The Sticky Fingers of Time

I watched this movie last night, The Sticky Fingers of Time, which someone had recommended on their blog months ago. It's about a writer in 1953 who suddenly is in 1997 where she meets up with a crew of sinister time travelers. She gets saved by a novice traveler who innocently gets mixed up in the mess.

It was filmed rather weirdly. Sort of like an independent nouveau-noir piece. Very affected. Sexual tension between every character. But the acting, because it was so affected, was just wooden and weird, and ultimately I'm not sure how much I enjoyed this movie.

The King of Kong

Last night I watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a documentary about competition for the world's record in an 80s generation arcade game (Donkey Kong) (which I always thought was called Donkey KonK).

It was very interesting, a little formulaic in that there was a clear good guy that you rooted for and a bad guy that loved to hate (Billy Mitchell). The bad guy reminded me of the Tom Cruise character in Magnolia, so full of himself in this aggressively arrogant way. Anyway, the bad guy was entrenched in the Donkey Kong world and sort of a hero to the handful of others who made up this subculture. Weibe, was a sweet and unassuming newcomer.

It was very interesting, particularly the stuff about the guy who watches hours and hours and hours of tapes of people's games to verify their scores...

Coming, Aphrodite

I saw a wonderful play this afternoon at La Mama Annex. Coming, Aphrodite is a pretty simple, straightforward love story that was joyfully made into a musical. The score (by Mark Ettinger) was rather incredible, vaudevillian and hip. The actors were very talented and I loved the set and the whole production. One of my favorite performances was by the actor who played the dog, and they made a very smart decision to clothe him as a somewhat fastidious looking person, rather that costume him as a dog. The singing was great and my favorite part overall was definitely the music.

Today was rather overcast and gloomy, and it was such a refreshing, happy way to spend the day.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

I watched this documentary about Enron last night and have to say I didn't really care for it.

It was done in a sleek choppy style with fun music and I found it very disorienting. It just kind of told the main story that I already knew, but really didn't help me understand the legal and financial specifics of all the fraud that was being perpetrated.

But, what I found really frustrating was the lack of analysis. They made it seem like mainly it was some selfish bad apples gone amok, and while yeah they nodded to the political machine that helped them, they didn't really look at the corporate and political culture that allowed Enron to happen.

MILK

I saw Milk in the theater last night. The first movie I've been to since last summer!

It was wonderful. I usually don't "do" biopics because they are predictable not just in the obvious way (you know what happens), but in a narrative arc kind of way. You just know how and when they will be tugging at your heartstrings. And the narrative is inherently linear and whatever complexity is in the story somehow, inevitably, ends up flattened.

That said, this was great. The story of Harvey Milk and the gay movement is important and worth being told again. Sean Penn's performance was phenomenal. The depiction of the era was uncanny. The use of actual footage was masterful. They did a very, very good job.

The Human Behavior Experiments

I showed the Sundance documentary The Human Behavior Experiments to my students on Tuesday, and we discussed it yesterday. They really got into it, and not just for the shock value (ha ha, no pun intended) but seemed jazzed on all the connections they made to course materials and course goals.

I've now watched this three times, and there is always something new that I want to highlight for students, or some new relevancy that I see.

Running with Scissors

I finished Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors yesterday. At first I enjoyed it tremendously, but eventually it became kind of tedious.

He tells these amazing stories of growing up with a mentally ill mother who abandons him to the care of an equally mentally ill psychiatrist whose home is like a make-shift open ward in a mental hospital. The stories are bizarre, unbelievable and at times rather disturbing.

Only on occasion did I find it funny. I think this was mainly because his prose was so bland and inelegant. He's been compared to David Sedaris, but Sedaris is a far more accomplished wordsmith.

By the end I didn't feel terribly invested in any of the characters and felt a little sheepish about reading such low-brow airport fare.