Nearly forgot, in my takedown discussion of Tha Depahted the other day, to call out the film for the faackin' omnipresence of the State House. Yes, it sits atop Beacon Hill. Yes, it's got a blingy gold dome. But by no means is it visible from every window in Baahstan. Fah from it.
For example, the cinetrix doubts you can see it from Boston Police Headquarters. Or from Wintah Hill. Yet you'd never know it watching this flick. Somehow Scorsese keeps placing that sucker in the background of shot after shot.
It's as silly as having the Eiffel Tower appear in every film set in Paris--from Zazie to the Andrew Blake oeuvre [NSFW]. Let's hear it for the free-floating empty signifier!
***
The cinetrix has been wondering what Manohla Dargis thought of Scorsese's win. Remember, she wasn't all that enthused about the possibility he'd nab it for The Aviator:
"Who gives a shit that I’m wrong?" Ms. Dargis said over the phone, laughing. She then defended herself by invoking the William Goldman truism that "nobody knows nothing" in Hollywood. "I just thought it was going to be a pity fuck for Marty."
Pity fuck or faackin' pity?
Anyhoo, speaking of Ms. Manohla, the cinetrix was entertained by Dargis's little discursis on apophenia in her recent review of the Jim Carrey is serious, you guys, thriller The Number 23:
Before you can say “obsessive-compulsive disorder” or look up apophenia* (the experience of seeing connections where none exist), Walter finds himself seeing the number 23 in every combination everywhere he turns: indoors and out, on street signs and in his personal history, name and anniversaries. It all adds up, even if it doesn’t.
What does it mean? Not much, though the film spends a lot of our time and its energy trying to persuade us otherwise. Mr. Schumacher has some fun with special effects, taking us inside the gloomy neo-noir world of the book itself, where Mr. Carrey plays another character with an animal-related moniker, Fingerling. The word Fingerling means small fish, but he comes across as small potatoes.
[Nyuk, nyuk. Do you think she and Lou high-fived when she came up with that kicker?]
* "Speaking of pattern recognition," the cinetrix's second post evar was about apophenia. Coincidence?
