the last girl with/who movie

Sunday was another double feature day. First, The Inside Job again. It wasn't as good the second time.

Next, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I love the main characters here. I love Blomqvist the journalist and Erika the other journalist and Lisbeth the girl with the tattoo and Blomqvist's sister who is Lisbeth's lawyer. It's not the best of the triology. That high five belongs to the first one. The second one was okay. I might rank them: 1,3,2. The third one gets second place because it's so sweet to see things finally kind of work out for Lisbeth. She shows up to court all punk/goth with big studs and piercings and a giant mohawk. She's, like, the tiniest goth you have ever seen. So, what happens is, apparently she set her dad on fire cos he abused her mom and then she was institutionalized because her dad was actually a russian spy and no one could know he was in the country and the mom had lost her mind so the little girl who would get a dragon tattoo and play with stuff and kick other stuff was like the only witness and there was a cabal of dudes in the govt assigned to make sure no one knows about the spy. So she gets locked away and declared unfit to handle herself. Except she's an awesome hacker and an information wizard. Which carries her for awhile until things get worse and worse. Until Blomqvist and his magazine Millenium and his sister get on board and they get really organized and then the govt gets involved and they track down the cabal members and discredit the doctor that says the Lisbeth is schizo. After her super horrific life, finally people are on her side and she's really vocal and right on in court and all the jerkoffs get in big trouble and arrested and it's great.

But I dunno if it was an awesome movie. It was more like, here, viewers, here's the wrapup!

So, there's HP2 and the new Coen Bros (True Grit!) and then what's next?

happy accident

I keep thinking about this one Zach Galifinakis joke and it occurred to me that I saw it on his monologue when he hosted SNL so it is totally appropriate to share here and then I can talk about how I feel about SNL, just in case I've never covered that.

So he says something like: Did you hear that the kid who slept with his high school teacher died today? ..... He died of high fiving.

I watched the entire episode and it was just okay. I don't love SNL, I don't watch it regularly, I loved the Amy Poehler episode. I'm so behind on TV. I will get cable someday, I will indeed.

where the sun don't shine (eternally)

I love Michel Gondry, don't you?

I love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I watched it last night. I do own it so it's not like I haven't seen it a million times, but it's a fun movie to return to because it's so strange.

One thing I found out while watching it with commentary by Gondry and Kaufman this morning before work is that the movie has the sunshine dust quality of light in it because there is actually smoke all over the place. You can't really see the smoke, it just filters the light. So that's how it looks so real or like dirty without being actual video.

I don't love Jim Carrey, but I do love Kate Winslet, and it's fun to see her playing such a crazy girl. I'm glad that the crazy girl is 30, too, and still dying her hair weird colors and working at Barnes and Noble and making potato dolls. I'm glad Jim Carrey is kind of haggard and scruffy. I love the scene where they're eating dinner in the restaurant and not talking. That used to give me so much anxiety with long-term boyfriends but now I think, a little silence never killed anyone. I guess people have problems not because it kills but because it bores.

Also, I love Mark Ruffalo and Kirtsen Dunst and how Kirsten Dunst is in love with the doctor who erases the memories and also how low-tech and shoddy the whole opertation is. I love cassettes!

I guess they try again, too, which is nice, but it's also kind of sad. I like that it's not too hopeful, like, you know what's coming, but isn't it sweet that although they erased each other from their minds that they are drawn to each other again?

I think that's so nice, is that silly?

famous dad tears

happy tears is another movie i got because the preview looked funny and it has parker posey. too bad it wasn't very good or even very funny.

it's about two sister, one married a rich guy, who are in pittsburgh because their dad is crazy and shitting himself. their dad has a probably crack addict girlfriend (a scary ellen barkin) who is maybe stealing their dead mom's stuff.

mostly this movie is about taking care of your dad even if you hate him. demi moore dislikes her dad because he always cheated on their mom and is a general pain in the ass. parker posey is a little crazy and has strange dreams and visions and was spoiled and protected and didn't realize what a cheating ass her father was until demi spells it out for her.

there's just too much in the movie. there are parker's hallucination, there is some drugs, there is a buried treasure in the back yard, there is the resentment between sisters, there is the maybe gay husband, there is the other husband who's going crazy, there is simply too much for it to be good.

and, it's written and directed by mitchel lichtenstien, who is roy lichtenstien's son. there is a character in the movie who's the son of a famous, dead artist, but he's minor, so i don't understand how much of the movie is autobiographical. plus, roy is the most boring of the pop artists.

extra kevin kline please

have you the extra man? i don't think you blogged about it, but it seems up your alley. it's stars kevin kline as an older man living in nyc. he gets by by teaching a class and by being an extra man. an extra man is not a gigolo or a hustler, but simply an addition to parties where there are more women than men. he feels that he adds a lot.

paul dano (love him) is a shy orphan who has moved to nyc after being fired as an english teacher at some small prep school. he wants to write and maybe cross-dress a little. he rents a room, and by room i mean small hallway, from kevin kline and they become kind of friends.

kevin kline really has some amazing lines in this movie. you just have to see it to really experience them. i think he was interviewed on fresh air and he shared some amazing lines then.

mostly, this movie is about learning to understand strange people and about making the best of situations. it's probably about other stuff too, but i can't think of them.

i liked it because i love both those guys, and because as my life continues on a non-traditional path, i like to see movies about grown-ups with non-traditional lives who don't hate everything about their lives. it makes me feel better.

white guilt

i got Princess Kaiulani because the preview looked good. turns out, the movie is slow and predictable and not very good. but, i learned new stuff about hawaii and was disgusted with the past and the shit white people tried to get away with.

princess kaiulani was the princess of hawaii around 1880s. she had a hawaiian mom and old man scottish dad. her uncle was king and the decedents of the three original missionaries who took over hawaii want to take over the government. dole is one of them, but the really bad one is someone not famous.

so, there's an armed upraising and kaiulani's dad sends her to england so she'll be safe. oh, her mom's dead at this point. so, most of the movie is about her life in england and how people are mean to her sometimes because she's brown and a princess and how she falls in love with a british guy who says he'll follow to hawaii and that he loves her.

but, when she needs to go back because things are really bad on hawaii and the white people have her aunt (now queen after the death of her uncle) under house arrest and the natives can't own land or vote, even though they're 90% of the population.

so, she goes to washington dc and pleads her case and she gets an audiance with presendent cleveland and he says he'll back her.

and, she goes to hawaii, which is about to be annexed to be part of the usa. kaiulani saves the day by giving a big state dinner and making a speech about how her people need the right to vote and dole backs her and the other guy leaves angry.

then, her white fiances shows up and loves her, but not enough to live in hawaii and live with her having any power. so, he leaves. and, she dies at 23, about a year later.

sorry that was so long. i didn't know any of that stuff about hawaii. and, it's fucking horrible that even after the civil war, fucking white minorities wanted to oppress the hawaiians after taking their country from them. assholes.

harry in nowhere land

i don't have a lot to add about the harry potter movie. i'm also really excited for the second one. i feel like then i'll be able to really enjoy it.

although, i think they stopped at a good place for this one and i like that. i was talking to a classmate who hasn't seen the movie or read any of the books and i mentioned that my facebook quiz about what wesley i would be had a spoiler because people die at the end of the 7th book. and she was really surprised (sorry to spoil it for you too) and she wanted to know everyone who died. so, i talked about how the 7th books starts with hedwig and madeye dying while helping harry escape. she got kind of mad and talked about how it's kind of dumb that so many people have to die for harry. i laughed and said that that's why the books are so good. because in the book and the movie, harry also freaks out about how so many people are dying for him and he wants to run away. but, his friends point out that they're not dying for him but for something bigger. they're standing up to evil and for their way of life and sometimes bad things happen to people to stand up for what they believe in. i love that about the books. people want to be selfish but the narrative won't let them because it's not always about you but about life.

i can't wait for number 2.

harry potter goes to the mattresses

Last night I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in IMAX, totally huge! Something Aaron and I often do together when going to the movies is walk into the theater just as the feature is starting. Not smart on Thanksgiving day and a totally popular movie and IMAX. We ended up sitting way up on the stairs because it's really hard to watch a movie when yr sitting so close yr basically beneath the screen. So, we'll try to go earlier, but actually I liked sitting on the stairs because it's different and you can stretch out more. Most people dont' pee as much as I do either, so I didn't have to move a lot for other people or ask other people to move a lot for me. All of this is extra, though! What about the movie!

Well, I totally, totally loved it! Those kids are so grown up, it's amazing. And the whole war thing, it reminded me of The Godfather a little, like, how they're going to war and they have to leave their homes and families, they call it going to the mattresses.
I'm not going to know anyone's name really because I never read this book and it's been too long since the last. But! I love Voldemort's nose. I love the flies buzzing around Bathilda (?) the historian so you knew she wasn't really her, that she was dead when Harry and Hermione meet her meat on the road near the cemetary. I love how the snake comes back up the stairs in her house when you think it's dead! I love Hermione and Harry dancing after Ron left! I love the whole mental illness or depression or self doubt thing about the locket, and how Ron totally defeats it but not before having some trouble! I love those Weasly twins! I love the adorable clothes Hermione and Ron wear and how tiny Hermione is! I love the evil lady in the pink suit who wears the locket in the courtroom! Evil middle aged women are my favorite! I also love Luna Lovegood! What a cute purple jumpsuit she was wearing when they were all stuck in the dungeon!


I was pretty much in love with this movie from the beginning until the end, and I'm so psyched for Part 2. I haven't loved all the Harry Potter movies, but I do think they've gotten better and better. I feel really satisfied by that movie, and even though I did'nt read the book, I don't feel left out.

Anyway, I guess I don't have much to say besides that I really like it. Harry Potter is such an escape, JK Rowling has really done us all a favor.

Snatch This

I couldn't watch Snatch, I tried but I couldn't do it. Do you like Guy Ritchie movies? Should I give it another shot?

go to lunch

Remember David Mamet? I'll take him over Aaron Sorkin anyday. After Inside Job, I had to watch Glengarry Glenross. It's about ponzi schemes, I think. What is a ponzie scheme? Anyway, you can't go wrong with one of the best all-male (I'm obsessed with gender and sex) ensemble cast ever! Jack Lemmon, Young Alec Baldin, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, Ed Harris! Everyone's really on top of it in this one. It's a movie with a capital M. I saw this on Broadway and all I remember is that it was amazing and that Alan Alda played the Lemmon character and that good theater is so powerful, it gives you such powerful feelings.

bad job

If you had any doubts that the white man is responsible for the economic excrementstorm currently ruining everyone's lives, Inside Job will tell you, doubt no more! There are some supervillains running the financial world. They have private jets, and multiple houses, and expensive prostitutes, and mountains of cocaine, and lie, and no morals, or even scrupples. Like, they'll totally tell Congress it's cool to sell people stocks that yr company is betting will fail. Or that selling debt around is totally okay. Or...maybe I don't remember that much. This documentary was very dense, and Matt Damon's voice is really great, and when he says stuff, it's easy to see it's important by his tone, but there was so much! So it's impressive that Inside Job explains the whole financial meltdown from the beginning and tries really hard to bring you up to speed. It's almost like a lecture on the subject, complete with charts and graphs. Also, very slick and neat, with some charm and some good humor. I recommend it when it's streaming and you're in the mood for loving good guys and hating bad guys. It's all real, too, is what might get you. It's all about stuff that's effecting our lives right now. I guess it's all the fault of the government for not regulating certain activities in American finance, and so there has been a rotation where the same people are economics professors or government officials or working for private companies, and they all kind of switch places, and that even with Obama, all the same dudes are in power so it's just business as usual. There have been some amazing people trying to make things right but they have no power and they get squashed. Maybe this documentary will help. It might be totally on YouTube, too

In conclusion, I hate rich people.

TV Party

So I saw Radiant Child, a new doc about Basquiat, directed by the woman who directed Billy Madison and is married to one of the Beastie Boys and has directed like a million major music videos, like the one with Cher and Beavis and Butthead-- totally awesome 90s chick. Anyway, before she was a 90s chick, she was an 80s chick and a friend to Basquiat. She was in film school and, since he was famous since he turned 20 or something, he was already famous so she interviewed him and then this old never-before-seen interview is the centerpiece of the whole thing. There is some nice rich yellow background wallpaper in the background during the interview, and whatever kind of camera she used, it just looks beautiful. It doesn't hurt that Basquiat is a nice looking man with a fun to watch face. Anyway, he talks about how hard it is to be famous, how racist critics can be and some other things. He was really aware and called people on stuff. He knew so much about art and was just so smart. Like, someone you'd like to talk to, really interesting but not crappy.

But the interview was interspersed with biographical info about him and interviews with people who knew him. There was a great public access show in NYC in the 80s called TV Party and when he was doing Samo graffiti, he came on the show and typed Samo stuff that would run on the bottom of the screen. Really great.



TV has potential, like Ghoul a Go Go, amazing: http://www.ghoulagogo.com/



So, this kid, he gets so famous so fast, he's all in nice galleries and studios but never feels like he is accepted by the museums. He's more NYT magazine than MET, I guess. Too trendy. And he always seems like he knows what's going on, right up until he was like 25 or 26, and I think he really got famous around 20, so that's a good 6 or 7 years. But then he starts doing hard drugs and gets paranoid and just gets really, really sad. People talk about him like he fell down. Such a bummer. Such a nice, smart, neat boy and he just couldn't keep his shit together. Anyway, I loved watching the interviews with people I recognized from their counterparts in the Bowie/Warhol movie. Charming, a lot of them.

So, I recommend this one. It's nice to get out of our time for a minute, and this documentary can do this for you. Although you might cry. Basquiat was so young. Younger than us, you know?

riding the 70s red

so, all you talk about andrew g made me want to watch something with him in it. i've seen the imaginarium of..., and i liked him in that. he was cute, but it wasn't a sudden cute. like, i had to see him a lot to really lust after him. he has such a skinny, angular face that it took some time.

so, this british movie or maybe made-for-tv movie called red riding: in the year of our lord 1974 is on instant. and, there are two more parts with him in it, which is why i think it's a tv thing.

this thing's kind of amazing. he's a very 70s rookie journalist investigating murder and corporation in northern england. the accents are really serious and instant doesn't have subtitles, but i was able to understand most things.

it also has that rebecca hall actress i blogged about in please give.

so, your boyfriend is really skinny and hot and kind of a fucking machine, which is nice. but, spoiler alert, he doesn't make out too well by the end. like, i thought he was the star of all three, but as we're moving along and shit just keeps hitting the fan, i can't figure out how he'll get out of it alive and in a one piece.

although, looking on imdb, he is in the other two movies, so maybe he does recover. i'll have to watch and find out.

let the sunshine in

so, we had a copy of sunshine in the kz, but i never watched it. david did and said it was pretty cool but i wasn't sold. but, peter read a review or something and wanted to see it, so i got it.

it's kind of like moon and kind of like a ridgly scott movie. premise: the sun is dying and these seven(?) people are taking a super fancy space ship named icarus (my favorite greek myth)II (the first one disappeared) to the sun. they have a big bomb and they're going to set it off to make a star within a star. action and death ensue.

it has that scottish guy with the huge eyes from 28 days later (same writer and director) and he's looking good. and, there are lots of brown people on the ship, which i think will be true in the future. this let me play my favorite game, name that ethnicity. check out the guy at the top. can you name his ethnicity?

please give the teen a kick

i put please give on my list and then i couldn't remember why. but imdb tells me why. it's written and directed by Nicole Holofcener. she wrote and directed lovely and amazing and walking and talking, two movies i love, and friends with money, which i hated.

i liked please give. it's about women, although here's a husband in this one, which isn't the norm. mostly her movies are quiet reflections of insecure/mean women's thought and feelings. and please give did that. i think there were some surprises and i laughed aloud a couple times, which isn't bad.

it's stars this women rebecca hall. she looks a lot like scarlet johanson's plainer sister. she even makes some of the same faces. but, they don't seem to related in any way.

also, there are two sisters living together and i had a good time thinking about myself as either sister. i think i'd be the quiet, searching one, but i'd probably be the mean, dumb, fake one.

an island with a city?

i've watched some movies, but this one needs some blogging. i don't remember it coming to theaters or anything, but it's called city island and netflix said i'd like it. it's stars andy garcia as a prison guard. he lives in city island, the bronx, which seems like a magical place. so, he's at work and he realizes one of the inmates is his son, the son he never met because he was 19 and split before the guy was born.

his son could get out if he had a family member to take him home, but his mom's dead. so, andy garcia takes him to city island with he's bossy wife, secret stripper daughter and son who's a feeder and is just getting into that side if himself with is obese neighbor.

there's so much that i don't want to spoil anything because it was good. it was like next stop wonderland, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.

sibling helpervy

Do you have Cinemagic in Chicago? What is the name of your movie theater chain? Here it's Cinemagic.

Today I went to see a noon showing (love the noon movie!) of Conviction, the one about the innocent brother who gets locked up for life and his sister who gets a GED, BA and law degree so she can be his lawyer. You love to cry, so you would love this movie. I forgot all about DNA testing not really happening until the late 80s or something. I guess about 300 innocent people have been released or unconvicted because of it. This lady's brother was one of them.

So, the cast was great and it was set in a little Massachusetts town. I love how Massachusetts is either boarding school/Harvard or trashville. Conviction=total trashville. Great accents. Clea DuVall and Juliette Lewis play drunk old lady types, angry ones, and ex-lovers of the non murdering brother. Hilary Swank plays the sister, and Sam Rockwell is the brother. There are some great flashbacks to their childhood, how their mom sucked and how they were close. Then some bits here and there about a bad cop and how the brother is whacky and a bit of a loose cannon. Then-- he goes to jail! Sister goes to law school! She becomes friends with Minnie Driver! She eventually finds the evidence box and get DNA testing! He's innocent but shit! The prosecutor says he could be an accomplice! So then they have to get statements from the old witnesses that lied about him admitting to the murder! Even though you know the ending, because the story had been all over the place, sort of, it's still a surprise that this lady pulls it off. It sort of destroys her marriage but it seems like that's okay because her jerk-ex kind of forbid her from going to college anyway. And the cop who arrested the brother is such a witch! Like a framing witch! Ugh. The law is pretty yucky.

I feel like this one could make it to the Oscars, what with the cast and the story and all, so I'm glad I saw it. It felt mostly like a maintenance see, however. You know?

bill maher is religulous

Have you ever seen Real Time with Bill Maher? What's incredible about Bill Maher is that he is SO SMUG and his jokes are REALLY CORNY but he somehow manages to hold my attention and make me laugh. I give him time I'll never get back, and I never feel good about that.

I did it again last night by watching Religulous. This is his documentary where he's in love with himself (like always) and he guffaws (?) at religious people and how religulous they are. Like, creationists are crazy, yeah. And some Christians hate gay people. Right. And everybody's weird and the Vatican is rich. There was a nice part about how the Jesus story would make a good Hollywood movie: guy fathers a son to a virgin, the son is also him and the son goes on a suicide mission, etc. There's a nice part where Bill Maher talks to a dude who plays Jesus at a Christian theme park. I don't know why people would want to watch a bleeding dude with a cross on his back stumble along a paved lane while they sit on cement "boulders" but so maybe I have more in common with Bill Maher than I think.

What I wanted was a liberal documentary to make me feel better and complacent since I've been a little uneased because Maine's governor does not seem like a good guy. What I got was Bill Maher: Smugulous! It was pretty good, though.

welcome (back) to sunnydale

Did you ever finish watching buffy the vampire slayer? I can't believe I don't know that. What I don't know could fill something very, very, very large. Possibly enormous, or even gigantic. What I once knew and now don't remember could probably fill a football field, but is the sky the upper limit of a football field or what? That's a lot of space.

I am back in the last season and I'm totally in love with it and Spike.



I never really had a punk rock boyfriend. Did you?

peter parker!

I can't exactly explain why I'm wasting time on a website like this, but I can gush about the news that Andrew Garfield, my new favorite, is the new Spiderman! Hooray! I love those two things!
Ugh, this website is gross: http://bumpshack.com/2010/10/12/andrew-garfield-buffing-up-for-spider-man/