Zander’s Weblog

Like an exceptional old Bordeaux, I can appreciate all of its impeccable qualities and rate it quite highly–without really having liked it personally. It was long at 2hr 20min, and since they decided to omit subtitles for the music (!!!) I’m certain it could be compared to drinking wine with a clothes-pin on one’s nose.

An HBO special that hits all the right notes, or, I should say, left notes. Sample: ‘General Peter Pace didn’t want gays in his Iraq forces because “they are immoral”. But at least they know when to pull out of a stinking shit hole!’

Fritz Lang’s futuristic sci-fi silent film, shot in B&W and using an orchestral sound track. Certainly pushed the limits of special effects and miniaturization (and the studio’s budget) available in 1925. And there are shades of many subsequent movies in this film. On those two counts the film is certainly worth a viewing, although it is long and the story quite odd.

An HBO lazy documentary showing a rather random swath of true believers. Seeing Ted Haggard lie his ass off all through the film was priceless. One viewing is plenty to convince me there is no god: if she existed she probably would have created people more capable of thinking their way out of this bizarre cage called religion. The only explanation for the existence of religion is that we evolved from monkeys.

An ITV (the biggest commercial television network in the UK) version of the story based on Thomas Hughes’ 1857 book, I thought that any movie catalogued using the keywords “Beating, Punishment, Caning, Corporal Punishment, and Bullying” might be amusing. And although the actors were cute, as boys of caning age can be, the film had problems developing its characters consistently and resolving the story lines. Pity. Perhaps the 1940 film version with Freddie Bartholomew is better? At 3 hrs 39 mins it had better be.

La Flor de mi secreto has all the typical Pedro Almodóvarisms–the wonderful color and camerawork, the overwrought eccentric characters, the twisted plot, and the snappy Spanish music. But surprise–no one dies and there is a happy ending. Another enjoyable romp through the Pedro-Zone.

If you like the Jerry Springer Show you’ll love this film: stupid people doing stupid things. I found nothing to care about or like in this film. Of the genre, American History X is the better film, but I’ve got better things to do than write about either of them…

A fun PBS series, I just watched seasons 1 and 2 (2001 and 2003). Each hour-long episode visits with about 4 working artists, up close and personal. As with walking through a gallery, my reactions were “wow”, “wtf”, “amazing”, “get a life, hon”, “I want to see that”, “what planet did you come from”, “stunning”, etc.

You can take Ellen Page to the bank on this one. Loved it. Great opening credit animations, perfectly matched sound track, wonderful low-key acting, and only minor flirtations with Hollywood (more Disney) boilerplate devices–best film I’ve seen all year (well, yeah, I’ve only seen two films this year and the other one was NT, but I still loved this one).

Tripe, but I knew that going in! I saw this in a nice new movie theatre in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato–in English, with Spanish subtitles, which is what I really went to experience. ¡Que fabuloso!