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Lost in Translation, Duplex, Something's gotta give

I saw these three movies in the last 48 hours or so.

Du­plex: it's dum­b, dark, and the end cheat­s.

Some­thing's got­ta give: If I were Di­ane Keaton, I would have tak­en Keanu. If I were Jack Nichol­son, I would­n't have dumped the daugh­ter. How­ev­er, the con­cept is cool, and Di­ane looks damn good.

Now, the sight of Jack Nichol­son's butt was com­plete­ly un­nec­es­sary. Now I am so self­-­con­scious I am go­ing to buy a robe. I nev­er imag­ined any­one could look so bad, and I need to make a habit of hid­ing my body be­fore it all falls down.

Lost in trans­la­tion: I want to mar­ry Scar­let Jo­hansson's char­ac­ter. I doubt Mrs. Jo­hans­son her­self would be half as much fun, al­though she is ob­vi­ous­ly just as pret­ty.

On the oth­er hand, I want to say, make it Sun­to­ry time. Now, to the right, with in­ten­si­ty. More Roger Moore!

If you have not seen it, the above para­graph makes no sense. If you did: I want to be him, too. On­ly younger. And mar­ried to her.

I quite liked the movie, even if my date did­n't (she says, and she is right, noth­ing hap­pens in it). Had the movie had a plot, it would be amaz­ing. What is there is good enough it even sur­vives the plot­less­ness as good.

I sug­gest Jer­ry Bruck­heimer hires Sofia Cop­po­la. Al­though he has the worst imag­in­able taste in di­rec­tors (the wrong Scott broth­er! Michael Bay!), he re­quires all his movies to have a be­gin­ning, a mid­dle, and an end­ing, and that the end­ing be dif­fer­ent from the be­gin­ning.

So, if Jer­ry wants to be­come a We­in­stein-­like fel­low, and he keeps those re­quire­ments, eas­es up on the ex­plo­sion­s, and forces Sofia to hire a writ­er (if at all pos­si­ble, the one who wrote "Ac­tion!" with Jay Mohr?), man, that is go­ing to be an ac­tu­al movie, in­stead of just 2 hours of film.

Oh, you may say, Rober­to is crazy! Sofia Cop­po­la is art­sy! Bruck­heimer is crass!. There is such a thing as too art­sy, and def­i­nite­ly, there is such a thing as too crass, but, sur­prise! There is such a thing as not art­sy enough, and, worse of al­l, not crass enough.

Nowa­days, movies fall ei­ther on one side or the oth­er, ex­cept for some film­s, very few, van­ish­ing­ly few. I pro­pose ex­ogamy, be­cause the in­breed­ing of the art­sy and the crass tribes is killing them.

Com­ing soon (not re­al­ly): why Kiarosta­mi should di­rect a Taranti­no scrip­t.

Roberto Alsina / 2006-04-03 07:14:

I adhere to the Siskel test: if the movie is not more interesting than having dinner with the actors, it has a problem.



Now imagine yourself having dinner with Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson. What would you prefer? ( or even dinner with Scarlet Johansson alone ;-)



Just like computer applications need not be like real-life objects, and usually suck if they try to, movies need not be like life.



Life is like life, and we already have one of those.


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