Ah, middle school. The glasses, the hair, the abuse. Reason #452 (someday
I will compile an actual list) not to have a child: why bring someone into
the world in which there's seventh grade? Very good movie, without a happy
ending: refreshingly realistic.
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Yer Easter Christian epic. This and "The Ten Commandments"
were on alternating channels. My first Easter on which I deliberately didn't
watch "The Ten Commandments." And I really want to see
"The Celluloid Closet" (spring '97).
Very blunt cold war paranoia operating behind these four-hour melodramas.
At any rate, these and "The Planet of the Apes" are the only movies
with Charlton Heston that I have ever seen (scratch that).
I decided that they're much more amusing if you append the female chimpanzee
doctor's epithet for Heston to anything anyone says to Juda Ben-Hur or Moses:
"Look for them in the Valley of the Lepers, Bright Eyes."
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I didn't know if the culminating gruesome act might be Disneyed out of
this version, but it wasn't. Well cast, with little plot but lots of ideas
left out; the reason for the boy's desperation is diminished. While perhaps
such an act wouldn't raise an eyebrow today, by calling him "Juie"
instead of "Father Time" and without the longer debates on free
thought, Hardy's Naturalist point is lost. Not recommended for anyone on
serious medication.
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The only thing I didn't get is the title. Their favorite sport is European
football, not trainspotting. Maybe it's in the novel, which probably has
more in common with A Clockwork Orange than only the fact both have
a glossary. With bits from Gravity's Rainbow and more desperation
than you could shake a stick at, whoever said this film condones heroin
use probably thinks "Dead Man Walking" promotes the death penalty,
just because that's what that movie's about.
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Why? Because I had intended to give HAO
some long-neglected tutelage in Indiana Jones, but none (neither, really; "Temple
of Doom" is unimportant) was in. Maybe we got this because we had no imagination
and it stars Harrison Ford, who is some consolation even if he isn't playing
Indiana? Maybe. Anyway, I maybe would have been more impressed if I didn't know
it was based on a Scott Turow novel (yawn) and if BJW hadn't blown it on me
when it first came out. I was living in Old Lyme spring of '91 and my then-boyfriend
had seen it with friends at school. He raved: I had to see it, you never know
until the end whodunit, very taut and well done and everything; and I mentioned
this to BJW, prefacing his rave with the fact I had not seen it. Caution:
here I give it away for those who haven't seen it (but at least I warn you).
Maybe the excitement of actually going to her biannual movie got the better
of her, maybe (nooooo!) she just had practiced her selective hearing and not
paid attention to what I'd said. Anyway, she immediately blurted, "Oh yes
it's very good and then when you find out the wife did it...."
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A big treat for me, actually going out to see a movie, with KKJ and HAO
at the Mayan. For one person to write, direct, and star, is impressive enough;
for one person to do all three and produce a movie of this quality is really
spectacular. Caution: here
I give it away for those who haven't seen it. While he committed the first crime
in the heat of ignorant passion, I think the second crime's being premeditated
shows that he knew both what he was doing and his actions' consequences and
that maybe he was trying to make amends for the first and for his brother's
death by preserving the safety of another mother and son.
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And for the first time in my life, the whole thing. I have only ever seen the
televised version, which cuts bits that perhaps don't further the Action! Romance!
Singing! but which do develop character. The Baroness is much more conniving
and Max much more complacent. They're secondary, and thus unimportant? In this
version, the Auschluss doesn't just happen one
midsummer morning. It's much more political. And we know why the children
misbehave, how tragic. Somebody tell me though, if the eldest child is 16 ("going
on 17") and the youngest nearly five, and their mother has been dead for
"several" (according to the Mother Superior) years but presumably
not more than five, then why does only the eldest have any memory of their mother?
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Why? Because friends were going to see it and it sounded like fun. In the past
two years I have seen three movies in theatres; two were Jane Austen cinematizations
and one was Star Wars. Make of that what you will. Pachyderms in a desert? Well,
I'm no zoologist. Someone let the Muppets rejects run rampant. Jabba must be
sort of like carp, or most reptiles: given the room, he'll grow and grow. Clearly
he did a lot of growing between "Star Wars" and "Return of the
Jedi" because he glared Han only square in the eye here and was easily
mobile. I should have tried out for "Mystery Science Theatre 3000,"
though twenty years later, this movie is too easy a target, too much in our
cultural conscious. After the Storm Troopers (was I the only child who thought,
despite seeing Luke and Han wear their armor, that they were robots?) level
the rebels, Darth Vader enters Leia's ship and says "Bring the prisoners
to me. I want them alive." This just begs the rebuttal, "And their
little dogs, too!"
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I am glad that A.S. Byatt said (when she spoke at the Tattered Cover in May
of 1996) that she accepted this interpretation, glad because I liked it and
wouldn't want to feel guilty about it (but I haven't read the short story "Morpho
Eugenia" yet). She did say that there was a line at the
end she didn't like, but unfortunately I don't remember which. All the more
reason for me to read the short story. I liked the costuming, the brilliant,
exotic insect-like colors of the women's dresses. The names, too, like Alabaster
and Adamson, were obvious. Rich saw Veblen all through the movie; I haven't
read The Theory of the Leisure Class but I would bet Byatt has, with
knobs on.
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Okay, I fell asleep during this, but what I saw I liked. I confess I do enjoy
the proletarian pleasure of dozing in front of the TV, and this was a weeknight--excuses,
excuses. This was a great role for Lili Taylor (whose name I hope I got right;
I do know I don't mean Liv Tyler). I liked "Mystic Pizza" and "Say
Anything" (of course, any flick with the sense to use Peter
Gabriel to serenade someone), and I don't know what she's done since,
but I'm glad to have seen her in, may I say, a serious role.
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The first thing to say here is that obviously my brain had been switched off when I saw "Forrest Gump." Which was probably the producer's intent; anti-intellectualism reigns. Or, as they would say, it reins. Or rains, even. (D'ja pick up that I didn't like "Forrest Gump"? If there are schools for people with sub-80 IQs because society decides such people need such schools, where then are the schools for those supra-120 folks? Hmmmm?)
By the time Juh-ny had grown up as Robin Wright, I certainly never recognized her as Buttercup from "The Princess Bride." But when I first saw the advertisements for "Moll Flanders," I immediately named her. During "Moll Flanders" I saw aspects of Robin Wright's face that were obviously Juh-ny and others that were clearly Buttercup. As Moll, Wright did at least the shed the commonality between Buttercup and Juh-ny, that of being almost wholly incapable of fending for herself and making tragic decisions when she does try.
The jacket matter says things like "based on characters from the Daniel
Defoe novel" and such, so we asked Jeff if the two had anything in common.
"The name," he said.
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Kevin Spacey is excellent.
January 1997
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