movies I want to see, like, right now

it's still technically summer, for a week, so I can get away with such a frivolous post...

synecdoche, new york - I have been waiting like a patient disciple for the newest work by my patron saint, charlie kaufman. it seems like forever since I read the leaked screenplay for this...and was pretty confused, I have to say. I have no idea how this film is going to work. what I read of the screenplay was about a main character who had lots of lovers and health problems (I remember something about green feces), all in crisis at once. it didn't seem to match the description of the movie, which is supposedly about a man who constructs a version of manhattan for a play that is as big as manhattan itself (or something) - look up 'synecdoche' if you don't remember anything from AP english. I want to see this so bad, philip seymour hoffman is starring, and kaufman is directing. you can see a couple little clips of it here.

lou reed's berlin - forget shine a light, give me a documentary on berlin anyday. berlin was one of those albums that, when I was sixteen, perfectly matched my developing conception of what adult life was really like. it's not a happy album, but songs like "men of good fortune" and the "caroline says" series seemingly had no melody, which laid the focus on their fantastic, if bleakly existential, lyrics. I couldn't get over lines like "it's so cold in alaska" paired with depictions of domestic violence - that was totally poetic to me. I marveled at how reed could get away without really singing. I'm still somewhat indifferent toward the velvet underground, but reed's solo work was a huge deal to me in high school. there's a weird kind of determination that emanates from songs like "how do you think it feels" and "sad song". don't even get me started on "the bed".

brief interviews with hideous men - I have been waiting for-fucking-ever for john krasinski to release this film version of a david foster wallace book (!!!!). I'm having doubts that it will ever come out, but I continue to monitor it. this is a complicated book and I'm interested to see how it gets made - if krasinski uses voiceovers, I will kill him.

the curious case of benjamin button - an adaptation of probably the strangest f. scott fitzgerald story I've ever read. this sounded like a horrible idea, except that david fincher is directing.

w. - uh, obviously. actually the trailer is good enough. I think josh brolin is going to be fantastic, and I get the feeling oliver stone's not going to just slap together the same old rise-to-fame biopic, but also not going to do an obvious parody but something more nuanced.