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Reviews (2)
01 August 2008
Zadie Smith's "On Beauty"
Whether familiar with Forster's "Howards End," Smith's work leading up to this or the cultures of Boston and North London depicted, "On Beauty" is a compelling narrative space of character and class. Highly recommended, as with all of Smith's writing, but this really does seem to have the compassion she aspires to in her fiction. She maintains a certain morality while not being judgmental, caring for her characters even as they operate on many theoretical levels: ethnic and cultural representation, class representation as well as analogues to the book to which it is an overt homage, "Howards End."
04 December 2007
Light Sleeper release for European market
I bought a VHS copy of Light Sleeper some time ago after having seen a fragment of it on late night television. The VHS was in full screen with acceptable image quality. I liked the VHS but wanted the definitive version of the film--what the writer and director Paul Schrader had imagined in its planning and production. I purchased the American DVD to find that it was also presented in fullscreen, and its special features did not go beyond a trailer. I tracked down this PAL European DVD just recently and found that it was listed as widescreen even though IMDb listed the film as having a 4:3 aspect ratio. I am very pleased with this DVD of Light Sleeper which also includes a commentary track by Schrader and a partial commentary track by Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon. Light Sleeper seems to have somewhat forgotten and I'm glad to have found this copy although a friend of mine recently told me that it was being played on IFC...