After girls in my high school made a habit of blotting their lipstick on their locker room mirror, rendering it difficult to clean, the principal gathered them and the janitor there one day after gym class. He warned them not to do it any more, then motioned to the janitor, who dunked a sponge in one of the toilets and used it to wipe down the mirror. The girls were horrified.Sure, Principal Flood could have fixed this the easy way, but the hard way is just better. I thought about this when I saw a special screening of the movie Biutiful over the weekend, followed by a Q&A with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (he also directed 21 Grams and Babel.) Alejandro said that Javier Bardem had to choose between doing the film Nine, in which he could prance around with a bunch of hot chicks for a couple months, or Biutiful, in which he could play a dying man in the filthy and smelly and often frigid ghettos of Barcelona. Javier chose filthy/smelly/frigid, and got nominated for an Oscar.
The movie also got nominated, for best foreign film, and I recommend seeing it, but only once. It’s way too sad to view twice. I also don’t recommend kissing mirrors – you have no idea where they’ve been.
