the way life should bleed, and bullying

so Thursday evening, I went to see Damnationland, a series of 7 short horror films made in Maine. last weekend I saw Derek's new short film, too, so there's been lots of local short films in my life.

Derek's short film is called The Bully, and true to (Derek) form, it's about how randomly cruel kids are and how disappointing adults can be. There's a funny chub friend and a reserved boy who decide to maybe try to beat up the class bully to impress the cute girl with the glittery silver flop hat. They run into a bit of trouble and the reserved boy gets abandoned by the funny friend and reserved ends up sort of participating in the bullying of the bully by the bully's older brother. older brother bully ends up getting reserved totally drunk and when reserved gets home to his sister's birthday party, he is totally drunk and his parents don't notice. it was overall charming and high on moments that are really common where nothing happens but are heavy with normalcy. it looked really beautiful, it was shot in wisconsin, and the kids were really good actors. i had to leave right after the first short film because i had to do my radio show, but from the applause i could hear as the door hit me on the ass on my way out, he got a good reception. good work.
you can watch the trailer here, if you feel like watching a trailer: http://www.lasthouseproductions.com/thebully.html

and then, yikes, i went to damnationland! here's the trailer for that one if you feel like you can watch another trailer: http://www.damnationland.com/
i haven't seen it so i'm going to watch it now...okay, i watched it. with no sound, but i did see it. anyway, it was great! and not great, too! it was great because local film is great. it was not great because two of the films were about crazy dudes who kill chicks. seriously, kill ANOTHER prostitute why don't you, horror makers of the world? ew, in this one the guy made the hooker dress up like the ex gf that he killed when she exed herself. yuck. and then the other one was about a guy with a crush who kept fantasizing about killing his crush. there was a pretty sweet yr-cooking-and-oh-no-now-yr-face-is-on-cast-iron-pan scene. then there was a nice one about those bells they put in coffins so that if someone was buried alive they could ring the bell and be saved. there was an adorable zombie one where a survivor guy is totally kicking zombie brains until he is shot by another survivor guy who thinks sg#1 is a zombie and sg#2 never even knows he killed a possible friend. there was a stand/apocalypse type one where a supercomputer makes everyone kill themselves because of radio waves, kinda dull. there was a great one about two killers, one who wants people to die with fear and another who wants people to die happy, and they race each other around killing people and the fear killer is winning and the happy killer is trying to catch up. that one was neat, lotsa stuff about "how you die shapes the next world you go into" and all that jazz. it had the best humor, too. so all in all, it was worth it and totally not scary. i guess there were some jumpy moments. i love local film around here. maine is great sometimes.

flat las vegas

i've watched all my tv, so tonight i watched saint john of las vegas on instant. it wasn't bad. it had steve bushemy, sarah silverman and conrad from weeds. someday i should learn conrad's real name because i really love him. like, really love him. and he was great in this.

so, stevie b is a down-on-this-luck gambler who now works for peter d//// the little guy as an insurance guy. he and conrad are going to go out to investigate a claim and it's stevie's big chance for a promotion. things go write and wrong and sometimes they're funny.

mostly the desert looks really amazing. oh, this movie also has that guy who wrote/directed and starred in leaves of grass. i guess i'm on a theme here.

twin ed nortons

so, because baron was sick, we watched two movies in one day. leave of grass is this ed norton movie where he plays a classics professor that everyone loves and his hick, okie, pot growing twin. this movie was written and directed by the funny looking guy in oh brother where art thou and many other movies.

it was kind of great. it was funny and small and charming. there were some family break through moments about why you are ashamed of where you come from and why you still love your pot growing, fuck up brother.

really it's just worth it to see ed having a fight with himself when one of himselves has a bad haircut and a wicked accent.

queen and common

so, you may not know this about me, but i love common. so, i had to see just wright, the queen latifa/common romcom, only it wasn't really funny so it's more of a romance.

the plot is that QL is a awesome, sports fan physical therapist and common is an NBA star. QL's friend wants to marry rich and she just happens to meet common and the marrying rich thing is looking good. but, common hurts his ankle and the girlfriend leaves him. QL takes over his therapy and pulls him out of his depression and gets him in the play offs. as you can guess, they end up together because common realizes she's amazing and wonderful and real even if she isn't super sexy and smooth.

this movie needed some better writing, but it wasn't bad. it's nice that common was such a regular guy and kind-hearted. and, it's also good that they really connected and the relationship didn't seem forced.

maybe i don't have love because i'm too much a homegirl?

dragons as cats

how to train your dragon was pretty solidly cute. i want there to be more. it's about a viking kid who's bad at fighting and that embarrassing to his huge, leader viking dad.

but, the kid takes down a super stealth dragon but can't kill him. instead, he helps him fly again and learns that dragons don't want to hurt vikings but are just protecting themselves. he then blows the minds of all the other vikings and saves the day.

mostly liz and i spend the movie comparing the different types of dragons to our cats. we now have three cats so it was a fun game. i love cats!

lyme meh, life meher

I know that lyme disease is really bad. I mean, all diseases are bad, some are worse than others, I hate disease. Here's the thing about this movie, why I think it sucks: the whole thing is supposed to touch on the gravity of lyme disease, or like the anxiety of the possibility, of it being around in this town and the threat that anyone could get it, deer ticks, etc, and that lyme disease and the shittiness and anxiety of having it or it being all over the place is supposed to be this foundation onto which the rest of the dramatic action is built. but, unless I missed it (<-- totally possible), the film totally doesn't really talk about what lyme disease is, and I kind of needed that. I think the movie needed it.

If you want to see really awful acting by Alec Baldwin, this is your movie.

So, yeah, it's the 70s, Lyme disease is all over, parents are having affairs and terrible marriage fights and kids are awkward and creepy and exploring their sexualities in normal ways that still make them and maybe you uncomfortable. I don't remember much of the plot except one husband with Lyme disease is always hiding and sketching in odd places (his basement) and he witnesses AB porking his wife (the lawyer from Sex in the City) and he draws that and she finds out that he knows because she finds the sketchbook. At the end, he gets a gun and you're not sure if he shoots the wifescrewer or the deer he's been stalking. Like, the movie ends with a gunshot. It's so crappy. There's some good acting but mostly it just seems like a waste-of-time-and-film Ice Storm. Maybe I'll rent the Ice Storm tonight. Now that's some good 70s marital/teenage horror.

National Jenny Spends All Her Time at the Movies Week

In the past seven days, I have seen 4 movies in the theater, one movie twice and two movies in a row in one day, so that's 5 movies, 2 theaters and 4 trips to a theater. Here is the log (sidenote: I just saw a book called Who Let The Blogs Out? here at the library. now i have that song in my head, but then it reminds me of Todd Barry on Flight of the Concords. Todd Barry is really funny.).

The first movie I saw was The Social Network. It's written by the West Wing guy and directed by the Fight Club guy. Imagine Harvard Square looking all Fight Club-y. It's great. The birth of Facebook is all wet, gross, angry, and girl-hating. The best part of the beginning is when a BU girl breaks up with Mr. Facebook and he had been insulting BU a bunch. GO BU, right? Truth be told, I liked it a lot better the second time. But I'll get to that. You might not see this one at the movies but I recommend it for the old queue.

The second movie I saw was Let Me In. I'm pretty devoted to the Swedish movie, I even read the book and bought the soundtrack. At first I was offended that someone would remake it, but then I remembered how many more people would see the story and that was encouraging. The little vampire is played by HitGirl from Kick Ass. She's good. The little boy is really good. Some stuff is different, like this one is more special-fx-y, glowing eyes and whatnot, more fake. The pool scene is great. It's not as good as the original, but it's better than most movies. Plus I love how the kids are neighbors and communicated with each other through the walls with Morse code, and Richard Jenkins is always so great and sadfaced, and I love how the ancient vampire loves puzzles and is always saying "we can't be friends" but ends up with the little boy anyway. Also, bullying is so intense. I'm pretty sure I was a bully before 6th grade when I got weird, and then high school I was the opposite of a bully, so I get mixed feelings. When the boy strikes back against his bully it's pretty amazing, even though you know the bully is bullied himself by his older brother. And that the vampire encourages him to strike back: good influence or bad influence?

The third movie I saw was called Phillip Seymour Hoffman Never Shuts His Mouth All the Way. Just kidding. It's called Jack Goes Boating. Based on a play, and I think PSH was in the play, also he directed the movie. Amy Ryan is pretty adorable in general. PSH is okay, he used to be a fave but that has waned. Anyway, he's a dopey car service driver in NYC and his best driver friend who tells him he loves him all the time decides to set up a double date with Dopey and the BDF and the BDF's wife and the BDF's wife's co-worker, Amy Ryan. The girls work for some kind of funeral thing but it's a lot of sales and it's unclear. The BDF's wife has lots of affairs and apparently the BDF is a loser. Dopey loves reggae. Amy gets attacked on the subway and Dopey brings her a reggae tape and asks her out to dinner but when he makes dinner for her and the couple, they smoke a hookah and get high and then he forgets about dinner which burns and then he hides and cries in the bathroom until Amy plays the reggae song and everybody sings. The best part is how the BDF teaches Dopey how to swim in a pool because a pool was a big part of my life in NYC so I just sat back and enjoyed the nostalgia. Another good thing was the Grizzly Bear/Fleet Foxes soundtrack but seriously, this movie was bad.

The fourth movie I saw is the first movie, the same. I watched Jack Goes Boating and it wasn't enough and I couldn't fathom sitting through The Town or Wall Street so back into The Social Network I went. It was much better the second time. I was less shocked by the misogyny and more entertained by the characters, especially the giant Aryan twins, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, and the kid from Zombie Land, the more substantial looking Michael Cera. I love the ex girlfriend even though she's barely a character and Karen from the Office is in it and her character is also barely in it but manages to be really annoying. The thing is, it's all about lawsuits and then college, so that's interesting and also how shockingly cutthroat this kid the mother of facebook is. I'm always happy to see someplace that I've spent a lot of time in on the big screen. Also way overscored. Maybe Trent Reznor is bottled up, I dunno. Although, the second time I was totally into the ominous sounds every time something was about to happen, was happening or had just happened.

The fifth movie I saw was Never Let Me Go. You said you read some of the book so maybe you have some idea of the tone. It was all pretty charming and eerie. Love the big old boarding school, love the incredible wardrobes of toggle coats and wellies and wool hats and nice sweaters, love the tearjerking of it all. The love triangle was hard to take because you just know that the one girl goes after the boy to upset the other girl but what I didn't like was how in the end she was all, i'm sorry i kept you two apart. it's like this boy had no say in it. so that was annoying. I also can't capitalize consistently. Anyway, it was sad sad sad and foggy British browns and greens and lots of seaside windy scenes. I recommend this movie, it's got a lot of good things going for it, like story, acting and style. I didn't cry even though that was my main motive for seeing it. Everybody seemed to be crying. I was too wrapped up in the main character's story, and she seemed more stoic than sad. Stoic could be something to aspire too, at least for a minute or two, but then again I don't think it works that way.

earth schmearth

I have one Blue Planet DVD, or at least I thought I did. Inside the case, I discovered a Planet Earth DVD. Probably this belongs to somebody else. So I think nature documentaries are probably one of the most relaxing things besides David Attenborough's voice, so it's nice that David Attenborough does nature documentaries. The PE disc I watched had segments on jungles, great plains, and shallow seas. The jungle was neat because I love timelapse video of things like mushrooms growing. One mushroom has a kind of net that looks like a honeycomb pattern skirt going to the ground. Other mushrooms grow, and they look great. I didn't love the part about all the monkeys eating figs. I might be more into plants, insects and marine life than I am into mammals. The great plains was shocking because of the brush fires. An entire herd of gazelles had to hightail it out of the plains because of a rapidly approaching fire. I know Sigourney Weaver narrates a US version. I'm glad I didn't have to watch that one. She's not bad but she's no this guy. And then the shallow seas was all about coral reefs and humpback whales. There are so many stories in this segments, and the footage is very beautiful and all in all, I feel not so much educated as relaxed. Maybe that's the point.

temperence brennen (jenny's review)

I failed to take yr advice on watching clips of Temple Grandin before watching the HBO movie, but I will take it eventually. I got this movie out of a Redbox, first Redbox experience ever. It was okay, there wasn't a very good selection but I was very happy this movie was a choice because I have been thinking about the hugging machine a lot and I was dying of jealousy that you'd already seen it.

This was an intense movie. Temple is pretty amazing. I didn't cry but I did sit there dumbfounded the whole time, which is the intellectual equivalent of crying for me. I kept thinking her mom was Juliet Binoche, too, so I was annoying myself. Claire Danes was amazing. Everyone in it was pretty great. It made cattle handlers look like a*holes. I loved the way things were written on the screen. I loved how she got into the hugging machine at first and that she fixed the gate. I'm glad she went to school and the way everything converged is amazing. Like, she ended up at her aunt's ranch and then studying science and everything. It made me think, because at first I was not in favor of her mother dragging her to college, Temple was so upset, but it was good that her mother pushed her a little bit because it seems like Temple was able to do so many things for the bizarre cause of slaughterhouses. What a fascinating movie.

The only thing I didn't like and never like about HBO movies is the overscoring. Always with the melodramatic music and I feel like it takes down the drama cos it's so over the top and unceasing.

I can't wait to see Temple explaining things.