Friday *

We recently saw Judd Apatow's movie Knocked Up,* leading to the admission* that I'd never bothered to see his other movie, the 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005).* Why? Because the previews indicated it was just another movie of the type I'm disinterested in: situational skit comedy evolved around the fulcrum of stereotype versus stereotype in the easy arena of socially protected sexual prejudice. Well, the movie in question is popular, and in due course we were invited by friends to watch it on DVD over delivery pizza and margaritas. I can't say I was altogether incorrect in my knee-jerk prejudices about the 40 Year-Old Virgin, though I'm glad I saw it. Why? It was very funny. The plot revolves around Andy, who, attempting to foster greater connection with workmates, begrudgingly admits to retaining his virginity. This introduces not only the stereotypical skit-like lowbrow social study I find annoying, but also the particular comic wit of Judd Apatow who can always find the vein while mining the rascally intercourse of man-children who presume no one is looking. From these humble beginnings the movie fits squarely into expectation along its broad strokes: Andy's capitulation as his buddies hijack his future love life ebbs and flows while he virtually trips over women who find themselves grooving to his quality inner person. It's revealed that Andy's lack of experience is symptomatic of an overall postponement of maturity (regrettably symbolized by the care he takes with his toy collection). Around these lesser qualities the movie is genuinely sweet, and tries to plumb real humanity from the usual handful of Apatow types. But while bending over backward to dignify and sweeten the impulses that drive its male cast, the film offers uneven shrift to the motivations of the women drawn to Andy's type of harmlessness. [Cavin]

Friday

We recently saw Judd Apatow's movie Knocked Up,* leading to the admission* that I'd never bothered to see his other movie, the 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005).* Why? Because the previews indicated it was just another movie of the type I'm disinterested in: situational skit comedy evolved around the fulcrum of stereotype versus stereotype in the easy arena of socially protected sexual prejudice. Well, the movie in question is popular, and in due course we were invited by friends to watch it on DVD over delivery pizza and margaritas. I can't say I was altogether incorrect in my knee-jerk prejudices about the 40 Year-Old Virgin, though I'm glad I saw it. Why? It was very funny. The plot revolves around Andy, who, attempting to foster greater connection with workmates, begrudgingly admits to retaining his virginity. This introduces not only the stereotypical skit-like lowbrow social study I find annoying, but also the particular comic wit of Judd Apatow who can always find the vein while mining the rascally intercourse of man-children who presume no one is looking. From these humble beginnings the movie fits squarely into expectation along its broad strokes: Andy's capitulation as his buddies hijack his future love life ebbs and flows while he virtually trips over women who find themselves grooving to his quality inner person. It's revealed that Andy's lack of experience is symptomatic of an overall postponement of maturity (regrettably symbolized by the care he takes with his toy collection). Around these lesser qualities the movie is genuinely sweet, and tries to plumb real humanity from the usual handful of Apatow types. But while bending over backward to dignify and sweeten the impulses that drive its male cast, the film offers uneven shrift to the motivations of the women drawn to Andy's type of harmlessness. [Cavin]

Thursday

The second of two movies I saw yesterday* at DC's E Street Cinema* was Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977),* a gritty documentary-style slice of sociology made for pocket change as Burnett's MFA thesis at UCLA. The film gently presents life in Los Angeles's Watts neighborhood through Stan, a husband and father suffering disconnection with his life. Stan's existential crisis is profound, the central observation about that imperfect world where impoverishment gives way to the lower middle class. Satisfaction is hard is find between soul-crushing days at the local sheep processing plant and long sleepless nights. While he fights to maintain some sense of self-esteem for the sake of the kids, Stan's helpless to dredge up the energy or humanity necessary for a relationship with his wife. Mostly he sleepwalks, finding solace in housework or small moments of nostalgia: a favorite song or a cup of coffee. Around him, the world exists in many forms engaging and banal: children play in the dirt of a construction site, friends gather to throw dice, every now and then the train rumbles by. This movie documents the trials and trivialities of life just beyond the ghetto, revealing more questions than answers. Or maybe that's not it; maybe it only reveals what is, and postulates that there are no questions or answers. Stan's wife is desperate to engage her husband, and there's some evidence that she's making headway--though these scenes, as always, are crowded by uncomfortable abattoir footage from Stan's slaughterhouse workdays. This movie, a favorite of festival circuits and the Library of Congress National Film Registry,* was long seen only in degrading 16mm prints. Recently, finally, it has been remastered, its music rights secured, and made available in a pristine version rescuing the versatile contrast of its excellent photography. Recommended. [Cavin]

Wednesday

I was standing on our balcony today when the first thunder bolted and the pool was rapidly abandoned by dozen of disappointed kids. I was checking to see if it was going to rain because I was about to leave the unit. How is it that I can spend most of my time yearning for rain, which finally comes when it's least convenient? By the time I was lugging out the recycling it was storming so hard that I got soaked under my umbrella. It's understandable that I forwent healthy walking in favor of the Oakwood Metro shuttle. I took the orange line to DC's own E Street Cinema,* to see two back-to-back moves in the pouring rain. The first of these was Paris, Je T'aime (Paris, I love You, 2006)* an anthology of eighteen narrative snippets by notable filmmakers (and some connecting tissue that seems to have fallen outside anyone's care). Many of these little stories are very clever, if not outright good, but there is only so much even a great filmmaker can do with an average of five minutes screen time. The Cohen brothers use their funky hostile comedy effectively, Alfonso Cuarón examines just what you can't know about a couple you overhear on the street, and Christopher Doyle has keenly odd off-Broadway feelings about Chinatown. The best of these short-shorts offer a slice of interpretive scenery sans punch line, but many attempt a breakneck narrative without depth or resonance. These picturesque trifles supposedly gather the great affinity the filmmaking world feels for the city of lights, but as tightly cadenced and coordinated for contrast as they are, the overall effect is more akin to gazing at a checkerboard than a piece of art. It was still raining heavily when I took the metro home. [Cavin]

Tuesday

Last words about this weekend: we were introduced to yet another really interesting Indian restaurant. This is a little dive called Delhi Dhaba, oddly nestled in an alley down behind a Subway sandwich place. The Subway faces Wilson Boulevard about a block down from the Court House Metro station, where we've been to the Irish pub and the crappy movie theater. The big yellow Subway sign lists the Indian restaurant in little letters to the side. Delhi Dhaba is neat in that it's no-frills cafeteria-style Indian fast food. And cheap. It is primarily a carry-out place, centered around a middle-sized buffet representing the menu du jour. Dine-in food is served from that buffet into sectional plastic TV dinner trays or on paper plates with plasticware. The pressboard paneling in the dining area is a deep, well-oiled brown. I had the dal makhni, some samosas, and rice, plus some raita and pickle; Sunshine got a combination platter with three main dishes and nan. I liked the place: there was not a whiff of exoticism. I felt like this was the closest I have ever been to eating this stuff the way I would if I were actually in New Delhi, where Indian food is just, you know, food. On to the present: these last couple of weeks I've been getting used to having a very popular pool in my front yard. By roughly ten in the morning, the place to be is out there splashing happily about. Not that the pool is really that much closer to my window than anyone else's, but where the Play Place directly beneath my balcony used to attract eighteen vocal locals at any given time, the pool certainly attracts eighty from all over the neighborhood. Oh, there's new pictures from New York here. [Cavin]

Monday

Another thing we picked up while shopping Sunday was book cases. We got two more stackable three-foot fold-out shelving units, matching the four we already had. The color is "java". These have shelved all our floor books. They've also provided room for all the books we'd gratuitously tucked into our bedside tables, pretending we'd get around to reading them all real soon. I still have the paperbacks triple-stacked on their sides, but we are now the proud owners of some Extra Space: today I was able to square everything away with one whole unit spare; three shelves free to expand into. I am pretty sure I said something along the lines of "that should hold us till we move again" back in February when we last bought shelves, and I’m chagrined to see how that's worked out. We have more months before packing out than we've had since that declaration, so it's possible that we'll end up having to get even more shelves soon. Keep your fingers crossed that the Vietnamese apartment we move into will be the size of a city library. This evening we went out for dinner at Italian Café, a place Sunshine spotted between here and the zombie multiplex on Lee's Highway. It's really my favorite type of Italian restaurant: a little dark brown dive with nicotine-stained booths, tucked into an uneven sixties-era strip mall. It's very reminiscent of Jersey, à la the opening credit sequence of the Sopranos. The food is predictably marvelous. Certainly they make all the very same things I'm used to in strip-mall Italian places: the usual array of noodles in the usual Italian flag of colored sauces. But they do it all very well, and we've been to eat here three times in the last two weeks or so. [Cavin]

Sunday

Extending the overall productivity theme of this last week, we did a lot of shopping during this weekend. Saturday we braved the awful Seven Corners intersection to go computer shopping, and I must admit that I did a pretty good job of it: I just crossed my fingers and passed right through, figuring I'd find the road I really needed once safely on the other side. That's what I normally have to do. I made a wish and just went in, and, by god, I was on the right road coming back out. I think I have the key to driving this thing:* faith. I believed in myself, and yea though I drove through the intersection of the shadow of death, etc., etc., etc. Science and other pragmatism is banished from Seven Corners. Sunshine is in the market for a new computer, but the market will get me, too. It's difficult not to want something new when others have them. I fell in love with a little Sony machine yesterday. We eventually found something she liked, too; and then, after a hair-raising trip to a bike shop (where ten-speeds cost as much as our car), we came back to the unit and she bought a similar computer online. Let that be a lesson to you, Best Buy: your practices are so annoying and you employees so ill-informed that it's far more satisfying to leave your store and shop from home. And then wait: Sunshine's new thing should arrive in several weeks. And she'll buy a bike off craigslist, thank you very much. Craigslist was no help to me, though: today's shopping was at the local blasted-out looking Target. Am I the only person who has to shop for underwear every time I have a new doctor's appointment? Alas. [Cavin]

Saturday

Two days ago, on Thursday, I saw back-to-back films at AFI's Silver Theater* in Maryland. I mentioned the first of these yesterday.* The second was Ingmar Bergman's carnival riff on the specter of death, the Seventh Seal (det Sjunde Inseglet, 1957).* The film follows blond young Max Von Sydow across a plague-ravaged medieval landscape as he seeks to forestall the event of his own death. To do this, he famously challenges the black-clad reaper to a chess match, buying time necessary to learn a little about life. He encounters a tarot deck of lost mortals along his way: a fool, a squire, a child, a priest, a robber, a wife and a martyr, etc.; imagined too paper-thin to be characters themselves, but nevertheless combining facets to illustrate the process by which the knight accepts his fate. A Canterbury card house, to extend my metaphor beyond all reason. This was an art-house revelation! While the movie had all the shape and circumstance of theatrical spectacle (actors playing actors form a large part in the story, which is, after all, a procession of discrete scenes within acts), it merely used this accepted platform to sink out of sight into inner philosophies. It was subtle: in one scene, a painter depicts much of the remaining story on the wall of a church; it was interpretive: between bouts of mortal chess, the knight encounters life's pleasures and cruelties by turns; the ending was even opaque, asking questions about life's purpose, and fear, rather than answering them. None of this mitigated the movies more explicit pleasures. It remains one of the most beautifully photographed movies I have ever seen. In the fifties, the Seventh Seal took the international film scene by storm, creating a sensibility of global art cinema still going strong today. [Cavin]