Life of Pi

Last night I saw Life of Pi in 3D. I had read the book years ago and was tremendously moved my it.

The movie, directed by Ang Lee, is incredibly beautiful. Lush, vibrant colors and haunting images.

Although I feel that they did a good job, a very good job, at translating the book, somehow something was missing. In the book, the elements of survival and the intense loneliness of being a castaway are explored in great detail, and I felt intensely gripped by the story. In addition, the bond between the boy and the tiger, Richard Parker, was more complex and moving in the novel. Last night I left the theater dry-eyed, like I did in Anna K, and these are both stories that to be fully successful must hit you in the gut.

Bad Santa

I just watched my favorite Christmas movie. In fact the only Christmas movie that I really care for. Bad Santa is fantastic.

Billy Bob Thorton plays an over-the top hostile drunk who works as Santa in department stores each year waiting to steal from the safe on Christmas Eve. He works with a sober dwarf who cases the store, and who constantly has to shove Santa into shape. The story involves the people that Santa meets on a particular heist in Arizona, which includes a relationship with a woman who has a Santa fetish, and a strange, deadpan, chubby boy. Santa's unapologetic bad cheer never wavers, and yet, of course, in the end it's a heartwarming movie with a sweetness that isn't at all gooey.

Anna Karenina

Last night I saw Anna Karenina. This lush, highly stylized, beautifully and imaginatively rendered drama ultimately left me dry-eyed and unmoved.

The action was all set on an elaborate stage, which sounds hokey, but it really had an intense and surreal effect.

The acting was all very good, but I didn't feel any kind of emotional investment. When I read the novel, I remember being very drawn in and crying and having trouble putting it down. Perhaps the ultra stylized presentation, the artifice of the theater, was what created that distance. I think in particular the disintegration of the core love story and Anna's unraveling were somewhat glossed over, and this had been one of the most interesting parts of the book.

Diner

Just watched Diner -- wow, what a great little movie.

I had seen it years and years and years ago (it came out in 82), and I was nervous that it wouldn't hold up.

But, being a period piece, and being inherently steeped in nostalgia, it didn't just hold up, but got better with age.

The actors, Guttenberg, Bacon, Rourke, Reiser, and Barkin, were all so young -- their youth is almost painful to look at. Something I of course couldn't appreciate at the time because they were all older than me. But now they seem like just kids.

And that's what Diner is about, a group of boys, arrested adolescents in modern parlance, who are floundering in their young adulthood, unable to really thrive or pick up any traction with their lives, so they gravitate around each other in what has become known as a bromance.

The movie has a few plot strands, but really it's about the hanging out, the bonding, the feel of the group. Each of the characters is looking for more, perhaps, than the diner crowd, but at the moment they are content with where they are. The bittersweet thing is that the viewer knows that the eventually, sooner rather than later, life will sweep them up, that this charmed time will not last.

Back to the Future

The other night I watched Back to the Future on an HBO channel. I missed the beginning, and came in right where Marty and the scientist are being chased by "Libyans". Right before he lands in the past.

I had of course seen this in 85 when it came out and thought it was a very fun well-done movie back then. And actually it holds up. Silly and broad in ways, and cliche, it still has an engaging plot and moves at a good pace, so I never got bored or irritated. I was always uncomfortable about the sexual attraction between Marty and his mother in the 50s, but other than that, it's a sweet fun flick.

The Wizard of Oz

I caught The Wizard of Oz on TBS last night. I missed the first twenty minutes, the black and white part in Kansas, and tuned in just as Dorothy was first stepping in Oz.

It is such a wonderful kids movie. I remember loving it so much as a child. It was fascinating, and gorgeous, and really scary and intense and sad. The scenes with the witch were so, so scary, and it was so disappointing the times that Oz let them down.

Of course, after seeing it so many times and being an adult and all, it doesn't have the same hold on me. But it's still a great story, and I was sorry I missed the beginning.

I wonder if kids today like it as much as my generation did. I remember I had a wonderful toy Emerald City, that closed into a box and had dolls of all the main characters.

Public Speaking

Last night I watched Public Speaking, a documentary by Martin Scorsese about Fran Lebowitz, that consists primarily of an extended interview with her spliced with segments of her, well, public speaking.

I had not known much about Lebowitz. Was aware of her as a NYC public figure, a hip figure, a literary figure. But I didn't know anything specifically.

Wow, is she a formidable woman. So fucking smart, so wry and cutting. So refreshingly and unapologetically elitist. I came away from the documentary really impressed with her and interested in reading her two main books of essays. Also, I would love the opportunity to some day see her speak.