Sunday, August 26, 2007

Ambiance

A sign on my way to my first outdoor soccer game, Saturday of last week:
It turned out to be eerily appropriate when applied to some of my fellow soccer-players.


An image from Psycho at Bryant Park (or, rather, if you look closely, two cartoon cats lurking on opposite sides of a tree trunk during the Looney Tunes warm-up):
The sporadic cool drizzle throughout the film helped set an appropriate gloomy tone for Psycho. The movie was less grisly than I expected, a nice side benefit to watching vintage films. But from a modern perspective it was risible to have a heavy exposition scene at the end to explain what we just saw. For some reason, Hitchcock apparently found it advisable to have a police psychologist inform us that Norman Bates killed his mother (duh) but now one of his personalities thinks he IS her (yeah, we got that the first time) and dresses up like her to kill other people who might come between mother and son (check). The psychologist-expositor also explains the difference between a transvestite and a psychopath/schizophrenic who thinks he is his own mother. I'm not sure what it says about our society, but this explanation is really no longer necessary.

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