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(COOLLIST) Loves Gilliam
Well, I've told people in the past that Hal Hartley was my favorite
American director. This remains true, for many reasons. However, I
had never defined the position of my second favorite American
director. I will do so now, and that person is Terry Gilliam.
Why? In the last 48 hours, I've seen Gilliam's two most recent films.
On Wednesday night, I saw _Twelve Monkeys_, an apocalyptic and surreal
science fiction masterpiece. Tonight, I watched his 1991 effort, _The
Fisher King_, for the first time. It stunned me and delighted me
simultaneously.
If you've not yet seen 12M, go see it as soon as possible. It is an
outstanding movie that will make your brain hurt. Gilliam adapted this
from the 1960's French film La Jetee (accents deleted), but the film
isn't foreign subject matter. It deals with fear, optimism, insanity,
and the timeless qualities of people. Wow!
TFK also dealt with insanity. It dealt with coincidences, perhaps not
as subtle of coincidences as _Red_, but very tragic and joyous ones.
Robin Williams gives an awesome performance, and I very much liked his
love interest, the mousy Lydia, played by Amanda Plummer. This is a
movie about being homeless and about being soulless. Tres good.
Gilliam also directed _Time Bandits_, _Brazil_, _The Adventures of
Baron Munchehausen_, and the three Monty Python films. All are
recommended.
BTW, I'm sorry for not writing out more. It is hectic here, but I
constantly am thinking about all of you.
--
Benjamin L. Combee (combee@techwood.org) <URL:http://www.yak.net/combee/>
that public-access-TV-making, video-game-collecting, cryptography-pushing,
World-Wide-Web-explaining, fem-music-loving, bad-pun-creating guy in Austin
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