Friday wrap-up

We watched "24-Hour Party People" last night. Really interesting film -- mostly for its narrative style, which allows its main character to talk directly to the audience and comment on the action, what's going to happen later, whether he is or is not the center of his own story, etc. It's the same director, and many of the same actors, as in the film of "Tristram Shandy," which we saw a couple months ago, and which used much the same style -- but in that case, I gather that the style is derived directly from the book (which more or less invented metafiction a few hundred years before anybody else tried to do it). I'm fond of narrative experimentation in general, and here I think it succeeds more often than not. But I'm still waiting for a movie that uses methods like this for a really trenchant purpose, and not just because they can. It's like, okay, you've come up with a new and interesting way to say something. Don't you have anything in particular to say with it?

(Does anybody but me remember "Timecode 2000"? In which the screen was split into quarters, and each quarter was a different continuous 90-minute shot, sometimes different angles on the same scene, sometimes different scenes entirely, and the sound editing was used brilliantly to direct the viewer's attention to one quarter or another, but we could faintly hear all 4 all the time? Fascinating storytelling method; completely aimless story being told thereby. I suspect it's seen as a failed experiment just because the story was pointless, whereas I saw it as a successful experiment that needed a better subject.)

In other news, the weather was so gorgeous yesterday that I took Frank for a long walk, a couple miles -- down the main road and then back up the side road that runs along a creek. This is noteworthy mainly because it's been more than 2 years since I've been able to take a long walk with my dog. I had to put ice on my right knee last night, and it's still a little sore today, but it was totally worth the pain. (Frank enjoyed it at least as much as I did.)

( Meanwhile, in work: )