Alright, America: Ready...Set...Decipher!

As you lug your notebooks, spreadsheets and Venn Diagram paper with you to see Pirates o' Caribbean: Retroactively Kinda Irrelevant Title this holiday weekend, be prepared to consider the following on your way out:

Is Pirates 3 the most confusing movie in history (yes, even moreso than the cinema of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Syriana) because

a) it's stacked wall-to-wall with impenetrable and arbitrary exposition, with characters literally explaining the plot to eachother in a fashion that winds up making things more confusing still?; or

b) screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio are simply inept at storytelling, akin to someone who stretches out a simple anecdote with endless diversions, corrections and irrelevant explanations?

I ask because, like many who've seen it, and even moreso than with number two (which I still sorta liked), I had no clue what was going on from moment to moment. I'd written it off as an immense latticework of tedious backstabbings, reversals, abrupt-changes-of-heart, tedious re-backstabbings, re-reversals, double whammies, re-double re-whammies and triple backstand quadruple gainers. But then Slate's Dana Stevens somehow managed to coherently summarize at least part of it (while intentionally leaving out at least half of the plot, that is). So I'm not sure what to think, and really have no desire to ever set eyes on that fucker again. (Had there been a triple fight on a runaway water wheel, that would be another thing.)

In any case, have fun, America! You've sure got your work cut out for you!

So much for the auteur theory

Q. What does the trailer for the visually striking Hungarian Holocaust drama Fateless, as seen here

have to do with the trailer for the über-chick flick Evening, as seen here?

A. They were both directed by Lajos Koltai. No, really. No, really, I'm not joking. I'd really appreciate if you'd stop insisting that this is a tall tale told by me, a liar.

The cherry on top? Koltai is a longtime cinematographer who's worked for Tornatore, Szabó, Albert Brooks and even Jodie Foster. I suppose his tenure working on pictorially homely Hollywood fare like the Born Yesterday remake and Out to Sea have prepared him for a middlebrow maelstrom. Still: What. The. Fuck.

I Want to Blog!

This blog has been on life support (or just purely self-promotion duties) for too long. It's about time I returned to semi-active duty. Here's what to expect round these parts from now on:

• Quickly tossed off observations on films, both new and old, that I haven't been paid to write about elsewhere
• Random, possibly eccentric minor observations on various errata (like the one you'll stumble upon in a minute)
• The very occasional and very interesting factoid about my daily life
• A political/social rant, but one well-considered and, well, not very rant-y
• Shameless self-promotion. As though I could give that up.

To start things off, here's something I noticed after looking at the cover of the latest issue of Skeptic. I can't believe I never caught this before, but ye gods does the great, late scientist resemble Nouvelle Vague superstar Jean-Pierre Léaud (The 400 Blows, Masculin-Feminin, etc.). Quick! Some enterprising French filmmaker go make a Carl Sagan biopic with the aging former child actor, possibly even in the French language. (And I really do mean quick: Léaud, 63, is currently one year older than Sagan was when he died.)
















(An unusually fiery Sagan, from the cover of Skeptic, as mentioned; a typically laid-back Léaud, from, I believe, Bed and Board.)