looking back (like not dylan in the movies)

You reviewed The Trotsky forever ago. This blog has been napping! I need to check that review out.

I rented it the other night with Xander. I had already seen Bridesmaids that day and was pretty laughed out but The Trotsky completely charmed me. Like a less-precious, more-pinko Rushmore. I love the part about sleeping with 18 year olds and the professor lawyer smoking pot all the time and how smart the kid is but naive and how awesome the stepmom is and how cool the little sister is and how awful and funny the brother/wife/baby team is and the dad. I guess I loved the whole movie.

I didn't get bored at all and Bridesmaids is a tough act to follow. Good recommendation! See, this blog has to wake up because it works!

am i miserable because i listen to pop music?

Last night I watched High Fidelity. I guess I've done a little ex tour. It seemed appropriate. But it's okay to hate movies where people get back together, right?

Anyway, it's so fun to see people being record store snobs in movies. Record stores kind of barely exist anymore so I wonder if the snobbery is even more concentrated. I feel like everyone I know who used to work in a record store works in a bank now that all the record stores in Buffalo but two are closed. So that's where those people go.

Also, I follow John Cusack on Twitter. At least I think it's John Cusack. He's a crazy liberal. I think? If it's him, he is. But he's a crazy liberal in the way that he's passionate and unintelligible and I stopped following him because it made me uncomfortable that I always only vaguely knew what he was talking about and I knew that wasn't my fault, it was his.

High Fidelity is Chicago, too. Chicago movies, hooray!

Things I love about it are that the guys who work in the record store are so annoyingly adorable and that they make top 5 lists all the time. I love favorites. I really like the girlfriend that leaves him for the creepy ponytail guy but I also really like that they get back together out of exhaustion. I wonder how old they are? It's overall pretty yikesy.

But I like it, not sure why. Maybe because the whole movie seems dusty (is this cos it's 90s?) and uncolored or halfcolored or dullcolored? The story seems really dusty too. Record stores? Mixtapes? Oh, it's everything I love and I feel like it's all gone. It's not gone, I'm just older. I just feel weird. And all that jazz.

So anyway, do I think watching this again is a good idea? I do. If only for the sweet soundtrack and Lili Taylor and Joan Cusack and okay John Cusack and Jack Black and the bald guy and the cool moments, the moments of manufactured cool, like how John Cusack's character is always jumping over things, including the counter of his record store and a bench to wait for the bus. He could've totally walked up to the bus bench and sat down but instead he had to walk around the back and sort of jump over and sit up on the back of it, if that makes any sense. In a leather jacket. In probably his 30s.

Where is this cool factory, Alisa?

I love the 90s.

fish tank not shark tank

the second movie i watched while not leaving my bed was fish tank, a british indie drama. this movie was sad and slow and totally predictable. the lead is this 15-year-old with anger and a young mom with a new boyfriend. it seems like the boyfriend is maybe too friendly and then, spoiler alert, he is and they have sex and he leaves and she finds him and he's married and she starts to kidnap his daughter but returns her and then she runs away with her gypsy boyfriend.

one of those movies about how some people have a really hard life and are trapped? it was really bleak (totally spelled that right without trying) and kind of beautiful for that reason. maybe i didn't understand this movie. maybe i'm too dumb to get art.

show those skills

in an effort to not leave bed the other day i watched two instant movies. the first was skills like these. this is a comedy about three dude friends, the worker, the artist and the asshole. the artist realizes he's a bad writer and robs a bank instead. and falls in love with the teller. sillyness follows.

this was a pretty good movie. it seemed really 90s to me, but maybe because i really loved movies like this in the 90s and 00s. and, it's set in denver, which really is behind the times.

the lead artist bank robber had an afro and these crazy green eyes. like, his eyes where almost just one color with just a few specks of color. and his pupils seemed really small. he was nice to look at.

god, you couldn't pay me to live in denver.

why all the fighting

so, maybe i didn't love the fighter. like, it was just what i thought would happen. i guess i was surprised that the brother stayed clean when he took his welcome back cake to the crack house. and the sister fight was amazing, it's true.

i thought mark wahlberg was really good. like, he just had to play it straight the whole time with all the crazy around him.

take me back to 1912

ok, so you actually couldn't pay me to go back to 1912 england because that society was a classest mess. all of that was wonderfully apparent in downton abbey, a new bbc/masterpiece theater 7 hour show. vanessa and jenna both loved it and although i don't usually go for costume dramas, i gave it a try and couldn't stop. there's lots of repressed lust but some actual lust. lots of hidden tension, but some actual tension and plenty of fancy outfits.

do you like stuff like that? i guess i do.

good, giving and gilmore

I love TV, Alisa. I love how it's all put together and how it's obvious and "quirky" and easy to get through. I love Gilmore Girls. Have you seen it? It's adorable and pretty dorky. Like, teen parents arguing over who's better, Metallica or Offspring? It's hard to believe they couldn't come up with a better pair. Radiohead v Oasis? Nirvana v Pearl Jam? Like, who cares about M and O and who's better and I'm not even sure they can count as actual rivals? That really bugged me. There is an adorable Korean teen neighbor who skanks to Rancid in the opening credits. Cutes! So there are nice nods to 90s culture. It's just another experience of missing the 90s just like with Buffy. People make snide comments about books and cutesy cultural references that sometimes don't make sense and I wish I had an example of that but I'm coming off of a migraine so maybe I should just start getting specific since maybe generalities aren't my specialty.

so the story is, there's a 16yo girl and her 32yo mom living in a quaint NE town called star's hollow. The mom runs an inn and the daughter goes to high school and the mom is flakey and silly and the daughter is silly but a little more serious. The mom ran away after getting pregnant at 16 cos her parents were rich and controlling and F THAT. she did it her own way. the dad, who shows up eventually, seems to have floated out of her life but sometimes shows back up. now her and her daughter are bfs and everyone in the town loves in each other. there's a dance teacher named miss patty who has lots of steamy dancer stories from whatever era she wouldve been young and beautiful in, there's a diner runner named luke who is gruff but obvs in loves with the mom. there's also the thing about the daughter going to a super exclusive expensive rich b/tch school and how they have to have dinner every friday with the rich controlling parents because they ahve to ask the grandparents to pay for the school. eventually with snags they become cool with each other. there's a dance where the girl's bf starts a fight with a mean rich kid, there's some teen kissing in a grocery store, there's some datey stuff with the mom and a teacher, there's some town stuff here and there. I like it. Usually I don't love the word "quirky" but it fits like a glove, you know?

I'm almost done with the first season. the mom's name is lorelai and the daughter's name is lorelai too but they call her rory for short. pretty cute.

have you seen this show? do you hate it?