Yonatan Zunger’s Blog

Shakespeare Santa Cruz is putting on a fantastic production of King Lear. It’s still going for another week. Well worth the trek over the hill.

From a NY Times review of Polar Express:

It’s likely, I imagine, that most moviegoers will be more concerned by the eerie listlessness of those characters’ faces and the grim vision of Santa Claus’s North Pole compound, with interiors that look like a munitions factory and facades that seem conceived along the same oppressive lines as Coketown, the red-brick town of “machinery and tall chimneys” in Dickens’s “Hard Times.” Tots surely won’t recognize that Santa’s big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will.” But their parents may marvel that when Santa’s big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.

Of “Team America: World Police,” from the New York Times:
“Team America: World Police” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has graphic violence, explicit sex and shocking language. And puppets!

Well, you clearly can’t beat a combination like that.

Spider-Man 2 is excellent. Go see it.

I just finished watching “Smoke.” It’s a good film, kind of a hard one to explain – just a story about people who hang out in a smokeshop, really, but who they are, what’s happened to them, where they’re going… for a short summary, it’s got Harvey Keitel playing the owner of the shop, and ends with music by Tom Waits. And can pull the latter off without bullshit, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Actually, I signed up for netflix a few weeks ago – after suggestions by quite a few of my friends that I ought to – and since then have been watching quite a few more movies than I normally do. It makes some sense, really; when you come home late from work, it’s too late to call anyone up or to do anything like playing the piano, it can be a good way to spend some time. And it’s been a chance to explore through what’s out there in film, which I’m realizing I haven’t spent nearly enough time doing. There’s a whole literature out there just waiting.

(Some of the highlights from the past few days – Smoke, Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, and Roman Holiday. All well worth the time.)

Anyway, I’m starting to scan through good film for things to watch. Anyone have any suggestions? Films you think everyone ought to see at least once?

I’ve been rewatching Cowboy Bebop lately, a bit at a time, when I have the chance. I just reached the ending again.

I’ve seen it once through before, and watched parts of it since here and there – but this is the first time I’ve rewatched it from beginning to end. It gains a lot on second viewing.

What’s surprising is the seamless texture. It’s much more clearly a love story – not agape but philia.

s33k3r, you should watch this sometime. I think you may enjoy it.

From the NY Times review of the Return of the King:

“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” is rated PG-13 for a stunning mastery of violence and intense scenes of bloodletting.

The photos from our little production are now up! (Unfortunately I forgot to tell Albert about the magic juju that triggers the autofocus, so only about half of them turned out right)

Doing this was very neat, and thanks to everyone who participated or watched. And Ted, your cell phone seems to have gone off during the play – when I got home I had three answering-machine messages-full of the paranoid ramblings of a mad Sicilian king.

Come to think of it, that may be something entirely unrelated to the play; I get those sometimes.