{"id":78,"date":"2002-04-30T15:58:11","date_gmt":"2002-04-30T22:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=78"},"modified":"2002-04-30T15:58:11","modified_gmt":"2002-04-30T22:58:11","slug":"a-bit-of-grit-for-the-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"A Bit of Grit for the Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"times\"><\/a><em>The Times, August 25, 1998<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>A Bit of Grit for the Eye (excerpt)<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Geoff Brown<\/p>\n<p>In &#8220;The Book of Life,&#8221; another American attraction, most of the actors wear deadpan faces or irritated scowls. There is a reason for this: the director is Hal Hartley, and he sculpts his performances in his trademark way for this hour-long contribution to a French TV series featuring the millennial musings of leading directors. But visually he has broken out with a vengeance: shooting on video, he keeps blurring the images, creating a kind of kinetic painting usually associated with the cult Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wei. Aspects of the subject matter are also unusual: you don&#8217;t expect Hartley to show Jesus Christ snaking through Manhattan in a business suit on December 31, 1999, the fate of the world in his laptop computer. Hartley regular Martin Donovan assumes that role; Satan, grousing in bars, is Thomas Jay Ryan. The talk, at least, follows the usual pattern of philosophical jousting: good fun for Hartley fans, slimmer pickings for anyone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Times, August 25, 1998 A Bit of Grit for the Eye (excerpt) By Geoff Brown In &#8220;The Book of Life,&#8221; another American attraction, most of the actors wear deadpan faces or irritated scowls. There is a reason for this: the director is Hal Hartley, and he sculpts his performances in his trademark way for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}