they're filming a movie on my street, and it's early evening for day. It's funny, when you turn onto the block seeing the klieg lights is a lot like seeing daylight walking out of a matinee. they're dream makers even on their coffee breaks, sitting on my stoop.

I had just come from World of Video, the video rental store teetering delightfully on the edge of bankruptcy. the place smelled strongly of garlic, and pete, the ruddy, slightly paunchy, sad eyed and immensely sweet stalwart, explained that he had finished heating up dinner. talking to pete about movies can seem superficial because one thing goes quickly to the next. when i asked if he had seen virgin spring he had years ago, and spoke briefly about it before mentioning that the last house on the left, "a nasty little horror movie," was a remake of it. but these detours aren't because he isn't deep thinking, his knowledge is simply too vast to not spill into my equally sprawling ignorance. i've been returning movies half a week late there and justifying it by claiming its a roundabout philanthropy; pete wouldn't take my petty contributions but i can sneak something into their rent check this way. but also two days is really much too short to have to watch a movie, what kind of ridiculous, outdated business plan is that? i hope this dinosaur lives forever, the air thick with scents not normally associated with plastic boxes and well scrubbed dvds.

i've just watched Together, a recent swedish movie, that was recommended to me by pete and some other guy at world of video. i really, really hated it. More than boring, more than tacky and unbelievable and trivializing, Together promotes some really alarming bullshit. at the beginning the sister of a guy in the commune is struck by her husband and she leaves with her kids and joins them. the husband spends the movie drinking and being violent. in the last evening in which the movie takes place, he shows up at the door of the commune with presents for the kids and flowers for her. she slams the door in his face and tells him it's over repeatedly, but by the end of the night they have reconciled, the children are happy, the roses have been accepted, everyone plays soccer and the movie ends with them kissing. This is fucked up. nothing has been fixed, this guy just managed to not be an asshole for less than 12 hours and it is on that criminally false note that Together founds its message of togetherness.

some idiots on the internet writing about this movie mentioned the non-commune characters who were also big losers, the husband who struck his wife was a slave to the bottle, and another asshole was characterized as a slave to porn. this was understood to somehow equalize matters, to make it an evenhanded thing between commune and non-commune life. all that actually does is callously and shallowly widen the baseless humiliations moodysson perpetrates on these characters; this movie's either idiotically misanthropic or philanthropic but it's idiotic one way or the other. what a fucking stupid movie, i am so sad that pete recommended this crap.

the movie is really just about ridiculing people. it's about ridiculing homosexuality, vegetarianism, meditating, not watching television and socialism. the acting is terrible, the message is fucked. the first scene, in which they celebrate franco's death, is delightful, and much of the rest is at best hackneyed teen love and at worst the crude, moronic undermining of serious things.