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[Hairy Lime]

"set in Venice"

My Christie-loving wife's head nearly exploded.  Who then treated me to a well informed rant on the travesties Branagh is making, the failure to capture Christie's characters in proper context of time and location, the monstrous mismatch of Halloween Party and Venice, etc. 

The rotting but loved paperback she just plopped in my lap is, I see, dedicated to the well known Venetian author PG Wodehouse.

I won't share the full exposition I just received on the reasons that Poirot is Belgian but suffice it to say that "He's Belgian" is all the moustache origin story any sane person needs.

As I noted, changing the setting to Venice is odd for several reasons but mostly because the limited number of potential murders in the area is a pretty vital plot point. Woodleigh Common, sure, but Venice?

[Oilcandide]

Harry Melling who so limberly played the limbless thespian in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, plays E A Poe, in his student days at West Point in The Pale Blue Eye.

I wanted to like this more - the historical backdrop, the somber wintry setting and gloomy interiors, snatches of poetry and romantic passion from the budding bard, the mysterious and macabre aspects of the deaths young Poe helps investigate - all the makings of great period psychodrama.  But somehow it loses coherence, tosses in a plot twist that is more "written" than convincing, and has Christian Bale (among others) speaking lines that seem too modern for 1830 and treading on social boundaries in various anachronistic ways.  (Also hard to envision a marriage of Toby Jones and Gillian Anderson yielding tall children, but that's a casting nitpick)

[luee]

Agree completely, beautiful eye-candy but the central plot disintegrates rapidly.

[Oilcandide]

Be nice if Melling had another crack at playing Poe, in something better plotted.  I'm also curious if the writers understand that young ladies, of the daughter's class, in 1830 would be chaperoned at all times in any social contact with a young man, especially the first such contact.  And especially a young lady with a seizure disorder and delicate health. 

[Hairy Lime]

Yes to that and add that for all its Poe-try PBE does a couple things I truly dislike in mysteries: it leans heavily into the occult, and the solution to the mystery depends on a conversation we do not overhear about facts we do not know about, depriving us of any chance to solve the thing for ourselves. Did not like it. Felt like dropping it off a tall bridge like a limbless thespian. Will not rewatch.

I note Melling even with all his limbs is decided lighter than he was in his first few roles.

[Oilcandide]

Yes, familials inform me that he was more chunky in the Hogwarts films (which I have not seen).  And an LOL for "dropping it off a tall bridge..." 

Also, as my parenthetical remark may suggest, not big on reliance upon the occult in a mystery either. 

Still awaiting The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket: The Musical. Or really, any adaptation. 

[Hairy Lime]

Now that I think about it, an Everything Bagel is an odd concept, philosophically.

[Oilcandide]

The Schwarzchild radius of any bagel would be very tiny, given the small mass, even of those quite solid Thomas bagels.  The black bagel in the movie EEAAO was...okay that was a maguffin I didn't take too seriously and so cannot recall if it had an entire universe's worth of matter collapsed into it or what.  But yes anytime one says "everything" in some cosmic context, it calls into question what's all that stuff that's OUTSIDE of the object's event horizon.

And thinking about a bagel as a maguffin...well, there's cognitive dissonance when maguffin is so similar to, say, MacMuffin.

[Hairy Lime]

At the very least I appreciated EEAAO's use of Chekov's buttplug.

[Hairy Lime]

I avoided EEAAO and went in expecting something gimmicky facile and twee. I did not expect to find myself deeply, quietly moved by a scene involving sentient rocks.

[Oilcandide]

As I recall, by the time I had reached the talking rocks, I had weathered one weird gag concept too many - black hole bagel, hot dog fingered people, the Chekhovian awards on Jamie Lee's desk, the hoary Chinese-American  tropes like laundromats and kung fu and mothers-in-law, the general genre anarchy....but later I softened my position and liked the rocks.  And tried to see the absurdist stuff as metaphors deployed on behalf of a familial drama, and getting peace with past forks in the road of life.   

And it's possible my initial negative reactions were somewhat driven by the enormous vats of praise ladled on by critics at the time (last  Spring?) and which had me expecting more than I felt was delivered. 

[Hairy Lime]

I may have liked it so well in part because I was expecting to hate the weird gag stuff. But every time I started to drift off it would bring me back to the human story at the core, and I started to see that gag stuff as linked to the themes of the movie, like the disconnect between and among the families, or how one exists in a random world with no meaning. And damn everyone is so good in this, Yeoh, Short Round, Curtis, Hsu, the actress who played her girlfriend, all of them.

Also, it reminded me how remiss I have been in not ever seeing In the Mood for Love. Which does not appear to be streaming free anywhere.

[Oilcandide]

I like your take - I think you may have seen it more clearly than I did on first viewing.

Eleven Oscar nominations seems a bit much, though.  I may need to rewatch the damn thing.

In the MfL is an understated masterpiece.  Ms Coppola said it inspired her to make Lost in Translation.  Your local PL probably has it, if you've got a DVD player back there stored with the Victrola and tube radio. 

[Hairy Lime]

It was basically nominated for everything, everywhere it could be except visual effects. And I feel like I slighted Ke  Huy Quan by not checking his name before posting. Since there is a very good chance his obituary will open with "Oscar winning actor..." I should acknowledge him by real name.

I have BoI and AQotWF 5o watch before March 12. Not sure i will be able to access any other top line movies.

[Hairy Lime]

I do want to say, now that I have seen the complete list of nominees, that it is my fondest dream that, on March 12, someone at the podium will say the words, "And the Oscar goes to... My Year of Dicks". That would make me indescribably happy.