hey alisa hey jenny you should watch this movie

looking back (like not dylan in the movies)

2011-06-09T05:29:00.000-07:00

You reviewed The Trotsky forever ago. This blog has been napping! I need to check that review out.

I rented it the other night with Xander. I had already seen Bridesmaids that day and was pretty laughed out but The Trotsky completely charmed me. Like a less-precious, more-pinko Rushmore. I love the part about sleeping with 18 year olds and the professor lawyer smoking pot all the time and how smart the kid is but naive and how awesome the stepmom is and how cool the little sister is and how awful and funny the brother/wife/baby team is and the dad. I guess I loved the whole movie.

I didn't get bored at all and Bridesmaids is a tough act to follow. Good recommendation! See, this blog has to wake up because it works!

am i miserable because i listen to pop music?

2011-05-17T17:25:00.001-07:00

Last night I watched High Fidelity. I guess I've done a little ex tour. It seemed appropriate. But it's okay to hate movies where people get back together, right?

Anyway, it's so fun to see people being record store snobs in movies. Record stores kind of barely exist anymore so I wonder if the snobbery is even more concentrated. I feel like everyone I know who used to work in a record store works in a bank now that all the record stores in Buffalo but two are closed. So that's where those people go.

Also, I follow John Cusack on Twitter. At least I think it's John Cusack. He's a crazy liberal. I think? If it's him, he is. But he's a crazy liberal in the way that he's passionate and unintelligible and I stopped following him because it made me uncomfortable that I always only vaguely knew what he was talking about and I knew that wasn't my fault, it was his.

High Fidelity is Chicago, too. Chicago movies, hooray!

Things I love about it are that the guys who work in the record store are so annoyingly adorable and that they make top 5 lists all the time. I love favorites. I really like the girlfriend that leaves him for the creepy ponytail guy but I also really like that they get back together out of exhaustion. I wonder how old they are? It's overall pretty yikesy.

But I like it, not sure why. Maybe because the whole movie seems dusty (is this cos it's 90s?) and uncolored or halfcolored or dullcolored? The story seems really dusty too. Record stores? Mixtapes? Oh, it's everything I love and I feel like it's all gone. It's not gone, I'm just older. I just feel weird. And all that jazz.

So anyway, do I think watching this again is a good idea? I do. If only for the sweet soundtrack and Lili Taylor and Joan Cusack and okay John Cusack and Jack Black and the bald guy and the cool moments, the moments of manufactured cool, like how John Cusack's character is always jumping over things, including the counter of his record store and a bench to wait for the bus. He could've totally walked up to the bus bench and sat down but instead he had to walk around the back and sort of jump over and sit up on the back of it, if that makes any sense. In a leather jacket. In probably his 30s.

Where is this cool factory, Alisa?

I love the 90s.

fish tank not shark tank

2011-05-04T20:26:00.000-07:00

the second movie i watched while not leaving my bed was fish tank, a british indie drama. this movie was sad and slow and totally predictable. the lead is this 15-year-old with anger and a young mom with a new boyfriend. it seems like the boyfriend is maybe too friendly and then, spoiler alert, he is and they have sex and he leaves and she finds him and he's married and she starts to kidnap his daughter but returns her and then she runs away with her gypsy boyfriend.

one of those movies about how some people have a really hard life and are trapped? it was really bleak (totally spelled that right without trying) and kind of beautiful for that reason. maybe i didn't understand this movie. maybe i'm too dumb to get art.

show those skills

2011-05-04T20:21:00.001-07:00

in an effort to not leave bed the other day i watched two instant movies. the first was skills like these. this is a comedy about three dude friends, the worker, the artist and the asshole. the artist realizes he's a bad writer and robs a bank instead. and falls in love with the teller. sillyness follows.

this was a pretty good movie. it seemed really 90s to me, but maybe because i really loved movies like this in the 90s and 00s. and, it's set in denver, which really is behind the times.

the lead artist bank robber had an afro and these crazy green eyes. like, his eyes where almost just one color with just a few specks of color. and his pupils seemed really small. he was nice to look at.

god, you couldn't pay me to live in denver.

why all the fighting

2011-05-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

so, maybe i didn't love the fighter. like, it was just what i thought would happen. i guess i was surprised that the brother stayed clean when he took his welcome back cake to the crack house. and the sister fight was amazing, it's true.

i thought mark wahlberg was really good. like, he just had to play it straight the whole time with all the crazy around him.

take me back to 1912

2011-04-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

ok, so you actually couldn't pay me to go back to 1912 england because that society was a classest mess. all of that was wonderfully apparent in downton abbey, a new bbc/masterpiece theater 7 hour show. vanessa and jenna both loved it and although i don't usually go for costume dramas, i gave it a try and couldn't stop. there's lots of repressed lust but some actual lust. lots of hidden tension, but some actual tension and plenty of fancy outfits.

do you like stuff like that? i guess i do.

good, giving and gilmore

2011-04-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

I love TV, Alisa. I love how it's all put together and how it's obvious and "quirky" and easy to get through. I love Gilmore Girls. Have you seen it? It's adorable and pretty dorky. Like, teen parents arguing over who's better, Metallica or Offspring? It's hard to believe they couldn't come up with a better pair. Radiohead v Oasis? Nirvana v Pearl Jam? Like, who cares about M and O and who's better and I'm not even sure they can count as actual rivals? That really bugged me. There is an adorable Korean teen neighbor who skanks to Rancid in the opening credits. Cutes! So there are nice nods to 90s culture. It's just another experience of missing the 90s just like with Buffy. People make snide comments about books and cutesy cultural references that sometimes don't make sense and I wish I had an example of that but I'm coming off of a migraine so maybe I should just start getting specific since maybe generalities aren't my specialty.

so the story is, there's a 16yo girl and her 32yo mom living in a quaint NE town called star's hollow. The mom runs an inn and the daughter goes to high school and the mom is flakey and silly and the daughter is silly but a little more serious. The mom ran away after getting pregnant at 16 cos her parents were rich and controlling and F THAT. she did it her own way. the dad, who shows up eventually, seems to have floated out of her life but sometimes shows back up. now her and her daughter are bfs and everyone in the town loves in each other. there's a dance teacher named miss patty who has lots of steamy dancer stories from whatever era she wouldve been young and beautiful in, there's a diner runner named luke who is gruff but obvs in loves with the mom. there's also the thing about the daughter going to a super exclusive expensive rich b/tch school and how they have to have dinner every friday with the rich controlling parents because they ahve to ask the grandparents to pay for the school. eventually with snags they become cool with each other. there's a dance where the girl's bf starts a fight with a mean rich kid, there's some teen kissing in a grocery store, there's some datey stuff with the mom and a teacher, there's some town stuff here and there. I like it. Usually I don't love the word "quirky" but it fits like a glove, you know?

I'm almost done with the first season. the mom's name is lorelai and the daughter's name is lorelai too but they call her rory for short. pretty cute.

have you seen this show? do you hate it?

jake and other drugs

2011-04-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

not gonna lie, i was really excited for love and other drugs. i've missed movies and missed jake gillenhal. he's so fucking hot and he's extra hot in this movie with some muscles but not overwhelming and so many wonderful smiles.

the plot was what you think. he's a pharmaceutical salesman and player and she's a sick, amazing, beautiful woman. they fall in love and have to work to make it work.

the best part is that it's set in 1996 and there are perfect songs for it. so so good! and, mirah in there too, which is wonderful. well rounded.

unmade beds, unmade hearts

2011-04-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

have you seen unmade beds? it's a british indie movie with young people from all different countries looking beautiful together. these people all live in an artist squat in london and live kind of great lives.

the movie follow two people living there, axl's come to london to meet his dad and vera (?) is moving past a break up and falling in love again.

great music and so much pretty!

tapes n tapes

2011-03-12T07:18:00.000-08:00

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!

sibling awesomery

2011-03-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

I love John and Joan Cusack. They are faves. Last night I fell asleep watching Gross Pointe Blank. I love this movie too. I had forgotten about how Minnie Driver is a radio DJ. I also love how there's a ten year high school reunion but everyone looks like they're in their mid-30s, just like how all the high school kids on 90210 looked like early 20s. Nice work, Hollywood.

If you know this movie really well, I apologize for the recounting. However, since I fell asleep it will be not complete, so there's that.

John Cusack is a professional killer and he has a job to do in his hometown Detroit around the same time of his high school reunion. Joan Cusack is his assistant who helps him find info and yells at people about deliveries of bullets being lost or late. His therapist who doesn't want to see him because he's afraid of him is Alan Arkin. Minne Driver is his high school sweetheart who he stood up at prom and then disappeared to join the army and eventually become a professional killer. Jeremy Priven is his old best friend who's a real estate agent now. His mom is in a loony bin because she's loony. His house is gone and in its place is a convenience store that gets blown up by an assasin who has been sent to Detroit to kill John Cusack because the Detroit job I guess he got instead of Dan Akroyd who is JC's nemesis and wants him dead. He wears all black and everyone says he looks like a gangster. When people ask him where's he's been and what he's been doing for the past ten years, he always says professional killer and no one bats an eye, at least until the point I've seen.

I think I fell asleep when they're at the reunion. I know there's a gunfight. I think I might start it at the beginning, I like it so much. It reminds me of Better Off Dead a little. Has anyone made a movie called Better Off Ted?

Townie 4L

2011-03-05T06:46:00.001-08:00

I watched The Town awhile ago but it's never too late to blog, right?

So, I really liked it. I didn't want to see it in the theatre but then with the Trashachusetts fest in my DVD player, how could I not watch this one?

First off, I totally agree about the guy from The Hurt Locker getting an Oscar nom coming from left field. Other than having a Celtics tattoo and being a run of the mill dude, he existed. Yawn.

However, I loved the messed up damaged girl (learning to love myself more) and I love Ben Affleck in this movie. I think I don't always love him. It kind of made me want to find a townie to date a little, cos I'm lonely. Maybe my last bf was a bit of a townie, so maybe I have that in the bag.

I liked that the movie made me cringe a lot, and I liked that the FBI saw the messed up lady as a possible accomplice and not immediately a victim. Have you seen the White House study about how women still make 75% of what men make? And then the op-ed in the NY Times, the Disposable Woman? It's about what reality TV does to women or how it treats women. You should read it and tell me what you think since you're the TV expert.

the mind slips sideways

2011-02-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

that title is a line from one of my favorite movies, enchanted april. maybe i should read the book. if there is a book. anyway, i went to the gene siskel film center for the first time and i went alone, which hasn't happened in a while. i went to see I Remember You, which is an uzbek film from 1985. it was good. it was dreamy and artsy in a way i didn't think central asians could be. sometimes i think art is a luxury of the upper classes, but i guess uzbekistan was a pretty developed area.

the movie's about a dying mother who wants her son to go to russia and find the grave of his father, who died during WW2. she needs some of the dirt from the grave to go on her grave. he doesn't want to do it, but she makes him. he's a vet, which i don't think they even have in the kz, and he takes a week off and takes the train to where his father was buried. the journey is interesting, filled with new people and customs. i'm not sure if the movie would have been as good if you didn't know central asia.

i learned that i still understand russian, although i needed the subtitles. i also learned that things haven't changed much since 1985. it's kind of nice. and, that uxbek men are hot, but i already knew that. this guy was a fox. there was also an nice sequence with a fox running through the snow. a real fox.

starring monsters and adrien brody's nose

2011-02-13T17:26:00.000-08:00

i loved predators! is that ok? it was mindless and had lost of glowing blood and a little suspense and hotass adrien brody talking low. i know adrien brody's kind of a sketchball since he mouthraped halle berry, but i still just love him. in predators, he's the leading badass. he's wearing long sleeves and a thick vest for most of the movie and i was wondering if he had any muscle at all. i kind of liked the idea and he didn't/couldn't put muscle on. but then his shirt is sleeveless and his arm's are pretty big. and in the end, he's shirtless and killing and covered in mud. and, he's ripped and lookin' good. i think that he wasn't sleeveless/shirtless for most of the movie because he has to work really hard to keep muscle like that one and he couldn't do it for the whole movie. i just love wiry dudes.

banksey's a genuis

2011-02-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

so, i've kind of fallen out of the art world, but exit through the gift shop really reminded me of what smart people who make art to change the world are like. i really think banksey is one of those people. i haven't paid much attention to his art, but it's pretty moving and amazing. i think it's even better than most street art. i know i'm not alone in thinking that, and that's fine.

and, there's this guy space invader in it who put up tile space invaders all over paris and then the world and in 2001 and 2002 i really loved him and took pictures of his space invaders around paris and london, so that made me feel like i was a part of something.

anyway, the movie is about this french guy from la who always video tapes everything and his cousin is space invader so he starts video taping space invader putting up his art around 1999 and then filming other street artists and eventually banksey. he becomes friend with all these guys because they need someone to video tape their work because it's gone so quickly.

then banksey becomes famous and the rest of them follow and banksey wants this guy to finish the documentary about street art that he's been making, but it turns out this guy just films and then saves the tapes but doesn't watch them.

so, the guy does make a horrible documentary kind of thing, and banksey wants the tapes so he can make his own and tells the guy to go back to la and make street art (which he's started to do a little) and have a show.

so, the friend guy takes him really seriously and sets up a huge show of his work and hires people to make his work and just jumps in without any talent or experience. and, the la show is a huge success and this guy, now mr. brainwash, makes a shitton of money.

but, all the street artists, including banksey, don't think his art is good and that he has no meaning behind it and they kind of hate him.

but, the question is, is it true or is it a banksey prank to show how lame artworld people are and how you can just make someone without talent famous. it could go either way. i took banksey seriously that he wasn't happy with what happened, but he's kind of a liar.

and, i can't really tell that mr. brainwash's art is bad. i guess i know it's bad compared to the real thing, but it's so hard for me to tell. modern art doesn't usually move me deeply, so the pleasure has to come from other places and some of his art give me some of that pleasure.

sorry for the long post.

holy moly

2011-02-06T19:51:00.000-08:00

the other day was a two movie day starting with heartbreaker and ending with holy rollers, which is a based-on-a-true story about Hasidic jews who smuggle ecstasy into the states. that kid jessie eisenberg? plays lead and he's ok. not the fast talking moop he usually plays. there are some sad moments and some action moments but mostly it's about how people feel stuck in the life they were born into and can't always get out.

not so heartbreaking

2011-02-06T19:47:00.001-08:00

it takes some time for me to watch movies with subtitles, but heartbreak is soo so worth the reading. it's this great french movie about a brother/sister/husband team who make a living breaking up unhappy couples. the man seduces the woman and allows her to see that she's unhappy and leave her husband. they don't break up couples that are happy.

the heartbreaker is the sexy-in-french way little russel brandt. i love him. his sister and her husband are great. of course they're asked to break up a couple that seem actually happy and of course he falls in love with her, vanessa paradiso, johnny depp's other.

this movie had humor, action and romance. i just loved it.

salt that wound

2011-02-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

did you hear how originally the main in salt was supposed to be a man but it feel through and they cast angelina jolie? it's true, which made me want to see the movie and watch the whole thing thinking about how it should be a man. and, chris and jill saw it on a date recently and jill said it was amazing but mostly she was glad to be away from her kid for a few hours.

so, salt is a badass who might be a russian spy or might be an american spy and someone took her husband and she's working her ass of to get him back.

this movie was impossible to predict and i watch a lot of movies and tv and could pretty much write any of them. there are twists and turns and unexplained ends but mostly there's a lot of action and freaky skinny jolie with her big lips. it's awesome.

my kinda town

2011-02-06T19:37:00.001-08:00

so, as i've mentioned, i fucking loved the town. i asked aaron about it and he said that he thought, "ugh, another movie glorifying violence." and then realized that's totally what his mother would say.

ben affleck really did it up for this one. i love that he was already off drugs. i love that his dad was such a shit and chris cooper, whom i love. i thought a lot about if i would have fallen in love with him like rebecca hall did. i'm not sure i could have. i'm a snob, you know. but maybe because she was sad and damaged too.

and, i love jeremy reiner. i didn't think he was totally amazing in this because he didn't have much of a part and i'm not sure why he got the oscar nomination, but i love him and am glad for any press he gets. he was really amazing as a totally fucked up fuck.

i really loved how smart they both were and even how smart the cop guy was. i felt like john ham was maybe miscast because he wasn't a very good badass, but liz pointed out that he's just a badass for his job and it was a good contrast.

and, i thought boston looked really good and it really showed how fucked up the neighborhood are there.

oh, and i was happy that it didn't end really horribly. i'm a sucker for a happy ending and that ending was happy the right amount.

wolves rule

2011-02-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

I guess wolves are pretty private animals, something to do with most of them being killed to protect livestock and so wolves, very afraid of people. And so it's been hard to get the deal on them. That's why this dude sort of put together a pack of wolves as puppies and hung out with them and then released them into a sanctuary to study and film them from afar. It's not really from afar though. This dude and his wife get pretty close, like she even crawls into the den to check out puppies when some get squeezed out. And the alpha wolf is total buds with the dude. Lucky people! I learned that wolves are supersocial and familyobsessed but vicious and mean but also love to play. I don't like Discovery Channel documentaries. They're not as good as the BBC ones. I'm a snob?

not so tough

2011-02-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

I rented Martyrs but couldn't watch it because the trailer terrified me. I'm not saying I'll never watch it. I can't remember how you are with scary but here's the trailer if you think you can handle it. Maybe it's no big deal? Ugh, shudder, ugh.

jennifer's body

2011-02-05T07:43:00.000-08:00

I was like a really big Hole fan when I was about 14. There's an awesome song on their second album called Jennifer's Body. This movie is a horror movie about indie bands, satan and the fucked up relationship girls have with each other in high school. The lady who wrote Juno wrote it. I wonder if she ever stripped to a Hole song?

Have you seen Big Love? I'm trying to remember what else the daughter is in, but in JB she plays a nerd with a boyfriend and a best friend who is a not nice person and also a cheerleader.

Okay, I realize I'm gonna hafta tell you the whole story, so this is the spoiler alarm ringing!

It starts out totally sweet with the nerd in jail and you're all, I thought the cheerleader is the demonmurderer, what's this?

The cheerleader is the demonmurderer but the nerd is the demonmurderermurderer. The cheerleader and the nerd go see an indie band in their town called Devil's Kettle. Yikes! The indie band sacrifices the cheerleader who says she's a virgin at the Devil's Kettle waterfallbottomless pit because they get so sick of touring and trying to make it that they get into occult shit to make it happen for themselves. Anyway, she's so not a virgin and so she ends up becoming a scary demon that vomits tar and eats quarterbacks. It's not okay but not too bad until she goes after the nerd's boyfriend and starts messing with the nerd cos the nerd is onto her game. The nerd also found the occult section at the library, just like the indie band, so she finds out the story. And then she sets about taking the cheerleader demon down at the big dance. There're some good parts, I enjoyed it, it got pretty silly and dumb but at times was selfaware. I like the satanic indie band thing. They did get famous. I like the girllovehate thing. I like that a Hole song played at the end but I was bummed that it was Violet and not Jennifer's Body. Anyway, the nerd wins but all anybody ever sees is that she kills the cheerleader. Bummer for the nerd. She gets some demon powers though, for the kill, so in addition to spitting on everyone at juvy and kicking everyone else, she can also float. Neat, huh?

heartbreaking cartoons

2011-01-29T15:50:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-24T16:06:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-24T16:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-15T07:51:00.000-08:00

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)

2011-01-13T07:41:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-01-13T07:16:00.001-08:00

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

2011-01-11T07:45:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-11T07:40:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-11T07:29:00.000-08:00

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?

2011-01-08T07:09:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-05T07:37:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

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.

I'd pay $3 for a pickled Buffalo tongue right now.

2010-12-30T16:19:00.000-08:00

That might not be my favorite line in the movie, but it was such a good one, it stuck with me. So I saw True Grit without seeing any trailers or commercials, just like you. I like to read reviews, and I like to watch trailers after the fact or in the movie theater but I don't like the commercial versions because they are too short.

You're totally right. True Grit is either almost perfect or perfect. The kid-- amazing! Did you hear about how they auditioned 15000 kids or something? She carried the movie. Also, sometimes I forget what a great actor Jeff Bridges is. He's, like, seamless. I looked for cracks in the Rooster character, but it was impenetrable.

I liked how it started and ended with trains. I loved how she was an old spinster. I loved the scene right before she falls in the snake part, where her and the texas ranger watch rooster come up on the four dudes. Everything about it was so great. I love the Coen brothers.

EVERYONE'S SWEET GIRL

2010-12-30T15:50:00.000-08:00

I loved Black Swan, I think. It's hard to tell.

At first, I was all, DANCER IN THE DARK.

But then I loved the way it messed with me, like how I was all relieved when she was having what everyone seems to be calling lesbian hate sex with the girl from that 70s show, like awesome rebellion pleasure let go, yeah!

But then it never happened. And then she murders the girl with a mirror shard and proceeds to perform after that, omg, that was like, holy shit, but then that never happened. I mean, she stabbed herself, she was always scratching, stabbing, picking. When winona ryder stabbed her own face, that was incredible. It's been awhile since I've reacted so physically to a movie. I was curled up in a ball, rubbing my fingernails a lot. Finger/toenails I feel are a big horror thing for people. Good one, Arnovsky (sp?)

I hated how she kept seeing her own face on everyone else's, that was really lame, and I hated the mirror stuff. yawners. I loved how her arms turned to wings at the end-- bjork video! I loved how she had stabbed herself and she was going to die. I loved that. I didn't love all of the melodrama. I didn't love the histrionics. The heavy breathing soundtrack and cracking bones and toenails and bloody nails, all that, gross! Yet I loved that! I loved all the pink and white but then she was so competitive and naive, like not all artists are all dark and broody. Also, ugh, her mother throwing/not throwing the cake away, so great! Her mother was a monster, she was sort of surrounded by monters, but then she's a monster, so it looks like it's all monsters out there, kiddo. The movie made me think about this Degas exhibit I saw once that was all paintings and sculptures of horses and ballerinas and how they were both movement and muscle and animals.

this is nice:

but then bjork did this:

so i guess we all have it in us. actually, i hope we don't all have schizophrenia. it's good to be competitive. it may even be good to have wings. but schizophrenia? no thanks.

don't turn yr back on me

2010-12-30T15:17:00.000-08:00

Another day, another Errol Morris documentary. This is the one that made Herzog eat his shoe. He bet Morris, if you make a documentary about a pet cemetary, I will EAT MY SHOE. And so he did, and then he did. Gross, right?

What's nice about the late 70s is the clothes that people wear. We have some great patterns and strips to see in this documentary. Not to mention facial hair, awkward hair, smelly looking fabrics and cute cars. This is sort of a muted scene, but it's nice anyhow:

The deal is that this guy in North Dakota buries his faithful dog when he's a kid, near his family farm, and he lets other people who loved their faithful animals and don't want to send them to the rendering plant bury their animals there too. [The rendering plant and the guy who runs it are the foil to this guy and the pet cemetary. The rendering plant and the guy who runs it don't seem all that bad, but next to this hero, he looks like a major a*hole who's just trying to do his job. The zoo comes out shady, as well.] He does the same in California but as like a business. But then the lease is up on the land in California, and all the graves have to be moved. Then they move it, some people are miffed, some not as much, some lady wears a fur to the exhumation and that makes another lady mad, and then either another family takes it over or something or it's another pet cemetary (I fell asleep or daydreamed through some of it, the 70s are almost always out of focus to me and require special effort, for some reason this does not apply to The Godfathers. maybe cos they're so beyond great. anyway!), anyway, then it's a father and his two sons who run the pet cemetary and it's called Bubbling Well, which is a gruesome name for a cemetary, right? Yikes, yucks.

Then there's lots of interviews with pet owners and the father and the mother and their two sons. The father wants to retire soon. The mother connived to get both sons back in town. The older son burns out in the insurance business and brings his annoying motivational-speaker personality to the business. But he gets there after his broken-hearted younger brother, so the motivational speaker is the lowest man on the totem pole and he doesn't like that. The younger brother seems mellow. He lives near the pet cemetary, maybe they all do, but he lives alone and he has a nice speech about playing guitar. Then he does this and it is amazing:

How could you not rent this?

bored to life

2010-12-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

Isn't it perfect that after you told me that yours and peter's thing about adulthood is being bored and lonely and then I rent bored to death which I think you and my mom, the tv twins, have also talked up? Is that perfect? I project a lot. I wish that meant I got more done, really it just means I think about things and get nothing done. I have nothing to show for anything.

Although, I watched Disc 2 of the first season of Bored to Death this afternoon. I love it! I hope the videostore gets Disc 1 in so I can watch that one while I clean/pack/organize tomorrow. The videostore has a deal for Wednesdays: 4 movies (can't be new releases, which is fine, there's so much to see), 7 days, for 7 dollars! Killer, right? Okay, they just called and Disc 1 is in! I'm, like, live blogging! I really want to live blog a movie sometime. I will get my computer fixed next year, I promise myself.

I love Bored to Death. Do you remember I used to live in that neigborhood? So that's nice. I recognize a lot of things, which I love. Also, love Ted Danson. Love the episode where he decides to try bisexuality and he talks to the male prostitute (Conrad from Weeds, so great!) about books and movies. And the boxing match. And Brighton Beach! I'm excited for Disc 1. I like Zach Gali--etc. too.

I love the quirk of it, the Brooklyn-ness, the literary-ness, the mystery-ness, I guess it's got everything? I always thought Brighton Beach was too far of a subway ride too. It's nice we got to drive there.

i wanna go away

2010-12-30T14:58:00.000-08:00

At some point during Xmas vacation, my mom watched Away We Go and I happened to go into her room while she was watching it and it was the part with Maggie Gyllenhall and the fight about the stroller and even though I had no interest in seeing it when it came out (sometimes I avoid things that I think I marketed directly for me, you know? it's lame because usually I end up liking them. marketing works. I should know that by now. maybe even be grateful?), it looked pretty good and i liked the nick-drake-esque soundtrack and i like all the people in it, so when my mom said it's good and talked it up, i decided i should see it soon.

so i saw it. i really liked it. i love allison janney and catherin o'hara. i'd like to see them someday have a scene together, they're both so right on and hilarious. of course maya rudolph and jim from the office were adorable and have the kind of relationship everyone wants, right? in the making of thing, they talked about how the writers have a shorthand between them and they gave that to the characters and that was awesome. i love the shorthand, even between friends i love the shorthand. it makes things more fun and go quicker, right?

can you imagine dating the same person you dated in college? it seems nice onscreen but whoa, so much time has passed and will pass. anyway, yeah, it seems awesome. i watched the making of featurette and i learned that most of the movie was filmed in CT. so they squeezed montreal, phoenix, miami and madison out of CT. the filmmaking illusion machine is totally amazing. i love it!

cowboy clever

2010-12-30T07:31:00.000-08:00

so, i loved true grit. i've since seen a couple commercials on tv and i'm glad i didn't see anything before going to the movie because the commercials are alright, but they don't really set the movie up right.

peter sent this blog about the lack of contractions in the movie and how that's not really period accurate but just helps to make the dialogue sounds old. i loved the language. i loved how hard you had to focus to get everything and how funny some of the lines were.

i also loved how totally awesome the little girl was. the whole horse thing was spectacular and really gave me something to work towards. i need more grit in my life and i'm gonna get it!

classic canadian cartoon

2010-12-29T11:48:00.000-08:00

As you know, I watched/finished A Series of Unfortunate Events last night. Although the drive to and from Buffalo to Maine was not a series of unfortunate events, returning to my gloomy house in Portland did seem slightly unfortunate, and although still I had not necessarily enjoyed this movie enough to finish it the first time I started it, just before holiday travel, I thought, second chances are sometimes a good idea, and usually always with movies. And so, as you know, I watched/finished aSoUE last night.

That's what Jim Carrey reminds me of in this movie. I've seen Eternal Sunshine so many times, love it!, that I've become accostomed to that Jim Carrey. I remember thinking his 90s movies were funny or else really bad, depending on the movie, anyway, after watching the Making Of featurette on the ES DVD, I just think, maybe I learned that Jim Carrey is kind of a jerk? I'm excited to see I Love You Phillip Morris, though, aren't you?

The second time I really liked it, despite my casting criticisms. Like, the children are too adult looking and beautiful. They don't look very much like children, with the exception of the baby. But then they grew on me because they're all really great. I was excited that Jennifer Coolidge was part of the theatre troop. I love her in this, she is so great:

I loved Meryl Streep in it and whoever is the snake uncle. That snake story was so great, I was sorry when he died. What else? I dunno. The marriage play was amazing. That eye stuff was intriguing. I wonder, will they ever make more movies? I guess I should read the books.

Although I liked the movie, ultimately, I do wish it had been all like the end credits because that stuff: loved it the most!

tom fucking cruise

2010-12-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

i got the movie knight and day because it looks fun and i'm not sorry at all. even though tom cruise is batshit crazy these days, i still have a soft spot for him and knight and day brings out the best of tom cruise, it's like his character from magnolia, he's intense and totally in control and a cartoon.

knight and day seems to be about a rouge secret agent (cruise) who is running around like a crazy person, killing people and crashing planes. cameron diaz is just so pretty and she's hardly wearing any make up, which is nice. she does scream too much and seems too flaky and dumb, but she works things out and takes care of herself and really pulls it together in the end. so, there isn't gender equality, but there is a balance that i respect.

i liked this movie too much.

too much make up, drew

2010-12-29T11:09:00.000-08:00

i was really excited for the movie going the distance to come out. it's kind of sick about how much i was looking forward to it because i like structure in my life and i like things to look forward to.

it held up pretty well. it's about justin long and drew barrymore falling in love while she's in town for six weeks and then trying to make it work long distance.

there are good side kicks in charlie from it's always sunny in philidelphia, floyd from 30 rock and christian applegate. and, drew barrymore is still just so fucking awesome and cute, who would not want to make a relationship work with her?

i'm such a sucker.

my mickey rourke

2010-12-29T10:57:00.000-08:00

i really have a mickey rourke problem. like, i'm way too attracted to him now when he's all plastic and creepy and gross. but, there's something about him. i saw diner a long time ago before he made his come back and he just looked like bruce willis but less good looking. so, i watched the pope of greenwich village, which is from 1984, making mickey rourke 32 in the movie. he's interesting young, but i'm still really attracted to him. he's a lot like logan from veronica mars.

the pope of greenwich village has mickey rourke as an italian, new york guy working and stealing from a restaurant, dating a girl and working very hard on his look. his cousin, eric roberts (julia robert's half brother, i think) ropes mickey into a plan to steal money from a safe, which slowly totally blows up in their face with the mob and eric losing his thumb and everyone losing all kinds of things.

mickey really stays almost silent the whole movie but he has this amazing power behind him. there's a strong contrast between him and his cousin because the cousin talks all the time and seems really dumb and mickey manages to not seem dumb.

there are some great lines about wasps out growing mickey and about how it's harder to be honest than to be a thief.

i don't know if i'd like this movie if it wasn't mickey rourke.

is she the right one

2010-12-29T10:53:00.001-08:00

i finally watched let the right one in. i'm bad at watching movies with subtitles sometimes. but, i watched this one and it was pretty good. i know you love it and plenty of other people love it too, but i found it pretty slow. like, it would have been better as a half hour short. but, i liked the parts when things happened.

i thought the end was really violent. peter made the book sounds better than the movie, so i'll have to give that a try.

breaking up is hard to do

2010-12-29T10:47:00.000-08:00

sorry so much blogging. i have not been doing much besides watching movies.

so, i watched breaking upwards because it looked kind of funny. it's written and directed by the two people who star in it. it's probably like tiny furniture because it's about being young and unsure in nyc. peter watched some of it and said that these two people got to make a movie because they're both so good looking. which is funny because they're both pretty jewish and good looking, but not in a normal way. they're both cute, the guy more cute and the girl more sexy.

this movie is about how hard it can be to break up and this couple is taking off days and stuff, but ultimately break up. there's a joke in it about how they're breaking up like lesbians.

i liked this movie alright. at one point the woman states that she doesn't like him when he's around but really misses him when he's not. that's how i feel about peter a lot of the time and it was nice to see it.

julia roberts is paid to laugh

2010-12-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

i read eat prey love in the kz and it was interesting because the woman writing the memoir is annoying and not likable to me at all, but the things she was doing and the people she met i liked a lot. so, it's an odd mix.

eat prey love is a about a writer, elizabeth, who goes through a nasty divorce and gets money to write a book about going to italy for four months to learn italian, going to india to practice at an ashram for four months and then going to bali to hang out with this old medicine man for four months.

it's all about this annoying, unlikable woman trying to find balance and happiness. but, she loves a lot. she has her husband, then a boyfriend, then a whole 8 months without anyone and then she's in deep deep love again. fuck love.

the movie wasn't that good, but it had it's moments. the book's better.

move over lindsey lohan

2010-12-29T10:23:00.000-08:00

easy a got a lot of stars on netflix and i had high hopes, even though i'm trying to not watch so many teen movies. easy a is about a girl in high school (emma stone) who tells her friend she had sex with a college guy, the whole school learns about it, she kind of likes the attention and the looks, her gay friend asks her to pretend to have sex with him so he'll get picked on less and, quickly, emma stone moves into bustier with a scarlet a wearing maddness and everyone in her high school notices. she pretends to do all kinds of things with different guys and they give her gift cards.

of course, it all gets old and blows up in her face and she realizes she does not want to be thought of as a slut and works on fixing everything.

there are some really funny lines and a hot guy from gossip girl. mostly, it was annoying because no one really cares about anyone that much and it's stupid to pretend high school is any other way.

it's a trotsky life

2010-12-29T10:17:00.001-08:00

i didn't even know about this canadian movie called the trotsky. it's stars that kid who's in all the judd apatow movies, jay something. so, his name is leon b...., which was leon trotsky's real name and this high school kid is convinced that his the reincarnation of leon trotsky and his life will follow the same course that trotsky's did.

this involves attempts are unionizing thing and dating an older woman.

mostly, this movie is totally charming. it's canadian and that makes the people more real and normal and wonderful. it made me really want to move to canada and it also made me want to have a 17 1/2 year old passionate boyfriend.

paint it black swan

2010-12-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

i loved black swan! i loved how natalie portman was fragile but strong. i loved that that 70s show girl was perfectly cast as sexy but girl-next-door. i loved the creepy sound effects. i loved that the ballet director was sexual and creepy but didn't actually rap her or anything. i loved the ending and how everything was resolved although still fucked up.

but, mostly i loved that it it really showed how crazy jealousy and competition can make a person. i feel like that so often because i have so much internal anxiety and jealousy and i feel like i'm always being ranked and judged against other people and all those feelings make me feel crazy and horrible. black swan was a movie version of those feelings and even by showing and the bringing the internalness out in the world, i feel better. so the next time i'm freaking out and don't feel like i measure up, i'll think about what that feeling did to natalie portman and i'll work on feeling better.

i also loved that it wasn't about making a relationship work because that's what everything is about.

2010-12-21T16:14:00.001-08:00

the kids are fine but the adults suck

2010-12-20T09:34:00.000-08:00

i'm not sure i'm smart enough to understand the kids are all right. did you see it? i don't think you blogged about it, but i'll have to look.

i think what i missed is how mark ruffalo is the bad guy. i understand that he had an affair with one of the moms and he wanted her to leave the other mom and transplant they family to him, but he was in love and in love with having a family and, sure, he cheated a little because he wasn't around for the first 18 years and he'd only known them from a few weeks, but i think he just got a little swept up in the moment.

you need to see it and explain it to me because i'm not sure.

it also bothered me that when he wants to start a family, he doesn't even think about doing that with his hot hosts/sex friend. she seemed really hurt and i think it's because she would like to start a family with him and he didn't even think of doing that with her. is it true that guys have the madonna/whore thing?

your boy a

2010-12-20T09:29:00.000-08:00

i got the british movie Boy A because it stars your boyfriend and it got a lot of stars on netflix. i've learned that andrew garfield made sadass movies where he has hot sex.

andrew just got out of prison for murdering a little girl when he was a minor. his social worker has him pick a new name and gets him a job and a place to live and works to convince him that he's not the murderer anymore and he deserves happiness, even though people want to kill him. he was a minor, so no one knows his name and there aren't adult pictures of him.

he's a little strange. he had a hard childhood, his best friend was a psychopath, and he spend most of his life in prison. he's quiet and awkward, but he's working and making some friends (guys are so easy) and dating a girl and things are moving a long. until they aren't, of course.

i wasn't sure how i liked the movie, but i kept thinking about it after i watched it and it really stayed with him. sometimes i don't like sad movies because i don't like to feel sad, but i understand that it can be important to feel sad and simple to feel, so, because of that, i liked this movie.

forget the riches

2010-12-20T09:22:00.001-08:00

i needed some tv to watch and i went with eddie izzard's series the riches. it also has minnie driver. it's funny because they're both british but they're playing american travelers, or gypsies.

so, minnie driver has been in prison for two years and eddie and their three kids pick her up and take her home to their traveler camp. she comes from a long line of travelers and is kind of traveler royalty. but, eddie realizes that the travelers are mean, rude, stupid and boring and wants to get out of that life, so he steals the family bank (the cut of the money the temporary leader takes from everyone) and leave. while running, this car goes off the road (not their fault) and the two people die. so, they take over these people's lives (mr and mrs rich). this is not a comedy.

i guess it's kind of good because it's about conning your way into everything and how everyone's a liar, even if they're not completely lying like these guys. but, mostly it's too serious and i spend too much time holding my breathe and waiting for everything to go horrible wrong. it's too much and i haven't watch any more after my initial hours of watching it.

not so super troopers

2010-12-20T09:16:00.000-08:00

have you seen super troopers? i had not seen it until the other day. i'm always looking for the funny and people told me the funny could be found with super troopers, so i gave it a shoot.

it's funny, but not that funny. like, there are a little too many dude jokes or no jokes at all.

it's about the state troopers of new hampshire (i think) who are fuck ups and jokers and loosing funding so they're trying to make a big drug bust so they can keep their jobs. they do have these funny games they play of people they pull over to fuck with them. like, one guy bet the other that he couldn't say meow ten times while talking to a guy they pulled over. it's really funny when someone says meow instead of now or something else. that was pretty good.

but, overall, i didn't love it.

shit you not, sherlock

2010-12-20T09:08:00.000-08:00

so, the BBC has a new series of sherlock holmes episodes called simple sherlock that are set in modern england. it's kind of amazing how well sherlock holmes and the whole thing lend themselves to modern life.

vanessa and npr recommended them and i watched them all on a day i should have been finishing my school work. luckily there are only three episodes at about an hour and half each.

watson is played by the british jim from the office, and he's really wonderful. he's this great mix of old-fashioned and charming. holmes is played by a kind of funny looking guy with super pale blue eyes. there are mysteries and holmes amazes people, but some people hate him because they think he's a psychopath and there are some gay jokes, but seriously, watson and holmes totally loved each other.

the show is slick and mysterious with little jokes and lovely london. i can't wait for more.

teense stop me

2010-12-20T09:04:00.001-08:00

i need to stop watching teen movies. i just want them to be good and sometimes they are really good, but usually they're dumb, slow and boring. latest example: angus, thongs and the perfect snog. it's british and based on a ya book, so i thought it would be better, but no dice.

it wasn't horrible, it was cute and funny sometimes. it's about a teen-age girl who wants to kiss a guy, duh. she has a big noise and is a little bit of a dork, but she's also a planner and keeps working out ways to get his attention.

in the end, it all works out. seriously, please stop me. angus was a big, funny cat, which is good.

oh russell, too much hairspray

2010-12-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

i have a new, strong love for russell brand and a comedy special of his is on instant and i pretty much loved it. he's just so smart and funny and sexy. he talks about how he's a scarecrow, but that's my type.

he does wear too much makeup and his hair is too much, but otherwise he's great.

he makes a lot of jokes about how people who hate gays are the sucks and other things. really, i just love rock and roll.

annoying divorced men

2010-12-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

i watched white on rice as a late night relaxer. it's a comedy about a japnese guy who moves in with his sister and brother-in-law in the us after his wife leaves him. he's forty and has never really had a job and is a pretty annoying, dumb guy, but maybe in a charming way. he annoys his brother-in-law but his sister loves him. he falls in love with his niece (not related) although she doesn't give a shit about him.

the best part about this movie was the quiet view of everyday struggles to enjoy life and family, the nerdy, independent son and that the side kick from hero was in it. i missed that guy, even though i forgot about him until this movie.

i'm always looking for a good comedy and this wasn't really great, but it wasn't bad.

celtic secrets

2010-12-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

so, i actually had to make a list of movies to blog about because i'm so behind. what a mess.

secret of kells is this short (less than an hour) animated movie about a celtic legend of the book of kells. it's animated in a really wonderful style that's kind of a mix of power puff girls and yellow submarine (two things i love). the first time i watched it, i fell asleep of a little bit and when i woke up, i was confused. so, i rewatched the part i slept through, but i was still a little confused. but, i like that confusion. like, there are things we will never understand about other cultures and traditions.

i just read the first book in a series called the secret of the immortal nicholas flamel and these books work in all kinds of legends and gods and traditions. i feel like secret of kells will make more sense after i've read all these books.

bad movies need love too

2010-12-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a bad movie. It's like Heathers with vampires, which I would expect to be great, except it's not that smart or dark or funny. There are loads of lame jokes. I can't even remember any. But what I like is that the whole power thing still comes through. I like the strong cheerleader thing, I guess. Girl power, and whatnot. I like Kristy Swanson, she's such a good ditz, and Donald Sutherland is a good patriarch type person as her Watcher. There's no Watcher Council or anything, he keeps getting reborn with all Watcher knowledge, so a lot is different from the series. I'm so glad they remade it. Anyway, besides the snotty silly dialogue, the best part of this movie is all the bit parts that people who would get way more famous later have. Well, Pee Wee is not the villain but he's like the Vice President Villain, but I guess he was already famous. Hilary Swank plays one of Buffy's bitchy friends who gets nasty when Buffy starts missing chearleading practice to kill vampires. Ricky Lake is a waitress in a bar, she waits on David Arquette and Luke Perry. Luke Perry becomes friends with Buffy after she accepts her fate as the Slayer. David Arquette is his friend who becomes a vampire. They're sort of like Christian Slater in Heathers, both wearing grubby clothes and I think they're mechanics, so they're not as dangerous or as cool. Ben Affleck is a basketball player on the team that plays Buffy's high school team and during that game one of her team's players comes out as a vampire. I think that's it? Oh, Liz Smith has a cameo, she's a gossip columnist I think, as a reporter, at the end. I hope I didn't forget anyone. See, one of my favorite games is spotting people or character actors and naming other things they've been in. This is especially awesome with TV, especially HBO shows, because a lot of the same people from like The Sopranos or Sex in the City also show up in Six Feet Under or something.

I wonder what the new Buffy movie will be like.

never enough wiig

2010-12-18T06:46:00.000-08:00

last night I watched some TV and the movie MacGruber. Have you seen the MacGruber skits on SNL? well, they made a movie. I thought, oh, let's not get high hopes because, outside of Wayne's World, SNL movies usually blow. I'm not saying MacGruber was totally great, but it was better than anything Rob Schneider has ever been in. The story is the MacGruber's wife (Maya Rudolph) was killed by Val Kilmer (when did his face get so fat?) on their wedding day so they're mortal enemies. MacGruber's been living in a monastary for ten years and everyone thinks he's dead until Cunth (haha?-- that's val kilmer) gets a nuclear weapon and the us govt is all, only you MacGruber can defeat Cunth and save the world so leave the monastary and go kick ass. MacGruber headbutts Ryan Phillipe and gets Kristin Wiig (she was his wife's best friend) to join them on their search. The phrase "let's go pound some Cunth" pops up a lot. It's funny? There are some funny parts. Like a heartfelt scene where Ryan Phillipe is all, how come Cunth killed yr wife? And MacGruber tells this story all serious and sad about how Cunth and Maya Rudolph were married and Maya Rudolph was pregnant and she started banging MacGruber and she left Cunth and had an abortion and MacGruber is all, that's why he took my first love away. So silly. Super silly sex scenes, reminding me of how Pee Wee Herman dies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'll blog about that too, cos I also just watched that one. But here's what it was like:

Is posting videos annoying or helpful? Is it cheating? Let's keep it honest.

fanny och alexander

2010-12-16T06:40:00.000-08:00

You love TV so you might love Fanny and Alexander. We talked about it on chat. It's so beautiful, and there are four episodes. I think they're each about 70 minutes? I'm not totally sure. There's also a truncated movie version which loses all the best parts in my opinion, although it's still good but don't watch that one first. Or I guess you could. It's your life.

The story is that Fanny and Alexander are the children of some theater people in Sweden. When their actor father dies, their mom gets really lonely and marries the bishop that's been on her since her husband's death. So the kids go from a jubilant happy rich red colorful dramatic and loving house with giggling servants and lots of children to a big cold stark white walled stone house with mean servants and a creepy dying aunt and no children, only ghosts. The bishop is mean, the mom realizes her mistake, and wants a divorce but the bishop refuses. He is so terrible! So the mom's first mother in law has been having an affair forever with a Jewish puppeteer named Isak and he uses magic to hide the children in a trunk that he buys from the bishop. Then the mom doses the bishop with sleeping pills and makes her escape. Finally she returns to the theater. The important parts of this movie are the ghosts. The dead father, the bishop's dead children, there are others I think, not to mention the character of Ishmael, who is Isak's nephew (although the character is played by a woman, which could also be a theater reference, right?) and is locked up in the puppetshop and is dangerous but the danger is that he can make people see the future. One of the dead father's brothers is a charming, windbag philanderer and the other is a whiner with a German wife who he's so mean to. The matriarch of the dead father's family is a former actress and super rich, I guess they're all superrich. Sweden, 1907. So interesting. I wonder if everything really was as red as it is in this movie. I love the theater parts. I love how when the father dies, he's performing as the ghost in Hamlet. So much to love.

good morning!

2010-12-16T06:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this is the second time I've reposted something that I've posted on Facebook. I've been on a videoposting frenzy on Facebook. I love videos. YouTube is so great.

I watched Good Morning by Ozu this week. Ozu is a Japanese filmmaker who I guess was way more influenced by American films than Kirosawa, I guess. He makes movies about the middle class a lot and families a lot. Floating Weeds is a good one about a Kabuki troupe. This one is about a neighborhood in a Japanese village. Mostly it's families with kids and the only people with a TV are a young couple. The girl used to sing in a caberet, oh dear. So all the kids in the neighborhood, there doesn't seem to be any little girls, just boys, they all go to watch TV at this couples house. They're skipping English lessons and the parents don't like it at all. The parents try to stop the kids but fail. Finally, two brothers, the ones in the video, go on a hunger strike until their parents buy them a TV. Meanwhile, there's gossip and possibly some love action happening between some single people who need to get married just like everyone else, jobs or no jobs. The kids get their TV in the end. Three cheers for civil unrest meets child demands!

Cat Saves the Day

2010-12-16T06:29:00.001-08:00

After napping after Reds, I watched Coraline while I ate chicken noodle soup and waited to go to the radio station. I've listened to some audiobooks of Neil Gaiman's, and I heard the I think Terry Gross interview about this movie forever ago. I did see it in 3D but when I saw it on the library shelf, it appealed to me. I like the plastic doll feeling of the animation. I like all the yellow and blue. I like that a cat saves the day. I like the part where Coraline turns her pillows into parents when they're missing in the evil spider witch's web. I'm not sure exactly what the moral of the story is. Coraline gets mad that her parents are too busy working on a gardening catalog to pay attention to her, which is worse because they've all just moved to a new state and the creepy Pink Palace apartment building, but she has a nice Russian acrobat neighbor and some weird former-performer ladies who stuff their dead dogs and eat hand stretched taffy as other neighbors. So a kid gives her a doll that looks just like her, she finds a tiny door in the wall and when she goes through it she finds her life but better, like her parents on this side of the door fall all over her and make her cakes and mango milkshakes but they have buttons for eyes and eventually want to button her eyes as well. This is gruesome. I will not dwell on how gruesome it is. More and more she wants to be on the other side of the door, where things are nicer and more delicious. The cat is always like, kid, it's a trick, you know, but Coraline doesn't listen until it's too late. The cat is the one that helps her out of the jam when the spider lady traps her and then kidnaps her parents. The better life on the other side of the door was all a game to feed the spider lady, how scary! She gets out in the end and frees spirits and saves her parents and then is happy to be not trapped by the evil spider lady anymore. So is the point that good things are fake? Love your parents? Listen to cats?

epic love for the socialist set

2010-12-16T06:18:00.000-08:00

I worked for about 12 hours on Tuesday (whine and cheese) and then had to work sort of early on Wednesday but also was done by noon so the plan was to go home, get under my two down comforters, put a movie in my tiny personal pan dvd player with its little screen, hook it up to the bose speakers because the player's speakers are the worst, and nap in and out until it was time to do something. I picked up Reds and Coraline at the library where I was working, and Reds seemed the obvious choice due to its length.

I didn't nap all that much at all, I napped after, and ended up watching the whole thing. Diane Keaton is so amazing. Warren Beatty is pretty amazing too, and it's always fascinating when a star is directing. How does tht work? He's in almost every scene. And behind it, too. Jack Nicholson was good too as Eugene ONeil. Diane Keaton is Louise Bryant and she leaves her husband in Portland Oregon to go to NYC with Warren Beatty who is a radical journalist named Jack Reed (Reid?). They live in Greenwich Village, which seems so much nicer when it's less nice. She doesn't find anything specific to do and she hates his friends because they ignore her. They have really great fights. It takes her forever to figure out what to do and mostly it seems she follows him around or he leaves a lot to go to socialist or whatever conferences. Back and forth, back and forth, it's based on a true story, I wonder what Louise Bryant ever did? She trekked across Finland to find Jack, that's one thing. They end up in Russia during the revolution in 1917 (I think) and that's cool. Jerzy Kosinski plays a tough communist who doesn't agree with Jack Reed. Jack Reed dies and then the movie ends, which I hated. It was all nice and romantic and not glossy about love being easy or people always sleeping only with each other, they were into free love, and they seemed to have a nice time in Provincetown with theater before getting whole hog into the red stuff, but he dies and that's it? What did she do then? Maybe I should wiki Louise Bryant. Anyway, I love movies that are long. Over three hours is a real treat.

sunshine state

2010-12-16T06:10:00.000-08:00

Besides Fog of War, I hadn't seen another Errol Morris documentary until I rented Vernon, Florida, on Matt Brown's suggestion. It's 56 minutes long of interviews with mostly old men. You never hear the questions, they're just talking at the camera. Topics include: opposums, fishing in a dead mule's body in a swamp, turkey hunting, turkey hunting as a cure for diahhrea, oak trees as signs from God, wigglers, books, brains, cops hiding and not hiding, and other things. It was made in 1981. I want to start watching documentaries made around this time, find out what the world looked like when we were just born.

Anyway, I highly recommend this one. There are subtitles, it's hard to understand with your ears what the accents are muddying sometimes, and it's not the kind of thing that isn't a respectful documentary. And, unlike Herzog, Morris is entirely absent as a persona. That' a nice relief, right?

on the wright track

2010-12-06T16:50:00.001-08:00

so, this isn't about a movie i watched, but yesterday morning there was a great story on weekend edition sunday about black filmmakers in hollywood.

it talks about why it's so hard to get films made that star black people in normal roles but not something like booty call or whatever. they mentioned just wright, which i love. and also medicine for meloncoly, which i have to watch.

i felt like blacks were pretty equal in our society, but it's good to remember that it's still really unequal.

get me to the greek with him

2010-12-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

so, i had pretty low expectations for get him to the greek because i pretty much hate jonah hill and because some review on npr said that it stars two supporting guys (russel brand and lame jonah hill) and they can't hold up a movie.

but, it turns out that those two with sean combs can hold up anything as well as the next guy. i thought sean combs couldn't act, but he delivers his lines with real feeling and it's fucking amazing.

mostly, russel brand is really something special. have i mentioned the russel brand interview on fresh air? it's really something special. in some ways, i wish i knew someone like russel brand. someone sexy and wild and fantastic and smart. but, in other ways, people like that might be too much for me. i think it's that russel brand is smart is really great because it only makes him better.

this movie made me want to see forgetting sarah marshal again. i didn't like it the first time, but i do love him.

sex jokes in the sex city

2010-12-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

i had to watch sex and the city 2. i realized that i don't remember the first movie at all. i totally saw it, but what's to remember?

this one is pretty horrible. it's all about being rich and buying everything and being stupid. but, there are some really hot shirtless men and some really great lines.

favorite, samantha called a guy "lawrence of my labia"

but, mostly it was dumb. it did remind me that relationships are not perfect and can be annoying and hard. i guess that's good.

the last girl with/who movie

2010-11-30T16:26:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-30T16:24:00.001-08:00

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)

2010-11-30T15:35:00.003-08:00

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

2010-11-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-28T08:28:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-27T07:16:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-20T10:01:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-20T09:58:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-20T09:41:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-20T09:12:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-15T16:35:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-15T16:24:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-11-15T16:10:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-11-05T06:57:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-11-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

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/

the way life should bleed, and bullying

2010-10-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-18T15:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

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.