[ Posted by kevin Thu, 09 Feb 2006 15:40:25 GMT ]
The web was supposed to be the push button publishing revolution, but most movie reviewers suck. What gives?
Finally, I’ve found a guy that sounds very promising – http://themovieboy.com.
I’m particularly interested in his 2005’s best and worse – just added a bunch of movies to my blockbuster queue and will let you know! :)
Technorati Tags: movies
[ Posted by kevin Thu, 09 Feb 2006 14:37:05 GMT ]
After seeing this movie again yesterday, I agree with my wife’s review last week that luck plays an important role.
He is very lucky. He gets offered the free, high paying job where he has no work to do, and the beautiful scene with the ring flying through the air shows how he gets away with the murder by sheer luck. The point that Woody Allen’s use of the luck theme is trying to make I think is that he doesn’t seem to know what he wants, and luck pushes him through life. I can’t understand why luck is used so many times. He really pounds this theme into it, and I don’t think it fits that well. Luck is emotionally distant itself, which just adds to the coldness of this film. That’s what I find beautiful about it though, as I’ve always been a sucker for tragedies – the coldness is almost more tragic than the murder.
That’s not entirely true – once he meets Nico, he realizes “I want you!” And that passion becomes his object through the veil of his ordinary life. When he is with her, pursuing her, he is happy because he is doing something he wants, rather than something given to him or that he was particularly lucky for.
The tragedy, of course, is that he is driven to kill the one thing he wanted. How did this come about? Things got complicated. This led me to contemplate why anyone would ever have an extra marital affair – this had been lurking in the back of my head since the Kinsey movie when they said it was quite common. Why invest time and emotions in a new relationship instead of working on your existing one?
Why wasn’t he in love with his wife? Things were too easy. I see him as being trapped up in the web of the rich girl that can get what she wants. She wants him, and he wants Nico. I think he might have been barely strong enough to break out of the web, if only Nico and his friend would have broken off their engagement before he got married. The thing is, everyone wants money, and most people are willing to sacrifice all sorts of things to get it. Until not that long ago, marriages were always ones of political power and material wealth. That it’s tragic that he doesn’t marry for love is a throwback to that almost-more-normal style of marriage. One argument goes that if you’re not going to have sex after the first few years anyways, you may at least be comfortable. I can’t even decide if Chris believed in love at all. His line when speaking to his friend “perhaps this is finally the difference between love and lust,” is confusing, because which is which? Can he really be saying he loves his wife? I got more of the hints that their relationship could be okay (going to galleries together can be very romantic, etc) the second time watching, but I think the truth is that he is so emotionally distant the only satisfaction he derives from either relationship is the thrill of the conquest. It’s a very divine question, conquering someone’s free will, and making them your lover.
For someone who doesn’t know what he wants, Chris is very ambitious. A murder like that … is a very difficult thing. He said “it was hard, but when the time came, I could pull the trigger.” which speaks of a certain emotional blankness as well. The use of characters sitting up in the middle of the night (“I know he did it!”) is very well used here. Chris wakes up, and we all realize that he’s going to kill one of his lovers.
The use of Dostoevsky (that he was shown reading earlier in the movie) fits in well here, and as he said “it would be fitting if I were caught and punished” – but he is not. Luck saves him. What is Woody Allen trying to say? I can’t help but wonder what elements in his past went into the making of this movie. Despite Dostoevsky’s roots as one of the forefathers of existentialism, I think Allen is trying to take a more Camu like “Nothing has meaning” approach. Luck doesn’t choose sides based on moral integrity. It is this philosophical integration that made this good movie a great movie for me.
In terms of directing, at over two hours, this movie still moves very fast. His cuts between scenes I found brilliant – one minute we would be seeing him have sex with his lover, the next eating breakfast with his wife while she tests whether he is paying attention by telling him “a whole new planet was discovered yesterday!” It’s easy to wander through life, and I see this movie as a cautionary tale at the same time as a philosophical drama. Are you paying attention to where your life is going?
Technorati Tags: movies, match point
[ Posted by kevin Wed, 29 Jun 2005 16:53:01 GMT ]
Last year I decided it was time to ‘get professional’.
For me, that meant buying a bunch of books on usability and studying ‘experts’ and the big web sites like amazon, etc.
Short rant: I hate amazon’s design. It’s always been hideous. The new one is a bit better, at least they realized having 300 tabs was confusing. But now there’s none! And they advertise movies + free shipping on their front page instead of books, talk about losing your perspective.
So I read ‘don’t make me think’, and several other good books. I’ve learned a lot. I think I’m pretty good at it.
Except now, when I design something, it seems like there’s one ‘right way’. I’ve gotten used to this using a programming language ‘ruby’, where we refer to it as the ‘Ruby way’. But design is supposed to be a creative and artistic process. Now making things simple enough seems to lead to one specific design that I like, but I don’t think is flashy or pretty enough. But I can’t change anything, because that would break my usability guidelines.
I’m looking forward to hopefully hiring someone in Pittsburgh to help with the design process. Except now that I’ve read all these books, I’m going to know way more than them. Hopefully it will work out, I really need someone to bounce ideas off, and to come up with creative color schemes and layouts themselves.
I’ve never been an amazing programmer, but now I’m not a good designer either! Uggh, this is progress?
[ Posted by kevin Mon, 06 Jun 2005 18:37:22 GMT ]
Some friends of mine got married on Saturday, and I was surprised to hear them quoting some nice sections of this.
There are some great messages in this book involving how lovers need to stay separate people. I’ve always hated the whole ‘two becoming one’ idea of marriage. You fell in love with each other separately – if you both lose your ‘identity’, neither will still be in love anymore.
Anyway, lots of the ‘reed standing alone in the wind’ sort of feelings, which fits into the Ayn Rand philosophy I’ve been following some over the last year or two.
Self-love starts with selfishness!
