Three faces of dawn

Best movies of 2010

Winter's Bone

A film noir about hicks in the backwoods that treats its subjects (and its audience) as sophisticates rather than bumpkins.

Poverty is the main character of this movie. We don't like seeing him anymore in American movies, but he almost always is an excellent actor. Damn, he did a good job here.



Heartbeats

A high-concept art house film that's secretly a buddy movie.

Beautiful cinematography, dialog, and soundtrack. The movie is gorgeous and everything you imagine a French movie could be. Two friends fight over a man. A very simple concept, but how the characters in this movie choose to fight!

Watching it with my friends, I found the movie could be viewed as a tragedy or a farce. I say it's a farce, perhaps because I can see myself getting into the same situations the characters do, so I was able to laugh at them.



Black Swan

Psychological torture porn.

I think this movie is Natalie Portman's All About Eve. Portman, like the character she plays, is aging in a industry full of fresh faces and has a squeaky clean image she needs to get rid of if she wants to stay around.

The cinematography sometimes overreaches in an attempt to look artistic, but the movie was unlike anything I had seen before.

You may feel somewhat like a monster when you've finish watching it.

Merry Christmas!

Tell it to the birds: 1860

Lovers have a rage for talking of their martyrdom. Rather than be silent, they would tell it to the birds that fly, or the cloud which passes.

--From Catherine--

According to Google Books, the phrase made its way into the English language via a translation of a French novel. It seems to have taken awhile for it to gain the tone of sarcasm with which we associate it today.

Tell it to the birds

Winter colors:

Four views of the Saint Petersburg Christmas Tree

Just an old fashioned love song: circa 1450

Freedom of expression: 1605

But all these inconveniences, and many more I have not mentioned, would cease, if some intelligent and judicious person of the court were appointed to examine all plays before they are acted, not only those made about the court, but all that should be acted throughout all Spain; without whose approbation under hand and seal, the civil officers should suffer no play to be acted; and thus the comedians would be obliged to send all their plays to the court, and might then act them with entire safety; and the writers of them would take more care and pains about what they did, knowing their performances must pass the rigorous examination of somebody that understands them.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

Don Quixote goes mad from reading fantasy books, mistaking them for true stories. People burn books; it's portrayed as a good thing to do. And there are long passages, like the one above, where characters endorse government censorship.

Paternalism was seen as something all right thinking people should get behind.

Potty humor: 1605

Now, whether the cold of the morning which was at hand, or whether some lenitive food on which he supped, or whether the motion was purely natural, which is rather to be believed, it so happened that Sancho had a desire to do what nobody could do for him. But so great was the fear that had possessed his heart, that he durst not stir the breadth of a finger from his master; and to think to leave that business undone, was also impossible: and so what he did for peace sake, was to let go his right hand which held the hinder part of the saddle, with which, softly, and without any noise, he loosed the running point that kept up his breeches; whereupon down they fell, and hung about his legs like shackles: then he lifted up his shirt the best he could, and exposed to the open air those parts which were none of the smallest. This being done, which he thought the best expedient towards getting out of that terrible anguish and distress, another and a greater difficulty attended him, which was, that he thought he could not ease himself without making some noise: so he set his teeth close, and squeezed up his shoulders, and held in his breath as much as possibly he could. But notwithstanding all these precautions, he was so unlucky after all as to make a little noise, very different from that which had put him into so great a fright. Don Quixote heard it, and said: "What noise is this, Sancho?"

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

All those poop jokes they have on TV? Just subtle homages to Don Quixote.

Why that hot chick/dude doesn't dig you: 1605

Heaven, as you say, made me handsome, and to such a degree, that my beauty influences you to love me whether you will or no. And in return for the love you bear me, you pretend and insist that I am bound to love you. I know by the natural sense God has given me, that whatever is beautiful is amiable; but I do not comprehend that merely for being loved the person that is loved for being handsome is obliged to return love for love. Besides, it may chance that the lover of the beautiful person may be ugly; and what is ugly deserving to be loathed, it would sound oddly to say, I love you for being handsome; you must love me though I am ugly.

--From Don Quixote de la Mancha--

And this was in a comedy!