As you know, Luc Besson is a talentless hack. He did, however, make one really fun movie, and it looks like he might be putting out a second.
Take note, film makers, any movie whose trailer kicks off with a Tintin reference is pretty much guaranteed to take in some of my hard-earned Yankee dollars.
Some of you may remember that when living in Brooklyn I took a rather dim view of anti-hipster backlash, because the obvious alternatives were much, much worse. Furthermore, as the comic that kicks that post off demonstrates, sometimes hipsters do things that are actually pretty cool.
So a cool thing that some hipsters did last weekend (and will be doing again next weekend, if you live here in town) was perform the Star Trek classic “Amok Time” in a park in Northeast Portland. I went with some degree of incredulity, but left totally floored. I looked around around for web presence, but they don’t seem to have any, and all the press is too busy pretending not to be nerds to convey how great it is. Instead, here are a couple of clips from my tiny camera that will hopefully give you some inkling of the greatness.
The nice thing about wheel throwing vs. hand building is that you can make charming functional objects with speed and (some degree of) elegance. Unless you become obsessed with making teeny necks for all of your vessels, rendering them pretty useless. That seems to be my plan. They’re a spirited lot, I can say as much.
“It looks so nice outside,” they said. “Let’s go play.”
“Oh, that’s so much better, ya.”
Spring is not so very promising as it is the thing that looking back was fire, promising: ignition, aspiration; it was not under my thumb. --Rachel Zucker, from "Diary [Surface]"
Spring in Portland is a thing to behold. Some days the changes in sky come by the minute, certainly too quick to attune one’s mood to (unless your mood is equally changeable, I guess, in which case you should really consider migrating here). Before everyone had their personal soundtracks white-budding in their ears as they wandered through the city, we had to rely on things like the sky to invest our otherwise mundane moments with scope and gravitas. That, at least, is what I was mulling over while I sat in The Half and Half, enjoying a piece of pie and coffee with cinnamon & (obviously) half and half.
Spring break started off strongly — Ch., a friend of jmags & co., came for a second visit, this one filled with drizzly walks, roller skating (more, I know), and speed scrabble. Last Sunday, after Ch. — possibly the most accommodating house guest ever — slipped out quietly to head back to NYC, I found myself in the most inexplicably cranky mood. Although we’d planned to stay in for the day, jmags suggested we go out and about, and it ended up being just the thing.
Well, I should back up. “Inexplicably” is not quite right — I can pin it down, a little, to a phenomenon I’ve experienced at the beginning of open stretches of time, like the beginning of Summer Break last year: I get so excited by the many possible way I might spend my time that I end up paralyzed and manic. It’s so dumb. And, in my defense, after that first day, I have been both productive and fairly relaxed.
But back to last Sunday: books always help, and jmags knows this, so we went to Powell’s. I selected another Murakami & a replacement copy of Rebecca, one of the first grown-up books I read — I think I was about 9 or 10. But! I also picked up several books about clay, the best of which you can see taking up precious real estate on the table next to the pie. (I would also like to take this moment to note that my hands continue to be my most photogenic part.) These books have been enchanting and inspiring me all week, both at home and at the studio, where I’ve been working on my throwing skills. I’ll have photos quite soon.
And that brings us to Polaroids. Although jmags and I were gifted a cache of the precious film, we’ve been tentative in using it. But the sometimes-bright skies of spring were an inspiration, and look at the progress we’ve made on the wall:
On Monday I start a yoga class (the first one for me… we’ll see). I feel like I’m entering a period of productivity, both physical and creative (and, I hope, professional), and the accompanying exhiliration is a nice place to be at the end of this break. I’ve always felt my time of year was fall, not spring, but evidence suggests otherwise. Promising.
(disclosure: jmags took the top two photos — that’s why they look so nice)
So I think I’ve been tagged to write about Broder (and I will), but I also wanted to talk about the difference in tone between the book and film versions of Let the Right One In.
FWIW: “Spoiler warning,” as the kids say. If you’re the type for whom the plot is central to your appreciation of a work, you may want to go back to the 19th. Century. Furthermore, if this is true of you and you haven’t read or seen Let the Right One In you may want to avoid this post.
It should not surprise anybody that many details of the novel Let the Right One In were dropped for the film version. In fact, there are many reasons to be glad that they were. In an age where people feel like we need 2+ hours to understand the finer points of fucking Iron Man, a film that tells a complete story while letting itself in at under that 2 hour mark is a feat in itself.
Snideness aside, the trimming was well done and, I think, fairly symmetrical. Also, you will note that while all flashbacks were omitted, there were a couple of brief flashes, confusing if you haven’t read the book (which I hadn’t when I saw the movie), that acknowledge the events from those flashbacks.
In contrast to this, none of the episodes from Hakan’s (sorry, not going to go looking for the right escape code) past get any reference at all. In the absence of further information, it is easy to get the impression that Hakan started his life as a guy just like Oskar, and, by extension, that Oskar will one day be just like Hakan. Hazel and I both left the theater with this impression, and even if it were not the original intention of the film maker, it must have been accepted at some point.
I’m pretty sure that this makes the movie superior to the book. While the book is full of gruesome details, and many of the characters are substantially less likable, it still ends with a restoration of moral order. By contrast, the end of the film is incredibly bleak in a way that I found very moving. I think that it showed a little more courage (although it really took a dive on adhering to the fat-people-can’t-be-protagonists rule.)