movies: pride goes before The Fall

Saturday evening I finally–I’d wanted to see it for a while, but it slipped off my radar–saw The Fall directed by Tarsem Singh. I always appreciate stories within movies where the stories seem to take place on another plane, a universe with its own sense and rules. This all harks back to my love of The Princess Bride, I’m sure, but it’s also why I enjoyed Chicago the film but would never go to see the musical. Like many story within a story tales, the meta-story may reflect people or events from the non-story and in The Fall, it gets pretty dark. The four of us, Paul and Al hosting Kyle and me, agreed that the fantastic tale was far more interesting than the real world.

Additionally, it was just visually stunning. It was my first time sitting down to watch a Blu-Ray movie and I would advise that this film could easily convert the unbelievers and those on the fence about the upgrade. The only problem is that the film, when all is said and done, is sort of boring. It’s gorgeous, but when you’re wishing the plot would move on not because you want to know how something turns out, but because you want to see how the next scenes were shot, you’re appreciating the eye candy of the composition, locations, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a fan-cut of this movie that stripped out all of the “real world” story and just showed the stuntman’s tale.

In other news, I’m getting my first signs of holiday illness. I normally do not get sick, but when I do it can be on par with a man cold. So as not to be a cranky bitch burden to my friends, I usually just hunker down and avoid all contact. This is both for contagion–alcohol doesn’t kill all germs–and the fact that I’d like to keep my friends. If I’m lucky, this is just the faux-illness brought on by holiday blues and not a true sickness. I can much better deal with really being sick after the New Year when we really have cold/bad weather. 👿