Pauline Kael

There's been a request for a Tin Tin review, oh boy, a movie review, what fun. In my oh-so-humble opinion, Tin Tin was very well made. I can admit this despite disliking Steven Spielberg and most of the crap he churns out, isn't that big of me? None the less, I was bored. I think I've just lost my capacity for kid's movies. I can't think of any specific fault, as I braved the mall to get to a non-3d version so can't complain about that, and there were some really clever visual moments. But I was still bored. Jonah liked it but didn't love it. He felt they combined too many elements from different books without having good reason to do so. He felt they should have stuck to one book and done it thoroughly.

I don't understand this hyper-real animation thing... why does animation need to look so real? If you want them to look like real people, use real people. If I need to see the veins in Capt. Haddocks arms and each fine hair follicle... just use real people. What's the deal with this excessive motion capture? If they're acting out every scene... just act out every scene and make a real movie with real people. Gollum had his place, you know?

My filmic victory of the day, however, is that after a year of trying, I got Griffin to watch Casablanca with me and he liked it. I knew he liked it when I said "cake break" and he said "wait, I want to see what happens here", but he actually {after teasing me} readily admitted it was a good movie. So I'm hoping Casablanca will be his gateway film... leading to more films, dare I say, harder films, schedule C films, the Maltese Falcon, and Citizen Kane, oh Key Largo has lot's of violence, Rear Window, Notorious, the Third Man, dare I say the 39 Steps? My secret love Dr. Zhivago, and some day, some day, my favorite movie ever, Down By Law.

As for me, my day gave new meaning to the phrase "bad hair day". My short haircut looked cute, I liked the bangs, but the bangs fell out in about 10 minutes and any delusion I had about getting by with short hair for a bit has gone by the wayside. Very little hair left and what I have is dead... you can just tell it's dead. I need to have my head shaved, but don't know when I'll have time, so I've gone the way of the hat. I've given up on the head and I'm redirected my focus on the eyebrows. I like my eyebrows and they're still there, I'm hoping they'll stay, I'm so pale already, I think I really need my eyebrows. And Jonah, in his most wonderful schmaltzy greeting card style said "I still love you with no hair, because it's what's on the inside that counts and you're still the same on the inside." I swear, verbatim, he said this verbatim with a grin and a hug.