update - Witches of Eastwick, True Blood

Just finished The Witches of Eastwick.



Wasn't sure what the point of Updike would be if it's not realistic small-town America, but actually found the heightened awareness of it as a fable meant appreciating more consciously the actual craft of his fiction (I'm gonna admit, something, somewhere inside of me, just wanted to assume Rabbit was straight-up documentary) - he's pretty good.


Back to Rabbit Redux now, maybe from a bit of a different angle.







Just watched the first episode of True Blood. It seems weak. However compelling it is to watch a blonde waitress with psychic powers that somehow turn her into a caricature of naivety rather than jaded and manipulative (I'm guessing the grandmother is something to do with that), that scene in the forest particularly killed it for me. the one with the confrontation with the potential vampire-drainers - kind of important, plot-wise. a hinging point. there needs to be this confrontation, and it needs to be resolved in a certain way, and that way is that Sookie and Bill temporarily defeat the drainers - with Sookie playing the main part in saving Bill's life - yet it still needs to be left open for retaliations or follow-ups later.



but the guy gets strangled by the chain in some not entirely clear way, the both of them look scared and give up and stumble off (with the obligatory "we'll be back"-type comments)... then do a bit of a wheel-skid in their truck. just to scare a little. could they not have just run them over?!



cheese or cliché is fair enough, but can it still not be a little tighter?



didn't Buffy do this better? (I'm actually not sure, just wondering)

half nelson

one reason i'm shit at reviewing* is that i feel quite a bit more comfortable criticising than appreciating.

this means that i could easily spend more time talking about things i don't think are worth any time than things i do, a contradiction that could almost cause me to combust if it really came to fruition and wasn't, as it is, held back by this other problem - that my criticisms, being relative to some ideal or supposed standard as if people had stood up and claimed that this work they'd just made was the greatest thing ever, or this, or that, which is generally not the case at all, end up seeming not worth much anyways.


Half Nelson basically runs through a tree of american indie tropes - school classrooms can be inspiring places as the kids are ultimately motivated but just waiting for the right teacher; black people are still ghetto but have strong families ; white people are still upset that their parents don't understand them; middle-class people can be fucked-up too, the most cool-looking people are the most fucked-up internally; life is a bit shit but human nature is beautiful and actually so is life really; fucked-up people, as well as being the most physically attractive, are also most likely to be associated with intelligent-looking stuff like some kind of fantasy maverick history lecture (for 12yr olds?), or a children's picture book on dialectics...

but it is lovely. nice music, nice colours.



*other reasons are that i'm just a bit shit, at thinking, and writing.