Tag: Holly Hunter

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A shot of Evan Rachel Wood in Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen", as reviewed by poet and film critic Jessica Schneider.

Aimless, Shapeless: Catherine Hardwicke’s “Thirteen” (2003)

When reflecting upon your life, what will you be lamenting, as in, wishing you could have done? Will it be that you wished you could have achieved that triumphant knowledge or skill? Become more prolific in your craft? Or perhaps been nicer to your loved ones? Spent more time with them? Been happier? Or maybe you wish you’d read that book or gotten that so-called degree? After all, what is stopping you? Granted, these achievements might not mean much to the larger world, but maybe they mean something to you. Our life on this earth is finite, so it’s best we spend it productively, achieving what we can, and benefiting those who love us. Time, like cute puppies and kittens, is precious.

Yet, imagine yourself instead spending that precious time inhaling air duster for a cheap high, stealing cash from purses so you can buy yourself some new gold earrings or Skechers, failing your tests because you stay out too late—(so much so that you will need to be held back), being an asshole to your mom, living within a world of total ephemera and chronic emotional whim, and/or not recognizing there is an era beyond yours and expecting the world to bend for you? Then, within free moments, rearranging your time not for study or self improvement, but for recreation. Does this sound like a life you’d wish for when you are at your death?

‘Alas, if only I’d inhaled more air duster…’ […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A stylized photographic still from Rodrigo Garcia's "Nine Lives" (2005), depicting a dinner party with champagne. Besides Amanda Seyfried (pictured), the film stars Sissy Spacek, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Robin Wright Penn, Aidan Quinn, K Callan, Dakota Fanning, Ian McShane, Mary Kay Place, Molly Parker, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Elpidia Carrillo, Jason Isaacs, Miguel Sandoval, and Joe Mantegna.

Dreams and Bones: Reviewing Rodrigo Garcia’s “Nine Lives” (2005)

The very first shot of Rodrigo Garcia’s Nine Lives is of a bright corridor inside a jailhouse, straight down its length, with the cell doors to the side all unmistakably shut. This establishes two things: 1) the location of Garcia’s first of nine explored lives, Sandra (Elpidia Carillo), who is incarcerated in this very jail, and 2) the idea that, in critic Dan Schneider’s words, this film is about how “people…are their own jailers” and are enclosed not only by circumstances outside their control but by the consequences of their freely-willed choices.

This is a prevailing theme of Nine Lives, and perhaps its most subtle, but it is certainly not the only one. Also at play is the connectivity of community, how relationships proliferate beyond even the small(er) understanding of any one participant; as well as the human tendency to invent a grand(er) narrative that coheres events together in order to make better sense of them. […]