The Filmcake

March 17th – March 22nd

Synecdoche, NY – What can I say? I love Charlie Kaufman. There is no analysis of this one that can be done in just a few sentences. So, I’ll wait on that. All I can say, really, is that this is the first movie in a while where I couldn’t wait to purchase the Blu-ray and devour it over and over again. One thing I will briefly mention–I really, really enjoyed the film blogger featurette on the disc. Movie discussions & beer. Does it get any better? I’d like to see more of that type of discussion as a special feature on future (deserving) movies.

Old Joy – In anticipation of seeing Wendy & Lucy this coming weekend, I wanted to take a look at director Kelly Reichardt’s previous film. Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Willy Loman (or, Daniel London as Tom as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Synecdoche, NY–see above) are upstaged by Lucy (Reichardt’s dog) in my opinion. Not really, but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want to see this one in part because of the dog. It did look like it would’ve been a really fun film shoot for a dog though.

Friends are a strange thing. The reviews and discussions of I Love You, Man bring up Paul Rudd’s character who is almost carelessly a friend of girls but who has real trouble finding guy friends. Hey, I’m that guy! Then last week I somehow got peer-pressured into finally setting up a Facebook account. Well, of course, that brings up its own quandaries. What is a friend? How much work should one exert towards finding and/or keeping friends? How passive/active to be? Does any of it matter?

Old Joy quietly and beautifully examines what friendship means after time passes, people change, and life continues on regardless. Maybe friendship is going your separate ways. Or maybe friendship simply ends right there and then. I don’t know. I still find myself very much in the dark when it comes to friendship. I’m still learning. I am truly grateful, however, that a dog is a man’s best friend. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know much of it.