Depressed Old Men
Day In The City All By My Little Lonesome
I bussed into town this morning and had a long look around the shops, seeing what new DVDs were out etc. and ending up with a couple of good purchases from Queen Street, one being The Conversation - a supposed Francis Ford Coppola classic which I have looked for before and never been able to find. This is a movie which I look forward to seeing as his other 3 "classics" (being Apocalypse Now and the first two Godfather films) are among my top 10 favourite movies ever. The other thing I bought was one half of my belated birthday present for Simon (I only learnt it was his birthday the day of his birthday dinner, and as I was home alone and currently lack driving skills [I'm getting there though] there was little I could do).
Anyways, today I went to two different cinemas and saw two movies which starred lonely old-timers, namely Kong and Bill Murray. Broken Flowers was my virgin flight into Jim Jarmusch territory after getting just a flash of the weird-haired fellow's work when a scene from Coffee & Cigarettes was played in a media studies lecture a couple of semesters back. I was treated to a thoroughly good movie with as much if not more humor and thematic exploration in the patient pauses and awkward silences as the words which surrounded them, using its subtext to create an added richness which essentially drives the film through the ponderings/realisations/depressed-ness of Bill Murray's Don Johnston (with a "t" by the way, not to be confused with the 80s TV star) and it's also a film which effectively incorporates its inanimate mise-en-scene into characterisation without being pretentiously overly-symbolic or (not too often at least) making the mistake of merely shaping its characters as products of the space that surrounds them for the purposes of making our understanding of them easier. There's some terrific comedy, including a Lolita joke which quickly takes a surprising absurd turn that arrives from nowhere and drew one of the biggest laughs from the audience, and there's also the brief appearence of Jessica Lange as an "animal communicator" amongst other ridiculous incidents of which there are too many to recall in this short space of time as I write this. And yes, Bill Murray once again plays the melancholy mumbler - but he does it pretty darn well I must say. I'm a big Murray fan. At least his permanent role in every movie is better than Jennifer Aniston's (Rachel) or Keanu Reeves' (Zombie). I give this film a strong B, or 3.5/5. Almost a B+, but in saying that I don't see this grade going higher with repeat viewings.
Watching King Kong on the (formerly-IMAX) "Megascreen" is quite an experience with its huge screen-size (duh) and superb sound set-up. Anyways, it was my third viewing of the film and I think I enjoyed it this time as much if not more than the first time. Third viewings, especially if its a while after the second viewing, are good in that you are by then familar enough with the plot to follow every minute detail without having to give your 100% concentration to what's on the surface, instead now also being more consciously open to the subtleties which you are often, to an extent, only subconsciously aware of in first and possibly second viewings. Having a break of a few weeks between viewings also helped in that as the opening hour of build-up wasn't as fresh in my mind I was more interested in it and didn't find myself wanting it to hurry up past what I already knew (I mean, it is an hour) and get to the juicy stuff in the middle and end. I maintain that this is the best movie of the 60 or so I saw in 2005, in fact one of the best of the 21st century so far, and as it achieves basically everything that can be expected of it and as I had damn high expectations (Jackson, plus my respect for the original) I confirm my grade is an A, or 5/5. This isn't a *supremely* solid A I must admit, this would be in the bottom third of As I've handed out, but it is in roughly the same echelon as the best I've ever seen and isn't too far off any other great action dramas I could name. If you disagree with this grade, follow my advice and see it a 2nd time and then, a few weeks later, a 3rd. By then you will see it is awesome. If you don't, you are wrong.
Watching Broken Flowers I had another film idea today. I often find that a lot of good ideas come from pre-empting something I'm watching on TV or in a movie and then finding that the idea I had for what would happen next doesn't actually unfold in the ensuing scene(s). Because then I realise that the idea might be good, and didn't happen, and thus is mine and I am free to use it. Mwahahahaha.
I bussed into town this morning and had a long look around the shops, seeing what new DVDs were out etc. and ending up with a couple of good purchases from Queen Street, one being The Conversation - a supposed Francis Ford Coppola classic which I have looked for before and never been able to find. This is a movie which I look forward to seeing as his other 3 "classics" (being Apocalypse Now and the first two Godfather films) are among my top 10 favourite movies ever. The other thing I bought was one half of my belated birthday present for Simon (I only learnt it was his birthday the day of his birthday dinner, and as I was home alone and currently lack driving skills [I'm getting there though] there was little I could do).
Anyways, today I went to two different cinemas and saw two movies which starred lonely old-timers, namely Kong and Bill Murray. Broken Flowers was my virgin flight into Jim Jarmusch territory after getting just a flash of the weird-haired fellow's work when a scene from Coffee & Cigarettes was played in a media studies lecture a couple of semesters back. I was treated to a thoroughly good movie with as much if not more humor and thematic exploration in the patient pauses and awkward silences as the words which surrounded them, using its subtext to create an added richness which essentially drives the film through the ponderings/realisations/depressed-ness of Bill Murray's Don Johnston (with a "t" by the way, not to be confused with the 80s TV star) and it's also a film which effectively incorporates its inanimate mise-en-scene into characterisation without being pretentiously overly-symbolic or (not too often at least) making the mistake of merely shaping its characters as products of the space that surrounds them for the purposes of making our understanding of them easier. There's some terrific comedy, including a Lolita joke which quickly takes a surprising absurd turn that arrives from nowhere and drew one of the biggest laughs from the audience, and there's also the brief appearence of Jessica Lange as an "animal communicator" amongst other ridiculous incidents of which there are too many to recall in this short space of time as I write this. And yes, Bill Murray once again plays the melancholy mumbler - but he does it pretty darn well I must say. I'm a big Murray fan. At least his permanent role in every movie is better than Jennifer Aniston's (Rachel) or Keanu Reeves' (Zombie). I give this film a strong B, or 3.5/5. Almost a B+, but in saying that I don't see this grade going higher with repeat viewings.
Watching King Kong on the (formerly-IMAX) "Megascreen" is quite an experience with its huge screen-size (duh) and superb sound set-up. Anyways, it was my third viewing of the film and I think I enjoyed it this time as much if not more than the first time. Third viewings, especially if its a while after the second viewing, are good in that you are by then familar enough with the plot to follow every minute detail without having to give your 100% concentration to what's on the surface, instead now also being more consciously open to the subtleties which you are often, to an extent, only subconsciously aware of in first and possibly second viewings. Having a break of a few weeks between viewings also helped in that as the opening hour of build-up wasn't as fresh in my mind I was more interested in it and didn't find myself wanting it to hurry up past what I already knew (I mean, it is an hour) and get to the juicy stuff in the middle and end. I maintain that this is the best movie of the 60 or so I saw in 2005, in fact one of the best of the 21st century so far, and as it achieves basically everything that can be expected of it and as I had damn high expectations (Jackson, plus my respect for the original) I confirm my grade is an A, or 5/5. This isn't a *supremely* solid A I must admit, this would be in the bottom third of As I've handed out, but it is in roughly the same echelon as the best I've ever seen and isn't too far off any other great action dramas I could name. If you disagree with this grade, follow my advice and see it a 2nd time and then, a few weeks later, a 3rd. By then you will see it is awesome. If you don't, you are wrong.
Watching Broken Flowers I had another film idea today. I often find that a lot of good ideas come from pre-empting something I'm watching on TV or in a movie and then finding that the idea I had for what would happen next doesn't actually unfold in the ensuing scene(s). Because then I realise that the idea might be good, and didn't happen, and thus is mine and I am free to use it. Mwahahahaha.
posted by Steve @ 10:41 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home