(no subject)

[jfb]

1. Wow, Middlesex was great. I'm not going to say anything else about the book itself. I'll confess something: I avoid long novels. It takes me a long time to read anything, and the longer the book, the more likely I am not to finish it at all. 530 pages is more than enough to ward me off, but I loved the author's previous, much shorter novel The Virgin Suicides, so I made the effort, and am very glad I did.
   
   The cover of my paperback edition was covered with a thin waxy film, glued on so at first I didn't realize it was there. But over the course of reading it--two or three months carried around in my backpack in the California sun--it started to peel away from the cover, at first just around the edges so it seemed like an extension of the smoke motif in the cover design. Today after I read the last page I pulled the rest of it off, and, with its skin shed, it looks bright and shiny and new. Which, as it happens, nicely matches the protagonist's experience: gradual, then sudden transformation into what you were all along.
   
   
2. I finally saw Fahrenheit 9/11, which left me a little sad, some angry, but mostly inarticulate. I will say that I hated his use of music cues, and I really, really liked that there were Kerry supporters outside the multiplex registering voters.
   
   
3. It looks like I'm in a new band, with Meredith Edgar and three of the DTs. With this one I'll be playing keyboards--the full-sized kind--along with, of course, some other instruments. (The usual suspects: mandolin, accordion, maybe a little lap steel.)
   
   Russell and I are still trying to name our duo, and the new band needs a name too. So far, we are in grave danger of being named the Dead Horse Beaters. Our friend Dan is taking a poll on the subject, so chime in if you have an opinion.
   

Comments

[bnewmark.livejournal.com]

heeyyy - i'm halfway through middlesex - when i'm done, let's discuss!
and what do you mean about the music cues - i thought his choice of music clips during different parts of the film were great. is that what you're talking about?

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Yeah--I thought things like playing "Vacation" when Bush is on vacation were cheap shots, and using bluegrass to underscore Bush's supposed rusticness was just offensive, for the reasons Sean gave in another comment. But oh well, to each her own.

I thought on the whole the movie got a lot better in the second half, when he was mostly done cramming information and jokes into a tight space and moved on to the human cost of war. But maybe he needed the first half for the second half to work--I haven't thought it all through.

well

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

Like I said in a conversation last night about the candid shots he used, it's tough to figure out how much to critique him when he's obviously going for humor. Moore is a comedian too, and not as many people would see his stuff if they didn't get a laugh from it too. It definitely weakens his overall political "purity," if that exists anymore -- and in any case, the right wing has proven itself more than capable of bad taste attacks on liberals in their own right.

If his research is accurate, I forgive him his cheap shots in a few places, I guess.

Re: well

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgive him too. I'm not above a little propaganda in a good cause, let alone some bad taste. I'm just saying I didn't like it. (FWIW, I don't like "bluegrass is for stupid people" jokes in straight comedies, either.)

[bushmiller.livejournal.com]

I also hated what Moore did with the music cues. All the "hey, Bush is a down home bumpkin!" finger-pickin' music really irritated me, for the inherent regionalism/classism in including the music like that, but also because it's completely blind to the fact that this countrified bumpkin stuff is a pose. Bush is a blueblood from New England, but I guess making fun of that with music isn't as easy. Far too much pandering to middle-class liberals.

In contrast, I saw Jehane Noujaim's Control Room the other day. Similar topic, obviously, but overall a much more interesting, thought-provoking, and enraging film. I strongly recommend it. Right now, it's the best movie I've seen in 2004.

Dead Horse Beaters is an awful name, man. That sounds like the Be Sharps to me.

--sean

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the bluegrass stuff was the worst. I liked Control Room a lot too.

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I thought Turkey in the Straw was a bit much, but loved the use of The Greatest American Hero. And, yes, I did think that a lot of the editing was annoyingly over the top the top, especially in places where he edited together "Hussein/Al Qaida" when he could have just used more real clips (although that would have taken more time).

If only you had a list of potential band names...

[bnewmark.livejournal.com]

i also liked the "cocaine" riff when they showed the documents regarding his service with the other guy's name blacked out.

[bushmiller.livejournal.com]

Did you notice how the music in the beginning was quite reminiscent of some of Phillip Glass's more minimalistic stuff? I got the impression during the opening credits that Moore was trying to leech off of the legitimacy of Errol Morris' documentary style.

--sean

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard some of that. I don't think of it as leeching, though--just, Glass has a style that works for certain types of documentary scene, and Moore's composer made use of it.