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12 January 2006

Art that must enter my brain this year

So January is supposed to be a time for taking stock of your life and to organize your thoughts etc. I tried the whole New Year resolution thing (i.e. to stop swearing and exercise more) only to fail miserably at 9:00 on January 1st when the system at the bookshop kept giving login errors and repeatedly failed to reset. Needless to say, I swore a lot on the first day of 2006. You can only make life altering changes in habit when your head has been sorted out. Waiting for a specific day to do it just indicates that you weren't ready.

I spent these early days of January in a sort of nowhere. Not exactly purgatory, as I did read a couple of interesting things, such as Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk and the Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. I considered reading The House of God by Samuel Shem, but after
karen little's post about the Unreal World, decided on much lighter fare, namely The Easy Way Out by Stephen McCauley. I have chosen two authors to discover during this year. The one is Peter Carey and the other is Armistead Maupin. Initially I picked Rick Moody, but then remembered how much I disliked The Ice Storm.

It's almost award season and once again all the brilliant movies are released simultaneously. Why don't they space them out over the whole year? I know that Golden Globes and Oscars bring hype that money can't buy, but surely these films would take box office from one another by being released within the same couple of months? I guess I'm just annoyed that I'm going to be very broke soon. Here's my list of must-see movies:
  • Walk the Line
  • Brokeback Mountain
  • The Producers
  • Transamerica
  • Capote
  • Memoirs of a Geisha
  • The Squid and the Whale
  • Match Point

These are all nominated films, and there are lots of smaller things I need to go watch. Ooh, can you feel the electricity?

2 comments:

  1. you should check out ing's post on truman capote (seeing as you listed the movie about him as must-see).

    which carey's ahve you read? start with the kelly gang. it's my favourite favourite.

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  2. I read ing's post and I also recall some photographs of the older and more rotund Capote - quite unlike the ones she's managed to uncover. I'm looking forward to the movie: Capote's played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favourite actors.

    I've got Kelly Gang at home somewhere. I've only read his short stories so far and would like to read some more. Quite a clear style of writing.

    PS: on an Oscar & Lucinda-y note, I saw an interesting movie today with Ralph Fiennes in it. It's called The Chumscrubber and you'll like it if you liked Donnie Darko. Glenn Close digs a flowerbed in the middle of the night, while Mr. Fiennes gets ethereal with some blue paint.

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