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01/14/2005 Entry: "Forget it Jake"

AT the VoKi tonight we viewed Polanski's Chinatown from 1974. It's as clever, nuanced and intriguing as one might expect from a thirty-year-old.
Jack, Faye, and the whole dang cast do a real bangup performance. It is beautifully shot. And while the story thrives on wheels within wheels and the protagonists hard-boiled PI chic, it all comes crashing down at the end in a beautiful, muddled tragedy one might expect in the real world.
After that one long shot of the escaping white car that far in the distance down the street in Chinatown never makes the turn, we land in a world of needless death, a rush of chaos where we know longer no who was good and bad. The credits rolled and we wondered where justice and resolution were to be found.
We were full of questions that, thankfully, never were answered in a sequel. All we could tell ourselves was to forget it; it's Chinatown.

ERRATA: Sorry. They did plan a trilogy, which is why Jack refused other PI roles other than that of Jake Gittes. A sequel was filmed in 1990, The Two Jakes and directed by jack himself.

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