Wednesday, May 04, 2005
The point to drive home
The Alicia Keys concert last night was pretty awesome. She gave her best and her arrangements were quite good but she had too few songs (only two albums to her credit) and when she done singing "If I Ain't Got You" everybody just wanted to go home and they didn't demand an encore. The audience was 80% black. There's a lot of Stevie in her playing, and she pays proper respect to the blues and old black music (unlike the horrendous so called "R&B" today). It was a good show and she gave great energy, and she can sing too. I probably won't see her again for a little while, but if Alicia keeps doing what she's doing, in ten years she'll still be the talk of the town. And then she'll have more songs.
Palindromes was another misanthrope view of a schizophrenic society in Todd Solondz's world. A notch up his previous Storytelling but hasn't lived up to his best film Happiness, some scenes in this movie are worth chewing and pondering. The scene where these disabled kids dance to a Gospel song is almost as funny as the last scene in Napoleon Dynamite. And characters from his first film Welcome to the Dollhouse pop in and out of this film. It's not difficult to call Solondz a genius, but he's more unconventional than he's talented. He knows that he's talented but he chooses to select uncompromising topics. In the film it's abortion. His films are the American equivalent of French director Catherine Briellat, another controversial filmmaker who is not afraid to cross the line.
I'm hungry. I need some breakfast.
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Palindromes was another misanthrope view of a schizophrenic society in Todd Solondz's world. A notch up his previous Storytelling but hasn't lived up to his best film Happiness, some scenes in this movie are worth chewing and pondering. The scene where these disabled kids dance to a Gospel song is almost as funny as the last scene in Napoleon Dynamite. And characters from his first film Welcome to the Dollhouse pop in and out of this film. It's not difficult to call Solondz a genius, but he's more unconventional than he's talented. He knows that he's talented but he chooses to select uncompromising topics. In the film it's abortion. His films are the American equivalent of French director Catherine Briellat, another controversial filmmaker who is not afraid to cross the line.
I'm hungry. I need some breakfast.
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