This and that
So yesterday I ended up curled up on the couch watching movies with Sister Girl, for a change of pace: Burn After Reading and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus.
(First: yes, I heard, Fox has picked up Narnia. I am terrified. This is why. Also this.)
Anyway, Burn After Reading was interesting, in an "I'm glad I waited until DVD" kind of way--I don't know, it reminds me a lot of Fargo (hapless losers attempt crime, all hell breaks loose), but without sympathy for the characters (which is what made Fargo so gripping). I mean, right down to having a law enforcement figure kind of throw up his/her hands at the end and go, "What the hell? Why?" And maybe this is the difference between a drama and a comedy, I don't know (it's probably an unpopular opinion on my part as well). It probably would have been more difficult to actually get you to care about these people instead of just having them be wacky and have a great (black) comedy, but then, I like a challenge. I don't know--the only person I really felt for was Ted the gym manager, although I felt myself trying to feel empathy for Linda and her desperation for a surgical makeover, but... I just couldn't manage it, somehow. But oh, man--Ted, y'all. Good Lord.
Although, yes, Brad Pitt stole with the movie. I didn't like him as a person so much as I liked him as a character, though--he was an idiot, but he was a fun idiot. Unfortunately, I'd already heard what happened to him, so it wasn't much of a surprise.
Fur, meanwhile, was CRACKED OUT. It was also a lesson in not paying attention to reviewers, because things I'd heard in passing seemed to indicate that it was yet another lackluster also-ran biopic. Yeah... no. I couldn't even tell you if it was a good movie, but I would definitely recommend you give it a shot because it is CRACKED. OUT. As far as I can tell, the characterization of Arbus was based on Patricia Bosworth's Diane Arbus: A Biography, and then the movie put her in a made-up situation to fantasy-explain how she broke out of her '50s housewife blah blah blah to become an iconic photographer. I actually thought that Nicole Kidman was really good at portraying a very meek, sheltered, bottled-up woman who just absolutely could not deal with her richie-rich parents' world, and spent much of her time zoning out on people and staring at things, wishing she could photograph them. And then, pretty early on, Robert Downey Jr. shows up as a masked man who drops a key down the drain and--I'm not even going to tell you why he wears a mask. I don't even want you to know that much going in. Man. I kind of loved it, just the dreamy zonked-out craziness of it. Just--Netflix it or something.
(First: yes, I heard, Fox has picked up Narnia. I am terrified. This is why. Also this.)
Anyway, Burn After Reading was interesting, in an "I'm glad I waited until DVD" kind of way--I don't know, it reminds me a lot of Fargo (hapless losers attempt crime, all hell breaks loose), but without sympathy for the characters (which is what made Fargo so gripping). I mean, right down to having a law enforcement figure kind of throw up his/her hands at the end and go, "What the hell? Why?" And maybe this is the difference between a drama and a comedy, I don't know (it's probably an unpopular opinion on my part as well). It probably would have been more difficult to actually get you to care about these people instead of just having them be wacky and have a great (black) comedy, but then, I like a challenge. I don't know--the only person I really felt for was Ted the gym manager, although I felt myself trying to feel empathy for Linda and her desperation for a surgical makeover, but... I just couldn't manage it, somehow. But oh, man--Ted, y'all. Good Lord.
Although, yes, Brad Pitt stole with the movie. I didn't like him as a person so much as I liked him as a character, though--he was an idiot, but he was a fun idiot. Unfortunately, I'd already heard what happened to him, so it wasn't much of a surprise.
Fur, meanwhile, was CRACKED OUT. It was also a lesson in not paying attention to reviewers, because things I'd heard in passing seemed to indicate that it was yet another lackluster also-ran biopic. Yeah... no. I couldn't even tell you if it was a good movie, but I would definitely recommend you give it a shot because it is CRACKED. OUT. As far as I can tell, the characterization of Arbus was based on Patricia Bosworth's Diane Arbus: A Biography, and then the movie put her in a made-up situation to fantasy-explain how she broke out of her '50s housewife blah blah blah to become an iconic photographer. I actually thought that Nicole Kidman was really good at portraying a very meek, sheltered, bottled-up woman who just absolutely could not deal with her richie-rich parents' world, and spent much of her time zoning out on people and staring at things, wishing she could photograph them. And then, pretty early on, Robert Downey Jr. shows up as a masked man who drops a key down the drain and--I'm not even going to tell you why he wears a mask. I don't even want you to know that much going in. Man. I kind of loved it, just the dreamy zonked-out craziness of it. Just--Netflix it or something.