Married, Father, United
I saw this based on Louis’s recommendation – that and the fact that I almost always like comic book movies. The dialog ruled, the feel of the film was awesome, but the violence really disturbed me – something that does not happen in movies that often these days.
Some of the mad cap crazy stuff was good, but the brutally realistic stuff struck me as just way to much.
Absolutely amazing. This depressed me for three complete days. The loneliness, isolation, complete inability to communicate, the historical sweep, interconnectedness – everything thing about this is completely amazing. I do not know how Ware is able to do this – and one amazing aspect of his work is the post-modern self confidence of everything that he does – I mean he knows exactly what he is doing, he tells you he is going to do it, and then when he does it he has some how tricked you becuase the really cool part was not what he was talking about at all.
Like when Jimmy gets beaten by the school bullies for hitting a girl – his father cannot protect him forever, obviously. Really obviously. just amazing.
This is so good that I will read everything Ware puts out forever.
Of course, I said this about Wallace & I still have not gotten to the Oblivion book – and that is something else. I am really down on myself right now for my complete inability to finish anything. I have Varieties of Religious Experience going for months, I cannot get through Lacan without trying to reread thousands of pages of Freud. The Kem Nunn book I was so excited about sits. I cannot get into the Dylan Chronicles, I have not made progress in poetry readings in months – everything thing is kind of backing up & that is causing me to get frustrated.
not sure why, I mean all this reading is supposed to be fun – I can take fun and make it work for no reason…
This is the best valenitnes day movie ever made. A fantastic study of relationship, identity, memory, ego, and bad hair. I watched this with Lisa last night (I had actually watched it the morning & night before) and she even really enjoyed it. My favorite scene is the bookstore erase – when Kate Winslett throws down the concept that she is not a concept. That is huge for me, since I do have the bad habbit of treating everyone as if they are not really human, but rather representation of some ideal. I also like the beck soundtrack. Visiually the movie completely ruled. The sub plot @ the girl in love with the Dr was a little to Deux ex Machina – I mean Clementine could have gone through the imposter Joel’s backpack and figured everything out which may have been easier. A good flick.
Almodovar’s latest is such a messed up muddle that it is hard to know where to start.
I guess starting with the music is never a bad place, and the music in this is never bad. Alberto Iglesias put the soundtrack together and it is by turns campy, classic, and deeply haunting. It reminded me a lot of Lynch’s soundtracks in that it was eclectic, but not whacky; tied to a theme but not thematic (whatever that means); and largely in the back ground unless you stopped to listen at which point you realized how weird it was.
This great soundtrack makes for a fine compliment to a movie that I am coming to really respect – the plot has so many twists and turns that it starts to seem simple – kind of manufactured. But the key to this is the line “You changed the ending” – because the original short story ending is never known. The ending of the movie is a blundered note written by a dying junkie. What is the “story” what is the “meaning” when there is absolutely no trust worthy naration & the naration is based on another naration which was designed to be used for blackmail.
By totally destroying the narrative trust of the film – and then rushing into a film noir paradoy – further complicates matters.
As does the fact that a film maker is not the lover of movies & the writer is – the writer who is dead. A story being plagerized by an imposter. the path of the movie from inspiration to production is a large part of what the movie is trying to deconstruct. And deconstruction works very very well on this – the shocking homo erotic aspects of the film are completely undermined by the films morbid fascination with film making – with costumes and character – plot and developement.
When all is said and done there is very little left to talk about then the soundtrack – a soundtrack which is very very good.
David Given Schwarm 