Out of Egypt:

Indiana Jones 2-sentence review

Spielberg, I thought you'd let me down. You didn't.

prince caspian two-sentence review

They turned my 2nd-least favorite of the Narnia books into a decent film. I approve.

(Note: a lot of the Rotten Tomatoes critics thought the film dragged and that Caspian's character didn't develop. Well, that didn't happen in the book either. At least the battle sequences gave the movie something to hold it together, although it's not one I would see again.)

one last thing...

I had forgotten just how awesome this movie was. (Thanks, Dagen, for reminding me.)

not a review

We went to see The Darjeeling Limited tonight after church. It was warmer and more intimate than The Life Aquatic, despite having a whole country as backdrop. Though a bit rambling at points, it also could be quite moving. I liked it.

Some good previews before the film. Now I really want to see the film version of Atonement, which looks so intense, not to mention the Jack Black/Nicole Kidman film, and the Dylan movie (which looks way better than Masked and Anonymous was). Oh, and I still want to see We Own the Night at some point. But I don't think I could justify paying for all that media consumption.

And, for those in the know, I just want to say I did pay my debt to society (or to the T, to be more specific).

This needs to stop

My friend, UWF film student John Dagen on a movie device that has outworn its welcome. The oldest movie I remember seeing this in is Blade Runner. I think movie makers just assume we're too stupid to realize that a photograph doesn't have infinite resolution, and thus can't be magnified indefinitely. In reality, however, many of us who actually care enough about movies to go to the theaters to see them have used Photoshop and other similar programs before and so know quite well the limits of magnification.

saw i heart huckabees tonight

Was a little disappointed. I was hoping there would be more "real" philosophy in the film. It really seemed like just a string of buzzwords. At the end the characters were basically doing what they had been doing before, they just felt better about it. Dustin Hoffman's character may have said "I'm not a therapist" but that's really all that philosophy ends up doing in the movie. It's palliative, just like the unthinking suburbanite mindset Mark Wahlberg's character is so upset about.

The movie was hilarious and the characters brilliantly drawn - not too sympathetic though. I would've thought they would've wanted to make the Jason Schwartzmann-Jude Law antithesis clearer by making J.S.'s character less idealistic or at least a better poet. After all, going in the front door with a suit and tie, as Jude Law says, is what gets things done (if you know what you want to do, beyond keep up appearances, as he did). Contra Will's joking comment, it's still truth even if a bastard says it. But of course, maybe we're not really to think the movie is endorsing J.S.'s lifestyle.

J.S.'s statements in the end scene may be true - interconnectedness comes from pain, but still that doesn't answer the why question. Why is the world as it is? And why do people long, or even have the ability to conceive another? Christianity can answer these questions, can give the teleological direction that the movie's New Agey being philosophy lacks. Teleological because ethical because narrative - the world created by a Person for a purpose, humans created for communion, communion broken, communion restored in Christ. How unfortunate that the movie only shows Christians who haven't thought through the implications of their own doctrines. They are like Jude Law in some sense: they follow a convention, a code without really knowing why.

And, yet, amazingly some such as these will gain the Kingdom. But, oh, for those who are able to take part in the dialogue with those whose questions are about suffering and disconnection rather than sin, being-oriented vs. Law-oriented types. They seem to be the larger category today, since people, by and large, have lost a sense of guilt and gained a sense of lostness. St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation is great at addressing these kind of questions: fellowship restored by renewal of the Image of God in man through the coming of Christ.

"Dear children, we are now the children of God, and it is not yet revealed what we will be. But we know that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." - the words of the Apostle John, among my favorite of the Scripture

A little filmic game

Will and I were spending an idle first evening of school thinking of movies that would make really bad, inappropriate musicals. I'd like to see what you all can think of. Here's a few to get you started: Psycho, Jurassic Park, and Terminator (any of them). I thought Garden State might also be "interesting." All the emo kids would go to that one.

Chris Clark has a theory...

about Blue Velvet, by David Lynch. And it's borne out, I think, by the quotes page on the IMDB. Let's just say the "robins" quote seem even more ridiculous when you see it written out.

(Note: Some of the quotes on the page are pretty vulgar (it is a movie about a criminal fiend, among other things), so if you're offended by profanity and ual references, don't go to the page.)

(Note on the note: the computer I'm using, once again, censors certain words, such as s3x. There it is - the first and last use of 133t-speak you'll ever see on this page.)

Changing the quote...

If you can guess it, you have my respect.

A seclusion yet greater

After I wrote the last entry, I got sick with the flu (after seeing the Life Aquatic, which I thought was good, but not up to par with his other three films - not focused, and somehow not earnest enough, although Bill Murray is the man). My life's entertainments are going less and less.

But I'm getting better now. Saw Closer on New Year's Day with my erstwhile friend Dagen (not quite sure what "erstwhile" means but I use the term to suggest how rarely I see him now that he lives in Florida). Well-acted, probably the most painful to watch film I've ever seen. Makes The Graduate seem like a happy ending, and almost makes one consider becoming a eunuch. Has definitely killed any vestige of my boyhood Natalie Portman crush (which flared up again briefly after seeing Garden State). I still respect her immensely though. The scene in the strip club makes me question the morality of acting: whether acting out a character's moral degradation, even when it is portrayed as degradation, is degrading to one's own character. Not sure quite what to think about that. I'm glad that's a problem that doesn't come up in my native realm, literature.

Been reading some Rumi, the seventeenth-century Sufi mystic (who had an interesting relationship to Christ) lately. In fact, he inspired the session of thought which inspired the following poem, though it sounds more like the style of a French decadent poet than anything else:

Memory comes when I am ill,
of the days of burlap and the Bride
when I covered myself with abnegation and the Names.
Mysticism led to madness.
The taste of God I found too sweet.

Mark well, all you who seek a world of spirit -
know it brings dread as well as awe.
When you recognize that all is possible
you are near to the abyss.

I sought to speak of Fire, Dark, the Sea -
images of divine Energy but,
not knowing the reality, my soul
sickened with the infusion.

I learned the way of humility
from that first fall in pride.
Yet, death-bent, my lust for knowledge
keeps me stumbling back up that cliff.

I cast myself into a faceless Absolute,
my Saviour's face was underfoot.
I missed the sense of my first vision,
Isaiah at the cleansing throne.

Now I look, blinded, for a guide
back to that mystical Garden.
I indulge my soul's untrained desire -
Like the democratic youth of Plato's dialogue,
first practicing music, then studying philosophy.

The world is a glorious deathly library
in which I wander, flickerings
of my first fire craving to be set ablaze,
yet banked by reason, for I know
some books are magic, and the flames they forge purple,
and their product, only ashes.

If I could confine myself to the Word!
If I had not been touched by the sense of Other,
a rending of the Veil -
If I could wait to see my Redeemer,
and work for Him, not as a Seer, but a slave.

Filmic Joy

Saw the "Life Aquatic" trailer. I agree with whoever said it looked like it was trying to be a Wes Anderson film, rather than just being a Wes Anderson film. Heaven knows I would go see it even if it looked utterly horrible, though, simply because it's Wes Anderson and I would never refuse to give him a chance. And with all the people in it who are in it (terrible grammar that, but hey), it can't be too bad.

Side-note: I recommended "Lost in Translation" to my parents over the summer after I heard that they had liked Scarlett Johanssen in "Girl with the Pearl Earring." They got bored with it, and only my dad actually finished it. He said Bill Murray was expressionless. I disagree. I think he often has an expression of mild anguish on his face. That's what makes him funny.

I am ridiculously excited about the fall film series at the Bijou. All the indie films I wanted to see this summer but didn't (though, with the notable exception of "Garden State," they all came to Lancaster County). I might end up subscribing to the whole season if it would save me money.

I was considering seeing "De-Lovely" this summer, for the music primarily and despite the details of Porter's love life, but the reviews have been pretty uniformly sour so I guess I'm glad that one's not on the list. Or was it too mainstream to be on there? "Napoleon Dynamite" was great, however, but I suppose that one's fairly mainstream as well. Not a normal film by any means, yes, but it was distributed by MTV films and all.

While I'm in a Listing Mood...

Here's my current status on the AFI list. I confess some of these I watched with a group of friends whose explicit goal was to see movies on the AFI list. We enjoyed most of them, however.

If anyone wants my opinion on the movies (or literature - in the entry below) in bold, drop me a line in the comments.

1. CITIZEN KANE (1941)
2. CASABLANCA (1942)
3. GODFATHER, THE (1972)
4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
5. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
6. WIZARD OF OZ, THE (1939)
7. GRADUATE, THE (1967)
8. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
9. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)
10. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)
11. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
12. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)
13. BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE (1957)
14. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
15. STAR WARS (1977)
16. ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
17. AFRICAN QUEEN, THE (1951)
18. PSYCHO (1960)
19. CHINATOWN (1974)
20. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)
21. GRAPES OF WRATH, THE (1940)
22. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
23. MALTESE FALCON, THE (1941)
24. RAGING BULL (1980)
25. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)
26. DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)
27. BONNIE & CLYDE (1967)
28. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)
29. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)
30. TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)
31. ANNIE HALL (1977)
32. GODFATHER PART II, THE (1974)
33. HIGH NOON (1952)
34. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962) (saw this one in class, several times)
35. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
36. MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)
37. BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE (1946)
38. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
39. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
40. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
41. WEST SIDE STORY (1961)
42. REAR WINDOW (1954)
43. KING KONG (1933)
44. BIRTH OF A NATION, THE (1915)
45. STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A (1951)
46. CLOCKWORK ORANGE, A (1971) (the one movie I've ever refused to see)
47. TAXI DRIVER (1976)
48. JAWS (1975)
49. SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)
50. BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
51. PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE (1940)
52. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)
53. AMADEUS (1984)
54. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
55. SOUND OF MUSIC, THE (1965)
56. M*A*S*H (1970)
57. THIRD MAN, THE (1949)
58. FANTASIA (1940)
59. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)
60. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
61. VERTIGO (1958)
62. TOOTSIE (1982)
63. STAGECOACH (1939)
64. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
65. SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE (1991)
66. NETWORK (1976)
67. MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE (1962)
68. AMERICAN IN PARIS, AN (1951)
69. SHANE (1953)
70. FRENCH CONNECTION, THE (1971)
71. FORREST GUMP (1994)
72. BEN-HUR (1959) (saw this one in class once)
73. WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
74. GOLD RUSH, THE (1925)
75. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)
76. CITY LIGHTS (1931)
77. AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)
78. ROCKY (1976) (saw part of it on TV once)
79. DEER HUNTER, THE (1978)
80. WILD BUNCH, THE (1969)
81. MODERN TIMES (1936)
82. GIANT (1956)
83. PLATOON (1986)
84. FARGO (1996)
85. DUCK SOUP (1933)
86. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)
87. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
88. EASY RIDER (1969)
89. PATTON (1970)
90. JAZZ SINGER, THE (1927)
91. MY FAIR LADY (1964) (ask me about my ideological stance against this film - and the musical it's based on - sometime)
92. PLACE IN THE SUN, A (1951)
93. APARTMENT, THE (1960)
94. GOODFELLAS (1990)
95. PULP FICTION (1994)
96. SEARCHERS, THE (1956)
97. BRINGING UP BABY (1938)
98. UNFORGIVEN (1992)
99. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)
100. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

Bowling for Columbine

I remember watching that film last spring...OK, maybe a little before spring. I thought it was amusing in parts, but even then I was skeptical. So much looked staged. This just confirms it.

It's a comedy, not a documentary. And Moore is a raging narcissist.

Eternal Sunshine (as dictated to Bob)

Well, this is an interesting experience. I've been laid low by the stomach virus/food poisoning and so I'm basically an editorial demon on Bob's shoulder right now, as he midwifes my thoughts to birth. I'm listening to Johnny Cash, whom I must confess I hardly heard of until the day he died. So I guess that makes me a bandwagon... or something.

Speaking of being introduced to music through death, I learned to appreciate Elliot Smith a great deal more this past fall, when he commited suicide. My friend Matt Serfass heard about it before I did from Melinda Gilbert, who went to high school with us. She said to him, "Did you hear about Elliot Smith?" And he said, "What, is there going to be a concert in Philly soon?" And she said, "No. He's dead."

So anyway, on to the actual topic of this post: I saw Eternal Sunshine a few weeks back, as Bob already mentioned on his blog. I really wanted to see the movie, primarily because of the preview which reminded me of a surrealist painting and also, strangely enough, of oranges.

Actually, as it turned out, they were tangerines.

Oddly enough, doing this post dictation-style makes me suffer from an odd form of performance anziety, as if I'm worried that what I say will be inadequate to what I want to say. Suddenly that invisible audience is all too present.

Therefore, I will begin with the most frivolous of my reflections and maybe later progress to something more substantive. I was really impressed with Kirsten Dunst's performance, minor as it was. No longer will I think of her as that annoying girl from Spiderman. It turns out she can play drunken stoned people quite well. And any scene that includes the Clash is OK in my book. They practically telegraphed what was going on between her and her psychiatrist father figure employer, but that was cool. I always enjoy watching character-driven movies because it's almost like emotional voyeurism - you know something that the characters do not.

It was like that with Joel and Clementine, as well. Since you are quite literally inside Joel's head for a good portion of the movie, you feel by the end like you've grown to know him in a deeper way that Clementine ever did, even though you've only seen him for two hours and she's seen him for several months straight. As he said to her once, "There's a difference between talking and communicating." All the talking which went on in their relationship seemingly prevented the real communication from beginning.

I must confess, I was surprised to see Elijah Wood in this movie. That wasn't something I'd seen in the previews. It was amusing to see him take a minor role and one in which he is portrayed in a less-than-flattering light, to put it mildly. I'm glad Frodo has come back to the real world, or as much of the real world exists in a movie where time itself is out of joint.

The beginning of this movie, the part before the opening credits, was longer than in any movie I've seen in recent memory. What is more, the actual chronology of how that relates to Joel's love affair with Clementine is not clear until much later, if indeed it ever is.

Seeing Carrey weep with the credits below him, unobtrusive in their sans-serifness, is the perfect way to begin the film. That, coupled with the February bleakness of his New York milieu, throws the viewer off-balance from the start.

As someone who has experienced mental illness, both watching and being acted upon by it, I found the scenes immediately following Joel's breakup with Clementine were like a meditation on the effects of depression. The camera sees all, hollow as Carrey is himself. His lengthening stubble beard is a visible manifestation of his growing apathy.

Clementine, however, is mania, life lived upon an impulse. The scene in which she takes Joel out to the ice, urging him to disregard all fear and step out with her, is beautiful. It was at this point, more than any other in the movie, that I felt the vicarious experience of joy that makes us love the movies. Yet I knew that this was foolishness and that it couldn't last.

I would like to talk about all the beautiful cinematography in this movie, such as the scene in which Joel's childhood house dissolves into a clapboard ruin and the scene in which Joel and Clementine wake up together in bed on the beach at Montauk in the snow, which was one of the scenes from the preview that first drew me to the movie. I could also, time permitting, speak about all the Freudian imagery, such as Joel's memories of his mother's legs, of masturbation, and of being bathed in the sink. Faceless people and disappearances in the subway station would enter into this reminiscence, yet I will not pursue it. For all that surrealism has not left me with any deeper meaning, only aesthetic gratification.

The movie is based on a Charlie Kaufmann script. Before this, I had only seen Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. While this movie does not have the nihilism of that, it leaves you (or at least me) with a message no greater than this: take life as it comes, don't give up on the future because you've been scarred by the past. While that may be great advice for this world, I don't think it will help us in the next.

Why Do My Entries Have to Have Titles?

I found this interesting:

I first read about the Sundance award winning film Super Size Me a month or so ago. The documentary was created by and features filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who was a health-conscious man engaged to a vegan chef, and his decision to eat nothing but McDonalds three times a day for 30 days. He never ordered his meals supersized, but if he was asked if he would like to upsize them, he was obligated to say yes (a rule he made up ahead of time). Long story short: He gained an incredible amount of weight, his liver turned to shit, and his overall physical, sexual and mental health were completely shot.

Talk about sacrificing for the sake of art. But seriously, that's disgusting. Much worse than the Catacombian doughnut diet. I don't think I could make it...