Clovers In The Atmosphere

I am flush with the buzz of masculinity which accompanies fixing one's own car. it turns out it was the hydraulic system (I will spare you the physics explanation of incompressible fluids), which may have been exascerbated by the cold. now we just have to wait and see if the hydraulic fluid will leak right back out of whatever let it out the first time or if it was an incremental decomposition and the problem will stay solved. N.B. poking around under the hood of your car at -20C is not at all fun.

I went to see "stranger than fiction" of friday night. It definitely could have been worse. Writing fictional narratives that become aware of themselves isn't exactly rocket science (I wrote one for my high school literary magazine as a 12th grader), but STF manages not to become overly involved with its own cleverness (as I did). Will Farrell is deployed very well. He is slightly dislodged from reality already (from his previous outlandish roles), which makes his in medias res dislodgement in this movie more fluid and palatable.

Emma Thompson is very good despite her increasing visual resemblance to my undergraduate dean. Maggie Gyllenhaal is given the fool's errand of trying to play an implausible and underdeveloped free-spirited love interest, but she and her button nose to their darnedest.

I saw borat on monday (hey what else are you going to do when it is -25C out?). I can't really see what all the fuss is about. It wasn't that funny or that shocking. I think we are all pretty surfeited with mockumentaries at this point. and most to all of the humor was staged.

I saw "the fog of war" on saturday (I'm serious, it is freakin' freezing here). Robert McNamara is engaging, and Errol Morris does make a nice film even if his nasal disembodied questions make me want to scream. I think Morris misses a golden opportunity by not further exploring the pros and cons of bringing business efficiency statistics to the military. I was also surprised that he passed on the opportunity to point out the fact that mcnamara was literally the intersection of the military-industrial complex. McNamara himself is very engaging and clear during the early part of the movie, which makes his inability to express clear thoughts or opinions about Vietnam somewhat damning. Given the epilogue which implied that there was a great deal he would not discuss on camara, perhaps the murkiness of the vietnam section was necessary due to lacunae in the subjects covered in McNamara's interview. But overall a really fine move. pretty, informative, and not forehead-smackingly partisan.