A downtown Tacoma resident for 7 years and counting, Erik covers the arts, technology, and politics with a smattering of travel blogging thrown in. Email him at erikemery (at) gmail (dot) com.
I read (and loved) The Blind Side a few years ago. It's a great piece of sports writing with a great story in the middle of it. That story makes up the core of the movie adaptation.
And generally, the movie stays pretty true to what actually happened. The biggest change from the book, and the hardest for me to get past, is the focus on the adopting mother (Sandra Bullock) as opposed to Michael. This is like watching the story of Hamlet through Gertrude's eyes--the most interesting character is not the focus.
Even so, it's an affecting story and pretty well-served by the movie. If it makes you pick up the book, then by all means go see it!
I spent two evenings with Kevin Smith, actually. The two disc set has about 3 1/2 hours of Kevin Smith.
The DVD is a compilation of 5 Q&A sessions he did at universities around the country. They are funny, irreverent, interesting, full of penis jokes, and then sometimes really graphic. Pretty much your basic Kevin Smith movie. He has some wonderfully funny stories in there. His story about writing a draft for a never-to-be-made Superman movie in the mid-90s was great; as was his week of making a documentary for Prince that never went anywhere; and picketing his own movie was pretty good too. I'm not a Kevin Smith devotee, although I seem to be one of the few people who liked Jersey Girl. But it was still a good time.
"I can't believe it - a man at last," quipped Bacall, as she accepted an honorary Oscar over the weekend. "The thought that when I get home I'm going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting."
I read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca recently, which was adapted into the wonderful Hitchcock movie of the same name with Laurence Olivier. The book is from 1938 and holds up tolerably well. The narrator is twenty but for a long time she's as annoying as a 12 year old. She's a lot easier to take in movie form where you don't have to be inside her head.
But the book is still pretty good. There's definitely a few more plot twists and turns than in the movie.The biggest downside was the romance-novel-style cover. It's hard to take any book seriously with a cover like this. The last romance I read was a free Harlequin eBook I downloaded to my Kindle that was sponsored by the Paris Las Vegas. Before that it was probably the first two in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. And fortunately, none of those had billowing red satin (velvet?) on the cover.
Music Just discovered the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album. What an odd combination of musicians! And with a pretty great result. I've been listening to their cover of Gone Gone Gone by the Everly Brothers. Here's the Everly Brothers performing it. It's a really fun pop song, though in this case the highlight is definitely the dancers. Television Mary's been watching Weeds and whenever I drop in for a few episodes I've really liked it.I've been interested in Glee and FlashForward but have decided to save both for DVD. The only TV on DVD I've been watching is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is wonderful when it's on the mark and just so-so when it's off. For current TV, I'm on a diet of just How I Met Your Mother, The Office, 30 Rock, and The Simpsons pretty much. Looking forward to seeing Lost start up again. Oh, and I TiVo'd "V" last night. We'll see how that is. Theater I forgot to mention that The 39 Steps in Seattle was a lot of fun. A good comedy built around a Hitchcock movie with an absurd premise.Movies I can't believe I wasted a Netflix rental on Supergirl. Books I read Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol in about 24 hours, which is pretty common with his books. Like his others, it's high-octane, can't-put-it-down utter nonsense. Anyone with a passing knowledge of history or science can spot where he's twisted things to suit his facts. The science-y stuff is like a novelization of The Secret (which I didn't read) thrown in with a little Bible Code (which I did read). The book isn't as good as Angels & Demons, which is still Brown's best, I think. And John Adams, of course, which will get its own separate post later.
The Coen Brothers "A Serious Man" was some great filmmaking, though not up to their No Country For Old Men. It was funny and rather painful, but that has something to do with it being loosely based on the Book of Job.
It's an odd movie, to be sure, made more so by an entirely Yiddish opening and a very abrupt ending (that I did not see coming). But like any Coen Brothers movie, it's perfectly cast; that and the filmmaking are really wonderful. It opened at the Grand yesterday. Here's the preview. It pretty wells illustrates the oddity and the fun of the movie.
Some great modernist posters here. The Dark Knight is pretty great, especially how it alludes to Two-Face without showing him. And I really like Rain Man, Star Wars, and Ratatouille too.
Plus the Harry Potter covers are pretty great too. (via Andrew Sullivan)
When Mary's mom was in town this past weekend, we watched two old Hitchcock films: Shadow of a Doubt and Foreign Correspondent. I'd never seen either.
Both of these were made well before Hitchcock really hit the height of his talents, but each have all the same undercurrents of his future films. Shadow of a Doubt was just plain creepy. A character driven piece, it was a "psychological thriller" (or, as much of a thriller as a film can be from 1943). There are elements of future films--the sexual creepiness of Vertigo, the woman under cover, in danger, and with no place to turn (Notorious, Rebecca, North by Northwest). Foreign Correspondent had all the trademarks of his espionage films like North by Northwest and Notorious, with a MacGuffin driving the plot. There's some great setpieces in the movie, and with the exception of one long section that really dragged, I liked this movie a lot better than Shadow of a Doubt, which is much more highly regarded apparently.
“Dizzle” is one of those movies that film festivals were invented for. Too bizarre to ever see wide distribution it’s a gem of a film that expands minds even as it wallows in, well, the toilet.
The film starts with a stunning sequence of a message in a bottle making it’s way down from Snoqualmie Falls to the Seattle waterfront. Shot over many months in numerous locations, it’s an opener that even big budget films wouldn’t have the budget for. It’s obvious from the beginning that this film is a labor of love and dedication.
I forgot to write about this, but I wholeheartedly agree with Rosemary here. The worst part of "Dizzle" is its title. Everything else is pretty great. Thanks to the Grand for bringing it here.
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