![Screening Log: Super Late New Year’s Holiday-Plus-Epic Sick Time Edition
Sorry about the super-late update. I’ve been wrestling with a massive cold that has caused me to sleep 12 hours at a time plus a hilarious stint without internet thanks to a Verizon cock-up, which technology would have actually made the my illness more fun. Anyway. Here’s to another year obsessively reporting what I watched to my 2 or 3 readers.
1. Green Lantern (2011, Martin Campbell) This almost became my final film of the year. But I said fuck that and put on… [DVD]
2. The Clerk (1932, Ernst Lubitsch) As part of the comp film If I Had a Million, and one of those perfect things in creation, like air, grass and Laphroaig.
3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011, Tomas Alfredson) Having trouble with this one. Its admirers talk about how the screenplay does a magnificent job of whittling down a dense, plotty tome into a swift 129 minute movie, and that it rewards those who pay attention enough to follow it. As someone who lost the plot about a half hour in and was only able to grasp what was going on in fits, I can only admire this from a distance. And yet part of me wonders if a movie that operates almost entirely on plot isn’t missing something essential. I can’t for the life of me suss out a perspective or an angle of attack on the material beyond the expository. Smiley is such a void — by design — that the movie seems to be about nothing but its own narrative cleverness, which I appreciate but can’t fully get behind. Then again, another part of me wonders if the perspective is one of total distance, that it puts us in the detached bemusement of Smiley. If anything the emotional connection winds up between two characters whom we’ve previously thought of mostly as mere chess pieces (note the visual metaphor, with the suspect’s faces on pawns). This is a long way of saying I need to see it again and pay better attention. [theatrical screening with the blue hairs]
4. Episodes two and three from the first series of Downton Abbey [Netflix Instant]
4. Fright Night (2011, Craig Gillespie) Not bad, and it actually does find a number of clever ways to deviate from the original. One of those is not the car shot, a bald and not remotely as effective ripoff of the one in Children of Men. [DVD]
5. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011, Constance Marks & Philip Shane) As likable as its subject, but this is still one of those docs that annoys the shit out of me, where they simply talk to the subject while failing to explore the ideas his/her works brings up. (There are other talking heads, but they’re just there to talk about what a genius Kevin Clash is.) Notice how there’s no third act to Clash’s story? Because there’s no third act to this doc. [screener]
6. /Ocean’s 13/ (2007, Steven Soderbergh) Surely you know this is my favorite trilogy of the oughts. [DVD]
7. Man on a Ledge (2012, Asger Leth) Review forthcoming, unless Burnsy takes it instead. [advance screening]
8. The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996, Michael Epstein & Thomas Lennon) Somehow I never watched this the first time I bought Kane, back in 2001. I now own two copies of it. [DVD]
Yes, this should be a lot longer. But I spent much of the last week with festivities, recovering from said festivities or sick-sleeping.](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxcbm5WCQe1qzoio3o1_400.jpg)
Screening Log: Super Late New Year’s Holiday-Plus-Epic Sick Time Edition
Sorry about the super-late update. I’ve been wrestling with a massive cold that has caused me to sleep 12 hours at a time plus a hilarious stint without internet thanks to a Verizon cock-up, which technology would have actually made the my illness more fun. Anyway. Here’s to another year obsessively reporting what I watched to my 2 or 3 readers.
1. Green Lantern (2011, Martin Campbell) This almost became my final film of the year. But I said fuck that and put on… [DVD]
2. The Clerk (1932, Ernst Lubitsch) As part of the comp film If I Had a Million, and one of those perfect things in creation, like air, grass and Laphroaig.
3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011, Tomas Alfredson) Having trouble with this one. Its admirers talk about how the screenplay does a magnificent job of whittling down a dense, plotty tome into a swift 129 minute movie, and that it rewards those who pay attention enough to follow it. As someone who lost the plot about a half hour in and was only able to grasp what was going on in fits, I can only admire this from a distance. And yet part of me wonders if a movie that operates almost entirely on plot isn’t missing something essential. I can’t for the life of me suss out a perspective or an angle of attack on the material beyond the expository. Smiley is such a void — by design — that the movie seems to be about nothing but its own narrative cleverness, which I appreciate but can’t fully get behind. Then again, another part of me wonders if the perspective is one of total distance, that it puts us in the detached bemusement of Smiley. If anything the emotional connection winds up between two characters whom we’ve previously thought of mostly as mere chess pieces (note the visual metaphor, with the suspect’s faces on pawns). This is a long way of saying I need to see it again and pay better attention. [theatrical screening with the blue hairs]
4. Episodes two and three from the first series of Downton Abbey [Netflix Instant]
4. Fright Night (2011, Craig Gillespie) Not bad, and it actually does find a number of clever ways to deviate from the original. One of those is not the car shot, a bald and not remotely as effective ripoff of the one in Children of Men. [DVD]
5. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011, Constance Marks & Philip Shane) As likable as its subject, but this is still one of those docs that annoys the shit out of me, where they simply talk to the subject while failing to explore the ideas his/her works brings up. (There are other talking heads, but they’re just there to talk about what a genius Kevin Clash is.) Notice how there’s no third act to Clash’s story? Because there’s no third act to this doc. [screener]
6. /Ocean’s 13/ (2007, Steven Soderbergh) Surely you know this is my favorite trilogy of the oughts. [DVD]
7. Man on a Ledge (2012, Asger Leth) Review forthcoming, unless Burnsy takes it instead. [advance screening]
8. The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996, Michael Epstein & Thomas Lennon) Somehow I never watched this the first time I bought Kane, back in 2001. I now own two copies of it. [DVD]
Yes, this should be a lot longer. But I spent much of the last week with festivities, recovering from said festivities or sick-sleeping.
