been some big losses, I feel. Definitely worth watching if you’re a Steelers fan or a fan of football in general.
2. Low in Europe Dave gave this to me for my birthday. This shows some great footage and interviews of the band on a tour of Europe following the release of Trust. Maybe I just haven’t looked for many interviews of Low, but it seems that they haven’t been interviewed much, so it’s nice to see some more in depth coverage of their lives in this movie. There’s also some great footage of the band playing live; one of my favorites is a couple acoustic songs at a radio station in Frankfurt. The film ends with them playing at the Union Chapel in London, which no longer hosts shows, but while it did was a fantastic place to see a band like Low, as Andy or I can attest to. Worth watching for fans of Low or if you’re interested in becoming one.
3. Drive Well, Sleep Carefully The Death Cab for Cutie tour documentary. This close to 90 minutes of interviews and performances from a tour last year. The interviews seemed a bit lacking and single-tracked, but there’s pretty good pacing and editting between the interview portions and the song portions. The individual performances of the songs vary in how good they are. It’s worth watching if you’re a fan or are just an OC watching hipster.

I went to see 40 year old virgin at the Capitol Drive-In for my birthday on Saturday with Andyl and Shad.

The title basically explains what the movie is about.

It was really funny and well-written. I laughed out loud a bunch. It’s also got a reasonably good story and good characters given the genre.

I saw Grizzly Man tonight.

It’s a documentary about bear activist Timothy Treadwell who lived among bears in Alaska for 13 summers. He called them and his friends and repeatedly tells bears that he loves them. He and his girlfriend eventually get eaten by a bear.

This is nutso German director Werner Herzog’s take on the Treadwell story, assembled largely Treadwell’s own footage.

This movie is pretty intense. It’s definitely an interesting study of one man by another interesting man. There’s some amazing bear and wolf footage. It doesn’t have a happy ending.

Over the last two nights I watched part of The Gods Must be Crazy and The Gods Must be Crazy II. Man, what a set of fantastic movies!

The basic plots are Xixo, a bushman from the Kalahari, interacting with “heavy people,” e.g. South Africans and westerners. Both movies have a bumbling South African and a woman who interact in a love story.

There is something very charming about these movies. Movies just aren’t made like this any more! Slapstick humor, slightly spead up film for effect, a goofy “narrator” part that makes it seem like an anthropology movie. The first movie even has this problem with the audio where it’s out of sync with the mouths moving on the screen.

I remember in 1989 or so, we’d just moved to Pittsburgh and the whole family went to see 2 at the Galleria (in the right most theater, if you’re counting). It was just at the time when my brother and I didn’t want to sit with our parents at the movies so we sat up near the front (probably the 3rd row—we’d often sit in the 3rd row) and my parents sat near the back. During the entire movie I could hear my dad’s laughter over everyone else’s.

I saw Me You and Everyone We Know on Thursday.

There’s a mentally unstable father and shoe salesman who is just separating from his wife. There’s a performance artist and “elder cab” driver. Then there’s the neighbors and coworkers and clients and whatnot.

I liked it. I can’t really pinpoint why. It’s tremendously funny at points and sad at points. There’s good chemistry between the two leads and in general I like the charactters.

)) <> ((

I have a couple more posts in the works, but a quick one first.

I saw Wedding Crashers last night which is about a pair of lawyers that crash wedding receptions regularly. The trailers looked pretty lackluster, actually, but as Jesse reported it’s actually really funny. Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Christopher Walken were all great.

It’s hard to be believe that Rachel McAdams who played the somewhat blah Regina George in Mean Girls plays the absolutely radiant Claire Cleary (read: main love interest) in this movie.

Also, I didn’t notice during the movie but the soundtrack looks like it has some decent stuff on it.

I haven’t posted anything for a while so I thought I’d put in a couple updates.

I saw Crash last night, which was directed and written by the screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby (and creator of Walker, Texas Ranger), Paul Haggis, and stars just about a bazillion people. It’s a Magnolia-like many-stories-happening-simultaneously-and-somewhat-related sort of story. It’s largely about race and things like that. Besides being intense, it’s also uncomfortable—”good” characters do bad things and “bad” characters; a nice muddle moral pool to make one uncomfortable. But it’s good. It’s a thinking movie.

At Wally’s recommendation, I got Freestyle: the Art of Rhyme, which is a documentary about, amazingly, freestyling. Freestyling is often exhibitted in battles, like those in the movie 8 Mile, if you’ve seen that, but just as often, or more often, in parks and on street corners. For those not as entrenched in the hip hop arts as I am, freestyling is rapping off the top of your head. There were two characters that were focused upon a bit more than others in the movie, Supernatural and Juice, both of whom are absolutely amazing in their ability to rhyme just about anything without any forethought. There were clips where both of them were just going about their normal business rapping about their surroundings and things as they came along. It’s an interesting movie. I’d recommend it.

On Saturday, I swam for the fourth time in Aquatic Park, in San Francisco. After all this time, I’ve decided to show what it actually looks like. I decided to do a “perimeter” swim on Saturday. I started between those two short docks on the right centerish, went left and a little down across towards that boat house looking thing on the left side, then headed up and a little left for a while, then went almost directly right toward that boat—aww, I suck at describing this. I’m just going to draw you a hastily drawn map. Two points of interest are marked by the dots. Around the one at the top, there it was quite choppy because it was basically open to the Bay at that point. At the one on the right side there was a wicked current toward the right that almost carried me into one of those large boats on the right side. The X at the bottom left is where the last swim bouy is; most people swim back an forth between that swim buoy and one located near the two docks on the right side.

The big swim is this coming Saturday. Wish me luck.

I’ve had Hotel Rwanda from Netflix for a while but finally watched it this morning.

It’s good—it’s a tremendously affecting movie.

Don Cheadle’s acting is good, but I think the standout part of the movie is just the story.

That’s all. See it.

Andyl and I saw Fever Pitch on Sunday Night. I liked it.

It’s a movie about a fanatical Red Sox fan (Jimmy Fallon) and his priorities with new non-Red Sox fan girlfriend (Drew Barrymore) based on a book about a fanatical soccer fan.

It’s by the Farrelly brothers (Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber), so there is some gratuitous (and funny) bathroom humor, but mostly it’s a love song to the Red Sox and their 2004 season. And something of a love story between Fallon and Barrymore too.

Both Andyl and I came out of the movie, somewhat strangely for a movie about a team and a girl, very nostalgic for Boston. I knew where Drew Barrymore’s character lived (based on the First Baptist Church, at the corner of Comm Ave and Clarendon, you see as Jimmy Fallon leaves her apartment); it’s probably around 93 Marlborough. That was about a five minute walk from tEp; fenway was about a fifteen minute walk. It’s all very familiar.

Caveats to my liking this movie:

• I like the Red Sox.
• I like Boston.
• I like Jimmy Fallon (but even that couldn’t get me to watch Taxi)
• I like Drew Barrymore.

I saw the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou the other night [it was pretty good, not Wes Andserson's best, which may be Rushmore] and now I really want a Team Zissou red knit beannie cap.

The Onion shows it in the Swag Year in Review like I want it, the ribbed hat with the stop light on it . I’ve seen a lot on ebay that don’t look like that. They have movie title embrodiered on them (which I suppose I could rip out), they don’t look particularly ribbed and I haven’t seen the stoplight logo.

(Not to mention they’re expensive.)

Andy, your theater doesn’t happen to have any of these promo items lying around?

On Wednesday, Gumbeaux and I saw Boys of Baraka as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Here’s a pretty good article about the movie and the story of the school. (Username:bugmenot90@mailinator.com
password: bugmenot, courtesy of bugmenot).

A few years ago Baltimorian (?) and philantropist Robert C Embry, Jr. and his Abell Foundation started a boarding school in the Kenyan bush for 20-40 “at risk” inner city boys a year. The idea was to get these kids away from gangs and drugs and shootings and give them personal attenion in teaching. The movie follows four kids as the go through this program and come back to Baltimore, some drastically different and some not.

I liked this movie quite a bit. The four kids they follow are really interesting. They are so genuine and funny. The editting must have been really hard; I bet there was just so much that they could have included. I would have liked to see more about their time in Kenya, particularly the boys’ reactions to Kenya and their interactions with the locals.

The scenes there were very familiar to me; my short trip to rural Tanzania looked very similar. I wanted to tell people around me at the theater that I’d seen these scenes and the people.

Because of circumstances beyond the directors’ control, it wasn’t the movie they probably set out to make and in the end it wasn’t the movie that I wanted it to be. (It’s sort of a spoiler so I won’t say what happens.) That was a bit disappointing.

There is something about documentaries that can really effect me. I guess it’s because these are real people and events that really happened. They can show you the goodness of humanity (and sometimes the badness). The characters are endearing. Other documentaries that I really liked: To Be and To Have and Spellbound.

One thing that sort of angered (I don’t know if that’s the right word) both Gumbeaux and I was the audience reaction to some parts of the film involving one of the boys Devon. Devon’s christian and he wants to be a preacher. In fact, he has the whole African-American evangelical preacher style down. (you know, the sort of agitated style with the vocalizations as emphasis: “I would like to ask you Lord huh! to help us huh!”) And he preaches at his Church when he gets back. People laughed at this. Not a “that’s cool” sort of amazed laugh but a condescending laugh. People also laughed when Devon was in Kenya and he was on the phone with his family and the preacher happened to be there and he told Devon to testify to the people. As Gumbeaux put it, if people have an enlightened enough world view to want to see a movie about this, then how is it that they are so condescending to these displays of christianity?

I could say more about this but I think this is as good a point as any to stop.

I saw the movie In Good Company at Flicks at Stanford.

The 10pm shows at Flicks are fun: They put out newspapers and you ball it up and chuck it at people. Fun!

Quick plot summary: 26 year old up and comer ad exec, played by Topher Grace, become 51 year old old school ad exec, played by Dennis Quiad’s boss. Scarlet Johanssen plays the daughter of the old ad guy. She starts dating the young ad man without either telling the dad. Hijinx ensue!

I was surprised by actually how good it was. I didn’t expect it to be horrible, but I didn’t expect it to be good either. There were some moments that were genuinely very funny, mostly ones that were also very awkard. The story isn’t a break through story that no one has ever told, but it was good enough and only mostly predictable. The right people changed and the right people got their comeupance. I would say border-line theater material, but probably better as a rental.

The film has three songs by Iron and Wine on the soundtrack. Two were from the album Our Endless Numbered Days and one was brand new previously unreleased. It came on during the credits. Andyl and Dylan walked out and I just stood there and listened.

When I got home I found that it’s called “Trapeze Swinger” and it’s over nine minutes long in it’s full version. It’s also only available from iTune Music Store as part of the In Good Company Soundtrack. Well f that.

It turns out it’s available here. Read the comments to see how to actually download it (annoying! but worth it). It doesn’t sound like some of the other Iron and Wine songs (well sort of, it mostly does). It’s long; it has a loopy feel; the instrumentation builds; there are backwards loops in there (definitely not trad folk instrumentation there). Oh, and did I mention I’ve listened to it about fifteen times today because I like it a lot.

The first line of each verse just works so well. “Please remember me happily/ fondly/ at halloween etc.” Eh, just listen to it.

Last night, as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival, I saw Street Angel with live musical accompaniement by American Music Club.

American Music Club is a pretty old indie band (started in 1983!) with Mark Eitzel (who’s done some good stuff as a solo artist) that’s recently reunited. AMC did a great job with the music. They didn’t follow many of the customs of silent movie accompaniement. For instance there was singing!

The movie was surprisingly nuanced and complex for a movie of that error. I’m used to watching some of the more facetious silent movies, like Buster Keaton movies (who’s completely awesome!). This movie was much darker but still with a happy ending.

If you’ve never seen a silent movie with live musical accompaniement, I’d recommend it highly. Most of the time it’s a piano or organ. The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto has a Might Wurlitzer organ with silent movie Wednesdays during the summer.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is coming up.

Here are some of the movies I may want to see. Anyone want to go to any of these?

• 3 Iron Arpil 22 9:30pm, April 25 9:30 pm. A nearly silent love story, apparently about a drifter and an abused married woman. The main reason I want to see it is that it’s by Kim Ki-Duk, the guy who did the absolutely hypnotic Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring.
• Boxers and Ballerinas April 27 2pm, May 1 6:30pm, May 3, 1pm. About two boxers and two ballerinas, two each living in Havana and Miami. I don’t know, but I’ve liked boxing movies lately (by which I mean Million Dollar Baby).
• Boys of Baraka April 29 1:00pm, April 30 12:45pm, May 4 9:30. This one looks really interesting. A documentary about twenty inner city boys from Baltimore are taken and put in a bush school in Kenya.
• Shepherd’s Journey into the Third Millenium April 27 8:30pm, April 28 5pm, May 4 7pm. A documentary about shepherding in the Swiss albums. I’m not quite sure why this sounds good, but it does.
• Street Angel April 23 at 9pm. A silent movies with live music accompaniement provided by indie band American Music Club, Mark Eitzel’s band.

I’m back from London. Did you miss me?

The reason for visit was my cousin’s wedding, but I got to hang out a couple days in the city as well.

London sites:

• Tate Modern Second time I’ve been there. Still a great collection of modern art. There’s quite a lot I like and quite a lot I don’t and quite a lot that I just don’t get.
• British Museum Greek columns? blah. Roman statues, blah. Easter Island statue, pretty cool. History of clocks with running clocks througout? sweet.
• Design Museum I liked this place a lot. I didn’t quite know what to expect because design covers everything from graphic design to product design to industrial design. It ended up being a lot of graphic design and some of the other stuff. An entire exhibit on various ways people get across lots of information in a compact and understandable way.
• London Eye An engineering marvel and a pretty interesting view of London. Go up on a clear day and you’ll see for miles.
• Natural History Museum—Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibit Some really spectacular photographs here. I bought the book with all the photos in it, so I can show you some time. The photos also had all the technical info and descriptions by the photographers as well. The descriptions ranged from “this was my fourth day waiting for this photograph” to “I just turned and there it was.”

Shows:

• National Anthems Three American actors (Kevin Spacey, Steven Webber (I remember him from the show “Wings”) and Mary Stuart Masterson) in an American play about a tremendously American topic on the London stage. I’m not surprised that it wasn’t a full house there. It’s a story about a recently fired firefighter (Spacey) meeting and spending the evening with the new neighbors on the block (Webber and Masterson), who are materialistic keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ sort of people. It all takes place in a suburb of Detroit but there are also many references to Pittsburgh, where Spacey’s character grew up, including Iron City and “yunz.” The acting was amazing. Just spectacular. There was just so much to it and it built up while drawing one in and not overdoing it or breaking the spell (Naomi Watts should take lessons from these people). This was acting as it is supposed to be done. The play itself is quite good and other productions of it might be good.
• the Producers Funny, clever, well-acted (by Lee Evens as Bloom and Brad Oscar as Max, in this version, and supporting roles, especially the swedish bombshell part). Classic Mel Brookes in many ways, reusing some of the same jokes from his movies and things. Deserves the praise and worth seeing.

Movies seen en-route:

• Alfie meh.
• that new Bridget Jones one meh.
• Unforgiven a 1992 effort from, in this case, director, producer, star Clint Eastwood about an old west outlaw that comes back for one last job. I’m not a fan of westerns or the idea of westerns, really… This one has some complex characters and Clint’s great directing and acting. Morgan Freeman is superb as usual. Not a top 10 movie of all time, but certainly quite good.
• Spanglish another Adam Sandler movie that’s not really an Adam Sandler movie (others being the Wedding Singer and Punch Drunk Love). I thought this movie was entertaining and made some interesting points about other cultures in America, especially Latin cultures in America, but in the end, I was put off by the final moral and the heavy-handedness of how it was presented. Definitely not a bad movie to see on a plane though.

I saw the Motorcycle Diaries tonight at Flicks. It’s a movie about the young Ernesto “Che” Guevera and his friend Alberto Granando taking a 12000km trip through South America, initially by motorcycle and later by foot, boat, hitch-hiking and whatever other means were necessary. It’s a very interesting movie. The two main characters are interesting and the story is subtle, but engrossing.

Thoughts, in three:

• there are a lot of movies based on real life, because real life is interesting. leading to…
• I should write more about my life, particularly a memoir of my time at MIT and the quasi-autobiographical road trip screenplay that I started
• I really should learn Spanish. If you’re in the Bay Area, you’d understand. I’m not naturally gifted at languages, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t work at Spanish (and later: Zulu and Afrikaans).

I had Friday Night Lights from Netflix for a while and got around to watching it last night. I liked it. The screenwriters did a few clever things to fit some things (quotes/ thoughts) into the movie that weren’t said in the main action. Some of it was sensationalized from the book (which Odessans said was sensationalized from the reality) and some details were left out, but that’s to be expected. It’s pretty hard to condense four months of detailed story and backstory into a two hour movie. Tim McGraw did a really good job for his first acting role and the kids and Billy Bob Throton were good as well.

The Explosions in the Sky soundtrack was pretty awesome. I’d heard many of the tracks already, but they fit in a lot better in the context of the movie.

South Africa has received their first (foreign language) Oscar nomination in Yesterday. I believe it’s the first feature film in Zulu. I saw it while in South Africa. It was quite good. I’d more like it to win because it’d be good for South Africa than because it’s an amazing film.

It’s about AIDs in still-very-rural-as-in-water-pumps-and-no-electricity-for-the-most-part Zululand, South Africa. It tackles many problems that are uniquely South African or third world. The man going off to the industrial center (Jo’burg) to work. Travelling to the City for the first time. Walking all day to get somewhere. Rural health clinics. Insular ideas of a small village.

(And I feel I ought to point out, if you don’t know, that the adult prevelance rate of AIDS in Southern Africa is astronomical. 9 of the top 10 in prevelance are Southern African countries with Botswana at the top with 38.8% of its adult population infected.)

We watched Ray last night. Before I get started on the movie, I’d like to point out that it showcased the Wurlitzer electric piano, though his models were, I believe a 140 (around “What’d I Say”) and later a 200(A) (”Hit the Road, Jack”), not the 206A or the 203W. The movie was definitely worth seeing. The story is good; I’ve seen better man-stuggles-with-drugs stories and better man-overcomes-disabilities-despite-what-people-may-think and better man-cheats-on-wife-repeatedly-but-in-the-end-doesn’t-want-to-lose-her stories. But add some great music scenes in and you have a pretty good movie. Jamie Foxx just about is Ray Charles. There weren’t any points when I thought the actual Ray Charles was on the screen, but it was close. Does he deserve the Oscar? I don’t know. Take away the acting-just-like-Ray and you have a decent, but not incredible, guy-on-heroin, which I’ve seen better (um, Requiem for a Dream). And the acting-just-like-Ray is basically a spot-on impression. Guys at comedy clubs making $25 a night do spot-on impressions. Heck there was a kid at this Boy Scout camp that I went to that did a spot-on impression of Brett Weinheimer, the scout-in-charge of the whole camp, that was so good that he fooled many patrols into thinking that Brett was coming to a surpise inspection. Okay okay, Foxx is really good at doing Ray Charles and pretty good at the rest so maybe that’s good enough? Clint Eastwood was really good in Million Dollar Baby but he was probably too stoic in the role to (jennifer) garner (ha!) the award.

I also finished the book Friday Night Lights last night. I’d been stuck on a couple books a couple weeks ago while I was over at a coworkers house playing poker. He’d just finished Friday Night Lights so he lent it to me. The story is a reporter from a Philadelphia newspaper decided that he needed to write a book about high school football in the heartland and moved his family to Odessa, TX. He followed the team for a year and wrote this book. Fans are crazy about the Permian Panthers there and games against the cross town rivals will draw 20,000 fans (to a high school game!). There is a lot of pressure in this town that doesn’t have anything else going for it for the football team to win, but not just win, to go to State. The book was written by a reporter, a journalist, so that shows in both the way its told and also what is told; there is a lot of background to the football, of course, but also included is lots about the town’s economic and social and racial problems. All in all, it’s a pretty easy/ quick read, but it’s not as light as many sports books. I liked it. I would like to qualify a recommendation, however. a) I like sports stories, though I don’t read many of them. I read a lot of those Matt Christopher books as a kid. I was entralled by the BoSox’s story this year. b) I like it when people play for the love of the game. c) I know all about high school football and it’s importance to people. Upper St. Clair had (slightly) more going for it than just football and people didn’t live and die for the team, but it was a football school, in large part. Perhaps the only thing that people talked about as much was the musical in the spring. I never missed a game in high school (I was in the marching band, so I had to be there), including the freezing trip to State my junior year.

(There has been a movie made of Friday Night Lights and the Austin, Texas post-rock group Explosions in the Sky did the original soundtrack. I would sometimes play the soundtrack while reading the book, which is almost like watching the movie.}

I’ve been listening to this song by the Red House Painters called “I’m Sorry,” off of a John Denver Tribute album called Take Me Home and it could possibly be the most crushing song ever. Mark Kozelek’s voice imparts added melancholy to whatever he sings. It’s so good!

I saw Million Dollar Baby last night. It’d been getting good reviews so I thought I’d check it out.

It’s good enough to warrant the praise. I remember after I saw Steamboat Bill, Jr. at LSC (with Marty Marks on the piano) with Wally, afterwards he wanted to leap and bound up the side of the student center, like something Buster Keaton would do. A good movie will make you do that. Today I want to jump rope and get some gloves and a bag.

Another sign of a good film is that it sticks with you. This one is so far. I’m still mulling it over.

The acting is top-notch. Hilllary Swank gives a fantastic performace. The sort of performance were she’d been living the life of the character all her life and someone asked her to do it in front of camera and she said “It’s all the same to me, boss.” Clint Eastwood. He acts almost by not acting. His performance is straight and without frills, yet that’s what it makes it so great; and that’s what keeps this movie real when it threatens to degrade into sentimental mush. Morgan Freeman’s performance as friend-cum-narrator is good, but not as nuanced as Eastwood or Swank.

The story could have stopped at other points or moved in different directions, but the success of the movie is in large part because it doesn’t take the easy ending. Not all the questions are answered. Much like Nowhere in Africa this movie benefits greatly from not telling the audience what is right or wrong, but to lay out a complicated story and leave it to the audience how to feel.

The screen play needs to be applauded as well. It’s told as one story line—no flashbacks, no starting the movie in 1958 and then jumping to present or whatever. Those sort of tricks would have hurt this movie.

Eastwood directs as well and he does a masterful job of minimalist film making. The movie, as well as his performance, are stripped down and presented without Hollywood tricks. It’s all there for you to see and that’s alright because it’s all good.

The film’s not perfect, but the reasons why are pretty nitpicky and I think many of you wouldn’t notice them unless I point them out, so I won’t.

I need to check out Eastwood’s other movies as a director.

So I have this Napoleon Dynamite watch that Andy gave me. It displays the time in a digital format. It also says “idiot” (like in the movie), when one presses the button.

Today I was walking to my car and back in the rain to get something and when I got back to work, well, I guess some water had gotten into the watch because it started saying “idiot!” repeatedly. As it turns out, this is embarrassing in a quiet office.

I ended up taking it off and shoving it to the bottom of my bag, covering it with as much stuff as possible, closing the bag and shoving it as far under my desk as it would go.

12. Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens
11. Funeral by Arcade Fire
1. Sufjan Stevens at 7/31 Great American Music Hall
2. the Mates of State 2/6 at the Los Gatos Outhouse
8. Pedro the Lion with John Vanderslice 6/03 at Bottom of the Hill
3. Iron and Wine at Great American Music Hall
13. Our Endless Numbered Days by Iron and Wine
10. Damien Jurado 11/09 at Great American Music Hall
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5. the Cameraman (with Buster Keaton) at Stanford Theater with live organ accompaniment
6. the Polyphonic Spree 7/18 at Slim’s
15. Hero
17. Napoleon Dynamite free screening at Stanford
7. Arcade Fire Live at Museum of Television and Radio (archived by KEXP)
16. From a Basement on a Hill by Elliot Smith
14. Before Sunset
9. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring

I saw Das Boot for the first time yesterday and today (I saw it once, split over two days). It’s a long movie, as it turns out. 293 minutes worth of long. And very deliberately paced. (Perhaps the cut of the movie that wasn’t completely and totally uncut would’ve been a little been less slow).

But it was good. It’s a pretty depressing ending, despite the successful resolution to the main conflict.

I saw the Incredibles at the Capitol Drive-In in San Jose with Andy.

The drive in seems a good one. There are 6 outdoor screens—I thought there were perhaps 3—in this multi-plex of drive-ins. It’s got a good location, right in the path of planes landing at SJC and right by the train tracks. I’m not being facetious; this is exactly where I’d want a drive-in to be. If I wanted a clean, sterile movie-viewing, isolated environment, I could find that many places. It’s about 40 minutes from Menlo Park, so it’s a drive but it’s not totally unreasonable to go to occasionally, especially since they appear to be open 7 days a week all year long. (Many of the New England ones were open weekends for much of the spring and fall and 7 days a week in the summer peak.)

The Incredibles was good, great even perhaps. I’m sure everyone else has told you this as well. I thought it was a very entertaining movie and that stuff that people say about it being the best Pixar movie might be true. Someone told me it was one of the best movies of the past few years. I don’t subscribe to that, but it’s worth seeing if you haven’t. The plot is interesting, the animation is good (duh), the characters are, given that they’re super heroes and animated, believable and human and it’s all done with a good dose of humor.

[update] The Incredibles, much like another very good movie, Sideways, is not very good necessarily because it’s great!—brilliant!—genius!—but rather because there is nothing wrong with it. I came out of both movies not overwhelmed by the film, like I did with Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or To be and to Have, but at the same time I had no criticisms then and I don’t have any now.