Author Archives: Duff

Big Screen: Somewhere

Posted on by
Reply

I really (REALLY) liked this movie. I thought it was beautifully filmed and acted and got its point across really poignantly.

And then I got in the elevator with a ton of people who were in the same theater as me and they all HATED it.

Yes, it is really REALLY, I mean REALLY, slowly paced. One might call it glacially so. There were a couple times when I did find myself wondering “So is the camera (and the actors in the scene as well!) not going to move for an entire….song? Should I be watching the edges, is someone going to jump into the frame?” But hello, it’s Sofia Coppola, what are you expecting? This isn’t a Michael Bay film.

The film stock is all faded and dusty and super vignettey around the edges — I kept wondering if they had to treat it to achieve that effect or if they found some boxes of film that expired in the ’70s in an old warehouse and used that — and it just serves to reinforce the point.

Remember that horrific (not that I saw it and I certainly hope you didn’t see it) movie my former boyfriend Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck made last year about the disintegration of celebrity and how empty and shallow that life is? Yeah, this film tells that story in a very different (and actually artistic) way. All the booze and drugs and access to ladies doesn’t make for a LIFE.

Also the ending is completely open-ended, you have to decide how you’re going to take it, and where you think he is.

Stephen Dorff is surprisingly great. (Not in that I thought he was bad previously but in that he’s never been on my radar as someone particularly good.)

Big Screen: Fair Game

Posted on by
Reply

Really depressing because it’s all true. Everyone knew there were no WMDS; Bush et his cronies just did not want to hear that and got rid of anyone who insisted on telling them that. Everyone that NEEDS to see this (and to see all this blatantly shown) is exactly the everyone that would never go to this movie anyway. Which is sad.

This was pretty powerfully done, good performances all around (Sam Shepherd has just a bit role but totally nails it, of course).

I also really liked that they included clips of the real Plame in the credits.

But I never quite believed them as a couple. It seemed like they styled Penn older than he is and Watts younger than she is or should be for the role (esp after seeing Plame in the credits) and it annoyed me a little. (Not that I didn’t think they were both v. good, I just occasionally had a “I’m not really believing them as a couple” moment.)

Note that my fellow moviegoer completely disagreed with me, loved their chemistry and loved the movie.

Two Ladies with Good Ears

Posted on by
Reply

Isn’t it just hilarious that I haven’t written about music almost all year (obviously posting on the whole has been down) and yet all week I’ve been working on a 2010 favorites post? While you breathlessly await that one, why not go see what two of my favorite music bloggers had to say.

Heather’s 2010 Favorites (I Am Fuel, You Are Friends)

Beckie’s 2010 Favorites (Movies of Myself)

Some stuff I also love…some stuff I now need to go seek out. That’s what the best music writing should do.

À la Nick Hornby, books in/books out for December.

Posted on by
Reply

Bought:

  • Vampire Academy 5: Spirit Bound, by Richelle Mead (iphone/Kindle)
  • Vampire Academy 6: Last Sacrifice, by Richelle Mead (iphone/Kindle)

Read:
  • The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary E. Pearson (borrowed from Natalie’s classroom)
  • Halo, by Alexandra Adornetto (gift)
  • Worth Dying For: A Reacher Novel, by Lee Child (iphone/Kindle)
  • The Dead-Tossed Waves, by Carrie Ryan (gift)
  • Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (library)
  • Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead (electronic)
  • The Tell-Tale Horse, by Rita Mae Brown (library)
  • Hounded to Death, by Rita Mae Brown (library)
  • Vampire Academy 2: Frostbite, by Richelle Mead (electronic)
  • Vampire Academy 3: Shadow Kiss, by Richelle Mead (electronic)
  • King Hereafter, by Dorothy Dunnett (re-read)
  • Vampire Academy 4: Blood Promise, by Richelle Mead (electronic)
  • Vampire Academy 5: Spirit Bound, by Richelle Mead (iphone/Kindle)
  • Vampire Academy 6: Last Sacrifice, by Richelle Mead (iphone/Kindle)
  • The Girls with Games of Blood, by Alex Bledsoe (library)

Big Screen: Rare Exports

Posted on by
Reply

This movie will definitely be in my top 5 for the year.

It’s called Rare Exports. It’s Finnish. It’s about Christmas. Fantastic writing, fantastic acting, fantastic directing. A fairytale that you would never predict or expect.

It opens in Chicago Christmas Eve at the Music Box. I believe it opens in NYC then as well. I hope word of mouth gets the film to more cities and more theaters because it is such a wonderful experience.

It is a piece of wildly creative, truly inventive, FANTASTIC filmmaking.

Thumbs up to the uppest of possible degrees.

Mystery/Fiction: Faithful Place, by Tana French

Posted on by
Reply

Gifted!! The third book in the (loosely connected) series by French that began with In the Woods and The Likeness.

I was worried I wouldn’t like this book as much; a number of friends read it earlier than me and the reception seemed a bit so-so.

Well, I had nothing to worry about. I loved this book; in fact, it MAY be my favorite of the three. It dips into Frank’s past and the current him gets confronted by the biggest mystery (and heartache) of the younger him. Rosie, his daughter, and really all the members of his family, are so richly drawn. I felt all caught up in their love affairs and their fights and those bitter things we can never take back. Frank was a bit of a cold fish in his earlier appearances in the other books, but you can see inside him here, through his many layers of self protection.

I love mystery and I love fiction but I super extra big time love when they come together in this world of deeper, thicker mystery fiction. Tana French can do no wrong!

Apparently her fourth book will also have a similarly loose connection, following Scorcher Kennedy, who drove me bananas in this book! I can’t wait to read a book from his point of view and come to love him just as I did Frank.

Here’s a cool interview where, among other things, French touches on that idea of moving up above that genre fiction labeling: More and more crime writers are rebelling against that, and I’d love to be a small part of the force that finally crumbles that ridiculous imaginary barrier.

Fantasy: Curse of the Wolf Girl, by Martin Millar

Posted on by
Reply

The sequel to Lonely Werewolf Girl. I was So! Excited! when I randomly ran across this! YAY MORE KALIX!!!

I will say, though, that the beginning felt very stiff to me and if I owned the previous book, instead of having read it from the library, I would have gone back to see if that one felt that way as well. But then the story picked up and sucked me back in. And ultimately I really loved it. There are so many hilarious relationships in these books and so many miscommunications. Oh, Kalix.

These are fantasy + werewolves + lots of humor. They’re a cut above your typical werewolf genre fiction.

Fiction: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

Posted on by
Reply

A gift!

So you know how David Mitchell’s first few books were all told from multiple (and in some cases MANY) points of view, alternating by chapter, sometimes showing you different viewpoints of the same event, sometimes unconnected? And then he came out with Black Swan Green, from just one viewpoint, which is honestly such a tour de force book, it’s breathtaking? (You can search for it on this page to read my brief thoughts at the time.)

So I started this book, and it kept going from chapter to chapter in Jacob’s viewpoint and, while obviously well written, there was a point at which I thought “You know, I’m really not sure I can make it through an entire book in Jacob’s voice, I just don’t know that I can…” And suddenly: it wasn’t his voice anymore!! Much fewer viewpoints than some of his early books, each viewpoint is in a much longer stretch of the novel, and the interlockings are very clear. And the voices he chooses are so the right ones, and I’m always amazed how he can write both women and men and make them sound right (and he’s also, in this case, writing Dutch AND Japanese and some Brits as well).

The beginning dragged for me a bit, and I did have to make a chart of the characters early on (so many Japanese names to keep track of!) but oh! oh, the ending! The ending really won me over. It’ll never be my favorite of his books. But it was SO worth reading.