13 January 2010

The Girl Can't Help It (Part II) / Silent Light / Fados

I finished The Girl Can't Help It. It's really kind of boring but it reminded me of this essay by a former professor of mine about how Gold Diggers of 1933 is protofeminist because the women are using the tools they have to achieve upward mobility. And here, too, there seems an aspect at the end of Mansfield exercising control to the extent she's able to. I don't know, it's interesting enough to think about and Abbey Lincoln's performance is incredible but I suppose that's it. C

As to Silent Light, I thought it was really lovely and unique. When it went off to another place at the end I didn't really go with it. It was beautiful though and I'd watch it again. B+

Fados is described as a documentary about fados, the Portuguese ballads. It's not really an ordinary documentary though because it's basically some text at the beginning that gives a brief explanation of what the music is and how it developed and then a series performances with modern dance accompaniment. Kind of like music videos. I thought the music was great and it's great to have the lyrics subtitled, for the most part. What's classic here feels classic. Oddly though, whenever there's anything that's meant to be more modern, it already seems dated. The videos seemed monotonous after a while though and I finally just let the music play in the background. The songs on an album would make a nice compilation. I didn't like the hip-hop take on fado but I feel like it would sound all right if you didn't know what they were saying... C

I feel like I'm slacking off on this entry but it's been a long couple of days; I'm on my third eight hour shift in two days. I'm ready for bed. If only it were eight hours from now...

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