~ ONE JOURNEY ~

~ There is only one journey: going inside yourself. ~
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Dot the "i" ~ Tuesday, March 14, 2006

An earlier start this morning, but to what a day outside! In contrast to the rainy but balmy 15 degrees of yesterday (and there was even sun in the late afternoon), today is cold and miserable. The wind cuts right through everything and there's a fine dandruff of snow dusting the ground. Yuck!

I therefore may not end up getting in my 10,000 steps. I did do 15,000 yesterday, so if I'm counting for the week, then I'd probably only have to do 5,000 today, but I'd like to do as many as possible, regardless of the weather. Hopefully it will calm down a bit soon, and if I bundle up, I'll at least be able to get out to the local streets. And goodness, there are a few patches of blue sky emerging--how astonishing!

We watched the film "Dot the 'i'" last night. Since it was dubbed as "this year's 'Memento'", I'll confess that I expected rather more from it than I got. That's the problem with comparisons. Though they allow you to contextualise (if they're apt, that is), they also set expectations high (if the comparison is with something else that you liked). In this particular case, I did not think it was particularly like "Memento", any more than any other film that is told very slightly out of chronological order would be. And I do mean slightly. Narratively, I'd say that "21 Grams" is much more like "Memento"; even though the time/narrative sequence is fragmented in a different way, it's another movie that throws you off balance for a while as you try to assemble what's going on. I also ended up seeing both a second time, as a knowing viewer, so that I could see the earlier scenes in context.

So, I wouldn't say that the comparison between "Dot the 'i'" and Memento was particularly apt. Of course, there were a few kind of neat things--all the little meta-references, allusions and so on--that were somewhat interesting. But I pretty much guessed (or rather inferred, since they were fair and they did give hints) the first twist (that came very late in the film) and Tom guessed/inferred the second. We ultimately felt that the first half-2/3rds, which was overlong IMO (though I know it was meant to show us the building relationship between the two illicit points in the love triangle but really just made me a bit irritated with the heroine and had me wondering why the "other man" was so into her cause she seemed like a dork) was not redeemed by the twists and turns that took place in the final third.

So kind of a neat film, but not something I'd rave about. I liked Almodovar's "Bad Education" better--and that comparison seems a little more appropriate, with people not being who they seem to be, the whole acting tie-in (Gael Garcia Bernal plays an aspiring actor in both films), the allusions to other films and genres (Hitchcock films in BE and stuff like "The Graduate" etc. in DTI) and a twist cropping up some way into each film. But in "Bad Education" the twist at least made the characters more complex, multi-layered and in some cases repugnant. In "Dot the i", the twist made a flat character of one sort into a flat character of another sort, and the other two stayed more or less the same. Neither seemed particularly complex. Funnily enough, both films also featured the song "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" ("Bad Education" did so in Spanish).

I have set today aside for reading all my library books (or sorting through them, at least, and giving some of them a closer look). Since I'm stuck on the Regency (and I will try to brainstorm or come up with other directions for how I can get my characters into the situation I need them to get into), I might as well do something productive! And I'm hoping (despite what I said above) to get a walk in--which may, in turn help me with my ideas, so long as the weather conditions don't end up proving so distracting that I get caught up in the physical. Though, on the other hand, that may be a good thing by way of getting me out of my thoughts for a spell.
::Posted by Anduril Elessar @ 8:13 AM::::
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