Don Davis' score was all over the map, from solo-voiced choir musings to techno-electronic atmospheres to a somewhat cheesey patriotic orchestral theme there in the end.

The best thing in the movie for me is Fabulously Fascinating Famke Janssen. Let's get this girl in more films! I liked her in House On Haunted Hill and X-Men, and in Don't Say A Word her left leg is particularly appealing.

Mark Isham's low-key but ever present score struck me as being rather uninspired. Somewhat like James Newton Howard's synthesized percussion scores, laid over darkly shifting orchestral chords. Graeme Revill is credited in the End Titles as doing "the heist" scene, which I suppose is why that opening scene doesn't fit in with the rest, being heavy on the electric guitars if memory serves (and it doesn't much any more).

Don't Say A Word (USA 2001)

Directed by Gary Fleder
Screenplay by Anthony Peckham and Patrick Smith Kelly, from the novel by Andrew Klavan
Photography by Amir Mokri
Music by Mark Isham

Hound Of The Baskervilles was on Sunday afternoon TV, unusual to see Cushing and Lee not portrayed as antagonists. Not the greatest Sherlock Holmes adaptation but as with most Hammer films, the one thing this had in spades was ATMOSPHERE!

As Barry Norman might have put it..."not everyones cup of tea, but I enjoyed it, so there!"

...or something like that

And Bernard's score?

The...Hound...Of...The...BAAAAASSSK...Ker...Villes

Solid performances all around. I don't think a better person than Reese Witherspoon could have been cast for Elle Woods. Every time I use to see Victor Garber, I'd think, "I'm sorry that I didn't build you a better ship, Rose," but now with this film (and ABC's "Alias") I'm starting to forget that lame part he had in Titanic. Finally, I must say Raquel Welch still looks great at the age of 61! Selma Blair is able to give some very evil-looking stares, making me wonder how much practice she's had with those outside of her acting career...

The college stereotypes are spot on. I have an old woman professor (yes, she is old) that does the damned "Mr. Little" crap when calling on me, like Professor Stromwell does to her students.

Since I have no life, I read about 60 of the 250 or so reviews at the IMDB. It seems most people either love the movie or hate it. Generally, American reviewers seem to have a more positive opinion than those from elsewhere. Those that don't care for the movie seem to be taking it way too seriously. Just accept the premise of the story as true/believable and it's a highly entertaining film. (I actually wonder how these people like any sort of fictional entertainment.)
The score is themeless and nothing to write home about. There's a handful of good ideas and material, but it all sounds very generic to me. It's fairly loud at times, prompting my Dad to do his famous air conducting just to annoy the hell out of me.

SHALLOW GRAVE. Two words: Black Comedy. Literally. On some sequences so horrifyingly black, that one doesn't know should he cry or laugh or throw the VCR and TV set out from the window. Includes couple of truly shocking and yet extremely emotional sequences. This is certainly not a movie which you can watch with popcorn and a soda - this needs viewer's attention 100%. McGregor is terrific.
Out of five stars rating I would give it **** - truly gribbing and emotional. Music score wasn't so memorable...

EMMA (96). I got this soundtrack many years ago and even liked it, because it reminded me of Rachel Portman's even more beautiful score to BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: THE ENCHANTED CHRISTMAS. But now, when seeing EMMA at last, I have to confess that I don't seem to have the patience for watching people just talking to each others about two hours... The movie is calm but incredibly "cold" - this kind of acting just doesn't reach me. Even if one likes (and waits to see) Ewan McGregor in the act - I say, don't bother watching this one. Rating: *

THE PILLOW BOOK (95). Peter Greenaway's very ARTistic view on, in fact, quite a good story. It's a pity that the too ARTistic overall style of the movie kills most of the story elements. There are some beautiful, and quite interesting visuals, but again they are wrapped in a too long, dragging, package. The musical decisions are partly hilarious, partly ingenious, and partly total disasters.
If one likes to see Ewan McGregor totally naked - and in incredibly long sequences - this is indeed THE movie to watch. But be prepared for a very ARTistic experience.
Rating: **

TRAINSPOTTING. This is one of those films I've never imagined to watch - and now after viewing it twice, found it immensely good !! Ofcourse, the movie is themed around quite unpleasent things such as drugs, violence, and criminal actions - but the movie's ending justifies it all. As SHALLOW GRAVE, also this one is best described as a black comedy with some very disturbing sequences and some totally incredibly funny scenes, concocted with a healthy amount of emotions of all sorts. Ewan McGregor does one of his very best role performances.
Rating: ****

A LIFE LESS ORDINARY. The director of TRAINSPOTTING goes to Hollywood and loses half of his ingenious style. This is almost a pure comedy that TRYIES to be a black comedy, but doesn't quite succeed. With this one a box of popcorn and soda do indeed fit well in - the script is so crazy that one really doesn't need any brains to follow the storyline. There is about only two good laughs during the entire movie - the rest is somewhat ordinary entertainment - yet, not bad.
Cameron Diaz and McGregor make an interesting starring couple. Holly Hunter, on the other hand, has real troubles TRYING to be funny.
Music is almost completely song-driven. The movie includes good song & dance scene with McGregor and Diaz.
Rating: ***

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. The first half an hour one really has troubles to "get into" the story - but when finally one gets in, then the result is almost like being in love. The movie is about a spy with some very emotional problems of his own (Ewan McGregor) which he is able to resolve by quite uncanny procedure. The movie is not a thriller although it fits to the genre quite easily - it's imaginative, warm, touching, and yet, when needed, it reminds the viewer about life's shocking, realistic ways. Ashley Judd is excellent in the other lead role.
This movie is the perfect agent-adventure to women - and everybody who wants to be emotionally "rocked".
Rating: ****

NIGHTWATCH (98). A big Hollywood-remake of an European television film. This movie has a very promising beginning with some intense atmosphere and effective horror scenes, but as in the case of many other Hollywood "horror movies", the ending is almost totally opposite: too hilarious to take seriously. The ending makes use of all the many "teen horror movie" clichees, which mainly get the viewer to laugh when one should be horrified. A real pity, because the story indeed includes very good ingredients if concocted up in a better way. Musical score is everything a movie like this one needs. McGregor is good as usual.
Rating: ***

NORA (99). A movie about the writer James Joyce and his peculiarities. The movie made me hoping that Joyce hadn't any relatives to see this done, because the story seems not to hide anything regarding the writer's eccentrics. The overall storytelling-style is a bit troubled by too ARTistic cinematic narrative - so the movie may seem a little long and dragging, although it contains many important little and bigger witty truths about life itself. Ewan McGregor makes a very convincing portrait of the unbalanced writer - a total opposite to his many brighter role characters.
Rating: ***

And finally...
STAR WARS - EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE. When I saw this (the first & only time) in a movie theater, I didn't like it a single bit - a disaster in every possible way. Now when I watched it the second time (on video), my previous feelings only got stronger... TPM is a total disaster, and even Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson (nor the pretty Natalie Portman) can't save a single bit of the movie. Nor John Williams' score. Nor a box of popcorn & soda.
I rest my case...umm, lightsaber, that is
Rating: **

A MOULIN ROUGE a day will keep the gloom away.

Directed by Nicholas Ray
Screenplay by Daniel Taradash and John Monks Jr, from the novel by Willard Motley
Photography by Burnett Guffey
Music by George Antheil

Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, John Derek

50 YEAR OLD SPOILERS AHEAD! Hard-boiled lawyer is convinced to take up case of young pretty-boy hoodlum. He bases his defence on how the misunderstood adolescent is actually a good egg at heart, and that he couldn't possibly murder anyone. When misunderstood adolescent confeses his guilt, hard-boiled lawyer adapts strategy and claims that, okay, he did it, but it was the fault of the system that made him do it.

Semi-successful anti-capital punishment movie. It's well-meaning of course, but the platitudes sound a bit hollow. It's rather too simplistic, I feel, although the script does at least attempt to flesh out the young hood's character, and John Derek, in his screen debut, is quite likeable.

The hard-hitting ending still works, with John Derek being led off to be fried (head partially shaved), in fact that wordless final scene is more effective in getting the point across than Bogie's previous verbal diarrhea. But the two halves of the movie (the flashbacks of the accused's life and the trial itself) seem to be a bit clumsily cemented.

Apart from doing extraordinary things like writing concertos for aeroplane engines and cracking Nazi codes, George Antheil did some film scores, though to be truthful, there doesn't appear to be anything special about his busy music for Knock On Any Door.

Directed by Spike Lee
Screenplay by Spike Lee
Photography by Ernest Dickerson
Music by Terence Blanchard
Songs by Stevie Wonder

Main Cast: Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, John Turturro, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Lonette McKee, Anthony Quinn

Merry-go-round of lives and loves in New York.

My second film of the week (see Knock On Any Door) in which the two halves don't quite gel (jell? Jell-O?). A pity, because Jungle Fever is largely excellent. Mordant and extremely wittily written observation of our everyday prejudices, performed splendidly by all concerned.

When I say that the two halves didn't seem to Jell-O, I mean that after having very successfully addressed the main points, the film goes off into exceedingly dramatic territory with Wesley Snipes confronting brother (as in real brother, not simply another black person) about his drugs problem. I thought that maybe that could have been left for another Spike Lee movie (and perhaps it was: Clockers).

Who could have imagined that a film which opens with the deeply meaningful title song by Stevie Wonder would end up so dark? Here are some of Stevie's lyrics:

"You've got jungle fever
I've got jungle fever
We've got jungle fever
We're in love"

Some of Stevie's songs were a bit dramatically suspect too (it wasn't all source), but I was intrigued by Terence Blanchard's scoring. Orchestrally and harmonically dense, it reminded me of John Corigliano's love theme for Altered States and the unpredictable themes of Michael Small and Paul Chihara.

Another good film in Pixar's roster. John Goodman and Billy Crystal made a great (vocal) team; be sure to stick around for their duet over the end credits. Steve Buscemi did a good job voicing Randall, the villain of the piece (even though I heard about him in the role, I didn't quite recognize his voice early in the film). I was also impressed with the job of Mary Gibbs, who voiced Boo, the young girl. She was so adorable, not to mention capable in what was obviously her first role.
Randy Newman's score was also good.

Film: 4.5/5; Score: 4/5

Bogart feels guilty that he didn't do enough to help the kid. He points his finger right into the jury/audience and says it's our fault too. If there were no poverty there would be no crime--an old adage that's never been proven true. The kid has his own guilt trip going despite his tough airs and that wonderful line: "live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse" and they get used against him in a way that would never work if the guy had been entirely calloused. But he is guilty so what can you say. Like Bogie you've gotta watch as they take him to death.

Bogie got hauled in front of HAUC for being a liberal and Antheil too I suspect had left leanings. Bogart's own production company, Santana Productions, made 4 films and they all have scores by Antheil so Bogie and Antheil must have had some connection.

Ray had been a communist but because he made the right-wing Flying Leathernecks for Hughes over at RKO as well as re-shooting a lot of scenes uncredited for a number of RKO films, Hughes kept Ray from being black-listed.

As for Ray and Bogart, their real great film together is In A Lonely Place.

I've seen inter-racial relations between whites and blacks, blacks and asians, a lot of different combinations, and for the most part, these have been good loving connections between good caring people.

But there are times when I see a black person with a white person that I feel the motivation is different. It's some kind of strange ego boost for the black person who feels low from racism in the first place. It's like, I'm so cool that white people sleep with me. They're showing off to other blacks and they've so accepted seeing themselves in the racist's terms that the only way they can get any esteem is to turn the table and be accepted by whites. I've met a lot of women who sleep with black guys just because their own parents are racist and they're being rebellious at their closed-mindedness who then ultimately dump the black guys and marry some bourgois white professional. And that's another side of wrong-minded misegenation.

When you can see yourself as an individual and a person rather than in terms of class, gender, race, religion, or nationality and then do the same to someone you love, then your union is positive. Any other reason and you're getting involved for the wrong reasons and will ultimately hurt yourself and another.

Malcolm X "nothing!"

Here though are some of the things I feel are less good about it (I must be retreading old ground here, but I haven't actually seen many of the following points voiced, though I'm sure they have been)-

1: The investigation itself is a shade pedestrian.

2: The shower scene is overrated. There was no need of course to see the knife actually going in, but it would have been better if it hadn't been seen to miss its target so much.

3: The final segment with Simon Oakland (in an overbearing performance) is superfluous. I worked out Norman Bates' character better than he did!

But I still think that Psycho is in many ways brilliant, and Anthony Perkins provides one of THE great screen performances of all time. I've never seen such convincing twitching and stammering since.

Silly final observation: Perkins displays the most extreme wide-shoulder to skinny-body ratio ever, like his arms were dislocated.

Directed by Javier Balaguer
Screenplay by Álvaro García Mohedano and Javier Balaguer
Photography by Juan Molina

Main Cast: Paz Vega, Sergi López

Wife suffers at the hands of her bullying husband, and the authorities can't do much to help.

There are a lot of good, challenging films coming out of Spain nowadays, but this isn't one of them. The very real problem of wife-beating is a dramatic enough subject to just about keep Solo Mía afloat, but it ultimately fails as a film, not so much because of its elementary Movie-Of The-Week script or its lack of style, but because of its insufferably didactic tone.

Timmer, thanks for more of the backstory on the Malcolm X moment.

Since last post:

Gillo Pontecorvo's The Wide Blue Road (1957) with Yves Montand. Exciting and visually beautiful technicolor film shot in Sardinia? Dalmatia? examines the politics and relationships between police and competing fisherman in a poor coastal village. Recently rediscovered and released through Milestone Film/Video by Jonathan Demme and Dustin Hoffmann.

Directed by Howard Hawks
Screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
Photography by Gregg Toland
Music by Alfred Newman

Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck

Group of professors compiling an encyclopedia get involved with gangsters and their reluctant floozie.

I found this smartly scripted and often very funny, a most pleasing entertainment. The highlight of it all is the interplay amongst the motley crew of old profs (my favourite is Richard Haydn's fruity-voiced Professor Oddly), all so enjoyable that the surrounding gangster plot becomes a trifle wearisome.

I was thinking, in the final reels, when the profs overcome the hoods with a mixture of scientific ingenuity and spindly fighting, "Mmmm, this doesn't quite ring true", but I don't think it was ever meant to be taken literally. Pure fantasy, Ball Of Fire's multiple references to Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs are entirely appropriate.

Directed by Roger Corman
Screenplay by Charles B. Griffith
Photography by Jack Marquette
Music by Fred Katz

Main Cast: Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, Ed Nelson

Dim waiter inadvertantly finds fame and popularity among his arty clients when he takes up sculpting. But there are real bodies under the clay.

The superficial similarities to House Of Wax might lead one to believe that this is a horror movie parody. But Corman is only using that as an excuse to take wicked potshots at the pretentious world of beatniks, jazz poets and their hangers-on. And he does it hilariously.

There are even Poe allusions, before the director turned his hand to those adaptations. The way the walled-up cat unwittingly becomes Dick Miller's first masterpiece is an absolute hoot!

On a budget like this, Bucket Of Blood is going to occasionally look like a home movie, but maybe the difference between Corman's home movies and ours is that his are fun for everyone, not just for those who were in them.

The Little Shop Of Horrors, hurriedly assembled for three dollars the following year, is the more famous of the two movies, but I don't remember it being half as clever as A Bucket Of Blood.

Directed by Mark Robson
Screenplay by Philip Yordan, from the novel by Budd Schulberg
Photography by Burnett Guffey
Music by Hugo Friedhofer

Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Rod Steiger, Mike Lane, Jan Sterling

Past-his-prime newspaper column writer gets the chance to hit the big time again, as boxing promoter. But he soon becomes disillusioned with the crookery surrounding him.

I hadn't heard much about this before, so I was quite surprised at how good it is. Still "modern" looking in the same way that On The Waterfront is/was modern (The Harder They Fall shares both Rod Steiger and writer Budd Schulberg with the aforementioned classic). I think I also detected a touch of the cutting-edge TV style then in vogue, with its roots in New York. This film does whip up a good head of steam, and the fight scenes are bloodily realistic.

Bogie's swansong, he acts as a bridge between the old and the new, and his acting appears in some ways "effortless" besides the ferocious energy of Rod Steiger for example. I wonder whose acting is better... Bogie is touching as the dinosaur, but he looks (appropriately) awkward as the dinosaur. And it must have been hard being the only lightbulb-headed actor in a cast of stocky, thick-necked squareheads.

Except for a pair of truly disgusting scenes (they're pretty blatant) and an ethnic slur, this film is freakin' hilarious! Everyone in the young cast is terrific and there are some very insightful moments; you really have to listen for them. I loved the adult performers as well, including a fine cameo by a teen movie vet toward the end that I won't spoil for you. That plus a terrific score by Theodore Shapiro. IMHO, this may well be one of the year's best. It's even funnier than "Scary Movie".

And Scott really found his alter ego in Harry Gregson-Williams. I'm sure that this score is exactly what the director thinks is great film music.

Now I'm going to look for that old thread where you all commented on SPY GAME. Will be interesting to see if anyone makes me see this movie in a new light. Or maybe you'll just confirm the fact that I am an old fogey!

Spy Game (USA 2001)

Directed by Tony Scott
Screenplay by Michael Frost Beckner and David Arata
Photography by Daniel Mindel
Music by Harry Gregson-Williams

A Touch of Zen (1975) Directed by King Hu

3-hour sword-fighting epic set in ancient China with a woman and a general fleeing corrupt officials.

Chac the Rain God (1975) Directed by Rolondo Klein

"[Technical] sensuality is something there isn't enough of in cinema...It's clear, especially in American cinema, that you don't work anymore with the camera through the fact that the camera is more and more artificial. I recently saw The Pelican Brief. It's just commercials. The camera's moving, but it has nothing to do with the camera movement or stillness or the change of shots of Von Stroheim or Von Sternberg. There is no meaning, just to pretend we are doing pictures. [It's not its own form of sensuality,] it's prostitution."

Or in terms of my own, the content isn't exciting enough by itself so, as the argument goes, it has to be fuel injected with swish pans and drum machines and quick cutting because otherwise it will seem slow and people will lose attention. The result however is that the films are just frenetic for no honest aesthetic reason. None of the techniques add the meaning they could, the techniques are used as mere window dressing and are being abused and robbed of their original power. Years of watching this gruel erodes people's sense of time and emotion to where no one can pay attention to anything in real life longer than 10 seconds or feel anything at all. This is the opposite of what cinema can accomplish. At least, that's another argument in constrast to the first.

This is one of the reasons I find Ozu's films so restful to watch. He just plunks the camera in front of the action and it stays there: no pans, no zooms, simple editing, a very "See Spot run" kind of film grammar.

For our sanity, we need to return to a style a little bit more like this (even Camille Paglia agrees), but it's probably too late to do so. Hollywood and TV disagree and an audience brought up on quick-cut, fast-paced music videos and video games would reject it.

Movies have become a sugar and caffeine buzz and you know that's not a substantial diet. Movies are a self-proclaimed roller coaster ride. Fine for a once-in-a-while vacation, but if every moment is this, soon you're airsick, dizzy, you're back whiplashes, and you launch your lunch.

Staircase (USA/France 1969)

Directed by Stanley Donen
Screenplay by Charles Dyer, from his play
Photography by Christopher Challis
Music by Dudley Moore

Main Cast: Rex Harrison, Richard Burton

Two gay hairdressers in London voice the angst of their imperfect relationship.

So what? These characters aren't human at all, and the film is just a vehicle for their self-centred bitching. I had no sympathy for them. The script is far too smugly sure of its wittiness. I can imagine that theatre audiences would be lapping this up and nudging each other in the ribs at the outrageousness of lines like "God help us all and Oscar Wilde", "I hope your nipples drop off" and "As dry as a camel's bedpan", but it all seems to me far to clever-clever and ultimately annoying.

As regards the performances, well, I think that both actors, but particularly Rex Harrison, overdoes the wiggly walk and limp wrist.

It has aged really well, and Whale's sardonic, even cruel, humour is to the fore. Wonderfully fluid camerawork too.

Trivia: Gloria Stuart is the love interest here. She was STILL the love interest (in a manner of speaking) 65 years later in Titanic. Pretty good going.

There isn't any music until the final reel. I recognised some of it as being the stuff which was re-used in Flash Gordon (not Waxman: that was later?), but there's a passage I didn't recognise at all. W. Frank Harling is credited in some sources as having contributed music, so maybe that was him? Over to the erudites!

The Invisible Man (USA 1933)

Directed by James Whale
Screenplay by R.C. Sherriff and Philip Wylie, from the novel by H.G.Wells
Photography by Arthur Edeson

The Last Picture Show (USA 1971)

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Screenplay by Larry McMurty and Peter Bogdanovich
Photography by Robert Surtees

Main Cast: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman

Teenage angst in a small Texan town in 1951.

Speaking of the magnificent, high contrast black and white photography in The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich stated that "colour always had a tendency to prettify, and I didn't want that. I didn't want it to be a nostalgic piece." Is that one of the main differences between this and the likes of AMERICAN GRAFFITI? Youth here is certainly not a barrel of laughs, and as a celebration of "the best years of our lives" The Last Picture Show is commendably caustic. In fact, the only nostalgia as such doesn't come from looking back at the youngsters, but rather from old Ben Johnson's tales of HIS youth. Old Ben, in an Oscar winning performance seems to be the only character in the whole film who seems to have come to terms with his less than perfect existence. All the other elders are tormented by mismatched marriages and ideas of having missed the boat (Cloris Leachman, in the movie's other Oscar winning performance, is painfully authentic as the most blatant voice of this aspect of the script). And the teens don't appear to be heading for a happier future either.

I suppose The Last Picture Show is about the end of an era and the coming of age (maybe). I think "evocative" would be the right adjective, but, although intermittently impressive, I don't think it's focussed enough or penetrating enough, and Timothy Bottoms is terribly distant as the young Jimmy Horner lookalike.

Directed by Stuart Gordon
Screenplay by Dennis Paoli, from a story by H.P. Lovecraft
Photography by Carlos Suárez
Music by Carles Cases

Main Cast: Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal, Raquel Meroño, Macarena Gómez

Young couple get stranded in very creepy Spanish coastal village, where the inhabitants are turning into fish.

Filmed just up the road from me, the premiere of this movie was a big event. Having pumped money into the project and after even having some copies specially dubbed into the Galician language, the local Xunta politicians and dignitaries settled back in their seats, awaiting with baited breath the first images of this very beautiful corner of Spain. The Minister for Tourism was particularly excited at the prospect. Before too long however, they began coughing nervously and peering at each other through the darkness of the projection hall. Why had nobody told them that this was going to be a B-movie gorefest? And what kind of exportable message is being generated in the portrayal of Galician people as half-fish who'll skin you alive for a laugh?

Whatever the politicians thought, I can see the logic in choosing this landscape for a Lovecraft adaptation. Beautiful it is, but also moodily mysterious, this is a land full of folk-tales and legends of witches. So the setting is appropriate, but it takes more than that to successfully adapt H.P.

I think he must be a notoriously difficult author to do justice to on film, and going by previous movies, nobody has got it right yet. Some were too brightly modern, even psychedelic (THE DUNWICH HORROR), others, like Stuart Gordon's earlier attempts (RE-ANIMATOR), were too tongue-in-cheek. All have also been restricted in scope by insufficient budgets, and DAGON is no exception.

But it's not all bad. DAGON plays fair with the audience, and it is commendably straight for the most part, but the problem here is the corn factor. Make no mistake, with a village full of groaning shuffling fish-folk, the corn is ripe.

Still, it's enjoyable enough, and it builds up to an exciting final reel, complete with naked blonde being lowered into the monster's pit. Oh, and don't miss the late great Paco Rabal's farewell to the cinema. He couldn't have asked for a more gruesome adios!

Directed by Spike Lee
Screenplay by Susannah Lee, Cinqué Lee and Spike Lee (Wot? No Christopher Lee?)
Photography by Arthur Jafa
Music by Terence Blanchard

Main Cast: Alfre Woodard, Delroy Lindo

The everyday trials and tribulations of a black family in New York, 1970-something.

And a heck of a lot of it is done to the sound of 70s soul classics. Now, I felt that this approach only distanced the audience (ie me) from any inherent immediacy in the drama, in fact a lot of this film was turned into a series of mere montages due to the overlay of the songs. Maybe that was intentional, because ultimately the message seems to be one of putting things in perspective, the importance of letting go of the past, and the inevitability of change. At the end, the music even turns into rap for the first time.

I didn't find it that interesting, however.

Anyone know why the entire lengthy episode with the young daughter being sent to live with her horrific aunt was shot all squashed up? I thought initially that the projector had its wrong eye on, but it was intercut with normal-ratio scenes...That didn't mean anything to me.