robert altman

so the first mistake was choosing to do a robert altman retrospective.

is there anyone else who thinks his layering of voices effect extremely tedious and impossible to understand?

i enjoyed short cuts*, but couldn't hear any of the player, so i decided we should do a retrospective. we're all about retrospectives at the moment. we are also doing coen bros, and wes anderson, and i know both will be more satisfying than mr altman. and even with movies i've had trouble hearing in the past either because of loud music or inarticulate speech, i figure i can catch what i missed because we use... subtitles.

clokes loves saying "for the hearing impaired" when i remind him to put them on. so maybe i am a little deaf. i like to think it's because of all those bands i saw as a youngster, rather than my advanced age.

i do realise using words like "youngster" does not help my youthful image.

anyway. we started with number 1 which is beyond therapy.

if you have seen this, i would love to hear your thoughts.

if you haven't seen this, don't waste your time and money. we turned it off after about 10 mins of hoping it would "get better".

reasons why it was atrocious:

1. jeff golblum is not leading man material. sure, he was funny in the big chill when he had to sleep in the aeroplane bed. BUT THAT'S IT. the fly = no. the tall guy = no. jurassic park = no. the only decent thing this guy's been in is the life aquatic, but that wasn't because of him.

2. julie haggerty - never was there a more annoying actress on the face of the earth. she was annoying in flying high, why could someone think she would be good in a rom-com? it was like robert altman had visions of her as some diane keaton-annie hall manifestation.

wrong. wrong. wrong.

3. "it's like a porn movie, without the sex" this is what my husband said about 30 secs before we turned it off.

4. trying to build interest in the characters by having all these nutty people in a restaurant is just nutty.

i don't have any more points. i've wasted too much of my life already with even writing this much.

we are back on west wing.

* the irony is short cuts is apparently not available on dvd in australia.