More Sanchez bloggin' action at Hit and Run

 

It's a Jersey Thing

8/6/2004 | link

I didn't think that the movie Garden State could possibly be as good as its elegantly produced trailers (the gorgeous Frou Frou "teaser" one especially), but Heather McDonald nailed it: This is the best movie I've seen in quite a while. It's true that, especially in the latter half, it occasionally flirts with self-help schmaltz. And sometimes—as in the scene shown in the trailer where Zach Braff stands against wallpaper in a shirt of the same material, blending into the background chameleonlike—there are some implausible set-ups just for the sake of a great shot.

But this is quibbling... especially since those great shots come with such astonishing frequency. In fact, the power of the film isn't so much from its plot in the conventional narrative sense, but a structure akin to that of the Tralfamadorian novels Kurt Vonnegut describes in Slaughterhouse Five: a series of vignettes which, when viewed from above, as a whole (Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians see the world four-dimensionally, all times at once) fit together mosaic-like.

The cinematography here is so exquisite—film schools are going to be showing this one to freshmen for decades—that you're certainly encouraged to see it that way; that is, not as a linear story, but as a sequence of pretty stills arranged like jewels on a thread, perhaps not connected directly, but reflecting each other. And when the dialogue does avoid those occasional flirtations with schmaltz, it's pitch-perfect accurate in capturing the moments of human connection or failure to connect that, more than the official plot, are the movie's real story. It's dead on enough, anyway, that I found myself squirming in my seat at a few of the more awkward moments.

Of course, maybe my affection for this one is driven in part by personal resonance. It's not just that I grew up in New Jersey, though there is that. One of the friends with whom I saw it later tentatively described it as a "coming of age" movie, which isn't quite right if by that one means the traditional sort of bildungsroman; the characters here are adults in their mid to late twenties. But there is a kind of parallel experience I think a lot of people around that age have—through with school and the exhultation of just-post-school and suddenly feeling discomfitingly unmoored. The semi-existentialist stance Garden State ends up taking to that period makes it one of those rare films that leaves you feeling as though a thin outer layer of skin has been stripped away: You're suddenly a bit more vulnerable, but the cool air outside the theater feels fresher and more immediately there as well.

Anyway, long story short: I was already committed to seeing any film Peter Sarsgaard played in. I'm now resolving to see whatever Zach Braff directs next as well.

 

The Future is Now

8/4/2004 | link

I just got an advance copy of the Future Soundtrack for America that MoveOn put out with Barsuk records, and at about halfway through it's clearly a damned good disc. Tracks from OK Go, Death Cab, Mike Doughty, R.E.M., TMBG, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nada Surf, Flaming Lips, even the late Elliot Smith. I think even if I loved George Bush, I'd have to pick this one up. God help me, I even thought the Blink 182 track was pretty good.

 

Bizzaro Personals

8/2/2004 | link

I can only assume that this ad (super babe seeks geeky libertarian; passable looks optional) is a goof, because I haven't noticed that the streets are suddenly full of blocky-skinned, chalk-white people who introduce themselves with: "Goodbye, how am me?" As Brooke recently observed, lib women typically have their pick of more pale, socially awkward guys than you can shake a copy of Atlas Shrugged at. In fact, I half suspect that is Brooke just trolling to see what comes out of the woodwork.

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