Late last night, I caught part of a movie called The Legend of 1900, starring Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs) and that guy from the movie Heavy. Heavy, by the way, is really worth checking out. I'm sad I don't remember the guys name. Let me look it up... IMDB to the rescue, Pruitt Taylor Vince. Heavy also stared Liv Tyler. Pruitt Taylor Vince plays a guy in Heavy who isn't, well, the best looking man and is kind of slightly retarded -- to me at least, he might not have been slightly retarded and just had some issues. He falls in love with Liv Tyler, who has always been sweet the man, kind and all that. It's a great movie, and I don't want to give too much away. And besides, this post is going to be about The Legend of 1900.

Okay, Tim Roth plays a guy who's born on an ocean liner and named 1900. He can play the piano really well. Almost too well for his own good. He lives on the ocean liner and never leaves. Pruitt Taylor Vince plays a musician who befriends him. There are some amazing scenes in the movie. I came across the movie fliping and the first thing I saw was Pruitt Taylor Vince stumbling about as the ship rolled on the sea. Tim Roth convinced him to take the brakes off his piano and sit next to him. As the ship did it's thing, they road the piano about the ballroom while Tim played.

The Jazz in the movie is very nice. There's even a piano duel with Jelly Roll Morton and Tom Roth's 1900. The movie came out in 1998, and it saddens me because I'm just now finding out about this movie. It's just beautiful, and I just done mean the flappers either.

Some of the reviews of the movie seemed a bit heavy on the movie being a metaphor for life. One guy actually gave the movie a bad review because he thought it was a metaphor for cinema itself. So what if it is? Metaphors only work if the story can stand without the metaphor being noticed. And also, sometimes a poem really is about a tree or a forked road, not the many choices that life gives us. What I saw last night, could very well just be the story of a piano player living his life on a ship at sea. After that, it could be the metaphor for a lot of things. And this movie would tend, I think, more toward having allegory than metaphor.

It would be hard to mention Tim Roth without pointing out Reservoir Dogs. Reservoir Dogs is Tarantino's best. And Tim Roth is amazing in it. It isn't exactly a companion piece to The Legend of 1900 though. Reservoir Dogs is a love it or hate it movie. One day I'll do a longer post on it. My lunch has arrived, and I need to eat. So one last thing... "Why I got to be Mr. Pink?"

  ¶ 12:19 PM