Eric S notapenguin's blog: "Movies and other reviews - most brief"

(Seen at Lincoln Center yesterday) and I feel more than a bit the picket-line-breaker, though there wasn't a physical picket line I crossed, for doing so. (There's a stagehands strike in NY City, but not one that affected Lincoln Center or the Manhattan Theater Club.) Anyhow, a couple of gripes- articulation was catch-as-catch-can sometimes and language also sometimes rushed through, and when Shakespeare's English is as close to being a second language as it is, this impedes understanding of a convoluted plot! However... and speaking of someone whose whole knowledge of this particular play, was that I read about a composer's incidental music for it (see http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/May03/Zemlinsky_Beaumont.htm, toward the end of that review) in a magazine some years back (and that Fanfare-magazine review is online but subscription access only, it seems.) I think the whole got across, the staging, acting (otherwise) and even for once the music were wonderful, a most enjoyable evening with a new-to-me Shakespeare play.

(By the way, the villain of the piece calls himself Fu, after the Chinese symbol...) Without trying to reveal much more of the plot than is already on the back cover, well, a serial killer in London is taking his victims, a fact the police only start putting together after they find the fourth and first white young boy- and the Scotland Yard higher-ups start panicking when they realize what the tabloids will do with this collection of pieces of information (never mind that none of the newspapers had seen that even what information they had showed a pattern, either). So Detectives Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers (regulars in this series, absent from one - maybe two? - of the novels in it I think...) find this case managed from the top in ways that ... do not help at all. They still seem to be on the trail of the killer when one of the worst and most painful "wrenches" the author has thrown in about a dozen books' worth of them... The book itself is wonderfully written as usual (and full of empathy for the characters, clever touches, the usual that brings me back to my favorite authors and makes me wonder as usual why I took quite awhile to get back to reading this series, not counting a really good adaptation last summer seen on TV) and I'm glad I read this too, not "despite" the saddening ending but - well, I know she's written one this year or at least since, and want to see where she's taken her characters next...

of Game Plan - (well, not extremely brief :) ) - it was very enjoyable, and while something of a genre comedy- not predictable. (Hrm, of a football-related - not exactly a football - film I want to say that it "threw curves"? Mixing metaphors, me? ...)

I've seen this before, half of it on TV, once in full but with passing attention. Now saw it with a friend but with almost full attention (and subtitled to help me catch the words... my hearing does not improve like a fine wine.) It's been quite awhile since I read all of (a prose translation of) the Odyssey, from which this film draws its inspiration; and less time but still awhile since I read even part of it. The relation of the movie to the original is very interesting... but then it manages in many ways, not just that one, to be, without being obscure or esoteric- a very deep film and very remarkable, I think... and I'll keep this brief for now and follow up some later time. I can see it becoming a strong favorite though, and I may want to see it again before I return it to the video rental on Monday.

Capsule summary for now :) -
on DVD this weekend and the days previously, saw some good films including:

• Breach (based on an account of a true story, of the capture of the spy Robert Hanssen in 2001)
• The Prestige (magicians in turn-of-the-19th-century London - though Colorado figures in - compete in an increasingly dangerous competition for secrets)
• Ma Vie en Rose (this I already mentioned - Belgian film about a pre-teen and his confusions about his gender and sexual identity, amidst family conflicts and other problems in 1997...)

(Might see Talk to Her tonight. I think there's an alternative but that does interest very much.)

I've seen the other two films but not read the books yet. For all three I can say very nicely-done, exciting, got past my usual resistance to suspense films of all kinds (including action films when the heat turns up) by making sure one could "tell the characters without a playbook" or however and that one cared what happened to enough of them... (As to the plot and the ending I say nothing, though I know it's been out for a bit now as a movie and rather longer as a novel.)

Very sleepy now (have been, did not sleep well or much) - but the film was really very good, fun and funny. I laughed often, and it was more than just a longer episode, I think... (well, some of the individual episodes have ... ok, I am not going to go down those tangents and I don't want to write a review so early that says too much, either.)

Just saw this (DVD). Described as a comedy- would not agree. But I did like it, strongly emotional, found it powerful really... family, abuse and relationships on a reservation in the late 20th century.

Cheery and cheering, a very good conclusion (?) to the trilogy. Was laughing my way out of the theater and tapping my feet.