Crashing into Lives
Posted on | May 16, 2005 at 12:48 pm | Comments Off
Still pretty depressed after attending Jeff’s funeral on Friday. What a f*cking tragedy.
So, what better thing to do than go see a depressing movie like Crash? Actually, that’s unfair – even though it’s not really the feel-good movie of the year, it does have some uplifting moments. Writer/Director Paul Haggis also wrote Million Dollar Baby, and the tone doesn’t vary a whole lot from that movie. It’s basically a drama about race relations in Los Angeles, featuring a large cast and many intertwining stories, like in Short Cuts, Magnolia, or Grand Canyon (all of which I liked). As all the critics have pointed out, it is peopled with characters who have both their evil and good sides. All grey, no black and white here. No easy answers. There were about three too many coincidences, but hey, like Roger Ebert said “it’s dramatic shorthand”. Without those coincidences, you might as well have separate movies. But at least there were some mild surprises and insights. The old “if there is a gun it will be used” thing came into play, but it didn’t quite turn out as expected. The movie certainly didn’t bore me and I give it a zero on the Nod-O-Meter.
I also watched the Showtime production of the musical comedy version of Reefer Madness, which was… er… interesting. Pretty funny and some of the songs were catchy – I’ve still got the title song knocking around in my head. The oddest part for me was seeing female lead Kristen Bell, whom I’m used to from TV’s Veronica Mars, in dominatrix gear. Yow.
Latre.