confessions of an amateur cineaste

I continue to love this show beyond all reason. I am number three on the library hold list for season four. Alvarez is AWESOME. Diane is AWESOME. Sister Pete is BEYOND AWESOME. So is Adebisi. And don’t even get me started on Ryan & Cyril. And that they’re played by brothers? Also AWESOME.

Are we detecting a theme? AWESOME.

Since I am a huge dork I have a print-out of all of the Oscar nominations, with everything I’ve seen highlighted. I just was able to highlight the entire “best animated short film” category, which is -sweet-. I don’t know if they’ve done this before in Seattle and I just missed it (which seems unlikely), but this year they’re showing the short nominees at the Varsity. I’m going to go to the live action ones later this week. I’m afraid that “One Man Band” will win, just because it’s Pixar, but cute as it was, it wasn’t the best. Shorts are really diverse, though, so it’s hard for me to pick a favorite. The best visually was definitely “The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello” in all its steam punk glory.

Last night we watched Primer, which was sold to each member of our group on the basis of our individual interests (engineering, puzzles, time to knit). It was sold to me on the basis of the fact that it had won awards and featured people talking over each other Just Like They Do In Real Life. Which -is- a big plus for me. That’s about all I knew about it going in, plus that it was only 4 minutes shorter than the total amount of film shot.

Four minutes. That’s -insane-. That means the entire movie is the first take. The only take. So I was kind of uncertain as to how the movie would be, not storywise, but look and acting. I shouldn’t have been concerned. It was well done, and the cinematography was awesome and distinctive. And the movie itself was trippy; I’m sure I didn’t understand most of it, and I look forward to seeing it again. Thumbs up.

Friday after work I made a mad dash downtown to catch the matinee of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, the feature directorial debut of Tommy Lee Jones. Which was fantastic. Also, Dwight Yoakam continues to be seriously creepy. Right on.

Speaking of creepy, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (complete with full protection of our precious bodily fluids) showed at the EMP’s JBL theater Sunday, part of the Sci Fi Museum’s ongoing film festival. I’ve seen it before, of course, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see it on the big screen. Or at least a bigger screen. -Awesome-. There was an introduction that ran down some of the changes from the original script as well as some stories from production, and I am totally a sucker for that sort of thing.

Monday afternoon I caught Syriana, which was great and complex. I had forgotten somehow that the cast included Jeffrey Wright & Chris Cooper, both of whom are brilliant and understated in everything.

And finally, in between everything else this weekend I was plowing through the seriously -insane- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy so that I would be fully prepared for Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story. Which. I don’t know. Being prepared for that film is probably impossible. But it was seriously brilliant, and I’m glad I had read the book first, because then I was better able to appreciate the large quantity of crack the film appeared to be on. I’ll be buying it, I’m sure, and not only because the film contained a plug for the DVD.

Yay movies.

…means the watching of the movies. The Dish is a charming little film about the role Parkes (Australia) played in the 1969 moon landing. Then we watched Serenity (which possibly should get its own tag here just so I can track how often I see it) and the first half of Center Stage (hey, I am a sucker for dance movies. I can’t help it.)

The sublet had a Woody Allen box set, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Annie Hall is one of my favorite movies of all time. In January I finished off the set with A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Zelig, and The Purple Rose of Cairo, all of which I enjoyed, that’s pretty much the order I preferred them in, too. Purple Rose I was watching for the second time. I think I might need to buy it.

Last night I caught Match Point, which was good, but I just didn’t connect with it the way I had hoped. I’ve read that it’s Woody for people who don’t like Woody, but I -do- like him, and so perhaps it was not for me. It’s always good to see Emily Mortimer, though. And the previews included one for Friends With Money, the new film from Nicole Holofcener, who wrote and directed Mortimer in a great film: Lovely & Amazing. Much with the yay.

Oh! Oh! The other thing about Match Point is that the casting was a constant reminder of the there-are-only-twelve-actors-in-the-UK thing, as it included Shaun’s mother the prime minister, Bernard Black’s summer girl, and Tubbs, etc. Odds are there were more I missed.

I should figure out what Woody I haven’t seen. It can’t be much at this point, and I could take care of it between the library and Netflix.

Last Saturday we went down to Cinerama for the Science Fiction Short Film Festival, which was pretty cool. We went to both 2 hour sessions, for a total of 20 films. Short collections are always hit or miss, but there were enough neat ones that it was definitely worth it. The program sold out, which is awesome. Plus, it’s so rare that we can see them on the big screen.

Less awesome was Firewall, which was free and still wasn’t particularly worth it, even though the villain was my boyfriend, Paul Bettany. The really sad thing is that I had low expectations and was still very “meh” about the whole deal. Very tired concept made more so by tired writing and direction, and the perhaps unintended hilarity of a getaway on Highway 2. Whatever.

On DVD or the like: Dead Poets Society (for which I continue to have an unhealthy amount of love), two of three parts of the David Tennant Casanova (light years better than the Heath Ledger version), and In Her Shoes (which I had seen in theatres this fall and am quite fond of).