Knit One, Watch Two - Scene Two

Hello, Gentle Readers (and Watchers)!  This is the second installment of Knit One, Watch Two.  I hope you find it useful!

Happy - 2011, directed by Roko Belic

This documentary travels the globe in search of the true meaning of happiness and how people define this often elusive aspect of life.  On this journey we find that, across cultures, we are more alike and interconnected than we may have thought, and these similarities could be the key to finding true happiness.

I am not usually one for documentaries, but this one was highly recommended by a friend.  And rightly so.  Just watching Happy brought a smile to my face.  The people who have found contentment and purpose in their lives sent their positive energy to me right through the screen.  Unless you are fluent in many languages, however, you will have to juggle your project and subtitles to get the full stories of some of the people featured, but not the whole time.  I loved that I was doing something that made me feel happy and fulfilled while watching a movie about achieving just such a feeling.  Initially, I thought I was going to be able to use this film as a means of justifying a lazy day of knitting, but it really became more about being in the moment and experiencing the bliss of a simple, productive activity.  I give Happy a hearty rating of KNIT.

Columbus Circle - 2012, starring Selma Blair and Amy Smart

An heiress in hiding, a mysterious death, and a detective with suspicions and questions aplenty, this movie is a nod to the film noir genre of years past.  

I had high hopes for this movie.  I love film noir.  And I love Selma Blair.  But Columbus Circle was plagued throughout with awkward writing and very disappointing acting. The latter, I suspect, is the result of the misguided efforts of a director trying too hard to stay true to the style of past decades and ignoring the sensibilities of present-day audiences.  There were also several improbable circumstances regarding identity and the assumption or erasing thereof (a main theme of the film) that completely ignores the post-9/11 world we now live in.  It was as though the script was originally written as a period piece, but was changed at the last minute to save on costume design.  The good news is, if you must watch it, the plot is mainly dialog driven, so at the very least it will not slow your knitting down too much.  Needless to say, with its overreaching direction and poor writing, I give Columbus Circle a FROG.