Movies and music
Feb. 1st, 2004 12:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaWatched Infernal Affairs tonight, as parents wanted to see it (the upside to VCDs being that they play on the proper DVD machine hooked up to the proper telly, mostly). Do not understand how they eked a trilogy out of the storyline (rampant prequeling O_O) but we will see. In any case it was dark of moral and visual palette and thus I am content. Labyrinthine thrillers, mmm.
In fact the dénouement of the thing is rather like... Minghella's take on The Talented Mr. Ripley? Because Highsmith meant Ripley to get away with it, but the movie - ah, wait, I've got a sentence - getting away with it in a literal sense doesn't equate winning, because when one escapes payback one rejects the possibility of atonement and redemption as well. That of course if one is sensitive vis the concepts of atonement, redemption and so forth, but if one were not Hell would cease to have a meaning.
I always like to see the Buddhist and Christian hells coincide on a metaphorical plane with the Sartrian. XD Being that I'm a rationalist who thinks in metaphors, the more baroque the better.
(A digression: in the philosophy of hedonism, crime is verboten. Not because lawfulness has intrinsic value, but because any selfish enjoyment to be derived from said crime is thought to be ultimately outweighed by the misery, if not of punishment, then of the fear of discovery.)
The het felt so gratuitous in this movie. I haven't seen or read anything in a while in which it was this bad; and sadly gratuity is not even technically the case, as each of the women had an indispensable plotwise turn to serve that wasn't getting kidnapped for blackmail purposes, so I frankly don't know why it grated. I think it was the inappropriately sappy romantic music that came in fits and starts (my sister says cue editing is her main objection toward HK film soundtracks). Or just Sammi being particularly egregious.
***
Luckily I'd put by great store of "moody, whinesome rock" thanks to the said the gramophone guy, to toss in the 'amp while pondering Sartrian hell. XD ...Am currently horrified by Gramophone Guy, by the way. Bitterly freezing Montreal winters put him in the mood for a weekly theme comprised of Elbow and the Stills and Modest Mouse? That's... that's like a tall glass of water when in danger of drowning. There's a reason I spend every December to March listening to cheesy sparkly Avexpop.
Also: watching PopArt. (The music videos, I emphasise unnecessarily; the songs I have to download, bother it all.) It's wrong that after twenty PMVs I still wouldn't be able to recognise LChris in a street environment at any age, not if he walked up and spat in my eye. The man apparently just has one of those faces, and then he started in with the sunglasses and funny hats and it was game over. Which is sad, because he was actually kinda cute. How can someone be kinda cute and completely unmemorable?
The commentary so far is basically nothing but TNeil and LChris going "XD XD XD".
In fact the dénouement of the thing is rather like... Minghella's take on The Talented Mr. Ripley? Because Highsmith meant Ripley to get away with it, but the movie - ah, wait, I've got a sentence - getting away with it in a literal sense doesn't equate winning, because when one escapes payback one rejects the possibility of atonement and redemption as well. That of course if one is sensitive vis the concepts of atonement, redemption and so forth, but if one were not Hell would cease to have a meaning.
I always like to see the Buddhist and Christian hells coincide on a metaphorical plane with the Sartrian. XD Being that I'm a rationalist who thinks in metaphors, the more baroque the better.
(A digression: in the philosophy of hedonism, crime is verboten. Not because lawfulness has intrinsic value, but because any selfish enjoyment to be derived from said crime is thought to be ultimately outweighed by the misery, if not of punishment, then of the fear of discovery.)
The het felt so gratuitous in this movie. I haven't seen or read anything in a while in which it was this bad; and sadly gratuity is not even technically the case, as each of the women had an indispensable plotwise turn to serve that wasn't getting kidnapped for blackmail purposes, so I frankly don't know why it grated. I think it was the inappropriately sappy romantic music that came in fits and starts (my sister says cue editing is her main objection toward HK film soundtracks). Or just Sammi being particularly egregious.
***
Luckily I'd put by great store of "moody, whinesome rock" thanks to the said the gramophone guy, to toss in the 'amp while pondering Sartrian hell. XD ...Am currently horrified by Gramophone Guy, by the way. Bitterly freezing Montreal winters put him in the mood for a weekly theme comprised of Elbow and the Stills and Modest Mouse? That's... that's like a tall glass of water when in danger of drowning. There's a reason I spend every December to March listening to cheesy sparkly Avexpop.
Also: watching PopArt. (The music videos, I emphasise unnecessarily; the songs I have to download, bother it all.) It's wrong that after twenty PMVs I still wouldn't be able to recognise LChris in a street environment at any age, not if he walked up and spat in my eye. The man apparently just has one of those faces, and then he started in with the sunglasses and funny hats and it was game over. Which is sad, because he was actually kinda cute. How can someone be kinda cute and completely unmemorable?
The commentary so far is basically nothing but TNeil and LChris going "XD XD XD".
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Date: 2004-01-31 11:33 pm (UTC)The last movie doesn't stay within the boundaries defined by the first two movies, though. It keeps returning to it and Yan, upon whom the entire trilogy hangs, but I liked the last one because...well, you'll have to wait for it. Again. XD