the pod bay door

I saw two movies today. The Grey Zone is one of the most powerful holocaust movies ever, and one of the best pictures of the year. It is written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, who played one of the brothers in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and also directed O. The film examines the Sonderkommando, the group of Jews in concentration camps that ushered other Jews to the gas chambers, and then burned their bodies. The Sonderkommando were granted privileges such as food, wine, liquor, cigarettes in exchange for unspeakable acts, and were spared their own deaths, but for a period of four months only. On Oct 7, 1944, a group of them staged an historic revolt at Auschwitz.

The film features a number of memorable performances by Mira Sorvino, Daniel Benzali, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Allan Corduner as the Jewish surgeon who reported to Josef Mengele, David Chandler as one of the kommandos, and surprisingly, David Arquette, whose performance as a Hungarian Jew will make you forget his previous personas (of mostly assholes). The most horrifying aspect of the movie is its bleak and basic portrayal of the kommandos actions, which for them was business as usual. the movie is mind-numbing. I left wondering, again, how anyone could ever do this to another human being, and how the Sonderkommandos’ own psyches could survive until their own deaths.

I also saw Femme Fatale, the new film written and directed by Brian de Palma. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays a jewel thief who double-crosses her partners in a jewel heist of a diamond-studded – er – outfit. She escapes, and seven years later, returns to France as the wife of the US Ambassador. Along the way…well, it gets kinky, and messy, and confusing, and ultimately unsatisfying. Romijn-Stamos won me over as a Bad Girl, but it wasn’t enough for me to recommend the movie. Wait for the video/dvd/whatever.

Last night was another NYC ritual: visiting and having dinner with Leo and Diane Dillon in Brooklyn. I first met the Dillons at a regional sf convention I had helped organize, Context’89, in Edmonton that year. We’ve been friends ever since, and every time I visit NYC, I take the subway to Brooklyn and we meet, visit, and have dinner. Last night was no exception. They signed a number of copies of their books for me, in addition to a few posters and post cards. I love them both a lot, they are wonderful folks and brilliant illustrators. They showed me their current work in progress, another title by Margaret Wise Brown called “Where Have You Been.” Wise passed away in 1952, having written hundreds of of books and stories during her short life. The Dillons also illustrated her story, “Two Little Trains“.

Today is a runaround day, for lack of a better description. I hope to see The Grey Zone this afternoon, maybe get a half-price ticket to see 42nd Street, wander through a couple record stores, visit the Pop Shop. If there is an emerging theme to this trip, it’s laziness.

The one enduring image I have of New Yorkers this time around is that of cell phones: they are everywhere. Every third or fourth person is walking and talking on a cell phone. It’s like the plague. Speaking of which, for the first time in 100 years, the plague has hit NYC.