Blogging My Life

The latest Netflix journal entry! I really liked this film, far more than I expected to. I knew I would like Ben Kingsley, and thought that Jennifer Connelly would probably be good, but I was blown away by all the performances. I was grooving right along with the tone of the film, a classic tale of seemingly equal legal and moral claims on something — in this case a small, dilapidated house on the California coast — right up to the end, which I initially thought to be a bit over-wrought. Then, having seen Don Giovanni the night before at the Met, I realized that this film, especially the ending, is best viewed as opera, actually. An American opera with no music. Four stars.

Excellent film, although not quite what I was expecting from, I guess, trailers and reviews from last year. It’s more El Norte than the Latin American Requiem for a Dream I was steeling myself for. Catalina Moreno is incredible, especially for her first film. The globalization links — the flowers being sold on the street in Queens, after being packaged by exploited workers in Colombia, not to mention the cocaine — are useful, and, despite a growing realization that one will be set up for an emotional motherhood appeal, the story is compelling and moving.

Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. I had to finish this movie this morning because we couldn’t watch it to the end last night. This is a significant: if three academics in full political sympathy with a documentary can’t make it to the end, it is too long! Two hours and twenty-five minutes. Jeez.
The film has some enjoyable images and many wonderful soundbites. It seems to have a long “introduction” that would probably be recognizable as such in text form, but in the film simply makes subsequent references to things in the intro part seem repetitive. Until the dissection of the psychopathic personality framework really kicks in (a great motif!), the film feels very rudderless. The usual left heroes–Naomi Klein, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore–say predictable and good things, but nothing earth-shattering. Earth-shattering are the comments from Ray Anderson, Chairman of Interface, a carpet company who saw the light big time on the global effects of the Industrial Revolution and the corporate model and is now exhorting his fellow execs to a sustainability model. Very eloquent. Interesting to be reminded of the historical development and totally imaginary quality of the corporate charter, at a time when its naturalness seems take for granted. Also, the history of the corporation as a person and the ridiculous disproportionality of 14th Amendment cases protecting the rights of corporate persons versus the black persons it was designed to help. My new thought on watching the film is that campaign finance reform should totally exclude corporate donations to any electoral candidate ever for any reason, since the corporation’s legal definition forces it to ignore the public interest and focus only on maximizing profit. That such entities should have no voice–financial or otherwise–in elections seems now to me a no-brainer.
Overall, I was disappointed with this film, which I had hoped to use as a teaching tool, perhaps in my upcoming class on Studying Up. Now, I think the book, by Joel Bakan, must be far better than the film. He seems serious and smart, based the interview on the Majority Report Air America show included on the dvd.
Great narrator voice, but one wishes she would speak up a little more and go more slowly.
IMDB link

I guess this film got on my NetFlix list because I saw it mentioned as a classic Los Angeles film, and, having just more or less moved to the Los Angeles area, felt I needed to see it. (I have started a list of L.A. films somewhere…where? my palm pilot? my wiki? Christ, I’m lost in my own technologies….Some of the films on my “movies to see” list have been there so long that I don’t remember why I wanted to see them.)
This film has a surprisingly disturbing ending after an often very funny two-hour lead-up. Looks very much like other favorite mid-seventies films: Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, etc. Also Midnight Cowboy, obviously. I enjoyed it a lot. It is a classic Hollywood story. Reminds me of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, for different reasons. Watched it at home tonight with Alvaro and Philo. This film will do, for me, for “Jeepers Creepers, Where’d You Get Those Peepers?” what Blue Velvet did for the song of the title!
<Nostalgic reminiscence>Blue Velvet was the first movie I ever walked out of thinking, man, I need a drink. I saw it in 1986 with Andrea in Seattle’s U-Distric, and we walked to whatever bar was on the corner there. I had scotch. After a childhood viewing of Song of the South when I derided my sister’s tears as a way of suppressing my own, this is the next most powerful experience of being knocked on my ass by a film. Also the first time an emotion was linked with alcohol? Maybe a therapy topic for ten years from now…:-) </Nostalgic reminiscence>
Noticing that Day of the Locust has an R rating, which makes a certain sense, makes me wonder whether DVD releases of films this old go through a review process again or use the same rating as when they were released. In this case, the rating would be no different, I think.
IMDB link

Saw this Wednesday night, March 2. Liked it a lot. Amazing to see Jodie Foster speaking excellent French. The combination of gruesome battle scenes, dark comedy, and sentimentality (about the maximum I can stand, actually) really worked. Audrey Tatou is so interesting to watch. (Did I say “interesting”? Is that a euphemism of some kind??)