I haven't seen a movie for so long that it's getting to be a big deal, deciding how to end the movie-drought. The Silver finally has a good movie this weekend, Blue Velvet, and I'm going to do my best to go see it at least once. It's not just one of my favorites, but it's right for my current state of mind.

And then... oh, the shame. OK, I am dying to see the new Miami Vice movie. I mean, tell me this doesn't sound good to you:

In Miami Vice, the nightscapes of L.A. are replaced by a transnational Mann-land: Whether you're in Miami, Havana, or a lawless frontier city straddling the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, there's no shortage of stark-white apartments with spectacular ocean views, where gorgeous biracial women take long hot showers as R&B throbs in the background.

Lest this all start to sound campy, let's be clear: In returning to his own Miami Vice series for source material, Mann isn't mining the vein of '70s and '80s TV nostalgia that brought us movie versions of Starsky and Hutch, Charlie's Angels, and The Brady Bunch. If anything, it's the TV show, with its garish costumes and winking dialogue, that feels like a sendup, while the far grittier and darker film functions as the real thing. Mann treats the bygone series not as a brand but as a myth. He uses our background knowledge of it as shorthand, the better to hurl us in medias res.

But it also seems like the kind of thing you really have to see with a date, and the Mr. is in Durham, working all weekend, while I stay home in DC. So maybe that'll have to wait.

And then on Sunday, I'll be seeing, eeps, Lady in the Water with Liz. That can't be my movie-drought-breaker! I'll have to be sure and get to Blue Velvet first.

Tags: movies
Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: "Skunk", MC5