My weekend drive through PopCultureville.

• All the buzz you hear about Eros is dead-on. Wong Kar-Wai's piece is an immaculately crafted bit of longing and desire (what else would you expect?). Sodey delivers one of those exercises in goofball filmmaking that he perodically returns to (see also Schizopolis, Full Frontal, et al). And Antonioni drops one of the most embrassing and banal pieces of sub-Skinimax soft-core that I have ever seen. It made me long for the wit and depth of Shannon Tweed's oeuvre.
  
  
• Powell & Pressburger's Tales of Hoffman proved to be too much for me. The Archers' film about an opera/ballet within an opera is almost painfully beautiful and sensual (that Technicolor!), but, truth be told, the score is shrill and the pacing is... off. (Full confession: I made it 45 minutes in and decided to save the rest for another day.)
  I did walk away from the film with this observation: Lemony Snicket might just be a fan of the film.
  Here's Coppelius, a mad professor-type, from Hoffman (notice the eyes on the jacket-- and you can't tell in this picture, but dude's got crrraazy eyebrows):
  
  
  And then Mr. Snicket's evil Count Olaf (via Brad Silberling):
  
  Bitched at Swirth*? Methinks.
  
  
• I had no problem making it through my first viewing of Kubrick's epic Barry Lyndon. What can I say that hasn't alread been said ad nauseam? Brilliant cinematography/that natural lighting? Check. Sublime composition? Check. Ryan O'Neal is somehow tolerabe? Check. Kubrick (like Altman) is one of the only directors who can make the zoom work? Check. That it's a deft tightrope walk between being the greatest BBC costume drama evs and a complete farce of said genre? Check. Shrug. It's great. That's that.
  
  
• If you haven't heard Nina Simone's "Lilac Wine" as remixed by The Album Leaf, do yourself a favor and pick up Verve Remixed 3 or download the single at iTunes. It's a perfect slice of bittersweet electro-pop.
  
  *= Bitched at Swirth (c) 2004 The Thigh Master.