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Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
 Remember how Sylvia and I differed on the merits of the Despereaux movie as compared with its book? Well on the subject of The Golden Compass we're more in agreement -- the book is a gem, the movie not worth the time spent watching it. Sylvia's review: "Whoever directed that movie, they didn't make it good."
For about the first half of the movie, I was thinking about writing a long post detailing every divergence with the book and for each one, explaining how it was to the detriment of the movie. But better I think, to tell what these differences have in common: in every case, the mystery in the book is discarded and replaced with clear, dry explication. Ambiguities are absent. What I loved about the book was Lyra's development from total innocence -- here at every step of the story she connects the dots like she had been expecting the solution all her life. And maybe the worst offense is not to show Lord Asriel's treachery -- the whole ending was trimmed off, I guess because the movie was running over-long -- without this the story doesn't go anywhere. It's funny in a way -- I guess I think of the merits of this movie as being about the same as the merits of Despereaux, a fun visual romp with some sentimentality, and nothing like greatness -- but I would never recommend it the way I would recommend the mouse movie. It ought to be a great movie, a majestic movie. Falling short of that, it is not worth bothering with.
posted evening of December 31st, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Milk was a fantastic movie and a pleasure to watch -- though a bitter-sweet pleasure in these times of victory for homophobic measures in the states. (And see Frank Rich's column today for more about homophobia in these United States.) The nicest thing about it might have been the feeling of nostalgia I got for political demonstrations of my childhood. Somehow in my adult years, I have not been as politically engaged as I expected I would be when I was younger. I remember attending demonstrations with my parents when I was in grade school and high school, and the feeling of being connected to the cause was powerful and nice. When I left home something changed -- at college when I was quite active, it started to seem like a game; and after college when I would still attend protests out of a sense of duty, I felt like a stranger. This is still true now -- work I've done for the Democrats in 2004 and 2008 has not felt satisfying or connected. Watching Milk brought the old feeling back very strongly -- I wonder if there is any way of retrieving it, and whether I should try to get engaged again for Sylvia's benefit. (Seeing as my parent's involvement did not have a lasting impact on me, that might not be the strongest consideration.) Relatedly, I wonder why I don't have any memory of Proposition 6 -- I would have been in third grade at the time, the same age Sylvia is now -- possibly my parents' political involvement started later than that, possibly it was limited to nuclear arms and Nicaragua -- the two issues I remember demonstrating about -- possibly my memory is just too dim that far back. OTOH I have a pretty good memory of the debate over Proposition 13, which was in the same year.
posted morning of December 28th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, December 26th, 2008
Waltz with Bashir opens this week to a rave review from A.O. Scott; Folman was interviewed on NPR today.
posted evening of December 26th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
So Sylvia and I watched Despereaux this rainy Christmas Eve afternoon. I am finding this kind of funny: I, who did not like the book, thought the movie was better than the book; Sylvia, who liked the book (and who liked  the movie better than I did) thought the movie was not as good as the book. That makes it seem to me like a pretty middle-of-the-road movie, worth recommending to people who need some movie to watch with their kids over the long vacation but not to anybody else -- fun but not that fun. The movie was different from the book in a huge number of plot points but contained the same essential story and the same moral (the transformative power of apology -- this lesson is my primary complaint about the book). Sigorney Weaver's narration sounded just about exactly how I picture Kate DiCamillo sounding. And, well, the sanctimonious voice of the narrator is my other big complaint with the book -- so the movie matches the book for its drawbacks. On the other hand, it's got cute animation (with minor but noticeable continuity problems) which is fun to watch and diverting. It's got big names (Ms. Weaver, Dustin Hoffman, Matt Broderick, Kevin Kline...) on the marquee. I think if I hadn't been so pissed-off at the book for being lame, I probably would have really enjoyed the movie.
posted afternoon of December 24th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, December 21st, 2008
Watching John Ford's The Searchers last night I was struck by a curious parallel to Gopnik's reading of Babar -- I was only able to watch it as if it were a dark satire about Confederate racism. But I am far from sure the movie is intended this way. Wayne's character (and to a lesser extent, every other character in the film) seemed by turns creepy and darkly hilarious; but instead of laughing I kept asking whether Edwards is being put forth as a hero, and whether audiences in 1956 would have taken him that way. I mean the story-teller definitely portrays Edwards as having some problems; but does not seem to think he is evil through and through. So as a viewer I'm in this uncomfortable position -- am I being asked to sympathize with this jerk? There were moments in the film where I did sympathize with him; but then the next minute I would recoil when he said the white women who had been captured by the Comanche were no longer white, and no longer human. Is this recoiling the point of the film? I never saw Ford tipping his hat.
posted morning of December 21st, 2008: 2 responses
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Thursday, December 18th, 2008
I wrote a brief review of Stroszek for The Great Whatsit's Thursday Favorites column. Check it out! If you're coming from there and want to read more about Stroszek, click the link below.
posted morning of December 18th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
We're thinking of seeing a couple movies this weekend -- Milk and Cadillac Records. Have you seen those? Worthwhile, or do you have a different recommendation? Let me know. (A friend recommended Slumdog Millionaire in pretty glowing terms, but I don't know if a trip in to the city is going to be feasible.)
 Oh, look at that! Slumdog Millionaire is playing in Montclair -- maybe I will lobby for that. Cadillac Records looks like it might not be that interesting.
posted morning of December 17th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Last night I was watching Herzog's short documentaries; one of them is How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck... -- Beobachtungen zu einer neuen Sprache, which is a record of the 1976 National Livestock Auctions championships. Interesting and fun! The auctioneer's cant always gets my blood going. (The above song is "The Auctioneer" by The Spark Gap Wonder Boys -- the movie has a similar thing going on, but even better because there are so many different auctioneers.)Well -- a lot to say about this film but I didn't really get any of it sorted out. There are things that remind me of Stroszek, most obviously the auction scene but other stuff too, like the lovely performance of "Country Roads" midway through. The main thing was, I thought this documentary was a distillation of Herzog's fascination with language and idiom -- my favorite part was the beginning, when Herzog was interviewing some of the contestants. The camera just hung on their bodies and heads and watched them talking. They talk about how they got into auctioneering and how they learned the cant. Bonus that they came from a lot of different places in North America so you got to watch how their inflecions come through in the cant.
posted evening of December 10th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, December 7th, 2008
...I don't know -- hard to think of a clever title. Anyway: It's trite for adults to complain about the lameness of kids' movies so I'll just say that I found Madagascar II, to which I chaperoned Sylvia and Kaydi this afternoon, even worse than the original film. The animation was pretty mediocre and the plot points a dreadful hodgepodge of mass-produced sentimentality. But what about this: There was a preview for DreamScape's Monsters vs. Aliens. OK -- looks kind of silly but in good fun. But why in hell does the evil leader of the aliens look like a caricature of Barack Obama? Am I paranoid and inventing this? Trailer here. The resemblance does not seem as obvious on rewatching as it did in the theater.
posted evening of December 7th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December third, 2008
 This movie will be opening in the city at the end of this month. It looks like a really disturbing and meaningful look at conflict in the Middle East (or one subset of such conflict) -- it is a documentary/animated recreation of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, directed by a man who participated in that massacre as a 19-year-old Israeli Defense Forces soldier. Sebastian, who saw it in Germany, describes it as "devastating."
Jonathan Freedman reviews the film for the Guardian; he calls it "startlingly original" and says, "The effect should be flat, but the low-tech style somehow conveys an emotional depth that catches you by surprise. The characters appear in two dimensions, yet are intensely human." Folman explains to Freedman why he chose animation to create his documentary: "There was no other way to do it, to show memories, hallucinations, dreams. War is like a really bad acid trip, and this was the only way to show that."
posted morning of December third, 2008: Respond
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