Eyewear saw There Will Be Blood last night. It wasn't Kane - it was morose and downbeat like Ambersons, with some of the muddiness and new century cornpone of that film - and it made me think there will be hype. I found the didactic false prophet vs. false profit motif slightly linear, and the lack of any character development curious. Of course, the acting was bravura, the tone and pace original, and the Malickian attention to men at labour in American fields, moving and well-shot. It may grow on me. One thing about the Oscars this year - most of the US films up for the big awards were very dark, very violent - this is the age of Bush - and the toxic blowback from Iraq has just now begun to seep in to the water supply in Hollywood. The best American movie of 2007 was possibly the third Bourne feature - in terms of direction, and suspense; it too, was violent, and political, but somehow deemed irrelevant - perhaps because it expressed its skills so openly. Anyway, the good news may be this: a fourth Bourne could happen. If it does, let's hope they stick to the formula (same theme song, same look, same actors, same director).
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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