Letter Never Sent

I watched a great movie this weekend, Vozvrashchenie (The Return). I was doing my regular tour around Blockbuster trading out rentals and I just picked it up. I think everyone should watch it because it works on you. You’ll carry it with you for days after. It deals with subjects everyone has some experience with: having a father and being a father. There is at least one important female role, but most of the story revolves around two brothers and their estranged father who shows up out of nowhere to take them on a journey. The journey with this father they’ve never known is an initiation into manhood squeezed into 7 days. The sons are faced with harsh lessons and each reacts differently to the experience.

The older I get the more I think about what type of father I will be. I also find myself looking back at what I learned from my father and the role he played in helping to shape my character and personality. I don’t know how much was intentional, but there were often lessons woven into the things my dad did with my brother and me. Like how he would send us to help our elderly neighbors, or how we always had to help him work on projects for our grandmother like building a deck or cutting the grass. Family was always important, so was being a good neighbor. I still try to remember all those things.

The Machinist (2004):

“A little guilt goes a long way.” I liked this movie a lot. Christian Bale’s skin and bones look was palpably disturbing. It’s one of those movies you’re going to want to read more about after watching it because there are many layers and details to catch. Bale did a great job in this one, but he doesn’t usually make me believe in him in most of his roles. I do think he is a good and convincing actor, I just can’t put my finger on it.

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

The last time I watched this movie was about ten years ago. I fell asleep then, although I liked parts of it. This last time I watched it I stayed awake, but it barely held my attention. I do not get this movie. I still don’t. What am I missing? Ten years has changed very little in terms of my experience of this film. There are beautiful moments, but that does not make it great. River Phoenix and Keanu are great in MOPI, but if it weren’t for that, I could not give it more than two stars.

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Liked Al Pacino in this one although his performance was overdone. Johnny Depp and Michael Madsen… not so much. Every time I watch something with Michael Madsen it seems dated now. His squintyness gets on my nerves.

Jody and I went to see “Revenge of the Sith” today. RoTS was way better than any of the previous two movies, however it just makes you wish Lucas had his stuff together for the first two because they could have been a lot better. Now here come the bullet points:

The Good

• Action is steady. This is number one reason it didn’t suck. The other two movies had too many slow points that were awful.
• The special effects were awesome.
• Nice conclusion. Everything is tied up, although what was the deal with the part about Qui Gon Jin?

The Bad

• Bad dialogue. I could have come up with something more romantic and that’s quite a statement.
• The emperor Palpatine / Darth Sidious makes the Dark Side look sissified. I still don’t get the Sith thing. Who are they? What’s with the weird names?
• Jimmy Smits looks like a Ren-fest attendee.

I saw Wes Anderson’s newest movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou a few days ago at Westgate where I normally end up going.

One thing worth mentioning is that I think I spotted someone camming the movie. When I was coming out of the bathroom before the movie started I passed a guy with a camera bag entering the bathroom. He was in his late twenties with a pony-tail and goatee. I only took note of him because of the camera bag, which I found a little conspicuous, although I have no idea what he had in it. I went back to my seat in the last row, right in the middle until the lights dimmed and the previews finally started. About half way through the coming attractions the pony-tail guy comes back and sits three seats to my left and places his camera bag lengthwise across the top of the folded up seat cushion. He spent a couple seconds adjusting it then I guess he noticed me eyeballing him because then he traded seats with the camera bag and moved it to the left of him.

Anyway, about the movie. Even though I was excited about seeing it, I became disappointed and bored pretty quickly. It has the same nostalgic-for-the-mid-1970’s style that I liked in The Royal Tenenbaum’s and Rushmore, but even that seemed more affected than earnestly sentimental. The story was bland and confusing. There was nothing interesting about the characters. I got the feeling that Wes Anderson made the movie as an excuse to hang out with all his friends. I’ve had enough Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston to last me another few years. I want to see a more manic and smartass Bill Murray for a change, not the run-down schlepp he’s been playing. The Life Aquatic is unfortunately a pretentious movie that’s light on substance. Why is Cate Blanchett even in this?

Admittedly, I have been hooked on watching The Apprentice. I didn’t watch it the first season, but I got into it this year. It’s gotten to the point where I will watch almost any reality TV show if it’s on while I’m sitting and eating dinner: Nanny 911, Wife Swap, Trading Spouses, the Biggest Loser, etc. I don’t watch a lot of television and I don’t have cable, so besides Will & Grace, it’s the only type of thing I have occasion to see. If anything else comes along I usually just download it from one of the tv torrent sites.

The 3 hour season finale of The Apprentice was on last night and that was a pretty huge television committment. The best part was the announcement that season 3 will consist of the so-called booksmarts against the so-called streetsmarts, which is enticing. We will be sure to see heated moments of class warfare. I predict the streetsmarts will have an early edge given that they are certain to have a more practical and pragmatic intelligence. In the video preview, they looked a lot harder. There will be a few cutthroat booksmarts who will pass muster.

The company rented a screen at the Barton Creek AMC theatre today for everyone at work to watch the debut of Pixar’s new animated film, The Incredibles. We were able to bring a guest, so I brought Jody with me and she really enjoyed it. The Incredibles was …incredible. It seems like Pixar gets better with everything they do and it didn’t hurt that they enlisted the talents of Brad Bird, the man responsible for The Iron Giant. While I was watching it, I kept thinking how amazing it would be to be involved in something like that. To nurture a project from idea to reality over the course of 3 years. It is rare to see a group of individuals who are so focused on producing work of true quality. It is awe-inspiring. Real quality takes tremendous discipline and talent to achieve and when you see something done right, you can’t help but feel a large measure of respect for those responsible.

There’s a new trailer out for the upcoming Wes Anderson film, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Judging from first glance it looks like typical Wes Anderson, which means it should be good. His films are uniquely quirky in a full and complete style, brimming with a trademark sense of humor and nostalgia. His films have always seemed to me to be monuments to innocence and imagination. (List of songs in the trailer, most of them will be familiar) Parts of the trailer reminded me of Fantastic Voyage (the movie where they explore the human body in a tiny submarine) and all those ocean movies of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Did you spot the vampire squid in the trailer?! It’s my favorite cephalopod.

I recently saw Napoleon Dynamite. It was enjoyable and very funny at times. There seemed to be a discernible influence of Wes Anderson in its sentimentality. Napoleon Dynamite seems to lack more substance, plot and character-wise, than Rushmore or The Royal Tannenbaums, but it was impressive as a debut.

Here are some pics from The Life Aquatic, and here are some cast photos.