(no subject)
Sep. 9th, 2010 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Things of today:
- So, the thing I always forget about Maltese Falcon when I haven't watched it in a while is how awesome Sydney Greenstreet is in it. Seriously, he is totally amazing. And weirdly adorable, with his circumlocutions and his little giggle.
- I also tend to forget that Sam Spade is really a terrible person. I forget that while I'm watching the film, which is a mark of how awesome Humphrey Bogart is, really. But Sam is awful and does not actually have human emotions or care about other people at all. (He does at least remember to fake human emotion around Effie most of the time, but that is because Effie is wonderful.) The bit at the end where Brigid is all, "You never loved me!" always kinda makes me stare at her because of course he doesn't, have you met Sam Spade? He is a frelling sociopath or something. Mr Bogart at least makes him a charming and magnetic sociopath, which is probably why it didn't work the first two times they filmed this story.*
- Speaking of noir-ish** things! So, the best thing to come out of my Inception-fueled watching of things that have Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in them is Brick. Which is a movie that I watched and then thought, "Why did no one ever tell me about this?" so I am telling all of you. It is a little bit like the film makers sat down and thought, "Y'know what the world needs? The world need a high school AU noir film!" And then they proceeded to make one. Oddly, I think that it's possible that the world did need a high school AU noir film, because it's kind of amazing. In that "I have watched this twice since Thursday and may possibly have ordered it from amazon" kind of way. Yeah.
- The damned nodule thing on the tendons on the back of my left hand has started to hurt again. It's not terribly bad yet but it's going to be. And the sad thing is that there's nothing really to be done about (except possibly let my mom hit my hand really hard with a book and pop the thing, which doesn't really sound like an attractive option). Grar.
- I have this weekend off! Also, I am skipping church! Whee!
*I have not actually seen Satan Met a Lady, so I can't speak to that but the 1931 version of Maltese Falcon? Oh my goodness, but that Sam is horrible. He's honestly hard to watch. (It doesn't help that that version is pre-Code and thus gets to keep the strip-search scene from the book.)
**Is Maltese Falcon noir? People tell me conflicting things. What counts as noir, anyway? I mean, I know that it refers to a filming style, mostly, but am I allowed to use it as shorthand for hardboiled detectives stories where people wear fedoras and drink whiskey and there are femme fatales and possibly first-person narration? Or do we have another word for that? Because that's kind of a mouthful.
- So, the thing I always forget about Maltese Falcon when I haven't watched it in a while is how awesome Sydney Greenstreet is in it. Seriously, he is totally amazing. And weirdly adorable, with his circumlocutions and his little giggle.
- I also tend to forget that Sam Spade is really a terrible person. I forget that while I'm watching the film, which is a mark of how awesome Humphrey Bogart is, really. But Sam is awful and does not actually have human emotions or care about other people at all. (He does at least remember to fake human emotion around Effie most of the time, but that is because Effie is wonderful.) The bit at the end where Brigid is all, "You never loved me!" always kinda makes me stare at her because of course he doesn't, have you met Sam Spade? He is a frelling sociopath or something. Mr Bogart at least makes him a charming and magnetic sociopath, which is probably why it didn't work the first two times they filmed this story.*
- Speaking of noir-ish** things! So, the best thing to come out of my Inception-fueled watching of things that have Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in them is Brick. Which is a movie that I watched and then thought, "Why did no one ever tell me about this?" so I am telling all of you. It is a little bit like the film makers sat down and thought, "Y'know what the world needs? The world need a high school AU noir film!" And then they proceeded to make one. Oddly, I think that it's possible that the world did need a high school AU noir film, because it's kind of amazing. In that "I have watched this twice since Thursday and may possibly have ordered it from amazon" kind of way. Yeah.
- The damned nodule thing on the tendons on the back of my left hand has started to hurt again. It's not terribly bad yet but it's going to be. And the sad thing is that there's nothing really to be done about (except possibly let my mom hit my hand really hard with a book and pop the thing, which doesn't really sound like an attractive option). Grar.
- I have this weekend off! Also, I am skipping church! Whee!
*I have not actually seen Satan Met a Lady, so I can't speak to that but the 1931 version of Maltese Falcon? Oh my goodness, but that Sam is horrible. He's honestly hard to watch. (It doesn't help that that version is pre-Code and thus gets to keep the strip-search scene from the book.)
**Is Maltese Falcon noir? People tell me conflicting things. What counts as noir, anyway? I mean, I know that it refers to a filming style, mostly, but am I allowed to use it as shorthand for hardboiled detectives stories where people wear fedoras and drink whiskey and there are femme fatales and possibly first-person narration? Or do we have another word for that? Because that's kind of a mouthful.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 09:54 pm (UTC)Re: noir. My definition was always that ..... there were lots of instances of the camera focussing on a person's shoes and/or panning up from there. Um. So anyway, ...
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 09:57 pm (UTC)Huh.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-10 06:36 pm (UTC)In other news: Ooh, you're skipping church!
In other, other news: You have amazing taste in movies. I am continually reminded of all the reasons I friended you oh so long ago. (Okay, it wasn't that long ago, but it sounds better that way!)
And I'm spent.
[Kai]