a day at the races/movies
We have tickets to the MassCap now, yay! I can't find a seating chart online, but the guy I ordered the tickets from said the box of seats we got was right before the finish line. We do have one extra seat, if anybody is interested in a day at the races (that would be Sept. 20).
Getting "we've received" notifications from Netflix reminded me that we watched two movies this weekend:
Getting "we've received" notifications from Netflix reminded me that we watched two movies this weekend:
- The Orphanage. Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, making his leap from music videos to the big screen, and produced by Guillermo del Toro, I've seen it frequently referred to as the third part of a trilogy also containing del Toro's The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. While it isn't as nearly good as either of those two movies, it is a very well made film of horror and suspense, helping to cement Spain's reputation as the new home of art horror films. It isn't terribly violent or gory (in fact, I can't bring to mind much gore, really none in the sense of guts strewn about) but I often found myself at the edge of my seat, one hand to my face, desperately wanting/fearing to know what happens next. Very nice camerawork and cinematography helped create a creepily tense atmosphere. M and I disagreed on whether it had a happy ending or not. I felt it did, he felt it did not. I'm happy to discuss it in the comments, if anyone has seen it and has an opinion, or just wants to know why I thought it was happy (tragic happy, but happy).
- Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. I really enjoyed this warts and all biography/retrospective by Julian Temple (see, people who I was talking to on Sunday? You do recognize the name, even if I couldn't remember it at the time!). Joe Strummer comes across as intensely driven and talented, and not always a nice guy, particularly mid-career. Fatherhood and discovering raves seemed to have mellowed him out later in life, so that even the people who had just cause to be pretty angry with him early on all spoke glowingly of him in his later years. The film uses footage from the past, sometimes with the original voices, and footage of friends and colleagues of Joe's in the present, commenting on him and how he affected their lives. Nobody is named on screen, which is slightly frustrating at times but also means the words of an obscure hippy chick are given the same narrative weight as those of say Flea or Bono, which I think gives a more complete picture of Joe. Fascinating portrait of a man rather torn between art vs. commercial success/righteous behavior vs. commercial success, and a fascinating portrait of the early days of punk and how the movement changed over the years.