New indie films take steps toward connection
This article in the Boston Globe talks about two of my favorite movies this year, "Lost in Translation" and "American Splendor," and a couple new ones I want to see, "The Station Agent" and "The Cooler."

In a year when many mainstream studio efforts have been box-office disappointments, audiences seem hungry for the bittersweet refrains these smaller films offer, their soulfulness and sense of loss. These films are superbly nuanced, to use a term that has come up again and again in cultural writing this year, consistently avoiding formula and breaking new ground.

There's a nice quote from William H. Macy, who stars in The Cooler:

"Indies started off being about fringe elements of society... Now they're about things people find in their own kitchen or backyards -- the mundane things in life."

Right where I'm looking. (3rd house = the mundane, day-to-day)

8:35:11 PM      trackback [] 

Snow predicted this afternoon

2:06:44 PM      trackback [] 

W. grows up?

Nicholas Kristof find lessons for the Bush administration in Homer:

Achilles is both the mightiest warrior and a petulant, self-righteous, arrogant figure. A unilateralist, he refuses to consult with allies; he dismisses intelligence about his own vulnerability; he never reads the newspapers.

 

So the Greeks are nearly defeated, and while Achilles sulks in his tent, his dearest friend, Patroclus, is killed. Then the impulsive Achilles careers into action and overdoes it in the other direction, desecrating Hector's body, but in the end he returns to his tent, calms down and shows a new sense of his own limits, a new compassion, a new moderation and a new wisdom.

Kristof sees some hope - in the administration's latest shift to a multilateral approach towards North Korea and Iraq reconstruction - that Bush is learning.

Ancient heroes like Achilles and Odysseus do not avoid mistakes, but they learn from them... the subtitle for "The Iliad" could be "Achilles Grows Up."

W's newspaper screeners should read this article to him.

12:42:52 PM      trackback []