Wednesday, December 26

We went and saw Ali tonight. What a wretched, fairly dull mess. It's hard to figure out what the director, Michael Mann, was thinking in this film, which was very episodic, atmospheric, and very much like an extended music video. The Nation of Islam stuff was presently so quickly, with no explanation, so that if you didn't know anything about the internal strife of the Nation of Islam, you'd be very confused. Adding to the mystification was the compression of time, so that in one scene, we see Ali speaking to a young Nation of Islam woman in a bakery, and a scene later, they're lying in bed with their baby crying in the next room. For a modern film, there were some terribly awkward, lame plot devices - like having Ali's lawyer call him from a pay phone at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, hang up, and - of course, MLKJr is assassinated. (And if that really happen, I take back the "lame" part. But somehow, I don't think it did.)
I added a few more photos. Go back here and scroll down to see.