sesquipedalophobia

Today I finished watching Cinema 16: European Short Films, which surpassed all of my expectations; actually, it's pretty incredible. I'm normally not "in to" short films, but this caught my eye because of all the big names... we're talking Lars von Trier (his graduation piece! It's pretty much exactly what you'd envision if given the prompt "Lars von Trier Graduation Film"), Lukas Moodysson, Jean-Luc Godard, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Anders Thomas Jensen (featuring Ulrich Thomsen of Festen, one of my #1 secret heartthrobs!), and various other Europeans of note. This was also my first experience with Jan Svankmajer (Czech animator), who seems right up my alley, and who I plan to become obsessed with immediately. Of particular interest are several films by directors who either haven't done any feature films, or who've just started their careers (Juan Solanas, Virgil Widrich, and especially the hilarious Javier Fesser)... I'll be keeping an eye out for them. What an amazing dvd!

After watching the Moodysson short, I was looking up his newest film on IMDB (A Hole in My Heart) and noticed that it was out on PAL, so we should be getting that in soon; between that and all the Haneke I've been watching, I should be non-functional for at least several days afterwards. (Apparently, this one is even harder to watch than Lilya 4-Ever -- why am I excited by this?) Anyway, in combing the IMDB chat boards, I found out that both Lilya 4-Ever and A Hole in My Heart are available from Netflix on REGION 1... ?! How? These aren't available anywhere. I asked Geoff, and he said that they must have some exclusive deal, which is ridiculous. This is the exact kind of insidious bullshit that masquerades as customer-friendly policy ("We, Netflix, want to bring the best selection to you, Customer! PS: Not really.")... pardon my paranoid ramblings, but this is going to backfire and get us all in the end. I realize that my "Damn the Man!" ideologies will probably eventually degenerate into me crouching in the back of a darkened hovel, hissing at an errant sunbeam, but for now I'm 24 and it's still kind of cute. Peace, dude!