Many movies come and go, and much
like most of my evenings of late, are ultimately forgotten or never really
thought about again. That isn’t the case with all films though and when Darren
Aronofsky’s THE FOUNTAIN finally made its way on to the big screen last year,
whether you thought it was a piece of shit or a work of genius, I think everyone
could agree that the film wasn’t necessarily the kind of motion picture which
could be fully digested after only one sitting (it was my 2nd favorite movie
from last year, but even I admitted in my
review that I didn’t really fully understand it).
One film that I absolutely didn’t
"get" the first time that I saw it was Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY and it wasn’t until recently that I really started to appreciate its odd
structure, slow pace and many unanswered questions. Mind you, I was high as a
kite when I watched it recently, so maybe that helped. But today, not only do we
have Roger
Ebert’s review of THE FOUNTAIN (he’s been catching up on his reviews and
it’s great to see him back), but also, a pretty cool theory about what THE
FOUNTAIN is all about, via our very own Matt Withers, whose theory apparently
impressed Mr. Ebert enough to post on his own website HERE.
Check it out, I like it a lot myself. Good stuff, Mr. Withers!
Finally, the
writer/director of the film himself, Darren Aronosfky recently
launched his own
site (apparently MySpace was a little too buggy — don’t blame
ya, dude), on which he’ll be posting his musings from time to time,
but on which you can currently find a COMMENTARY
TRACK to the film featuring Mr. Aronofsky himself…in his
apartment, talking about the movie. I haven’t listened to it yet,
but I plan to sometime soon. You can download the file (for your
iPod?) if you wait until the entire file loads, then RIGHT-CLICK on
the QuickTime menu and SAVE AS QUICKTIME MOVIE.
Incidentally, Warner
Bros didn’t want to do a commentary track on the official FOUNTAIN
DVD, which is why Aronofsky decided to record his own, with the
help of documentary filmmaker Niko Tavernise of Antwrangler
Films. Smoke ’em if you got ’em and enjoy the track, kids!