Arts This Week at the Movies
posted by on November 3 at 15:23 PM
What movies should you see this weekend?
Well, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, duh. (Bemused haters can suck it!)
Also, I very much liked Babel, though it’s getting decidedly mixed reviews. I won’t tell the haters to suck it, but I will say that very little in the movie is actually a string of butterfly-wing events. There is a central catastrophic incident, but it’s as much a product of the past as it is a harbinger of the future. I interviewed director Alejandro González Iñarritu about the film last month, and you can read the transcript. He basically disagreed with everything I had to say about his movie, so hmmm.
If you’d prefer Lars von Trier-proportioned fuckedupedness, this weekend Crispin Glover is bringing his decades-in-the-making masterwork What Is It? (read Kelly O’s preview here) to Broadway Performance Hall. Kelly O also got the chance—of a lifetime!—to interview Mr. Hellion Glover over the telephone. I think she almost peed her Halloween costume. Here’s the tantalizing transcript.
In other news, a kid-friendly, made-for-TV documentary about global warming is opening at the Meridian. Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette are the narrators, as if climate change weren’t scary enough. We weren’t informed of this booking until the evening we went to press, so we don’t have a review. But help yourself to the slightly hyperbolic New York Times review.
Someone from the Stranger please Slog a detailed description of what happens tonight with Crispin Glover. I'm too broke to go see it and I'd love to know of any strange, interesting, witty things he might have to say.
So is all of this assuming that you've already seen Shortbus?
Because, really, everybody should see Shortbus.
Read Anthony Lane's article, and I didn't come away with the impression that he hated Borat.
Go see Shortbus.
I really didn't like 21 grams. So I'm not so interest in Babel. I mean it had it's moments, acting was good but..ew.
Shortbus was awesome, that's why I'm really posting here.
Last night after much anticipation I saw "Borat...". After You-Tubing umpteen different clips in recent weeks, I was afraid I had spoiled much of the movie for myself. Happy to say, there was much left to send me into tears through my laughing.
What strikes me about Sacha Baron Cohen is just how great of an actor he is. All of these scenes he stayed firmly in character. I think it was the EW article I read where director Larry Charles said that Cohen stayed in character off camera throughout the whole time of filming. Cohen is BRILLIANT, and this movie is one of the best comedies I've ever seen. I plan on taking my 81 year-old dad to see it - he has a high threshold for filthy humor.
BTW, for massively funny Borat appearances, search You Tube for this weeks' Conan and Letterman shows.
Sean--
I used the general noun "hater," not the specific verb "hated." Anthony Lane was plainly bewildered by the movie.
As for Shortbus, it opened several weeks ago, and I was talking about new movies here (should have been more specific). See it if you like.
I stayed home and watched Look Back In Anger. You people missed out. Richard Burton, to his wife's best friend, who has just said to him "I do love you": "Perrrhaps you doo." Fucking brilliant.
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