Thanks to a couple long plane flights last week, I had a chance to (gasp) watch a movie: The Merchant of Venice. Al Pacino as Shylock, Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio, Jeremy Irons as Antonio, and Not Cate Blanchett, Sorry as Portia.

Don't know the story? ( Here's the Cliff Notes version. )

Shylock is the character everybody remembers, an anti-Semitic Christian's archetype of the miserly, angry Jew, but with a deeper layer: "Hath not a Jew eyes?" He was played as a comic wretch at first, but in the last couple hundred years he's been played more sympathetically. Shakespeare's genius is that the text allows for both, especially with some judicious cutting.

Al Pacino said in an interview that he's been offered the role of Shylock "many times," but had always passed due to the play's anti-Semitism. I can see why he took this version on. In the film, Shylock's anger is more understandable and his pain deeper. You see, more than once, Christians spitting on Jews and harassing them in the streets. The effect of Portia's maneuvering is more clear: Shylock stands in the rain, cast out from the Jewish community of Venice, not accepted by the Christians, abandoned by his only daughter, truly alone.

The play, and the film, almost feel like two different stories: a comedy featuring Shakespearean standard cross-dressing, mistaken identities, and love at the end, and a tragedy featuring one of Shakespeare's more tormented characters. Roger Ebert noted that Jessica jumps from one play to the other one mid-stream.

It's a beautiful film, well acted and well staged. Worth watching if you like Shakespeare or costume dramas. I'm still thinking about it days later.

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. He heard a step behind him....

I'm a sucker for last-man-on-Earth stories. One of my favorite obscure SF movies, The Quiet Earth, starts off with almost half an hour of the main character wandering through a deserted Auckland while going steadily mad.

I finally got around to watching 28 Days Later late last night, which has been holding up my Netflix queue for longer than I care to admit. There's a lot of blood in that movie, but for me one of the most creepy scenes was the opening: the main character wanders aimlessly through an utterly silent and deserted London. Cities are not meant to be that quiet.

I'm starting to creep back to my pre-vacation stress level, and am trying desperately to maintain the sense of calm I'd achieved while I wasn't working. This, plus lack of sleep due to a new sleep schedule, is leading me to odd, nearly manic-depressive mood swings, such as tonight:

I rode home with my boss, babbling nearly all the way.

I bounced along with my dog and fed the cats without complaint.

I settled in front of my TV with a pizza, a beer, and the latest offering from Netflix: Martin Scorsece's Bringing Out The Dead.

One hour and a beer later, I was convinced that I was seeing the same hallucinations as Nicholas Cage. My wife came home and found me nearly catatonic and studying a beer bottle with the same intensity you used while studying your ex's picture, just before you burned it.

Fortunately, my wife, who's put up with me in much worse moods than this, gave me a hug and a kiss, and didn't even bitch too much about the fact that I didn't switch the laundry like I was supposed to.

Fifteen minutes after the movie ended and I was staring at the ceiling, I bounced up and did a few household chores before settling in front of my computer for what remained of the evening.

Note to self: don't watch depressing movies when I'm already in a mood.

Sleep has been in short supply this weekend. We keep having to get up and get out of the house to avoid running into potential buyers.

With the dog home, we decided to take her to her Saturday morning greyhound "fun run." This is a weekly event sponsored by a local dog day care, where the greyhounds are allowed to romp together in a safe, fenced area. Amy was too tired to really appreciate it, but it was fun to catch up with folks, and it did get us out of the house.

Bubbles spent the afternoon in a law school study session. Lacking anything else to do with my time, I went to see Serenity by myself. It was a fantastic movie, a worthy follow-up to the sadly unfinished TV series. My only regret is that the Firefly DVDs are packed, so I can't go back and spend some more time with the characters.

And I didn't twitch after the movie either.

Had a lovely evening of dinner, talk, and wine with a couple friends last night, after which I crashed about 2 AM. 8:30 arrived earlier than usual. We were supposed to leave no later than 9:30 to avoid some folks who wanted to see the place at 10 AM.

The 10 AM showing didn't materialize, so bubblesutonium, Amy and I went home. Bubbles started in on her homework while I laid down for a nap. I got about an hour before we heard voices downstairs: another realtor had showed up, with her client, without calling first. We scrambled to get out of the house and ended up taking a 20-minute walk in soaking rain while they took a look at the house.

We'd just settled back in and started to dry off when Realtor #3 called and wanted to look at the place. "Once is happenstance, twice is a conspiracy," I told Bubbles, and we decamped for the afternoon.

We're hanging out in a favorite net-enabled cafe, the one with the cupcakes. I've had my headphones all day to drown out the sound of hyperactive children. bubblesutonium, gifted with the ability to tune out any audio stimulus short of a 135 decibel siren, has been crafting a legal analysis for some homework. I've been catching up on my news and blogs, noodling a bit on a chess problem, and reading through a primer on UNIX use for the Mac. It beats doing real work.

Ever onward.

Our dog is back.

She didn't have a very good time. Apparently she and one of the other dogs under our boarder's care got snippy with each other. No harm done, but Amy spent a lot of time in her borrowed crate, since the dogs couldn't be left alone together. She was so nervous and unhappy she chewed through a brand new collar, her muzzle, and did a bit of self-damage into the bargain.

When bubblesutonium brought her home tonight, she gave us both a pathetically grateful look, ate all her dinner, and collapsed on one of her beds. She's barely stirred in the last three hours.

Guilt is such a reliable old friend. You can't ask for a more regular visitor.

We still can't leave the Hound home during the day until we sell the house, so she's going to have to be in day care or with one of us all day every day. The logistics will be a pain, to put it mildly, but it'll be worth it to have her with us and happy again.

---

bubblesutonium is off to a study session tomorrow afternoon and is taking the dog. I'm thinking of going to see a movie.

For once, though, I'm torn. Mirrormask and Serenity both opened this weekend. My impulse is to see Mirrormask, because it's getting no promotion at all and I'm very afraid it's not going to be in the theaters long.

However, since all of my friends and indeed most of the Net seem obsessed with Serenity, I think I better go see that one quick before somebody spoils me for the movie.

Decisions, decisions.

EDIT: Hm. Apparently Mirrormask isn't opening here until next week. I guess that's settled then.

I promised bits on mayors, movies, magistrates, and mexicanos. So, without further ado:

Mayors

Near the beginning of All The King's Men, there's a scene where Willie Talos, a Louisiana politician not entirely dissimilar to Huey Long, gets out of his limousine with his entourage and stops off at a soda fountain. And every activity in the soda fountain just stops, while a crowd gathers to fawn and kowtow.

(No, I didn't get the name wrong. In the edition I have, he's Willie Talos, not Willie Stark.)

A couple of years ago, H and I were invited out to dinner in Chicago by some folks she knew at a Chicago-based law firm. These were successful corporate lawyers, mind you, used to power and the elite, not easy to impress. The restaurant was an up-and-coming hotspot, on the rise, a place to be seen if you were in the know. One of the lawyers was telling me about the two weeks he'd just spent sailing the lakes on his yacht...

...and then a limo pulled up outside.

"Oh my God," someone said, "look who just walked in."

I turned around. A large, well-dressed gentleman, with perfectly coiffed hair and immaculately shined shoes, stepped into the restaurant with a bodyguard at his right. He looked over the restaurant with the benign, omnipotent air of a Roman emperor.

"It's Mayor Daley!" someone hissed.

And the conversation just stopped.

It was, indeed, hizzoner Da-Mayor-For-Life, Richard M. Daley, son of the late mayor Richard J. Daley, owner and proprietor of the Great City of Chicago, Illinois. The maitre d' and the chef practically tripped over each other in their race to greet him and do him homage. And the lawyers, one and all, were giggling with pride over their chance personal sighting of Him, the Mayor, the Chief.

I don't think I would have believed Robert Penn Warren if I hadn't once sat in that Chicago restaurant.

Seattle mayors, while likeable, don't tend towards the charismatic. Greg Nickels gets an attitude of amiable respect rather than kowtowing. Paul Schell was given up for useless after the WTO and Mardi Gras riots. Norm Rice was appreciated, particularly since he was mayor during Seattle's boom years, but I don't think there was a restaurant in town that would have genuflected before him.

Never mind the accolades of the press or the respect of the elite. Real power is when you, not the chef, run the restaurant.

Movies

I hadn't intended to go. Movies in the theater are, literally, painful experiences for me these days. But the reviews were less awful than I predicted, and the word of mouth wasn't as bad, and my sister was coming to town to see it anyway, and it was the last stage of my favorite childhood story...

Oh, hell.

So I saw Revenge of the Sith at Seattle's best theater, the Cinerama. And after the shaking stopped and I could walk normally again, I smiled.

It failed to suck. Which is about the best I could ask.

And (very minor spoiler ahoy) the shot of Darth Vader's mask being lowered onto Anakin's burned, dessicated face, Anakin's eyes staring in horror from his melted sockets, was genuinely creepy.

Magistrates

Enough metaphorical ink has been spilled about the current battle over stacking the US judiciary with judges that the politically-active religious conservatives like. I don't feel the need to add to it.

The one aspect of the debate that I think is beneath contempt is the demonizing of judges (on both sides) that you don't happen to like. That's why US judges now have to hide behind layers and layers of security. That's appalling, and dangerous.


This is already too damned long. I'll talk about Mexico separately.

(*waves* genially at greyaenigma and saavedra77, who I've finally gotten around to adding to my friends list)

I have a love-hate relationship with movies.

When it comes to storytelling, I have attention-deficit disorder. In almost every movie or TV show, there are scenes that I simply cannot stand to watch. Either they're incredibly badly written, or they're so well written that I feel the character's embarrassment as my own and want to crawl under my seat.

This is one of the reasons I love books. You can skim a book. You flip past the scenes you don't like, keep right on going without really losing the thread. If the scene was really good or important, you can always come back to it later.

Up until the invention of the DVD and the DVR, I was mostly forced to watch movies beginning to end, when I bothered to watch them at all. Now I can zip past scenes just like I can in a book, without losing the thread.

I ought to invent a new scale of movie reviews: how much of the movie does waysofseeing skip? 5 minutes? 2 hours? If the answer is 'nothing,' it's a damn good movie.

My taste in movies is a bit odd. I mostly watch well-made action movies, historical dramas, and documentaries. I've also got a weakness for classic cinema, especially comedies. The last movie I really enjoyed was an old Buster Keaton silent picture, "The General." I'm currently working my way through "Kill Bill," which is enjoyable enough, but feels very derivative of all of the Hong Kong action, kung fu, and Japanese revenge pictures I've seen. (Which is the point, I know. But still.)

I love, love, -love- well-filmed Shakespeare. I'll trade Ian McKellan's performance in all three Lord of the Rings movies for his portrayal of Richard III. Al Pacino does a wonderful job with Richard III too, in "Looking for Richard." I regard it as a nearly criminal act that no one has released Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet on DVD. I even liked Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet."

The finest bit of swash-and-buckle I've ever seen on screen was Errol Flynn's Robin Hood. The best repartee is in "Casablanca." I've seen a lot of actors play English kings and queens, but for me they begin and end with Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn as Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in 'The Lion in Winter.' Hannibal Lecter was a scary dude until they drowned him in bad scripts, but Al Pacino's face at the end of the second "Godfather" movie is all you need to know about the price of evil. The most elegant gun battle on screen is in John Woo's "Hard-Boiled." I'm still waiting for the best heart-breaking scene that doesn't descend into schmaltz.

So I put it to you. I need more movies for my NetFlix list, or possibly my Scarecrow Video subscription. Which movies do I need to see before I die to make my life complete?

For the most part, I can't go see movies in the theater any more. Something about the massive screen or the projection makes my nervous system go haywire. I sometimes have trouble walking or using my hands for about twenty to forty minutes after the movie is over.

There are a very few movies I would go see in the theater even if I knew it would leave me a twitching wreck. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was the most recent one.

Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask looks like the next one.

( Wow, is this pretty. )

More when I have a few spare minutes.

For the none of you who actually look at my journal as opposed to reading my entries on your friends page, I'm messing around a bit with the look of the journal. Feel free to offer an opinion.

While I'm thinking about it, a belated but heartfelt shout-out to prosewitch, who graduated from college on Saturday. Congrats! May your life be delightful and your loves joyous. May you also find great glee in reading for no one but yourself for once.

Spent the weekend in great company, enjoying a rare and unexpected visit from J. (who has, perhaps inevitably, been dubbed "Strahd" by morganminstrel). Also got to see quite a bit of the Old Crowd, including several beloved friends who we see infrequently at best.

H. and I ran the "Beat the Bridge" race on Sunday, an 8K race through our neighborhood that crosses two drawbridges. Twenty minutes after the start of the race, the organizers raise the second bridge, giving you a strong incentive to run like hell through the first two miles. Thanks to a slow start, I missed beating the bridge by 45 seconds. Aggravating, but I'll do better next year.

[Note: no spoilers here.] Last week, my mother asked me to burn a copy of the new version of "The Lion In Winter" onto a DVD for her, since she doesn't have Showtime. While I was at it, I watched it myself. Think of the play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" moved to medieval England. Henry II has invited the young but redoubtable King Philip of France to his Christmas court, and brings along his entire family, all of whom despise each other for good and sufficient reasons.

The script is exactly the same as the Peter O'Toole/Katharine Hepburn movie, save for one short scene at the beginning. Patrick Stewart's Henry is not quite as forceful or boisterous as O'Toole's, but even more calculating. Glenn Close's Eleanor is oddly more fragile than Hepburn's. One always got the sense, watching Hepburn's performance, that her Eleanor used her moods and tantrums for effect, while Close's Eleanor seems to be genuinely on the edge of a breakdown while she plots and schemes. Some of the directing choices are a bit questionable, and the low budget shows through in several scenes, but the scenes with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close together more than make up for it.

Now if I can just start getting through Firefly. I've only had time to get through the first twenty minutes of the first episode so far. I want more!