Legal Commentary

I need to post this picture...

... because I don't like seeing the "Harold Pinter's dead" post at the top anymore... though I'd be happy to keep talking about the movie "Synecdoche, New York," which I thought was pretty good. It was loaded with ideas and images -- for example, buying a house that is on fire and that stays on fire while you live in for years, until you die.* Much more could have been done with all of this. It could have been sharpened up and made more visually vivid, but it had only a $12 million budget, so it's actually astounding that they got as much out of it as they did.

I'd like to make a list of movies about theater, which would include this movie and my all-time favorite movie, "My Dinner With Andre." There's also "Vanya on 42d Street." I don't want all the movies about the life of actors, like "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Stage Door" and "All About Eve." (Put them on a separate list.) I want movies in which playwrights or theater directors delve into the meaning of theater. I'd add the Woody Allen movie "Melinda and Melinda," which we watched a few days ago. 2 playwrights -- one comic, one dramatic -- take the same story and spin out their scenarios.
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* [SPOILER ALERT] ... of smoke inhalation.
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I think that was the third footnote in the nearly 5 year history of this blog. I have been avoiding footnotes like mad. But why? And why, if my abstention has been so important, did I deviate here?

Full post as published by Althouse on December 25, 2008 (boomark / email).