heartbreaking cartoons

The illusionist is the saddest movie i've seen in a long time. it's by the french guy that did the triplets of bellville, which is one of my favorite movies. the french guy adapted the screen play from a jacque tati script. jacque tati's movie mon oncle was one of my favorite movies when i was about six.



i watched it every day.

the illusionist is beautiful and almost totally without words and has a really great rabbit and a very tall magician. plus, cartoon 1940s scotland looks just great. but it broke my heart.

you know, those guys

so, people said the other guys was funny and i love markie mark, so i gave it a try. it was funny sometimes, but it just didn't hold together. like, they had strange personality things that just didn't make sense or were poorly written or something.

for example, will ferrel's character is married to a really hot woman but he's always saying that she's cute but not hot and being mean to her. and, he's a chick magnet. mark doesn't understand how will can argue that his wife's not hot and why all these women love will ferrel. i guess it's funny, but it just doesn't make sense and it's not always that funny.

and, markie mark's not shirtless enough.

trashachussetts

have you seen the fighter yet? i can't remember.

oh man, massachusetts might be one of my favorite settings. i love that during a training scene the breeders was playing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt5MWCwFhCI

are music videos any good still?

there's an awesome fight scene with amy adams and marky mark's like 12 sisters. christian bale is truly a wizardic actor. he's so scary as a crackhead. and if it's lowell, it sure looks like it. and everyone looks so massachusetts, all redface and accented. what's not to love?

war movies go so well with heartbreak

so, i'm going to watch as many war movies as possible. and i probably won't, because i never follow through with plans like this. i could use deerhunter in my life right now, you know? maybe magnolia, too? although that last one is mostly, not all but mostly, emotional violence. anyway, the other night at the cottage I watched jarhead. that's the one about desert storm with jake gyllenhal and the guy who married his sister. i love movies about war. when ryan and i split forevs, i watched band of brothers, and while i know it's not that great and definitely overscored, i got so into it. same thing with MASH after chris and high school aaron. if you have any war movies to suggest, bring em on. just no comedies please.

so, jarhead i guess the deal is that the crewcut makes a marine's head look like a jar. and one of the shitty jobs marines that screw up have to do is drag a pot of excrement out of an outhouse and set it on fire and stir it, so horrible. there were other horrible parts, like when jake gyllenhaal's gf back home has a new guy friend who's a good listener and then he can't masturbate to her picture anymore and he's like banging his head against the bathroom stall. sometimes, like the movie where the mom humps the dad's urn, masturbation scenes are so sad.

and people die and shit gets blown up and it's your regular war movie where people do the unthinkable or freakout or whatever. i think it just kind of ended. after seeing the fighter, i really wanna see three kings again. also the village voice review of jarhead called three kings bold and messy. that sounds like me right now.

a waste of anna faris

I'm not sure if you know this, but one of my favorite actresses is Anna Faris. She is so funny! I love the Playboy bunny movie and I love Smiley Face. I watched Observe and Report this morning because she's in it. Seth Rogen is just like a thicker Jim from the Office, they have the same general mien. Anyway, it is a really weird movie. I didn't like it at all. The humor was really cold and really dark. Usually I like dark but maybe not cold. Like the drunk mom making a joke about making a change, to switch to beer. Or Seth Rogen's character, the head of mall security, totally doing it to a passed out makeup mall girl played by Anna Faris. It was one of those awful people movies, I guess.

the mumble chair

so, i'm new to mumblecore. i feel like i might be getting a little manic with these blog posts, also, so let me know if it's too much.

anyway, i watched a mumblecore movie named the puffy chair the other day. it's a nice story about a couple who fight all the time, and the dude is about to take a roadtrip from nyc to atlanta (maybe?) to bring his dad a replica of the chair his dad loved in the 80s (that the mom made the dad get rid of cos it was crummy looking, sort of like a lazy boy) that the dude is gonna pick up on the way (in virginia, he bought it on ebay). his plan is to hit the road alone but he invites his girlfriend as a way to make up after another fight. yikes. on the way, they also visit his brother who decides to tag along and later fake-marries a girl with amazingly curly hair in virginia while they're waiting for the chair to be reupholstered. the dude is like all mellow hipster but he really loses it when the puffy chair seller turns out to be a liar and the chair is in terrible shape. so he strolls around all cool and finds illegal immigrants working there and then he's leaving the building telling his bro and gf that the guy will pay to have it reupholstered overnight. then when the reupholsterer doesn't have it ready, he all like totally threatens to drive through the guy's shop window and then sits in his car and watches menacingly while the guy reupholsters the chair. that's i think after he and the gf have a bad fight where she's all, are we ever gonna get married? and he's all, why do you even want to marry me? you act like you hate me. they don't break up until the very end. you never even really think they'll get back together. but the vibe between them eases up.

so i guess it's this guy and his wife and brother who make a bunch of these movies. mumblecore, what a funny word. all like handheld cameras and natural dialogue. I think I'll watch more. have you seen any? i wonder if you could recommend one. i guess tiny furniture counts.

after the blood comes the boys (or, dirty pillows and twin peaks)

Nobody ever told me that Catherine Martell was Carrie's mom when she was younger:

Oh, my favorite game is recognizing character actors.
We have a few feet of snow here in Maine. There was a ban on street parking last night so I had to park over the hill, near the ocean last night and then get it out by 6am this morning. I am sleepy! I'm reading The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon. I love Andrew Solomon even though I might've thought maybe he sounds too know-it-all-ish or pedantic but his voice is really great. Anyway, it's about depression and I'm reading the history chapter, it's very interesting. Here's a crummy cellphone picture of the ocean, the snow and the hill this morning:


So the point of the snow talk is that we got so much snow yesterday that most things were closed. Not the videostore, though, thank goddess. And I've been trying to get into horror so I asked a couple of known horror buffs that are friends of friends to give me a list, and Carrie was on it. I ended up watching it with two girls who went to the high school where it was filmed and also I guess where Mr. King taught high school. I also learned that while he tried to throw the manuscript out, his wife sent it to a publisher and lo it was his first book.

Carrie is the story of how horrible people are. And not just in Maine, right? The opening scene where she gets her period and thinks she's dying was the opposite of the one in My Girl. So sad, she goes to the other girls in the locker room for help or explanation and they just corner her and toss stuff at her. If she didn't even know what a period was, how could she know what to do with the tampon bullets these bitches were shooting at her? Sissy Spacek did such a good job of totally spazzing out. I remember reading the book but this may've been the first time I've seen the movie in total.

The other girls are so mean, Carrie's mom is so crazy, her whole house looks like an attic, the closet with the jesus with the glowing eyes is terrifying, although it's interesting that she ultimately returns to it with her mother's dead body when the house is collapsing in on her. Like, she's telekinetic, right, so her mom thinks that she's got some devil in her. Carrie's not stupid, she's read about telekinesis and she doesn't believe the story about her dad getting taken by the devil, she knows he ran off with a homewreckertype. When one of the mean girls tries to make good by making her bf ask Carrie to prom, Carrie initially refuses because, again, not stupid, but then she accepts, under duress, so she can rid her porch of the asker before her mother discovers him and probably get sent back to the jesus closet. She makes a killer dress that shows off her twin peaks and dirty pillows and has like a nice time at the dance once she calms down. She's amazingly awkward. Sometimes Sissy Spacek is cute. Then of course the awful couple who are always slapping each other and calling each other "stupid shit" rig the king and queen election and she and her date are it and when they go up onstage to get the flowers and crowns, the meanies dump pigs blood all over her. It's worse because they got the pigs blood themselves, from a real pig, it's not like they went to a butcher. Ugh.

At that point, she goes ape/bananas and everyone dies.

When she gets home she wants sympathy from her mom but her mom denies. They spazz out on each other and the house starts to collapse on them, at which point Carrie drags them both to the jesus closet. Oh carrie, will you never learn? Your mother and tormentors death are your ticket to freedom. Telekinesis yourself some cash like the dad from Firestarter and get outta that town. Telekinesis a car to drive you to California, where you can join a freakshow or something.

I hate that Carrie dies in the end. I'm not even comforted by the fact that she haunts the dreams of the only girl who survived. That's the one whose bf took Carrie to prom. I think someone should remake Carrie where she ends up running into some wise old lady or young punk teenager and then it turns into a pagan kennedy book.

more more more misandry!

I know it's hard to really tell because this video is crappy, but this woman is walking in Central Park by the big angel fountain (you might have to click the picture to get the whole story):



It's crazy to walk alone in Central Park at night! Especially in the late 70s and early 80s! Times Square was more like Pimp/KnifeFight Square! But, see, she's totally hardcore. She's a mute seamstress who was raped twice in one day, but the second time she kills the rapist and steals his gun. That's where the title, Ms..45 comes from. After that she sort of goes on the hunt, dressed like one of those Addicted to Love back up band girls, lotsa makeup and heels and black clothes, killing dudes who mess with her, with the stolen .45. No one knows about the killings, but her landlord (who looked for a second like Hatchet Face but is not) suspects something. So, this is definitely a cheesy movie, like the blood is totally watered down acrylic paint, and there's a scene where you think she might kill the neighbor's dog, so you can't be a fan of her all the time, even though the movie is all, check out what a sweet revengist she is! She totally is. She kills dudes for trying to pick her up, for touching her too much, etc. There's a scene where some seamstresses and models are walking down the street and every dude has something smartypants or gross or kissynoises to say to them, and it's funny to see a dramatization of what I felt like in NYC, even though it wasn't every dude.

So, her landlord doesn't catch her but she does go to a Halloween party with her boss dressed as a nun and when he puts his hand up her skirt, she shoots him. And then she shoots a bunch of other dudes. And then a model stabs her. And then you find out she didn't kill the dog.

How weird that she couldn't speak, right? She only made a noise when she threw up, that's all. She does some awesome chopping a dude up action in the bathtub like Morvern Callar. I was just looking at the youtube homepage(do people still say splash page?) and there are videos of people helping you learn how to put make up on. Here's one that doubles as a scene from Ms. .45:


As you can see, this movie is really cheesy but somehow it worked for me. I was thinking, cheesy movies are fun to watch because it's really obvious sometimes how things are done, like the acrylic blood, you can see through the veil or behind the curtain or whatever. But they can be tough too because sometimes the illusion is awesome! Like, who wants to see inside ET's suit? So...Can you watch cheesy movies?

little misandry

I'm obsessed with the word misandry. I feel like I've known misogyny forever but since I got kind of sexist, now I know what to call it: misandry.

So, when I was in Buffalo I saw Tiny Furniture. I saw it at my favorite in the world movie theater, it's called the North Park, and it looks like this on the outside:
And then like this on the inside:
I just found out the other day that the rent on this place is still $250 per month, so that is pretty amazing. There's a nice ticketbooth inside where a little old man (like the one from Twin Peaks):
is always in there, he wears a suit and bowtie and he's very gentile or old world or whatever. So, the whole experience is pretty magical, I guess. I wish I could see every movie at the North Park.

Anyway, Tiny Furniture. Watching this movie made me really glad I didn't go to a small liberal arts college because although college was totally a bubble, it seems like that is a real bubble thing. Then again, maybe we all deserve some bubble time, outside of the 9 months of it we get at the beginning. It also made me really glad I never lived in Manhattan.

Good parts include: weird platonic relationships with people you might not like but vaguely want to sleep with (she makes a fellow youtube famous friend who sort of crashes in her bed but they never even makeout, i don't think, i did get up twice to pee), old friends who are out of place in the old/new life (she reconnects with a batshit rich british childhood friend who does lots of drugs and inappropriate things and she ends up ditching her Oberlin friend), old mom diaries (she finds her famous artist mom's diaries from when she first got out of college and it is awesome how she reads them!), hate love family (there's a lot of good family stuff, she has a sister and her mom and they're both really successful and she's drifting, it's great, her younger sister is an awardwinning poet at 17 and gives her sister plenty of crap for being useless, and the mom is just kind of there to sometimes say either really helpful or really insulting things).

It's nice that it's her real mom and sister playing her movie mom and sister. What do you think of her mom's photos?
http://www.lauriesimmons.net/photographs/


Overall, I do think this chick sort of captured listless and directionlessness really well. It was entertaining and sometimes painful to watch. I love the tagline: Aura would like you to know that she is having a very, very hard time.

So I really liked it. I can't remember why it made me hate men. Maybe I'll remember later. I want more revengerina movies.

the extra man

I loved the Extra Man! It was Wes Anderson precious and Will Ferrell funny funny funny! Everyone was great! I was so excited about the crossdressing and the christmas balls! At first I thought Kevin Kline was too over the top but he was totally committed to the role and he pulled it out just fine. Paul Dano is adorable and so odd. Nice weird face. I loved how it was NYC but not really! I loved it! I guess I don't have much else to say other than, thanks for blogging it. This blog is working.

revengerina

the other night i watched(oh! i just remembered i haven't blogged Tiny Furniture, I lost my list, okay, next one) a japanese horror movie. it was all, female revengefest. the movie looked good and crisp, sort of like A Single Man, like that kind of. I'm not sure when it's set but Japan looks like the 70s, and not necessarily in a good way.

So it all starts out with a man's wife dying. He has a young son who grows up to, ten years after his mom's death, goad his father into considering remarriage. The son is all over girls, the dad, not so much. The dad is a TV or some kind of producer, maybe film would make more sense because he mentions his latent desire for a second wife and his filmmaker friend suggests, "oh, hey, i have this movie i have to cast/make, and so let's talk about your things you want in a girl and we can see if maybe we can audition for the part of your wife! don't worry it won't be weird." Thus follows a whole bunch of conversations, dripping with misogyny, about how the best wife is young but not too young, obviously beautiful and talented at something like singing or dancing but not a professional, how subservient is definitely tops, how women are not as smart as men, etc, etc, choosing one from many is the privelige of the male of the species when you're talking about humans. So for the first half, it's all, whoa, there is misogyny among the upper crust in Japan. Gross! The producer/wifeseeker looks through headshots and resumes and he's thunderstruck by one girl, so when she shows up, he's obviously into her and they make a date.

Well, she fits the bill, alright. I dunno if she ever even looks him in the eye on one of their dates. She used to be a ballerina (can you think of any more crazy ballerina movies? I am into this genre right now). She's pretty in a creepy way. There's this shot of her slumped on the floor of a cruddy, brownish apartment, with a big white bag full of something next to her. It's like a gross-beautiful scene, like maybe something out of that horrible movie Se7en (hahaha, that looks so funny). She's waiting for him to call her. He isn't calling her because his filmmkaer friend said, there's something fishy about that girl! She had some reference from a record company but the guy had been missing for a year, plus the bar she said she worked at has been closed for awhile because the owner was murderered, cut into pieces, and the police found EXTRA FINGERS, an EXTRA FOOT and an EXTRA TONGUE. There's a nice scene where the wifeseeker imagines a tongue on the floor, flopping like a fish. Anyway, he does call, and when he calls, the bag rolls over, it's so scary. There is clearly a dude in there! These adorable people do it:


Eventually, the girl does go batshit. She was all, you must love only me. She killed his puppy. She chopped off his foot with wire that "cuts through bone and flesh so easily." She was abused when she was young. I guess it's a revenge story? She doesn't get away, though. The son saves his dad. It was too late for the puppy.

what time is it there?

Have you seen YiYi? I guess there's something pretty great in Taiwanese cinema? I would say, of the two Taiwanese movies I've seen (YiYi and What Time is it There?), there is something pretty great in Taiwanese cinema.

So this movie is about a street vendor who sells watches and sits on a bridge over a city banging a watch on a pole to advertise (?). His father dies and his mother takes it really hard. Since you've been watching The Office a lot, I thought the phrase "that's what she said" might be appropriate because the mother is like sexually into the father's urn, and this is a totally amazing scene, where the mother is like all dolled up bedroom style and stares at a picture of the father as she like humps the urn that the father's ashes are in. later, the son finds her sleeping resting her head on the urn. she has a flower in her hair, it's heartbreaking but not over the top. to be fair, the urn is sort of wicker and not marble. i can never remember sex scenes so i'm not sure if the lady/urn pairing is the weirdest, but it's gotta be up there. what is nice about it and the whole movie is that there's not so much judgement, it's all very, it is what it is. and what it is is sometimes shocking or bleak or sad.

the other amazing scene i remember (there were many, but you know how you can't remember them all) has to do with the other protagonist. she is a woman who buys the watchsellers own watch because it has two faces and she is moving to paris so she wants paris and taiwan time all the time. this is why the bored watchseller sets clocks in taiwan to paris time, a chance encounter. isn't that beautiful? anyway, she is in paris and there's this incredible scene where she's very sick in a cafe and she goes to the bathroom and is vomiting and a chinese (is that what you call someone from hong kong? is that a dumb question? maybe just a xenophobic question?) woman follows her into the bathroom and sort of hovers as the other woman vomits. what got me was that, there was a door separating the toilet where the girl was vomiting from the outside waiting part where the woman was, and the woman didn't actually shut it until the girl stopped vomiting and was cleaning herself up. then when they were sitting at their adjacent tables, the chinese woman sent the taiwanese woman a glass of hot water and they begin this awkward chatting up sequence where you think after every exchange it's over but it keeps sputtering to start up again.




This is how it ends! So incredible! It's like a Kieslowski movie! I should see more of this guy.

tales of the unexpected about marriage

I read that Roald Dahl biography, and I learned that a bunch of his short stories (for adults) were made for TV under the name TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED. They are 15 or 20 minute shorts. Xander and I watched three. I made the blandest French onion soup. I poured more red wine into it. Maybe I bought the low sodium broth. I may have overboiled it as well. Here are the opening credits:



Anyhow, the first tale reminded me of Four Rooms, remember the part about lighting the lighter ten times in a row or else you lose yr pinky? Remember Four Rooms? Remember when Tim Roth spoke at BU and he brought that traumatizing baby rape movie and he ranted abour reporters?



I just learned from youtube that this story originated with Alfred Hitchcock, The Man from the South, on his TV show. So since the tale of the unexpected had the same name, it was a remake! An American sailor (Sheriff Harry S. Truman from Twin Peaks, younger and more narrow and handsome), his new British paramour, a British dude chillin out and a Spanish dude all sit around the same patio at a resort in Jamaica. The American offers cigarettes around and says his lighter always lights. The Spaniard says, wanna make a bet? I have a Jaguar. If you can light it 10 times in a row, you get the Jaguar. If not, I chop off yr pinky. So they all go to the Spaniard's hotel room, wind-less as it is. And they get set up. He lights it 7 times before Mrs. Spaniard comes in and shuts the whole thing down, it turns out it's not even his car to bet, it's hers, and then they show she only has TWO FINGERS!

The next one wasn't great. It was about old people having affairs together, which is interesting. One rich dude gives his mistress, who's married to a boring dentist, a mink coat-- even though it's a "i can;t sleep with you anymore" gift, she is superpsyched. In order to hide it from the dentist husband, she takes it to a pawn shop to leave it there til the next day. But he finds the ticket with no name or description and insists he cash it in since a pawn shop is no place for a woman, which I had never realized. Then he gets the box and she's all excited but it turns out there's a mink stole, not a coat. She's bummed and thinks the pawn shop dude swindled her but still happy for some mink until she bumps into the dental hygenist who is TOTALLY WEARING HER COAT.

Lastly, remember Colleen from 30 Rock?


She's much younger, I think this is all the late 70s? It looks like it. The acting is all very bad, by the way, and most of the characters are unattractive. Every episode is introduced by Roald Dahl, who, although only in his mid60s, looks frail and sickly under his little writing lap desk. Maybe because the bio made such a big deal of how active he was? But also I guess it made a big deal of how sickly to. We only hear what we want to, right?

Anyway, Elaine Stritch is bad in this as a meek wife who is happy her mean husband is dead. Until she finds out that his brain and one eye is alive and kept by a neuroscientist. Then she insists that her husband should be home with her. This is because she is going to smoke, drink, wear makeup, watch tv and party like he told her not to in his will. And she sets up mirrors so his eye can see the whole thing. She's great as the drunky free fun lady:


That's all I watched of it. Pretty neat.

EVERYTHING MUST GO

Did I tell you about all the Hoarders I watched in Vermont? Hotels are great, by the way, and so is A&E. So, I watched maybe 3 hours of Hoarders last Monday night. We took a break in the trip. Vermont closed the mountain that is in the way of New Hampshire, anyway, so it's good we found the Bennington Motor Inn.

Hoarders put the fear in me, but I'll get to that. First let me tell you about my favorite hoarder. I only remember one name out of all the shows, and that is Jo, the 70ish Texan queen of the empty nest. Jo is unique for a few reasons. Out of the 6 people (2 per show), Jo was the least emotional, like she was a total rock. Also very stubborn. The others seemed to be more squishy and all "I have a problem please help me" tears, but Jo stood steadfast, and even when they found both a possum skeleton (like the cow skeletons in the desert, just perfectly laid out there, bones only) and a LIVE possum living in an empty box in her husband's former work room, now secret possum hideout, she is not completely convinced there is a problem. She is also unique because she collects some things of value. Like, clocks, dolls, glassware, stuff like that. Also clothes. Not as much with the garbage or food. Garbage and food are big ones. But still she collects junky clocks too and her husband only has his den that isn't floor to ceiling stuff so he's about to divorce her after 50 years of marriage. And they bring in antique roadshowie types to assess the value of some of her non-junk, and it's like 10-20k!! But she's just standing there stoicly staring at the stuff they're talking about, and you can just tell that she's not gonna sell anything and this marriage is over and what if she ends up like the Collyer brothers? Buried beneath the collections? Or Grey Gardens? First living with and then eaten by possums?



Really, this show is horribly sad. So is Intervention. I watched two hours of that. I feel like I learned that divorce and/or childhood dad-less-ness and/or poor supervision and/or overpermissive/guiltridden parents leads to drunk dudes and junkie girls. One man showed his older brother and younger sister how to do heroin and they both died and he still didn't want to quit. BI guess at that point, I dunno, how sad, is all. Like, it's easy to be judgemental and say, yr an idiot, just go to rehab, well, it's actually pretty easy to stick by the judgements.

Anway. But the nice part is, the people on the show get some kind of help and counseling after the show people leave, so it's like, a helpful freakshow? Is that okay? Social work meet rubbernecking?

I'm kind of moving, maybe, you know, and the new goal is to fit everything in my car. I've got all my clothes fitting in one cute wooden trunk, maybe 3 feet by two feet, and now I have like a mountain of papers (business papers?) and records and art supplies to go through. I'm glad the clothes are done first. I also own 2 down comfortors, two quilts, a cotton blanket and about 5 throws. I'm obsessed with blankets. I found a box of old syntax homework and so far that's been the hardest thing to consider getting rid of. I did so horribly in that class but I loved it and I learned a lot and I think I squeezed a B- in there. But I have to get rid of stuff. Or else the possums will find me, right?

the whole toy story

When the movie reviewer on Talk of the Nation said that Toy Story 3 was all about death, I became VERY interested. Luckily, the day after Xmas, some cable channel was playing 1 and 2 in a row, and I found them just as the credits were rolling into the first movie, not out of it. Fortune!

These movies went very well with Bison French Onion Dip, Wavy Lays and Diet Pepsi.

I love the voices. I was glad to hear Cliff Clavin (I think) from Cheers. Tim the Tool Man Taylor was good too. I was afraid it was like Russell Crowe or something. I loved the scaredy cat dinosaur. I can't remember if the puppy shows up in 1 or 2, but I liked that. The army men are probs the favorite.

2 was okay but not as good. Like the middle Girl with Tattoo book, it seemed like a plot mover but not much else. Let's get Woody some friends. He did always look oldie and out of place next to the other toys. I loved a lot about 2, like the horse and Jessie and the mean prospector and the old tv show. But ultimately the story felt thin.

I redboxed 3. Have you seen it? I like it a lot. It was pretty dark and scary. There were times that I thought could be really awful endings, like depressing Swedish movie about death endings, but it's not like I forgot it's a kid's movie.

I guess all I really took from it, is that friends are awesome and good to hold hands with in a garbage dump and sometimes you have to have faith, i guess, in alien toys who can work heavy machinery, you should give mean teddy bears a second chance, even if they might and actually do blow the second chance, that little kids are pretty great, that joss whedon did some writing for these? what else? i feel like i waited too long to blog this. the wrinkles it put in my brain are sort of...ironed out.