Films of Late

Another busy week, but my dear husband came back to me after his Arizona adventures so now I have access again to a computer that spell checks and can actually load webpages. But for all that, I have very little to say, since I have had little time to think. So I will tell you about a few movies I've seen recently.

Annie Hall is the second Woody Allen film I've seen, and I quite enjoyed it. He used quite post-modern techniques, although the subject matter and narrative are not. It surprised me in how little the academic and artistic world has progressed since then. Alvy marries a professor at one point and goes to a party with her full of academics. He escapes into a spare room to the watch the Knicks game, because everyone was talking about "modes of alienation". I had to laugh because one of the last academic conferences I was at, they decided on "modes of alienation" for the next year's topic. Don't you think if Woody Allen was making fun of it in the 1970's, we would be done with it by now?

I checked some movies out that I knew Matt wouldn't want to watch while he was gone. One of them was Kadosh , and Israeli film about love and sexuality in a Hasidic Jerusalem ghetto. One of my German professors, in her excitement, had already told me all about the film and its plot on a long flight across the Atlantic, but I decided to check it out anyway. I had a mixed response to it, because as a member of a religious minority, I find that don't like to see attacks on other religious minorities. On the other hand, I enjoyed how the film explored the interplay of sexuality, fertility, love and religious ambiguity even if a bit heavy handed (or perhaps biblical?) in the ending.

I also checked out The Lion in Winter , not the Peter O'Toole and Kathrine Hepburn, but a new filming with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. Glenn Close made a weepy Eleanor, but Patrick Stewart was good, of course. John was played by a fat, whiny, hairless wonder, so it made a lot of the dialog even funnier. They played up Richard and Phillip's homosexual relationship, but then didn't mention that Henry was a pederast (I think it lost some of the ambiguity of the revelation scene). Didn't like Alais, but I never liked Alais. If you haven't seen any version of it, I highly recommend it (either one). It's a classic Christmas movie, although I couldn't stand three hours straight of bickering, so I had to watch it in chunks over the weekend. Here are some favorite quotes:

Prince John: A knife! He's got a knife!
Eleanor: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!

Henry II: Now see here, boy...
Philip II: I am a king - I am no man's "boy"!
Henry II: A king? Because you put your ass on purple cushions?

Eleanor: In a world where carpenters get resurrected, everything is possible.

Eleanor: Good, good Louis; if I'd managed sons for him instead of all those little girls, I'd still be stuck with being Queen of France and we should not have known each other. Such, my angels, is the role of sex in history.

Prince John: Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out!
Prince Richard: Let's strike a flint and see.

[to Prince John]
Prince Geoffrey: If you're a prince, there's hope for every ape in Africa.

Henry II: I'm 50 now. Good God, boy, I'm the oldest man I know! I've got a decade on the pope!

And for your entertainment, go to this link and enjoy the short film (the blog is quite good as well).