Post-Holiday

[aadroma]

So Thanksgiving came and went. To say it was noneventful would be fairly accurate -- I talked to a few folks on the phone but beyond that really nothing happened. Carl had bought a turkey breast and I had cooked that up (the thermometer popping out fifteen minutes after being on the counter!), but mostly everything else that had accompanied it,

Comments

[zurcherart]

Odd. When Aldi has "American Week" here the American specialties are really good.

Did you see the American cut of Eyes Wide Open? Or the European cut? There's more nudity in the European cut of course. But not much. Funny enough I think the very small edit to the American cut changes the whole scene if not the whole film.

We liked it a lot.

[caestus]

It was very well put together, bleak and inevitable. I got mildly alienated by the reification of standard "tragic gay" tropes in cinema: 1. the pretty young trouble-maker (what old guys never seduce? Did you really not get Lolita?)...although the slut-shaming was legitimate in the context. I'd've liked it more if it seemed more mutual or guided by the butcher at least initially. And, along the same lines, 2. we see a taste of the butcher's own alienation, but he really seems pretty okay and heteronormative until... Come on it's 2010 everyone, we're fairly certain that sexual proclivities don't get switched on when troubled homeless peeps take shelter in our shops.

The fact that it was inevitably going to--and did--end badly was frustrating. If it had been yet another American film about tragic gay fags, I'd have been really annoyed. But contextually, I was okay with that sense of dread. In many ways, strangely, it really reminded me of Gomorrah (have you seen that one?) and that worked for the film