Snow Angels, Taxi to the Dark Side, The Damned United, Sita Sings the Blues, & The Prisoner

Snow Angels is a depressing film by David Gordon Green, director of the excellent George Washington, the less excellent Undertow (the first time I think I'd ever seen Kristen Stewart), and Pineapple Express. This falls much more towards the first two, a look at a divorced couple and their daughter and the boy that the wife used to babysit. It's full of good performances: Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Nicky Katt, Amy Sedaris, Michael Angarano, and hipster-to-be Olivia Thirlby (seriously, just look at the glasses and the camera). I think I wouldn't have liked it as much had there not been as much growth from Michael as the boy, because otherwise it would've been a little too depressing.

Taxi to the Dark Side is another in a long line of documentaries about how messed up Iraq and Afghanistan are/were. Better than some, although not as masterfully frakked as Standard Operating Procedure. Maybe I should check to see if I have any more documentaries about the War on Philosophy and maybe move them much further down in my queue. Possibly even off it entirely. I'm not sure I need to keep watching them.

The Damned United is the story of probably the biggest flameout in sports history. Seriously, it's the stupidest job decision ever. What the hell was the board thinking when they offered Brian Clough the job at Leeds United? And what the hell was Brian thinking when he took it? It's really quite a good film, with strong performances from Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall. It's about a time in English soccer that I really didn't know that much about. Dirty soccer being played with lots of diving and cheap shots? Certainly wouldn't pass in current days, and I imagine the better sports coverage allows for more obvious penalties. Certainly that New Mexico player may have gotten away with it during the game, but the cameras caught everything.

Sita Sings the Blues is an animated film almost entirely done by Nina Paley. It combines the story of her husband leaving her, the story of Sita and Rama (told by people who can't quite agree on what was happening and when), and has musical interludes of Annette Hanshaw songs that comment on the links between the two stories. It's an interesting film, although I wouldn't say it was great. I object immensely to the rights issues that she had to go through to get this film released. Annette Hanshaw stopped recording in the 1930s. This was released last year. The rights holders were asking for $220,000 for a small film that few were going to see? That's utterly ridiculous. These were state laws rather than federal laws, but this is clearly stuff that should be in the public domain, because it's been almost 80 years since some of these recordings were made, and the performer is dead. There's no excuse for this. None.

The Prisoner ends with seriously one of the most messed up finales of all time. It's batguano insane, and although the episodes leading up to it were also pretty messed up (I watched it in the KTEH order, as opposed to the DVD order, which is really annoying, having to change DVDs almost every episode, or at least the order), it's really pretty hard to understand just how messed up it is. I know that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have seen this show, and I have this fear that they're going to go this route with Season 6. But they're at least going to have a little more time to put this together, since there're some weird shifts. I don't want to be more specific, because you should really see this, in order (I almost totally agree with the KTEH order rather than the DVD order, which is what I saw it in college). Lost has been pretty trippy, but I expect an online revolt on the order of the ending of The Sopranos except nerdier (and far less stupid) if the ending is anything like this.