Saturday: Watched Everything Must Go.
I love watching Will Ferrell being serious. He's still funny, it's just a different kind of funny. He's not trying to be funny, he's just funny to watch. And he can act. Although I don't think he's as engaging in this performance as he is in Stranger Than Fiction, he's working harder here. The cast isn't powerful and overwhelming in this film, as compared to STF (where he was working with Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal) so he's got to carry things on his own. He does. I liked the movie, but since it's based (loosely) on a Raymond Carver story - Why Don't You Dance? - I had that thing in my head too, and I ended up thinking too much about the opportunities the movie missed.
I'd have hoped that since this production was about as close to an independent release as you can get in Hollywood it might also allow itself to get closer to edgy. That's what Carver's stories do - play on the edge: the guy drinks a lot of whisky, not a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon; the guy himself sets up his furniture on the front lawn in the same way that it was set up in his house, he's not been kicked out with all of it by his wife (that's been done in a few movies before); the young couple shows up and he plays them records and they dance together and he with them, he doesn't meet an underprivileged kid with whom he plays catch, and who he grooms into a salesman, nor does he meet a tender-hearted young mom-to-be who nurtures him back to health. These re-visions are not better than the source material.
In fact maybe they only noted the source material to avert a possible complaint, and then went about there merry business disregarding the story (except for the furniture on the lawn bit). Maybe the screenplay based on Carver's story should have been written by Tom Waits (or at least by Charlie Kaufman). Maybe then it would've hung onto the grit and the rough. Then we'd have to do a little good work ourselves to see what good has come of it for the fired, down-on-his-luck lost American-dreamer. Do we always need to be told that there's a "diamond" in there?
Friday: Won $70 at poker (2 games, subtract $20 for the fee to play). Won the first game, came in second in the second.
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