Technology and a Film or Two

Well - as noted, my iPod died - and as promised, I replaced it, with a 160 Gig monstrosity. Which leaves me here tonight synching the machine with iTunes.... which looks like an all night project. With luck. It crapped out once already. I just hope it gets to the end. It's this initial synch - 45 gb of music, more or less - that causes problems. I fear the days are numbered for my old iMac - I've had it awhile. It occurs to me, I have been using it as my main machine longer than any machine I had before - rather impressive. It's still adaquate - it's just starting to get slow. And the hard drive is smallish - so all my music, for example, is on an external - that can't be helping the synch process. (I'm pretty sure that's what killed it the first time, the externa; deciding to take a nap.) Anything intensive - video, music - is sluggish. It's almost time. I'll gut it out as long as I can - but....

What this means to us today, though, is just that I have some time to kill. A bit too late to start a movie - I can watch the Red Sox and Yankees, but really - those are, I'm afraid, about the least interesting games out there. Histrionics and hand-wringing - it's boring. The rivalry crap overshadows the games. I notice these days, the Yankees seem as into it as the Red Sox - a few years of mediocrity will do that. (What, you say? the Yankees have won the division every year since 1645! how can they be mediocre? - I say, 200 million dollars is a lot of money. It can dress up a pig in the finest silks. And that can get you through the early rounds when no one is paying attention. But have the Yankees won anything in the post season? bluffing their way past the red sox in 03 and alkmost bluffing their way past them again in 04 is all they have to brag about. This year, assuming they get the Angels int he first round, they won't get a chance to face the red sox. All for the best. Yankees/Red Sox is boring. Bring on the Mets!)

Failing that, I will use the moment to do some writing. Movies! reviews! Yesterday, I saw Tsai Ming-liang's latest, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone - set in Malaysia, but otherwise pretty consistent with the rest of his work. Long takes (92 shots in 2 hours, I think it works out to); not much dialogue, none by the main characters, I think; floods, fires, bugs, injury and illness; sexual longing, usually unwisely directed; loneliness sliding toward lunacy; basic bodily functions - eating and drinking, cooking, sleeping, pissing, cycles of bodily fluids, plus work - cooking, cleaning, etc. It's fairly grim, full of physical suffering and deprivation - perhaps the grimmest Tsai film since The River; though it ends as happily as any of his films have. Finally - the main protagonist of the film seems to be a mattress that gets dragged from place to place by the characters - it might be the "I" of the title, not wanting to sleep alone.

That was one thing. On the other hand, there's Across the Universe. I've noticed (and noted) that Inland Empire is a genuinely divisive film - people really do love it or hate it. Well - at least at the showing I saw, that's true of Across the Universe too. Sitting up front were a man and a woman who after gutting out an hour of it, had enough - they went out the front exit, and as they passed out into the street, the man flung his backpack angrily at a wall in front of him. I ca only assume this was a reaction to the film. Meanwhile, when the movie ended, a group behind me broke out into applause! And lest you think they might have been simply glad it was over - they were still there at the end of the credits, one of them declaring, "what a fantastic movie!" My own reaction fall between those extremes - though perhaps the way the letter C falls between A and Z. In fact - my main emotion during the film was disappointment. It could have worked. There are hints and flashes, usually in the dance routines - and indeed, it comes to shining life 2-3 times over it's 2 1/2 hours, though it never lasts. All through the film, the song and dance business tends to pop up, overmotivated, but not really integrated into the story - and quickly abandoned for more dull storytelling. It's a shame. A couple times it's almost criminal - "Come Together" gets a fine treatment - a real singer in Joe Cocker (the mediocrity of the lead actors as singers is a constant nag), and some very cool choreography of salarimen in a subway, then dancing with their briefcases on the street. Bono's bit - doing "I am the Walrus" - is embarrassing nonsense of the best kind, almost worthy of Moulin Rouge or Ken Russell, with Bono mugging and oversinging quite effectively. But the high point - the only part of this thing I hope ever to see again - is Eddie Izzard doing "For the Benefit of Mr Kite" more or less as himself. The film takes off for a moment - then comes back to earth, more bland standing around from the cast....

It's too bad. It's hard to imagine how this could have been a really good film - especially with the awful Forest Gump quality History of the Age story line. But it might well have been a properly over the top piece of shit - Julie Taymor, I think, is, in fact, not far from the Ken Russell of the age - with her biopix and Classics and now this, which at its best, is Tommy or The Wall on valium. Take away the valium, and people could at least have gotten a good laugh out of it. Instead - she is not willing to follow through on the weirder ideas; the dance routines toy with surrealism and general oddness, but they back off. Things start to go over the top, but they don't make it. And, on the other end - she doesn't extend the stylization of the everyday that crops up a couple times - some football cheers at the beginning, those commuters during "Come Together", some of the street scenes in Liverpool, especially at the end - far enough; doesn't extend it all the way. Abandons it completely for long stretches of melodramatic nonsense - dumb looking riots... too bad.

[This post has been updated: the laptop induced typos removed (or reduced), and a Ken Russell link added. And yes, I know The Wall is Alan Parker...]