Random, not especially deep thoughts.

+ I'm reading a collection of Dostoevsky's short fiction (I just heard the sound of a thousand web browsers closing; hold on a second, I'm not saying it to flash my literary bona fides, I do have a point with this). Between "The Double" and "Notes From the Underground" there is a huge change in style, which is apparent even in translation. He got better with age, and that's comforting. We make so much of creative people who emerge fully-formed, especially when they're photogenic. Orson Welles is the best example, but even Tarantino and Kevin Smith, who--and this is far from a criticism, because I'm a fan of both of them--were as good at the start of their careers as they ever will be. I'd add Michael Chabon to the list, though that's debatable; his first two books are the ones that resonate for me, though I like them all. Hemingway, same thing: appreciate and admire the later works, but LOVE the early stuff. Shakespeare got better as he went along. I'm not that big a fan of early George Carlin, but I'm a HUGE fan of "You Are All Diseased"-era Carlin. It's nice to be reminded that your thirties and forties and fifties and onward don't have to involve a rapid plummet in ability or popularity, that you can improve and actually break through even if your first effort wasn't stellar.

+ Crime films are my favourite genre, and I realized today that they're the only genre that deals with economics. Every other genre, the characters just seem to have these amazing New York apartments and weeks and weeks off, and no financial burdens whatsoever. In a crime film, you always know A) how people make their money and B) how they feel about it.

Couple of film recommendations:

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead has an amazing cast, a great script from Kelly Masterson, solid direction by Sidney Lumet...and no one saw it. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, Ethan Hawke and Marisa Tomei...my brother's man-crush Michael Shannon even shows up. I was knocked out, not just with the tightness of the crime aspect, but the family dynamic is pitch-perfect.

I wrote about Mesrine: Killer Instinct before, but I just want to clarify: there are foreign films that bore the shit out of people (the kind VIFF likes, cheap shot, I know) and there are foreign films that manage to both ape Hollywood fare and put their own distinctive stink on things. Vincent Cassell is terrific as the title character, who at one point breaks out of a Maximum-Security prison in Quebec by enlisting the help of other inmates, in return promising to come back and bust them out. Mesrine has the kind of forceful personality that would convince someone he would keep that bargain...whether he does, well, check out the film. The second part comes out soon, hopefully.

Speaking of Kevin Smith, I haven't seen the last four films he's done, though I dug his "Evening With" series. I did recently see Clerks II, and donkey-fucking aside, I liked it, the ending especially.

Nothing But Trouble might...might...be the worst film I've ever seen. Well, no, but it would be in the running. I think Last Days would be number one, followed by A Perfect World, Postman, and Chicago (which won an Oscar, showing how far from the pulse of the mainstream I am). I also saw another horrendous Eastwood movie recently, Tightrope. Awful, really awful. Most of these are old movies, and there's a reason you never heard of them.