Notes at the Plaza

I'm sitting in Schenley plaza, enjoying the lunch hour music. There is a clarinet-piano duet which gives a total Woody Allen style chill to the plaza on a nice end-of-summer day. Lunch chats are all around: ladies with sunglasses on top, guys in all sort of minimalist attires... and yet at the end the game of attention and passion hunting is on.

I keep thinking about a few things that I watched recently: Antonioni's La Notte,
Cohen's brother's Burn After Reading and a few episodes of office. Beside's Antonioni's genius in subtle story telling, it was interesting to see how relationship complications that we think are issues of our time were pretty similar in 1960 of Italy. Same issues of boredom and isolation. Probably things have gone more globalized.

I don't like Office. The direction and story telling is quite interesting. It's fiction in the style of reality TV: With the same lines of monologue talks to the camera, on hand cinematography, etc. However its surrealist comedy content does annoys me. So much making fun of average Joes... Very much picturing a looser-winner society.

Burn After Reading is quite successful to picture the chaotic state of affairs in Washington. It makes a caricature of the whole thing: Intelligence community, Average Americans, Emotional dramas, etc. At the end the story is simple and flows well. It hasn't impressed the critiques, but I liked it. Actings are quite impressive: Brad Pitt is quite hilarious and most people rock. I found the music odd, but novel. Quite in fight with the dramatic picture of the screen. Maybe this is a new style to make things more tense.