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Mpls, MN, United States

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Saturday, March 31, 2007

Meta-media

In the past week, I have watched three films about film. The first was Inland Empire, which, as Bryant mentioned, we watched on Monday. Things he didn't mention were that the Oak Street Cinema is really old1 and charming in a Joyo Theater sort of a way, with broken seats and tiny, clammy, vaguely eerie basement restrooms like the ones in older churches; that the film was 172 minutes long; or, specifically, that it was crazy--the salient feature, I believe, of Lynch films. There were parts I really liked, but it could have benefited from some serious editing; I think it was at least 70 minutes too long.

The second was The Holiday, which I got from Redbox and watched by myself because I was sad and lonely after Bryant left on Wednesday. It was thoroughly and unwaveringly fluffy, but so pretty that I was hardly irritated at the (radiant, granted) overacting of Cameron Diaz and saccharine plot, and for at least a scene or two was (spoiler warning!) completely enthralled with the idea of Jude law as a beautiful, charming, sensitive, book-editing widower given to tears, with two delectably large-eyed and politely British-accented daughters, whom he was raising by himself.2

Finally, there was Hollywoodland, which, despite attractive scenery featuring fabulous 50s era glamour--and Adrien Brody!--ultimately fell flat. I'm going to issue another spoiler warning here and say that the ending, rather than prompting any interesting thought due to its open-endedness (as did Inland Empire), was a boring cop-out that didn't follow from the previous material--more of a cessation than a conclusion.

Which is what I'll do now.

1It appears to have been built in 1916
2 This video seems to hit most of the high points

1 comment:

Jeff said...

Hey. I hope all is well. I never thanked you for the Thinking Blog Award nomination. Let me make that right. Thank you! :)

Peace, Jeff