Winter Escapism
Jan. 16th, 2007 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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marginalia has posted elsewhere, a few of us went out to see Pan's Labyrinth on Friday. We had to trek out into the wilds of unincorporated King County to find a late showing that wasn't sold out, but it was well worth the drive: The film's historical setting is the closing days of the Spanish Civil War, as Franco's Fanlangists seek to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance: think Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, only in a later and more desperate place. The fantastic elements center around the imagination of a girl whose mother has reluctantly married a Falangist captain, and look superficially similar to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation, although a good deal darker, shading not infrequently into horror along the lines of the original Grimm's fairy tales or even E.T.A. Hoffmann's stories. And del Toro's narrative is by turns moving, beautiful, and brutal--easily the most memorable picture I've seen in months.
On Saturday, I ventured out into the uncharacteristically Arctic night air we're experieicing in Seattle again to see Casino Royale a second time. I might not have done so, particularly on such an unpleasant night, but it was playing at The Big Picture andryuusama hadn't seen it yet. I mean, what better place to see a Bond film than a place with a bar? Things I appreciated more the second time through: the people cheering a fight between a cobra and mongoose in Madagascar, near the beginning--a whole lot like us getting off on the movie's violence; also, that Chris Cornell song is the best Bond theme since "Live and Let Die" if you ask me.
Sunday night,ryuusama hosted the premier episode of HBO's Rome, which shall we say paralleled events in Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The story gives us the lead-up to Brutus' and Antony's funeral orations, and the results that ensue, while avoiding the event itself. Then again, as well-crafted as this series is, how outsize would your ego have to be to think you could outdo this?
marginalia has posted elsewhere, a few of us went out to see Pan's Labyrinth on Friday. We had to trek out into the wilds of unincorporated King County to find a late showing that wasn't sold out, but it was well worth the drive: The film's historical setting is the closing days of the Spanish Civil War, as Franco's Fanlangists seek to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance: think Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, only in a later and more desperate place. The fantastic elements center around the imagination of a girl whose mother has reluctantly married a Falangist captain, and look superficially similar to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation, although a good deal darker, shading not infrequently into horror along the lines of the original Grimm's fairy tales or even E.T.A. Hoffmann's stories. And del Toro's narrative is by turns moving, beautiful, and brutal--easily the most memorable picture I've seen in months.On Saturday, I ventured out into the uncharacteristically Arctic night air we're experieicing in Seattle again to see Casino Royale a second time. I might not have done so, particularly on such an unpleasant night, but it was playing at The Big Picture and
ryuusama hadn't seen it yet. I mean, what better place to see a Bond film than a place with a bar? Things I appreciated more the second time through: the people cheering a fight between a cobra and mongoose in Madagascar, near the beginning--a whole lot like us getting off on the movie's violence; also, that Chris Cornell song is the best Bond theme since "Live and Let Die" if you ask me.Sunday night,
ryuusama hosted the premier episode of HBO's Rome, which shall we say paralleled events in Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The story gives us the lead-up to Brutus' and Antony's funeral orations, and the results that ensue, while avoiding the event itself. Then again, as well-crafted as this series is, how outsize would your ego have to be to think you could outdo this?
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Date: 2007-01-17 06:58 am (UTC)