Aimee and I saw 25th Hour this week at the Parkway, and we both loved it to bits and pieces. Aimee actually put it in her top five movies ever, which is really something. Spike Lee deals head-on with what America feels like after 9/11/01 and folds it into the story of a convicted drug dealer (played by the remarkable Edward Norton) spending his last day in NYC before his dad drives him to prison. It's hysterically funny, wrenchingly sad, beautifully shot, perfectly paced. It would make a great pair with Do the Right Thing. Now if only Spike Lee would stop making commercials.

Friday night was symphony night, and Frans Brüggen was conducting Fauré, Poulenc, and Rameau. The Fauré was the Masques et bergamasques, Opus 112, with Pavane, Opus 50, tacked on at the end, and it made me sigh happily it was so lovely. Jean-Phillipe Collard played a passionate piano for the Poulenc Piano Concerto, and then we travelled back several centuries for Brüggen's arrangement of a Suite from Rameau's Les Indes galantes. The latter didn't really work for me, too many abruptly short pieces strung together, no chance to really settle into the music before we were on to the next thing. I was very excited every time Jean-Pierre Van Hees got to play his musette, however. Walking back to my car after the performance I ran smack into a mass exeunt from the Bill Graham Ci vic of the Mary Kay Career Conference 2003. I could feel them itching to get th eir hands on me.

When I got home I put on The Virgin Suicides, which I hadn't seen in a couple of years. I think the film actually gets better when you know how it ends. You join the neighborhood boys in looking for clues, and you realize that, like them, you never have the first clue about what's going on in the minds of those girls. I love the mood that Sofia Coppola creates and the details she chooses to focus on. The Air soundtrack doesn't hurt either. I swoon when Josh Hartnett leans over Kirsten Dunst and calls her a stone fox.

Saturday evening was memorable not for the Platform One-Year Anniversary party Chris and I went to at the Gift Center Pavilion, which was supposed to be a multimedia buffet of art/fashion/film but seemed to be suffering a bit of an i dentity crisis. Chris examined someone wearing a balloon hat and joked that he wanted to get a cat painted on his cheek. And then he saw a girl with a cat painted on her cheek. No, it was the walk we took through a few of the city's neighborhoods in the crazy-warm evening that I will remember. Highlights included free scones and anti-war buttons at Atlas Cafe, tons of street finds, the Chris Ware mural above 826 Valencia, refreshing beverages, a dosimeter, various nefarious deeds, and a crowbar.

Pssst, I have a LiveJournal now. Use it to stalk me and I will beat your ass.

25th Hour
The Virgin Suicides
Platform
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