Guy is in Sydney until Wednesday so I feel quite safe in declaring that last week I watched The Pianist and I thought it was good and that Adrien Brody was really good in it. Like, really good. Man, I'm gonna pay for this. Guy hates that dude so much. But I've only ever seen him in The Pianist and The Thin Red Line so I've got no beef. [Ah, remember that movie? Back in the day when it was okay to love Jim Caveizel, back when he called himself Jim Caveizel and did that whole hot army khaki no shirt dog tags thing...mmmmm]. Anyway, yeah, The Pianist was good. Granted it's not The Grey Zone, but what is? Aw hell, I always feel shitty comparing Holocaust movies like they're a genre. I fear I'll find myself going, "Hmmm, I believe that both films ably represent a sense of daily grimness in the 'trope' of mass death so necessary to this genre, however, I feel that blah blah blah and up my own ass." Which concerns me only insofar as it makes me sound like a tool, truth be told. While watching the movie I sometimes found myself working out the emotional/historical import of what was happening from information out of other films. Like, when he watches the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto from his hideout, I was like, "Hey, that's the uprising from Uprising and Leelee Sobieski and Hank Azaria and David Schwimmer are in there, really pissing off John Voight who for some reason has brought along his desk." And I don't think that's superficial. I think films deepen my understanding of history sometimes. 
 
Anyway, this morning I watched Malcolm X and it was really good. Highly interesting. And it held together much better than some of the other Spike Lee movies I've seen. I mean, I expect something highly interesting from Spike Lee as a matter of course, just because of the material and people he assembles, there's always some new cultural texture in the details. But his movies sometimes fall apart a bit. Like Bamboozled was highly interesting to me, giving a sense about the minstrel shows and all the 'coon' bric a brac that was around and the difficulties associated with success. And the dancing was amazing. I'm so glad I watched it. But still, the movie kinda fell apart towards the end. Anyway, all I'm saying is that in Malcolm X there wasn't that feeling of sitting through some bad times to get to the gold. It was solid. Strong black consciousness stuff makes me happy. I know this is twatty but I really get all 'yeah' and beamy whenever I read or see stuff about it. I just get happy. Like I read some Black Power stuff a few years ago and it was just great. Fine, judge me. All I'm saying is that it's interesting and engaging and smart and I dig that sort of stuff. Anyway, a really good movie. A big deal, methinks. And I loved the cameos by Al Sharpton and Nelson Mandela.