the Village Knittiot

This weekend, Mr. K, who has long wanted to create his own line of t-shirts, discovered the joys of Cafe Press. After tackling a few of his own creations, his thoughts turned to the Knittiot. So, he created a Village Knittiot store. Mostly just for me, but I would be remiss not to share the fun results. My personal favorites are the hoodie, the tote bag and the mouse pad. Though I might need to get a journal as well. Oh, who am I kidding. One of everything please.

Yesterday we traipsed off to the movie theater to see Broken Flowers, the supposedly mainstream breakthrough of (normally) un-fucking-believable and amazing indie director Jim Jarmusch. Sadly, Broken Flowers was like a watered down version of everything that is good about his direction and storytelling prowess with lots of product placement. Budget Rental, Ford Taurus, Aquafina, MSN.com, Mapquest, Calvin Klein and United States Postal Service, to name a few. It was incredibly disruptive because it was so unexpected and so antithetical to anything he has ever done before.

The movie itself had about 1/4 of the depth of say a Down By Law (my personal favorite) or a Ghost Dog (Mr. Knittiot’s Favorite — see his review of BF here). Hell, it had less impact than Coffee and Cigarettes, which was supposed to be like the movie equivalent of a collection of short stories (albeit a brilliant collection of short stories) with a common theme, filmed over more than a decade exploring like concepts from a variety of short scenarios. Unlike Broken Flowers, it was satisfying and delightful. It didn’t leave you feeling like there should have been more. It had a signature richness that I always associate with Jarmusch.

What was brilliant in Broken Flowers were the performances by the women (Frances Conroy, Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton and Jessica Lange) who played the former loves of Don Johnston, Bill Murray’s character (who was supposed to be a modern-day Don Juan, but just seemed like a pathetic old man). The connections were obvious, the pacing sloppy and Bill Murray was just so dead (similar to his lackluster role in Rushmore and very unlike the performance in Lost in Translation). I left the theater with no idea why these women were drawn to him. Though they (the actresses) did an excellent job of portraying that there was indeed some kind of an intensity and pull between them, no matter how faded it may have become over the years, Jarmusch and Murray did a poor job of providing us with any explanation for it. The movie managed to capture us in the last five minutes, but in general, it was disappointing. Go back to your indie life, Jim, it was much better to you.

Well, that’s all for this fine Monday morning. Hope your day treats you kindly…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 6:08 am and is filed under this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.