It's been a busy weekend, hence no updates. Lo siento mucho. Much of the weekend was spent in darkness, watching the flickering light from a projector on a pearly-white screen: There's a film-festival in Oslo this week that coincides very nicely with the Winter Olympics.

On Friday, I saw the "new" Woody Allen film, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (it's new in Norway, but it's already out on DVD). It was very funny, much more so than Small Time Crooks (which was a relative disappointment in my book); the setting -- pre-World War II New York City (naturally) worked in the movie's favour, setting it apart from the typical contemporary Woody Allen movie. His insistence on pairing himself with young(er) and beautiful actresses (in this case, infamous Saved by the Bell showgirl Elizabeth Berkley, and a sultry Charlize Theron) wasn't as unlikely as in other Allen movies: This movie played with the discrepancy, and, besides, the May-September (or, perhaps more correctly, January-December) romance is a mainstay of the film noir genre and the epoch (case in point, Bogart and Bacall).

Saturday I saw Gosford Park and The Royal Tenenbaums one after the other, and although I thought both were excellent, Tenenbaums was by far the better movie -- in fact, I'll now have to modify my "Best of 2001" list to include the latter film. I liked Bottle Rocket, loved Rushmore, but Tenenbaums is Wes Anderson's masterpiece, at least thus far. Funny, quirky, weird, and emotional; absolutely recommended. Gosford Park was the best Altman movie in a long, long time, and it was an evocative look at the upstairs, downstairs dynamic of the English manor life. I probably would be more enthusiastic about it if I hadn't seen The Royal Tenenbaums five minutes later.

Finally, last night, I saw Todd Solondz new film, Storytelling. I thought his first movie, Welcome to the Dollhouse, was interesting and original, and Happiness was a brilliant but utterly disturbing look at damaged people in awful situations, but Storytelling -- although it again described flawed individuals under unfortuante circumstances -- was incredibly funny and engaging. Not quite as stunning as Happiness, but absolutely worth watching again.

I still have two more flicks to catch; The Man Who Wasn't There, and Mulholland Drive. I'll post my brief thoughts on both of them later this week.  ¶ 12:51