good thing

[rm]

Gluten-free croissants, pain au chocolat and raspberry biscuits have just been mail-ordered.

The funny part?

The bakery on the long list of things that are not allowed in the bakery for those with multiple food restrictions informs us that the croissants are free of lupine contamination.

Because wolves in my food is my biggest problem.

WTF?

Comments

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

More on this issue here. I read it and thought of your struggles.

Re: Michael Clayton, you were correct. It was a great film. The supporting characters were all excellent and I sort of pictured a Venn diagram in which I saw them appearing in other films that were taking place at the same time that the one I was watching was. Like his brother, for example, the cop in Queens. He could have been in a kind of parallel film that was just as good as Michael Clayton.

Re: ...

[rm.livejournal.com]

I should write more about Michael Clayton, I've just been so busy. But it's just so astoundingly tightly made. Also interesting (and nice) to see evil be that banal.

Great celiac article. As usually happens when I read these, I found another thing I have had that I didn't know was a symptom.

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

The think about the film I really liked was the way seemingly small details were later shown to be tightly woven into the story. They just got so many of the details right - like the "Realm of Conquest" book and the way the kid kept on talking about it. I can totally picture seeing those books in B&N or Borders.

There were also parts of the film that you had to fill in yourself. This, I found, was a very satisfying feature.

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[rm.livejournal.com]

Yup. I liked that the film wasn't unnecessarily complex so much as not assuming the audience stupid.

I loved Realm of Conquest, found the horses unspeakably eerie and smart and adored the opening monologue, which is probably some of the best use of voiceover ever.

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

Peggy pointed out that it was a smart person's thriller. It didn't make you feel stupid for liking it and it didn't talk down to its audience. They make these kinds of films in Europe more than in the US, and it's a trend I'd like to encourage here.

The loan shark guy's clothes were perfect - the little gold medallion? Wonderful! We also see what a total genius the manic lawyer is when he starts talking about New York State law while carrying the bag of bread. And his sister's home in Orange County? How great were the details there? I have no idea how many times I have been in homes and on streets EXACTLY like that.

Re: .

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's amazing to me how often films shot in New York (this was) don't even look like New York -- as if there is an attempt to anonymize the real city (or, for example, the way a municiple building on Wall Street was transformed into 71st and York in the recent Bourne film). In this all the locations were pretty much what they said they were and recognizeable (I've been in that hotel at the end a dozen times and the interior and the exterior were an actual match). And yeah, the homes were dead on -- speaking of which, how fascinating was it that we saw where everyone lived except our hero?

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

And how amazing was it that there was no romantic love interest for him at all? See, this is usually where the idiots start to mess things up. Not this time. I have to wonder if some of this isn't influenced by a kind of "Post-Sopranos" maturity. Have the stakes been raised and the level of detail the audience can deal with been expanded in the wake of Tony and company? I hope so.

The scene after his other brother appears, where he talks to his son in the car, struck me as the place at which the film could have gone off the rails. Does Michael just want to believe his kid won't end up burdened with the same problems? Or, instead, does the child actually have the resilient qualities he describes? I think the child actor was so good that we might well believe the latter and not right it off to the former. Again, like good European films, the smaller parts were all well played.

As I think about it, I also recall the moment at which the child's mother's partner tells her (sotto voce) to "let it go" over the waffle issue. This was another indicator of how observant the people making the film were when it comes to these kinds of details - so often missing in Hollywood films entirely, but present in HBO programs like The Sopranos or The Wire.

Re: ...?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I thought the kid was excellent. I felt like there was a constant sense of him beliving in his beloved book entirely and also knowing that it wasn't real and trying to make sense of the way other people respond to him about the book, which is either never what he wants or never what he instinctively knows is appropriate.

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

He definitely carries that frustration of trying to get the adults around him to see what's important about this book. When I was a kid, I knew that frustration. I also liked his dad remarking that as soon as he finishes the book, he knew his son would be on to something else. It revealed how much of this film was drawn from observed reality.

More good stuff on the film here.