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.
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.
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.
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] 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.
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?
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.
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