I think I identified overmuch with the girls in Virgin Suicides. The completely unnecessary misery and loss of them, their poor misguided parents, and the older one's boyfriend who abandoned her at exactly the wrong moment and never could understand why he'd done it... it was a tragedy, and whether or not it was well done, it hit me hard in soft places.

We watched Clean last night. It starred Maggie Cheung as a Courtney-Love-like woman whose husband ODs. It was not very good, unfortunately, and we were really looking forward to seeing it. Next up is Brick.

I posted my review of The Descent on LJ. Hie thee there forthwith, y'all, read and tell me what you think.

Edited for bad tagging, oops.

Ha! I just got back from that! I'll go read.

Excellent review, Zenkitty! Here's mine. I linked to yours.

Thanks, P-C!

Woohoo! White Nights is coming out on DVD at the end of the month. Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines dance, and Isabella Rossellini looks pretty!!

I just saw Inside Man. I remember there was a lot of love for the movie in this thread. It was good stuff. I'm a Spike Lee fan.

My relatives, however, have no blinking clue who he is. We were all baffled by his use of a popular Bollywood song at the beginning and end (I still don't understand why the hell he used it).

"It must be an Indian director," my aunt said.

"It's SPIKE LEE!" I cried.

"Famous action director," my uncle said.

"He's not an ACTION DIRECTOR!" I said. "Do the Right Thing?"

"Famous Asian director," my cousin said, and I threw a pillow at him. "What, his name is LEE!"

Le sigh.

DEADWOOD: Loved Action!Al what with the leap off the balcony to go to Alma's aid and, of course, stomping the everlovin' shit out of Hearst's lackey (or was he more of a toady?) before settling on a more permanent means of dealing with him. Plus a great one word command: "Wu". Heh.

Also, a recent TV Guide had a short interview with Robin Weigart, and a photo of her in non-Jane mode. Never would have recognized her in a million years. Apparently she enjoys poker in real life, and was talking about how poker-playing Deadwood fans in Vegas wouldn't recognize her, but after interacting with her would be all "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

She was also talking about looping dialogue for syndicated airings to come, and how awful it was having to replace profanity with things like, I kid you not, "cob-shucking". Which I may have to start using IRL because it made me laugh and laugh.

I finally watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory over the weekend (on HBO), and I have to say that I thought Willy Wonka was much, much better. Yes, CatCF was more faithful to the original book, but WW had a better sense of the utter bizarreness of Willy Wonka, the man, and the creepy otherworldliness of his factory. Also, I thought that the actors were all better in the original, except for Johnny Depp, who was on the same level as Gene Wilder, just different. But, I did like the idea of making Mike Teevee a computer hacker/gamer and Violet Beaureguard an ultracompetitor (with a really creepy lookalike mom).