I'm going to desperately try to make TAKE SHELTER with you guys. It looks awesome.
Brandon, hope the tour went well. I'm really broke right now but once I get $25 bucks I can spare, it's going towards your Kickstarter project and a vinyl copy of TEAMWORK. Really dig this:
Jeffrey, I'm looking forward to your review of MELANCHOLIA. I think you're going to be happy. It's all I've been thinking about for two days. Also, BOARDWALK EMPIRE is really running this season. I didn't realize you like BORED TO DEATH though I guess I should have suspected. Have you seen this interview with Jason Schwartzman from The Believer?
John, the Saint-Exupery book is yours to do what you will with. I bought it at the Ithaca book sale for $.50 last spring. I was there on Saturday but didn't get over to the VHS section. I did get a few good books and some vinyl. ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS and SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS are not available on NWI.
Oh yeah, I watched DOGTOOTH last week in the middle of my SONS OF ANARCHY binge. I don't really have anything to add to the discussion. It was alright, I guess, but I don't really have a strong opinion either way. I wouldn't watch it again and I probably wouldn't recommend it either.
Below is a bit about MELANCHOLIA. There are not really any spoilers in it because I'm not entirely sure how I could spoil it. Read it or don't, I kept it brief because I think that the interesting part will be in the discussion (also, I still haven't figured out exactly what I have to say about it). I hope you can all see it soon.
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Melancholia is just going to pass right in front of us and it's going to be the most beautiful sight ever.
MELANCHOLIA opens with a beautiful, disorienting and dreamlike sequence of images from which it is almost impossible to look away. These first few minutes are set to Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" Prelude, which creates a haunting backdrop for von Trier to spend the next 10 minutes intercutting pictures of the characters with shots of planets aligning and ultimately colliding. The whole opening is amazing. It's gorgeously shot and puts things in a cosmic perspective.
Part 1 begins disarmingly. Von Trier uses a shaky handheld camera to shoot a funny and endearing scene about the newly weds attempting to get to their reception. Dunst and Skarsgaard are so charming that it is easy to forget that the world will be ending. Complex family dynamics begin to unfold when the couple finally make it to the wedding and Justine begins to revert into herself. More often she turns up missing and the guests have to wait while she takes a bath, drives around in the golf cart or sits in another room. Over and over again Justine is told to be happy, that a lot of money was spent on the wedding and she should want "this." All this expectation to be happy adds guilt and drives her deeper into herself as the reception unravels.
Part 2 begins after the wedding with Justine arriving home in a taxi in a depressed and weak state a few days before Melancholia is supposed to "fly by" Earth. Ironically, as her sister begins to fall apart with fear that the planet will hit, Justine begins to become the stronger character, though probably only through resignation.
I watched MELANCHOLIA twice in about 24 hours and I am even considering watching it again tonight. My brief recap above barely touches the film. The real genius of it would fill pages Or, more likely, needs us all to sit down over a pot of tea for a few hours and discuss. Honestly, I cannot stop thinking about the film - especially Part 1. It is such a sad and wonderful thing to behold.
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