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The Movies
I never realized quite how much movies mean to me until recently, when I subscribed to Netfilx and started watching the classic movies I really enjoy more frequently.
I went over to Woody's house last night and watched The Passion of Joan of Arc, which I've seen a couple of times and loved for its visual beauty; I think I may be getting past the gawking and starting to be able to appreciate the tragic beauty of Joan's story. In particular I was noticing something in common between watching this movie and reading The Gospel According to Jesus Christ -- how my understanding of the story is shaped by knowing the lead character will suffer martyrdom. It probably goes without saying (though I don't know if I would have made the connection myself before yesterday) that Joan is a Christ-like figure -- in her story as in Jesus' there is a sense of fatality, that he will go to his death on the cross and she to hers on the pyre because God has set in motion the course of events and it is not subject to change.
Something that had held me off from reading The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was the subliminal fear that it would be mocking Jesus -- I am not a religious man and indeed have been known to appreciate lampoons of religion and of Christianity, but the idea of a life story of Jesus which mocked him was rubbing me the wrong way. I am glad to find my worries were totally misplaced.
I will never forget your kindness and your breakfast.
A friend at work has been recom-mending movies to Ellen; so far her picks have been fantastic. Tonight we watched Bread and Tulips, about its heroine's escape from her unsatisfactory, stifling home life into a world of romance and creativity -- it caught both of us up and took us out of ourselves into its Venice. The anarchist florist and the gossipy holistic masseuse, the sentimental Icelandic waiter, the bumbling would-be P.I.; I just wanted to dive into the screen and live with them. This is the right way to make entertainment.
I'm glad I watched La Pointe-Courte when I did, as I'm now seeing loose parallels between it and everything I am reading... Sort of the archetypal melancholy romance.
Con la vista perdida en el mar, Paco hacÃa escurrir aún la arena entre sus dedos.
Paco was squatting a bit further down the beach; before giving myself up to sleep, I asked him:
--What do people live on, here?
He was distractedly letting the sand run through his fingers; he didn't even raise his head:
--On fish.
--And you? --I turned my mouth up(?) and closed my eyes--. What do you want to be?
His response, this time, came directly:
--Mechanic.
I slept. I was aware that after a few hours, I'd forget the fatigue of the journey; I didn't want anything besides to let myself bake slowly, my face to the sun.
Once or twice, I woke up and saw that Dolores was sleeping too.
His gaze lost in the sea, Paco was still letting the sand run between his fingers.
I'm thinking I will work on a full translation of this story.
Some amazing work from two Uruguayan artists, Federico Ãlvarez and Mauro Rondán. According to paledave (to whom thanks for the link!), they did this on a budget of only $300. Soundrack is by Snake.
Nice line from SciFiLatino -- "It is refreshing to see [Montevideo]â??s landmarks attacked by aliens, since I thought aliens only knew about the U.S. and Japan. "
Looks like a pretty fun movie actually... too bad about the subtitles. Director and screenwriter is Halit Refiğ.
The book is written in 1901, censored and not published until 1923, then filmed (in reality) in 1965 and (fictionally) in 1981. (Filming began on May 17, the day before my 11th birthday!)
I was exuberant at the thought of beginning anew, and greatly soothed by the consolations of life in a yalı, so much so that during the first few days I convinced myself that a rapid recovery was in prospect. No matter what amusements we'd partaken in on the previous evening, no matter how late we'd come back, and no matter how much I'd had to drink, in the morning, as soon as the light began to stream through the gaps in the shutters, casting its strange reflections of Bosphorus waves onto the ceiling, I would throw open the shutters, each time amazed at the beauty that rushed in, that almost exploded, through the window.
It suddenly struck me this evening that Pointe-Courte has a lot in common with this portion of Museum of Innocence. I'm wondering now how much a comparison of Noiret's character with Kemal would work, how much provincial France in the 50's "is like" Turkey, the provinces of Europe, in the 70's. I'll be watching Pointe-Courte again on Thursday (Mark and Woody are coming over!), will keep that thought in mind.
posted evening of October 26th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Orhan Pamuk
I am really enjoying Channel 13's presentation Reel 13 on Saturday nights, although it is consistently making me stay up past my bedtime... Last night they showed The Pink Panther -- which I have watched a couple of times before but always glad to see again -- Adaptation -- which I watched when it came out, but had forgotten completely; what a fun, gripping, moving film! -- and this beautiful animated short, Le Loup Blanc by Pierre-Luc Granjon:
I tend to just think of The Pink Panther as a Peter Sellers vehicle -- I had forgotten how much worth watching the rest of the cast are, in particular David Niven and Claudia Cardinale. And the music! Obviously the theme is a great song, but there are a lot of other gems in the soundtrack as well. I sort of want to know what the movie is parodying -- I had been thinking of it as a parody of James Bond films, but Ellen pointed out that it came out in 1963, only a year after the first Bond film... It could be a parody of the thriller genre maybe?
posted afternoon of October 18th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Animation
Thanks to Alvy Singer for pointing out a new list of top-fifty animated films from Time Out, with some commentary by Terry Gilliam! I'm glad to see they gave Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs a place on the list, even though it's so new and unproven. I am as convinced as they are that "this maddeningly ingenious and wildly original smart kidsâ?? adventure will one day take its rightful place in the animated pantheon. " Most of the Miyazaki masterpieces make the list, with My Neighbor Totoro taking top ranking as is well and good. The list is a little biased toward feature films -- it seems like the shorts by Chuck Jones and Tex Avery deserve pride of place. Jones has "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie" from 1979 at number 3, but that was decades after his finest work.
I wanted to write a post tonight about Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which Sylvia and I watched last night and just loved; and I wanted to make the point right up front what a visual treat the movie is. Of course I went looking around the web for stills; and I found a lot of them, but none that quite communicates what a rollicking lot of fun it is to watch this movie... The one above is about the closest I could get. So you'll have to take it on faith I guess -- walking out of the movie you feel like you've been at a feast.
The movie is extremely clever -- there are a lot of the Pixar-style asides making jokes to the adults in the audience, they are very well-done: they made me laugh without hitting me over the head what was going on. And more, the jokes seemed true to the characters and situations. What was lacking in Up, I thought, was nuance; this movie has nuance and subtlety. It is able to make a standard-issue children's lit point -- about (in a nutshell) smart kids being ostracized and having trouble getting anywhere in life, but sticking to their dreams and eventually finding self-realization -- without slipping into after-school special sentimentality. It is, in addition to being tons of fun, moving and uplifting.
posted evening of October 12th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Sylvia
When they did shut up and dance, they were gorgeous -- and maybe the very best bit of the show was the interplay between the director's need to be in charge and the movement of the dance -- there were complex bits where she would criticize another player while they were dancing, stop, rewind, take 2... They could have pruned the dialog quite a bit and still gotten their storyline across, and there would have been room for a lot more dancing.
In the London Review of Books' "Short Cut" feature, Bill Pearlman reminisces about hanging out with Pynchon in Manhattan Beach in the 70's. "He thought the world was mad with its weaponry and paranoias, and that hasnâ??t changed much."
Looks like a pretty fun movie actually... too bad about the subtitles. Director and screenwriter is 
