Eros

Eros is another anthology film that has parts that work better than others.

The first one was Wong Kar-Wai's The Hand, which is why I wanted to see the film, and why it was given to me. To give you an idea of whether I liked the film, I was crying through a good portion of the next one. I seem to have this tendency to fall in love with people who don't love me back, and then stay in love even after they've made it clear how they feel. So, of course, I was going to identify with the tailor who gets a handjob from a prostitute and then proceeds to make her gorgeous cheongsams and fall in love with her. It was also shot by Christopher Doyle, so it was also beautifully filmed, and that was some of the saddest rain I've ever seen. As it's a Wong Kar-Wai film, there were some great scenes, such as the two main tailor sequences, which include a sort of sex scene with the newest cheongsam after the aforementioned sad rain, and a scene where Chang Chen measures Gong Li for a dress using only his hands.

Equilibrium by Steven Soderbergh was far lighter, funnier, and has a bit of quite well done dreamlike footage at the beginning. Robert Downey, Jr. and Alan Arkin are funny as an ad man and a psychiatrist trying to understand the ad man's dream. Although Arkin is far more interested in some sort of tryst rather than this dream that seemed to be the only thing that Downey could focus on. I liked it, but not nearly as much as The Hand.

On the other hand (see what I did there? It's funny!), The Dangerous Thread of Things by Michelangelo Antonioni is full of some of the worst dialogue ever written and the two female leads spend no time waiting to get naked. The movie felt like it was made by a 14 year old boy, not a master of cinema. About the only way I could tell the women apart was that one liked horses, was slightly mopier, and had small breasts, while the other was a "free-spirit" who laughs a lot and had larger breasts. Oh, and the small breasted one likes to do ballet in the nude on the beach, while the large breasted one likes to just draw on the beach with a big stick while nude.

Although The Hand was the only one without nudity (Equilibrium has some fleeting glimpses in the dream bit, and The Dangerous Thread of Things would be easier to note scenes without nudity), it was by far the most erotic. I pretty much didn't need to write this review, really, since Roger Ebert expressed my feelings about the film. I even agree with his star ratings for the films, although for Antonioni's it might be better to say, "I award you no stars, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Jarhead

Jarhead almost seemed to me to be more about how a bunch of undersexed 20 year olds waste time rather than killing some Iraqis. Oh, yeah, that's exactly what it's about. Thus it never quite gets to be anything more than an intermittently funny, intermittently interesting film about the first Iraq War. Nowhere near as good as Three Kings, although somewhat less revisionist in its complaints about the American army. Then again, this wasn't trying to say anything, I don't think. If it was, it failed. Should have been better, possibly by being more interesting. No, that's pretty much it, my complaint is that the film isn't interesting. The book's probably better.

Breaking News

Breaking News starts with a 7 minute long single take that goes up and down in a building and then goes into a huge gunfight, stunts, and then cuts to a different shot of an explosion. How can I not enjoy a film with that? I have no idea, so I enjoyed the film. It's utterly ridiculous, with hundreds and hundreds of shots (not quite a John Woo 10,000 bullets) and a fairly low body count, but style to spare. Of course, it's far more accurate that they can't hit anything with pistols fired wildly and while running, but it does seem a little ridiculous that they couldn't maybe possibly hit once. Plus, Cheung has a bit of Terminator to him that seemed a little unrealistic. Anyway, Johnny To does an amazing job with the film, messing with the audience's expectations, although he never quite figures out a real reason for all of this, even as he seems to have a little to say about the interconnected media and how that affects reporting of crime. If you've ever watched CNN or any other 24 hour news channel in the middle of the day, you'd realize just how worthless they are (I watched CNN for a while this week where they were tracking a horse that had fallen down and they were sending a rescue crew, complete with helicopter footage. It's a horse. Once they get injured, the humane (horsane?) thing to do is to kill it, because they really don't do well when injured), and the putting on a show becomes more important to the police than actually doing the right thing some times. The film is style, and nothing much more. But that first scene (and the remaining part of that gun fight is about as good an opening shot since The Player, and makes me highly recommend it to anyone looking for a Heat-like cops and robbers film, although it isn't nearly up to that level. And you have to love the Beckham poster.

The Baxter & Where the Truth Lies

The Baxter was Michael Showalter's baby, although the other Staters (Statists? or should I just use Stella, a name that was also used in the film, and made me giggle) involved all were fun to see. There was very little to the film, but what little there was was funny and mostly enjoyable. And who knew that Michelle Williams would be the one star of Dawson's Creek who'd continuously do good movies? Weird how that is. She's the second best thing in the film, after Peter Dinklage's hilarious turn as wedding planner Benson Hedges. It's just a shame that the film doesn't work nearly as well as it should, and I tend to think it has something to do with Michael Showalter's acting. He doesn't work as well as Michelle Williams (who's luminescent, quirkily awesome, and gorgeous) as the sort of goofy nerdy type, and seems uncomfortable in many scenes. Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux, as the rivals for Showalter's attention from the ladies, both have good scenes, and the ending gag was great, but it makes me wish that, maybe, Paul Rudd had starred in the film, rather than Showalter. He could have owned the role, rather than just be uncomfortable. And I want to defend Cincinnati. There is singing there. The College-Conservatory of Music is there, and they can sing quite well. So, yes, singing exists in Cincinnati.

Where the Truth Lies is somewhat famous for being an NC-17 film that wasn't able to be cut down to make it R-rated. It's crap, of course. I think I'm approaching the point where I think NC-17 shouldn't actually exist as a rating. If parents feel like their kids can handle R, what's the difference between that and this film? There isn't any, except for the brief scene with the... um... well, slick remnants of a bit of lesbian oral sex on the chin. I'm pretty sure that's what made it NC-17, not the thrusting, or the orgy scene, which wasn't particularly explicit. Stupid MPAA, just accept that sex isn't nearly as harmful as violence, and just make it far clearer what is in films that is so dangerous (Rated R for breasts, butts, and a little bit of bush, along with snappy lobsters and lots of drug use and some bad language). There was nothing more explicit than any R-rated film here, it was just what? The homosexual overtones? Oh, yeah, that's it. So damn frustrating. The film was well-made, as you'd expect an Atom Egoyan film to be, with strong acting from all three leads. Twisty, good film. Shame about the "NC-17" rating.

Bill Maher: The Decider, Dr. Akagi, & The Ice Harvest

Bill Maher: The Decider was a new HBO special recorded on Saturday night in Boston. Maher continues to be really funny, even if a lot of it isn't particularly new for him. But even if a lot of it is stuff he's been complaining about for years, he's hilarious, and I will continue to watch him.

Dr. Akagi has a scene where a perverted man sticks an egg up a woman and then eats it. Somehow, this is the second film I've seen about life in Japan during World War II that had a scene like that. I don't know what that says about me, but I really don't have a strong desire to do the same thing. Maybe the Japanese are far more food-sex obsessed. Well, there's also Tampopo, the best food-sex film ever. At least it's better than violence-sex obsessed like America. The film's about a doctor in rural Japan, near Hiroshima, who tries to deal with the hepatitis outbreak. With the help of a drunk priest, a morphine-addicted surgeon, an escaped Dutch POW, and a prostitute-fisherwoman who can't stop working and wants to kill a whale. It's a Shohei Imamura film, so of course it's obsessed with sex, but it's also pretty funny. And anti-war, like many of the best Japanese films. Gotta love that obsession with sex, humor, and being anti-war. Somehow, he's Bill Maher.

Ice Harvest is a film I kept hoping would become good. Damn shame about that film. Oliver Platt's character, and, actually, pretty much every single character in the film is just annoying as hell. That the film just came so close to actually become not bad is worse than if it hadn't come close. The alternate endings fit the movie well, but continuing that mean streak to the end was just too much.

Beat the Devil

Beat the Devil was based on a novel by Claud Cockburn, famed commie journalist, father of Alexander, Andrew, and Patrick, cousin of Evelyn Waugh, and grandfather of Olivia Wilde (who was on the OC, a show I've never watched). It's crazy just how connected the guy was, although they're all crazy in some ways. He had to publish Beat the Devil under a pseudonym, due to his ties to the Communists, and his fighting for the right side in the Spanish Civil War. The movie really seems to be something of a spoof of The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, along with film noir basics. It's quite an interesting film, and Bernard Lee also has a small role. Which is nice, since he never gets noticed for anything other than being M. The script was written by Truman Capote, which probably has some linkage to the camp factor of the film. The film is in the public domain, and subsequently the DVD is craptacular. Maybe one of the many other DVDs isn't quite as crappy. Public domain films don't work nearly as well as public domain books.

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo

Sometimes I just feel like someone has written the thing that is, at the time I read it, absolutely perfect.

Having read and translated most of Catullus's poetry back in high school, with a teacher who, while very nice, didn't quite explain all the intricacies of just how sexual and dirty Catullus was, I have always loved his sparrow poems. And his invective against his friends can be hilarious, as can his complaints about stealing (Oh noes! Writing lots of poetry about how much you suck! So mean!). Yes, I was a huge Latin dork (one of two students in AP Latin at my school, along with a teacher's aid for a Latin class my senior year). It's so nice to know that I'm not entirely alone.

Reading Metafilter, I found this, which is funny by itself, but then reading the comments (frequently the best thing about posts there, especially when they go off on a collective tangent as they do here), I realized that poems redone as limericks are awesome. Unfortunately, you missed out on more chances of bad poetry from me, because these have been written already (by the appropriately pseudonymed Kattullus).

Poem 85
I hate and I love, oh it's true
It's excruciating to know you
But Lesbia, dear
Let me be clear
I wanna fuck till we're both black and blue

Poem 3
My Lesbia's has a sparrow she kisses and licks
It repays her by doing all kinds of tricks
To understand the attention
She gives it, I should mention
That "sparrow" is the name of my dick

However, I remembered the best poem of Catullus, at least from a completely vindictive perspective. I'm pretty sure we didn't actually translate this in the class (because the Latin is really filthy, and apparently is frequently ignored or censored heavily?), so I had to go try to find an unexpurgated copy somewhere else back then. So I bring to you the only limerick version of Catullus 16 that has ever mattered. As it's the only one that I've written.

Poem 16

You claim that my poems are gay.
Although that's what you are anyway.
My poems are not clean.
I am, so you're mean.
I'll sodomize you both right away.

Catullus was a genius, I tells ya!

Buffy Singalong, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, & The Human Beast

Friday night I went with friends to see Once More, with Feeling on the big screen. And sing along to it. The Washington Post has a write up, but somehow I don't think I had any pictures taken of me anywhere. Just imagine me as Giles in I've Got a Theory/Bunnies/If We're Together. And it'd probably be slightly better than my actual costume. There were not nearly enough costumes for my liking, as I didn't see any, and only a few Sunnydale t-shirts. The District is a boring place of people unwilling to have fun. I am including myself in that. I was also extremely disappointed that my popper didn't pop. I wonder about what that means. But the show was immensely fun, bunnies are awesome, it was nice to see that there were a lot of Buffy fans in DC (although the one time I was walking around DC with Firefly, I did discuss it with a stranger), I sang along to every song, spoke along to my favorite lines, and I now have vampire fangs that taste terrible. I think I might need to soak them in something minty because ew. At least before the next screening in November.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a sort of revisionist look at her, but I question whether anyone could possibly have thought that Hitler wasn't evil, or at least horribly anti-Semitic. Then again, most Germans were anti-Semitic then. It's disappointing that she just sort of shrugs off any problems with book burnings or anti-Semitism. That she is so intent on trying to minimize her culpability for all of it is so obvious that her claims lost quite a bit of their effectiveness. Having seen Triumph of the Will, there is no doubt that it's a masterful work of propaganda, but it's also an utterly repulsive film. But at least this 3 hour long documentary has an intermission. Plus, nudity! Dead Jew nudity! African nudity! Floppy Nazi nudity! Master race, my ass! Note the very important comma. I'd only seen bits and pieces of Olympia before, but that one really is an impressive film. And only a little racist.

The Human Beast is another Jean Renoir film. I think I'll just go take the rest of the Renoir films out of my Netflix queue. Ah, there. Much better. It's one of those films that's only really known by its original name, not the translation, which is why I'm referring to it as its translation. Also, he's pretty bad in his role in the film. Beh.

The Quiet American, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Initial D, & Three... Extremes

The Quiet American is a book I've been wanting to read for years, at least since I first read about the making of the Michael Caine film (which I really love, you know, just in case you couldn't have guessed from it being me) and it being held back for being anti-American. Which it is, completely deservedly due to our constant screwing up of a variety of countries through stupidity. The book itself sort of surprised me, especially with the ending. (Really, that's how you're going to end it? What does that say about the world if everything goes that way after the American gets killed by the commies?) Also, lots of opium. It's actually far better than either movie, as would be expected, but I was more impressed with just how accurate Graham was in his impressions of what would happen and just how much more he knew about the situation rather than the Americans. I also read this essay about the differences in the films, the book, and reality. It's interesting, if you're familiar with all of them, which you probably aren't, considering there were only 2,913 ratings of the 1958 version on Netflix (far less than the 225,852 ratings on the 2002 version).

Sunday Bloody Sunday is a sort of depressing look at a love triangle with the only twist that it's a Jewish doctor and an older woman for a younger man. It's a John Schlesinger film, who's very up and down, with good films like Midnight Cowboy, The Falcon and the Snowman, and Cold Comfort Farm, along with dreck like The Day of the Locust and The Next Best Thing. He also did Marathon Man, the movie that is extremely disturbing for the garotte scene alone. I found this film most interesting for the answering service, which was just a cranky old woman who was basically lying to a bunch of people about messages if she felt like being vindictive.

Initial D is full of pretty cool car stunts, and is all style, no substance. I imagine it's basically just like The Fast and the Furious, but with actual talent involved (the team behind Infernal Affairs, who apparently made a film called Forlorn City with the good Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Shu Qi, and I clearly need to see), so I can completely see why they felt like ripping it off for Tokyo Drift. And anything with Anthony Wong is worth watching for his performance alone. But my favorite thing about it is the fact that it has a dubbed version and subtitles. And they're not the same. I am a huge fan of terrible subtitles, although I bet that the subtitles track the actual dialogue far more than the dubbing. The jokes in the subtitles are far funnier than the dubbing as well, as there are fewer gay jokes and more crossdressing and prosititution jokes. And the voices in the dubbing are horrendous. Weird that the main girl, Natsuki, was played by Anne Suzuki, who was in Snow Falling on Cedars, quite a good film. Also weird: the ending of the film with respect to the relationship of Natsuki and Takumi. I guess it really is just a love story about a guy and his car. Speaking of which, watching the videos for Gran Turismo 5 on the Playstation Store made me want to get that game lots. And there are quite a few other games I want for the PS3. Could this possibly mean that purchasing a PS3 rather than buying a PS2 and saving the extra money wasn't a terrible decision? Well, Blu-Ray porn has something to say about that!

Three... Extremes is a three-part anthology film (and apparently this is the second collection of these films?) with parts by Fruit Chan (who I hadn't heard of before first reading about screenings of this film, but is a good Hong Kong director, maybe?), Chan-wook Park (overrated Korean pain director), and Takashi Miike (Japanese awesomeness). So the three films are pretty much horror films, although only one had any aspects that have become cliché as an Asian horror film (creepy long haired ghost). As any anthology film goes, some are better than others. Dumplings, Fruit Chan's film, is about Bai Ling making dumplings from aborted feti as a sort of anti-aging remedy. It made me extremely sick. The crunching sounds when she's eating continue to make my skin crawl long after watching it. Really, just ick. And the scene in the bathtub towards the end was extremely squicky. Highly recommended to anyone with a strong stomach. And anyone who wants to see a gorgeous film (shot by Christopher Doyle, my favorite cinematographer) with a non-good Tony Leung. Cut was crap. Chan-wook Park does a little crappy self-referential junk which is just violence for the sake of violence. With a twist at the end. Hey, just like Oldboy, that vastly overrated film. What a surprise! Maybe his I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK will be better, since it isn't a revenge film at all. JSA was good, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance at least seemed like you didn't hate everyone in your film, and then, what? Some actor must have pissed in your Cheerios, because that's the only excuse. I should have liked it with the vampire aspects, but nope. Box, on the other hand was one of the creepiest things I have seen. And it's also the one closest to the Asian horror cliché, with the sister of the main character creepily wandering around. But the film was extremely well-made, and what's the scariest thing imaginable? Twins. There's also contortionists, small places, fire, and being buried alive. And the final reveal. Oh, man, it really freaked me out. So I salute you, Takashi Miike and Fruit Chan, and give a big raspberry to Chan-wook Park. I recommend the film, even with Cut, because you can always skip ahead. Yay for DVDs.

Café Lumière, Millenium Mambo, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, & Mirrormask

Café Lumière is about two major universal truths: no mass transit system in the world sounds better than the Tokyo one, and Photoshop is a huge resource hog. It's dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu, on his 100th birthday, but it's only not really an Ozu film, as the camera actually moves, and some shots aren't from a kneeling standpoint. Hsiao-hsien Hou makes a film that would have been far better had it not had the specter of Ozu's work hanging over it from the opening titles. I was expecting something far more than it was. It's essentially a love letter to the Tokyo trains, with the barest plot there to occasionally draw you away from thinking that it's all about the trains before another shot reminds you of the trains. I kept hoping for something more, but nothing particularly happened. I have no idea why I decided to add this to my queue. It's well made, just very light.

Millennium Mambo is... um... well, I guess I can add Qi Shu to my list of Good Actresses Whose Labia I've Seen. Although that wasn't in a movie. She apparently posed for some Asian porn magazine. And by pose, I mean, she shows pretty much everything (you can find it all online, although under a different transliteration of her name). After having seen The Transporter and enjoying it far more than I should have, I never would have picked her as a good actress. But she was quite good, although a fairly stupid character in the film. She's a somewhat physically (but mainly mentally) abused girl in Taipei, who has to deal with the men in her life who aren't entirely on the up and up. It's another Hsiao-hsien Hou film, although this one isn't nearly as interested in being an Ozu film, and is much more of a modern film, even with a couple of great scenes, like the one of Qi Shu just walking down a covered walkway, and then the faceplants in the snow. The music was also quite good, although it was all apparently Giong Lim's previous work, not songs written for the film.

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart reminds me that one of the worst things that happened in my lifetime was 1980s fashions. And then you give Asians ridiculous feathered hair, and it's just painful. It's another Wayne Wang film (after Chan Is Missing) about the assimilation process of Chinese in San Francisco. Although the DVD didn't even bother to translate everything. Which pissed me off immensely. But there is a reference to Cheez-Wiz, so Wayne Wang FTW! Or something. Also, I have now seen everything that Laureen Chew has done on film. Which is sort of strange, because even with the sometimes stilted acting, she's far better than some of the people with long careers in movies. I know, I know, it's because she's not devastatingly gorgeous. But two other people in the film did go on to far more, Victor Wong and Joan Chen (Apparently Joan Chen directed Autumn in New York which has a good cast? So it's clearly Allison Burnett's fault, who's a guy? What the hell?). The DVD includes Dim Sum Take Out, a short film which includes lip syncing to My Boyfriend's Back (plus a version in Cantonese and English?), a sex toy party, plus an insane amount of crazy 80s fashions, and is what Wayne Wang filmed the year before and tossed most of to film the relationship between the daughter and her mother, rather than the daughter and her friends. It's completely bizarre.

Mirrormask has production design that was outstanding, with masks and crazy sets and characters all over the film, and the metaphors also were quite good. Nothing outstanding, but certainly not nearly as bad as some of the reviews were making it out to be. The fear of losing a parent is quite disturbing, and it's really quite an effective look at that and growing up with trying to decide whether to follow in your parents' footsteps or not. It's made by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, who are clearly very talented. I loved Gaiman's story about how he ended up writing the English translation of Princess Mononoke (my second favorite Miyazaki film after Nausicaa): he got a call from Harvey Weinstein who basically said, "I was looking for the best screenwriter working today to write the English translation, so I went to Quentin Tarantino, but he said to come to you, so would you like to do it?" and then he flew to see it on a big screen and said yes. Because it is a great film to see on a big screen. But I did get to write about it before it even appeared in the US, because of the seamless integration of CGI effects fit in with my paper on them in college. I seem to have gone off on a tangent here. Mirrormask is certainly above average, but the little niggling things are certainly distracting. Not distracting: the Britishness, and the idea that for some people, this will be their favorite film ever. It isn't mine, but I love that people are out there making films like this.

Neuromancer & After Dark

Neuromancer has a little reference to Johnny Mnemonic, which I instantly recognized, and then I read that Gibson had a trilogy of books along with short stories in the same world. I'd read The Winter Market back in my Pleasures of Genre class in college, but I'd never read any other Gibson, but I clearly need to remedy that. Shouldn't be too hard. I pretty much need to read more cyberpunk stuff in general. Or, alternately, read more in general. With traveling, it is far easier, because plane rides and long metro and bus rides, along with no internet access lends itself to reading far more than having a computer with internet access and TV does. Anyway, I really liked Neuromancer.

After Dark is the latest Haruki Murakami novel, this one about a pair of sisters, the elder one a model and the younger a student who is not as attractive, and their experience over one evening. It's differently structured than his other works, being sort of real-time and only set in one evening, plus its third person omniscient narration. But it's as good as his other stuff, extremely well written (and translated by my preferred Murakami translator, Jay Rubin. Yes, I have a favorite translator of Haruki Murakami.). The younger one meets a jazz trombonist/law student in a Denny's, translates for a beaten Chinese prostitute, considers a long-distance relationship while studying in China, and discusses her older sister, who apparently is asleep in her room when an unplugged TV turns on. It's full of name brands, jazz music, cats, supernatural aspects, and discussions about sex. If you want to know why I like Murakami so much, that's why. Although the book is short (I read it pretty much on the way to Cleveland, which is just as 30 Rock says it is, and if you aren't watching this show, you are wrong), I loved it.

Ju Dou, The World, Chan Is Missing, & It Happened Here

Ju Dou is Gong Li being gorgeous. Well, I can't think of one single film with her in it that isn't her being gorgeous. Not a bad career. The use of color is also quite impressive, although the DVD itself was pretty weak. Lots of scratches on the print.

The World was a film about a theme park in Shenzen that has a New York area (with WTC, pointed out with something only slightly less than gloating), a Taj Mahal, a Vatican, the Pyramids, and an Eiffel Tower. It's about the lives of the workers in the park, who have to do dances from around the world and wear silly costumes, along with occasionally playing Africans, which apparently is a little on the touchy side for them. The actors were actually fairly good for non-professionals, or at least actors mainly in Zhang Ke Jia's other films. It was somewhat good, but I was more interested in the Russians imported and who had their passports taken away than the main storylines.

Chan Is Missing starts with a Chinese cover of Rock around the Clock but with changed lyrics about inflation. I knew I was going to find the movie interesting. It was another film with non-professional actors, and the last Asian one in this post. The acting is pretty bad, and there were a lot of mangled lines that clearly were mistakes but left in. But the script is actually pretty interesting and occasionally pretty funny. The look at FOBs assimilating or not in San Francisco is something I found endlessly engaging. The discussions of differences in linguistics and Chinese food really are what make the film worth seeing. But the DVD was all messed up due to rain, maybe? My mail was soaked and the Netflix packages were wet through.

It Happened Here again has non-professional actors, and this one is about as bad as Chan Is Missing for occasionally extremely stilted performance, but the idea is so fascinating, and the execution, from a technical standpoint, that the film is a must see. It's about what may have happened had the Nazis invaded England in 1940, and then had to withdraw most soldiers to counter the Soviet menace a few years later and the nascent resistance force. That the Nazi flags seemed so natural on the buildings and the England SS uniforms was just extremely unsettling. The Nazis in the film are just as disturbing as real life Nazis, and the use of actual footage of English fascists is effective. Also, I hate when DVDs don't have main menus.

Proof

Proof is one of those plays that was so freakin' incredible when I saw it back in 2003. It's an amazing play, maybe more so for someone who has an interest in theoretical math (even if said person doesn't entirely understand, say, theoretical math), and somewhat reminiscent of Arcadia, which I saw (and was completely frakin' blown away by it off-Broadway, I mean, just look at the cast of the 1995 performance: Billy Crudup, Blair Brown, Victor Garber, Robert Sean Leonard, Paul Giamatti, Havilland Morris (in both Sixteen Candles and Gremlins 2!)). That said, the play is incredible, but the opening-up of the play into the movie doesn't work nearly as well as it should have. The actual dialogue directly from the play is quite good, but the band scene was completely unneeded, as were the scenes outside of the house and yard. I know very few plays that get significantly expanded from their stage origins and work well. Or at least the expansions feel remotely right. Good plays have good dialogue and good acting. Same thing with movies. Just because you usually don't have that many sets doesn't make expanding the film into many different sets more cinematic. Proof is one of my favorite plays I've ever seen, so even if the film isn't nearly as good, that so much of it was kept means it's still quite a worthwhile film. Scarily, it almost makes me want to see The Lake House. And then I come to my senses.

The Polyphonic Spree at 9:30 6/30

Thanks to NPR, I have a setlist (with no section numbers, because that would be stupid or far more anal about a band than I feel comfortable). Plus, the wait for that led to... me spending time to link to flickr and a blog! That has youtube links! And was written by a younger person! So you get pictures along with my witty commentary!

Together We're Heavy
Running Away
Hanging around the Day, Pt. 2
Get up & Go
Hold Me Now
It's the Sun
Light To Follow
Younger Yesterday
The Fragile Army
La La
Watch Us Explode (Justify)
We Crawl
The Championship
------------
Sonic Bloom
Lithium
When the Fool Becomes the King
It's the Sun (reprise)
Happy Birthday to Rick

Well, I went to this basically on the strength of the reputation of the live shows. And... they did not disappoint at all. After putting up a red paper wall and projecting John Lennon's Gimme Some Truth (possibly performed by the Spree, I'm guessing so, but can't be positive), Tim DeLaughter spent a good minute or so teasing the audience by slowly cutting it down. And then the full 23- (-ish, there was a roadie who participated somewhat, but I just want to call him a roadie, even if he filled the entirely necessary confetti guns) member band went into a set that was heavy on the new material.

The black military uniforms seem like they don't really match the religious revival feeling of the show, but the music certainly did. Before The Fragile Army, I liked the band as a theory, but this album is actually really good. Probably because the songs themselves feel more focused and less long-ass. I was able to sing along to quite a bit of it, and that was very much encouraged by Tim, and it was actually one of the more energized crowds I've seen in DC.

That said, after playing for around an hour (not playing either Soldier Girl or Reach for the Sun, which were the only two songs I would have known before last month), they came out in their white robes with a color border at the feet, and then played four songs. Four songs that lasted around half an hour. Well, ok, Tim also got the audience to sing Happy Birthday to Rick at the end. But the encore was one of the most fun things at a show I can recall. Just for the cover of Lithium, which had the entire audience singing along and bouncing, treating an extremely depressing song as unironically as possible. I know I say this a lot, after most shows, even, but that is one experience I wouldn't mind having over and over again. It was that much fun and that cool. They finished the encore (except for the aforementioned Happy Birthday) with When the Fool Becomes a King, which is really the only place to put the 10 plus minute song, although they technically started with Everything Starts at the Seam, pushing it to more like fifteen minutes or so, and the reprise of It's the Sun just sort of blended in. I do sort of wish they had ended with Lithium, because that was just such a highlight, but I guess I can understand not wanting to end with a cover.

This is one band that I'd see even if I didn't like the last album. But that I did like the last one as much as I did certainly helped. Also helping: the choir clearly enjoying their long hair. It was sort of hard not to stare at them. Attractive women do make for better shows...

Darwin's Nightmare

Darwin's Nightmare was a depressing documentary about the destruction of the ecosystem of Lake Victoria, due to the introduction of a bucket of Nile Perch about forty years ago or so. And how that has destroyed lives by killing off almost all ways to live there except prostitution and fishing. It's a huge downer. Because Europeans don't seem to understand why the destruction of the ecosystem is so bad, and the Tanzanians don't seem to mind either. They're exporting the fish and importing...? Guns, germy Europeans who abuse the women, and Big Mouth Billy Bass. Oh, and a destroyed ecosystem and economy that leads to kids huffing and fighting over rice. I wasn't overly impressed with the film itself, which attacks pretty much everything, but that's probably because, while extremely liberal in many ways, I'm far more interested in capitalism and free trade due to my economic background than others who might share some of my other beliefs. Like giving everyone a musket to protect themselves and banning every firearm that can fire more than four times a minute. If you can't kill your deer with that, go back to playing Counterstrike. The kids do play Counterstrike still, right? Should I have said Halo? I'm so out of touch on FPSs. Anyway, if you see one documentary about how we're destroying our world as evidenced through enormous fish and huffing kids, watch this film.

The Trial, French Cancan, The Bad Sleep Well, & Bleak House

The Trial was just as well-made as you would expect from an Orson Welles film, and it's extremely paranoid. Which is exactly what you'd expect from a movie based on Kafka's The Trial. Now, I've never read it, again showing that my knowledge of a large amount of literature comes almost entirely from pop cultural references. Which sometimes is sufficient (I never felt like I needed to read Moby Dick), and other times needs to be remedied (I finally finished Lolita, but I can't top that song...). I feel like I have a firm enough grasp on it to not have to read it. Anthony Perkins is sufficiently bewildered throughout the film, until the film requires desperation. He's basically just good. According to the IMDB, Orson Welles dubbed quite a few other people throughout the film, and it was fairly obvious about some of them. When he finally showed up as the Advocate, I was sort of surprised. He didn't want to just be responsible for everything behind the camera, but also acting and replacing voices? The film does work very well, though.

French Cancan is the story of the opening of the Moulin Rouge, fictionalized, but far less FREAKING TERRIBLE than Moulin Rouge!. That said, it's still not good. I didn't like the songs, and the choice of name for the main female character just... Well, I think the film would have worked far better if the name had been changed. I understand that it's supposed to be a great film of the creation of art, but all the films and cartoons and the like spoofing (whether intentional or not (I'm looking at you Moulin Rouge!)) cancan dancers just makes me not care that much. Sorry Renoir, I just don't like the film.

The Bad Sleep Well is another outstanding Kurosawa film about corruption and bureaucracy. This one has the great Toshiro Mifune trying to expose bribery among two huge corporations in (then) modern day Japan, and it clearly had to have touched some nerves. Especially with the ending, which I won't spoil. And for those that care, the 135 minute running time listed on Netflix is wrong, it's the full 150 minute version.

Bleak House is something I should have watched back when it first aired, but as previously stated, I made a mistake. I have rectified that, and can completely recommend it, as I can't imagine reading the actual book would be nearly as fun as seeing Charles Dance, Nathaniel Parker, Burn Gorman, and especially Philip Davis so clearly enjoy their roles. That's not to say that Anna Maxwell Martin, Gillian "Scully" Anderson, and Denis "Wedge" Lawson weren't good, but they didn't stick out quite as much for the awesomeness of their performances. Apparently, the English version has an extra 30 minutes or so, but I think 8 hours was enough.