Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Packer

Just back from the coast where it was warm to the furnace of Portland. Oh for air conditioning.

Anyway, George Packer has some nice bits on the New Yorker blog. He has me excited for Fred Kaplan's book 1959. Even better, his review of the war movie Hurt Locker, which he quite liked. Here is the first para:

I didn’t particularly want to go see “The Hurt Locker,” because every other Iraq war movie I’ve seen managed to portray American soldiers as psychopaths in a crude, politically overdetermined video game, with the same hand-held camera tricks and heavy-metal score creating a nauseating sense of randomness and meaninglessness. But “The Hurt Locker” turned out to be the first good movie about the war I’ve seen.

2 comments:

CG said...

Hurt Locker is fantastic - tough to watch in parts, but extremely well done. Made my sister nauseous though (shaky camera work) and probably 5-10 older people walked out (couldn't take realism of the violence maybe?).

A couple of young guys with crew cuts (vets?) sitting in front of me couldn't stop squirming and talking to each other, leaving before the end as well. Definitely had a big impact on everyone in the theater.

Tripp said...

I nearly saw it last week in the heat wave, but saw Moon instead. I considered the double feature, but figured that was a bit much cash.

Now you have me convinced I need to see it!