it's suntory time

I haven't seen Sofia Coppola's directorial début yet, but her followup Lost in Translation exploring alienation and isolation while conferring a sombre melancholy and seriousness to the genre of chick flicks was time well spent. Bill Murray turns in the best performance of his I have ever seen, ably exploiting his iconography as an actor to lend the character of Bob Harris (aging star of movies like Sunset Odds and husband for 25 years to a woman obsessed with interior design) all the worth of the film's length. The film opens unpleasantly with a lingering shot of Scarlett Johansson's derriere. And I found hardly any reason to like the rest of what she did on screen. All the expressions I saw in The Horse Whisperer (was that referenec to horse photography an intentional dig?) and Ghost World reappear. Aside from little truths like the more you know what you want, the less you let things upset you, you have loads of trivia like the pseudonym Evelyn Waugh, a fictitious movie called Midnight Velocity starring Kelly (a dig at Cameron Diaz?) and Keanu Reeves. And a clip from La Dolce Vita, references to Charlie Brown, Joey Bishop, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinat(o)ra, Dean Martin, Roger Moore and extracts from Scarborough Fair and Nobody does it better. Watchable, sad, yet fun. And refusing to let us hear what Bob whispers in Charlotte's ear at the end is pure genius.