April 28, 2007
Another movie about tons of notebooks and the obsessive people that write in them. When I see movies that involve a character writing all the time in composition notebooks, “Seven” for instance, I immediately want to go out and buy a pile of them myself. From there I’ll write into retirement like a burning clipper ship on the horizon. There’s something very satisfying in those bound, almost square books that spiral notebooks can’t come close to. Also, being left handed, spiral notebooks are difficult to use without branding yourself with hieroglyphs of red, continuous dashes.
Are your friends and family really real? Can a cute guy with a PhD in Mathematics secretly have a crush on you, and stick around even during your craziest moments and still exist? Ask yourself these questions. A beautiful house. Books piled in the hallway. People without actual jobs. Working through a comfortable night. Even the crazies are well groomed with clear skin. I want an older sister to fly in like a mother hen and buy me a little black dress.
Too many facial close-ups. Why use widescreen when you’re going to fuzz out the background only to focus on the perfect, statuesque alignment of Gyllenhaal’s mouth or Davis’s hair? I can see all that on dlisted. If I worked on set design I would’ve wanted a full, actorless walk through of the house that Jack built in the Special Features section. Oh, and BTW, can Davis do any wrong? I’m right now in the kitchen, melting all the gold I’ve stolen over the years (watches, lockets, teeth) and constructing an award better than the Oscar. I’ll call it Betsy and it’ll be a hermaphrodite donkey standing inside a crystalline orchid. Betsy will stretch out on her tip-toes, extend out her arms. Held in her manicured hooves will be a revolving star that will measure barometric pressure and shed gold sparks when thunderstorms are approaching. I’ll give this statue to Hope Davis as thanks for being in “Proof.”
