Eh: noncommital expression, denoting apathy or indecision or lack of inspiration

It's not that I haven't been watching movies... it's just that I haven't had a whole hell of a lot to say about any of them-- even the ones I've really liked. So, for this post, I'm just gonna list stuff and give a brief response to each. For those of you who like it when I write long, insightful viewer-responses, well, uh, tough. For those of you who read my posts but wish I would just keep from running off at the mouth so much, well, lucky you!

Running With Scissors
My officemate at work hated this movie, but I gather she'd read the book. The book is not interesting in the least to me-- memoir of gay boy's crazy childhood--but the movie appeared to have some charm, judging by the trailer. I dunno. The movie wasn't really all that charming. Evan Rachel Wood, as per usual, was luminous and full of spirit. I'm again struck by the way such a beautiful delicate-looking girl can deliver charged performance after charged performance. But, really, it's Annette Bening's movie--and she does a pretty good job acting out the role of a truly awful parent. I say "pretty good" because the bad-mother-of-a-gay-boy -- or maybe just the (archetypical? Is she archetypical already) Bad Mother-- is getting to be a pretty tired variety of character. I was wondering aloud at work the other day about why we see so many depictions of irresponsible, self-destructive, unpleasant mothers in film these days... and a coworker said something about how it must be a reaction to that June Cleaver/1950s/perfect-housewife-complete-with-blinging-teeth image-- the one that puts women in a lovely little birdcage, sitting teeteringly atop a pedestal. To which I think, so, great! Now mothers are demonic.. and yet put-upon...so they are both evil and victimized? Yay! We've come so far! Well, anyway, I imagine bad mothers aren't really anything new to film-- it just seems like I'm feeling sensitive about the depictions of them lately.

Delicatessen
What's up with French comedies, lately? Why must they all seem like cartoons, and yet not be? I'm thinking here of movies like Amelie, which, don't get me wrong, is adorable... but why continue to produce movies that feel like they're populated with caricatures more than characters? Perhaps this isn't a legitimate complaint to make of French comedies in general, but, man, was I bored by this movie... and maybe the fact that I was seriously fighting sleep for the last 45 minutes of it contributed to the fact that I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on... I don't know. Maybe I owe it a second chance. But basically, there's a former clown who goes to work odd jobs in a tenement building where a bunch of loonies live-- including a couple of, uh, comically suicidal loonies, and a murderous butcher and his myopic daughter (of course, she's the object of affection for the has-been clown). And somehow, there are all these weird men in goggles and suits made out of Glad bags who are, I dunno, vegetarian crusaders? Really, I think I must've missed a lot. Maybe I won't have two glasses of wine before I watch it next time...

The Motorcycle Diaries
If I were to judge a DVD by its cover, I would assume that I'd just love this movie. It's about the life of a political revolutionary (Che Guevera (ok, I have to interject that it just occurs to me that Jessica Alba's character (Max Guevera) in the short-lived James Cameron(ugh)-produced TV show, Dark Angel, was most likely named for Che... um, anyway...)) and stars Gael Garcia Bernal,to whom I'm beginning to pay much attention, mostly because he chooses such INTERESTING movies. But alas, I felt like this movie was a total let-down. And in a totally bizarre way. Assuming the audience already knows all about Che, the movie quickly becomes a series of snapshots in which we see Che's heroism mounting. On his motorcycle journey w/ his friend, he meets a poor migrant worker and his wife: *click*. He encounters umpteen other poor folks throughout Latin America: one *click* for each. He goes to live in a leper colony for a while: several more *clicks* here. I mean, yes, I'm sure these events were integral to shaping this political figure, but the movie lacks any form of subtlety at all. And so, I come away from it feeling like I've been looking an an airbrushed portrait or an angel for two hours, rather than a gritty movie about a gritty man. Tres disappointing!

Loverboy
Yeah, um, this isn't a very good movie. Kyra Sedgwick plays a woman who, at the beginning is VERY single-minded in getting herself pregnant. And then, once she manages to do so, becomes one of those mothers that makes me thank my lucky stars that my own is as great as she is. For example, my mother never tried to kill me and herself so as to prevent me from growing up. Thanks, Mommels! I owe ya one! But aside from this being yet another lousy mom story, I couldn't help but feel like there were some real gaps in story-telling here. There are a few flashback scenes to when Sedgwick's character was a kid-- and her parents, Kevin Bacon (also the director) and Marisa Tomei, are ickily lovey-dovey. And then one day Kevin Bacon coughs. And then one day, the two of them commit suicide, I guess? Yeah, I didn't entirely follow there either. And Sandra Bullock plays a hot-but-sad neighbor lady. And Matt Dillon shows up briefly. And Campbell Scott. And they all stand in front of the camera, wave, then walk off. OK, they kinda do stuff, but they're each sorta there to be placeholders for Sedgwick's character's psychological associations. And, though the kid does his best to rebel and prove that he's a real kid, he seems just a much a flat projection of her psychic state as the rest of the characters. So, I'm 4 for 4 now, aren't I?

Dreamland
I admit it. I rented this movie for no other reason than it has the kid from the Mac commercials (Justin Long) in it. C'mon-- you all think he's completely charming, too, don't you? His nerdy/cool ratio seems awfully well-balanced. And this movie is certainly... well... earnest. So much so that I nearly found myself caught up in the soap opera of the trailer park for which the film is named. First, there's Audrey, your average nurturer/caretaker, who has a drunk/agoraphobic/widower/heart-broken father. And then there's Cindy/Calista, Audrey's very cleavage-y best friend, with eyes on the big prize-- that's right! She's shootin' for Miss America. Except she has Multiple Sclerosis. Sad. Enter the perpetually sweaty, perpetually fish-belly-white-despite-the-fact-that-the-movie-is-set-in-New-Mexico Mookie (the Mac kid) to steal the hearts of both girls. Within moments of his arrival in the trailer park, he has meaningful sex with Calista-- out in the desert (no fear of the jumping cholla up the ol' tuckus in these brave, brave folks!)and then, within days, it seems, he decides that he's fallen hopelessly in love with the poetess Audrey (unfortunately, someone felt it was necessary to have her do voiceovers reading some of the saddest, most adjective-heavy, moony variety of high-school poetry I've heard in some time) and Calista wises up and, from her hospital bed (she crashed her motorcycle-- never fear, she's not ready to die just yet!), she tragically dumps Mookie, who immediately goes sniffing after Audrey, with whom he then has meaningful sex in the comfort of her very own trailer. And then Audrey gets to leave all the trailer park sob stories behind and go to college! Yay! I dunno. I kinda feel like there IS something salvageable in this story, but man! The pacing was just so far off! Either the passage of time was not conveyed effectively, or everyone was doing some turbo-bonding! I don't mean to be such a skeptic about true love amongst economically challenged teens... but this is basically your average teen love/sex drama filmed as though it wants to be considered an innovative independent film. Nice try, folks... but no dice.

Tadpole
So, now it's time for a commentary on a totally dated film. Tadpole came out when I was in grad school, so it's probably at least 5 years old. I could look it up, but I'm lazy. But I feel like this movie illustrates a number of things I've been talking about for some time on this blog. It's a movie about a 15-year-old kid who's in love with his stepmother, and proceeds to have an affair with this stepmother's best friend. There are a number of discussions between women about how they are unsatisfied by boring, staid, cynical men their own age.. and how a 15-year-old boy, given that he's smart enough and passionate enough and speaks French enough and is sophisticated in a million other ways atypical to 15-year-old boys, isn't such a bad alternative. And truly, the character of this 15-year-old boy is pure fantasy. But! He's a 15-year-old boy who is given the precious gift of sexual agency. True, he is far too adult to be convincing, but no one condescendingly calls him "innocent" or questions the fact that his desires are both sincere and adult-like in their viscerality. However, if men in their 40s are all boring, staid, and cynical... jeez. This bleak prospect makes me want to stop thinking about this movie immediately and move onto the next.

Half Nelson
Ryan Gosling's nominated for this film this year and I'm glad about that. When I saw The Believer, a little-known, but FANTASTIC film about a Jewish kid who becomes a Neo-Nazi, I remember feeling like I was watching something transformative happen-- as though the character was a presence above and beyond this very pretty actor. And same goes for Gosling's performance in Half Nelson. However, acting aside, I like this movie very much (yep, finally one that I liked, unequivocally) because the audience is unsure throughout where to invest its loyalties. I wanted to love this smart, articulate, sad, compassionate man, who is also incredibly fucked-up, who is also an addict (yep, an addict even I can love) but, as to be expected he lets me down, and he lets his students down (oh, yeah, he's an inner-city middle-school history teacher, doing his damnedest to impart Hegel's theory of dialectics upon a bunch of 7th graders). And there's a drug-dealer character, who is set up in opposition to Gosling's character (how's that for dialectics for you?), who's out there contributing to the detriment of his community, yet trying to protect his de facto family as best he can. There are a few simply wrenching moments in this film-- one in which Dan (Gosling) finally succumbs to buying crack from the aforementioned dealer, not realizing that the dealer is sending out Dan's favorite student to do the deliveries that night. They're exchange is silent but her sense of betrayal is palpable, his defeat also palpable. And there is a also a pretty interesting underlying political discussion that keeps popping up. Dan makes jokes about our ridiculous president a couple times, he engages in a totally stoned monologue about the futility of American humanitarianism, he feels his educated left-wing ideals are completely ineffectual, thus contributing to his very addiction. It's a movie about the frustrations and mis-directed coping mechanisms of economically challenged Americans, and for that, I'm glad it's getting it's little glimmer of Oscar attention, even if Forest is destined for the glory next Sunday night...

Mercury in retrograde

...And this is the point in the saga of little brown rabbits at which Marjorie remembers why she curses winter. For my entire life, I've been a warm weather girl. I've never been so happy, weather-wise, as I was during the three years I lived in Tucson. But, as my regular (ha!) readers might recall, I've recently watched An Inconvenient Truth and have finally been able to put winter in its proper perspective-- a necessary part of this planet's cycle, one that would have dire repercussions were it to disappear. Until this afternoon.

Last night, my freakin' psychic mother informed me that Mercury had just gone into retrograde, where it will stay for the next three weeks or so. In general, when Mercury goes retrograde, all sorts of the minor-annoyance brand of hell breaks loose. Miscommunications galore! Travel mishaps. Lost items. The milk spoiling two days before its expiration date... that kind of thing. And so, I should have known.

As I mentioned in a post earlier today, this morning, I decided to not brave the inclement Northern Virginia weather so as to make the trek into Georgetown where my office is. However, around 3 this afternoon, I went to the front of my building and noticed that a snowplow had indeed scoured the driveway of my apartment complex. So, I figured I'd try to drive in so I could enter some stuff into the computer at work-- and win some brownie points. I went and scraped all the ice off my car. I got in my car. I put the car into reverse. My car grunted loudly but did not move.

I should explain here that, while the snowplow cleared the main driveway area, it dumped all of the snow and ice that was in its way all along the sides, i.e., right under the rear tires of all the cars in the lot. Brilliant, eh?

I got out of my car and dug all four tires out with my piddly little icescraper. No, I do not own a shovel-- I live in a little apartment that has an enclosed sunroom, not a balcony... and I do not have a single square inch of ground on which I could stake a flag, so I generally assumed I would have no need for a shovel. So, yes, I'm digging away at hard-as-rock ice with an icescraper/brush-combo-deal. I get back into my car. I begin to back out, but apparently I began turning a little too quickly and my front tire sunk deeply into about 15 inches of snow. I wasn't goin' nowheres. Nowheres at all.

So, at this point my car is halfway out of my parking spot and neighbors trying to get out of the complex are honking at me--though it was painfully obvious that I'd gotten myself good and stuck. At this point, a lovely good Samaritan from a neighboring building comes to my service, bless him. He and I manage to dig the front wheel out again and he backs the car safely out of the slot. He gets out of the car. He locks the door to the car. With my keys still inside. With the car still running. Oh, yes he did. He did, indeed.

At this point, I can't even get back into my building b/c my door censor and my apartment key are, yep, on my keychain, in the ignition, in the car. So, I stand out in the cold shivering until this well-intentioned neighbor invites me into his truck... but then I figure I can at least call my landlord who can come let me into my apartment because he lives right around the corner. So, poor fellow, Mamadou the crazy nine-foot-tall Senegalese landlord, arrives moments later and lets me back into my home. At which point I go scurrying around trying to find spare keys. I manage to find my spare apartment key, but god only knows what's happened to my spare car key.

I get on the phone with the insurance folks and they manage to flag down another poor soul, who's been running around all day, dealing with people far less stupid than I, but who, nevertheless, possesses tools with which he can jimmy the lock. Bless him, too. However, by now, my car's been running in the driveway for a good hour and it's getting dark and the lights aren't on and I'm getting worried that some oblivious neighbor is gonna plow right into its little ass-end. Fortunately, no one did that. But, curiously, several neighbors found that it's helpful if you HONK at an unmanned vehicle, clearly stranded in the middle of the driveway. I'm not sure I follow the logic, but I'll have to remember that that is the proper protocol if ever I happen to see something of this nature.

So, anyway, the fabulous Auto-Rescue guy (Frank the Finn) opens my car without a problem. At this point, the idea of leaving my apartment complex is WAY TOO FUCKING STRESSFUL for me, so I decide to pull the car back into its slot. Foolish, foolish girl, I am! The fucking car gets fucking stuck. AGAIN. Frank has a snow shovel-- because it's his job-- and manages to dig my car out once again and then I get it pulled back in. And I turn it off. And I sign my locksmith receipt -- a measly $60! I thought it would be so much more! And I thank the nice man. And I go back into my cosy warm apartment. And I write this blog post.

Now, how's that for some seriously stinky-ass spoiled milk? I mean, really!

A valentine for Diamond Jim...and for Noah

Every so often, a Springer wins Westminster. And every so often, every Springer-lover in my family goes nuts. The only thing I don't understand is why Springers don't win every year, seeing as they are the best-looking dogs around. And this guy is no exception. Though, I think my Noah is at least as handsome as that fancy dog... and I don't know if James smells like corn chips or not, but certainly, that would give Noah an edge. And, if you can't tell the difference, Noah's the black-and-white one, James is the liver-and-white one with the dopey look on is face. All right. Fine. Noah's face is a little dopey, too. Part of the Springer charm.

Punxsatawney Phil, you got some 'splainin' to do.

It seems that leaving my little apartment today is just not even an option. I'm watching a few brave souls ascend the entrance ramp to I-395 over the top of my laptop today, amidst a lot of ice and not much snow. Weather weenie that I am, I've opted for curling up with a blanket and a large stack of test questions in need of editing and reviewing. *sigh* As much as I would enjoy an actual day off, it seems I'll have to settle for "working at home." With cold feet.

Distracters

hI compose multiple choice questions for a living. If anyone questions my masochism that I mentioned in the post below, be not deluded. I compose MULTIPLE friggin' CHOICE questions for a living. I bring this up because, in assessment terminology, the correct option to a multiple choice question is called a "key." All the wrong options are called "distracters." Because I my work entails composing multiple choice questions day in and day out, I thought I should mention the things that distract ME from my desire to a)punch walls, b)punch my colleagues, c)punch my computer monitor, and/or d) punch myself for taking the job in the first place. (For the record, all 4 options above are keyable.) So here are the two newest:


Thank you to Bob for this. I've also included a permanent link to this delightful bit of merriment in the right hand margin over there ---------->. Take note!

And because I'm still sorting through my enthrallment with the Killing the Buddha book, I thought I'd include a link to a fascinating article on the cult of virginity that was published in Rolling Stone, written by one of the co-editors of the aforementioned book, Jeff Sharlet. I find this article fascinating because, somehow, Sharlet managed to make the cause and the argument for maintaining chastity compelling... even to ME! Crazy, eh? I mean, there's a fair amount of the religiosity therein that makes me uber-nervous, but the people he interviewed seem sane, intelligent and have re-envisioned the notion of "the counter-culture." Though, I must say, I was amused to note how all the virginal interviewees seemed mightily obsessed with sex. And friends, I dare you one and all to start wearing one of those "masturband" numbers. Just 'cuz I'm nosy.

regarding droughts

My friend Jack asked me to write a poem. I haven't written a poem in nearly 3 years, though this is the subject in which I supposedly have an advanced degree. I hate writing poems. I think I suck at it. Yes, you'd think this would have stopped me from getting a degree in this particular discipline, but no. I'm just that much of a masochist. Oh, yes, I am. However, I owe Jack a gift. And lucky for him, his request arrived when I was just exhausted enough, just pissed off enough and just giddy enough to think a linguistic improvisation was in order. And so, I'm posting it here. Forgive my continued poetic suckiness. This is for Jack:

An Improv: Prose Poem for Jack
You're stopping, mid-costume-change and it's you and a wifebeater. It's you and those damn black stilleto boots. It's you and a black thong and it's you thinkin' he'd like this better. But, though the sky could rain mud, it doesn't. September and its juices can't come soon enough and neither can I. Is that your skin? Skin bubbles and cracks, creakin' beneath those boots. This is what I've got left to give you.


Have I effectively proven my masochism now? Glass of wine didn't hurt, though.

A celebration of the impending early spring

I don't care what Punxsatawney Phil says. For the last several days, the greater DC area has witnessed temperatures ranging from 7 to 23 itty bitty degrees. That's cold as fuck (positing, of course, that "fuck" is cold, that is, and, in general it isn't, but that's beside the point). It's really fucking cold here. So what does every good little movie nerd do? Yep, I balled up under a blanket and settled in for the weekend.

So, firstly, I'm beginning to think Maggie Gyllenhaal is slightly unsung. I mean, her brother's caught fire... and he's good and all... but his sad-eyed yearning in the likes of Brokeback Mountain and Donnie Darko and even The Good Girl (all movies I've quite liked) really only puts him on equal level with Maggie. God knows Secretary was the first love story that's spoken to my heart in many many years. And here she comes in Sherrybaby. In general, this is an unremarkable movie about a messed-up addict of a woman who gets out of prison and really wants nothing more than to get her kid back. It's not all that interesting a story. But Gyllenhaal's acting is something else again. She's a miserable sexpot who does a lot of ruining of her own life but somehow still manages to scape together enough integrity to act in the best interest of her kid. It's like the anti-The-Heart-Is-Deceitful-Above-All-Things. And I don't know that it's all that great a movie, but her performance is both meek and fierce, and though the sad Gyllenhaal eyes peer through it, the character is fully-realized and transcendant.

And every once in a while, even I need a good ole' craggy, cranky, cowboy story. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a movie that I heard quite a bit about last summer and just couldn't make myself see in a theatre. It's Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut and he's ostensibly the star. But really, Barry Pepper's border patrol officer steals the show. This guy's a racist manhandler in his job and just plain apathetic in his personal life.. until he kills an illegal Mexican vaquero (the Melquiades Estrada character) and karma comes 'round to bite him in the ass. Pepper never quite softens, and I was never fully convinced he'd learned his lesson, but he has the last words in the film... and those are subtle and underplayed and adeptly punctuate a rigorous performance. Jones' movie is about the lengths some of us will go to validate an unlikely friendship, but Pepper's movie is about how there are rules and how we break those rules and how we pay. And I found Pepper's story the more engaging of the two. And despite the fact that I wanted this movie to make some commentary on immigration issues relevant to border communities (and I suppose it does, to some degree), I was far more taken with the give-and-take aspect of justice that pervades the film.

And so, neither of these two movies caught my imagination in the way that some that I write about do... but they are marked by some stellar acting. Make of them what you will.

Sundance wishlist

Of the new crop of Sundance movies, there are certainly quite a few calling my name. Oh, how I wish I could have my very own little Sundance in my living room... Or you know, take one of those vacations where I go to Utah and do nothing but go to movies all day for a week... *sigh*. Oh, to dream... Meanwhile, I'm tentatively considering spending a week in Nashville in April so that I can go to a whole slew of movies at the NAFF. Last year I got a sneak preview of The Notorious Betty Page (it was ... um... awfully cute, considering it's about an S&M queen) and Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Hip-Hop Culture (one of the MOST fascinating documentaries I've ever seen) and some other movie about the loss of the father (I can't remember the title... Jon? Any Clue?). In general, it was a very positive experience-- one that I hope to repeat. We'll see, my Nashville friends, we'll see!

So here are the little tidbits to which I'm looking forward from this year's crop:

Hounddog
Yep, the famous Dakota Fanning rape movie. I've read all sorts of crazy reviews about this thing... everything ranging from debates about whether pre-adolescent kids have sexual agency to snark-fests that claim the director is pro-rape (this is an assertion I find unlikely, at best). Regardless, issues of childhood and sex are of particular interest to me and so I'm breathlessly awaiting this thing. I'm prepared to both love it and hate it.

Teeth
At last! How long have we all awaited a film about the physiological anomaly known as Vagina Dentata? Seriously. Anyone? Ok, it's just me, then. I very much want this to be a movie about the female confusion that surrounds our simultaneous desires to worship and mutilate the most obvious symbols of maleness... but, alas, I hear that it's yet another attempt, by a gay man, to define female sexuality. Yeah, the director's a big homo. And I am just SICK and TIRED of gay men, who are often afraid of vaginas, thinking they have something relevant to say about the politics of heterosexuality. OK, that's harsh, I realize, but I don't think John Cameron Mitchell did it all that well in Shortbus, so I'm really rather skeptical here. But, regardless, it's interesting fodder and I do, indeed, plan to spend money on this ticket.

Grace Is Gone
For a long time, I've tried to claim that my crush on John Cusack was really just a crush on Lloyd Dobler, the uber-optimist from Say Anything, but now, I'm pretty sure this movie is gonna solidify my bid for Mr. Cusack's heart. Apparently, it's a story about a guy who loses his wife to the Bush-administration-generated bunch of bullshit going on over in Iraq. In every clip I've seen, Cusack just looks so soulfull and so grown-up... goodness, it IS hard not to love him!

Padre Nuestro
An illegal alien gets his identity stolen-- and he didn't even throw away one of those credit card come-on letters! I dunno-- I hear this is supposed to be good. Could be in a similar vein as Maria Full of Grace, which was rough and moving and well-acted by one of the most gorgeous women I've seen in a long time (Catalina Sandino Moreno). We'll see. Looks promising.

Once
It's billed as a musical but it's a movie about immigrant buskers singing for their bread on the streets. I gather music would not be quite so disruptive in a story of that nature, yes?

Sweet Mud
Life on the kibbutz isn't as sweet as it could be, you know? Really, when was the last time we had a good kibbutz movie? Anyone?

Rocket Science
Oh, please let this be another Thumbsucker! Please!

So, we'll see how it goes. Oh, how I love it when little indie curiosities in film form get front-page coverage. It gives me hope.