Heights

My movie watching has been progressing well, only 4 more left in my
PowerBook, and I'm pretty sure I can get all of them finished within
the 2 weeks that I have left for work.

So I caught 'Casino' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' 'Casino' was pretty
much exactly like 'Goodfellas,' but different only in the context of
the Las Vegas Casino scene. After watching this, though I admit, this
was pretty good, I am definitely not a Martin Scorsese fan. His films
are done well, he pays attention and focuses on a lot of detail and
does a real good job at story making, but sorry, his style doesn't
appeal to me. I've now seen 'Casino,' 'Goodfellas' and 'Gangs of New
York' and among them, I liked 'Casino' the best, however, it is
perceived as the third best one among the three, so I'm wondering if
it's just me. Last year's 'The Aviator' was also directed by him, but
I'm not too keen on catching it, even though it did well at the
Oscar's. His movies are long, slow, and sometimes it's just a pain to
be watching it. But that's just my taste.

'To Kill a Mockingbird,' well, what can I say, it was based on the
novel, and it hit the nail right. Most of the time, when it's based
on a book, it shouldn't go wrong. The pace, focus and the direction
was pretty good for a black and white movie.

So last night, Francesco, Dawar and I tried to catch a movie, since
we couldn't do so on Friday, as it was too late by the time we
decided. You'd think they'll be showing a lot of movies on the
weekend, its either you caught it around 10, or past midnight. I was
pretty tired, since there was a lot going on at work, so I decided to
get an early night. But last night, we made sure we caught something.

We finally decided to go to some obscure theaters that are located
somewhat near to Tech, and there were a number of films that were
being screened that I wanted to catch. The three we shortlisted was
'Heights,' a poster of which I remember seeing around Buckhead for
sometime, 'Me, You and Everyone We Know,' a film that I remember
reading about from my English Professor's blog (which he thought was
a welcoming contrast to the idea of community community in 'Crash,'
which got me interested in this film in the first place) and
'Mysterious Skin,' which kind of sounds like a 'Donnie Darko' type
film, which got great ratings on IMDb (and I trust IMDb 95% of the
time, so I didn't doubt its rating).

The last two was being shown in an Arts theater not too far from
where we where, but the description for 'Heights' got all of us, so
we ended up going to a weird place that was surrounded mainly by
adult entertainment joints or bars. But to our surprise, that theatre
was pretty nice, and I recalled that the place that my English
Professor mentioned was this place. The feel of the theater was as if
my kind of films were being screened night in and night out. There
was only about 10 of us watching the movie, so we got into the best
position and watched the film.

I must say, I liked how the camera captured the spirit of urban life
of New York City, with soft music in the background which totally
sucked me in, and I was just lost in the movie. It lasted for 90 or
so minutes, but it felt like a great 2 and a half hour journey, and
its very hard to do that kinda thing. Usually movies that last that
long makes it feel draggy and bad, but not this one. I think it
weaved the stories (oh, its one of those multiple scenarios coming
together in the end type which I just love) pretty well.

Though I wouldn't say that it was a spectacular film, I liked it.
More for some of the scenes where it was static for 5 seconds just
showing the sights of New York and the empty, silent theater
supplemented the effects very well. It was more visual and the
reality of these lives in New York City than anything else. And the
fact that I was going around areas showcased in the film not too long
ago in my brief stay in New York earlier this month helped out in
somewhat identifying myself with what was going on.

Many might not think its a film worth watching, but hey, everyone has
different tastes.

Hopefully, we'll get to catch 'Mysterious Skin' next week, coz that
seems like something I will truly enjoy.