Tuesday, January 14, 2003

nurse betty ho hum comedy that failed to interest me that much. none of the characters werer particularly of interest or worthy of attention. or so i felt. i won't say more

the hours the hours was a brilliantly edited and acted movie, but as an adaptation of a ( from what i can tell ) intensly psychological movie it is naturally missing one thing: the thoughts of the characters. The actresses and actors did what they could, but ultimately, one is left wondering on the motives of various characters. I think the point was clear enough -- to live one's OWN life and avoid the cages of one's and others making ( here being of course quite glib and easy, I doubt writers nor filmmakers would want it so reduced ) -- so maybe it was not necessary, but for me there was a just a little missing preventing from it being a great peice of art.

adaptation speaking of adaptations however, this movie is brilliant, if only for the 3 or 4 levels of story that it tries to embed: the story of wild orchids and their adaptation and harvesting ( the movie being an "adaptation" of a book called the orchid thief ), the attempt to write an adaptation of the orchid thief, the story writer writing the orchid thief, as well as adaptation of plants, and people, and the creation of adaptations in terms of works of art, not to mention the process of writing a screen play and book, and the interesection of all those things.

If one tries to put all of it together it can seem quite bewildering a complex bewlidering self reflective structure. If one took out all those levels it would be a trite somewhat dumb story, but the way it all tied itself together is, to my mind, nothing short of genius.

I have new found respect for Nick Cage, Meryl Streep, and the people involved ( the screen writer, the writer of the orchid thief, and the orchid thief himself ) who must have agreed at some point to be so treated!

nemesis the star trek franchise is petering out ( an aside here, what is the origin of the term petering out? some poor peter long ago who couldn't finish a task? ). enterprise has been dissappointing of late, and now the movie. blah. first of all: the plot is just dumb, the picard clone gone wrong, the inhabitants of remus being vampire look a likes, who want to destroy the universe in revenge, and bred for war -- how many bloody species in the star trek universe are bred for war?! second: the action is all just action, nothing that grabs you, pulls you out of your chair and slams you back in again ( granted that is something not easy to do, but there have been a couple star trek movies that have done that ), big explosions aren't enough! alas, maybe they'll stop, maybe they'll give up, maybe some decent minds will move onto something less overdone.

I can hope can't I?