Ceci n'est pas un blog

Not too terribly long ago I went to the movies. When I was much younger this was a 3 times a week occurence but many many things have changed and now it's a bit rare to actually go to the theater, which I prefer. I remember when I was in early highschool in El Paso there was a theater that had 1 dollar movies every Tuesday. Often I would go alone to these, then catch a new release with friends on Friday and sometimes a matinee on Saturday or Sunday. Once in college we went to 3 in one day, not all at the same theater and without cheating. I have never gone from one movie to another without paying or snuck in. I just can't. I could never have shoplifted anything with Holly Golightly.

What I saw was Sunshine, the new Danny Boyle sci-fi drama. It is beautifully shot. It begins thoughtfully and slowly and you almost believe that this is movie about the inner doubts and group dynamics of this crew as they shoulder the responsibility for an exhausting years-long all-in mission to save the world. 2001 was the forst movie I ever saw in the theater. I was 4. This movie owes a huge debt to it and also to the more recent Solaris remake. Like most Soderberg films, Solaris isn't for everyone but it does a lot right and puts the story so far in front of the special effects that it almost doesn't have any. But somewhere along the line Sunshine loses its confidence and doesn't trust it's audience to find sufficient drama in the interior lives of this crew and introduces a pointless villain. Excellently done for a sci-fi and not your typical space action genre thing but misses the target despite some amazing shots and a strong cast. The exact same movie with the enemy removed would have been 2 stars better.

Speaking of movies that focus on the interior life, we watched Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring at home this weekend. It is a gorgeous little Korean film about a boy raised by a monk in 1 room floating monastery on a small lake high in the mountains. His journey from boy to man, from acolyte to criminal to monk is the center of the story but the scenery is what you remember. We found the story to be alternately powerful and vexing with continuity questions sometimes answered and sometimes left open. And we found ourselves unsure of the message the film is ultimately sending. Do the recurring cycles mean that there is no learning and each generation has to be reactively taught the same lessons that their teachers had to be reactively taught? It is unmistakably beautiful and aims for a magical lesson in Buddhist principles but, for us. it achieved only part of this.

We also watched the first episode of the second season of Sensitive Skin, a wonderfully shot and scored British t.v. series focussing on the lives of a few very wealthy mostly liberal intellectuals. The score ranges from spare clasical piano to Cat Stevens and similar and the milieu is pure Woody Allen but without the "this is a comedy" humor on top. Just a woman of 60 questioning her marriage and whether her achievements amount to much. The first season, taken as whole, is better filmed, written, and scored than 90% of movies. And the cast really make it. Everyone feels like old friends that you can really get attached to. There was a moment in series 1 when you just have to yell at the screen, feeling personally betrayed and there's a moment, at the end, where you think, "yes, that's how it ends" and it's sad and it felt genuine. I'm optimistic for season 2 but also a little a sad since the last one just ended right where it should. A full stop on a lovely sentence.

If you have kids or are a Hiyao Miyazake fan, H really liked Castle in the Sky, which also has the unfortunate title of Laputa. Like the Americans who dubbed the English version for Disney, you have to make yourself pronounce it lap-yoo-tah and not the way any Texan would.