Tuesday
Revenge of the Interpreter............. (sorry)
In the last two days I've seen Revenge of the Sith and The Interpreter. Some thoughts on each, without me being particularly careful about SPOILERS:
New York looked great in the interpreter, not quite as good as Nicole though. Has anyone figured out where her apartment was? I kept trying to get my bearings and failing. The only time I knew exactly where they were, other than an at the UN, was when she was having her Vespa fixed. I used to live right near that garage. Most contrived moment: Kidman's Silvia leaves blood on her face for a really long time for no imaginable reason other than to set up a touching moment in which Tobin Keller (Penn) cleans the blood off her face. When the medical personnel checked her for wounds (not shown, but absurd to think they didn't in that scenario), they would have had to clean other people's blood off of her face as well. The political message(s) were fine, didn't really get in the way of the plot. Penn's character was a less interesting version of Kevin Bacon's Mystic River character, and I'm neutral about Bacon's character from that. The theme about the proper way to greive/mourn/pay tribute to/ forget the dead is the most interesting thing going on, but the film is quite ambivalent about it (perhaps rightly so for such a complex topic). For instance, the characters have implicitly repudiated tribal wisdom of, "We don't say the names of the dead," by the end of the film, though it's not clear they realize they have. But the logic beyond repudiating that also calls into question Silvia's choice about shooting the dictator, Zuwanie. That theme and a pretty, possibly overly pretty, New York are the positive takeaways from the film.
Having written too much there, I'll be brief on Sith: The dialogue is still truly terrible, but doesn't manage to drag down a lot of the more adrenaline pumping parts. It's nice to have closure on the films as well. Is Yoda's line about Qui-Gon just meant to explain Episode IV's "If you strike me down I'll become more powerful than you can imagine?" If so, it's not that great an explanation, I have to say. It'll do in a pinch. Or is the more background on that line in the extra-cinematic canon? Padme's, "You're breaking my heart!" reminds me of a great line from the Robot Devil on Futurama. "Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry!" Also, Anakin's, "From my point of view, you're evil." Just infuriating.
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New York looked great in the interpreter, not quite as good as Nicole though. Has anyone figured out where her apartment was? I kept trying to get my bearings and failing. The only time I knew exactly where they were, other than an at the UN, was when she was having her Vespa fixed. I used to live right near that garage. Most contrived moment: Kidman's Silvia leaves blood on her face for a really long time for no imaginable reason other than to set up a touching moment in which Tobin Keller (Penn) cleans the blood off her face. When the medical personnel checked her for wounds (not shown, but absurd to think they didn't in that scenario), they would have had to clean other people's blood off of her face as well. The political message(s) were fine, didn't really get in the way of the plot. Penn's character was a less interesting version of Kevin Bacon's Mystic River character, and I'm neutral about Bacon's character from that. The theme about the proper way to greive/mourn/pay tribute to/ forget the dead is the most interesting thing going on, but the film is quite ambivalent about it (perhaps rightly so for such a complex topic). For instance, the characters have implicitly repudiated tribal wisdom of, "We don't say the names of the dead," by the end of the film, though it's not clear they realize they have. But the logic beyond repudiating that also calls into question Silvia's choice about shooting the dictator, Zuwanie. That theme and a pretty, possibly overly pretty, New York are the positive takeaways from the film.
Having written too much there, I'll be brief on Sith: The dialogue is still truly terrible, but doesn't manage to drag down a lot of the more adrenaline pumping parts. It's nice to have closure on the films as well. Is Yoda's line about Qui-Gon just meant to explain Episode IV's "If you strike me down I'll become more powerful than you can imagine?" If so, it's not that great an explanation, I have to say. It'll do in a pinch. Or is the more background on that line in the extra-cinematic canon? Padme's, "You're breaking my heart!" reminds me of a great line from the Robot Devil on Futurama. "Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry!" Also, Anakin's, "From my point of view, you're evil." Just infuriating.
