Busy Days, And Movies At Home

My days here have been busy. I’m usu­al­ly doing some­thing from one moment to the next. I now under­stand a way of spend­ing one’s time dif­fer­ent­ly from one I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. I find that I’m gen­er­al­ly a per­son who’s cos­mopoli­tan enough to be able to pass time enjoy­ably with most peo­ple. However, most of my friends seem to be doers, always need­ing some­thing to do lest an awk­ward silence set in. These last five days have been filled with com­fort­able silences though, just from meet­ing and hang­ing out with peo­ple who are com­fort­able enough with each oth­er to sim­ply let con­ver­sa­tion flow at its own pace. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to look at hang­ing out with my friends in the same way again.

I watched In The Bedroom with Darren yes­ter­day. Although I thought it was a very well made film, with usu­al­ly mov­ing (though drawn out) sto­ry­telling, I did­n’t enjoy it very much. There did­n’t seem to be much of a mes­sage at the end, which leaves the enter­tain­ment of the film up to the the sto­ry, char­ac­ters, and plot, all which I felt to be very shal­low. The film is sup­posed to be about “the bonds of mar­riage and the lim­its of for­give­ness [being] put to the test”, but there was only one major con­flict and only a few shal­low attempts at devel­op­ing char­ac­ters and motives. It just did­n’t seem to go any­where, and with­out inter­est­ing (to me, at least) events tak­ing place, I felt as if my time would have been bet­ter spent else­where.

Speaking of films, I’ve been able to catch a few trail­ers which have piqued my curios­i­ty. The Good Thief with Nick Nolte seems like an amaz­ing­ly styl­ized movie (direct­ed by Neil Jordan) about a retired art crook doing one last heist. It appeals to me because of the way Nolte seems to bring a pres­ence of con­flict­ing human­i­ty with his slurred speech and rugged looks. I also find the slow, patient tune at the end of the trail­er to fit per­fect­ly with the cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the way Nolte looks at his lighter before clos­ing it on a bright­ly grey day with the move­ment of a city in the back­ground. All of this from a trail­er, and I’m already hooked. Kill Bill also looks amaz­ing, in a cheesy, Tarantino sort of way.

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