Stuff and Such: October 2005 Reviews

October kept me pretty busy, but not as bus- y as September, which was a real banner month, i.e. probably not too impressive by most freelance standards, but I was pleased.  

Amazon: Cream - Royal Albert Hall: May 2-3-5-6 2005 [two- disc set], Crónicas (John Leguizamo's best performance since Moulin Rouge), Hart to Hart - The Complete First Season [six- disc set], Popstar (with Aaron Carter--yipes!), Bomb the System, Unscripted (HBO series from George Clooney and Steven Soder- bergh), Queer Eye for the Straight Guy - The Fab Five Collection [eight-disc set], The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Happily Ever After (Yvan Atal's second film with wife Charlotte Gainsbourg; features a cameo from Johnny Depp), Pixies - Sell Out, The Adventures of Pete & Pete - Season Two [2-disc set] (Iggy Pop and Michelle Trachtenberg join), A Different World - Season One [4-disc set], and Veronica Mars - The Complete First Season [six-disc set].  

Seattle Film Blog: Shopgirl and two short posts about SIFF events.  

Reel News: I didn't do any writing for Reel News, but I get a nice acknowledgment in the new issue, "Special thanks to Kathleen Fennessy" (for the articles I edited last month). That meant a lot, so I let Tara Morgan know when I saw her at last night's screening of Capote. Great movie, by the way. Highly recommended to anyone with even the slightest interest in the craft of writing--particularly the tricky art of the interview, i.e. Capote's In Cold Blood heart-to-hearts with Perry Smith; both beautifully portrayed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Clifton Collins, Jr. (Catherine Keener as Harper Lee, Chris Cooper as detective Alvin Dewey, and Bob Balaban as New Yorker editor William Shawn are also quite good).

Random notes: You might not guess it from my cinematic taste, but I love Veronica Mars. It's like a cross between The O.C. and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as written by Raymond Chandler and directed by David Lynch with Veronica as a post-millennial Nancy Drew by way of Veronica Lake and Lauren Bacall (Kristen Bell has Lake's petite good looks and Bacall's poise and smarts). And that's pretty much what I say in my review. I'm not sure why the net- work moved it from Tuesday to Wednesday--at the same time as Lost. For a UPN program, the ratings have been pretty good, but they don't compare to ABC's powerhouse. It's a great show. Please watch it (and it repeats on Saturdays). Incidentally, if you're not much of a TV watcher, you may still stumble across Bell on the big screen from time to time. A couple of years ago, she appeared in David Mamet's Spartan and, according the IMDb, she'll next be seen in 50 Pills with Thumbsucker's Lou Taylor Pucci and an Am- erican version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (here's hoping it's bet- ter than the US remakes of The Grudge, Dark Water, etc.).  

Postscript: After an inexplicable delay of several years--in- explicable to me, at any rate--Pulse is finally getting a US re- lease. Although the marvelously twisted Bright Future--killer jellyfish, Che Guevera t-shirts, and Tadanobu Asano--got a limited release last year, the equally twisted Doppelganger went straight to video. For shame. They're two of his best films. Seance, which was produced for Japanese TV (and was never released in the US) is even better. Pulse will be playing Seattle's Varsity from December 2nd through the 9th. See you there! 

 

Endnote: Image from UPN's Veronica Mars site.