It's like some broken fascination—I can't make it go away

[sovay]

I have not seen many films by Ang Lee. Based on Lust, Caution (2007), which I saw this afternoon with Naya, perhaps I should. This one was tremendous. It is an old-fashioned movie, in many respects: I think its closest cinematic cousins are Hitchcock's Notorious (1946) and Vertigo (1958), which the film acknowledges with occasional clips of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, a poster for Suspicion (1941) in a movie theater's lobby; an onscreen murder is as ugly and inefficient as anything in Torn Curtain (1966). It also contains the kind of sex scenes that most people only write, by which I mean that the characters make love like actual people, not like carefully cropped sculptures, and integrally to themselves. And to the story, which is the farthest from gratuitous as possible—without their detail and physicality, the audience would have only the characters' words to rely on: and this is the kind of movie where dialogue is almost always deception. I might not watch it again anytime soon. But I would certainly wait for whatever comes next.

It is cold and raw outside, like real October; the wind is full of wet leaves. I have nuked the sheep.* Having finished Phyllis Gotlieb's Birthstones, Emma Bull's Territory, and ellen_kushner's The Privilege of the Sword, I am reading Andre Norton's Witch World for the first time since high school. (I meant to post about Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, which I picked up and finished last week, but now is not the coherent enough moment.) If only I don't have to get up early . . .

*The amazing herbal hot-pack from my brother and his girlfriend, which is heated in the microwave. The name is inherited ultimately from a hot water bottle I had as a small child, which came in a sheep-shaped cover, complete with fleece and ears and a woolly tail; it has since become the default term for anything that can be used as a bed-warmer, no matter that the current object resembles a sheep only in the sense that it contains some vegetation. I love family dialect.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ang Lee is one of the best directors working today. He rarely puts a foot wrong. He creates such believable worlds and they're all so different- 70s America in the Ice Storm, a fairytale China in Crouching Tiger, Civil War era Missouri in Ride With the Devil. I'm really looking forward to Lust-Caution (which has yet to open over here).

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I have not yet seen Lust, Caution, but I can vouch like a vouchy thing for Ang Lee.

Except The Hulk.

But The Ice Storm was the first of his I saw, and it blew me away.

[darthrami.livejournal.com]

I've only seen parts of Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet, and I keep meaning to see The Ice Storm -- I hear it's amazing. But I love love LOVE Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. I mean, given my devotion to the source story for Brokeback, of course I take issue with a few things in the adaptation, but as a piece of cinema, it's utterly breathtaking. And it seems like everything he makes -- whether you like the film in the background or not -- is just gorgeous to look at.

(Of course, I refused to see Hulk...)

I really want to see Lust, Caution. I'm not sure I can drag S with me. Maybe if I promise to see Elizabeth with her. Hrm.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

He did a very good Sense and Sensibility. He understood what it was about.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What were your favorite Andre Norton books?

And you've reminded me that I wanted to read Ada. I had a friend who absolutely raved about it.

[darcydodo]

This is the NC-17 film I heard being advertised on the radio the other day? :)

I've seen three Ang Lee films — Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm, and Sense & Sensibility. I didn't see Hulk, but somehow I can't imagine that even with excellent direction it would quite match up to any of his other films.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Re: The Sheep and family dialect- in my family, anything used to keep hair accessories is called the pie, I think on the basis of some make-believe game we had going when I was very little- but I'm not entirely sure about that explanation.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

The movie sounds interesting. I'll try to get to it.

I've not seen heaps of Ang Lee's films, but what I have seen I've liked. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was splendid. And I liked Ride With the Devil quite a lot, and not just because a friend of mine did some of the music and was in the wedding scene. (John Whelan. He was the guy playing the strange mid-19th century accordion.)

It's real October here as well, now. About time. ;-)

Enjoy Witch World!

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

Ang Lee is an interesting mix of "oh, man, that was awesome!" and "I can't believe I just spent two hours of my life watching that."

Oddly, I seem to have it exactly the opposite of everyone else. I find Eat Drink Man Woman utterly fascinating on just about every level, and The Hulk is good, stupid turn-your-brain-off mindless-action fun. (But then, I have had a man-crush on Eric Bana ever since Chopper. I mean, I even sat through Lucky You. Sheesh.)

Then there's Crouching Tiger, Over Hyped, which is intensely boring (despite having an incredible cast) if you've seen any two other (superior*) wire-fu flicks. And The Ice Storm, which managed to pack in almost every actor working in Hollywood today I absolutely adore and still managed to not gel. That said, I have a serious, intense loathing for the guy who wrote the book, which probably colored my vision of the film more than a little. But when I can't get into the idea of Sigourney Weaver as a swinger? Something's way wrong.

[genarti]

I have nuked the sheep.*

The haybag, we call it in my family. Not hot water bottles, but any of those bags stuffed with rice or barley or herbs that you microwave, and then it comes out smelling like hay and oatmeal and rattling streams of grain in a barn. Or my mom does, at any rate; I don't think any of us kids have gotten around to acquiring our own. I fully intend to keep up the name if I do, though.