p e n g u i n d e v i l

After much anticipation, we watched The Science of Sleep. I’m not totally decided about it. It is pretty clever and fun, but it is another one of those where the lead character is a rather unlikable and unsympathetic loser. Beginning in the studio of Stephane TV, we meet Stephane. Stephane is an artist and after being absent for many years he arrives at his mothers in Paris after the death of his father because his mother has told him of a job at a calendar publisher. He thinks that this might be is big chance to get his calendar published. He has put together calendar of cartoonish disasters that is a hokey yet terrible yet fun collection of silly drawings called “Intestino Grues”.

He gets there to find that the job was a put on. It is a job, but it is actually typesetting the calendars, not “creative” work. He also finds a girl living in the apartment right next to his who he, of course, falls for and who shares his obsession with making little things and fantasy. The boy/girl things starts of quite hesitantly, with Stephane living it in is dreamworld and Stephanie being sort of uninterested. The job doesn’t start of hesitantly, he is thrown right into the midst of a bunch of nuts who waste no time having fun with him by suggesting he show his calendar idea to the boss. But they become his friends of sorts, especially Guy who he becomes very close with and who tries (in his own inappropriate fashion) to get Stephane to get his act together, especially in regards to mater of the heart. From here, the story progresses, but half of it takes place in his dreamworld (which frequently crosses over into his waking world) like at his studio for Stephane tv. The movie can go back and forth quite abruptly from real life to not real, sometimes quiet clearly, sometimes there is little sign at all. The dream sequences themselves are quite good, all props and stop motion and overflowing with activity and certainly the manifestations of all of his childlike fears and desires for revenge The movie is quite cute, with fun and clever set design and great props (lots of fabric creatures milling about) , but I found that Stephane’s continual dreamworlds, made him seem a bit pathetic, though there are some nice scenes with him and Stephanie. In addition to the great visuals, there are some good supporting characters, especially Guy, who I found to be one of the highs point of the film.

We watched Straw Dogs tonight, a film that I’ve been reading about a lot these days, and one of Peckinpah’s classics. Well it was quite fine. Dustin Hoffman is an American who has married a English woman and moved into the British countryside (to a town where she used to spend lots of time) to, once again, write a book. The locals don’t seem too friendly and a number of them seem to have pre-existing attractions for his wife. I couldn’t help get over my general dislike for Dustin Hoffman’s character. He treats his wife badly and, as the locals seem a bit cool towards him, he doesn’t do anything to warm them up. The movie starts out fairly slowly and we just get used to Dustin being kind of uptight. He is basically a jerky fish out of water and, when things start going on, he gets paranoid but not paranoid enough, as he is also a coward who finally gets his bravery up at the wrong time and for the wrong reason. I suppose that’s the point to the movie: a “meek” city fellow who tries to avoid any conflict he can, but then breaks. I had felt from what I had read that it was a slow breakdown, but in actuality he seemed equally lame until he finds his cause, then the movie gets quite fun. There are some good local characters and it also features, yet again, David Warner, who always makes me want to watch Time Bandits again.

And to complete an old thought. As I stated a few months ago, in Collecting Online Collections, I felt that there was an online space missing for cataloging albums that included the kind of LP’s that I tend to have. Well, yesterday I stumbled on a great one (which strangely enough, is local,) called discogs.com. It seems to be a great place to catalog your music (including LP’s which is what I am most interested in doing), and to buy and sell things. So I’ve spent a lot of the last day putting LP’s up there, something that gets a bit tricky due to a couple of things: 1) I only have about 25% of my LP’s with me and 2) of the LP’s that I tried to add to my collection, fully a third of the ones I’ve looked up aren’t listed. That is fine, as I can certainly submit them, but it does make the process take quite a bit longer.