I am sick, and not up to much writing, but I had to share this: the ice cream truck with the creepiest music ever. There is an embedded player at the bottom of that page that allows you to play a sample.
Month: March 2008
Thoughts on In Bruges
The movie In Bruges is… interesting, to stay the least. At times funny and horrifying and sometimes both at once, this tale of two hitmen hiding in the Belgian town of Bruges after a botched job is surprisingly unconventional. By that, I mean that the movie sets you up with all the usual sort of expectations for a gangster movie, to the point where you think you can predict what will happen next, and then it delivers something else entirely that still makes perfect sense.
It has a strong cast, including Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes, and Brendan Gleeson, and everyone seems to fit naturally in their roles, no matter how outrageous the characters get. That is a rather profound accomplishment in a movie that gets downright surreal and bizarre at times.
The pacing of In Bruges, in retrospect, is perhaps the true triumph of this film, starting out as what appears to be a leisurely gangster buddy movie, veering sharply to a dark twist, jumping between emotional highs and lows of the characters and story highs and lows for the audience, and ending with an intense, fast-paced, and still-humourous action sequence that delivers an irritatingly ambiguous ending.
Allow me a moment for a bit of a rant here. I dislike ambiguous endings. I feel they exist because the writer was too chicken to pick a definitive ending, and thus left it open-ended to avoid making the choice. I don’t really believe the justifications or excuses you sometimes hear — “Well, the story I was telling was really over by that point,” or, “I wanted to leave it up to the viewer to decide,” — it’s just an easy way out to avoid making the decision that’s going to piss off some of your audience no matter what. In the case of In Bruges, it’s merely mildly irritating, as I just want to know what happened; in the case of a movie like Pan’s Labyrinth, the ambiguity shown in the ending can potentially undermine the impact of the whole movie that came before.
Anyway, coming back to the main feature: In Bruges was a good movie. It has something of the feel of a Guy Ritchie-esque heist movie, and I’m not sure about its re-watch value, but it was one of the more unique and entertaining movies I’ve seen in a while, and well worth checking out (unless you’re averse to blood, violence, and swearing).
A New Approach
My posting here has been somewhat languid, and I think it has been because I’ve been self-conscious at writing for a site with the explicit aim of reaching people I don’t know. My writing here has been polite and restrained, and ultimately somewhat lacking in personality. Consequently, I’ve never felt the drive to keep posting something new, because when I do, I’m trying to eliminate my voice.
I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that. It took this entry of author Justine Larbalestier to crystallize it for me. When I look at the blogs I read regularly (such as Neil Gaiman, or John Scalzi, or Charles Stross), it’s because of their unique voice, and not necessarily because of their content. I’ve come across lots of “voiceless” blogs that have an interesting post or two, and I’m glad to get that content, but without having a unique voice, I’m not motivated to read more. So I don’t know what the rationale was for trying to de-voice my own writing.
Clearly, that mindset has to go. Which means my writing style here is going to change a bit, become a bit more casual, and hopefully a lot more fun. Changing that mindset will mean that some of the content I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks now will actually see the light of day, and make this site more interesting for whoever stumbles across it.
So cheers! Here’s to fun!