Movies since the last time I wrote about them. Then some books.
Jesus Camp, 2006, dir. Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing
Watched this with Ian. Fascinating. Well-made. Pretty even-handed. I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Ides of March, 2011, dir. George Clooney
Saw this with Blake. I keep forgetting what this is called, but I remember the film pretty well—George Clooney and Ryan Gosling do a very good job adapting Farragut North, a play, into a film. At least, it’s appropriately demoralizing and fascinating. I liked it. Great acting, a good script. A bit confusing in terms of motivations, but I felt pretty much like they knew what they were doing.
También la Lluvia (Even the Rain), 2010, dir. Icíar Bollaín
I’m glad I finally saw this. Gael García Bernal is awesome (as usual, I suppose). The plot is really well-crafted. There’s perhaps a mite too much melodrama, but in general I think the acting is good, the ideas moving, and the result well worth watching. Also it’s nice to watch movies in Spanish.
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, 2011, dir. Gereon Wetzel
Not in Spanish, despite being about a Spanish restaurant—but it’s (a) made by German filmmakers/documentarians and (b) about a Catalan restaurant more explicitly, which is to say predominately in Catalan. I like food; I liked this movie about food. It is strictly documenting a year in the “life” of this restaurant and its chef, Ferran Adrià. I enjoyed it, although it was pretty slow. Worth seeing if you like food/cooking/molecular gastronomy/creativity. Saw this with Justin and his friend Galen.
Jane Eyre, 2011, dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga
Jamie Bell is in this. Isn’t that weird? Jason tried to convince me to go see it months ago when it came out, and I was interested from then on; I finally watched it. I’d never seen any adaptation, or read the book, which was nice. This was a good introduction. I’m curious about the book now. A dark, brooding, gothic interpretation of the story.
La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In), 2011, dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Saw this in theatres in D.C., with Ian. I like Almodóvar films. I liked this one. It was a bit less silly than his older movies (although I guess the same could be said for Volver). It’s about a plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas, back with Almodóvar) who’s created a burn-resistant skin and is testing it on a captive. That’s all I’ll say. Watch the trailer. I think it’s worthwhile. Creepy. Very creepy. Predictable, but predictably good and intense.
We Need to Talk About Kevin, 2011, dir. Lynne Ramsay
I just saw this one yesterday with Jason and his friend Sean. (Thanks, J.) Tilda Swinton is one of my favorite actresses, and she’s amazing in this, as usual. She’s on-screen most of the time, as we weave through time to learn about the events preceding, during, and after a violent act by her son that leads to his imprisonment and her, well, downfall. It was well-shot, although sometimes a bit confusing in a way that I didn’t think was useful. Still, a really moving film.
Melancholia, 2011, dir. Lars von Trier
And this one I saw today, with my parents. It wasn’t as depressing as I was expecting, or as the above film. Still sad, though. Beautifully, beautifully-shot. Great acting from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, and everyone else actually. I had some problems with it (what was the point of the kid?!), but I liked the movie in general. It’s a bit slow (since it’s Dunst, I thought of Marie Antoinette a few times), but there is some action, and I kind of liked the way it was split into two fairly distinct stories. I interpreted it loosely as an “internal” depression and an “external” one, although I don’t mean that as a reading of the film. I think it’s one to think about.
Books.
I’ve been reading some, although nothing that I meant to. I finally read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson), and I suppose I’ll read the sequels, too, since I got through it so quickly. It was fun, although there were plenty of things that pissed me off / bored me / didn’t make sense stylistically. I thought once or twice of this piece in the New Yorker.
I also read Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, in just one night actually. (I’ve been reading Infinite Jest for over a year, Los Detectives Salvajes for four months, and The Magic Toyshop for two weeks, and I pick up this book and plow through it in a night? Dammit.) It’s not quite YA, but it almost qualifies, at least by virtue of its character’s age. It’s sort of a mix of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and maybe a few similar books. Mostly it’s the Stephenson, although I’ll grant him that Stephenson (and, probably, Gibson’s Neuromancer, probably; I never managed to start that, although I know I should) is more the starting point than the plot he follows. The plot is relatively distinct, and pretty clever/silly/both.
I was thinking this—including the bit about Grossman—and then I was at the Miami Book Fair and saw Grossman speak, which was fun (I like the guy). I need to get The Magicians and The Magician King from the library and re-read the first and read the second. I shall be on that!
The Book Fair was nice, but I’m done writing and going to publish this. Yep.