Extracted from an email (one reference omitted; footnotes added):
It was pretty good, but not near his best earlier ones.[1] Very much his take on an 'American' film[2] - reminded me rather of Edward Hopper's paintings[3] - but still plenty languorous, romantic, moody, etc, etc.[4] Norah Jones did a good job![5] (Actually, he got good performances out of all of the leads - including a nice cameo from Cat Power.[6] Rachel Weisz probably the best but Natalie Portman also good as a raucous Vegas gambler.[7])
(w/ David and Wei)
* * *
[1] The framing story couldn't help but put me in mind of Chungking Express, in particular.
[2] Something was lost in the translation, I fear - My Blueberry Nights isn't as rapturous, as rhapsodic, as say 2046 or ITMFL, and the dialogue is, dare I say it, positively clunky in places.
[3] But more smeared and impressionistic - or do I mean expressionistic? I'm never quite sure with WKW's films.
[4] Albeit with some surprising grittiness in the David Strathairn/Rachel Weisz segment - which is graced by some seriously great acting from both of the above.
[5] In kind of a dreamy, wide-eyed, almost excessively ingenuous way, but she did it well, and that was the point of the character.
[6] A couple of songs from The Greatest, including the title track, made it on to the soundtrack, as did a nice cover of "Harvest Moon" by Cassandra Wilson; all quite nice but the music doesn't function in the same hot-wire-to-the-spine way as it does in, eg, Chungking Express.
[7] Jude Law the least dynamic but held his own...y'know, I don't mean to be too critical about the film, though - it was, for all that, still pretty captivating.
