Sunday, May 29, 2005

Movies: Crash and Sideways, Neverland, Aviator

Dragon Mood? -- amazed at S

Friday night, S and I finally left our little house in the pine forest and went to see a movie. We chose Crash over the Star Wars Sith whatever-it-is movie; I would still like to see that one on the big screen.

We both thoroughly enjoyed Crash. It's a Pulp Fiction-like movie with multiple stories, chronologically shuffled around (there's that time thing going again) and multiple sets of characters who appear to crash into one another's lives with randomness and suddenness. The other major theme of the movie is prejudice, stereotypes and mis-assumptions about what other people are thinking and doing. It's extremely well done and I highly recommend it. You don't need the big screen to see this one; however, I'm glad that we did. Whoever the director of photography or cinematography was, they did a great job. There are numerous scenes with these very dreamy lead-ins (I'm specifically thinking of the car lights on the freeway images). There are images in my mind from the movie that felt artistic and yet edgy. I just liked how the film was shot -- its look, you know?

Last night, S voted for DVDs so we rented three: Sideways, The Aviator and Finding Neverland (I think that's the title). We watched Sideways.

[the sunlight is encroaching on my screen -- gotta take a sun break -- post more later]

[now mid-morning Monday] Hello, again. Just to finish off this post about movies, S and I watched Finding Neverland (Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie) and The Aviator (Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, John C. Reilly). I really liked Finding Neverland because it's all about imagination.

The Aviator was big and bold but it never really pulled me in. Probably the closest it came was one or two of the dialogues between Howard Hughes and Katherine Hepburn ("We're not like them; we're all these acute angles ... and we'll end up looking like freaks." -- or something along those lines).

Of the four I saw this weekend, I'd pick Crash as the best of the lot.

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