Movies, movies, movies.

I might have festival fever. As a matter of fact, I'd count on it.

We have Netflix. I've been guilty of dismissing it in the past, but no longer since I've given up almost completely on American cinema. I've watched a hell of a lot of films in the past couple of weeks (most of them with my youngest) and I'm going to list some of the best of them below, from decent to excellent.


Beneath the Dark. USA, 2010.
A young couple (some guy and Meadow Soprano) stop at a motel to rest and weird shit happens. I found this one slightly hokey but still a little interesting. Worth some time, though, as it's less lazy than most American thrillers.

Exorcismus. Spain, 2010.
A teenage girl is exorcised. Not all is lost, though: there's a twist AND a lesson.

Jar City. Iceland, 2006.
The murder of an elderly man opens up a decades old rape case, and a whole lot of other stuff. A busy story but well kept together. Iceland is a stark backdrop and it works better than I could have imagined.
(subtitled)

11:14. USA, 2003.
A movie about how lives become intertwined at a precise moment and around a particular intersection. This one is tight and  funny, and I had to guess a lot. Patrick Swayze stars in it, too, so I was all sad and nostalgic...

Hawaii, Oslo. Norway, 2004.
A man who works at a psychiatric hospital has a dream that one of the patients, out for a run, is hit by an ambulance. Given that the man's dreams have come true before, he frantically searches for the errant patient. His search introduces a series of characters whose troubled lives become intertwined.  A great script developed very carefully.
(subtitled)

The Secret in Their Eyes. Argentina, 2009.
A retired police inspector just can't forget an old case to rest and decides to write a novel about it. This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time, it's just a good story told well.
(subtitled)

Rabies. Israel, 2011.
Released in its native land as Kalavet and touted as Israel's first honest-to-goodness horror movie.
A guy staggers out of the woods to meet a handful of stranded kids on the road and tells them his sister has been abducted by a maniac. This movie did not unfold or end the way I assumed it would, and that made me intensely happy. Watch this. 
(subtitled)

The Wave. Germany, 2008.
A high school teacher proves to his political science class that a dictatorship in modern day Germany is still very possible. Nein, alarmingly easy. A reminder about the importance of structure and family and worth every minute.
(subtitled)

Five Days. Gone.

I had five days off. I have to go back to work tomorrow. I love my job, it's okay, but having five days off was pretty sweet.

I read a lot...  finished Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). The book maps out the night of Jesus' birth from the POV of one of the wise men, and relates how he really came to meet Mary, Joseph and Jesus. I don't know how God-fearing Seth is, but his Herod is one of the most loathsome I've ever come across.


I was kind of surprised by how much I enjoyed that, and I think that Seth is an undervalued writer. Maybe it's because I'm a Canadian that I don't get snooty enough about taking such liberties with Lincoln. I don't like romance novels and old romance novels don't charm me any more than the new ones do. There's nothing wrong with artistic license if it's smart, entertaining and just a tiny bit believable. 


Geoff passed along The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, written by Tom Wolfe. Written in 1968, this is a journalistic 'account' of the author's encounter(s) with the Merry Pranksters, a group of counterculture artists and others led by Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). As near as I can tell so far, anyway, I've just started.

I'm also halfway through 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang. Chang is an economist and professor at the University of Cambridge. He's teaching me a lot. This has been the most approachable and enjoyable book about economics I've ever taken a stab at. I'd recommend it to anybody. The gist: capitalism, and the free market system on which this ideology is based, does not work in the long term. Marvelous.


More later, including books...