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Remember when Sandler made films about gay marriage and the israeli-palestinian conflict back to back? Dang.

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INITIATE SHRUG EMBOLISM

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What a card, this guy.

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I saw Sleeping Beauty, and while it's unfair to compare it to the author's previous work (as it is from a separate medium), it does feel a little retrograde and simple in contrast to something like the excellent Disquiet. Julia Leigh's strength comes from being a prose stylist of rich descriptors (thus making sense the praise from the likes of J.M Coetzee and Toni Morrison), and such strengths have difficulty in application to film narrative. I will give credit to the film in terms of a classical approach to composition (long takes, tracking shots) and the arresting set design of a particular bed room.

To my surprise the work shares more in common with Leigh's novel The Hunter instead of Disquiet (gothic/symbolist undertones). There is a focus on cyclical routine and the separation of spheres in work life. If the film is about anything it is about the difficulty of acquiring money as a young person, with little of the strong gender undercurrents seen in Disquiet (femininity/maternity) or The Hunter (a hyper-masculinity) in regards to the main character, despite the sex trade backdrop.

The true strength to the film, is that it has some of the most comical displays of male impotence. All the sequences in the bed room while uncomfortable, are in a sense comic instead of erotic. I wish not to spoil them, but this film is a black comedy. The final ironic shot only reinforces this.

If I am thankful for this movie, it is from one scene. A conversation between a client and madame. The jarring closeup framing of faces, and dialogue is perhaps most evocative of Leigh's work, and got me wanting to check out Ingeborg Bachmann.

So yeah, I do recommend it, but Julia Leigh (with her strong visual composition and all) is better suited for the page.

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:0

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I've heard good things, but a lot of people have a problem that the kid is evii incarnate from the moment he pops out of the womb.

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I'm interested in it because I rather liked Lynne Ramsay's two previous films.

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http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/first_look_at_scarlett_johansson_as_a_sexy_alien_in_jonathan_glazers_under_/

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AW SHIT!!!

members only B)

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more owls than that zach snyder movie, up in there

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On a related note, be on the lookout paris train ladies: http://www.chrismarker.org/2011/04/passengers/

Based on the Petite Planete covers and Immemory cd-rom, this is so Chris Marker.

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