Thumbnail Movie Review #2

Alain Chabat and Gael Garcia Bernal face off

So we made our annual pilgrimmage up to Austin to see a movie last weekend -- since San Marcos has outlawed legimate theaters within city limits -- last fall it was Capote, an excellent, albeit limited film featuring a star turn by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who immediately disappeared (though he apparently has several films coming out next year). This year, the Science of Sleep, written and directed by Michel Gondry, who also directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, an excellent film from two years ago but one which was co-written by Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. Got all that? It's important, because the barely cohesive wackiness that Kaufman brings to the table was exactly what was missing from this film, leaving us with a series of vignettes that almost seemed to loop back on themselves into a big, confusing mess.

That mess was pretty endearing, however. You really couldn't help root for Bernal, as well as the oddly attractive Charlotte Gainsbourg (who not only is, in fact, the daughter of Serge, but also shares my birthday). There is a recurring motif in the film where Bernal, who seems to exist at least 75% of the time in his own dreamworld, has a sort of homemade movie studio where he creates and "projects" his dreams. The idea, and the energy that Gondry and Bernal puff into it, is really what drives the film, even moreso than the love story with Gainsborg, which is somewhat conventional. I couldn't help wishing, however, that Kaufman or someone had come along and put that little extra bit of shine on the story so that it held together better.

The whole thing was made enormously more enjoyable by the fact that we saw it in the Alamo Drafthouse South, the theater was largely empty, and we were able to enjoy good food and beverages which came just as the movie started. Yet another of the strange and wonderful things that Austin manages to get right.

The Departed

Are you @$%$@-in' kiddin' me? Damon and Leonardo duke it out

Went and saw The Departed last night, since it'd probably be our last chance to do so before all the relatives arrive for the weekend and the World Series starts. My thumbnail review is that it was all right. Not nearly as tight or compelling as Infernal Affairs, the 2002 Hong Kong film it was based on. In that film, the focus was almost totally on the cat-and-mouse of the two moles, one deep undercover in an organized crime outfit, the other undercover in the police anti-crime unit. Since Infernal Affairs gave us a quick montage of the two officers going through academy and working their respective ways up over the course of 10 years (instead of just one year, in The Departed), this part seemed more believable and made the moral ambiguities of both moles a bit more poignant to watch. I'm assuming that Scorcese dispensed with this because a)he's working with young actors in the mole parts, and b) he wanted much of the film's focus to be on mob boss Nicholson, so spent his "foreground" time on that character.

But come on, now: a new guy who just got booted out of the police academy joins your squad, you find out there's a mole, and you're wondering who it is? Please. Conversely, the cops find out there's a mole, and they put a guy who's only been on the force for about a year in charge of finding him, giving him power to wire-tap/follow/spy on any of his superiors? Really? (Actually, I can almost believe this one...)

Bigger problem is the convoluted shrink/love interest subplot. Played by Vera Farmiga, this character was also attempted in the original, though not in the ill-advised, both leads somehow striking up a relationship with her way it is here.



Of course she's about ten times better looking than a police shrink has a right to be, but lacks the requisite gravitas to pull the character off. Total waste of time. Paltrow or somebody would have been better, but really, did the movie even need her? More to say, but time to head up for my 10am class...

The Move

It's been a couple weeks but I'm back... The move was more intensive and difficult and consuming than I thought -- and this is coming from someone who's moved at least a dozen times in the past five years. This morning I woke up in the dark to a house that had no lights -- except, thankfully, in the back bedroom. Moments of murderous bitterness at the thought of the coffee maker possibly not working. . . Yesterday, the landlord had stopped by with a handyman to work on a burnt-out light in the kitchen, and he succeeded in shorting a fuse that took out most of the lights in the house. Already, our fridge had gradually been getting warmer and warmer for some mysterious reason. Now it's little more than a box to keep stuff in. Supposedly that's getting fixed today.

Alas, the coffee maker did work. Sat down to a gross breakfast of lukewarm soymilk over cereal, a glass of warmish orange juice, and the life-saving coffee. Got ready for another exciting day of school...

Anger

Angered at giving up 17 straight points in racquetball, I reared back and kicked the plexiglass wall as hard as I could. There was an immediate shiver of pain, but I kept playing. Later, swimming, every kick caused a sharp, stiff sliver of pain in my foot, starting where the toes branch from the foot and running almost to my ankle. Later still, at home, the foot stiffened up so much that I could hardly bear to put weight on it, and the thought of walking upstairs was abhorrent to me. I stood in the kitchen feeling it ache, and it seemed to me that the force of the wall in response to my kick was slowly traveling up my foot. Already it had gone from my toes to the top of the foot and nearly into the ankle. I imagined it moving up my whole body, like mercury up a thermometer, till it burst out the top of my head.

Who's Running?

The dog, anticipating my coming into the room, was already curled up on the floor beside the sofa. The cat slithered up onto the sofa through the gap between the armrest and the cushion, mincing close to be petted.

* * *

Walking to the school rec center after class I thought I saw one of my students coming the other way. This made me dip my head and walk faster to avoid the inevitable encounter which, I imagined, would be awkward in this context. But it was not a student of mine; only a girl with the same color hair wearing the same school t-shirt.

* * *

Turn on the TV to the still powerful, awful image of the towers coming down, the billowing gray smoke, so thick it's liquid, the slow crumbling, the sudden collapse; then people in business suits running, glancing back at solid waves of smoky debris chasing them... But I don't want to hear the testimony or the commentary, so I turn it off.

* * *

Who's running? I am running in time. I am running on time. I am running from time. I pass by the brown-haired woman on the track once, twice, three times when she stops to stretch and tie shoes and get a drink from her water bottle. Another woman begins running, and I pass her easily at the sharp turn corner of the track, we are a clock, I have till noon to run when the car needs to be back. I want to pass the brown-haired woman one more time. I gain on her on the straightaways, measure the distance when a turn puts her in profile, do some rude figuring of her stride against mine. Another lap and I'd make it. But I get to the end of the lap and stop.

Two Dreams

#1 Saturday, Sept. 9: T. tells me that Q. wants to go to Yosemite. I feel guilty because there's not enough time left in our vacation to take him there (that's him, to the left of this text). Later Q. points to his right eye as if it's hurting him. I lean in close and hear, as if telepathically, "Yosemite." I have to apologize and explain to him that we're out of time...



#2 Sunday, September 10: I'm typing a letter to explain to the woman in charge how I could help out with marching band if need be, having played the drums in marching band years ago. But at the same time, they're having a meeting about it in a sort of outdoor amphitheater with raised seating, and the keys of the typewriter are also the seats where people are sitting. So I look back over the crowd as I'm typing the letter, and people sitting on the keys are shouting the letters at me: "I think this is 'A' over here," etc., and I have to look at them and think about where the letters are rather than just type with my fingers, and it's loud and slow. Finally I finish the letter and sign with the name "Michael."

Darwin<>TRUTH

At the traffic light on Sessums and LBJ, I'm forced to contemplate the object of my ire: a green Villager minivan that coasted to a stop just in front of me, so that I have to wait for the signal to change to make the right turn into the parking lot. There's a big soccer ball magnet on the left side of the hatch, the surface layer peeling at the edges and starting to come off. On the right, there's a small bumper sticker that advertises "Calvary Baptist Church, San Marcos," bright yellow letters on a friendly blue background. Further down on the right side: a chrome-plated, plastic fish with the word "Darwin" in it, being eaten by a bigger fish filled in with the word "TRUTH". An interesting salvo in the ongoing "ichthys" wars.

SUNDAY: Running back from the Baptist Academy this morning, many cars passed me on the long, hilly, winding road, on their way to the Sunday service. Finally having been conditioned by my rural neighbors, after many years of living in the city, I raised my hand at each oncoming car and made a friendly wave at the driver. Now, where I used to be the one taken by surprise by such gestures, often ignoring them or making some awkward, stammering reply at the last moment, I became strangely invested in whether the drivers returned my wave. Most did, but only in that baffled manner that suggested they never would have acknowledged me with a glance, let alone waved in return, if they had not been prompted by me. Others ignored me or, worse, looked but refused to wave, which struck me as an obscure affront, as if to say "Why are you out here, running, when I'm on my way to church?"

But then there were those who waved with an easy flip of the wrist, affirming somehow as a handshake, or a slap on the back.

* * *

Dinner at Manuel's: A blue t-shirt:
"b -wling
--cks"

-- a black shoulderstrap crinkling the front so you couldn't read whether it says "sucks" or "rocks." The guy wearing it's skinny, somewhat nerdy; hard to tell what his opinion would be, or whether it's supposed to be ironic, or what.

Oh my God...

I've been waiting for this date forever. She gets into the car. My right arm is strapped tightly to my side. She notices this, but doesn't say anything. I start the car and drive. We pull away from the curb and out into traffic. Oh, no. It's starting again. It's very difficult to make a left turn. I have to yank the wheel in 10-degree increments. She asks if she can help me. I smile and mutter under my breath: "No, that's all right, really..."

Tell me why I don't like Mondays

Actually it wasn't so bad. Woke up from a weird dream where I was moving back to or from San Francisco, somehow managed to be cheerful (as I made coffee, let the dog out, took out the cats' food), and was annoying/amusing Tina by singing the NPR music and imitating the announcers. "This is Corey Flintoff..."

Drove to school and parked, took my 8am class down to the Writing Center for a tour that was a little bit quicker than I had thought it would be, and then brought my class back and went through a list of approximately 50 statements. They were to raise their hands if the statement applied to them. This was an idea that Abby had, then Tina did it, and we came up with our own questions (which I modified further when I did it). Here were some of the highlights:

3. I have a younger and/or older sibling. (I mention this one because one student did not raise her hand, and when I said "Oh, you're an only child," she said that actually she had a twin brother.)

4. I have a family member currently serving in the military. (Strangely, the early class had many more of these than the later one. These included several stationed in Iraq.)

6. I love chocolate. (One student said she was allergic and breaks out in hives if she eats this. Which is really too bad.)

14. I watched the World Cup this summer. (Some students had absolutely no interest in this -- one called soccer "boring" -- but the ones who did, like me, were pretty rabid about it.)

17. I have a great roommate. (A lot of students reported being really happy with their roommates. Just wait till the first major stress test -- like midterms, folks' visit, or somebody dating a total loser.)

20. I know how to drive a standard. (Pretty basic, but led to a discussion of the VW van in Little Miss Sunshine, a great movie that we saw over the weekend.)

22. I am a vegetarian. (One student in the early class raised her hand, but said she eats chicken; one in the later class said she'd been a vegetarian for two months.)

30. I watch one of the following shows: Bridezilla, Project Runway, and Flavor of Love. (Should I be happy or alarmed that fresh-persons are amused by the same things I am?)

41. I think Tom Cruise is a weirdo. (I don't think most of them have lived in a world where he wasn't considered a little odd -- obviously he's gone off the deep end now.)

Blogging is Beautiful

So it's Sunday afternoon and I just took my dog down to the river for a bath and a little ball-chase. A bit shell-shocked and worn out from grading 40 or so Freshman comp papers (that's right, kids). Still more work to do before (and after) dinner. But I just came across this story on Yahoo.com about how folks are making lots of money from their blogs. Check it out. This is to show you that blogging is not just for crackpots and computer nerds. Some of these people are making serious coin.

Meanwhile, here's a site to help you with common errors in English. It's pretty comprehensive, and probably more than most people need to look at. But there are links to just about every problem that I marked in student papers from the 1st class essay.