Dark Water
A break from the tedium of political commentary in favor of a little nepotism seems in order. This afternoon Dark Water starring Jennifer Connelly, directed by Walter Salles, screenplay by Rafael Yglesias will be playing in a theater near you. David Edelstein points out that while Dark Water is awesome, The Fantastic Four sucks. Yes, you could go see War of the Worlds but your money would just end up in the hands of a creepy cult instead of, say, the Yglesias family. Reading the reviews I see dad is once again misusing his power over characters' names for the purporses of making inside jokes for friends and family . . . I wonder if that's SOP in Hollywood.
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In my own experience, it is that I hate coming up with names, so I grab whatever is handy.
Occasionally, though, I've been in rooms where we like to give shout-outs to departed writers by naming characters after them.
July 7, 2005 11:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beyond Edelstein, reviews are mixed. Dargis in the Times completely hates it. Ebert is mildly positive. And the LAT guy loves it.
I'll go see it because of Salles, your pop, and Connelly, but my expectations are pretty low.
But the real catches out there are Lila Says and 5x2 (Cinq Fois Deux).
And if you can wait for the really good stuff, 9 Songs opens in 2 weeks, a restored print of The Conformist opens in 3 weeks, and there is an interminable 5 week wait for Pretty Persuasion.
July 7, 2005 11:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where's that happening, Petey?
July 8, 2005 6:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the WaPo review:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/A
R2005070702090.html
The review in the WaPo Express this morning was much better. Looking forward to seeing it.
July 8, 2005 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Where's that happening, Petey?"
Film Forum. Where else?
And for that little extra je ne sais quai, Storaro supervised the restoration.
July 8, 2005 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not much help to us non-New Yorkers. But big restorations that play there usually make their way down here to DC after a while, so hopefully I can see it in the fall. Also, new prints + restoration is a good sign for a DVD release, which is long overdue for this classic. The one time I saw it was on the big-screen, about 5 years ago.
July 8, 2005 7:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Not much help to us non-New Yorkers. But big restorations that play there usually make their way down here to DC after a while"
That's why god invented Amtrak. Just make sure to check the train reeeeeaaaaallllly carefully for unattended bags.
"The one time I saw it was on the big-screen, about 5 years ago."
Ditto. But the print I saw was lousy. So I'm amped to see it again.
I also have a feeling that some of the politics will have become oddly timely.
July 8, 2005 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, $35 round-trip buses are available for NY-DC travel, no need for Amtrak.
Where did you read about Storaro taking part in a restoration? The Film Forum webpage doesn't seem to indicate anything along those lines.
July 8, 2005 8:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
I dont know if War of the Worlds is endorsed by the Scientology cult but apparently there is a Dark Wark cult. I was driving to work today and on the message board of the local conservative Baptist church it read:
"Trust No One" on one side and "Dark Water" on the other. The message board often carries messages by the pastor some of them leaning toward the paranoid.
Hopefully the new message is just a prank by someone else. I worry about the mind of the pastor sometimes.
July 8, 2005 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matthew Yglesias could demonstrate his internets savvy by getting a photo of the paterfamilias in the appropriate spot on Rafael's IMDB bio.
I would love to take my wife to the film. She gets scared as a little girl in that kind of movie, and, well, you know how agreeably clingy scared women get in dark rooms. I've said too much.
July 8, 2005 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I was ten years old (in 1992), I read lots of science fiction. However, I once spotted a shout-out to another author (in a Star Wars book to a Star Trek author), and I realized that there were two explanations.
1) I was either going crazy.
2) or I was reading too much science fiction.
I haven't read any new science fiction since.
July 8, 2005 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look, you didn't have to put in that last sentence and a half. Now that you did, come on, give it up...
July 8, 2005 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Saw Dark Water tonight. All of the performances were great but John C. Reilly stole the show. ("You can smell the river from here!") Heh.
***SPOILER ALERT***
Salles totally spoiled the ending. I knew exactly what was up ten minutes into the movie when he had a lingering shot of a certain thing that any New Yorker can tell you only has one purpose in urban folklore. (And then repeatedly included that thing prominantly in all of his exterior shots.) It's too bad -- the screenplay paced the exposition well and I don't think it would have been obvious without those shots. Compare that to the "second ending", which in hindsight was set up very naturally by the dialogue at the beginning of the movie without you noticing.
***END SPOILER***
July 8, 2005 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Actually, $35 round-trip buses are available for NY-DC travel, no need for Amtrak."
If money is an object, don't forget about the Chinatown - Chinatown buses which are even cheaper, and put you closer to the Film Forum than Port Authority to boot.
"Where did you read about Storaro taking part in a restoration?"
You should look here.
July 9, 2005 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope you explained to your father the vital importance of gratuitous nudity for any character that Jennifer Connelly plays....
July 9, 2005 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, yeah, it mentions that Storaro supervised the restoration in the middle of their summary. But I think they're just talking about the restoration that was done about 10 years ago, which I believe he participated in. Maybe they have a new print of it, but they don't say either way. In any event, as always, there's plenty of stuff playing around here in DC (not the least of which is Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm) to keep me happy.
July 9, 2005 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fine movie, though the teen crowd at the theater I was inwas expecting a "scream" type movie, destroying with their incessant restlessness the creepy, oppressive tone and mood the movie created.
July 9, 2005 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's probably been SOP for a long time. A friend from my college days was locally famous because her father had been a friend of Gene Roddenbury. Little did he know he would be immortalized as the evil alien race of Klingons...
July 11, 2005 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink