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November 05, 2006
“But You Still Don’t Like to Leave Before the End of the Movie”
Roundup of films I’ve seen at the theater lately:
Marie Antoinette
Sofia, Sofia, Sofia. How many film soundtracks have featured the song “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow? Bio-Dome, Daddy Day Care, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, and Napoleon Dynamite to name a few. I’ll admit that Napoleon Dynamite is a good movie, and I can empathize with your weakness because I, myself, want candy. But what on earth made you think that playing the song in its entirety while showing a montage of Kirsten and the girlz eating a variety of (admittedly beautiful) pastries was going to give the audience a glimpse of the complex psyche of Marie Antoinette? It just made me hungry. Have you been eating enough?
Really, it’s a shame that this film doesn’t work. Coppola’s quiet, vibrant aesthetic – sheer brilliance in Lost in Translation – is wasted in this film. Kirsten Dunst is luminous as Marie Antoinette, and while Coppola’s bravely silent moments give us a sense of the mind and emotions at the heart of Antoinette’s excesses, Coppola needed to let Dunst talk more. Much of the film has the feel of a hackneyed music video where everyone is pretty and having a good time, and while that was certainly a part of Antoinette’s experiences, I think her life is more interesting than an “I Want Candy” montage. Even so, it’s a film worth seeing for Dunst’s surprising performance and for Coppola’s visually stunning world.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that Molly Shannon was terribly, horribly, distractingly miscast in this film. I felt badly for her every time she was onscreen.
Flags of Our Fathers
Speaking of historical epics, this highlighted an episode of history that I certainly didn’t know much about, but, really, how many World War II films does this world need? While this focused on different events, visually, it didn’t say anything Spielberg didn’t already cover in Saving Private Ryan. (Of course, Spielberg might disagree, as he served as a producer on this film.) And how did I miss Dirty Harry becoming a composer? He’s credited with the music on this film as well as numerous others (check out his imdb entry). Of course, aside from Mystic River, I don’t much like Clint Eastwood films.
Speaking of Saving Private Ryan, I recently watched Saving Ryan’s Privates. Wow, um, yeah. The less said about that, the better.
The Departed
Sometimes with Martin Scorsese you get films like Casino that are violent and terrible and don’t pass the bus test. Other times, you get emotionally and morally complex films like Goodfellas and The Gangs of New York that are engrossing and make you think long after you see whether or not they were shot on Kodak film. The Departed is in this second group. The night I saw this, when I sat down in the theater, I began to fret because I realized that I didn’t have my keys. Within sixty seconds of the film starting, I didn’t care about anything besides the story I was seeing. It’s hard to pick on this film; the writing, acting, framing, editing, music – everything is wonderful, but so, so hard to watch. Not for the faint of heart, but certainly among the best films I’ve seen this year. Bravo, Martin!
Next up? I’m DYING to see Borat and The Prestige. Running with Scissors looks fun. I’ll be seeing Deliver Us from Evil at the High Falls Film Fest this Thursday. I love the fall film season….
Posted by adrienne at November 5, 2006 12:05 PM
Comments
I want to see Stranger Than Fiction.
Posted by: tonderdo at November 5, 2006 03:32 PM
Me, too, but it's not out yet. Next weekend.
Posted by: adrienne at November 5, 2006 04:39 PM
I have that gift card, we could do that after we finish "working" on Saturday. Perhaps I'll even get a babysitter so that Ron can go and then he'll pay so that we still have the gift card.
Posted by: tonderdo at November 5, 2006 09:34 PM
Now you're thinking like a single girl.
Posted by: adrienne at November 6, 2006 08:18 AM
The last movie I went to was Superman and that was because we lost power during a storm. It was a huge disappointment.
Posted by: KellyScroger! at November 6, 2006 08:39 AM
The Prestige is truly fabulous. Well worth your money and a lot of fun to boot. I was thinking and rethinking every little nuance of that film for hours afterwards.
Posted by: Fuse #8 at November 6, 2006 11:37 AM
The reason I missed your call last night was because I went to see Borat after my Sunday shift. It is howlingly funny. That guy has nerves of steel.
Posted by: Jen at November 6, 2006 11:50 AM
I NEED to see Borat soon!!!
Posted by: chuck at November 6, 2006 03:18 PM
Ok, explain the Borat thing to me. I get that he's funny, funny, funny - but is he really from Canada & is married/dating some really hot actress? Is the Borat thing ALL a character and this guy is really totally...um, normal? (Sorry for the use of the word "normal." I couldn't find another word this early in the morning.
Ok, and can we talk about something for a minute? I was told by my professor that commas, periods, etc. *always* go inside the quotations. But in the case of "normal" above, shouldn't it go outside?? I'm so confused...
Posted by: JJ at November 8, 2006 09:00 AM
JJ:
Per the Chicago Manual of Style Online,
6.8 Periods and commas
Periods and commas precede closing quotation marks, whether double or single. This is a traditional style, in use well before the first edition of this manual (1906). As nicely expressed in William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White’s Elements of Style, “Typographical usage dictates that the comma be inside the [quotation] marks, though logically it often seems not to belong there.” The same goes for the period. (An apostrophe at the end of a word should never be confused with a closing single quotation mark; punctuation always follows the apostrophe.) In the kind of textual studies where retaining the original placement of a comma in relation to closing quotation marks is essential to the author’s argument and scholarly integrity, the alternative system described in 6.10 could be used, or rephrasing might avoid the problem. In computer-related writing, in which a file name or other character string enclosed in quotation marks might be rendered inaccurate or ambiguous by the addition of punctuation within the quotation marks, the alternative system may be used, or the character string may be set in another font, without quotation marks (see 7.79).
6.10 Alternative system
According to what is sometimes called the British style (set forth in The Oxford Guide to Style [the successor to Hart’s Rules), a style also followed in other English-speaking countries, only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. This system, which requires extreme authorial precision and occasional decisions by the editor or typesetter, works best with single quotation marks. (The British tend to use double quotation marks only for quotations within quotations.)
This is what happens, when Chuck works too much: I read The Chicago Manual of Style for fun.
Posted by: KellyScroger!! at November 8, 2006 12:18 PM
More on Borat later because I'm in a hurry, but the period should totally go inside the quotes.... :)
Posted by: adrienne at November 8, 2006 12:46 PM
Borat makes me uncomfortable. I don't like it when someone bleeds the line between reality and acting in that manner. It's one thing if two people are both acting and their work comes close to reality, but he takes advantage of people who aren't in on the joke and mocks them by the appearence of reality. It's something very similar to a character of Andy Kaufman's. Part of me does admire someone who so willingly steps into their art and lives it like that. But it's also close to being psychotic in a way I'm just not willing to be for my art.
You want to see an artist who really went psychotic for getting close to her art? Check out the film about Diane Arbus (at least assuming it's somewhat of a bio-pic). She was a photographer who got extremely close to subjects and it drove her to suicide. Her photos are frightening, both in some of the subjects themselves and also how intimate she had to have been with the people to get those images.
Posted by: Jeffrey Lee at November 8, 2006 03:54 PM
Um, Kelly...you need to move closer to us so you can have a life. I'm not sure I'll take you out in public if you resort to quoting "The Chicago Manual of Style" in mixed company.
Posted by: JJ at November 9, 2006 08:24 AM
Jeffrey, I think I'm going to agree with you. Of course I'll make up my mind *after* I send my money to Borat by way of purchasing a ticket to see his movie. ; )
Posted by: JJ at November 9, 2006 08:25 AM
It reminds me of Andy Kaufffman except that it's funny.
Posted by: chuck at November 9, 2006 10:28 AM
I like the idea of Borat simply because Americans have such limited knowledge of the rest of the world. He takes it a step beyond the Daily Show or Colbert Report.
Posted by: tonderdo at November 11, 2006 08:21 AM
I read Flags of our Fathers on a plane to Tokyo, and it occured to me nine hours into the flight that the iconic image on the front may evoke different emotions among more than half the passengers. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've read a lot about it. It sounds like the real movie to see is the *other* Iwo Jima film coming out also by Clint Eastwood but from the Japaneese perspective. I want to see both.
Posted by: chuck at December 15, 2006 04:39 PM