Specials: Winter Solstice. Undertow. Bortz scratches. Aslan talks. Hobos bite.

I’m back from a bout with the flu, and a couple of days of recovery on beautiful Whidbey Island, surrounded by sun, surf, sand, and DEER… deer everywhere.

I wanted to tell you about what I saw last week BEFORE falling ill…

I rented two films on DVD that had striking similarities. They were both about men trying to cope with the deaths of their wives while raising two sons.

Winter Solstice was one. Wonderful, meditative, beautifully filmed, and relatively overlooked by moviegoers, left to be discovered on DVD.

Undertow was the other. Wonderful, meditative, beautifully filmed, and relatively overlooked by moviegoers, left to be discovered on DVD.

And yet they’re entirely different. And I like them both.

Winter Solstice almost suffers for its lack of plot. In its attempt to avoid conventional events, it’s almost too strange, too strained. But still, I can’t get it out of my head, and I’m thinking it’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year.

Undertow suffers a bit because whenever the plot gets going, it almost spoils the graceful style of the thing, as if David Gordon Green is saying, “Aw, shucks, I agreed to direct a thriller, didn’t I?”

Anyway, they’re both worth catching, and hopefully they’ll get overdue attention when critics post their best-of lists at the end of 2005. I’ll be writing full reviews of both as soon as I can find the time.

Meanwhile….

JASON BORTZ SCRATCHES WHERE IT ITCHES
CT puts the spotlight on Bortz’s Africa project

ASLAN TALKS
The new trailer for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

KONG RISES
Peter Jackson gets a visit from the monkey that started it all.

LIFE OF PI TO BE A VERY FRENCH ENGAGEMENT
Jeunet is the latest director attached to the project.

CORALINE FINDS HER VOICE
Gaiman fantasy character goes to Dakota.

WATCH OUT
And an off-topic note for those in my neighborhood: These eight-legged freaks are all over my basement, and now they’re making news.