Pan Left Productions

Dear Movie Diary,

It has been a little while since I last wrote. I went to the theater last week to see the best rated films that will probably be up for Oscars. I first went to www.rottentomatoes.com to see what were the highest rated films at the El Con theater. I picked NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and JUNO. I wondered if all the hype would make me feel dissapointed about the movies, and it did. And then again, maybe I was just in a funny mood.

I first saw JUNO. I thought it was well acted, but the story seemed quite predictible and Juno, the main character, a pregnant, punk-like, 16-year-old from the suburbs, talked like she should be going to Harvard next year. And her best friend who dresses like a vapid cheerleader, also had a huge, snappy vocabulary like JUNO. I don't have a big vocabulary, so maybe I was just jealous (I actually do enjoy my friends who have large vocabularies.). But even so, I thought the dialogue was a little bit artificial and seemed just a vehicle for the writer to put in some snappy diaglogue and impress the audience with his(her?) vocabulary. I actually didn't see the end because I miscalculated the time between when JUNO ended and the next movie began. I was not sad about that because I think I figured out the end. I'll verify my assumptions when JUNO comes out on DVD. I still think SUPER BAD is the best comedy of 2007.

I looked forward to seeing NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I love the Cohen Brothers' movies. FARGO was my favorite. FARGO was a perfect artistic rendition of the midwest in the winter. But getting back to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, it was quite artistic as well. It reminded me alot of FARGO and BLOOD SIMPLE, in that it was a crime drama with a lot of silence and unusually portrayed violent acts. But NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was not as quirky as the other two. I found it to be more on the serious side. Some parts of the movie were kind of quirky, like when Josh Brolin was being chased by a pit bull through a river. That was creepy! I also had a hard time understanding all the dialogue in the theater. Sometimes film's audio does not carry well. I may try to look at it again when it comes on DVD. It definitely had that artistic silence which is the Cohen Brother's trademark. I recommend this film, but it didn't wow me like FARGO did. It seemed to be almost a spin off of previous crime films. But it is definitely worth a look, and Javier Bardem was extremely believable as a sociopathic killer. I think Javier is such a great actor. He plays so many different kinds of roles and makes every one of them believable.

Last night I saw GREEN GREEN WATER, a documentary co-directed by our own Jamie Lee. It told the plight of Native Americans (the Cree) in the Canadian provice of Manitoba, whose environment is being destroyed by "renewable" energy from running water funneled to the US from Manitoba by re-routing life giving rivers with the use of many dams. These dams have and are continuing to destroy the The Cree's environment in that area and their way of life. I got a real education and a reminder about how the corporate few are blindly destroying our Earth, for their own amusement. It brought up a lot of issues of betrayal of whole communities and peoples, the "sustainablilty" of taking energy from one area to be used in another, and the resulting artificial societies we have created that run on the slavery of making money to survive, as well as many other issues. The audience Q & A was phenomenal. I learned so much in that Q & A, as many concerned citizens in Tucson showed up to support the film. I am always impressed by the quality of people in Tucson. (I come from places where most people are still asleep and unaware.) I also liked the way all the donors were acknowledged in the credits. I am going to remember that for future projects.

Last but not least, I finished watching the 2nd season of BIG LOVE on DVD. This is an HBO series, like the Sopranos or Six Feet Under (which I absolutely loved!) I am so addicted to BIG LOVE. It stars Bill Paxton, Jean Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, and lots of other people like, Bruce Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Grace Zabriskie. The series is about polygamist families in present day Utah. It is the most twisted series I've ever seen and it's based on truth! I considered seeing the episodes out of order like I did with Six Feet Under, but I found it confusing that way. So I recommend seeing it from the beginning. Before I discovered this series, I saw the documentary, BANKING ON HEAVEN, which is about the polygamist community in Colorado City, AZ. Two ladies from Sedona created this documentary, and one is an ex-member of a similar community. Here is their website: http://www.bankingonheaven.com/ You don't have to see the documentary before seeing the BIG LOVE series, but knowing about polygamist communities helped me understand more of the background and motivation of the characters. I would love to talk about this series with someone.

More later,

Jean