Quickies

 

We saw Atonement last week. Just in time for Yom Kippur. I think I already used the dumb joke about the Jewish connection with the family's last name. Beautiful movie. We read the book a year or so ago. Well told story and well done movie. English accents are only a little hard to understand but since I now qualify for the senior discount at Piccadilly I'm having a harder time hearing anything. Getting my ears cleaned out helped a little.

 

Love in the Time of Cholera came in the mail recently. I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez' magical realism style of writing. I first read his short stories, then 100 Years of Solitude. Have not read Love in the time of Cholera but wanted to see the movie anyway. Beautiful movie. I loved the casting. Javier Barden was great and a pleasure to see him after not really liking No Country for Old Men. The commentary on the DVD that I watched later was very interesting mainly because the director, Mike Newell, has a great voice. Very soothing, especially for an Englishman. Even though he is mostly a TV director the movie wasn't all that bad. Pauline Kael had a good point in the 60's that it wasn't the major movies that television was hurting but the fact that television killed the B-movie which had been the training ground for directors. With television ending the B-movie market, directors were coming from television instead which is much more one-dimensional (at least at that time, supposedly). I'm not sure if Mike Newell's television background affected this movie but he did do Four Weddings and Funeral which had Hugh Grant. That's about as one-dimensional as you can get.

 

I forgot about seeing Mountain Patrol in Augusta last summer. Strangely beautiful movie about a true story in Tibet several years ago concerning the poaching of wild antelope and the attempts by local Tibetans to stop the poaching. Gorgeous scenery and great acting. I read quite a bit of viewer response to the movie and got very confused about who was really the bad guys and was the movie really Chinese propaganda to show how environmentally concerned they are by supporting the anti-poachers but really acting the other way. Or was it the other way around? Hard to tell from all the emotional responses. One news article did clarify that the scene of what was supposed to be 100's of skinned antelopes was really goats that was the normal diet for the villagers. They just lined up the carcasses for the movie. 

 

Saw the biopic about Bob Dylan, I'm Not There. All the jokes about the title apply. "I wasn't there either." "You had to be there." "There is no there, there" (Steinian philosophy). Compelling movie, nonetheless. The casting got most of the publicity. Cate Blanchett was good. Woody Guthrie has always been one of my heroes. The scene of the child actor playing Dylan and visiting Guthrie in the hospital was very moving. Interesting connection with my comment on the Mongolian Ping Pong movie about genocide practice in China. Guthrie had been recruited by the Columbia River (Oregon) Dam Company to write 26 songs commemorating the building of the dam and the resulting benefit of all the cheap electrical power. The other result of the dam being built was the total loss of the native American tribal way of life along the river. The tribes were moved inland to reservations and soon died off. The term used by other tribes in Oregon? Genocide.

 

We tried to watch The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir (1939). It's billed as the "greatest movie ever made" mainly for the cinematic artistry. Unfortunately, the subtitles were obscured by the background so we gave up. Too bad since I love Renoir's film, Boudru Saved From Drowning (nicely remade as Down and Out In Beverly Hills). Pauline Kael is credited with praising the film enough to give it a new life in the US in the 60's. It's well worth the trouble to find it. Subtitles aren't all that necessary as the acting is so expressive.

 

We saw Moon Over Parador awhile ago. Richard Dreyfuss stars who I always like. Very funny movie. Sweet story. Great acting all around. Dreyfuss' brother plays the dead dictator in the freezer.

 

Tried to see something called Mona Lisa but I thought I had ordered the Julia Roberts film (another Mike Newell direction) and instead got some incomprehensible English gangster movie with Bob Hoskins. No idea if it was any good. Damn those English accents.

 

OK, that's enough for now.

 

Thk gdnes. OMG! I thought you'd never stp.

 

Yes, and damn those text messages from outer space.