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

It all becomes lost in the waves of memory despair… what have we watched? We rented Alfie, which was quite fine. The style though, for me, was more suited to a theater experience. Watching it at home, with Michael Caine talking at us the whole time, I got sort of distracted. But still pretty fun little Brit number. Seeing those funny lads makes me want to watch Quadrophenia again. More better, we went to see Capote. I must admit I am rather disappointed to see its current lame distribution. Something like 50 theaters? How do people have such undiscerning tastes? It still shocks me. But it was good. Again, the casting was very good and being that we watched to kill a mockingbird not too long ago, I was delighted to see Harper and Truman portrayed as adults. Anyway, Truman isn’t the most sympathetic character, but there is definitely something sad and charming about him. I think that role was acted quite well, not like the parody it could easily have turned out to be. He was just as annoying as I expected him to be, but in a way that it just seemed like what he maybe was like. But all the roles were well acted and cast. The scenery was nice too, in a barren-kind of way.

We also watched American Psycho. I liked it. At time it seemed soo 80’s to me (even in the film-making style) that it could easily have been made then. I didn’t find it particularly shocking but it was entertaining, just hard to look at. My god, the hair…

We also took in Kiss the Girls. That was alright. Not really a tense scary kind of movie and some of it seemed non-sensical (oh yeah, but I liked American Psycho?). But that seems to be the style with modern Hollywood “scary horror or crime” films. Must make them soo overblown… I mean, does anyone actually like Saw? I thought it was lame when House of a Thousand Corpses ended by falling into a put of Nu-metal rock video lameness, but to have to endure that boring annoying crud over and over again in Saw was insulting. Especially to anyone who has any kind of penchant for horror movies.
Anyway though, I digress. Kiss the Girls was an alright film. Much better than Saw.

We also tried to watch Waking Ned Devine but I got distracted and went downstairs for too long so we ended up missing the last ten minutes. I still find it to be a charming little comedy. And man, I could look at that island and that village for hours.

For my birthday, we watched In the Mood for Love, which we also fell asleep at the end of. You know, cozy couch and popcorn and brownies smothered in whipped cream… But about the movie… I think it is one of the most pleasing movies to watch. Tony Leung has the nicest suits. The colors are wonderful, the music is divine. Those scenes around the noodle bar just make me sink into the couch. Plus, it’s a great movie, one of the finest. Very well made, good plot, beautiful to look at…

Last night we risked the theater to see Junebug I thought it was pretty good and that most of the reviews I’ve read that were bad were misleading. I think I read one that implied that the movie was making fun of people from the south and complained that no one improved in it. Anyway, that’s certainly not what I thought. I thought it was a generous and real movie of different types of people coming together. Not one of those “families re-unite leads to a Disney moment” films or one of the “families reunites leads to drunken brawls” kind either. It was a pleasant homespun kind of movie. I particularly liked the character of Eugene.

Also, in terms of TV… Now that we’ve got our little cable… E! played a special on the Curse of Poltergeist. It was pretty interesting but then, as I was leaving for work this morning, they were playing a special on the Curse of the Exorcist! Man. I would miss that. I’ve been itching to watch The Exorcist again as soon as we get it back. Now I really want to watch it again. Too bad I missed the special.