Tag: Helena Bonham Carter

March 18, 2010 / / Main Slate Archive

BIG FISH

Big Fish – 2003 – dir. Tim Burton

Tim Burton’s Big Fish is an homage to everything that we were, everything that we are, and everything that we will be.  What really bakes your noodle is the reveal that it’s all happening, every moment, all at once.

Based on the novel by mythology enthusiast Daniel Wallace (watch for a cameo of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces on Ed Bloom’s nightstand), Big Fish is a tale about everything big in our lives: the worlds of our childhood, the worlds of being in love, and the worlds of responsibility, maturity, death, and beyond.

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May 4, 2009 / / Main Slate Archive

FIGHT CLUB

By Peggy Nelson

Fight Club – 1999 – dir. David Fincher

So will you be at the meeting on Tuesday?  The first rule of Fight Club is, you don’t talk about Fight Club.  The second rule of Fight Club is, you don’t talk about Fight Club.  The third rule of Fight Club is . . .
I’m going to talk about Fight Club.  Based on the Chuck Palahniuk book by the same name, the film concerns a disaffected white-collar worker who can sum up his life with the three C’s: Catalogs, Condo, Condiments.  Not surprisingly, for his efforts he’s got insomnia, ennui, and anhedonia.  He starts going to support groups for diseases he does not have, to jump-start his atrophied connection to life.  But then he meets a woman doing the same thing; recognizing her as a fellow “tourist,” all his ennui and insomnia come racing back.  Then his house explodes.  Then the movie starts.

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