Červen

I'm absolutely beat from Fringe Festival. I saw so many great performances and met loads of interesting people...will definitely be posting more about it in the next couple of days.

June, month of the summer solstice and my birth, the Countdown To Aimee (she'll be here in 14 days!) and the premiere of the Sex and the City movie! This + the new Wong-Kar Wai tomorrow = a fairly thrilling week in terms of film reviewing. I'm expecting to find major flaws with both but am still excited. WKW is my #1 favorite director. But the preview for My Blueberry Nights was troubling because:

1. Jude Law and Norah Jones as the main characters. Although, my opinion of Law was recently improved by the brilliant re-make of Sleuth.

2. Candy colors, but not from Christopher Doyle.

3. Natalie Portman, once again (from the looks of it), not being given enough to chew on.

4. The worst is hearing the dialogue...flat, sentimental, and pseudo-deep...and wondering if his movies have always been like that, and do I only enjoy the dialogue of In the Mood for Love and Happy Together because it comes to me through layers of translation? I've often wondered this about foreign films in general. I think I noticed it first with Amelie. Is the story really that charming, or does the element of lost-in-translation, the base exotic quality of it being foreign, and the novelty of reading subtitles add layers of charm that the script itself really doesn't deserve? It doesn't deter me from seeing films or feeling how I feel about them. I love plenty of ones that other people think are insufferably precious in any language. But my point is, if My Blueberry Nights were in Mandarin, would I like it better?

For now, I'll daydream about what song(s) WKW will use in the new movie--he has a signature of looping one or two over and over--and revisit another that features a waitress: 1996's ChungKing Express