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So far, so good
Jul. 18th, 2010 10:12 amIt's been a good weekend so far. Friday evening I went to a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It in Woodland Park. Shakespeare in the Park is in its 22nd year, but this is the first production of theirs I've seen. It was very good. The play was much funnier live than it was on the page, and it wasn't just because of the mugging of the players, although there was some excellent mugging. It's just that the jokes were more obvious when spoken. Perhaps even more interesting is that I found Touchstone insufferable on the page, but he was a real joy on the stage. Nice setting for a forest-set play, too, of course. Unfortunately, sitting on the ground for over two hours wasn't exactly a comfortable experience. Still, well worth the suffering, and I hope to catch their production of Romeo and Juliet as well. In fact, I had planned to catch last night's performance, but I decided I didn't want to go through the physical discomfort two evenings in a row.
We've hired my friend Hazel to fix the water damage in the living room ceiling (finally!) and repaint it. Since part of one wall needs to be repainted too, Denys came up with the idea of painting that wall a different color. The ceiling and walls are already two different colors, so this will introduce a third color. Hazel came over yesterday and we went down to Daly's to look at colors. We bought a couple of samples and painted swatches on the wall so that D. and I can look at them in changing light over the next couple of days. It's fun hanging out with Hazel again. We have our twisted history, but it goes back almost twenty years now. There's a nice feeling of familiarity after that much time, whatever the twists of history. She feels like an old friend now, even though I hardly ever see her anymore and actually wouldn't have been surprised if I never saw her again.
Then in the late afternoon, after working in the sunny garden for a couple of hours, I went to see I Am Love again. I had previously seen it exactly a week ago (same day, same time). In the meantime I had learned that the cinematographer, Yorick Le Saux, has worked with Olivier Assayas in the past, and I assumed it was on demonlover, although it turns out he was only the second unit DP on demonlover, while he was the head cinematographer on Boarding Gate. He was also DP on Ozon's excellent Vertigo-homage, Swimming Pool. Anyway, I've seen some criticism of I Am Love along the lines that the editing and camera movement are extravagant for the sake of extravagance and don't actually communicate anything. I think it's actually pretty clear that the rhythms of the movie, both in the editing and the camera movement (and the music, for that matter) are meant to communicate Emma's subjective restlessness and disorientation. At first she's bored and lost within herself (a fact communicated purely on a nonverbal level), and then she's thrown off-balance by a dangerous, disruptive love. The visual style does remind me of demonlover, with it's restlessness, shifting focus within shots, and off-center compositions. There's a propulsive feel to it, as though the camera is chasing something elusive, looking in nooks and crannies, circling the room.
The movie was very different the second time through, yet it still left me in an altered state of mind at the end. Love is presented as a primal force that brings disaster as well as transformation. The disaster -- a death -- has a symbolic feel, and yet it's a narrative element, which causes an amazing, almost absurd, tension in the final scenes.
We've hired my friend Hazel to fix the water damage in the living room ceiling (finally!) and repaint it. Since part of one wall needs to be repainted too, Denys came up with the idea of painting that wall a different color. The ceiling and walls are already two different colors, so this will introduce a third color. Hazel came over yesterday and we went down to Daly's to look at colors. We bought a couple of samples and painted swatches on the wall so that D. and I can look at them in changing light over the next couple of days. It's fun hanging out with Hazel again. We have our twisted history, but it goes back almost twenty years now. There's a nice feeling of familiarity after that much time, whatever the twists of history. She feels like an old friend now, even though I hardly ever see her anymore and actually wouldn't have been surprised if I never saw her again.
Then in the late afternoon, after working in the sunny garden for a couple of hours, I went to see I Am Love again. I had previously seen it exactly a week ago (same day, same time). In the meantime I had learned that the cinematographer, Yorick Le Saux, has worked with Olivier Assayas in the past, and I assumed it was on demonlover, although it turns out he was only the second unit DP on demonlover, while he was the head cinematographer on Boarding Gate. He was also DP on Ozon's excellent Vertigo-homage, Swimming Pool. Anyway, I've seen some criticism of I Am Love along the lines that the editing and camera movement are extravagant for the sake of extravagance and don't actually communicate anything. I think it's actually pretty clear that the rhythms of the movie, both in the editing and the camera movement (and the music, for that matter) are meant to communicate Emma's subjective restlessness and disorientation. At first she's bored and lost within herself (a fact communicated purely on a nonverbal level), and then she's thrown off-balance by a dangerous, disruptive love. The visual style does remind me of demonlover, with it's restlessness, shifting focus within shots, and off-center compositions. There's a propulsive feel to it, as though the camera is chasing something elusive, looking in nooks and crannies, circling the room.
The movie was very different the second time through, yet it still left me in an altered state of mind at the end. Love is presented as a primal force that brings disaster as well as transformation. The disaster -- a death -- has a symbolic feel, and yet it's a narrative element, which causes an amazing, almost absurd, tension in the final scenes.
