precariously perched

Gregory, from Pocket Money, 1976 (dir. Truffault)

the little boy wandered into an open apartment and while his mother sat talking with the owner, he emptied the lady’s shopping bag and proceeded to empty all the packages and smash them with a hammer lying around.

dejeuner ex machina

from Pocket Money, 1976 (dir. Truffault)

the little girl refused to go to the restaurant with her parents, locked herself in after they left without her, she dropped the key into the fishbowl, got the bullhorn and announced to the apartment building that she was hungry, she was alone and locked in, and the neighbors sent her a basket of food, outraged that her parents would do such a thing.

Why didn’t I think of this?!

GPOY

from Pocket Money, 1976 (dir. Francois Truffault)

I love this movie so damn much

I watched this movie last night on Netflix Instant (expires 12/31). That is a very young, hardly-recognizable (to me anyway) Paul Dano. It was very good. One of those movies that surprised me a bit because it is not predictable like so many movies. It didn’t go where I thought it would (and dreaded it would, both because of the subject matter and the predictability/triteness factor). Challenges assumptions, always good.

anyway, Paul Dano…wow.

Creature with the Blue Hand (1967) starring Klaus Kinski

Well this is like the best movie ever.  Seriously. It’s on Netflix Instant but only for a few more hours but you may be able to watch it here

http://www.myfitv.com/videos/783860/creature-with-the-blue-hand

you won’t regret it.

So I watched The Social Network last night. It was good. Very interesting despite the fact that I have never had any interest in Facebook. But for most of the movie I just wanted to smash Jesse Zuckerberg in the face with a book (preferably a nice big reference book like a dick-tionary) and then Napster Timberlake too after a while.

and once again, I had sound problems. Okay, they’re in a loud pub, they want to make it realistic, but I barely understood a word of the first 5 minutes, or the entire scene where Napster and Zuckerberg were in that loud club toward the end. I tried adjusting the sound on my $200, 6 or 7 year old tv, but to no avail. I’d fixed it as best as I could the last time when I was watching, I forget, some other movie that was probably made for schmancy surround-sound HDTVs that I won’t be buying any time soon. At any rate, I think they should be able to make a DVD that sounds good on any tv, not just an overpriced one.

Back to the movie though. I liked the Winklevoss twins, they were hilarious. Overall, I don’t know. It was certainly well done, and very interesting, but maybe just not my cup of tea as far as finding it enjoyable.

So last night I watched Let Me In, the American remake of the Swedish film Let The Right One In, which was adapted from the Swedish book of the same name, by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

I’d seen the original movie first, then read the book (borrowed from Missbananafish, thanks again!), and gave the American version a shot, even though I had heard very little about it, never saw it mentioned as being in theaters and not much about it being released on DVD.

I thought the original movie was fantastic. I actually bought it on DVD, which is saying something. The book was good, in that it provided a little more insight into the characters, but i think the translation was lacking. Or maybe it was the writing, I don’t know.

The American version of the movie that I watched last night was pointless. The acting was good but the rest of it was blah. They did it in flashback mode, which was pointless, and they were a bit heavyhanded on the 1980s setting, which was also pointless (the book and Swedish version of the movie are also set in the 80s but you almost can’t tell) and it just didn’t have the flow or eerieness of the movie or book.

I often get mixed up if I have read the book and seen the movie, but if I remember correctly, the original movie only hinted at the origin of the relationship between the man and the vampire—I got the idea that they had known each other since the man was the same age as the boy was now, thus showing the vampire’s pattern, whatever. The American version of the movie was more obvious (of course) about this.  But the book had the vampire as actually being a boy, but I guess showing himself to the little boy as a girl, and the man was a pedophile, not necessarily the longtime love and caretaker of the vampire. I am not in the possession of the book so I don’t quite remember.

anyway, there’s my crappy, much-interrupted by stupid phone calls, disjointed movie unreview.

Can you believe I just saw Easy Rider for the first time?

This movie, La Haine, was excellent, highly recommended.

The Magnificent Seven, 1960

Time to watch this (for the first time). I heard it was a heartwarming Christmas tale.

at any rate, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, et al?  Yes!