Kylog

By way of background, I’m not an apple guy. I find the “don’t worry, we’ll control everything for you” mindset just as irritating when executed with impeccable style (Apple) as when with fumbling, crashing ineptitude (Microsoft). Nonetheless, when my beloved Rio Karma died, seeing that Rio was going down in flames, I was ecstatic when my mother-in-law gave me a sexy new 4GB Nano! So flipping sexy! I love it!!

Well, I love the form factor. But I do not enjoy being exposed to the Relinquish All Control world of Steve Jobs. Here are some things that suck about the iTunes universe:

Where’s my Rio Karma? Where’s Steve Jobs’ karma?

1. Brokeback Mountain — with this much hype, Citizen Kane would be overrated. And this movie is merely ok (albeit with gorgeous cinematography and a sense of self-importance).

2. Pride and Prejudice — this movie was awful! Abysmal! And it’s getting nominated for awards!!

3. Crash — this script was laughable; really more of a cudgel than a script. The acting was good, but Paul Haggis seems to think his audience is a bunch of morons. The scary thing: the audience largely agrees!

Just because I haven’t seen a ton of movies I wanted to this past year, I see no reason not to start a best-of list. Here goes:

1. The Squid and the Whale — best screenplay and acting of the year

2. Syriana — great political thriller

3. Hustle and Flow — kind of saccharine at the end of the day

4. Capote — PSH never ceases to amaze; I’d still like to see a Capote biopic, but this study of him during the Cold Blood period will do for now

5. The 40 Year Old Virgin — not an Oscar kind of movie, but funny!

6. Wedding Crashers — see 40 yo Virgin

7. Batman Begins — wow, this is the darkest comic book movie ever; between Christopher Nolan’s direction and Christian Bale’s acting, this movie really raised the bar

8. Brothers Grimm — Terry Gilliam is a genius; this was a great movie

9. Sin City — great eye candy, who cares about the plot!

10. not a great year for movies …

Full disclosure: I used imdb to remind myself what came out in 2005.

I haven’t yet seen the following popular movies made in 2005:
History of Violence
Walk the Line
Broken Flowers
Munich
a bunch of others ….

Maybe another day I’ll write an entry “Brokeback: The Phenomenon,” but having just seen the movie, it seems to me that the movie itself warrants some comments. The only thing I will say about the outrageous hype and hyperbole that have surrounded this movie is that it all makes it tough to just sit and watch the movie unencumbered by expectation. Ah well, Ang Lee and crew can hardly complain about too much attention.

First, the good stuff: the cinematography is gorgeous. First and foremost, it’s gorgeous in the high mountain scenes filmed in the Canadian Rockies — not only is the scenery gorgeous, but the setting for the broken backed mountain allows incredible framing, and the many shots of the sea of sheep on the mountain are mesmerizing. But beyond the mountain, it’s also gorgeous in the spare scenes in trailer parks and small town apartments. The shot of Ennis’s wife sitting alone at a coffee table after seeing her husband making out with a strange cowboy is framed perfectly, and the movie is consistently filled with such careful and striking cinematography. I also must say that the acting is generally great, specifically in the person of Jake Gyllenhaal and the supporting actors (Heath Ledger wasn’t that persuasive to me, despite being clearly in the Important Role).

Ok, the not so good stuff. Actually, this is a decent movie, not great, but a workmanlike genre piece (albeit one with an evidently incendiary Twist). As we all know, it’s a sentimental tale of self-betrayal and repression and it’s very sad. It doesn’t do anything interesting from a plot perspective; many scenes lay bare their outline in the first 10 seconds, then take many minutes to unfold, so you need to be braced to keep saying “I saw that coming” throughout the movie. That’s not an awful thing, just a sign of an accomplished director choosing not to innovate but to follow the established rules of his genre. Likewise, Ang feels free (or obliged) to use hack metaphors like the embers still burning in the campsite yadda yadda. (More on the metaphor of the sheep later.)

Unfortunately, the central premise of the movie — the two cowboys passionate but repressed love for each other — is never adequately conveyed to the viewer. They have a couple fucks, a tender moment, and a whole lot of wrestling and rough-housing during one summer. I just didn’t get the chemistry evidently, because I was totally surprised to see how much passion they had for each other 4 years later. But with a rocky foundation to the relationship (in a relationship movie), the movie is left struggling to keep up from that point on.

Some of the root of this is the Ennis character played by Heath Ledger. Completely joyless, completely uncommunicative, literally mumbling his way through the movie, a heel to his wife and kids, and frankly a buzzkill as a lover — this is the character at the center of the movie. I’m certain that we’re supposed to see those still waters run deep, and I’m certain that his taciturn exterior is supposed to belie a tender and wounded soul, but I just saw a joyless, uncommunicative, mumbling jerk. So why exactly was Jack Twist so madly in love with the guy? I dunno.

Which brings me to my last squirm of the movie. I’m never comfortable with movies which present “them” to “us”. And by them and us here, I don’t mean anything about gays and straights, I mean cowboys and moviegoers. Don’t get me wrong, cowboys can go to movies too, but this movie is unabashedly about an other, specifically embodied in our favorite mumbling, repressed, etc antihero. And there is absolutely no overlap between the community of people portrayed in the movie and the community of people targetted as the audience for this movie. We’re all supposed to go to the pictures and be touched and moved by this tale of a poor little man who can’t get in touch with his own feelings due to the pressures of a backwards society, that we the clever, liberal, tolerant members of another society scoff at. We feel pity for the simple soul, and we wish him well. We pat ourselves on the back, and we walk out of the theatre with wet eyes, a clear conscience, and the good posture of righteousness. I don’t like movies that take this stance, willing to stereotype a class and a community to make their point. It just makes me uncomfortable.

So bottom line: this movie qua movie is just ok. But let’s keep in mind the Brokeback phenomenon. Sadly, there is still a lot of backward society, witness theaters in Utah stupidly refusing to show the movie. Vote with your pocketbooks; if Hollywood guilt rewards an average film because it has a gay theme, that’s a good thing. After all, the Oscars are just about the economics and politics of the entertainment business — let’s enable more gay themed entertainment.

Yep, be a sheep, go to the Mountain. And enjoy the scenery.

First, let me say that The Talented Mr Ripley is a great book. It weaves together a thoroughly plotted crime story with a deft and plausible psychological portrait of a borderline personality. Just terrific stuff; it was really eye opening that this author could be roaming around whom I’d never read!

That said, Ripley Under Ground, the second in the series, certainly suffers from sequel-itis. It’s still an easy-on-the-eyes page-turner, but it loses much of what made its predecessor unique. First and foremost, where did the psychological insight go? How disappointing too that Highsmith simply walks away from the ambiguously asexual characterization of Ripley in the first book to turn him into a happily married gardener. And other than occasionally “thinking rapidly,” this Ripley has none of the internal complexity, self-deception and turmoil that made his predecessor so fascinating.

And then plotwise, my patience was too stretched thin here: impersonations galore, passports out of the blue, Tom flies all over the continent finding people in faraway cities with nary a clue, just hard to buy into all of it. The first book requires a bit of this suspension of disbelief, especially in the impersonation category, but it is also far more careful to lay out all the details of Tom’s deceptions so that the whole thing hangs together more. In fact, given how quickly and awkwardly Highsmith ties together the end of the book, I wonder if she found it increasinly implausible as well. The book essentially ends mid-plot, saying “and he continued the deception successfully in Salzburg, Paris and London.” Huh?

Partially redeeming quality: the theme of art and forgery, parallel to Ripley’s art of dissembly and impersonation does leave open some threads ripe for interpretation and play. Unfortunately, getting the reader to play along requires them to get past all of the above flaws, which I was unable to do. Ah well.

So, should I read the third or not? They turned it into a movie with John Malkovich, so someone was taken by it. I might try Strangers on a Train next instead. Back to some questionable sexuality at least!