Sunday, December 13, 2009

I've been posting nothing but youtube videos lately. December has been a whole lot of delayed flights and crap winter weather. It rained a lot this week and I just flew in from San Francisco where I spent the weekend eating a lot of soupy noodle-y food and watching plentiful movies including:

Overall, A Single Man was a very attractive film, much like Mr. Ford himself. Despite the critical acclaims I heard that it received, I was, at first, a little doubtful. In the inchoation* of the film, I thought that it might have well been a perfume commercial for a fashion house. Every bit of it was well-manicured and so perfect, to the point of being a hyperreality with stilted complexity and gimmicks.

The impeccable primness may have been a smart, biting remark of the story's setting ... Early 1960s, the era of stifling social manners and superficial conducts, and lacquered truths for affected pleasantness. It also was set in Los Angeles, the city known as the embodiment of vanity ... Of course, but this was nothing new (quick examples include Far from Heaven and Mad Men) ... and the main character being an English professor who led discussions about Aldous Huxley seemed too easy in some ways.

But as the story went on I liked it better and better. It was all too beautiful to dismiss, and the exceptional performance by Colin Firth quickly outshone any negative thoughts I had about the film. I think it was a genuine work, and the too-perfect-to-be-serious factor was embraced. Plus it reminded me a lot of Wong Kar-Wai. I'd like to see it again so I can feel it out further, I'm sure there were things that I didn't quite catch the first time around because I was too busy lusting after the visual allure.

Anyway, it's very late and I'm only half awake. I can't really tell if what I said makes much sense ...

*: After my 5+ month hiatus, I am trying to study GRE vocabulary words again, meaning that I am trying to mix weird words into my everyday life, regardless of its appropriateness.