Exhibit 27.26

Things That Entertained Me While My Internet Was Down


Apparently my Netflix queue is making its way through last year's big movies. Please forgive me when I try to engage you in a conversation about Inception in March 2013.

The White Ribbon
Maybe not quite as good as its reputation--or as good as Caché--but still really fantastic. It is not, despite what the trailers suggest, Children of the Corn: Wilhelmine Edition. Well, not exactly anyway. A strangely constructed movie and, like Caché, one purposefully demanding a conversation about what exactly happened.

Brief aside: Is it okay in film to have a narrator then show scenes that narrator could not have possibly witnessed nor known about? I don't care, really, I'm just curious since this is the sort of thing that gets railed about in fiction workshops. I guess the opening where the narrator admits he's not sure he remembers everything correctly is supposed to address this occasional omniscience, but it's still a little weird when other things--like, you know, answers--are only speculated about.



The Secret in Their Eyes
Sort of an Argentine Memories of a Murder. Definitely more conventional than The White Ribbon, but at its best it's smart and stylish and not nearly as crappy as the trailer suggests. At its worst, it's sort of a really good episode of Law and Order and exactly what its trailer suggests.

Took me awhile but I finally remembered where I'd see the lead actor. He's in Nine Queens, which is a nice Mamet-y con drama from a few years back. Wikipedia tells me he's one of the biggest stars in Latin America. Makes sense. He's sort of Tom Hanks-y.



Flight to Canada
I think I said this on Twitter, but I'm pretty sure I like this better than Mumbo Jumbo, and I love Mumbo Jumbo. Since today I can apparently only compare, I might as well say it reminded me quite a bit of Robert Coover's The Public Burning in its conflation/exaggeration/reinvention of American history. It was written about the same time, too. Something in the air after Watergate? In any case, you should read it.