sovay: (Default)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2009-06-21 12:48 am

We're going to sail through the night sky like a pair of bottle rockets

I wish the Brattle Theatre did not feel the need to deafen its clientele. It's a small theater; it doesn't screen big dumb action movies; it doesn't need to go all the way up to eleven. I had tissues stuffed into both my ears and they still ache sharply. Maybe everyone else in the audience is losing their hearing, but I don't need to be made to fit the profile. Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln . . . Actually, I loved White Heat. Right now I'm having trouble thinking of another actor who uses himself as physically as Cagney—he hurls himself into the role literally and it's like watching lit magnesium, it's mesmerizing. He was a dancer. He could sculpt matter out of motion. But the result is not at all stylized, and neither is the film; one of the aspects that struck me most was its modernity, carphones, fast food, electronic tracking, the increasing difficulty of vanishing off the grid even in 1949. The edges of the map are closing in. Cody Jarrett goes up in a sheet of flame: he looks like apocalyptic science fiction, the end of the gangster era in a mushroom cloud. I don't know what the hell the movie should be classified as, but I'm very glad I saw it. I think my ears are still out on their verdict, though.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2009-06-21 09:15 am (UTC)(link)
it's like watching lit magnesium... Cody Jarrett goes up in a sheet of flame

--okay, I'm intrigued. I wonder if it's the sort of thing one can rent via Netflix.

Your poor ears!

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2009-06-21 07:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Netflix is spotty on classics--or maybe classics are only spottily (?adverbfail) made available on DVD. For example, Rebecca is not available.

However, I've just checked, and it is available, so I've added it to my queue.

Next movie up, for us, though is Man on Wire, which I'm really looking forward to. Have you seen the trailer (or, for that matter, the film)?

"There is no 'why.' ... Death is very close ... Life should be lived on the edge ... see every day as a true challenge, and then you live your life on a tightrope."