Jybil - a film blog

7:45 The Ice Harvest w/ director Harold Ramis

Well, the movie was sort of exactly what I expected. However, Oliver Platt stole the movie for me. Perhaps it was his jovial drunken state (which I like to think of myself as a happy drunk) or perhaps it was merely the way he delivered the monologue to the Christian bartender on Christmas Eve. Director Harold Ramis was quite a delight. He was humorous, charming, modest, and endearing. He spoke after the film (and briefly before as well). Since I liked hearing him speak so much, I was a little disappointed that I just didn't fall in love with his movie as much as I fell in love with him. Still, it was good, but I had just wanted to like it a little more.

I had wanted to see The Dying Gaul afterwards, but I decided to go over and drink cocktails the rest of the night away at the Driskill bar. Patricia Clarkson stars in The Dying Gaul, and I fell in love with her a couple of years ago at the 2003 Austin Film Festival after seeing her in Pieces of April (hey! that's where I fell in love with Oliver Platt, too!) and I know she was in plenty of movies before, but seeing her just this past year when I watched The Safety of Objects for the first time, I fell in love with her again...and I really wanted to see her in this movie last night. Alas, the feeling of Friday was in the air and I needed to appease my desire towards an enticing cold cocktail instead. But during the Pieces of April screening in 2003, I liked what the writer/director Peter Hedges had to say, how the story had evolved, and how he put his own heart into into the story even moreso after it was almost done. (I'm not including any spoilers, in case you haven't seen the movie yet). Katie Holmes didn't bug me, so do go rent it if that is the only factor holding you back. It is a great holiday movie, a great feeling of community movie, and a great forgive your parents and forgive yourself because you both are only human movie. Patricia Clarkson had me in the restaurant scene. I wanted to run away with her and never look back.

In Rose Troche’s film of The Safety of Objects, this scene at the mall becomes part of a sequence that creates something that didn’t exist in the stories. The scene builds to a stunning moment when the car contest and the lives of all the characters explode into an incredible, terrifying recognition of just how interwoven all of our lives are. The commonality of our needs, desires, circumstance and passion become one—when I see it on screen, I know it. I know it from the inside out and I cry.

yeah...i was crying, too. i love glenn close.