Sense and Sensibility

This movie was perfect. I watched it on Netflix Watch Instantly and it was completely engrossing and lovely and smart.

Twilight of the Books

Caleb Cairn's piece in The New Yorker on the decline of reading makes for good reading, ha ha. He discusses not only evidence that Americans are reading less and less each decade, but also the history of reading from early civilization through the Greeks. A lot of the piece explores the different cognitive demands of an oral culture verses a literate one. The "illiterates" or orals, think metaphorically and, in a way, concretely, embedding ideas into actual situations and anecdotes. Literate brains are better at abstract thoughts and categorizing things, etc.

Of course, television and video games are identified as a big component in the declines of reading. There is a firm correlation between television watching, reading, and academic performance. Etcetera. This piece made proud to be someone who reads so much, and I look forward to my twilight years where I will be someone with that "arcane hobby" of reading actual books.

Cairn quoted Proust's description of reading as "that fruitful miracle of communication in the midst of solitude", which resonated with me quite a bit, being alone but much less alone with a book. Being in yourself, but also in communion with another mind, another voice.

Readers also do more than non-readers. We participate in sports, go to live entertainment events and museums and vote more than our non-reading brethren. Readers rock!

Hugh Pool

I saw this guitar player at Rodeo Bar last night and he was awesome. I don't know how to write about music, so I won't. But it was very intense. I got this picture off the net, it isn't from last night...

More Simon

Ah, I just read another Simon Pettet book, Selected Poems. Wonderful. What else is there to say?

AFTER THE PERSIAN

Your sweetness and generosity
Both capture and astonish me
I am too drunk now
ever to let go

The Bicycle Thief

The Bicycle Thief was so sad! I was expecting a bittersweet Truffaut type thing. I don't know why I thought that. But this was brutal. It was about an extremely poor man in Rome whose bicycle gets stolen. This bicycle was crucial to his employment and his family will be destitute without it. He and his little son, a really sweet kid, go all over Rome trying to track it down. You got to see all these different glimpses of Italian life during the depression (I think). But it was just too heartbreaking. They got more and more desperate and finally the man tries to steal a bicycle and ends up being mortified in front of his son. Like I said, brutal.

The quality of the DVD wasn't so hot. And for some reason there were all these chunks of dialogue they didn't bother to translate.

The Truman Show

I loved The Truman Show. I loved it when it first came out in '98 and I loved it the second time around. It was so ahead of it's time. It was made before reality TV existed (maybe The Real World had started, I don't know). It worked on several different levels. It's an ironic social commentary on consumerism and the dangers of TV watching. It has a strong existential theme, about finding yourself (uhg) and going past your boundaries and questioning your existence. It works as a light-hearted comedy. And there was a real sweet sentimentality to it. I got choked up both times when Truman finally hits the fourth wall and weeps.

I really enjoy high concept pieces like Groundhog Day and the Spotless Mind thing. I like suspending my disbelief for these things, and I like the way I am mentally engaged in the concept. I like watching how they take the concept and work it out to it's end.

This was the perfect movie to watch while making my imperfect Oreo balls.

The Incredibles

Incredibly, I loved this movie! I got it because it is made by the guy that did Ratatouille, and there was something sophisticated (for lack of a better word) about his sensibility that I thought I'd try this, in spite of how it looks.

Again, there was something different about the story, something less cloying and pandering than other animated Disney things are, or at least than I assume they are.

This is about a family of incredible people -- superheroes- who are forced to endure an ordinary existence in a world where "they keep finding new ways to reward mediocrity". The moral of the story might even be, don't be afraid to show off.

The reason they have to hide themselves is that all superheroes have gone into witness protection programs because there have been too many lawsuits against them. But, the father gets lured away from his stifling job as an insurance adjuster by a mysterious woman who turns out to be working for an evil genius. Someone who's brilliance is in inventing ways to surpass the powers of "natural" superheroes, and someone who Mr. Incredible thwarted when he was child. Anyway, plot synopsis not necessary, I realize.

The animation was awesome, it was really exciting, although I hate the idealized super-thin representations of the female body.