Netflix Is Calling

Here are a couple old newspaper articles that I am finally jettisoning from my Bloglines feeds: when and if these movies make it to Netflix, I'll have more to say. The first is a review (The Personalities in the Orchestra Pit, September 9) of Daniel Anker's new documentary Music from the Inside Out, by Laura Kern for the New York Times:

This meditative film sets out to reveal the individuals hidden behind the stern expressions and formal attire worn by the [Philadelphia Orchestra's] more than 100 musicians, who tend to blend together when sharing a stage. Through one-on-one interviews and larger discussions, which could double for group-therapy sessions, distinctive personalities emerge, one more articulate and charming than the next. The musicians relate intimate, insightful stories, some heartening, some bittersweet, and candidly discuss the origins of their passion for music and what continues to motivate them to pursue their dreams, provoking audiences to ponder the same issues.

Second, a new French film by Abdellatif Kechiche, Games of Love and Chance (in French, L'Esquive), reviewed by A. O. Scott (A Classic French Tale Echoes in the Gritty Paris of Today, August 31) for the New York Times:

Its English title, and much of its inspiration, comes from a play by Voltaire's contemporary the 18th-century French writer Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux. Mr. Kechiche's interest in connecting France's classical literary heritage with its contemporary social reality is intriguing, and it has resulted, in this case, in a spirited and insightful comedy of manners. That is not the genre usually associated with the banlieue setting, typically the backdrop for grim exercises in realist melodrama. Mr. Kechiche's naturalistic, almost documentary style certainly does not relieve the ugliness of the housing projects, and a late confrontation between some of the characters and the local police temporarily jolts the picture from its youthful reverie. But for the most part "Games of Love and Chance," a hit in France and the winner of several César awards, is a graceful and sympathetic look at how the lives of teenagers intersect with a work of literature. Its script, which Mr. Kechiche wrote with Ghalya Lacroix, choreographs a dizzying series of collisions between the hip-hop influenced, Arabic-inflected staccato of working-class youth slang and the decorous melodies of Marivaux's prose.

It also sounds fascinating.