The burren
I don’t really feel like writing at the moment. I think I’m going to stay in Galway another day, and maybe skip Doolin (although I didn’t see it today on my tour). I’ll look over my budget and calendar tonight (I seem to be heading through the country quite quickly, and I don’t want to get back to Dublin before Valentine’s day). Then again maybe not – I finally found the E. George I was looking for, so I’ll be reading that tonight (adding books to my budget – not my most brilliant idea… but whatever – I’m on vacation, and there is no sense in being unhappy as long as I mostly stick to my budget. Which I think I’ve been doing). OK – so I’ll post on the burren tomorrow. Here is EW’s round up on Sundance (important parts in bold/italic (important = read as pertaining to Sam Rockwell)).
saw movies at Sundance this year I’d heartily recommend, like Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, a documentary by Julien Temple (The Filth and the Fury) that passionately evokes the spiky fervor of the late Clash frontman, or the spooky child-rearing dramedy Joshua, or the grippingly journalistic Mexico-to-Jersey sextrade thriller Trade, or David Gordon Green’s tender and searing Snow Angels, a small-town tale of divorce and adultery, madness and murder, that to me was the movie Little Childrenwanted to be. Months from now, these films will be released, and with a little help from God or fate or maybe Fox Searchlight, they will find a devoted audience. Yet what I was looking for — questing for — at Sundance this year was a film that had the potential to break out of the festival’s hothouse bubble atmosphere and cause a genuine stir, maybe even a minor earthquake, in the real world.
I found that film when I saw No End in Sight, a coolheaded, devastating exposé that, with the right handling, could turn out to be An Inconvenient Truth for the Iraq war. Let’s be clear: This is no leftist agitprop, no Michael Moore harangue. The director, Charles Ferguson, works with a thirst for history that transcends ideology, as he gets a platoon of Bush officials, from Richard Armitage to Jay Garner to the eloquently outraged former officer of strategic policy Col. Paul Hughes, to go on record about how their advice was trivialized and ignored. As they speak, the film pulls back, like a telescope, to reveal each link in the gasp-inducing chronology of the Bush team’s bungling arrogance. No End in Sight leaves you furious at an administration of armchair warriors, yet it offers the catharsis of cold hard truth.
Waitress offers something more uplifting: a spangly reinvention of the chick flick — and, just maybe, the birth of a movie star. That would be Keri Russell, who’s as tartly irresistible as the desserts she creates playing a Southern pie-shop waitress who gets pregnant by her awful husband and then has an affair with her obstetrician (the delightfully befuddled Nathan Fillion). This vibrant comedy of sisterhood embraces the happy craziness of following your instincts at any cost. Early on, there was a hush over the screening, as tribute was paid to the film’s writer and director, Adrienne Shelly, who was killed in New York last November. Yet by the end, the tasty bittersweetness of Waitress was only enhanced by the revelation of what a talent she possessed…
Finally, let me return to Joshua, in which Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga are sensational as wealthy New Yorkers with a new baby girl and a demonically detached 9-year-old boy, played by the marvelous Jacob Kogan. The film is destined to be compared to The Omen and The Bad Seed, yet it’s something vitally new: a portrait of parental anxiety in the age of technology, hedge-fund capitalism, and kids who are far more brilliant than their elders. It’s a horror comedy that has cool and savvy fun with your fears.
(I’d like to note that a big book out over here is “We need to talk about Kevin” which is supposedly so horrifying as to put anyone off childbearing. It’s about a mother who tries to raise a good boy and then he goes off and shoots up his school cafeteria.)
Big bang baby – stone temple pilots
Tags: Travel
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