the frig blig

S and I alternately laughed and cried watching the film Outsourced last night at the Majestic Bay. Locally produced with lots of assistance from India, the film tells the story of a call-center manager who has to lay off his entire staff and then travel to India to train his replacement. We award it five bindis.

If you guessed ‘Fitzcarraldo’ based on the title of this post, bully for you. The fish and I watched aforesaid flick the night before last on our historic futon.

This 1982 film written and directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski in the title role is pretty cool. Watching Kinski speak german while pretending to be Irish took a little getting used to, but he was quite captivating as portraying the opera-obsessed eccentric capitalist with a dream of bringing european opera to the Peruvian jungle.

A film like this would no doubt utilize computers for effects today, rather than the huge expense of filming an actual steamboat being pulled up a real mountain by Indian laborers.

Seeing so many opera scenes made me compare director Herzog with composer Richard Wagner; both men are fond of creating large works with ambitious, epic themes. And both are skilled at their craft. And both are German.

This was the 3rd Herzog film I’ve watched, and the first with a happy ending I’m glad to report. All three films focus on men with near-crazy obsessions. They were all very intense, and powerful films.

Suzan and I watched the japanese film Tampopo (1987) last night. We both liked it and will probably be receptive to viewing other films by director Juzo Itami.

blog along with me,
the best is yet to be,
the current bits, for which the prev were made.

I read the news today, oh boy. Robert Altman, director extraordinaire, died.

While the press will certainly mention his wellknown flics like Nashville, MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Player, Shortcuts, etc., I must rave about his early, awesome but rarely remembered Brewster McCloud.

He was old and finally received a ‘lifetime achievement’ academy award just this year (?!), thankfully before he died. (Uh-oh, Altman was 81 and my father is 82!… a scary realization.)

I would never hesitate to see an Altman film. What I liked about his style was, he did not hew to standard formulas. He pursued characters, in the full sense of the word. He found good actors and gave them free reign. And his films were frequently damn good.

Besides Brewstser, I also liked one of his later films Cookie’s Fortune. Altman had a full length career so it is no tragedy that the end arrived. But I will surely miss his work, and hope (and expect) many others were inspired by his craft.

Good bye Robert, and thanks for sharing.