Caseus Archivelox: I Am Trying To Break Your Heart & Baran

2002-12-08 - 10:58 p.m.
I saw I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. It was a really good documentary about Wilco. If you hadn't heard of Wilco, then you probably wouldn't like it. For those who like them, then it's a generally well-done, if unenlightening, look at the band. And the performances are very good. They did play a lot more from Being There than I was expecting. And only one song from Summerteeth. So I was surprised, if not unhappy. And I didn't know that Jeff Tweedy is me as I want to be. In that he's a rock star, and he has migraines. Ok, so I don't want to have migraines, but he gets them, and the camera follows him into the bathroom to watch him puke. Which is just not right. There also wasn't much about Jim O'Rourke. Which isn't cool. And it was a little too "We're sticking it to the man". The music was good enough that I can forgive a lot of problems with the movie. Which is just the opposite of Muriel's Wedding, which was a good enough movie to overcome serious problems with the heavily ABBA soundtrack (EDITOR'S NOTE: I am complaining about Dancing Queen).

Today I watched Baran, which is about as far from an American film as you could imagine. One: it was about Iran. Two: it had, as a main character, Afghanis. Three: both Iranis and Afghanis were portrayed sympathetically. Four: it was in a foreign language. Five: the ending was not a traditional American ending. It was open to debate what would happen at the end. And six: it was slowly paced. But it was very good.