tapes n tapes

intro inquiry: how do we feel about the multi-movie entry?

i'm going to do it this time because i love the title tapes n tapes.

so my friend ann gave me a vcr and this is so exciting! i have some classics on tape, like rushmore and pee wee herman. i also recently acquired marty, which is an endearing old movie about a middle-aged butcher in queens who tries to find love as he is first encouraged but then gets foiled by his needy mother. it's a nice old movie if you're in the mood for a nice old movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMP-uD8F8tc

then i watched ghost world because i was in the mood for a bratty worldview. remember when steve buscemi was in every movie? i read that thora birch gained twenty pounds for this role and you can kind of totally tell once you know that, because she moves in a weird way, like when you paralell park a new-to-you car and you're not sure how it relates spatially to the world. there are good things, like that sarcasm and authentic 70s punk looks arent great for everything. and norman on the bench. and seymour's crappy girlfriend who buys him jeans, and the racist chicken place and that awesome character actress who dated martin scorsese for a long time as the flippy art teacher. i love daniel clowes and i think the movie is close enough to the book. i also came back to how when i lived on haskell street and i was bummed out i would put on the dvd (i guess i used to own the dvd) and you could watch just the indian video and it is really great to dance around to:


next up, the shipping news! who doesn't need a little more newfoundland in their life? add to that kevin spacey (remember when he was in everything?), julianne moore, and judi dench. also cate blancett! she has amazing thighs, and you see a lot of her thighs in this movie. it's a book but i've never read it. so the story is that kevin spacey is a sad sack kid/dude/man with a crappy, mean dad who pushes him off the dock to teach him to swim and tells kp all the time how worthless kp is, and then one day cate blancett is fighting with her bf at a gas pump and sad sack kp is behind them in his car and she just leaves her bf and gets in, like this:


but she is so mean! she's sort of hot in a scary black eyeline icy lipgloss short denim skirt evil satiny shirt kind of way. they do it and he's in love and she has a baby and leaves him but not before she sells the kid on the black adoption market and after that her and her new dude go off the rails of a bridge and get pulled up dead. so the kid gets back to the sad sack, but before cb left and sold the kid and died, the sad sack's shit dad shot himself and his wife because he realized their lives were pointless, so sad sack has these urns of ashes, and then the shit dad's sister judi dench shows up with her weird irish/canadian hybrid accent and stoic manner. she's headed to the homeland in newfoundland but first she needs to visit her bro's ashes. she does that and steals them. but why? i'm still not sure. i might've peed when that thread was tied up. sad sack follows the stoic sister with the slut's kid to newfoundland, where their people are from. they get there and find the house that was dragged across ice from one craggy rock thing to another and the house has been abandoned for years and it's full of foreign stuff which sad sack eventually learns is because his ancestors were mean gross necrophiliac pirates and it's not like it's totally cool now cos he finds out his dad raped the stoic sister who is also a lesbian who's life love died of leukemia. when they share the rape and sexuality thing, it's a nice moment. the slut's kid always has visions, they call that "sensitive" in newfoundland. like, she sees the house getting torn apart by wind in her dreams, totally happened in real life too. and although sad sack had been an ink setter in america, he gets a job as a reporter in newfi and he OWNS IT. he punks pete postalweight (sp?) (rip) a bunch and that's great. there's small town intrigue and spooky stuff and family rivalry and julianne moore as a local divorce who befriends/love interests the sad sack until they end up together.

you've seen this, right? i love this movie. i go in big for craggy scenery, sad sacks and the triple threat of cb/jm/jd.

tapes n tapes! tonight is groundhog day!