L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse, and Dan In Real Life

A few months ago I reactivated my Netflix again, and since then I've been watching entirely too many movies. Here are thoughts on a few recent ones.

About 6-7 years ago I saw L'Avventura, written and directed by the late Michelangelo Antonioni. I thought it was great, but for some reason I never got around to seeing the second and third movies in the trilogy, La Notte and L'Eclisse. Well, with the aforementioned Netflix account I could finally see them, and so when they got close to the top of my queue, I decided to rewatch L'Avventura to freshen my memory. For some reason I didn't think it was as good as I remember thinking it was. Maybe knowing the resolution (or lack thereof) took a bit of its luster away or maybe my tastes have simply changed since I first saw it.

Then La Notte arrived, and it was as good as I had remembered L'Avventura being, which is to say it was great. While L'Avventura and L'Eclisse have both been released as exquisite DVDs from the Criterion Collection, La Notte has only been released in Region 1 by Fox Lorber, so the DVD was pretty crummy, but as I said, the movie was great.

Based on this I had high hopes for L'Eclisse, but it turned out to be something of a disappointment. The stock exchange scenes with Alain Delon were probably the most exciting scenes of the trilogy, but the malaise that worked so well in the first two movies was just exasperating here. Monica Vitti, the female lead of the first and third movies, and the secondary lead in the middle movie, was great throughout. After finishing the third movie I looked her up on IMDB to see what else she's been in, and was saddened to read she has Alzheimer's.

On a significantly lighter note than Antonioni's alienation trilogy is the movie I got & watched today, Dan In Real Life. I had modest expectations for it, since from the previews the story was pretty straightforward. While obviously not in the same league as Antonioni's trilogy, this movie was a lot better than I was expecting, definitely one of the best movies from its genre I've seen in awhile. There were a lot of funny moments that weren't obvious from a mile away, and Steve Carell's performance was great -- probably the best I've seen from him so far. The chemistry between him and Juliette Binoche was surprisingly good, and I thought the story of their quick developing romance was very realistic. The real surprise of the movie though was all the awkward moments. The quantity and intensity of the awkwardness rivaled at times the second season of the original British version of The Office. Which is to say, it was great! Ever since watching that second season I've gotten into the bad habit of pausing it just as it starts to get really awkward, going and doing something else for a bit, and then coming back to the movie when I'm more ready for it. I must have done that at least 5 times during the movie.

Dan In Real Life seems to me like a really well done version of a movie from a few years ago that I had high expectations for, but ended up being pretty bad: Jersey Girl. The two movies have very similar plots, and both even feature the same song at key points, Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open The Door." But that's where the similarities end, since in terms of the acting & chemistry of the leads, the comedy, the awkwardness, and believability, Dan In Real Life was much, much better. In fact, I would say that Dan In Real Life surpassed the high expectations I had for Jersey Girl, and Jersey Girl was below my modest expectations for Dan In Real Life. This is very similar to my opinion of the similar movies I ♥ Huckabees and Stranger Than Fiction. I had very high expectations for I ♥ Huckabees and was disappointed, and had modest expectations for Stranger Than Fiction, and that ended up being one of my favorite movies of 2006.

The Daily Show starts in 3 minutes so I will end this now.

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree

Seventh Tree, the new Goldfrapp album, was released last week. On Goldfrapp's first 3 albums, the sound progressed from downtempo on Felt Mountain, to uptempo on Black Cherry, to all-out electro-sleaze on Supernature. So I was quite surprised when I heard the first track on Seventh Tree, Clowns, which prominently features Allison's vocals, accompanied by only a very simple instrument arrangement. This same basic characteristc is more or less followed on the rest of the album's 9 songs. The thumping beats which were a staple on the other albums are almost entirely absent here. Needless to say, the sound is a stark departure from that of their previous albums. I think I was so surprised by the new sound that I didn't give the album a fair listen the first time I heard it, and I dismissed it as a failed experiment. But with each successive listen the album has grown on me. Unlike Black Cherry, the magnificence of which is immediately apparent, it's taken several listens before the magnificence of Seventh Tree was apparent to me. Presently Seventh Tree is my second favorite Goldfrapp album, behind Black Cherry, although I would not be surprised if before long it's my favorite.

Goldfrapp has had some great music videos in the past, including Utopia, Train, and my favorite, Strict Machine. The music video for A&E, the Seventh Tree lead single, is no exception:



I really hope that when they're done releasing music videos from Seventh Tree they release a DVD with all their music videos.

UFC 82 results

UFC 82 was last night. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, so if you haven't seen it yet please stop reading now.

I ended up going 8-2 on my predictions. The full results can be found here. A couple thoughts:

-While I think Anderson Silva lost the first round, he completely dominated the second round, ending the fight with 8 seconds left in the round. As the commentators noted, there really isn't anyone left for him to fight at 185. While it seems unlikely, I think it would be awesome if somehow Silva was able to fight Georges St. Pierre. The main difficulty in this is obviously that St. Pierre fights at 170, and he'd presumably be at a big disadvantage at 185. Still though, that would be a great fight to see.

-As soon as I saw that Cheick Kongo was going to fight Heath Herring, I thought that this would be an easy, easy win for Kongo, based on Kongo's excellent performances in his previous few fights, and Herring's awful performances in his previous few fights. Of the predictions I made for UFC 82, I was the most confident that Kongo would be victorious. Boy was I wrong! They looked like 2 completely different fighters last night. The commentators remarked about how improved Kongo was on the ground, but I think the big story was how improved Herring was, mainly his conditioning. He seemed slow and easily winded in his previous fights, and in this one he fought hard the entire 15 minutes.