To say this is a sad movie is like saying it’s cold in Antarctica.  Duh, you know that it’s cold in Antarctica.  But what you don’t know until you’ve been there is just how cold.  So yeah, it’s a very sad movie.    I read the book so I was expecting this.  The movie is getting a lot of bad reviews.  I think people are being overly harsh.  I think 9/11 is a tough topic and will remain so for many years to come.  I saw this movie with my mom and she said she never really thought about how much loss and pain there was in New York following the WTC attacks–just how many people were affected.  Maybe it’s ok for us to being to look at that emotional rawness.  My one major criticism is the use of the “falling man” imagery.  And they use it a lot.  When you see the falling man, it takes you out of the movie experience and puts you into your own 9/11 experience.  Also maybe not a bad thing, but for me each time I saw the falling man I felt sick.  Max von Sydow is nominated for Supporting Actor.  I’m not sure there aren’t other actor who should be in his slot.  Nothing against him or his performance but I don’t feel like he hit it out of the park.   However the kid that plays Oskar–Thomas Horn, was fantastic.  I doubt many people who read this (all three of you) will put this on your Must See list.  I’d recommend the book.  The book is really a great adventure story.  I think the movie had to skip a lot of that, cause that what adaptation do.  This is the 12th movie I have seen this year.

Here are the films I will do my best to watch before Feb 26th.  This list excludes nominees for foreign films, documentaries, animated and shorts.  I have to draw a line somewhere.

The Adventures of Tintin

Albert Nobbs

Anonymous

The Artist

Beginners (check)

A Better Life

Bridesmaids (check)

The Descendants (check)

Drive (check)

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (check)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (check)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (check)

The Help (check)

Hugo

The Ides of March (check)

The Iron Lady

Jane Eyre (check)

Margin Call

Midnight in Paris (check)

Moneyball (check)

The Muppets

My Week with Marilyn

Real Steel

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

A Separation

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (check)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

The Tree of Life

W.E.

War Horse (check)

Warrior

Better get to it!

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Sleeping Beauty

War Horse

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Newlyweds

Bellflower

The Descendants

Leap Year (don’t judge me)

The Company Men

I Am Number Four

Rampart

For the rest of the year I will try to write something each time I watch a movie.  We will see how that goes. 

Since I really haven’t been writing very much I thought this year I would write something about every movie I watch.  I haven’t even begun that–but hey, we are only half way through the first month of the year so maybe I will keep that promise.  We’ll see.

When I moved to Greensboro I got a time slot on the college radio station so I really had time to express my own tastes.  I remember having a debate with my roommate’s brother—he was a classic rock fan.  I told him that I had heard all those songs way too many times.  There was nothing wrong with classic rock but I craved something new.  To prove my point I said that I could sing all the words to any song that came on the radio station he always listened to.  I never lost.  So what was I listening to?  If you listen to Spotify you can hear my playlist—1993.  Otherwise these were the cds I played over and over:

• When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.
• What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.
• The things I do for love
• You know nothing, Jon Snow
• Stick them with the pointy end.
• Valar morghulis.
• A Lannister always pays his debts.
• Fear cuts deeper than swords.
• Words are wind.
• Winter is coming.

Please feel free to add what I have forgotten.  If you haven’t read the books you are really missing out.

xoxoxo

Dogcatcher–hard to describe.  Big sound yet cool and quiet.  Seems great for these soon to come cool Fall mornings.  Ceheck them out here http://dogcatcherband.com/music/

The David Mayfield Parade–If you like the Avett Brothers and Gillian Welsh you will like them.

I once spent a masochistic weekend with The Road.  I started reading the book on Friday night, finished Sunday afternoon in time to see the matinee of the movie.  It was a grey and rainy weekend, thank the gods.  Had it been sunny I would have felt betrayed.

Yesterday I was listening to All Things Considered on my way home from work.  There was a story about an artist I have never heard of who made a movie about another artist I never heard of.  Yet Joann Sfar managed to capture my appreciation for the bleak.  He said:

“I’m so grateful when a beautiful thing try to teach me nothing,” he offers, almost as a weary provocation of the sort Gainsbourg might have uttered. “And it never occurs. You know sometimes movies seem to be like a medicine. … I wish to be sad and I wish to be lost, and I desperately don’t wish to be taught anything.”

I think Sfar and Gainsbourg are worth getting to know.

Comics Star Joann Sfar, Capturing ‘A Heroic Life’