Revolutionary Road

Didn't really sit down and watch this movie, just caught it in snatches while my brother was watching it on his computer. Directed by Sam Mendes of 'American Beauty' fame. Thought it was just going to be exactly like 'Mad Men' but a movie version, the good thing is that it was a kind of reversal of that. Not the picture perfect couple like the Drapers, who behind their seamless facade, have all sorts of problems, Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet are a couple who somehow imagine themselves to be "special" and "different" from everyone else, but somehow got trapped into a conventional life. What turns out to be the real story is that maybe they aren't different at all, or at least in Leo's case, just don't have the guts to try anything at all, really. They're about to move to Paris, when Leo gets a promotion and raise and Kate gets pregnant. Kate wants to get an abortion and still move to Paris, but Leo tells her he wants another child so he can use it as an excuse to stay. Of course, in the end it comes out that he just didn't have the balls to tell her the truth, she sleeps with the neighbor, gives herself an abortion at home after the first trimester's passed, and of course dies. Last scene Leo all alone at playground, wondering what went wrong. Mendes seems to love tragic endings, and a kind of Sirkian melodrama. Overall, totally okay, except for the real-estate broker's crazy son character who has to spell everything out for the viewer.

i know what i did this summer

Finally got around to reading this thing, which had been knocking around my house for months. Had bought it at Strand, on the wave of the movie marketing, but just couldn't get into it in the beginning because of the melodramatic tone of the narration. Kind of off-putting and intensely nerdy, but once I got into it, was interesting to see how the different strands worked together. Only my third or so real graphic novel (not including my brother's X-Men's I covertly read when I was a kid), after Maus, and some Tomine. In the end, perverse, egotistical superhero who likes Egyptian stuff (oh, right Ozymandias) creates a test-tube alien (looks like a cross between an octopus and a giant pussy) to spontaneously detonate upon its arrival in New York City, whereupon frightened citizens of the world would stop their squabbling, and thereby prevent World War III. Interspersed with "non-fictional reports" relating to different characters in the book, as well as a gruesome fable, "The Black Freighter," wherein a guy makes a float of a bunch of corpses and eats a seagull (plucks it straight outta the sky) in order to make it back to his hometown to his wife and kiddies before the pirates get there. Of course, the pirates had no intention of going there, meanwhile "the hero" has transformed into a grotesque animal, no longer a being that could be loved by his family or be part of society at all, really. Moral of the story ? Don't be blinded by your blind desire. You'll shoot yourself in the foot. Or more like face. I know. Of course, this nicely parallels the character of Ozymandias, who, in trying to save the world, loses sight of what he's doing and willingly sacrifices the people of New York City for his design.  The only thing is that he has no remorse. Is self-righteous till the end. Classic, "Do the ends, justify the means?" kind of thing. "Does that which benefits the majority always a good thing ?" "Who is the majority ?" Rorschach, the conscientious counter-weight to Ozy. While everyone else is willing to sacrifice the truth in order to preserve world peace, he outs it via his journal (mailed to a conservative newspaper called the "New Frontiersman.") "Watchmen" is also ambivalent about whether living by Rorschach's black & white rules (truth above all things, including world peace) is admirable, either. "The Watchmen" leaves things uncomfortably unresolved to the very end, like what the consequences of Rorschach's revelation will be; or even what characters are good or bad. The charm (really not the right word) of the book is that it raises a lot of questions and complexities, and doesn't offer any easy answers. An uncomfortable read, overall: grim, theatrical and dark.