Stranger than Fiction

Another film I have enjoyed this fall, Stranger than Fiction, follows a writer character named Kay Eiffel, played by Emma Thompson, as she attempts to write the tragedy of a Will Ferrell character named Harold Crick. But Crick inadvertently gains self awareness as a character being manipulated by a writer with a death wish. This self-reflexive film reminds me of At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien's tour-de-force on the "opposite and equal reaction" of characters upon their authors. Dustin Hoffman plays a very funny, very satiric, English professor who attempts to help Crick identify the type of story he is in. It is only when Crick accepts that he is in a tragedy that Eiffel wakes up to the possibility of a story not ending in the death of the main character. The playfulness with genres is delightful. And the implications of what makes for more profound literature--tragedy or comedy--and more profound living are truly . . . well . . . profound.

Existenz and Color Me Kubrick

No time to respond in depth, but I need to keep track of good films.

Existenz, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm, and Willem Dafoe, Dir. David Cronenberg. I liked this one much better than The Matrix. The relationship between physical reality and cyber reality is much more complicated. The central characters are implicated in violence to humans, with no clear lines between good and evil. Very complex, very subtle.

Color Me Kubrick was great fun, with smart references to Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon, and other Kubrick films. John Malkovich was wonderful as Alan Conway, the man who passed himself off as Kubrick in London for several years. Dir. Brian Cook.