Beholding Saturday...
Aug. 26th, 2000 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpAnother one of those lazy, hazy, crazy days as summer winds down.
Spent the day on and off looking at a translation I have to do this weekend. My heart's simply not in it. I have enough of this stuff to do - or will, now that a key player in the office has gone back to school - during the week.
Galina's been getting ready for her trip, and every available surface outside my room and above floor level is covered with "candidate" items, i.e., things that might, ultimately, go into a valise, a duffel bag, and in her carry-on. I'm sure the selection process under way out in the living room makes the process used by both major parties to choose vice presidential candidates seem tame by comparison.
It's not as if she's this way all the time. After all, it's not every day one can go visit one's sister in Russia after a 13+ year hiatus. Two years ago, when we hoofed it the hard way to Málaga, neither of us checked any luggage, and though we did not go the whole Rick Steves rucksack route, we did travel relatively lightly. Me, I'd like to try Steves' method and travel with only what I can carry comfortably on my back. The appearance and reappearance of his shows on the local PBS channel helps me focus on what, partially, I want out of life.
Napped again today - maybe some would call it sleep - from about 3 to 5 in the afternoon. Lee came back (finally!) around 5:30 just as I was pulling out to go to the video store. Later, we went to the mall, where I purchased a voltage converter (for the sister), though I must stress to Galina that her sister should think about what kind of stuff she's plugging into the unit, else she'll burn this one out the way she did the last one. Don't get me wrong, I like my sister-in-law, but she is of that class of human that does not pay much attention to the technical side of living (which only puts her in the overwhelming majority, but that's another issue...).
It's nearly midnight right now, and I'm feeling nicely worn through. Galina and I watched Eye of the Beholder a little while ago, and it contrasts nicely with what I said about last night's Titus. In Eye, some kind of surveillance wizard/superagent for the British embassy is set the task of following a young man suspected of pilfering money. Our hero, who is so geeky that his wife gathered up their daughter and disappeared many years ago, diligently follows the suspect to a museum, photographs a meeting with a young woman, and then follows the pair ot a love nest, where our hero witnesses first the titillation and then the savage murder of the young man.
Our hero becomes increasingly obsessed with the woman and follows her from city to city as she leaves a trail of corpses. If there is a psychological angle here, it never gets developed very well past the level of stark pathology. We know something drives the woman to kill, and there are hints here and there in brief flashbacks, but her character could have just as easily been made, say, a kleptomaniac, and story line would not be too very different, except we'd be missing all the blood and bare flesh, and nobody would pay money to see it.
At any rate, what makes Titus a more powerful film, in my opinion, is that the emotions played out there are clearer and perhaps closer to what we - as presumably normal people - are capable of feeling, even if the actions are beyond our nature. The people in Eye, on the other hand, are so clearly "out there," and their violence, while graphic, remains so clearly purposeless, that the story is a celebration of the aberrant.
I was interested in how the film would end, and hoped there would be an explanation - or at least a clarification - of what drove the characters to do the things they did. Though the end sort of fizzled out like a cigarette butt in a snowbank, it made a kind of sense, assuming you never really cared in the first place.
I can't say the rental was a complete waste of money, but my life would not be measurably less full if I hadn't seen this flick.
Cheers...
Spent the day on and off looking at a translation I have to do this weekend. My heart's simply not in it. I have enough of this stuff to do - or will, now that a key player in the office has gone back to school - during the week.
Galina's been getting ready for her trip, and every available surface outside my room and above floor level is covered with "candidate" items, i.e., things that might, ultimately, go into a valise, a duffel bag, and in her carry-on. I'm sure the selection process under way out in the living room makes the process used by both major parties to choose vice presidential candidates seem tame by comparison.
It's not as if she's this way all the time. After all, it's not every day one can go visit one's sister in Russia after a 13+ year hiatus. Two years ago, when we hoofed it the hard way to Málaga, neither of us checked any luggage, and though we did not go the whole Rick Steves rucksack route, we did travel relatively lightly. Me, I'd like to try Steves' method and travel with only what I can carry comfortably on my back. The appearance and reappearance of his shows on the local PBS channel helps me focus on what, partially, I want out of life.
Napped again today - maybe some would call it sleep - from about 3 to 5 in the afternoon. Lee came back (finally!) around 5:30 just as I was pulling out to go to the video store. Later, we went to the mall, where I purchased a voltage converter (for the sister), though I must stress to Galina that her sister should think about what kind of stuff she's plugging into the unit, else she'll burn this one out the way she did the last one. Don't get me wrong, I like my sister-in-law, but she is of that class of human that does not pay much attention to the technical side of living (which only puts her in the overwhelming majority, but that's another issue...).
It's nearly midnight right now, and I'm feeling nicely worn through. Galina and I watched Eye of the Beholder a little while ago, and it contrasts nicely with what I said about last night's Titus. In Eye, some kind of surveillance wizard/superagent for the British embassy is set the task of following a young man suspected of pilfering money. Our hero, who is so geeky that his wife gathered up their daughter and disappeared many years ago, diligently follows the suspect to a museum, photographs a meeting with a young woman, and then follows the pair ot a love nest, where our hero witnesses first the titillation and then the savage murder of the young man.
Our hero becomes increasingly obsessed with the woman and follows her from city to city as she leaves a trail of corpses. If there is a psychological angle here, it never gets developed very well past the level of stark pathology. We know something drives the woman to kill, and there are hints here and there in brief flashbacks, but her character could have just as easily been made, say, a kleptomaniac, and story line would not be too very different, except we'd be missing all the blood and bare flesh, and nobody would pay money to see it.
At any rate, what makes Titus a more powerful film, in my opinion, is that the emotions played out there are clearer and perhaps closer to what we - as presumably normal people - are capable of feeling, even if the actions are beyond our nature. The people in Eye, on the other hand, are so clearly "out there," and their violence, while graphic, remains so clearly purposeless, that the story is a celebration of the aberrant.
I was interested in how the film would end, and hoped there would be an explanation - or at least a clarification - of what drove the characters to do the things they did. Though the end sort of fizzled out like a cigarette butt in a snowbank, it made a kind of sense, assuming you never really cared in the first place.
I can't say the rental was a complete waste of money, but my life would not be measurably less full if I hadn't seen this flick.
Cheers...
