Made me think about how Alaska (slash Canada) was a weirdly popular source of comedy in the early 20th century. Keaton, Chaplin, and W.C. Fields all have films on the subject. Very bizarre that The Simpsons Movie decided to bring back this idea of “exotic Alaska” in 2007 cause I can’t really think of anything between The Fatal Glass of Beer and this that’s in that “genre.”
An extremely beautiful and more-than-a-little painful movie for me. I'd put it next to Ghost World and The Seats of the Alcazar as one of the best movies about having an obsessive passion for art that does not benefit you at all. A very honest film, which is willing to end with the fraught conclusion that Jönson's single-minded anime obsession probably was detrimental, but that it was still "worth it" to him in a meaningful way. Still, I really hope…
How can Americans relate to Europe? When you grow up in the historyless, cultureless suburbs, how can you relate to a place as old as Venice in any sort of meaningful way? The 15:17 to Paris is hyper-aware of the banality of tourism; Anthony Sadler's love of the selfie stick is only a (slightly) exaggerated portrayal of what every American tourist in Europe does and feels, a profound sense of surreality (my friend upon arriving in Dubrovnik: "this is a…
Shades of Vertigo in the manufactured ghost story, shades of Hamlet in the play-within-a-play. What starts as a (hilarious, energetic, sweet) romantic comedy begins folding in on itself endlessly, becoming a haunting story of fate, revenge, and illusion like no other. In the first half Shah Rukh Khan does comedy acting the way I like it, in which every gesture is specific and affected to generate comedy (see: Cary Grant, Nicolas Cage), but he proves his mettle dramatically in the second half, mixing in a haunted, vengeful showman without missing a beat.
Hell of a movie to introduce myself to Bollywood.
