For the long weekend I went away to Jenner once again. Actually I have gone for each of the past two weekends. Last week was cold and overcast, but this week saw perfect weather. I didn’t let that stop me though, and saw through on my endless plan to stay inside and do nothing.
The thing about Jenner is that, even when it is nice and you stay inside, it is still really pleasant. peaceful is really the right word. Just quiet and relaxing. I made some ribs on Saturday that were knock your socks off, as per instructions, and on Sunday I made a Hawaiian style tuna dish with stir fried vegetables. It was great.
Over the weekend I finally got to see Brokeback Mountain. It was fine, but nothing really special. It was pretty much as I expected. Ang Lee has made another visually stunning movie, but I thought that the script, and acting for that matter, left something to be desired. It was a little boring and hokey. I thought it could have been edited a little tighter, but that is basically true of most films I have recently seen. It was even true of Crash, which I also saw in the last week. This was apparently less in need of editing, but I mainly thought the movie would have been a little better with one or two fewer plot lines. I though that it could have developed the other areas better and left out a couple of the stories. Pretty good though. It was a bit heavy handed, but I guess it was supposed to be.
I also saw the original Spanish version of Vanilla Sky, Open Your Eyes (except in Spanish, which I can remember right now). It was practically as boring as the remake, but not quite. Maybe if I didn’t know what was going on, it would have been more interesting. This sort of thing really suffers on repeat viewings.
Also in the news: In a possible sympathetic reaction to the earthquake in Indonesia, my parent’s dog almost died. He was saved by intervention from the international community in the form of veterinary surgeons. Sadly, many in Indonesia weren’t as lucky. I first heard of this today because I was out of communication for the whole weekend. What is up in Indonesia? Didn’t they suffer enough with that damned tsunami? That sucks.
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I saw Crash before the Academy Awards were held. I thought Crash was one of the worst movies made in the last 5 years. I do not need sociology lessons by way of film viewing!
Haven’t yet seen Crash, so I won’t comment on whether/how much of a sociology lesson it involves. Except to say that I never quite understand why “sociology” became shorthand for social critique sermonizing. Oh wait, yes I do. Neb’ mind…
Re: Brokeback. I think some of your critique might point to the fact that it was based on a short story and, well, one can only do so much and not start just making shit up.
Re: Abre los Ojos. I went away from it thinking — wait, didn’t I see a better version of basically the same issue in Memento?
i thought “crash,” was way too melodramatic to the point of being silly. therefore, i was unable to believe the story arc or charactor development and became defensive as i started to predict the characters and plot lines. i was more right than wrong by a long shot in each case. the movie pulled “heartstrings” and was PC so it won.
i read “brokeback mountain,” when annie proulx, first came out with her anthology, “close range.” proulx, is very strong when writing about a subject she knows (as with any author) ie. “shipping news”, however her true understanding of wyoming and the high plain culture was more small chats with people than living for many years and drawing a conclusion based on long and understood values and peer group pressure. . she wrote about wyoming like a east coast female intellectual would and resolved all the conflicts in the stories with the same set of value judgments which would be fine if the characters were the same set of people that she knew. if you ever see the dvd again think about reactions of the protagonists and how they view the world. is it male, western” or is it female east coast?
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