I seem to have hit a bump of several foreign films for this weekend--it was totally by accident. Last night I watched Purple Noon the 1960 Rene Clement directed french version of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley and I think it's by far the best. Alain Delon makes a gorgeous Ripley. The only thing that doesn't work for me is that Philippe (Dicky in the novel)Greenleaf is still supposedly from SF and that is just wrong. Couldn't they have swapped any US reference for someplace French or does the jazzy motif make it necessary to have the Greenleafs American. I don't recall the ending of the book but knowing that there are at least three other Ripley books, I assume he gets away with his murders. In this version he doesn't and it's quite satisfying that he doesn't.

Then I watched Bertolucci's very sexy The Dreamers. Michael Pitt and Eva Green, with Pitt as Matthew, a young American exchange student in Paris for a year just as the city and country is about to explode with revolutionary fervor in 1968. He meets Isabelle and Theo, a brother and sister who claim they're twins and who have an intense, and not very healthy relationship.

The three are obsessed with cinema. They first see each other at a showing of Shock Corridor and meet up later at a demonstration at the Cinémathèque Française. For about the first half of the film, cuts of movies they love and which seem appropriate are spliced with whatever their doing then abruptly stop (unless I just got used to them) except for one last splice in a climactic scene.

They take him home with them and the three spend a decadent, increasingly sexual period of (presumably) several weeks while the parents leave them checks to buy food and take care of expenses. It becomes increasingly obvious that the siblings are incapable of taking care of themselves--plus they're living in an insulated bubble that Matthew, try as he will, cannot really penetrate. Theo reads Marxist literature but these are they are almost a pure example of bourgeois narcissism. When they do take part, it merely is a way to shut out Matthew.

I think we're supposed to take the whole thing as a coming of age story for Matthew, although we know nothing of who he became (unless he's meant to be the author of the book that was made into this movie) so although it's entertaining and sexy

And tonight I watched Persepolis an autobiographical animation adapted by Marjane Satrapi from her graphic novel of the same name. It's about the history of a young girl living in Iran from the 1970s through the overthrow of the Shah and the Islamic Revolution to about 1992 when she leaves Iran for good. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. I feel the characterization of Marjane was superficial. Despite this, I was very moved by the ending.

Finally, I watched the first to episodes of Carnivale and loved them. I gather that the second season kins of flails about...then what does it just end or is there at least a fading out. I don't know if I can take another abrupt end in the middle.
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( Jan. 18th, 2009 09:22 pm)
I saw the play on Broadway and enjoyed it very much. However, the movie is 20 times better. From the play only Frost and Nixon as characters made an impression. I have no idea if anyone else was in the play --I just do not remember. (and sure I can look it up, but that's irrelevant). The movie provides context ...for everything.

The secondary actors are uniformly excellent, from Kevin Bacon's Jack Brennan, the utterly loyal aide to Nixon and Toby Jones as Swifty Lazar (major player Hollywood agent of the time for those who don't recall)and Oliver Platt as producer Bob Zelnick and Sam Rockwell as James Reston, Jr.
Patty McCormick(remember The Bad Seed? ) plays Pat Nixon and Rebecca Hall plays Caroline Cushing, Frost's girlfriend at the time.

Michael Sheen does a very good job as David Frost (as he did in the play) and Frank Langella--what can I say? He's brilliant. Only a movie could capture the important facial expressions that make his Nixon come alive (and even, at the very end, sympathetic). I haven't yet seen The Wrestler (seeing it tomorrow) but I'll bet anyone that Langella and of Sean Penn will most definitely be competing for the Oscar.

The movie is, I think, more nuanced than the play because you see everything that went into setting up the interviews, the panic on Frost's side when things are going really badly. Also, the whole watching a movie watching tv brings something to the viewing experience that a play cannot.

I've always had this mixed relationship with regard to live theater vs the movies. I always feel more enveloped by movies than plays, although I do enjoy theater and attend it often. I know that many people embrace the immediacy of live theater and say there's nothing like it and in that I agree. The two experiences are almost incomparable. However, (as I've mentioned in an earlier post) as much as I loved the movie Doubt, I'm sorry I missed the live performances of it with Brian O'Byrne and Cherry Jones.
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