2003-11-09 - 9:03 a.m. How 'bout that red moon last night, huh? I agree, the Chills are better than everyone else on the chart (and better than the Clean, c'mon.) Avoided people, chores (except for a trip to Home Depot to buy fencing to help keep Mercy from escaping the backyard), productivity and exercise yesterday so I could sit around reading Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. After finishing it, I put on my jacket and walked 12 blocks to the movie theater and watched the movie. Yesterday was total immersion in Dennis Lehane's worldview. There are some good things about Clint Eastwood's movie (especially the flashback scenes and the whole first section set in 1975), but, not surprisingly, the book is much better than the film. The movie just doesn't get at the complexities of character, and doesn't venture an opinion about social class, fate/destiny, child molesters, revenge, and tribe mentality--all points that the book gracefully addresses. I'm thinking this would have made a good HBO mini-series, cuz in order to shrink the book into a 2-hour movie, Clint had to excise entire plot points and groups of characters. A key aspect of the Dave Boyle character, a compelling motive for his behavior, is absent and makes his character just seem simple-minded...but if there'd been time, his character could have been revealed more fully, and the weird algorithm of justice would have been mirrored as accurately as it is in the book. I would like to propose a moratorium on Shakespearean whispering in movies. You know what I mean? Where a character delivers an urgent, spitty, articulate monologue all in hushed tones, into another character's ear...it only happens in the movies and I find it so phony and annoying that it always takes me right out of the action. This time it was Laura Linney Lady MacBeth-ing all over Sean Penn. That said, the movie was pretty gripping. I recommend the book, then the movie. thoughts? (2 comments so far) previous - next blog archive contact