jesse james all modern and slow

the western kick continued with as assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford. i wish this movie had been maybe an hour shorter, then it would have been good. it's slow and scenic, but that only goes so long.

it's about jesse james and how in the end of his life (although he didn't know it was ending) he had this gang of local yokels and one of them ends up shooting him in the back and killing him. i don't really understand why jesse james turns his back on ford because i knows that ford's going to kill him. i think it's the whole part about how westerns are all about being manly and honor and jesse james wanted to go out in a manly way because he was kind of crazy at that point.

the interesting part is was happens to robert ford after he kills jesse james. he goes to new york and does this play about killing him and he becomes really famous and rich, but people also hate him and a guy eventually kills him. and, he kind of wants to die too. fucking westerns.

crazy in the heart

man, i love hearts. so, i also love jeff bridges and this movie was strange because i wasn't comfortable with his character. he wasn't really a big asshole, but he wasn't lovable the way i like. spoiler alert, he becomes more lovable, which i like.

this movie also taught me how to sleep with musicians, which i'm going to be all about.

and, i heard this kind of amazing radiolab with chuck close and it made me think about artists. at some point in this movie, bad blake is going to get $75,000 to record an album. that seems like a lot a lot of money. crazy money.

paper love heart love love love

we talked about it already but does it count if it doesn't show up on the blog? me watching paper heart, i mean. i want it to count.

for research, i read your post about it. i agree that charlene yi is stubborn but she's so adorable that it's hard to tell. this movie made me want to visit L.A. to see some comedy shows. L.A. seems scary but the underbelly of all that famous people stuff and everyone needing some entertainment work is a really good comedy scene, it seems like.

i loved this movie so much. i really go in for the falling in love with sketicism and cuteness thing. in this vein, i was reminded myself of amelie. but not this amelie:



hehehe.

falling in love seems so great. it makes me wish the love story were real. i'd like some good, real love stories. i guess there were a few in the movie. i loved the paper reenactments. what a smart thing.

and the ending? with the canadian cops crying at charlene's "life is too short" speech? i think it had a good message. and yes, i would also like to go to parties with indie comedians. i think that would be fun. but sometimes i feel like i know people who are that funny, it's just that they're not famous.

anyway, maybe i'll start watching paper heart all the time. that might cure what ails me in the heart department.

better red than dead

I love theater. Anyway, this is an actor doing the House of UnAmerican Actitivities testimony of this blacklisted comedian named Zero Mostel, who is in this movie The Front with Woody Allen.

The other night I watched The Front. It stars Woody Allen but he didn't direct it. The Front is called The Front because Woody Allen's character, a cashier in a bar, gets tapped by his blacklisted writer friend to sell his scripts because the blacklisted friend can't sell his writing anymore because of McCarthyism and because the blacklisted friend is a Communist. Apparently the director and some other people involved were blacklisted, like Zero Mostel, who has a really uncomfortable character to play. It was made in the 70s so it has that nice color. It was funny but also educational and sad.

Woody Allen has no problem getting together with beautiful women, does he?

get me off this island

have you seen shutter island? i was going to see it in theaters, but then i didn't get great reviews so i skipped it. and, it's probably good i did because liz and i both don't like scary movies and this one has some freaky ass moments. i don't want to talk about the plot because i don't want to give anything away in case you haven't seen it and want to see it, but the plot is solid and pretty simple.

i don't love martin scorsase, but this movie had some really good things going and it seems like that was all martin.

and, the ending was totally amazing. it really delivers. it got a little slow at one point and i started to think about how it would end, but shit got done. nice work.

the blinded by tears side

so, the blind side didn't make me cry my eyes out, but i did really like. i wish i hadn't seen so many previews because i knew all the key moments, but i still cared about the characters.

there was this plot point where the NCAA was looking into why the black kid decided to go to the university that both of his "parents" went to and the university that they just totally love. the NCAA woman is worried that more rich, white couples with adopt promising young athletes and get them to go to their favorite university. isn't that a strange idea? who would do that?

michael lewis wrote the book and he has these amazing this american life stories about the 2000 elections. i think he's some kind of non-fiction superhero.

is micmac postmodern?

so, there are these billboards in micmac for the movie. does that make it post modern?

there is so much amazing happening in the movie and i can't even start. i loved the villains. i loved how different they were but how really they're the same. i loved that the modern evil man has a son he's not really involved with. i loved that they eat the same for breakfast.

anyway, there was a lot to love. i've watched two seasons of leverage which is about conning the bad guys to ruin their lives and micmac is really like that. it's all about the long con.

oh, and some things may have been lost in translation. oh, why don't i know french?

where's yuma?

so, eric loves westerns and liz and i watched the magnificent seven, so we're a little into westerns. 3:10 to yuma is a new western with russel crowe and christian bale. it's pretty amazing. the plot is that russel crowe is a badass outlaw who gets caught and a group of men are going to take him to a different town and put him on the 3:10 train to yuma prison. christian bale is a struggling rancher (it's arizona and a drought) and he agrees to help guard crowe for $200. crowe's posse is out to free him and plenty of shit hits plenty of fans.

western's are so manly, it's crazy. there are two women in the movie and they both have very small parts. one sleeps with crowe and his seduction is amazing. real class. but crowe is an interesting bad guy. he draws and reads and is pretty fair, but also kills a lot of people. at first i wondered why he was the leader because he doesn't seem to do anything, but leaders are tricky like that. they work hard to get the point where they don't have to do anything.

i stopped watching it half way through to pick up avishay and finished it alone the next day. i don't really understand the morality of westerns. liz said it about survival and honor and eric said it's about being manly. survival is the only one i understand of those. honor and manlyness often just piss me off. so, maybe westerns aren't for me.

men who hate women

have you read the girl with the dragon tattoo? it's the first one in the trilogy by the swedish editor who sent off the manuscripts to a publisher and then dropped dead or something? i read that the original title in swedish is "men who hate women." the other two books are called something like the girl who kicked the hornets nest and the girl who did something else. i wonder what the original swedish titles are there. for english, i like the titles they have. perhaps "men who hate women" sums the story up best, however.

but why am i talking about a book that i've never even read? i guess it's time to talk about the movie that i saw.

first let me say that sunday in concord was the ultimate rainy day. i did nothing but eat and lay around and play boardgames until after dinner, i went to see the girl with the dragon tattoo.

it's in swedish and dark and two and a half hours long. but you know how sometimes when a movie is really good, you wish it were longer? the girl with the dragon tattoo is great because it's really good and really long and it doesn't get too boring. maybe it never got boring. what was unbearable were some brutal rape scenes (when they say men who hate women, they mean it). there's also some revenge stuff and some not-terrible men. i'm always happy when there are good male as well as female characters. like oz and willow. i think they're good for their genders. anyway, there isn't too much violence.

oh, but what's it about?

a journalist gets into big trouble for calling out a crappy bigtime financial person, like a lehman brothers type maybe, and somehow they sue him and he has to go to jail in a little while for forging evidence that he didn't really forge and the story of this crappiness never really gets out. a hacker who researched the journalist for a third party super rich old man gets interested in his story and follows info on him with her hacking. the old man hires the journalist to investigate the disappearance of the old man's niece 40 years ago. it turns into a big serial killer mystery that dips into swedish nazi territory. meanwhile, the hacker (she's the girl with the tattoo) was in the looney bin for being an arsonist or something and so even though she's 25 she has to have a guardian to watch her funds. her guardian is a total sadist rapist, it's horrible. she gets some good hard candy (have you seen that one? it has juno and it's good) revenge on him. anyway, the hacker joins the journalist on the old man's estate and together they solve the mystery. they also have sex and get kind of close, and that's nice because the journalist seems like a good guy. i say seems because most of the men, except for the old man and the police chief, are just so awful.

it has a nice ending, which is good after so much brutality. the journalist goes to jail but the hacker proves that the evidence wasn't forged so he gets out and is villified. i recommend the movie and i ordered the book from the library, but there's a long waitlist. i know i just told you the whole story but it's like still worth it to see, i think. especially if you wait til the dvd, then you have time to forget or just have vague memories.

romcom with accents

i got leap year because i really have to watch every romantic comedy with a hot guy. i know it's silly, but i just can't help myself.

so, it was ok. the plot is pretty basic. a overachieving, hyper organized nyc woman goes to ireland to propose to her heart surgeon boyfriend because that's how her grandmother did it. her flight to dublin is canceled and she has a two day adventure with a cranky irishman who she falls in love with and almost kisses a couple times and really does kiss once, but it's because of having to lie about being married, not because they can admit they're in love. when she gets to dublin, her boyfriend proposes and the irishman leaves. she goes back to nyc and learns that he proposed mostly because they wanted to get into this great co-op and the board pressured him to be married. so, she goes back to ireland and the irishman asks her to marry him in a really charming way.

ok, there's the whole movie, so i saved you, although you knew the plot before it even started, i'm sure. the movie was ok because irland's really pretty, the actors are cute as hell, and it's always nice to have the lesson that you have to relax and let life happen to you. oh, and the girl wasn't that annoying and she was a control freak because her father was a fuck up and she had to support them. and the irishman understood that and loved her for it, which is sweet!

does it hurt?

so, i didn't really get the hurt locker. you said that you liked it and your cried, so clue me in. i liked it alright. i went out for a couple hours to hang out with a friend (!!!) so maybe that broke the magic or something.

it was sad and moving and scary and kind of boring, which seems like what war would be like. i really liked that you could hear helicopters all the time. i think maybe i heard that when it was out, but i don't remember. i feel bad when i take credit for something that isn't my original thought.

anyway, eric said it was just a great action movie, which i can also kind of see, but it wasn't that great.

prince of a hot body

so, prince of persia was good because it was pretty. the desert's pretty, and jake's body is pretty. the people who made that movie knew it because he was either shirtless, in an open wrap top or wearing a vest. love it! the girl is also really pretty, although her voice is really annoying when she's yelling.

so, the plot is basically the lion king with king lear. it's not that important, but it's also not totally stupid and it really keeps moving so i was never bored.

there are ostrich races, which i'm not sure is a thing that can actually happen, but those ostriches look really funny running. a quick internet search tells me there is ostrich racing, and it's amazing. alfred molina plays the comic relief and i just love him and am happy to see him.

overall, it was a great rainy day off movie. next, iron man 2!

the mighty what?

so, we've been watching some mighty boosh. have you seen it? it's a british tv show where two comedians work as zoo keepers in the zooneverse, the worst zoo in england. it's pretty awesome because the animals are all fake, mostly people in animal costumes. it's great.

it's pretty funny. there's some songs, but not as many as flight of the conchords. it's very similar to flight, but most loose and free, maybe because it's not HBO? the one where they go to the arctic is my favorite, it's amazing.

there be pirates

so, pirate radio might be a nearly perfect movie. it's about how in 1966, when british musicians were changing the face of music, the british government won't let rock and roll on the radio. so, there was this big boat with a bunch of male djs and they provide britian with sweetass music. and, kenneth braughna wants to stop it real bad. so, the movie cuts between hi-jinx on the boat and the cold, evil government with great, funny music sequences. these song moments show what the people of britian are doing while they listen to the radio and there's some great stuff. mostly, different people at work and kids in bed, but also plenty of people on the toilet.

the djs are really funny. there's a mixed bag including a really perfect philip semore hoffman (i'm not looking up how to spell people's names, can you tell?) i think my time in the peace corps has made me really love stories about a few people having a good time in an uncomfortable situation. there's is plenty of that and a really dramatic, suspenseful, upsetting ending, so it's nearly perfect.