Tuesday, February 19, 2008

developments


Post Brooklyn hipster haircut, I have a new celebrity doppelganger! We are not quite twins, as she is a blonde. (Also she is a mother and grieving ex-girlfriend and she's probably taller too.)

I'm finally catching my breath a bit having hosted 3 friends over the last 2 weekends and celebrated a V-Day and an anniversary. The last included good food and a trip to the Natural History museum where we had the following conversation:

E: How did they figure out what the speed of light is again?
B: I don't know. It must say here somewhere ...
E: (after fruitless searching) That's okay. I'll just go home and look it up on Wikipedia!

I also rounded out my viewing of the Best Picture contenders. I enjoyed and appreciated There Will Be Blood, which I thought was on a par with, and eerily similar to, the Coens' No Country For Old Men. Mysterious American monsters! The untamed West! The pointlessness of everything! Search for money, search for god, search for justice -- it all comes out in the wash. TWBB was less scary, more grim, and made me laugh out loud at points, while NCFOLM was concise and terse. Neither passed the Ms. test but both were interesting and intelligent enough that I didn't really mind.

Still, for my money the best movie of 2007 was 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, which brilliantly captured life under a fascist regime that renders the smallest personal decisions needless complex and potentially life-threatening. If only the Academy, not to mention public opinion, didn't value men killing each other over women doing anything.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

what, no love for "lars and the real girl"? i don't know about best movie of 2007 (i never do very well with those types of categories, as i'm as likely to nominate a vampire movie as anything actually good), but i have to say, it was one of the better things i've seen in recent months.

ester said...

actually i missed that one. it's on my netflix queue for, you know, when it emerges on dvd.

i am excited that nancy oliver, its screenwriter, is nominated for an oscar, which means that three of the five nominees are lady writers! they must all have rooms of their own or something.

K. Ross Hoffman said...

agreed that 432 was amazing (and i love calling it that.) i've finally let myself convince myself (?) that i should see TWBB, though your comments confirm my earlier fears about it being like NC4OM.

the coens seemed kind of obnoxiously nonchalant getting their oscars, though i don't know what that should be obnoxious necessarily.