Mar. 17, 2004 - 8:10 am
well i haven't been watching so many movies the past couple of days. i'm trying to work on making the diary itself function better. i said a long time ago that i would go back and fix all of the older entries (making the cover images reappear) and making the "random entry" script work. well the random entry button definitely does work now. and it can go to any entry at all, not just ones from the beginning of 2003. isn't that nice? i didn't realize just how broken it was previously. but i'll continue to work for the next few days on repairing old entries so things stop looking like crap around here.
with Limelight, i guess i just saw it advertised on these Chaplin Collection videos one too many times. i felt like it was a necessity. so i went ahead and picked it up.
it's about a famous old stage performing clown who has lost the spotlight and how he comes to know and help a suicidal ballet dancer find her way back to the stage. she can't seem to go wrong once "Calvero" is with her, and he can't seem to make a dent in his poorly-received image. together they find a bit of happiness and a love that can never be realized.
i enjoyed the movie somewhat, but i think a lot of Chaplin's written dialogue is sort of overly emotional and fanciful. that's sort of the way that this movie is. it definitely tugs on your nerves at certain points. i also find a lot of Chaplin's written female characters to be very trivial people, and that's the substance of the ballet dancer in this film. she's not a real person, she's an ideal for him.