Colson Whitehead’s debut novel is a sure crowd-pleaser, if the throng has a predilection for gothic fantasy, New York noir, surreal humor, brainy prose, and meditations on U.S. race relations. Also the most fascinating book you’ll ever read about elevator inspection. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘microreviews’
The Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead (1999)
Sunday, November 16th, 2008Mamma Roma and La ricotta (1962)
Sunday, September 14th, 2008Ammazza, Signora Roma, che voce che ci avete!
—Market vendor to his vociferous neighbor
Ammazza che stupenda é la Magnani! She’s fascinating to watch, and Mamma Roma, Pasolini’s iconic film about a desperate, overbearing mother, is built for her. The rest of the cast is great too—her sulky teenage son Ettore, sleazy pimp Carmine, young neighborhood tramp Bruna, Ettore’s gang—but in that awkward, neorealist, “I can’t act but I’m trying” way. La Magnani is an operatic diva, stealing every scene she’s in. Tear your eyes away from all the beautiful faces a mo’ to behold the Roman landscape, ancient aqueduct competing with modern high-rise apartments, all seemingly in the middle of nowhere. But beware Pasolini’s heavy-handed, eye-roll inducing religious imagery that puts the ending over the top.
La ricotta is a tasty little bite of Pasolini, the thick religious imagery now tempered with irreverent and self-deprecating humor. It’s a thirty-minute film, originally released as a segment of RoGoPaG (1963), that earned him a date in court on charges of blasphemy. The Catholic ruling class of the day was not impressed, apparently, but I loved it! Orson Welles plays a radical Catholic Communist director (ehm) filming the Passion of Christ on the outskirts of Rome. A poor local man, who has landed work on the production as an extra, goes to great lengths to feed himself after sacrificing his catered lunch for his family, and ends up making the ultimate sacrifice. Marvel at the dandies doin’ the twist in between takes (a goofy six-tays kind of wonderful), and the slapstick fast-motion bum-scratching! And Ettore, the striking son of Mamma Roma, makes an appearance—I think he’s the one who drops Christ during the pietà. Hilarity ensues! Who knew?
****
- More Pasolini: Accattone
- More Magnani: her Tennessee Williams films, Nella città l’inferno (stint in jail opposite Giulietta Masina—!!), Rossellini’s L’amore, and Visconti’s Bellissima. And I would watch both Roma and Roma, città aperta again anytime!
Fast Food Nation (2006) (That’s the movie)
Friday, September 12th, 2008This flick is the fast food version of the book—fast, cheap, out of control. Tummy-ache inducing, and not the righteous kind. Not even Ethan Hawke’s Good (Yet Slightly Creepy) Uncle could save it. Maybe if he’d been animated? God, I’m depressed. Just go read the 2001 book, folks, which has nothing to do with Avril Lavigne and everything to do with the implications of your local burger franchise.
**
Coming down the assembly line: Maybe I’ll get around to sinking my teeth into The Jungle. (That’s a book.) No more crappy film adaptations for a while.
Lust, Caution (2007)
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Lust, Caution managed to be intense and boring simultaneously, like a loathsome Spielberg drama. Too pedestrian for Pedestrian Saga. The student resistance troupe wasn’t compelling enough. The ending was disappointing. And all that wasted Tony Leung sexual tension (and, ehm, release) simply left me in the mood for In the Mood for Love again.
***
Coming soon: any and all Tony Leung gigs not directed by Ang Lee
La commare secca (1962)
Saturday, August 16th, 2008La commare secca (The Grim Reaper) was Bernardo Bertolucci’s directorial debut (at 21 years old, the upstart). Pasolini (a mentor) wrote the film but then went to work on Mamma Roma, so Bertolucci was hired to direct instead.
It’s a murder mystery unraveled via slice-of-life stories of the various Roman proles who passed through the park adjacent to the scene of the crime. Each segment begins with a police interrogation and a flashback to the beginning of the day, and is marked by a sudden afternoon downpour. In between these episodes are glimpses of the victim moving gently around her room during that storm, preparing for her night’s work. Bertolucci claims he hadn’t yet seen Rashomon (1950), but I’m not convinced. Maybe Pasolini was influenced by the famous Kurosawa film?
La commare secca is very easy on the eyes and by far my favorite of Bertolucci’s films.* Beautiful faces and some terrific moments of melodrama—just engrossing. Fascinating Italian dialects too! And I love the strange and striking six-tays dance scene at the climax. Feels like I’d seen it before. Ditto the scene with the kids dancing to a record player in the apartment.
Criterion + my public library = big love
****
From here:
- avanti ad Accattone e la magnifica Anna Magnani in Mamma Roma
- un ripasso di Il conformista
*Last Tango in Paris—traumatizing; the four hours of 1900—forgettable, apparently; The Last Emperor and Little Buddha—I don’t remember much about them either (totally overshadowed by Scorsese’s Kundun in my mind); Stealing Beauty—gag me with a spoon; The Dreamers—just not interested…
Back to Bologna, an Aurelio Zen Mystery, by Michael Dibdin
Monday, July 21st, 2008More zany farce than hard-boiled crime fiction, this Aurelio Zen mystery features an ensemble of wacky characters running amok in beautiful Bologna―la dotta, la grassa, la rossa. A Berlusconi-esque tycoon and controversial owner of the local football team is found shot dead and stabbed with a parmesan knife. Meanwhile, an arrogant semiotics professor (a thinly veiled parody of Umberto Eco) dukes it out with a contentious student and a maniacal and fraudulent celebrity chef. A slapstick gumshoe muddles various links between characters, while our detective hero, Inspector Zen of the national police, turns out to be brooding and lethargic, a borderline hypochondriac who, in this case, doesn’t investigate much beyond his navel. (more…)