The week that was

I just got finished watching The Pianist. Despite my earlier post, I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it before. It was very good and probably deserved to win the Oscar for best picture over Chicago. It did an excellent job of showing the despiration of someone trying to survive by any means necessary. The movie I thought it most resembled was Stalingrad. I’m not sure how many holocaust movies are left to be made. There are certainly more stories to tell, but I think that only so many can be digested by the public. You don’t want to wind up with movies like Swing Kids (worst Nazi move ever).

As I sit typing this on my laptop i’m watching Mishima, one of my favorite films and, I think, one of the most under rated movies ever. It was directed by Paul Schrader (writer for such films as Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Last Tempation of Christ) and produced by George Lucus and Francis Ford Coppola. While written, directed and produced by Americans, the movie is entirely in Japanese.

The movies weaves parts of four of his novels, his past, and the last day of his life. The choice of set designs for the novels, the score (by Philip Glass of course 🙂 and the story are near perfect. Yukio Mishima is a really complex character (right wing, literary, homosexual, body building, death worshiping, and leader of a private army) A linear telling of his story just wouldn’t have worked. By showing his novels, you can better understand how he thinks, and better understand how he came to his end. Simply showing his last day wouldn’t never tell you how he got to that point. (what was his end? rent the movie 🙂

I went to a karaoke bar for the first time this week. It was sort of a farewell party for Jess who is going off to UNC for grad school in philosophy. It was an interesting crowd to say the least. It is prime hunting ground for people watching (and listening). I got to meet some interesting people who I’d otherwise probably never get to meet. I’d write more about the crowd, but its really a whole post of its own.