Mud and Greenpoint

Quite the fun time with BB last night babbling about books and then tromping through the Greenpoint twilight to the hipster movie theater to see Mud, which Ben and MaryAnn had both raved about but which gets an Eh+ from moi.

I mean, if you get an irrelevant shot of snakes in the third movement of the film and the hero gets bitten by snakes in the denouncement, it is not great filmmaking, okay? It is clumsy foreshadowing.

Mud's not a bad film, mind you. Some stunning cinematography and great performances from the two kids in the lead roles, one of whom looks so uncannily like River Phoenix in Stand By Me that comparisons to that film are inevitable. Two other films with which it invites comparison are Winter's Bone or River's Edge although Mud is much more like a Disney movie.

(River's Edge has long since been relegated to the Great Cinema Junkyard, which is a pity because it is a brilliant though deeply disturbing film: Adolescence as an exercise in total despair. I'm not sure its director ever made another movie.)

Mud is shot entirely in the Arkansas Delta, which I spent some time in during my circus days. Once upon a time there were fewer filters in the South, and I liked that about the place. That's rapidly disappearing now as corporate culture moves in. If Mud is about anything, I suppose it's about that particular cultural disenfranchisement – lots of subliminal shots of MacDonalds and other franchises on the sides of dusty roads, the blue light from the TV that a very haggard looking Reese Witherspoon watches 22 hours a day holed up in her cheap motel room, the destruction of the houseboats at the end of movie.

BB is one of those pals who once he likes you is genuinely in your camp. Thus, it is fun to be around him not only because we share a lot of interests but also because I get the sense that he is really interested in me, that he is rooting for me, that he genuinely wants me to prosper.

We saw some great graffiti too on the walk over: