Last week, I acquired my very own single office at work. When I first learned about this, I was quite sad as my former officemate is adorable and often offered me a much-desired distraction from work by sharing the ongoing tribulations of planning her wedding with me. And though I miss her (well, really, she's now next door to the communal printer and I can get a Celeste fix whenever I really need one), I've realized I can decorate my office with all manner of weirdness and no one can say a word!
This weekend, I bought some images for my walls with the idea that having weird things around me will contantly remind me that I'm weird myself, and will prevent me from assimilating into the corporate morass, even though I feel it licking hungrily at my heels every day.
Here's a list of my purchases:
Symphony for Felicia, Joan Snyder.
Snyder's a neo-abstract-expressionist lesbian painter... and the painting officially lives at the High Museum in Atlanta, a place that I love. This particular painting has slightly more subtle vaginal imagery than most of Snyder's other work, so I figured it wouldn't offend anyone. And hey, one of my colleagues has her little Georgia O'Keefes all over her office... a few more pictures of vaginae aren't gonna hurt anybody.
Blue Mountain, Vassily Kandinsky
This is a really gorgeous early, more representational Kandinsky than most. As I love to read the first books of poets, I find that I often also love the earlier, more formative work of big deal painters-- the stuff that shows where and how they learned their lessons, the stuff that's a little less iconic. Pasiphae, that transitional Pollock painting, has always been my favorite of his... mostly because it so obviously shows all his growing pains. I think this work shows a similar stage in Kandinsky's development.
I, and the Village, Marc Chagall
I once spent an entire afternoon at MoMA stairing at nothing but this painting. I mean, I made a special trip into NYC just to go spend time with it. I love it for all its otherworldliness, its nostalgia, and also because Chagall uses more green in the composition than one can usually get away with. A predominately green painting will, more often than not, fall flat. Trust me, I've tried -- green paintings are just hard to pull off. But this one totally glitters.
Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, Maryland, Diane Arbus
Who doesn't need a picture of a circus freak on her wall at work to remind her of her own freakishness?
publicity poster for Cremaster 5, Matthew Barney
Really, this is just a big, slightly creepy photo of some severed doll heads and Barney himself covered in some white powder. However, it has the word "cremaster" in large typeface across the bottom of it. And though I doubt anyone would actually make a big deal about it, I'm really putting it on my wall because not too many people actually know what the cremaster is... and because I know a few folks from my office read my blog, I'll allow their curiosity to goad them into googling it themselves, instead of spelling it out here. They all pretty much know I have the dirtiest mind in the building anyway. But god knows I love the fact that artists like Barney exist (see my July 25th, 2006 post for more about Barney)-- because someone has to do that purposefully rarified, whacked-out stuff, right?
And so, in this way, I hope to not lose track of myself.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Time for another round-up
So what happens when I watch a bunch of movies that I like well enough but don't have a hell of a lot to say about them? I write pointless capsule reviews so that I have an excuse to post something... anything... Seems the only way I can keep the writerly water running is to leave the faucet constantly dripping. Otherwise, we return to the desert... which is good for alleviating the frizz in my hair, but not so good in terms of its metaphoric repercussions on my creative drive. *sigh.*
A few weeks ago, I watched A Guide for Recognizing your Saints and liked it quite a lot. It really has quite a heart and Rosario Dawson's brief little performance pretty much steels the whole movie. And I really couldn't accurately opine on how Robert Downey, Jr. has become the actor that he is, but there's some real ache he put into this character that I've only ever seen in glimpses from him before now. And, Jesus, he is aging well. Those new lines in his face lend him a particular sex appeal that he lacked as a preternaturally red-mouthed youth. Wow, I'm not saying anything at all about this movie, am I? Well, no matter. See it for RD, Jr, Rosario Dawson and Chaz Palminteri. Oh, and the final credits run to that old Kiss song "New York Groove" and somehow, it totally works. It's worth it.
I also saw two movies about folks who seem to have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, back to back. I was hoping the comparison would lead to a blog post unto itself, but I wasn't overwhelmed one way or the other by either of them. The first was Gondry's The Science of Sleep. I felt like this movie was a very stylishly executed romantic comedy. At it's heart, it's a chick-flick all the way. It's just that there are several good bits with animated corrugated cardboard and a felt horse-- and Gael Garcia Bernal's typical pathos-- that at least give you more to look at that more average fare for this genre. Though, I wonder if Bernal's character had just a smidgen of Asberger's Syndrome or something... he's like a sexy retard. Could that be a thing that exists?
Well, anyway, my intended counterpoint to The Science of Sleep was Terry Gilliam's thing, Tideland. And I'm not sure where exactly this movie took a wrong turn... but perhaps it was Gilliam's totally patronizing introduction in which he claimed some people would love this movie while some would hate it, that children are resilient and that the movie might be disturbing but it was "innocent" because it was from a child's perspective. Come. On! Children are both resilient and innocent? This is something we MUST be told in order to understand his deeply artistic vision for this movie? Whatever. But moving on, I had a hell of a time staying awake for the duration. I mean, there's a kid crawling all over the corpse of her father, some blinky Barbie doll heads and and a tweaky dreadlocked chick fucking the grocery delivery boy and some hyper-colored cinematography... and even with all that,-- all those images that ostensibly should evoke the goldmine of the subconscious-- this movie just bored me. Though, I would like to offer that Jennifer Tilly is friggin' great for the 5 minutes in which she's in it and Jeff Bridges' character seems to be something like Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys, though 20 years aged. I think Gilliam just likes that guy and wants to put him where ever he can.
And then there's La Mujer De Mi Hermano. It's a well-dressed little Mexican sex drama about a gay guy, his wife and his brother. Or rather, it's about a woman, her gay husband and his virile but assholic brother. And, boy, those folks sure are pretty. However, in the course of the story, during the part when we're not supposed to know that the husband is gay, I kept getting uncomfortable as he adopted more and more tritely effeminate gestures. He insists on wearing two pairs of socks because he doesn't like his dainty little tootsies to get cold. There's more than one reference to back-waxing... that sort of thing. And so, OK, I get it. Obsessing over one's appearance and bodily comfort = gay. Being a slovenly womanizer = stud. Got it! I'm so glad someone clued me in regarding these social cues. And the ending sat somewhat uncomfortably with me as well-- or maybe I just felt it was unsatisfying. She, of course, gets pregnant via the brother, tells the brother (who tries to convince her to abort it), tells the husband (who says he'll raise it so long as he can have sex with men every now and again without her complaining), and thusly, the couple appeases the husband's grandbaby-hungry mom and the brother goes on thinking the husband has no idea the baby isn't his and they all live deceptively but quasi-happily ever after. Oh, and there's this totally unnecessary subtext between the two brothers that the gay one molested the straight one when they were kids---because OF COURSE it's only logical that any old queer would also be inclined to engage in incestuous pederasty. Of course! So, while this movie appears to be trying really hard to "be sensitive to the plight of The Gays," it just somehow missed its mark. Though Barbara Mori is one hot chick.
And on the tail of that sex drama, I watched Conversations with Other Women, yet another sex drama. What? As if any among you, my paltry yet loyal audience, have not yet ascertained my fixation on sexual politics, both intimate and social... don't look at me that way... But anyway, most of the interest in this movie surrounds this gimicky split-screen tactic that the director took. I think he filmed it that way for two reasons: 1) So that he could tell the flashback parts simultaneously with the present parts and 2) so that he didn't privilege the point of view of one character over the other. And while that's interesting in theory, after about 15 minutes of not knowing exactly where to look, I kinda started to ignore it. And because I was able to ignore it, I'm not sure it was all that successful. However, as always, I find Helena Bonham Carter fascinating to watch. She's so pretty and fragile and perpetually detached... and a little bit of a sour puss. Actually, she smiles more in this movie than in practically any other movie in which I've seen her... and her smile actually makes her face appear more pinched and anxious than ever. But the movie, overall, is modest and well-paced. And as a particularly careful disregard for resolution. The two characters were once married, lost touch, meet up again, have sex, he pleads for her to come back to him, she leaves to go back to her new family. It's not complicated but it's underplayed and resonant.
And so, I buckled and rented The Departed even though I wasn't all that excited about it. And basically, it's an entertaining movie. Entertaining. Nicholson played the same old smarmy, unctuous turd he's been playing for years, Whalberg played a tiny role exactly as it was written, and Vera Farmiga's police shrink was really the most luminous character there in. So, firstly, let me say what annoyed me in this movie, just to get it off my chest: rapid-fire murders were funny and video-game-like at the beginning Desperado. But as a method of resolution in a movie that won Best Picture? I just want MORE! I found them anticlimactic and very pat. By the time the movie got around to killing everyone off, well, yeah, of course, all those lousy SOBs had to die... and some not-so-lousy SOBS too, just for good measure. sure. Why not? And then there's that stupid rat crawling across the windowsill at the end? Why on earth would Scorcese put that absurd image there? I mean, everyone likes to pat themselves on the back for their own cleverness now and again, but, please, Marty, that was just self-indulgent.
Now, although I'm predisposed not really get as excited about primarily plot-driven movies, I do actually have some nice things to say about The Departed, too. I gotta say, DiCaprio did a better job than I would have anticipated with his role. His character didn't have a chip on his shoulder in the way I might have expected... he was legitimately petrified throughout. The way DiCaprio contains and judiciously releases that character's anxieties give a little glimpse of that of which he is capable of doing as an actor.
However, because DiCaprio seems to be one of those celebrities about which everyone has an opinion, well, it's difficult to judge his performances without having to negotiate his sometimes-questionable stature as a sex symbol-- and the fact that his public persona pretty much always supersedes whatever acting skill he may or may not have. As my friend Bob recently said, his face is actually a little "rodent-y." And really, I don't think he'll age well. He was pretty and smooth-skinned and sexually non-threatening when he first became famous-- all prerequisites for being the sort of fellow thirteen-year-old girls squeal about. But now he constantly sports patchy facial hair and squints a lot, and is a little twitchy. However, he has this really dynamic moment wherein he shows up at the shrink's house all rabbity, but, again trying to bottle the rush of it all... and he flips some switch and shifts almost imperceptibly. One second, he's like a caged puppy and the next, he quite purposefully re-channels all that animal energy into something sexual... and he approaches her.. and in his demonstration of this confusion of instinctual behaviors, I got it-- I finally understood why he's a sex symbol. And that's it, right? That conflation of intellectual intention and bodily experience-- well, that's where you find that flintspark every time. Of course, then he jumped back into himself pretty shortly thereafter. But the few moments of real humanity, like that one, that wrenched themselves through the scrim of genre fiction made The Departed interesting even for a tired movie cynic like me.
And on that note, I now have to completely undermine that very assertion of my own cynicism that I just made. Yesterday morning, I flipped on the TV and found an old childhood favorite on cable. The Last Unicorn was a movie I used to watch as though it were looped on the living room TV when I was little. It's an old anime that came out in the early 80s and the animation is just gorgeous. It's voiced by Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow-- and I still adore this little movie, despite the fact that someone should have told Mia Farrow she can't sing for shit. Watching it now, I'm a little surprised that, even as a six-year-old, I was so enamored of such a sad story-- one without much in terms of a happy ending, even. And now, as a grown up, it would be so easy to interpret the story as a metaphor of trauma and recovery. But that's kinda beside the point. It's sad and smart and really very pretty... and sometimes, that's enough.
A few weeks ago, I watched A Guide for Recognizing your Saints and liked it quite a lot. It really has quite a heart and Rosario Dawson's brief little performance pretty much steels the whole movie. And I really couldn't accurately opine on how Robert Downey, Jr. has become the actor that he is, but there's some real ache he put into this character that I've only ever seen in glimpses from him before now. And, Jesus, he is aging well. Those new lines in his face lend him a particular sex appeal that he lacked as a preternaturally red-mouthed youth. Wow, I'm not saying anything at all about this movie, am I? Well, no matter. See it for RD, Jr, Rosario Dawson and Chaz Palminteri. Oh, and the final credits run to that old Kiss song "New York Groove" and somehow, it totally works. It's worth it.
I also saw two movies about folks who seem to have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, back to back. I was hoping the comparison would lead to a blog post unto itself, but I wasn't overwhelmed one way or the other by either of them. The first was Gondry's The Science of Sleep. I felt like this movie was a very stylishly executed romantic comedy. At it's heart, it's a chick-flick all the way. It's just that there are several good bits with animated corrugated cardboard and a felt horse-- and Gael Garcia Bernal's typical pathos-- that at least give you more to look at that more average fare for this genre. Though, I wonder if Bernal's character had just a smidgen of Asberger's Syndrome or something... he's like a sexy retard. Could that be a thing that exists?
Well, anyway, my intended counterpoint to The Science of Sleep was Terry Gilliam's thing, Tideland. And I'm not sure where exactly this movie took a wrong turn... but perhaps it was Gilliam's totally patronizing introduction in which he claimed some people would love this movie while some would hate it, that children are resilient and that the movie might be disturbing but it was "innocent" because it was from a child's perspective. Come. On! Children are both resilient and innocent? This is something we MUST be told in order to understand his deeply artistic vision for this movie? Whatever. But moving on, I had a hell of a time staying awake for the duration. I mean, there's a kid crawling all over the corpse of her father, some blinky Barbie doll heads and and a tweaky dreadlocked chick fucking the grocery delivery boy and some hyper-colored cinematography... and even with all that,-- all those images that ostensibly should evoke the goldmine of the subconscious-- this movie just bored me. Though, I would like to offer that Jennifer Tilly is friggin' great for the 5 minutes in which she's in it and Jeff Bridges' character seems to be something like Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys, though 20 years aged. I think Gilliam just likes that guy and wants to put him where ever he can.
And then there's La Mujer De Mi Hermano. It's a well-dressed little Mexican sex drama about a gay guy, his wife and his brother. Or rather, it's about a woman, her gay husband and his virile but assholic brother. And, boy, those folks sure are pretty. However, in the course of the story, during the part when we're not supposed to know that the husband is gay, I kept getting uncomfortable as he adopted more and more tritely effeminate gestures. He insists on wearing two pairs of socks because he doesn't like his dainty little tootsies to get cold. There's more than one reference to back-waxing... that sort of thing. And so, OK, I get it. Obsessing over one's appearance and bodily comfort = gay. Being a slovenly womanizer = stud. Got it! I'm so glad someone clued me in regarding these social cues. And the ending sat somewhat uncomfortably with me as well-- or maybe I just felt it was unsatisfying. She, of course, gets pregnant via the brother, tells the brother (who tries to convince her to abort it), tells the husband (who says he'll raise it so long as he can have sex with men every now and again without her complaining), and thusly, the couple appeases the husband's grandbaby-hungry mom and the brother goes on thinking the husband has no idea the baby isn't his and they all live deceptively but quasi-happily ever after. Oh, and there's this totally unnecessary subtext between the two brothers that the gay one molested the straight one when they were kids---because OF COURSE it's only logical that any old queer would also be inclined to engage in incestuous pederasty. Of course! So, while this movie appears to be trying really hard to "be sensitive to the plight of The Gays," it just somehow missed its mark. Though Barbara Mori is one hot chick.
And on the tail of that sex drama, I watched Conversations with Other Women, yet another sex drama. What? As if any among you, my paltry yet loyal audience, have not yet ascertained my fixation on sexual politics, both intimate and social... don't look at me that way... But anyway, most of the interest in this movie surrounds this gimicky split-screen tactic that the director took. I think he filmed it that way for two reasons: 1) So that he could tell the flashback parts simultaneously with the present parts and 2) so that he didn't privilege the point of view of one character over the other. And while that's interesting in theory, after about 15 minutes of not knowing exactly where to look, I kinda started to ignore it. And because I was able to ignore it, I'm not sure it was all that successful. However, as always, I find Helena Bonham Carter fascinating to watch. She's so pretty and fragile and perpetually detached... and a little bit of a sour puss. Actually, she smiles more in this movie than in practically any other movie in which I've seen her... and her smile actually makes her face appear more pinched and anxious than ever. But the movie, overall, is modest and well-paced. And as a particularly careful disregard for resolution. The two characters were once married, lost touch, meet up again, have sex, he pleads for her to come back to him, she leaves to go back to her new family. It's not complicated but it's underplayed and resonant.
And so, I buckled and rented The Departed even though I wasn't all that excited about it. And basically, it's an entertaining movie. Entertaining. Nicholson played the same old smarmy, unctuous turd he's been playing for years, Whalberg played a tiny role exactly as it was written, and Vera Farmiga's police shrink was really the most luminous character there in. So, firstly, let me say what annoyed me in this movie, just to get it off my chest: rapid-fire murders were funny and video-game-like at the beginning Desperado. But as a method of resolution in a movie that won Best Picture? I just want MORE! I found them anticlimactic and very pat. By the time the movie got around to killing everyone off, well, yeah, of course, all those lousy SOBs had to die... and some not-so-lousy SOBS too, just for good measure. sure. Why not? And then there's that stupid rat crawling across the windowsill at the end? Why on earth would Scorcese put that absurd image there? I mean, everyone likes to pat themselves on the back for their own cleverness now and again, but, please, Marty, that was just self-indulgent.
Now, although I'm predisposed not really get as excited about primarily plot-driven movies, I do actually have some nice things to say about The Departed, too. I gotta say, DiCaprio did a better job than I would have anticipated with his role. His character didn't have a chip on his shoulder in the way I might have expected... he was legitimately petrified throughout. The way DiCaprio contains and judiciously releases that character's anxieties give a little glimpse of that of which he is capable of doing as an actor.
However, because DiCaprio seems to be one of those celebrities about which everyone has an opinion, well, it's difficult to judge his performances without having to negotiate his sometimes-questionable stature as a sex symbol-- and the fact that his public persona pretty much always supersedes whatever acting skill he may or may not have. As my friend Bob recently said, his face is actually a little "rodent-y." And really, I don't think he'll age well. He was pretty and smooth-skinned and sexually non-threatening when he first became famous-- all prerequisites for being the sort of fellow thirteen-year-old girls squeal about. But now he constantly sports patchy facial hair and squints a lot, and is a little twitchy. However, he has this really dynamic moment wherein he shows up at the shrink's house all rabbity, but, again trying to bottle the rush of it all... and he flips some switch and shifts almost imperceptibly. One second, he's like a caged puppy and the next, he quite purposefully re-channels all that animal energy into something sexual... and he approaches her.. and in his demonstration of this confusion of instinctual behaviors, I got it-- I finally understood why he's a sex symbol. And that's it, right? That conflation of intellectual intention and bodily experience-- well, that's where you find that flintspark every time. Of course, then he jumped back into himself pretty shortly thereafter. But the few moments of real humanity, like that one, that wrenched themselves through the scrim of genre fiction made The Departed interesting even for a tired movie cynic like me.
And on that note, I now have to completely undermine that very assertion of my own cynicism that I just made. Yesterday morning, I flipped on the TV and found an old childhood favorite on cable. The Last Unicorn was a movie I used to watch as though it were looped on the living room TV when I was little. It's an old anime that came out in the early 80s and the animation is just gorgeous. It's voiced by Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow-- and I still adore this little movie, despite the fact that someone should have told Mia Farrow she can't sing for shit. Watching it now, I'm a little surprised that, even as a six-year-old, I was so enamored of such a sad story-- one without much in terms of a happy ending, even. And now, as a grown up, it would be so easy to interpret the story as a metaphor of trauma and recovery. But that's kinda beside the point. It's sad and smart and really very pretty... and sometimes, that's enough.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Natalie, Martie, Emily and John
I'm no kinda music critic. No way. Upon reading that admission, some might be prompted to question wherefrom I went and gots all my movie critic street cred. And to that, I'd say, well, I went to the street cred store and picked out all the vocabulary that I noticed applied to both books and movies, paid my bill (yep, at the bursar's office) and went my merry way. As a special gift with purchase, I noticed that I seemed to have acquired some political lingo, too... but while at the street cred store, I'd gotten all intimidated by the musical people and decided they were way too cool for me to talk to... and didn't ever feel comfortable learning their language. But now, a bunch of documentaries about the politics of celebrities-- or the politics celebrities espouse, more precisely-- have recently emerged and I can't just NOT talk about them.
Last weekend, I watched The U.S. vs. John Lennon. As far as documentaries go, it's not exactly stylistically adventurous. It's a bunch of talking heads reminiscing about dear departed John and not-so-dear departed Richard Nixon. Among the highlights was Gore Vidal snarling, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel!" Indeed. I was moved. OK, not really.
There were a couple of strange notes hit within the course of this movie, however. One was the who's-in-charge? note. Parts of the film talked about how John grabbed hold of the great media machine and slung it about by its tail, sculpting his own image as artistic genius/left-wing loony to suit his every predilection. And then, like, 15 minutes later, the same folks are talking about how some of the big name 70s activist-politicos, like Abbie Hoffman and so on, saw John as the cash cow he could be for the anti-war movement and milked him for all he was worth. And the end, I wasn't entirely sure which depiction was more accurate. This probably has more to do with how little I know about John Lennon than how well the movie explained it, though.
Also of note is the way the Yoko-John relationship was described over the course of this movie. It's very careful to dodge any of the more... controversial, let's say, aspects of their relationship and instead, presents them as artistic and political kindred spirits. And dammit, they were just so cute! Sittin' around in their PJs with all their hair in their faces for weeks on end...
So, anyway, I know this movie was conceived and released in this day and age because infotainment shows like The Today Show like to pose supposedly non-leading questions like "should celebrities use their public platforms to speak about politics?" as though they take it for granted that celebrities somehow have more alienable free speech rights than the rest of us just because they have a larger podium from which they speak. And in this way, all of Lennon's run-ins with the Nixon administration are now providing backdrop for all the crap that's come to be expected when any living celebrity has an opinion and expresses that opinion aloud.
And due to clever structuring of my online video rental queue, I watched the Dixie Chick documentary Shut Up and Sing this weekend. It just followed so logically! Though, I must say, the format of this documentary was really ingeniously conceived. I'm not sure who had the foresight to start filming every conversation those girls had with lawyers, managers, publicists and other assorted consultants... but the publicity machine is a fascinating thing to watch. And watching those women weather the tug-of-war between their desire to remain a financially viable brand and remain steadfast in their refusal to capitulate to an audience that appeared to disrespect their human right to hold political beliefs is truly riveting. But the film flips back and forth between behind-the-scenes and concert footage of from 2003 and recording studio footage from 2005 and then more concert footage (under death threats) in 2006. And this kinda problem-solution/ what-happened;what-happened-next formal aspect of this documentary makes it really rather unusual. I mean, we all already knew the whole story... but there's so much we didn't know! And now, I guess, I'm glad I know more.
Admittedly, there were a couple of moments during which I winced at Natalie's glibness. She's caught on camera, after all, calling our dumb fuck of a president, well, a dumb fuck. It's a response to his saying they shouldn't get their feeling hurt if people don't want to play their music anymore (himself notably glib regarding the obvious financial hit they and Sony and all the rest of their backers took). But she looked right at the camera to say it! But then I suppose that makes me a bigger chickenshit than she is... I can't say that I wouldn't have been a little cowed by the outcry that followed those 12 fateful words ("we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas").
But then, there was an undeniably sexy-comic moment in which the three girls were talking about having to get up in the middle of the night to deal with babies. Natalie confesses she offered her husband $1000 to tend to their noisy child. An then Martie said something to the effect that blowjobs are more effective currency in her house... No doubt! Still, there's no denying they're hot girls!
Now, my tiny musical commentary, for the record: It was the screeching vocals of "Twist and Shout", not "Give Peace a Chance," that cemented John's position Marjorie's Favorite Beatle long ago. And the first time I heard "Lullaby" off the Chicks' rebuttal album, Taking the Long Way, I'm pretty sure my heart stopped a little bit. In fact, I've been listening to that song obsessively all day as I've been conjuring this blogpost in my head. It's really just such a lovely, tender foil to the fury that rages forth out of most of the rest of the album.
Last weekend, I watched The U.S. vs. John Lennon. As far as documentaries go, it's not exactly stylistically adventurous. It's a bunch of talking heads reminiscing about dear departed John and not-so-dear departed Richard Nixon. Among the highlights was Gore Vidal snarling, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel!" Indeed. I was moved. OK, not really.
There were a couple of strange notes hit within the course of this movie, however. One was the who's-in-charge? note. Parts of the film talked about how John grabbed hold of the great media machine and slung it about by its tail, sculpting his own image as artistic genius/left-wing loony to suit his every predilection. And then, like, 15 minutes later, the same folks are talking about how some of the big name 70s activist-politicos, like Abbie Hoffman and so on, saw John as the cash cow he could be for the anti-war movement and milked him for all he was worth. And the end, I wasn't entirely sure which depiction was more accurate. This probably has more to do with how little I know about John Lennon than how well the movie explained it, though.
Also of note is the way the Yoko-John relationship was described over the course of this movie. It's very careful to dodge any of the more... controversial, let's say, aspects of their relationship and instead, presents them as artistic and political kindred spirits. And dammit, they were just so cute! Sittin' around in their PJs with all their hair in their faces for weeks on end...
So, anyway, I know this movie was conceived and released in this day and age because infotainment shows like The Today Show like to pose supposedly non-leading questions like "should celebrities use their public platforms to speak about politics?" as though they take it for granted that celebrities somehow have more alienable free speech rights than the rest of us just because they have a larger podium from which they speak. And in this way, all of Lennon's run-ins with the Nixon administration are now providing backdrop for all the crap that's come to be expected when any living celebrity has an opinion and expresses that opinion aloud.
And due to clever structuring of my online video rental queue, I watched the Dixie Chick documentary Shut Up and Sing this weekend. It just followed so logically! Though, I must say, the format of this documentary was really ingeniously conceived. I'm not sure who had the foresight to start filming every conversation those girls had with lawyers, managers, publicists and other assorted consultants... but the publicity machine is a fascinating thing to watch. And watching those women weather the tug-of-war between their desire to remain a financially viable brand and remain steadfast in their refusal to capitulate to an audience that appeared to disrespect their human right to hold political beliefs is truly riveting. But the film flips back and forth between behind-the-scenes and concert footage of from 2003 and recording studio footage from 2005 and then more concert footage (under death threats) in 2006. And this kinda problem-solution/ what-happened;what-happened-next formal aspect of this documentary makes it really rather unusual. I mean, we all already knew the whole story... but there's so much we didn't know! And now, I guess, I'm glad I know more.
Admittedly, there were a couple of moments during which I winced at Natalie's glibness. She's caught on camera, after all, calling our dumb fuck of a president, well, a dumb fuck. It's a response to his saying they shouldn't get their feeling hurt if people don't want to play their music anymore (himself notably glib regarding the obvious financial hit they and Sony and all the rest of their backers took). But she looked right at the camera to say it! But then I suppose that makes me a bigger chickenshit than she is... I can't say that I wouldn't have been a little cowed by the outcry that followed those 12 fateful words ("we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas").
But then, there was an undeniably sexy-comic moment in which the three girls were talking about having to get up in the middle of the night to deal with babies. Natalie confesses she offered her husband $1000 to tend to their noisy child. An then Martie said something to the effect that blowjobs are more effective currency in her house... No doubt! Still, there's no denying they're hot girls!
Now, my tiny musical commentary, for the record: It was the screeching vocals of "Twist and Shout", not "Give Peace a Chance," that cemented John's position Marjorie's Favorite Beatle long ago. And the first time I heard "Lullaby" off the Chicks' rebuttal album, Taking the Long Way, I'm pretty sure my heart stopped a little bit. In fact, I've been listening to that song obsessively all day as I've been conjuring this blogpost in my head. It's really just such a lovely, tender foil to the fury that rages forth out of most of the rest of the album.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Jinxes of another nature
In the swollen seasons, you only ever break your own heart.
This is why the pangs of the baby are all long-forgotten.
You may never fully harness that which repeatedly unbridles itself;
that, needless to see, is the desire of a woman, as opposed to the desire for her.
After all, the horses of the occasion are left to fend the rapids.
Neither foalers nor mounts, they.
Let this be the punch to your gullet that I intend.
And a loose scarf eeled out the car window: that, too.
I find it humbling that I’m the same dumb fool-for-love I was 10 years ago.
Some babies are born and born and born and born.
This season swells.
We ain’t found bedrock yet.
It seems the only way I can keep my lines in blogger is to make things tiny. Sorry!
This is why the pangs of the baby are all long-forgotten.
You may never fully harness that which repeatedly unbridles itself;
that, needless to see, is the desire of a woman, as opposed to the desire for her.
After all, the horses of the occasion are left to fend the rapids.
Neither foalers nor mounts, they.
Let this be the punch to your gullet that I intend.
And a loose scarf eeled out the car window: that, too.
I find it humbling that I’m the same dumb fool-for-love I was 10 years ago.
Some babies are born and born and born and born.
This season swells.
We ain’t found bedrock yet.
It seems the only way I can keep my lines in blogger is to make things tiny. Sorry!
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Relishing the expletive
If you hold up your middle finger, and hold the two adjacent fingers at half-mast, it means the same thing as "Fuck You!" because it vaguely resembles a penis and two balls. And in this way, an ordinary hand becomes something obscene. And maybe this tiny gesture then begs the question (or doesn't, depending) as to how four letters, in the sequence F-U-C-K, became something similarly obscene. And so, armed with this very question, so set out the makers of a little documentary called F*CK.
And while this documentary seems well-intentioned, I suppose I liked it more because it left me thinking about all the things it didn't cover adequately than because it's really that last word on the curse word. Among moments of note, though, were Pat Boone offering a deeply insightful (read: racist) analysis of so-called foul language in hip-hop culture and some conservative talking head (I can't remember his name) claiming that artists produce BETTER art when stringent social rules are imposed upon them (i.e., by rule-imposers like the FCC, the Nazis... you know, all those prescient, halo-wearing political entities so well-known for spreading the good news of innovation and broken ground amongst the creatively inclined). Those two had me standing on my sofa, shouting "WHAT???!!!" Oh, and there was a creepy thin-lipped woman, with eyebrows to match, claiming that it's so much more fun to do it than to say it, so then, why say it at all? Curious logic, methinks... me also thinks thinking about her doing it is icky. Let me dramatize what a conversation between me and this woman might sound like (here I take a page from Damon who likes to blog in script form sometimes):
A play in 9 lines
Dramatis personae:
Marjorie (to be played by Little Orphan Annie wearing a leather corset, fetish boots and bearing a riding crop in her left hand)
Creepy Thin-Lipped Lady (to be played by a pterodactyl with an Aqua-Netted bob)
Marjorie: So, I gather you think the f-word is uncouth.
Lady: Yeah.
Marjorie: Do go on.
Lady: If the f-word denotes sexual congress, wouldn't you say it's a lot more fun to do it than to say it?
Marjorie: Sure.
Lady: So then why say it at all?
Marjorie: (sarcastically) Uuuummmmm.... because we like to use these things called words to describe our world and our actions? Because we humanfolk like to name things? Didn't god tell us that was one of our jobs way back in Genesis?
Lady: But why does it have to be such a bad word?
Marjorie: Uh, lady? You're the one who named it "bad," not me. See what I'm saying about the naming thing? Dammit. Can you quit flapping those skin-wing things around so much? It's distracting. (Marjorie flails riding crop at the pterodactyl)
Curtain
So that was fun. Anyway, some of the issues that are really at the heart of the matter of why the f-bomb is, indeed, incendiary were really glossed over in this film. Por ejemplo, Drew Carey briefly mentions the fact that part of why the f-word is taboo at all is because it was part of the diction of a lower class and therefore not acceptable vocabulary for anyone who aimed to keep his/her nose pointing way too high to catch even a whiff of the masses. But it's an ever so brief off-hand comment... and I really think this relativity between class strata is pretty central to the issue.
Beyond that, the trajectory of this movie barely glanced off the idea that the word "fuck" is only deemed obscene on arbitrary contrivances. In fact, it was one of the stuffed-shirt Republicans who even used the word "arbitrary," but he did not seem to possess the critical tools to adequately discuss the sign-signifier relationship. But after all, that is what's at stake, right? I mean the combination of the four letters F, U, C, and K is not inherently prurient. The aural effect of pronouncing them together isn't either. This is really already an overly hashed-out argument of semiotics, here, but really... I just find it so baffling that so many folks, both historically (the movie talks a lot about Lenny Bruce going to jail for "word crimes") and presently, get so up in arms about a dinky little WORD!!! And one to which we are all complicit in ascribing its meaning!
Now, don't get me wrong. A person such as myself, who trades in the currency of language, would be foolish to denounce the notion that words have power. But I'd also be foolish if I didn't acknowledge the fact that something as temporal as a word would be useless if we all didn't agree to imbue it with such power... thus shifting the onus of meaning from the speaker to the listener, right?
And I guess there's not really much room in a pop-culture documentary to discuss why it's okay to talk to our doctors about our vaginae (spell-check tells me this is the proper way to pluralize this word. Who knew?) and penises but not our cunts and cocks (oh, Connotation, oh what a heavy burden you bear!). But it is a movie that tries to provide an accessible in-road into the world of socio-linguistic semantics and that's kinda noble, I guess. True, it suckers us (me) in via use of a blatant appeal to the titillation sensors in our (my) brains-- I mean, you can't really say the word "fuck" without having ears perk, for an assortment of different reasons (all cursorily covered in the movie)-- but you gotta capture attention while the sun shines, right? After all, one of the repeated heedings uttered in the movie is that we're just all too inured to profanity these days. I mean, following that argument, the word "coitus" is gonna fall right out of the OED and the only word we'll ever need to know will be endless iterations of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck... fuck...fuck.
Damn. That's kinda sexy.
And while this documentary seems well-intentioned, I suppose I liked it more because it left me thinking about all the things it didn't cover adequately than because it's really that last word on the curse word. Among moments of note, though, were Pat Boone offering a deeply insightful (read: racist) analysis of so-called foul language in hip-hop culture and some conservative talking head (I can't remember his name) claiming that artists produce BETTER art when stringent social rules are imposed upon them (i.e., by rule-imposers like the FCC, the Nazis... you know, all those prescient, halo-wearing political entities so well-known for spreading the good news of innovation and broken ground amongst the creatively inclined). Those two had me standing on my sofa, shouting "WHAT???!!!" Oh, and there was a creepy thin-lipped woman, with eyebrows to match, claiming that it's so much more fun to do it than to say it, so then, why say it at all? Curious logic, methinks... me also thinks thinking about her doing it is icky. Let me dramatize what a conversation between me and this woman might sound like (here I take a page from Damon who likes to blog in script form sometimes):
A play in 9 lines
Dramatis personae:
Marjorie (to be played by Little Orphan Annie wearing a leather corset, fetish boots and bearing a riding crop in her left hand)
Creepy Thin-Lipped Lady (to be played by a pterodactyl with an Aqua-Netted bob)
Marjorie: So, I gather you think the f-word is uncouth.
Lady: Yeah.
Marjorie: Do go on.
Lady: If the f-word denotes sexual congress, wouldn't you say it's a lot more fun to do it than to say it?
Marjorie: Sure.
Lady: So then why say it at all?
Marjorie: (sarcastically) Uuuummmmm.... because we like to use these things called words to describe our world and our actions? Because we humanfolk like to name things? Didn't god tell us that was one of our jobs way back in Genesis?
Lady: But why does it have to be such a bad word?
Marjorie: Uh, lady? You're the one who named it "bad," not me. See what I'm saying about the naming thing? Dammit. Can you quit flapping those skin-wing things around so much? It's distracting. (Marjorie flails riding crop at the pterodactyl)
Curtain
So that was fun. Anyway, some of the issues that are really at the heart of the matter of why the f-bomb is, indeed, incendiary were really glossed over in this film. Por ejemplo, Drew Carey briefly mentions the fact that part of why the f-word is taboo at all is because it was part of the diction of a lower class and therefore not acceptable vocabulary for anyone who aimed to keep his/her nose pointing way too high to catch even a whiff of the masses. But it's an ever so brief off-hand comment... and I really think this relativity between class strata is pretty central to the issue.
Beyond that, the trajectory of this movie barely glanced off the idea that the word "fuck" is only deemed obscene on arbitrary contrivances. In fact, it was one of the stuffed-shirt Republicans who even used the word "arbitrary," but he did not seem to possess the critical tools to adequately discuss the sign-signifier relationship. But after all, that is what's at stake, right? I mean the combination of the four letters F, U, C, and K is not inherently prurient. The aural effect of pronouncing them together isn't either. This is really already an overly hashed-out argument of semiotics, here, but really... I just find it so baffling that so many folks, both historically (the movie talks a lot about Lenny Bruce going to jail for "word crimes") and presently, get so up in arms about a dinky little WORD!!! And one to which we are all complicit in ascribing its meaning!
Now, don't get me wrong. A person such as myself, who trades in the currency of language, would be foolish to denounce the notion that words have power. But I'd also be foolish if I didn't acknowledge the fact that something as temporal as a word would be useless if we all didn't agree to imbue it with such power... thus shifting the onus of meaning from the speaker to the listener, right?
And I guess there's not really much room in a pop-culture documentary to discuss why it's okay to talk to our doctors about our vaginae (spell-check tells me this is the proper way to pluralize this word. Who knew?) and penises but not our cunts and cocks (oh, Connotation, oh what a heavy burden you bear!). But it is a movie that tries to provide an accessible in-road into the world of socio-linguistic semantics and that's kinda noble, I guess. True, it suckers us (me) in via use of a blatant appeal to the titillation sensors in our (my) brains-- I mean, you can't really say the word "fuck" without having ears perk, for an assortment of different reasons (all cursorily covered in the movie)-- but you gotta capture attention while the sun shines, right? After all, one of the repeated heedings uttered in the movie is that we're just all too inured to profanity these days. I mean, following that argument, the word "coitus" is gonna fall right out of the OED and the only word we'll ever need to know will be endless iterations of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck... fuck...fuck.
Damn. That's kinda sexy.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
This just in
I just took an online poll. The results are as follows:
Do you have a positive or negative impression of Ann Coulter?
Negative: 58%
Postive: 31%
Neutral: 11%
In all seriousness? 31 percent of folks who took the online poll do not recognize the fact that the devil isn't too many branches up on Miss Coulter's family tree. And 11% have doubts about it! And that is some seriously sordid DNA. This is massively insane. Perhaps I'll start going around calling people who disagree with me "faggots." Let's just see how many hearts I can win! Oh, wait, I need some big blonde split ends to flip emphatically about... dammit all. So much for that plan.
Do you have a positive or negative impression of Ann Coulter?
Negative: 58%
Postive: 31%
Neutral: 11%
In all seriousness? 31 percent of folks who took the online poll do not recognize the fact that the devil isn't too many branches up on Miss Coulter's family tree. And 11% have doubts about it! And that is some seriously sordid DNA. This is massively insane. Perhaps I'll start going around calling people who disagree with me "faggots." Let's just see how many hearts I can win! Oh, wait, I need some big blonde split ends to flip emphatically about... dammit all. So much for that plan.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Irony-free love, not ironically free love
While I was in Honolulu last December for work, I spent most of my time off tooling around town with one of my colleagues, who is somewhere in the progression of her creative non-fiction MFA. There seemed to be two recurring themes in our conversations: whether or not irony was still a valid mode of communication, both in writing and in ordinary conversation... and the fact that she's rather ecstatically in love with a new-ish boyfriend. And then, this Saturday morning, I made coffee and then got back into bed to read Anna Moschovakis' incisive and remarkable book, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, and I found the following excerpt from "The Blue Book" section, which I felt like conflated those two strands of conversation. And she's masterfully crafted it, as well. Enjoy!
Many people change their names.
Afterward, they are not seen as different by most people.
They may have private or public reasons for changing their names.
They may change their names to buck or bolster tradition, for example.
(The change may or may not, in fact, buck or bolster tradition.)
Some people change their sex.
They may have private or public reasons for doing so.
Afterward, they are seen as different by most people.
Some traditions only become buckable with progress.
Sex is a noun that can be both active and descriptive.
A view of sunlight filtering through trees can seem corny or kitsch.
Sex seems to retain the ability to be experienced non-ironically.
This may be due to the doubling inherent in sex with another person.
Irony may be inherent rather than apparent in this doubling.
Heterosexual couples may experience a stronger/weaker doubling than homosexual couples.
Couples in which one person takes on the other's name seem to be addressing this doubling.
I wonder what it does for them.
Name is a word that can be both active and descriptive.
Like many people, I like hearing my name spoken during sex.
A feeling of intimacy after sex can often be mutual and sincere.
This can be true even in a setting of filtered sunlight.
Intimacy is only possible because people are seen as different.
My name comes from my father's side of the family.
I sometimes wish I had a different name, or no name at all.
I sometimes imagine what sex would be like in a world without names.
I really love the way Moschovakis is able to make these assertions without doubling back on herself, questioning herself, but, in the same space of this poem, leaves herself plenty of room for theorizing. I'm not entirely sure how she does that. And the seams between each line are so logical! And there are seams that connect different, non-adjacent parts of the poem together in a masterfully-planned sort of way. She is god to this poem in a way that I don't really see too often. And if you were to read the whole "The Blue Book" section, you being to notice that her clarity of thought and organizational structure emerge in a way that feels a little foreign and very exciting, when pushed into verse form. She is an algebrist (my spell-check makes me think I just coined that word) to this poem as well.
To anyone familiar at will with the lingo of the enneagram, I think I might characterize this poem as rather 5-ish. Its tone, I think, seems to be trying very hard to establish an intellectual distance between the speaker and the subject matter of sex... yet there is this just-below-the surface, powerfully emotive yearning for sincerity and connectivity in the context of the sex act itself. The reason this seems 5-like to me is because 5s are often characterized as being all head, no heart-- which I think is a pitiful misrepresentation of 5-ishness. It's just that, because big emotions often leave a 5 feeling drained, they have a difficulty processing them without establishing the aforementioned emotional distance. But that certainly doesn't mean that heart isn't thumping away under the nerdy surface, right? Anyway, perhaps this is part of why I've been so suckered in by the cool, aloof tone this poet adopts here. How does she do it???
The question we always asked in poetry workshops, when something really great turned up in class, was "Do you wish you wrote it?" And about this poem, and this book, really, I would say, unequivocally, yes. Apparently, she's giving a reading in Brooklyn as part of Sommer Browning's reading series at Pete's Candy Store at the end of the month, and oh, how I would love to go. I may, however, have to settle for going to hear her when she's in Baltimore in May. I found my voice getting tired as I was reading this book, the desire to hear them aloud was so great. Surely, she'll do a better job of it than I.
Many people change their names.
Afterward, they are not seen as different by most people.
They may have private or public reasons for changing their names.
They may change their names to buck or bolster tradition, for example.
(The change may or may not, in fact, buck or bolster tradition.)
Some people change their sex.
They may have private or public reasons for doing so.
Afterward, they are seen as different by most people.
Some traditions only become buckable with progress.
Sex is a noun that can be both active and descriptive.
A view of sunlight filtering through trees can seem corny or kitsch.
Sex seems to retain the ability to be experienced non-ironically.
This may be due to the doubling inherent in sex with another person.
Irony may be inherent rather than apparent in this doubling.
Heterosexual couples may experience a stronger/weaker doubling than homosexual couples.
Couples in which one person takes on the other's name seem to be addressing this doubling.
I wonder what it does for them.
Name is a word that can be both active and descriptive.
Like many people, I like hearing my name spoken during sex.
A feeling of intimacy after sex can often be mutual and sincere.
This can be true even in a setting of filtered sunlight.
Intimacy is only possible because people are seen as different.
My name comes from my father's side of the family.
I sometimes wish I had a different name, or no name at all.
I sometimes imagine what sex would be like in a world without names.
I really love the way Moschovakis is able to make these assertions without doubling back on herself, questioning herself, but, in the same space of this poem, leaves herself plenty of room for theorizing. I'm not entirely sure how she does that. And the seams between each line are so logical! And there are seams that connect different, non-adjacent parts of the poem together in a masterfully-planned sort of way. She is god to this poem in a way that I don't really see too often. And if you were to read the whole "The Blue Book" section, you being to notice that her clarity of thought and organizational structure emerge in a way that feels a little foreign and very exciting, when pushed into verse form. She is an algebrist (my spell-check makes me think I just coined that word) to this poem as well.
To anyone familiar at will with the lingo of the enneagram, I think I might characterize this poem as rather 5-ish. Its tone, I think, seems to be trying very hard to establish an intellectual distance between the speaker and the subject matter of sex... yet there is this just-below-the surface, powerfully emotive yearning for sincerity and connectivity in the context of the sex act itself. The reason this seems 5-like to me is because 5s are often characterized as being all head, no heart-- which I think is a pitiful misrepresentation of 5-ishness. It's just that, because big emotions often leave a 5 feeling drained, they have a difficulty processing them without establishing the aforementioned emotional distance. But that certainly doesn't mean that heart isn't thumping away under the nerdy surface, right? Anyway, perhaps this is part of why I've been so suckered in by the cool, aloof tone this poet adopts here. How does she do it???
The question we always asked in poetry workshops, when something really great turned up in class, was "Do you wish you wrote it?" And about this poem, and this book, really, I would say, unequivocally, yes. Apparently, she's giving a reading in Brooklyn as part of Sommer Browning's reading series at Pete's Candy Store at the end of the month, and oh, how I would love to go. I may, however, have to settle for going to hear her when she's in Baltimore in May. I found my voice getting tired as I was reading this book, the desire to hear them aloud was so great. Surely, she'll do a better job of it than I.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
A statue, a tower and... a romantic comedy?
Because I made such a big deal about the Oscars a few posts ago, and now they came and went, I suppose I ought to make a comment about them. Except what a snoozefest. There were a few pretty dresses but nothing really and truly spectacular. And there was a lot of blonde pin-straight hair. *sigh* This is always sad news for the redhead w/ the crazy Jew hair. But there was little excitement in the whole event. I felt like both supporting actor awards were given to the wrong people and who cares about The Queen and I'm just not interested enough in mobsters or hambones like Nicholson (man, I just know some friend or other is gonna take me to task on that one...) to be all that interested in The Departed. Yes, it was nice to see Forest Whitaker win and it was even nicer to see Ryan Gosling appear to be legitimately happy that Whitaker won and he didn't. But all in all, it was a lackluster crop of films this year and a lackluster show. Al Gore and all. Oh, it was pretty cool that Marie Antoinette won for costumes, though. I mean, I wasn't in love with this movie by any means, but it's a movie about clothes so its clothes SHOULD win. And really, they were meticulously beautiful taffeta confections, now, weren't they?
And I saw Babel. I thought it was gonna be a lot like Crash and it was and it wasn't. The movie format of seemingly unrelated, yet really quite interrelated story-threads is SO done! When people first started making movies in this format, they were about deep connections between disparate people-- like Grand Canyon, maybe, which is probably in my top 5 of all-time favorite movies, by the way. But somewhere along the way, filmmakers started tying to use this format to talk about other stuff: everyone's a rascist deep down, for instance (a la Crash). Or how all the world's problems exist because we can't talk to each other, or more accurately, because we can't listen to each other, as in Babel. And while the format sometimes works if the format is the subject of the film, the format doesn't really work if there's some other message with which the filmmaker would like to beat us over the head. And this is why Babel feels so damn contrived. I mean, I watched parts of it through my fingers because the pain on the faces of the actors was so real, but the overarching story was anything BUT realistic. However, either of the two women who were nominated for supporting actress would have been a far more accurate choice than poor Jennifer Hudson- once that poor girl's American Idol cast-off gimick-glow fades out-- well, I don't know that anyone will continue to recognize her for excellence in acting.
And I also saw a little romantic comedy. Yep, that's right. You'll very very seldom catch me in front of a screen full o' chick flick, but there you have it. My excuse? It has David Duchovny in it. It's called Trust the Man. It also has a couple more of my favorites--Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julianne Moore. And it's directing by Julianne Moore's husband, Bart Freundlich. And there's certainly nothing groundbreaking in it but it's a cute little peice about established couples falling back in love with each other. And that's kinda nice. And David Duchovny's character is a little obsessed with sex... in his typical deadpan sort of fashion. And good god.. the voiceovers he's been doing or the Pedigree dog food ads lately? The "I don't know how I got here but I know I'm a good dog" ones? The ones with the big sad puppy eyes peering out from behind chain link shelter/kennel doors? Sheesh! The man speaks to my soul. What can I say?
And I booked my plane tickets to come home for the Nashville Film Festival in April! I'm very excited. I'm hoping they'll have some stuff every bit as good as last year! Keep the light on for me, Nash Vegas!
And I saw Babel. I thought it was gonna be a lot like Crash and it was and it wasn't. The movie format of seemingly unrelated, yet really quite interrelated story-threads is SO done! When people first started making movies in this format, they were about deep connections between disparate people-- like Grand Canyon, maybe, which is probably in my top 5 of all-time favorite movies, by the way. But somewhere along the way, filmmakers started tying to use this format to talk about other stuff: everyone's a rascist deep down, for instance (a la Crash). Or how all the world's problems exist because we can't talk to each other, or more accurately, because we can't listen to each other, as in Babel. And while the format sometimes works if the format is the subject of the film, the format doesn't really work if there's some other message with which the filmmaker would like to beat us over the head. And this is why Babel feels so damn contrived. I mean, I watched parts of it through my fingers because the pain on the faces of the actors was so real, but the overarching story was anything BUT realistic. However, either of the two women who were nominated for supporting actress would have been a far more accurate choice than poor Jennifer Hudson- once that poor girl's American Idol cast-off gimick-glow fades out-- well, I don't know that anyone will continue to recognize her for excellence in acting.
And I also saw a little romantic comedy. Yep, that's right. You'll very very seldom catch me in front of a screen full o' chick flick, but there you have it. My excuse? It has David Duchovny in it. It's called Trust the Man. It also has a couple more of my favorites--Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julianne Moore. And it's directing by Julianne Moore's husband, Bart Freundlich. And there's certainly nothing groundbreaking in it but it's a cute little peice about established couples falling back in love with each other. And that's kinda nice. And David Duchovny's character is a little obsessed with sex... in his typical deadpan sort of fashion. And good god.. the voiceovers he's been doing or the Pedigree dog food ads lately? The "I don't know how I got here but I know I'm a good dog" ones? The ones with the big sad puppy eyes peering out from behind chain link shelter/kennel doors? Sheesh! The man speaks to my soul. What can I say?
And I booked my plane tickets to come home for the Nashville Film Festival in April! I'm very excited. I'm hoping they'll have some stuff every bit as good as last year! Keep the light on for me, Nash Vegas!
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