Feb. 17, 2003 - 7:13 pm
see, this is what happens when i get a new awesome video game and start actually having a life that involves me being in activites that involve real life people...i stop watching movies. there's some good to that and some bad to that. anyway, i'll try to get back on the ball here starting today.
this movie was recommended to me a while back as being another good movie that was done by the independent American director Jim Jarmusch. this really isn't another movie that's easy to locate, so it again took me a while. problems with the public library's copy etc. etc. so today i stayed late after work and watched UT's copy.
this copy was in "widescreen." "that's cool," i thought as i read over the box. unfortunately the packagers/designers of this video have a strange concept of widescreen. apparently to them you can also distort the proportions of the film and that can also be classified as widescreen. if you want a better explanation than that as to what exactly i was looking at... well you know how a movie screen is much wider than a television screen. i hope. well what they did was basically take the sides and squeeze them in, which makes everything on screen look really skinny and disproportionate. you do get the whole screen to fit on the tv that way, but everything's proportionally incorrect. basically it's dumb and you shouldn't do it. in my opinion, this is worse than "fullscreen." actually at this point i think i should comment that the term "fullscreen" is a lie. yeah, it fills up your screen, but you're not getting the full picture that exists. i think it should be called "tv size" or "chopped off sides" or maybe just "something to piss Mark off, especially when it's a really good movie and you're missing out by not seeing the entire picture."
anyway, so i liked Down by Law just a little bit. i'd say the main reason to watch it is if you're a big Roberto Benigni fan. i'm starting to become a fan of his i guess you'd say. i always assumed he was an idiot until i started watching his performances in films like this one. very intelligent man and his comedy is so absurd that it's hilarious. just try watching one of his movies and not laughing.
it's about three men who are all imprisoned in New Orleans in the same jail cell. we start out seeing them in their everyday lives (before their arrests). Tom Waits stars as Zack, the unemployed radio dj. and there's Jack who is a pimp. and Roberto (his character's name as well) who is an Italian that's just there in town for some reason. he writes down all colloquialisms that he comes across and then fits them into conversations where they really don't belong. they eventually make an escape attempt and that's about it.
one of the major flaws in this movie is the lack of plot. just not a lot happens. it's very slow. and most of the supporting cast is very weak. Tom Waits is decent, and of course Roberto Benigni is great, but other than that, no. one of the cast members' names is Rockets Redglare though and that's pretty cool.
and then of course i have to comment on Tom Waits' terrible terrible singing. i will always associate that with this girl in my film class who thought she was the coolest thing that ever existed and that she new everything independent that ever happened on the face of the earth. (imagine that happening in an art department...i know...i know, you wouldn't believe me but it's true.) but apart from her supremely sucking and listening to his music and forcing us to do so as well while we were in the cutting room, Tom Waits' music has a high level of suck content. even if it wasn't associated with this moron in my mind, it would still suck. it's terrible and it makes me want to vomit into a bucket that has been vomited into countless times. so many times in fact that it actually has the word "VOMIT" painted on the outside of the bucket in pastel blue. and it's never been cleaned. only thrown out into the yard and then put back in its designated place. but i think the more i listen to his music, i might start to enjoy it.