Thursday, March 20, 2008

What We're Watching

We've caught up on a few of the big 2007 movies in the past week, in addition to plowing through most of the Planet Earth series (The Birds of Paradise are fantastically over-the-top and apparently they got that way because the females are very picky about selecting a mate, so the males keep evolving ever-wilder plumage. Maybe Kate's pickiness explains why I'm growing an absolutely horrendous-looking beard right now?), a few more episodes of The Wire (Jimmy McNulty is single-handedly saving the season), plus the first few episodes of Gossip Girl (Don't ask. No, really, please don't ask). And now, I've started with the basketball.

We saw Into the Wild, which some critics claimed was jobbed out of a best picture nomination. Ha! A completely self-involved, borderline crazy, spoiled brat who spouts naive pop psychology sound bites (which the filmmakers pass off as Walden-esque) finally comes to a conclusion that everyone in the story had been trying to point out to him for the duration of his trip. We're supposed to root for this guy, or feel empathy for him? Totally weak.

No Country For Old Men was really well done. It was no Fargo (which I saw again a few weeks ago - what a perfect film), and it won't go down as one of the great Oscar winners, but for all its darkness and nihilism, it was a well-acted, well-told story.

No comments: