Gawd, Netflix, you've done it again! You've helped me to pass days and days and days with nothing to do and make me feel like I've accomplished something by watching so much television and film.
Recently consumed:
Portlandia, Season One (2011)-- totally freaking excellent. Can't wait for more.
Mallrats (1995)-- generally funny and obnoxious, but bores near the end
The Girls' and Boys' Guide to Getting Down (2011)-- starts off pretty funny but gets old just as quickly. If I want to spend an hour and a half watching abominable young adults snort cocaine and try to score, I'd be a part of the Greek system.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)-- totally freaking excellent. I enjoyed reading people's reviews and comments on rottentomatoes afterwards; it's fun to observe people debate the morality within a Tarantino movie.
up next: Talk to her (2002), Brazil (1985)
In other news, I've cleaned drawers, closets, bookshelves, written letters, napped myself into oblivion, baked earl grey shortbread, and attended enough holiday parties that my midsection is mildly distended (severe understatement) every evening. Fa-la-la-la-fat.
Finally! A thoroughly enjoyable movie-going experience! The Artist is a graceful tribute to the silent movie era, and playfully incorporates the storytelling paradigm of that time while remaining completely fresh and fun. Dujardin and Bejo are perfect for their roles, with expressions so minute and earnest, capable of eliciting any emotional response from the audience. They were also unbearably charismatic, and I particularly enjoyed Dujardin's character's obvious humanity and weakness. I highly recommend seeing it. It's playing at one of Seattle's most adorable movie theaters: the harvard exit.
Keira Knightley is a terrible actress. Nothing she does is natural, unless natural is synonymous with severe overacting. Everything she says is said in a forced yelp, and the Russian accent was by far the most embarrassing one I've ever heard. That's about all I have to say about this movie.
Sometimes we like to do things that we know will hurt us, but we do them anyway, because the experience is beautiful and necessary, sometimes even inescapable. Luckily, when I refer to this phenomenon in terms of watching certain movies or reading certain books, the repercussions and consequences are far, far minimized compared to when another human being is involved. Sometimes there's just something within us that we have to exorcize in any way possible. Recently I've been taking the relatively un-destructive route and watching movies and reading books that I know will undoubtedly break my heart. But part of me is pulled to these stories because they are real, and as they break my heart they make me feel whole and sane in a way that only relatable art can. There is simply no other way for me to explain the reason for my being so deeply drawn to that which will cause me pain, fleeting or lasting. I've always felt a need to experience the most soaring human emotions first hand, and this is probably why I'm not good at saying 'no' when I probably should. Plus, what sort of life is it, living in a grey muteness?
So I paired, rather unconsciously, Drake Doremus' 2011 film Like Crazy with Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel 'Norwegian Wood'. They were both wonderful and beautiful and heartbreaking. I enjoyed every minute of both works, particularly in combination with one another. In Like Crazy, Yelchin and Jones play Jacob and Anna, respectively, two seniors in college in LA. Anna, a journalism student, is from England, and as she falls in love with Jacob, a design student, she unwisely decides to overstay her visa, putting her future with Jacob in jeopardy, as she is subsequently banned from entering the United States. What ensues is a painful and impressionistic view of the following months, wrought with nostalgia and ache. Jacob and Anna can't reach one another on the phone, they turn to an 'open relationship' (riiiight), they break up, they get back together again, and then they try something most of us in a long-distance relationship, no matter how devoted, have not tried: they get married. Only now, six months stand between the two of them before the latter can join her partner in LA.
Understandably and realistically, shit gets complicated, and despite that living, pulsing love that Anna feels for Jacob and that he feels for her, the love over which they get back together despite months of not speaking over and over again, life ends up coming between the two. Like Crazy ends in the most ambiguous way, just like many of our relationships. You watch it and you say "Yeah, it was like that." And I find that to be a success on the filmmaker's part.
Murakami's novel was deeper, more disturbed, and more contemplative. Toru Watanabe looks back on his college years in Tokyo in the 1960s and relives his relationships with several young women who still have a hold on him so deep that he is brought to jolting nausea as the memories pour back in more than a decade later. Murakami's writing is exquisite, introspective, and everything I wanted it to be as I came to know 19-year-old Toru. Together we looked back on the time we learned that life and death are not so separate after all, the time we learned that not only are life and death not so black and white, but everything between the two; namely, love.
This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there. The night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.
You have to be extraordinarily careful making a movie set in Paris these days. You must be acutely aware of cliches to avoid--visual, musical, and spoken. To my dismay, ten minutes into Hugo I knew I'd be disappointed. And I SO wanted to adore it!
But it was much too slow, childish, and sloppy. I was captivated only by the final 20 minutes or so, but even then, it was so unfresh and tired that I felt embarrassed sitting in that dark theater. Embarrassed for Scorcese, I guess. (Not often one gets to utter that phrase.)
But yes, I was sleepy and bored and embarrassed, for as the movie's plot revealed itself as one bursting homage to the history of cinema, Hugo continued to deflate and cheapen itself. The unbearable cliches included goddamn accordion music, the subway/train station musicians gag, the old lady with a teensy obnoxious dog gag, the orphan bit, the wide-eed young girl out for an adventure bit, and the stilted policeman in 'love' (portrayed completely unconvincingly by Sacha Baron Cohen) with the radiant, somehow single and SOMEHOW interested flower lady. And these cliches, folks, just about sum up the entire film. Oh dear. Well, there you have it. I found it to be a vast disappointment, distant and impersonal, the cliche of all Parisian cliches, lacking heart, quirk, and soul.
1. These socks. I bought then in Vermont over Thanksgiving break and have been crazy about them ever since. They're like funfetti, but cozy, and on your feet. As everything else at American Apparel, they were extremely overpriced, but what can I say, love at first sight, folks.
2. My cat. Forever drooling and rumbling by my side.
3. Finishing a book for pleasure.
Sad:
1. Those Beacon Plumbing ads they have plastered all over Seattle (and god forbid, elsewhere). It seems they've been around for ages, and are only becoming more ubiquitous. If you live in the Greater Seattle Area, you'll know what I'm talking about. These ads feature the Beacon Plumbing slogan "Stop Freakin', Call Beacon!" above a lady, who can only be described as faux-busty, fake-tanned, fried-haired, and incredibly sad. In fact, these ads depress me to such an extent that I refuse to even include their image in this post. The saddest thing about these ads is not even the use of sex to sell a product that is not remotely related to a busty woman. The saddest thing is that the ad is so poorly and cheaply put together that it is impossible to look at it and not consciously make that connection, and all the while your facial muscles involuntarily contort to create the most wrenching stink face imaginable.
I've been on a bit of a Tarantino kick recently, and it's been fun and perhaps even mildly cathartic. (Does 'mild' even work in a sentence with 'cathartic'?) Never having seen either volume of Kill Bill in its entirety, I decided it was about time. So I recruited a housemate and my fleece blanket behind which to hide and went for it.
It is a testament to the director that one can watch this film, at least 80% of which is comprised of violent fight scenes, and not become bored, desensitized, or overwhelmed. Okay, maybe I did get a bit overwhelmed at times but that's why I had Stefan's left arm and my blanket. In any case, Uma Thurman is so kickass, and, as all viewers before and after me, I was obsessed with the crazy teenage killer girl. The dead eyes!
The soundtrack is killer, as is the expected pastiche of genre. It was a rather unconvincing tale, but I didn't have a second to contemplate the irrationality of it all while I was watching it, which is yet another testament to Tarantino. Other favorite bits: Daryl Hannah's white trench coat embellished with trompe-l'oeil belts and buckles, every scene of Uma Thurman's utter bad-assity.
I was told by a professor that Wong Kar-Wai is the Korean Tarantino. Not sure I see that after watching my first of his films. "Chungking Express" (1994) is fresh and real, impressive, but not consistently engaging. Each half of the film is dedicated to a separate story; both detail the heartbreak two young cops experience after breaking up with a girlfriend. The most engaging and beautiful parts of this film were the scenes in which one of the cops speaks to the inanimate objects in his apartment. This film is beautiful because it shows, simply, instances of people and our yearning to connect with anyone or anything at all, and the lengths to which we go to do so. Certain scenes are unspeakably gorgeous, but I was irritated at times by the all too consciously moving camera. It's impressionistic and ephemeral, and thusly true to life.
Movies I plan to see in theaters over break:
-Hugo (Scorcese + 1930s Paris + animation...!@#$%^&*)
-Shame (sex and psychos. enough said.)
-perhaps $3 showings of The Guard and The Rum Diary (only to show my undying love of JD)
-A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg's new film. What's that you say? I get to poke fun at psychoanalysis AND Keira's pout in the same motion picture? Jackpot.)
College boys are just that--college boys. I'm over you, college boys. Also, father knows best, and according to my father, I should be dating men who are, at the youngest, in their late 20s. I promise to keep y'all updated.
So these past weeks have been fraught with stress of all sorts. My prescription: tea and movies! I recently watched a couple that are as absurd a pairing as could be, but I did quite enjoy them both and will thus give you a blurb.
Firstly, I watched "Tangled", a recent Disney flick that appropriates the grim story of Rapunzel. I'm usually not into the animated deal, and although I see the epic Pixar movies eventually, I'm never rushing to see them in theaters. Anyway, "Tangled" made its way to the recently added "instant view" flicks and I was in the mood for Disney. Ideally, I wanted to watch Cinderella, but they don't have any of the good ones on instant play. "Tangled" was super cute, as expected. The best character is Maximus, the horse, so that says something about the overall quality of the movie, but whatever. If you're babysitting, or cold and sad in bed, or just want to pass some time, you'll enjoy yourself.
Ok. Then I watched Tarantino's notorious "Pulp Fiction". Being the self-proclaimed movie enthusiast that I am, I felt pretty embarrassed that, as a 21-year-old in 2011, I had never seen the movie all the way through. Now I am shamed no more, and join the cult! It's a freaking fantastic flick, from the soundtrack to the vignette structure to the postmodern content. The violence is extreme and awesome and punctuated and stylized, and "Pulp Fiction" neither lacks anything nor exceeds in anything. It's just all-around wonderful. Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman were definitely my favorite actors, the discussion of the 'royale with cheese' was my favorite dialogue, and the part where Butch kicks rapist ass is my favorite scene. Don't be an embarrassment like I was; watch it.
I almost decided against reviewing this film because watching it made me feel so ill that I had to lure myself out of my upset state with wine and Christmas carols, and I thought writing about it might make me feel horrid again. This may sound silly, but I am not joking. Some movies out there are truly, deeply upsetting, and this is one of them. (But the wine and singing helped and now I feel able to cope.)
Before I watch a movie I often check it out on IMDb or rottentomatoes.com to see how it's fared with the critics. I spotted a particular review of "The Piano Teacher" whose writer felt that to watch this movie was to "stare into a gaping wound". I can't say that I don't agree. There are some movies out there that are disturbing and perverse simply for the sake of being disturbing and perverse (you may have happened to read my review of "Incendies" which I totally called out for this very reason). I haven't quite yet decided whether "The Piano Teacher" is one of them, but I am definitely considering it.
This French/Austrian film stars Isabelle Huppert, who, in 2001, is well into her "femme d'une certaine age" phase (what you say in France when you don't want to say "old" or "middle-aged" when referring to a woman). It tells the story of a highly respected piano teacher (played by Huppert) who meets a young fellow and the relationship that develops. I approached this film as a dramatic romance, but was disappointed to find that the only real drama came from shocking the viewer with scenes of extensive sadomasochism.
To make a good film about sadomasochism can't be easy. The only other film I've seen that tackles the subject is "The Secretary" (2002), which I really enjoyed. "The Secretary" and "The Piano Teacher" have common elements: both focus on women who seek men to sate their urge to be dominated. Both women use self-harm and mutilation to cope with complicated, dysfunctional family relationships. For some reason, though, "The Secretary" worked for me, while "The Piano Teacher" didn't. Perhaps my thoughts on the subject will become distilled with more time. For now, my only explanation for my aversion to this film, apart from the glaring violence and abuse it unapologetically depicts, is the ambiguous fate of the heroine. With a plot line so severe, so in-your-face, the final scene felt too 'hands-off' for me, and I feel a bit cheated after being put through the emotional pain of watching what I did. The performances were excellent, however; Huppert was so raw and pained that I had to pause the film four or five times to allow myself to calm down before I could continue. It definitely does not shy away from anything, and does not approach the Euro-trashiness and pretension of "Ma Mere" (also starring Huppert), but apart from disturb me on a basic level, it didn't do a whole lot.
