The promise of several days of 80 degree weather has me completely dead to anything else. Bloggy McBloggersons i am not, but...

I was thinking how much over the last year, i have begun to appreciate good TV and movies. Before i started working at the mulls, i was a product of my life when it came to moving pictures of any sort. Raised in a strict home, i wasn't allowed to watch TV for a large majority of my life and movies/theatre were never encouraged. When they were allowed they were only scrutinized for moral acceptability, not artistic integrity. Up until two or three years ago, i never noticed the fine tuned shots of a director of photography or the cuts of an editor...i mainly judged them by whether the story was amusing. (Amusing...i find that word deplorable because its so...amusing. Requires no scrutiny or thought, and though most stories are meant to be an escape, how much more great of one if you don't have to separate it from your intellect or rationalize it's lack of details.) But thanks to the great number of time i spend among people who care greatly for the set up of a shot or the precise colors that show up on screen, i myself have begun to neglect the shoddier rom coms for things like the BBC. Sherlock Holmes, anyone? Or the comedic timing of Modern Family? Or the casual genius of Sophia Coppola? Lets pause there for a moment.

Sophia Coppola. Sophia. Coppola. Let it sit there on your tongue for a minute. If you are not familiar with her movies (ok, people forgive the Godfather 3 already!), let me recommend them. The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette are three of the most unforgivingly brilliant movies one will ever see. They hook you...you watch them with these wide open eyes and they bubble inside your brain for days after. There are these long slow moments where all there is is silence...decisions made so clearly in a camera's eye that you swore you were watching them play out in real life. And yet at the same time, its more permanent than real life. You see that her blues are what blue is like and her yellows are what yellow can be. She, defining the meaning of words we previously used our whole lives. You can taste her movies, feel them like a the smooth inside of a shell. She took sorrow on screen and added to it humanity-her sorrow is not just sorrow. It is what humans truly feel when they feel sorrow, this sorrowjoyrestfulrestlessness. Some people say her movies are boring and slow, they have no explanations and no clear ending. I think those people don't truly grasp what a feat it is to portray the complexity of human life through a bunch of metallic components. Certainly, she casts brilliantly, that helps. She also takes her time to allow the movies to unfold, like life actually does in its actuality. She is patient. Terribly patient. And demands the same of her audience. She explains little. Why explain things without explanation?

i really don't think much of people who watch these movies and don't like them. I frankly wonder what they see in the mirror when they look. Because that is what she does best, shows us mirrors of our own indiscernible hearts. I, and my decisions that remain a mystery to me, truly appreciate the honesty.

jamee sheehy
producer/editorial
W 617.226.9615
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