From far, from eve and morning

After a complete and surprising failure to find anything by E.M. Forster in a used book store in the Boston area—I can only conclude he is beloved and never put up for sale—I gave up and bought A Room with a View (1908) from the Harvard Coop this afternoon; Maurice is next. Tomorrow, Eric and I see Låt den rätte komma in (2008) at the Kendall.

Happy birthday, nineweaving!

You're not a kid, you're a monster, monster, monster

I don't think I can call Låt den rätte komma in—Let the Right One In—the most beautiful film I've seen in theaters this year, because The Fall so amazed me, but it's right up there. So many directors could have taken its core handful of elements and gone for sheer splatter, suspense, even black comedy; instead it's a character piece, like the color of winter twilight, at once remote and tender, not obvious, not comfortable. Am I making it sound like a piece of sculpture, serene and chilly? Some of what I loved about the film is that it's messy: you're dying to be alive when you're twelve years old. Children are monsters. Only some of them drink blood. Only adults are sentimental about it. Let the old dreams die. I don't want to see it remade. I do want to read the book. I want to see what this writer and director do next. And for God's sake, no more sparkling.