Episode 916: Somewhere

Missed church today because I'm still too tired from Friday night's lack of sleep. I did stay up last night to finish Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck though, which was heartachingly beautiful in a way that reminded me of Joanne Harris's Chocolat, incidentally also a book set in France that revolves around something we consume. Knox has written a sequel, The Angel's Cut, but as that's at least twice as long, I don't think I'm going to start on it until I've cleared the other books that I've already been trying to read for the past couple of weeks. A shame that the film adaptation of The Vintner's Luck is apparently really, really bad though. Speaking of films, I've just seen Sophia Ford Coppola's Somewhere, and I'm not sure if I like it. The dynamic between Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning was interesting to watch, but I didn't feel like there was ultimately enough emotional payoff at the end of the film. I mean, it's beautifully shot, I suppose, and you do feel a bit sorry for Dorff's character, but at the same time, he's a bit alienating because of how clearly privileged his existence is as a member of the Hollywood glitterati. I get that the film is trying to show how vacuous that existence can be, but I don't think it quite works on the whole. Since the film clocks in at 98 minutes, I'm also torn between thinking that a longer running time would have allowed for more development and thinking that it would have been unnecessarily prolonging the dullness. I've been reading things Coppola's said about the film and its style, and I see her point. I'm just not sure if I want to get it.