Music and Movies

Honestly, today I really do not feel like writing a long entry; instead I am opting to make it a short blog day, albeit one with a soundtrack. In my head this morning are two great songs: “I’m Always in Love” by Wilco and “A Punch Up at a Wedding” by Radiohead. My discovery of these tracks some years ago must be credited to Auditus, whose admirable musical tastes are the only reason that I know about them.

With those cords playing in the background, let us discuss movies. For the past two weeks my spouse and I have been trying to catch up on our public movie viewing. Last week we saw The Descendants and I have to say that the script and Clooney’s acting were remarkable. There are those critics out there like Richard Roeper who feel that someone other than Clooney would have made for better casting, but I disagree. What Clooney brought to the role was a restrained sense of rebellion against the dissolution of family and marital trust. His performance hinted at an underlying anger and frustration, but also at a more powerful need to rise above them. In some ways, this fictional father was the one I might have wanted. Good on you, George.

Just last Saturday night we managed to attend a showing of Hugo. Scorsese clearly loves film, and Hugo was nothing if not an extended paean to the imagination and staggering creativity of early filmmaking. How could one not be blown away by the inventive results of Melies’ films?

Many current examples fall far short of what he was doing over a century ago. Also, Hugo takes the mechanistic and imagistic qualities of film as its subject matter, making this movie an exploration of filmic epistemology. While not as emotionally resonant for me as The Descendants, I will give Hugo and its creators praise for their impressive treatise on film history and the ways it has trained generations of audiences to "see" the moving image and shaped our imaginations.