Riff on Movie Title:
I know what your collected thoughts were last summer.
I still know what your collected thoughts were last summer.
I know what your collected thoughts were last summer,... again.
I still know what your collected thoughts were summer before last.
Anyway, movies:
Dirty Pretty Things - fantastic. Who knew the BBC could make a movie I wanted to study, not just watch. Audrey Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor are magnificent and complex. See it.
Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse Planet Terror - fun. Rose McGowan is ridiculously sexy and the action is hilarious. I have had fantasies of running an old tow truck into human-shaped bags of red jello just to see the explosion, and here we get to see them in action. Also, having zombies eat Fergie's brains fulfills another fantasy for quiet. Finally, Marley Shelton's part as the second fiddle creates a great side story that ties things together.
Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse DeathProof - long-winded. Sorry. I wanted to like it because the Cannes folks did, and I liked Pulp Fiction, and Q plays to my generation, but, in the end, I did not like it. The last 30 minutes were good, but Q's focus seemed to wander. The dialogue was predictable and not that amusing. Won't watch it again (except maybe for the last car chase and beat-down).
Dark Knight - Heath Ledger was, as everyone says, excellent. He raised the bar for psychotic villians. Even Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lechter have nothing on Joker. There is an anarchic whimsy about the character and the mayhem. Christian Bale's straight-man Batman pales in comparison, but provides the boring springboard off of which Ledger can launch. Watch it for the Joker. Buy it for the Joker. Pray that screenwriters are paying attention and give us villians (and heroes, for that matter) with depth of character and strangeness that we deserve.
In other news, my 3.5 USTA tennis team won at City Playoffs and went to State. We did, in fact, get beaten soundly at State, but it was fun and challenging.
Upcoming: Misanthrope at the Boulevard Theatre, KT Tunstall concert, Irish Fest in Milwaukee, and the US Open in Flushing Meadows. So, there are reviews to come.
Hayden White from The Content of Form (p. 173) "The meaning of real human lives... is the meaning of the plots... by which the events that those lives comprise are endowed with the aspect of stories having a discernible beginning, middle, and end. A meaningful life is one that aspires to the coherency of a story with a plot. Historical agents prospectively prefigure their lives as stories with plots." I haven't checked the reference (I actually have that book on my shelf), but I like it whether it is on 173 or not. In 'The Holiday', starring Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz, Arthur (Eli Wallach) tells a depressed Iris (Kate Winslet), whose character has been emotionally crushed by an ex-boyfriend, that there are two types of women in the movies, the leading lady and the best friend. He tells Iris that he can tell she is a leading lady, but that she is, for some unknown reason, acting like the best friend. Iris's response is something like "I should be the leading lady of my own life, at least, shouldn't I?" What would it mean if we plotted our lives and made ourselves the heroes and leading ladies? What confidences and adventures would we have? What meaning would we impose on these existences?
I know what your collected thoughts were last summer.
I still know what your collected thoughts were last summer.
I know what your collected thoughts were last summer,... again.
I still know what your collected thoughts were summer before last.
Anyway, movies:
Dirty Pretty Things - fantastic. Who knew the BBC could make a movie I wanted to study, not just watch. Audrey Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor are magnificent and complex. See it.
Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse Planet Terror - fun. Rose McGowan is ridiculously sexy and the action is hilarious. I have had fantasies of running an old tow truck into human-shaped bags of red jello just to see the explosion, and here we get to see them in action. Also, having zombies eat Fergie's brains fulfills another fantasy for quiet. Finally, Marley Shelton's part as the second fiddle creates a great side story that ties things together.
Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse DeathProof - long-winded. Sorry. I wanted to like it because the Cannes folks did, and I liked Pulp Fiction, and Q plays to my generation, but, in the end, I did not like it. The last 30 minutes were good, but Q's focus seemed to wander. The dialogue was predictable and not that amusing. Won't watch it again (except maybe for the last car chase and beat-down).
Dark Knight - Heath Ledger was, as everyone says, excellent. He raised the bar for psychotic villians. Even Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lechter have nothing on Joker. There is an anarchic whimsy about the character and the mayhem. Christian Bale's straight-man Batman pales in comparison, but provides the boring springboard off of which Ledger can launch. Watch it for the Joker. Buy it for the Joker. Pray that screenwriters are paying attention and give us villians (and heroes, for that matter) with depth of character and strangeness that we deserve.
In other news, my 3.5 USTA tennis team won at City Playoffs and went to State. We did, in fact, get beaten soundly at State, but it was fun and challenging.
Upcoming: Misanthrope at the Boulevard Theatre, KT Tunstall concert, Irish Fest in Milwaukee, and the US Open in Flushing Meadows. So, there are reviews to come.
Hayden White from The Content of Form (p. 173) "The meaning of real human lives... is the meaning of the plots... by which the events that those lives comprise are endowed with the aspect of stories having a discernible beginning, middle, and end. A meaningful life is one that aspires to the coherency of a story with a plot. Historical agents prospectively prefigure their lives as stories with plots." I haven't checked the reference (I actually have that book on my shelf), but I like it whether it is on 173 or not. In 'The Holiday', starring Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz, Arthur (Eli Wallach) tells a depressed Iris (Kate Winslet), whose character has been emotionally crushed by an ex-boyfriend, that there are two types of women in the movies, the leading lady and the best friend. He tells Iris that he can tell she is a leading lady, but that she is, for some unknown reason, acting like the best friend. Iris's response is something like "I should be the leading lady of my own life, at least, shouldn't I?" What would it mean if we plotted our lives and made ourselves the heroes and leading ladies? What confidences and adventures would we have? What meaning would we impose on these existences?
