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Funny Games: the do-over
I often wonder: if a director had the chance to redo and improve upon one of his earlier works, what would he do differently? I’m convinced, for instance, that given a chance to do over the Star Wars prequels, George Lucas would have tweaked Hayden Christensen’s Anakin to make him less wooden, or might have done away with Jar Jar Binx.
We watched Michael Haneke’s Hollywood remake of his 1998 film, Funny Games and were surprised to see that the second version was a mere reenactment of the first, only with English-speaking actors, in a US setting, and with American references. The other plot points are virtually identical: a bourgeois family on vacation is imprisoned in their lakefront home and tortured by some preppy teens who claim to be staying with the neighbors.
The story unfolds the same way too. The family drives to their lake house hauling a boat and passing the time in transit by guessing the names of composers of random classical music selections. Before pulling into their gated driveway, they stop to remind the neighbors about an upcoming golf outing and notice they have guests and are acting weird. Later, one of the neighbor’s "guests" shows up at the couple’s vacation home, ostensibly to borrow eggs.
The dog in this film even bounces up the stairs and sticks his head in the fridge the same way the dog did in the original film. The house and décor look pretty much the same as in the Austrian version.
The director had an opportunity to redo his film for an American audience and changed nothing, except the language and local references. Nothing was edited out or toned down. No plot points were expanded. The scenes that I was convinced would have merited a do-over for American audiences were all left intact, and, like in the first film, one of the young pshcyos addresses the camera to let viewers in on his little joke. But I guess any changes might have undermined the statement about viewers’ reaction or obliviousness to violence. He just wanted to share that message with people who don’t like subtitles or foreign-language references.
Grass Lawn Park Gets a Makeover
New improvements have been added to Grass Lawn Park in Redmond.
The children’s play area features some modernized swings, climbing rocks, sprinklers, and a futuristic-looking merry-go-round.
Park upgrades also include repaved walkways and resurfaced and revitalized tennis courts.
Cirrus Clouds over Redmond
I took these pictures on June 22. A co-worker explained that these clouds usually form at high altitudes, when water freezes, leaving the visible trails.
Last Thursday, a friend mentioned that these clouds are also referred to as mare’s tails. As a child, she learned that their presence indicated that the weather was about to change. How interesting!
Jumper
Jumper finally arrived in the mail yesterday in a little red envelope. It’s about a teenager who inadvertently discovers that he can teleport himself: While trying to retrieve a snow globe from the middle of a frozen lake, he falls under thin ice and ends up dripping wet in the local library.
Eyewitnesses look on as the surface begins to and their fellow student falls through the ice. "What? And nobody calls the police?" I yell out in frustration. My husband gets annoyed when I comment during films, or try to ruin the mood by introducing logic. He asks me to stop talking.
But I continue to comment because nothing makes sense to me. After eight years, for instance, the teleporter returns to his hometown to settle scores with the school bully and reunite with his high school crush, a woman who repeatedly delivers zingy, ditsy one-liners, as if she were still in high school. The bully spots the jumper in a bar and knows, without question, that he’s the dead guy from high school, reincarnated.
A lot of other plot points go unexplained and even open-minded David admitted that the film had ni queue, ni tete, (wasn’t going anywhere), at least not for anyone over the age of 14.
Jumper is all about the jumping and teleportation. Nothing else matters: not the plot and certainly not the acting.
That’s not to say it wasn’t enjoyable; it just wasn’t a good film. Well, actually it wasn’t very enjoyable either.
Oh, and Hayden Christensen is still as good an actor as he was in the Star Wars prequels. Only this time, the actress who plays his high school crush, Rachel Bilson, makes his performance look fantastic…
Dodgeball
I think I learned the rules of dodgeball while watching David and his colleagues play the game at the team picnic last Friday.
The aim of the game is to eliminate all the players on the opposing team by pelting them with soccer-ball-size, squishy rubber balls. If you get hit, you’re out. You try not to get hit. If someone catches a ball that you have launched at them, then not only are you out, but the opposing team gets to bring back one of their outed players.
At the beginning of the game, the squishy balls are aligned in the middle of the playing field. The players wait for the starting signal before rushing to the center line to retreive a squishy ball and take it back to the end line. Once in home territory, they proceed to nail the other players in the legs or trunk.
It looks like good fun but I’m sure I’d be the sore loser who takes the game way too seriously and challenges everything. No strike would be intense enough to eliminate me and I’d be dragged off the field yelling that the ball barely grazed my ankle. Luckily, David was the one playing.
Tiggy’s Latest Lego Feat
Funny Games
I first watched Funny Games some 10 years ago, when I still lived near Stuyvesant Town and rented movies on VHS from the Blockbuster on 15th and 3rd.
I might have been expecting something like Cape Fear, that movie with Nicole Kidman on the sailboat. In Funny Games, a family vacationing in their relatively isolated lake house is terrorized by two young degenerates, dressed up like they are ready for golfing. But it was much more disturbing and things degenerate quickly as the two psychos hold the family hostage and forces them to play games that aren’t funny but humiliating.
When we watched the film again last night, I thought it was as shockingly violent and as unsettling as I did the first time I saw it. I was every bit as unnerved. After all the other sadistic, violent films I have seen in the last 10 years, this remains one of the most unsettling.
Shangri-la at Château Ste. Michelle
Mark Knopfler performed in concert at Château Saint Michelle Winery in Woodinville last Wednesday. This was David’s seventh time attending a Mark Knopfler concert since the last Dire Straits tour in 1992.
Between the opening act and the band’s performance, David and I listened some of the loudest thunder, roaring in the distance and threatening to wash out the outdoor event. But our umbrellas were only up for a half an hour.
As David pointed out, Mark reworked the arrangements to most of his songs, to give his audience something different from the studio versions. This was a nice touch, but got irritating when you tried to sing along to the tune with which you are familiar. Not only was I belting out the wrong words, I found myself singing off key!
There must have been a half a million fans out on the lawn, rising to their feet to dance to their favorite, walking around the grass and stockpiling wine. It’s amazing how much wine these people were putting away.
As I looked around the lawn, I observed that there were lots of older faces in the crowd. At least more mature than the faces in the audiences of other concerts I have attended. But these days, I often think that people my age are significantly older than I am. There’s a definite lag time between the way I see myself, as I get older, and the way I see my contemporaries, grouping myself in with people 10 years younger.
My biggest regret was that I wasn’t consulted about the song selection: no Money for Nothing, no Calling Elvis, no Postcards from Paraguay. Instead, he included some songs with which I was less familiar, and probably from his latest album, Kill to Get Crimson. David loved the set though, and was happy to hear songs that Mark does not play live very frequently, like Cannibals.
I have to remember to write in my preferences before the next show.
V, A, A, T and D family blog 