Cruel Shoes

I have two small bruises on my right calf from my new boots.
Clearly, I am going to have to take this breaking-in process slowly.

But damn they look good!

Movie Response: The Fountain

Yesterday, kateri_thinks invited me, uncrowned_king and _storyteller_ to see "The Fountain." It's a movie I had heard of, but not one I would have gone out of my way to see. However, opportunity to go out with both Kateri and L&L was not to be passed up.

Three stories are interwoven in this movie: the story of Izzy, a young woman dying of a brain tumor, and her husband Tommy who is a medical researcher frantically searching for a cure; Queen Isabella of Spain and the Conquistador she sends to South America searching for the Tree of Life in order to combat the Inquisition; and a mysterious bald man wearinng what looks like prison jammies floating through a nebula in a bubble with a dying tree.

Because Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the main characters in each scenario, and because I had read a review that suggested it, I watched the movie thinking that they were the same two souls manifesting over time. It was only this morning that _storyteller_ pointed out the truth: only the story of Izzy and Tommy is real. The story of the Queen and the Conquistador is the book that Izzy is writing, and the man in the bubble with the tree is Tommy in his dreams. I realized that the movie isn't about Death, as we all had been discussing the night before, it is about The Fear of Death.

Izzy starts out afraid of her own impending death. She copes with that fear, wrestles with it, by writing her own story as myth. Tommy expresses his fear of her death in his dreams, where he has a close relationship with a dying tree but keeps pushing away appearances by both Izzy and the Queen. He is so afraid of Izzy's death he is incapable of facing it with her. He pushes her away again and again. Sometimes it is so he can go to the hospital and continue his research, but some of it is that his anger and denial and helplessness prevents him from offering her any real support. He won't accept that she's dying, so he can't stand beside her as she needs him to.

Visually it's a beautiful, dream-like film. More dream-like than any other film I've seen. But as uncrowned_king pointed out, it wasn't able to do any of the three stories justice. It was a long film, but none of the stories went as deep as they could have, and so the overall impact of each was lessened.

I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in myth-making as a response to spiritual struggles, or who has an interest in death and dying -- and it's definitely a movie to see on the large screen, or the impact of the visuals will be lost, further reducing the effectiveness and emotional impact of the film.

I classify this one as a Noble Failure.

Lady Jane & Technology & Muppets

The movie Lady Jane came out in 1986, during my undergraduate years. I first saw it at a campus film festival, and it had a powerful impact on me. As soon as I could get hold of it on a VHS tape, I did, and I was thrilled when it finally became available on DVD just a year or so ago.

A few days ago I found that it was available iTunes, and it became the first movie I bought as a download. It's now on my iPod, and I've been listening to it in my car during my commute.

When I was a child, visiting my aunt and uncle was a special treat because my uncle was a film teacher and owned a reel-to-reel tape player and an extensive library of movies. He owned a VCR before they became as ubiquitous as television sets. And now I can download movies onto a gadget the size of a deck of playing cards and carry them with me anywhere. The mind boggles.

But one thing still eludes me: a soundtrack recording of Lady Jane. For some reason, although the score is sumptuous, no soundtrack was ever released.

Years and years ago I set up a tape recorder and microphone in front of the television and recorded snips of the music (and dialogue) onto cassette tapes, but I haven't figured out what technology to use now to record directly from a DVD on my computer. Surely all those people who grab and post mp3 snips have a better way to do it than a microphone in front of the TV. Is there a program that allows you to do that?

In addition to the music from Lady Jane, I am still in search of a soundtrack to Muppet Treasure Island (hey, my journal is titled "From the Sublime to the Ridiculous"), which is now out of print and sells for more than $50 a pop on eBay or Amazon.

The "Special" Shelf

havah_prewett made a reference in a recent post about the "scripture shelf" in her movie collection. mam_adar also made reference recently to different shelves in her own library.

Since junior high, I have had a section in my own book collection called my "Select Library": shelves reserved for the books which have touched me deeply, have shaped me, and continue to resonate with me years, even decades, after I have read them.

A few months ago I was looking at those shelves and wondering if some of those books still belonged there. It had been so long since I'd last read them that I could scarcely remember the plots of one or two. In some cases there were spiritual themes I wasn't sure would still be meaningful to me. I took down a fantasy novel by Michael Moorcock (not an author I usually like) called The Warhound and the World's Pain, about a warrior jaded and exhausted by years of combat who ends up going on a quest on Satan's behalf to recover the Grail. It's a strange book in many ways, but -- to my surprise -- once again it moved me in a special way.

I'm thinking about doing a post about some of my favorite of these books. But in the meantime, I'm curious: do you have 'special shelves' or sub-collections in your book, movie, or musical libraries? If so, what is on them?

More Movie Stuff

I'm now downloading my second iPod movie: George of the Jungle.

It's one of the sweetest movies I've ever seen. Brendan Fraser walks a difficult line of portraying George as simple, innocent, and sincere without becoming too ridiculous or stupid for me to like. The script is clever, the silly humor never goes stale for me, and the love story at the heart of it is romantic and believable within its context.

Enough with the LJ!

I have lots of dishes to do, floors to sweep, laundry to do, and a date with my mother and aunt to see Side By Side By Sondheim this afternoon!

Over and out!