A Cinematic Holiday Season

I'm going to blog about the holiday trip as a whole, but first, I've got to talk about some of the movies I've seen this season.

I'll say it started with Tron: Legacy.  When I saw the original, I was taken with its personification of programs within the computer world, and I've always loved any decent sci-fi film.  This one is decent, but that's all.  As is often the case, the filmmakers clearly gave more thought to the 3D effects than any rigorous conceptualization of the world they were creating.  There are a few interesting ideas, though, and Jeff Bridges was excellent.

Then it was Christmas day and time for my annual watching of Bad Santa.  The film does not disappoint. 

It's more than just a bunch of off-color jokes though.  By tearing down the artifice and sanctimony surrounding the holiday, it shows us what the holiday is actually about, sharing time with people who care about each other.  That, and--"Fuck me, Santa.  Fuck me, Santa.  Fuck me, Santa."

Then we went to Toronto and the Bloor Cinema, a great repatory theater in a wonderful old building.  The place is enormous; the balcony alone would be a large theater in and of itself.  In fact, the balcony has its own nicely appointed lobby.

A corner of the Bloor's lobby to its balcony.

 (Two years ago, we watched Obama's Inauguration there, and you can see coverage of that in this video, starting at the 8:24 mark.  It gives a sense of the theater, including some footage of Nicole and myself.)


This time at the Bloor, we saw Fair Game, which told the story of how Dick Cheney outed covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame.  It also stunningly puts the lie to the oft-quoted meme, "The intelligence community got it wrong."  No, the intelligence community did not get it wrong; Dick Cheney actively worked to fabricate bullshit to start that fatuous war.  The performances by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn are excellent; I cannot recommend the film enough.


On the plane I got to see the documentary Inside Job.  It is to the 2008 financial crisis what Fair Game is to the Iraq War.  It calls people out on their bullshit.  It was so refreshing to see the filmmaker interviewing people from Goldman Sachs and Bush's financial team.  They'd frequently try to drop misinformation, and the filmmaker, who was actually knew about the subject, would call them out on it.  Watch this movie.


Then, still on the plane, I got to see Howl with James Franco playing Allen Ginsberg.  The film alternates between an interpretive animation over Franco's reading of the poem, a re-enactment of Lawrence Ferlenghetti's obsenity prosecution for publishing the poem, a re-enactment of a long interview of Ginsberg, and biographical episodes.  Unfortunately, I only got to watch about half the film before they threw me off the plane, so I really want to see the rest.


Last night, back in St. John's, we saw True Grit.  I'd seen the original.  This one is much better.  And Jeff Bridges is great.

Today we plan to see Black Swan.  And I still want to see the Fighter and the King's Speech.  I said it's a cinematic holiday season.

(Don't go see "The Tourist."  It's not right that Angelina Jolie cheated another mannequin out of a paying gig.)