Mokka mit Schlag » Movies

Fowler’s Toad, Bufo woodhousii fowleri
Robert Moses State Park, 2007-07-07

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Sunday Beth and I watched Radiant City at two Boots Pioneer Theatre in Manhattan. (Short review: great movie: go see it if you have the chance, or, more likely, wait for it to show up on PBS at 3:00 one morning).

The tech left something to be desired though. The projectionist missed the cut between reels once. That could happen anywhere, but one weirder thing I noticed was that every three or four minutes, a pattern of dots that looked a little like braille would flicker briefly onto the screen. E.g. something like this:

* *
* *
*

The exact pattern seemed to vary from occurrence to occurrence, though they flashed by so fast I couldn’t be sure. The pattern seemed to consist of three or maybe four rows of one to two dots each. (I worked as a projectionist one year back in college so I’m a little more sensitive to these things than most people are.)

Is this maybe a watermark being inserted into the film to track videotaping? I’m not sure how many people noticed it, but it certainly wasn’t inobvious. I wasn’t certain I’d seen it the first time it flashed by, but once I was attuned to it, it became obvious. It does seem strange that this would show up in a small independent semi-0documentary like Radiant City though.

Yesterday afternoon after visiting my accountant (tax time, you know) I stopped over at FIAF for the Tuesday afternoon movie. It usually doesn’t matter a great deal what’s playing. It’s mostly just about practicing French, but boy did this one test me. If I didn’t have another event at 7:30 I might have left early. Apparently Eric Rohmer is not the only nouvelle vague director que je deteste. The poor sound quality in the print we watched didn’t help either. It’s hard enough to follow French without having to strain to hear every word.

I wasn’t the only one who felt this way either. At least a third of the audience, most of whom speak much better French than I ever will, had left by the end of the film. That the audience is almost entirely composed of FIAF members who get free admission may contribute to that. Mostly it’s Francophone senior citizens who show up no matter what’s playing. Usually one or two people leave early, but I’ve never seen an exodus like yesterday before.

Still, I can’t help but think there was something more going on that I (and most of the audience) just didn’t get. The Don Quixote theme was apparent, but there were lots of hints of other things. I suspect this may be a deeply symbolic movie, but if you’re not clued into to the symbolism, it’s just flat-out incomprehensible. I’ve googled a little looking for further info, without a lot of success so far. Does anyone understand this picture?

Yesterday Beth and I went to see Little Miss Sunshine. Wow! This is the single funniest movie I’ve seen in years. It’s up there with South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut; Clerks; and There’s Something About Mary. (It’s completely different from those movies, and never goes for the silly, teenage, gross-out humor those three are known for. It’s just that those are the only other movies I can think of where I laughed so hard tears were rolling out of my eyes.) If there’s any justice in Hollywood, Little Miss Sunshine will win the Best Picture Oscar in a landslide, along with every acting and writing award there is. There hasn’t been a comedy this good in a really long, long time. It is simply perfect. Don’t wait for the video release. Go see this movie now.

Beth and I went to see Casanova Saturday. It was quite an amusing movie, much better than expected. Part of the fun was just seeing Venice, which we’d recently visited. Venice is a very unique city, and it was fun to sit in the relatively empty theatre and nudge here and say “We were there!”, “Remember that?” The city really is beautiful, and the movie shows it to best advantage. If you get a chance to see it on the big screen, by all means do.
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The Guardian explains how copy protecttion is now even befuddling and bedeviling wealthy movie producers. When are people going to realize this stuff is more trouble than it’s worth? It’s not like I can’t go out onto the streets of New York City right now and find a pirated copy of Munich. Copy protection only hurts the honest, who in this case include people who might have otherwise voted for a Munich for a BAFTA award.