Ah, yesss…
So, last night my boss, may he be praised and venerated, gave me a lift to Scott Road Station, which was the only thing which allowed me to arrive in Victoria at a decent time. Then I immediately cracked open beer and watched 28 Days. I had heard a great deal about this movie from one of my beloved coworkers, a guy who only gets animated when he’s talking about what happened to him before he turned 18 and movies. Anyway, I really liked the movie, except the parts where I had to put my head into my own armpit, and Cillian Murphy is one neotenous looking dude. If you want a scary, unstoppable image stuck into your skullfat… picture him and Bjork having babies. Zar.
There are so many brilliant moments in 28 Days that it’s hard to line them all out. I know I won’t buy it, but I will definitely watch it again. Script, cinematography, casting, MUSIC, editing, all great. Plot holes like a screen door in a submarine (just like Patricia told me when it was first released), but o well. You don’t want zombie movies to be too realistic, that’s part of their charm. They are fairy tales for adults where, even though things turn out badly, you’re still alive at the end.
And so to bed, where I holed up with Sarah Dunant’s In The Company of the Courtesan that’s bopping around the best-seller lists lately. As a Dunnetteer, I have to read this stuff. Well, it’s set in Venice in 1527 – 1528, during and after the sack of Rome by the combined German/Spanish forces.
The Romans, like the feckless duckwits that they were at the time, all riddled with corruption and internal factions and lacking army, intelligent leadership and anything like planning, shot the leader of the incoming army dead in the first moments of the battle. You know how leaderless armies who haven’t been paid in weeks react when they have an undefended, unimaginably wealthy city in prospect, and when half the incoming army is motivated by intense hatred of the tenants’ religion – Papism…. Yeah, it was not pretty, and a lot of folks got put to the sword. First thing that happens to Our Heroine – an intelligent and energetic young woman – is having her hair cut off with violence by the army’s Calvinist campfollowers. Way to spend a Sunday. The story is recounted by her dwarven servant and in the voice of the omniscient author, alternating. (I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t get to say dwarven servant in public very often).
Woke up and lay in bed and read some more until 9:30ish, when I stirred my stumps and by our unspoken agreement cooked a somewhat low key repast. The coffee was amazing. I had three cups.
Then we went through the PILE, and there’s always a bloody pile around here, of Films in Prospect. I picked Ghost Dog out because it was a Jarmusch film – I find him consistently interesting and watchable – and settled in with the movie from the first frame. Forest Whitaker was mesmerizing. Once again, script, music, casting, all uniformly excellent, and I closely followed the excerpts from the Way of the Samurai, which I now wish to read. This is a buy and hold, in my opinion.
Then to phone my mother and tell her, “I’m having TOO MUCH FUN. See you whenever.” You can do this when you are 48. Then a shower, and a walk perhaps, and then a renewed attack on the dreaded pile of celluloid.
There are explosions coming from the living room. What is that man blowing up now? (later) No harm done, he’s just flying an ME 2somethingerother in the leaden skies over a European city. And blowing pixels up.
