Posts tagged ‘Movies’

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January 2, 2011

A Breakdown of the Movies I Watched In 2010

In 2010, I kept a record of all of the movies I watched. I watched 69 movies total, and here’s how they break down across various categories:

Year Released:

Of the movies I watched this year, by far the majority (49) came out in the 00s, and most of those came out in 2009. I watched:

  • 5 movies that came out in 2010 (Robin Hood, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Inception, True Grit and The King’s Speech)
  • 23 from 2009 (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Up, In the Loop, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Sherlock Holmes, Bright Star, The Invention of Lying, An Education, Broken Embraces, Up In the Air, Whip It, The Informant!, Crazy Heart, A Serious Man, Inglorious Basterds, The Hangover, Coraline, Precious, (500) Days of Summer, Invictus, Adventureland, Nine and A Single Man)
  • 5 from 2008 (Synecdoche, NY, The Hurt Locker, Baby Mama, The Happening and Anvil: The Story of Anvil)
  • 4 from 2007 (Sweeney Todd, Atonement, Year of the Dog and The Diving Bell & the Butterfly)
  • 2 from 2006 (The Fall and Children of Men)
  • 4 from 2005 (Me and You and Everyone We Know, Happy Endings, Kingdom of Heaven and Brick)
  • 2 from 2004 (The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Melinda & Melinda)
  • 2 from 2003 (Visitors and Secondhand Lions)
  • 1 from 2002 (Dirty Pretty Things)
  • 1 from 2000 (Bring It On)

Otherwise, I watched 20 movies:

  • 9 movies that came out in the 90s (Boys Don’t Cry (99), The Truman Show (98), Chasing Amy (97), Dead Man (95), Pulp Fiction, Swimming With Sharks and Heavenly Creatures (all 3 from 94), Strictly Ballroom (92) and Without You I’m Nothing (90))
  • 3 movies from the 80s (The Burbs (89), Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (88) and Ran (85))
  • 2 movies from the 70s (All the President’s Men (76) and Maitresse (75))
  • 3 movies from the 60s (Vivre Sa Vie and L’Eclisse (both from 62) and Through a Glass Darkly (61))
  • 2 movies from the 50s (The Night of the Hunter (55) and A Place In the Sun (51))
  • 1 movie from the 30s (Blue Angel (30))

Venue:

This year, I watched 6 movies in the theater (1 by myself and 5 with other people), 14 at other people’s homes, 12 at home with friends or family and 32 at home by myself (well, that’s a little embarrassing to admit).

Bechdel Test:

I define the Bechdel test a little more narrowly than the standard definition. My criteria are not only that the film contain a substantial conversation between two or more women that is not about men, but also that it take place when no male character is on camera. Of the 68 movies I watched (one, Without You I’m Nothing, was exempt from this test because it is a one-woman show), only 10 pass this test unambiguously (Atonement, Heavenly Creatures, Boys Don’t Cry, Whip It, Year Of the Dog, Visitors, Baby Mama, Coraline, Precious and Bring It On). Since the majority of the movies I watched were made and released in the last few years, this is a particularly pathetic number. There are a number of additional movies with strong female leads (True Grit, for example), but there is never not a male character on screen (usually with the movie taking place from his character’s perspective). It’s very rare for movies to be made that do not take place primarily through a male lens – this is because women will obligingly turn out to see movies that deal entirely or mostly with men and/or “male” issues (even if those movies also largely feature women being insulted, beaten, raped and/or shot to bits), but many men are dismissive towards movies featuring women (even if they are not “romcoms” or otherwise “feminine” in subject matter). Apparently, Hollywood thinks that men are so unable to identify with women as their fellow humans that they will be unwilling to attend a movie with a mostly female cast, regardless of subject matter or merit.  Note that movies such as Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown also do not pass the test as I define it, because, while this movie consists of a mostly female cast that often speak to each other when there is no man on camera, they are always talking entirely about their boyfriends (which isn’t to say it’s a bad movie – I liked it, actually, but it still doesn’t pass this test).

Additionally, there are a few movies that I wasn’t sure passed or not, because I wasn’t keeping track of this the entire year, and some movies I couldn’t remember clearly in retrospect. So, I think L’Eclisse kind of passes – there’s one scene where the protagonist and her friends are having a party and it’s all women, but I don’t remember what they talk about. They do dress up and do some sort of bizarre tribal dance to bongos (in blackface!), so, you know, maybe that sort of counts? I can’t remember if there are any conversations between only women in Me and You and Everyone We Know that aren’t about men, but I don’t think there were. The two women in Up In the Air have a conversation that is sort of more about age and opportunity windows than it is about men, but it’s really short and George Clooney is there for it, too, so it doesn’t count. I think there’s a brief conversation in The Night of the Hunter between the woman who takes in orphans and one of her charges about good behavior (mostly, but not entirely, defined by not running around with men). That might sort of count if we’re really reaching. I can’t remember clearly if Vivre Sa Vie, The Bridge of San Luis Rey or Happy Endings have any brief snatch of conversation between two women about something other than men, but I don’t think they do.

For more on the Bechdel test, see this great Twisty post on Toy Story III, and also Geena Davis on the dearth of girls in children’s movies.

Race/Ethnicity:

My breakdown for this is less reliable than the other ones, because I didn’t start keeping track of this until rather late in the year, so I might be forgetting some black, Hispanic or Asian actors, but for the most part, good roles for non-white actors that are not specifically about their race or ethnicity seem to be even slimmer than movies with female protagonists. I don’t really count movies in which the race or ethnicity of a character is essential to the role. So, for example, Precious has an entirely black cast, but the movie is about being poor and black. What I am looking for are nonspecific roles in which the director has cast non-white actors. This almost never happens. For example, the character played by a black actor in Melinda & Melinda is a pianist and a love interest – it’s not essential to the plot (or even mentioned) that he is black, so that movie passes.

Such a casting decision was made only 6 times out of these 69 films: Up (the little boy is Asian and his being Asian is not specific to his character [the actor who voices the part is Japanese-American]), The Hurt Locker (one of the three main stars is black), Broken Embraces (Penelope Cruz), Pulp Fiction (Samuel L. Jackson), Melinda & Melinda (see above) and Nine (Penelope Cruz again). Otherwise, Dirty Pretty Things has a black male lead, but he plays a Nigerian immigrant, so his being black is part of his character; Baby Mama has a black doorman, but he’s a racist caricature; Inglorious Basterds has a black character, but his being black is part of the plot; The Hangover has a horribly racist Chinese character; half the cast of Invictus is black, but it’s about South Africa after apartheid; and Bring It On has a black v. white storyline, which is also racist, although one of the cheerleaders on the “white” team is played by an Asian actor; and I’ve already mentioned Precious. So, even if we counted these movies, that’s still only 13 out of 69 movies with even one non-white actor in a major role (more movies than pass the Bechdel test, but still a pretty poor percentage).

Again, I could really be missing a few, because I thought about this only in hindsight, but I don’t think I’m missing any really principle characters, and the fact that I might have overlooked one or two minor roles in a few films doesn’t really improve the numbers much.  UPDATE: My roommate pointed out that Penelope Cruz should not count, because she is Spanish, so if I count her, I should count Marion Cotillard and other white Western Europeans in American films.  She also pointed out that foreign actors do have this problem, in that, say, Italians are always cast as mobsters, French women as seductive vamps, etc.  But that’s an entirely different issue – my point here is the rare casting of non-white Americans in American films (and non-white Brits in British films, etc.), so Cruz should NOT be counted, so that makes only 4 – 4! – films that pass this test!  I’m not updating the chart below, but those pie slices should be thinner.

Naturally, movies filmed in other countries feature casts almost entirely from their country of origin (for example, Ran is a Japanese movie with a Japanese cast), so they’re not included in this breakdown, though I should mention that as far as I can remember, none of the European movies featured any meaty roles cast with black or Asian actors. Also, there are a few movies that should be exempt from this test, because they are specifically about white people and so couldn’t have been cast with non-white actors (for example, The King’s Speech).

Rating:

Oh, so, did I actually like any of these movies or not? Looking back over the list, here are the ones I definitely really enjoyed (or, with some, didn’t enjoy necessarily, but thought were really very good) and would recommend:

Fantastic Mr. Fox, Atonement, The Hurt Locker, Up, The Fall, Heavenly Creatures, Boys Don’t Cry, Through a Glass Darkly, In the Loop, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Sherlock Holmes, Bright Star, An Education, Whip It, The Night of the Hunter, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Pulp Fiction, The Informant!, Strictly Ballroom, Brick, A Serious Man, The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, Inglorious Basterds, Coraline, Invictus, A Single Man, All the President’s Men and True Grit. (28 out of 69)

Here are the ones that I thought were terrible and would advise you not to watch:

Robin Hood, Year of the Dog, Chasing Amy, Secondhand Lions, The Happening, Precious, The Burbs and Nine. (only 8 out of 69)

The rest are either forgettable; or they’re mostly bad, but have one or two redeeming elements; or I can see that they are objectively good, but I personally couldn’t get into them, or was offended by them in some way; or they were clearly good when they were made, but they maybe don’t really hold up.

While I can’t pick the overall best movie I saw this year, I can state with total confidence that the worst was The Happening (followed very closely by Year of the Dog).

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Posted in Feminism, Movies | 2 Comments »

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December 1, 2009

I’ve Been Watching: Once

Dublin busker (Glen Hansard) meets Czech immigrant (Marketa Irglova), and together, they record an album. Hansard’s character is broke, heartbroken and living with his dad, and Irglova’s character is broke, estranged from her husband, and raising a young daughter. Initially, one might expect the arc of this movie to follow the typical growth of a romance between two people, but instead, the arc is a love story about the artistic process. From initial uncertainty, through growing excitement, to total immersion, to the resulting opened possibilities and new, refreshed outlook on life: the story will be familiar to anyone who has been carried away by an idea and created something, however inconsequential. The film illustrates how the creative process can rejuvinate and rebuild a life, but this is not an idealistic or larger-than-life movie. Rather, Once feels real and honest, as do the original songs, written and performed by Hansard and Irglova.

Posted in Art, Movies | 3 Comments »

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December 3, 2008

Films, You Know, Movies, You Know, Cinema, You Know, Pictures

Which movie of each of these directors is your favorite?

Here’s how I would answer:

1.  Very tough choice between The Big Lebowski and Fargo, but I think I have to go with Lebowski, because I really could watch Jeff Bridges play that character for, like, three additional hours without getting bored.

2.  My favorite Wes Anderson movie changes pretty much monthly, but right now, I’m thinking Bottle Rocket takes top spot.

3.  I’ve only seen Harold & Maude.  Which I liked, but not as much as some people do.

4.  I think I’ve only seen about one-and-a-half Kevin Smith movies, and that was one-and-a-half too many.  I refuse to pick a favorite.

5.  I can’t imagine ever liking any movie better than I liked Kill Bill.  It is the only movie that, after seeing it, I immediately went out and bought, and then watched five times in a row.  No deliberation needed here.

6.  Kubrick’s version of The Shining is my all-time favorite horror movie, and the only such movie I find truly, lastingly frightening.  Close second = Full Metal Jacket.

7.  There Will Be Blood.  Awesome.

8.  I have only seen The Fog of War.

How would you answer?

Obviously, I’ve not been blogging much lately, but it’s not like I’ve just been sitting around watching movies. I have also been watching television and paint drying. Here is a list of all the movies I have in the past few months, and how they affected me:

The Virgin Suicides made me glad I am no longer a teenage girl, and also it made me feel bad for not being extremely thin (about which, come to think of it, is also what I spent the vast majority of my teenage girlhood feeling bad).

Camille Claudet made me feel bad for not being brilliant and dedicated at something, so much so that I get up in the middle of the night and go dig around in mud for it. 

Desperately Seeking Susan made me feel bad for Madonna.

Hellboy 2 made me feel bad for not speaking up when groups of people decide on a movie.

Day For Night made me feel bad for having in the past gotten stupidly and overdramatically involved with various cast-mates; that must have been very trying for everyone around me.

Velvet Underground made me feel bad for not being extremely thin, and for not partying very much, or doing anything interesting.

Belle de Jour made me feel bad for having watched it.

The Double Life of Veronique made me google the movie for an hour afterwards trying to figure out what the hell it was about. Turns out, nobody else knows either.

Vicky Christina Barcelona made me angry, because if a woman had written it, it would have been condescendingly reviewed as yet another chick-flick, but because Woody Allen wrote it, it was reviewed as dry and witty and smart, which isn’t to say that it wasn’t an enjoyable movie, but just that it’s a good example of what I often consider to be an unfair, automatic dismissal of the work of women writers. Also, Penelope Cruz is awesome in it, and every bit as much fun to watch as ScarJo is not. Also, it made me feel bad for not being extremely thin, and for not shacking up with a sexy artist when I did my own long-term travel (not that I met any).

The Swimming Pool made me feel bad for not being extremely thin, and for not getting any writing done.

The Interpreter made me wonder if the UN really is completely empty at night, and if there aren’t any sort of security people or anything around, and also why those people had bothered to be in there talking about their plot, since it didn’t turn out to be necessary at all in any way. Did one of them say, ‘Hey, where should we meet to go over the details of our planned assassination? I don’t feel like paying Manhattan prices for beers. You want to just meet at midnight in the UN Security Council chamber?’ And beyond just that, since (spoiler alert) the assassination plot was a red herring anyway, they were obviously there entirely under the assumption that surely somebody would stumble in after hours and overhear their whispers. Which…what? Possibly, I’m confused about the plot in recollection, but I’m pretty sure it made no sense. Also, this movie made me feel bad for never following through on my vague plan to take the Foreign Service exam. And for not being extremely thin.

La Petite Lilli is even worse than The Seagull.

2 Days In Paris made me feel bad for not being French, extremely thin, quirky and taken. It also made me think how weird it must be to go from dating Julie Delpy to dating Christina Ricci. I bet Adam Goldberg is pissed about his career, too – his girlfriend’s movie, and Chandler’s roommate. Has he been in anything else? I wonder if he blames his tattoos.

The Dinner Game made me wonder if anyone has ever invited me to hang out with them just for the purposes of mocking me, and then I realized that of course they had; that’s what junior high is all about.

The Amityville Horror…sweet lord, what was with the ballet outfit? I wasn’t around when this movie came out, but tell me this was widely mocked at the time, yes? I mean, if you have not seen this movie, Margot Kidder at one point stands in front of a full length mirror in her bedroom and carefully arranges a white flower behind one ear, before doing several plies dressed in an unbuttoned white shirt (with no bra), panties, and one long white leg sock thing that’s like a legging that’s been cut off at the top…but just one. What the hell is that thing? Is that an actual garment? Did somebody say ‘let’s think up the most bizarre sort of dance-inspired lingerie we can imagine to ease us into the sex scene?’ I mean, really? I might go as that scene for Halloween next year.

Forty Shades of Blue – I spent this entire movie thinking that the one guy looked an awful lot like Ed from Northern Exposure, and then I thought, whatever happened to Ed from Northern Exposure? And then I thought about how much I liked Northern Exposure, and how if Alaska were really anything like Northern Exposure, it might be fun to live there, but really, it’d just be cold and then Sarah Palin. And then, I imdb’d the film, and guess what? It was Ed from Northern Exposure!

Belle Epoque had Penelope Cruz in it, too, but she was really young and boring in this one.

The Remains of the Day made me feel bad for never being forthcoming with my feelings, but also good, because I am not the sort of person who would ever employ servants, or feel any sort of loyalty towards a corrupted employer.

Bed and Board made me think it might be really fun to live in a big apartment building in Paris. And it made me feel bad for not being extremely thin.

The Prestige had both Christian Bale and David Bowie in it, and as such, there was really no possible way I wasn’t going to like it. And it made me feel bad for not being brilliant at and dedicated to anything. And it made me remember how much I enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which I read almost entirely in a hammock on a porch overhanging the river in the 4000 Islands in Laos), and made me wish I could find another novel as absorbing as those had been.

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July 24, 2008

Flicks and Lit For Boys and Girls

Bitch Ph.D. explains The Bechdel Rule:

The rule is that movies should have 1) at least two women, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.

. . . Few movies pass the Bechdel test–most of the dialogue happens between men, or between men and one woman. Most movies who have extended conversations between women tend to be under the umbrella of “chick flicks,” or the newly-minted term, “RomComs.” But even those movies don’t pass the Bechdel test; not only are the conversations about men, the movies are driven by what men do or don’t do, what they want or don’t want, even when all the principal characters are women.

Movies, yes, and television, and this rule should also really be applied to plays. I mean, it is just incredible how few women are in anything, and how little they do when they’re there. What they mostly do is (a) be all about the men in the thing, and (b) be the one to blame for everything that goes wrong. Women are almost always the “out” for why there’s a problem – it’s the mom’s fault because she tries to smother everyone because she’s timid, controlling and Puritanical. Or, it’s the girlfriend’s fault because she tries to smother her boyfriend because she’s controlling, domineering, bitchy and usually whorish. Or whatever. When the question is, what’s wrong with this swell male protagonist’s life, the answer is almost always a hysterical, shrewish, controlling woman.

The amazing thing is, you can point this out to men who write or do comedy, and they’ll agree with you and talk about how they are very careful not to do that, and really enjoy writing strong, sympathetic female characters, and then you read their stuff…and the women are all hysterical, shrewish, controlling bitches (I’m sure that the writers of Everybody Loves Raymond fully believe that the characters of Deborah and Marie are sympathetic, whereas to me, that show is a perfect example, among many, of women being horrid, unreasonable, humorless nags for no reason).

Obviously, until women start writing everything, we’re going to be stuck playing unreasonable, stupid, evil bitches on the one hand, or boring, sweet, ever-affectionate straight-men on the other.

I’ve been watching DVDs of ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ lately (which is hilarious), and I just watched a special features short where the cast was talking about casting Kaitlin Olson as Sweet D, and what they mostly talk about is how these three guys had written this show, and all the one female character did in it was be like, ‘You guys!’ all the time. And they didn’t like that, and Olson wouldn’t take the part if it was like that. It took them awhile to convince her to take the job. On her final audition, she read a hilarious scene and decided to do it, because she had so much fun at that audition. Except, she found out at the bar later that the scene was actually between two of the male characters – they were all like, ‘oh, well, yeah, we didn’t have anything interesting written for Sweet D to audition you with, so we had you read a guy part. But you won’t be doing that in the actual show.’

Eventually, however, they did make an effort to write that part in a more comedic way – in large part, I’m sure, because it’s obvious Olson is not at all afraid to say what she thinks about things, and she seems to flat out refuse to be pushed into a boring, supporting role, which is awesome. She’s one of my heroes now.

Women are used to being interested in movies, books, plays and so forth that are by men, starring men and all about men. I love all kinds of culture that’s aimed at men and meant to appeal to them. All women can get into dude-flicks or dude-lit (oops, there’s no equivalent condescending term to use), and even patiently overlook the blatant misogyny it almost always contains. But just hint to a guy that he try watching, reading or enjoying anything at all that is written by, staring and/or primarily about women (whether it’s truly silly and superficial on its own merits, or merely automatically dismissed as silly just because it’s concerned with women), and he’ll immediately dismiss it on all levels and call you a fool for liking it yourself.

Because women are niche. Even though we constitute the majority of the population.

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Oh, and while I’m on this subject Estelle Getty has died.  Here’s Feministe on Golden Girls:

Where else have you seen a popular sitcom (or any show) that revolves around women who actually kind of look like average women, who aren’t young and fabulous and beautiful, who have interests other than finding male companionship, who put their female friendships first, and who have sex after menopause? More to the point, where can you find a TV show or movie that revolves around women like that, and those women aren’t the butt of the joke?

It’s certainly a rarity, and Golden Girls remains a bright spot in TV history. Estelle Getty was a class act.

Posted in Books, Feminism, Humor, Movies, Rants, Television, Theatre | 3 Comments »

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July 12, 2008

I’ve Been Watching: Say Anything, Ordinary People, Wet Hot American Summer and Indochine

Last Saturday night, my roommate and I (at our usual level of Saturday-night hedonism) decided to try out the ‘instant watch’ option I’d recently discovered on Netflix. At first, my roommate thought she could hook her laptop up to the television, but the cord turned out to be for her camera only. Then, we thought we could at least watch on her laptop (which is faster than mine). But she has a Mac, and this Netflix option is not available on Macs. Then, we finally decided to just use my laptop, propped up on a stack of old TimeOut New Yorks on the coffee table. After perusing the selection (which is hit-or-miss), we finally decided on Ordinary People. My roommate’s friend really loves this movie, and neither of us had ever seen it. So, we clicked on it!

. . . Only to be told we needed to download some software. Slowly. We went for cake. We came back. The software finally loaded, we shut down, we booted up, we installed, we shut down again, we booted up again…and we pressed play!

. . . And got a message that, due to our internet connection, the movie would take nearly two hours to load.

“You know,” I said at this point. “I’ve never seen Say Anything.”

“Really?” said my roommate. “I have Say Anything!”

“I know!”

So, now I can knock that one off the list.

My mother once said to me that she didn’t understand why all movies and books and plays had to be about terrible things happening to people. I replied that I couldn’t think of a way to tell a story about everything going swimmingly.

I stand corrected. Say Anything is a story about everything going swimmingly. Two hot, nice, well-liked young people meet, go nuts for each other, and everything goes well for them about it. Oh, sure, the girl has the momentary “I’m going to London, we should break up preemptively,” panic, but then she’s all, “Or, why don’t you come with me?!” And there’s the whole thing with the dad, but seriously, what movie watcher is really all that upset about a dad going to jail for white-collar crime when there is hot teen sex to be had? Nobody cares about John Mahoney’s hypocrisy when John Cusack is standing in the rain with a boombox over his head. Especially since the fall-out with dad has no hugely negative effects in the heroine’s life – sure, she’s disillusioned with him (although I must say here that the thin reasoning behind how he rationalized his crime is super belabored – you can practically hear the writers’ gears grinding as they try to find a way to inject some sort of plot-necessary conflict into this movie that won’t put even a slight shadow over all the good-feelingness), but he still loves her and is there ready to resume their relationship whenever she can reconcile herself to his shortcomings, and too – she has a full, merit-based scholarship! So, conveniently, she need not even sweat over whether or not to use Daddy’s ill-gotten gains to fund her already planned-for dreams. She’s her own woman now, with a bonus Cusack along for the ride.

Which is not to say that I didn’t like Say Anything. I did like it – how could you not like it, is my point?

At some point during our Say Anything viewing, Ordinary People finally downloaded, so we started to watch that on my laptop. Ordinary People . . . was very brown. Everything in it was brown, which is typical for movies made during the time period – it was a very brown country around 1980. There was a lot of snow. There was swimming, and a suicidal boy, and Robin Williams was a kind, but no-nonsense therapist, and everything was pretty much Sally Field’s fault, because she was such a cold, self-absorbed bitch for no real reason. And Christina Ricci’s boyfriend got electrocuted, and there was a giant robot bunny that issued proclamations having something to do with string theory, and everybody got new sneakers.

Or something like that. I don’t know. The main thing I know about Ordinary People is that it took us about seven hours to watch it, due to the Netflix “instant” watch feature being (a) a piece of crap and (b) about as “instant” as osso bucco (you like that one? I worked hard on it). Every fifteen minutes, the movie informed us that it would need to spend 30-45 minutes re-downloading itself, to avoid viewing difficulties (by which I can only assume it meant cause viewing difficulties). But we watched it all the way through anyway, because we are ladies who finish what we start. It was the most gruelling Saturday night I’ve had in months.

This past week, I went with some friends to the free showing of Wet Hot American Summer at the McCarren Park Pool. The Pool is a couple blocks from my apartment – it used to be an actual pool, but now it’s a drained pool that’s used for summer concerts and movies, at which times it gets terrifyingly packed with hipsters. This movie was the first one this summer, and I unintentionally went in costume. I had never seen the movie and didn’t know anything about it, but I have in my wardrobe two pairs of shorts: one is a knee-lenth pair of cutoffs, and the other is a pair of red cotton short-shorts with white trim, which I now know are the exact same pair that the gay guy in WHAS wears throughout the movie. It turns out coming in costume to these outdoor movies is encouraged, so I ended up displaying far more enthusiasm than I’m normally comfortable with, completely by accident.

At any rate, movies at McCarren Park Pool are really fun, especially if you get there early enough to put down a blanket and enforce a small zone of personal space around it (which we did). You’re not supposed to bring your own food and beer, but everybody does, so next time, I’m bringing a 40. The other thing I will do differently next time (other than not dress up like a character) is wait afterward until the crowd bottlenecking through the narrow entry gates has disbursed. The crowd inside is not too bothersome, what with the open sky and all, but the rush through the gates was terrifying, and required bodily contact with many strangers dressed for (and all asweat with) the hot summer night. It was a wet hot American stampede (you like that one? I worked hard on it).

At some point in the past week, I also watched Indochine. For the first 2/3 of this movie, all I had to say about it was: ‘a bunch of French people act like assholes in Vietnam. The especially good-looking French people show some small compunction about their bad behavior.’ But then (around the time the daughter shot the guy) the movie got much, much better, and by the end, I’d decided it was a great movie. This had something to do with the perspective of the movie broadening out from being entirely through the perspective of the French, and becoming more objectively about Vietnam itself and the colonization conflict overall.

But, boy, if I’d been the daughter, I’d have totally gone for the revolutionary, enlightened childhood sweetheart who’s all “you and I don’t matter – join the resistance” over the “I’m sort of useless and intermittently cruel and racist, plus I slept with your mother, but man, look at these eyes” French soldier.

On a sidenote, I always take note when theatre people are portrayed as the political underground in movies or plays. This happens a lot, because people who write and do theatre and films really want to write their ilk as hugely politically significant, and while I know that in some situations playwrights are quite influential and active (Prague Spring, early-19th c. Russia), I think that, especially during the red scare, playwrights got way too much credit for their influence on public opinion. Was anybody really ever inclined toward Communism just because Brecht’s plays were oh so thrillingly entertaining? Please. Charlie Chaplin, maybe. Brecht, no. And as for more active forms of subversion, theater people are the most feckless, inactive, self-absorbed people on Earth (I can say it – I kind of am one, albeit in a reluctant, half-assed sort of way). Performers might kick up a stink if they’re censored, but they’re highly unlikely to go around assassinating officials and circulating broadsheets. Because those activities require discretion, and the only thing that theater people want out of life is to be widely and constantly observed. “Underground” is the last place a performer wants to go.

Posted in Brooklyn, Humor, Movies, Theatre | Leave a Comment »

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July 4, 2008

How Many Movies and Hot Dogs Can You Consume Today?

I’m already bored of Wall-E. I haven’t seen it. I haven’t really heard all that much about it. I’ve seen, I think, one preview. I’ve listened to everybody I’ve talked to in the last couple of weeks assert that it’s really very good, and that I ought to see it right away. And I’ve seen headlines of articles and blog posts about it on every site I visit – I haven’t even read the articles; I’ve just seen the headlines.

And I’m already sick of it. This is what happens to me all the time with whatever culture thing everybody goes nuts for. It’s not that I don’t want to see it, or that I wouldn’t like it on its merits. I’m sure it’s great, and I’m sure I’d love it. But I probably won’t see it, just like I never ended up seeing Juno or, well, really any movie, honestly. I think in the last year, I saw The Orphanage and Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day (both with other people, after all the movies on offer went through the rigorous screening process that is everybody else’s tastes and what they’ve already seen, so you end up left with something random, but by and large unobjectionable like The Orphanage or Miss Pettigrew), and that’s it.

It’s just that, within five minutes of a film being released, it’s freaking everywhere, and I feel like I’ve seen it, not just once, but over and over and over again.

And furthermore, I guess that some people are glad for the next cool thing, but personally (and I know I’m not the only one), I’m always drowning under a cultural backlog of things that I must absolutely see, read, experience, be up on, and whenever someone tells me that I simply must drop everything and see this thing RIGHT NOW, it feels downright rude. I have enough culture to be wading through! I don’t need somebody barging into my little culture-absorber’s library carrel and screaming, “Drop everything! We’re all seeing a movie about a robot RIGHT THIS MINUTE!” What the crap? I’m still working on seeing Juno! Are we done with that already? I still haven’t seen The Godfather. Or Say Anything. Or the first Batman – the one with Christian Bale, not the twelve Batmans before that. And I never saw Brokeback Mountain, either. Not to mention there are oodles of You-Tube videos people simply won’t speak to me until I watch now right now. So, you know what, Wall-E might not get watched right this damn minute, and he’ll just have to wait his turn, won’t he?

I’m feeling stressed just thinking about it. I realize that some people think that films and books and web bits and stand-up comics are things to be enjoyed recreationally, as they come, and need not be amassed like plunder in the various stockpiles of one’s brain. I realize that for some people, word of a new cultural sensation they’d not heard of before is a treat, not a sign of personal failure. But I think these people are of a different species from me entirely.

These are the type of people who say things like, “I’m looking for a good book to read.” A statement which I cannot believe anyone could ever utter in all sincerity. Who are these people?

Here, odd, disinterested space-people: here is my 58-page single-spaced insane book list I’ve been adding to since I was twelve years old, with titles scribbled all up and down the margins and extra Post-It notes covered in chicken scratch stuck on all over. Close your eyes and point to one. You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, I’m off to see Wall-E. I mean, The Dark Knight. I mean, STOP MAKING MUST-SEE MOVIES FOR A LITTLE WHILE, WON’T YOU?

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Speaking of glut, the 4th of July is the day for one of America’s greatest annual events: Nathan’s Famous 4th of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, the competitive eating event of the year. I’ve mentioned my obsession with competitive eating several times on this blog, and all the heavies will be at Nathan’s this year: Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut, and my personal favorite, Sonya ‘The Black Widow’ Thomas. Thomas is a 100-lb., 5’5″ Korean woman who has consistently demonstrated an astounding ability to put away large amounts of food:

She swallowed the egg. Then she swallowed 64 more in six minutes and 40 seconds. She could have eaten more but the organizers ran out of eggs. . . . “Eggs are easy to eat,” Thomas explains. “I could eat 80 or 90.”

(My obsession with all this, however, is not so unreasonable that I would actually go down to Coney Island this morning and experience first-hand the crush of humanity crowding around the Nathan’s Famous stand there.)

Speaking of impressive athletes, click here to marvel at the mind-blowing physique of Dara Torres, 41-year-old swimmer who’s attempting to qualify for the 50-meter freestyle in the Olympics this year. If I were to pick a role-model between the two, I think eating 64 eggs in 6 minutes is a slightly more reachable goal for me than looking like Ms. Torres when I’m 40.

It’s probably a good thing all of my goals are in culture consumption.

Posted in Books, Brooklyn, Food, Health, Movies, New York City, Rants | 1 Comment »

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May 23, 2008

I’ve Been Watching: Private Property

Let me preface this post by admitting that I know absolutely nothing about films. I’ve barely seen any, and I have no idea why the good ones are good, or why the bad ones are bad. Lately, I’ve been getting a whole lot of foreign films (mostly French) from Netflix. Part of my problem with watching movies is that I have very poor listening comprehension. My mind wanders, and I have to rewind over and over. But with foreign films, I read the subtitles, and so I’m able to focus on the task at hand. Also, there are usually sweeping shots of beautiful countryside and charming little towns. And finally, I experience a sort of detachment when watching foreign films, because so many of the subtleties – the cultural context, I suppose – are lost in translation, so I don’t get as invested, and I don’t get offended by things that would probably piss me off if they were in an American film (casual misogyny, lame humor, clunky dialogue, stereotyped and/or unrealistic characters, emotional dishonesty, forced and unjustified plot devices). I view everything at a sort of lovely, disinterested remove. And that same missing context also makes the movies really funny to me, in a disjointed kind of way. I compose a kind of running bulletpoint summary in my head as I watch, and it amuses me. For example, here’s what I thought to myself as I watched Joachim Lafosse’s Private Property today:

Isabelle Huppert: I am a very thin lady who lives with my two grown sons. I’m divorced.

Blond Grown Son: I am an asshat, across the boards.

Brunette Grown Son: I am also here.

IH: I have a boyfriend, as well. But I don’t bring him around.

Blond Son: Because I’d be an asshat about it.

Ex-husband of IH: I am a large man, and frustrated. I come around sometimes. I’m not the best ex you could have, but I’m not horrible, either.

Blond Son: I’m closer to my dad.

Other Son: I’m closer to my mom.

IH: I’m taking a shower in front of my grown son. If you think that’s peculiar, it’s probably because you’re an American, and you believe the naked human form is shameful.

Blond Son: One of our biggest problems is that we all only have one car.

Boyfriend of IH: I’m a chef. I’d like to start a B&B with my girlfriend, IH. If you sold your giant house, IH, we could pay for the B&B.

IH: That’d be cool. But I think my asshat son would be an asshat about it.

Boyfriend: You’re so passive. You should just tell your boys what’s what.

IH: I would, but I’m passive. Why don’t you come over and do it?

Sons: Amazingly, we’re taking a bath together and washing each others’ hair. If you think this is weird, it’s probably because you’re an American, and your mind is in the gutter.

IH: So, kids, I’m thinking about selling the house. Let’s not be asshats about this.

Blond Son: Oh, man. I’m SO going to pitch a damn fit.

Other Son: I am also here.

Boyfriend: Listen, your mother wanted me to tell you that we’re in love, and she’s awesome, and we’re starting a B&B together. But I hear one of you is an asshat?

Blond Son: That’s me. I’ll demonstrate my asshattery now.

Boyfriend: That’s it. I’m out of here. We’re through, IH.

IH: Just like that? Why? I thought we were pretty serious.

Boyfriend: Um…I don’t know.

Sons: Yeah, we’re not real clear on that, either.

Boyfriend: Regardless, I have to leave.

IH: Well, I’m going to go stay with a friend I just realized I have. You asshats can fend for yourselves. You are both fully grown men, after all, so I don’t know why this is such a big deal.

Blond Son: Fine. I’ll have my girlfriend over.

Girlfriend: I’m very well-adjusted, and teach aerobics. My boyfriend has seemed cute up to this point, but now that I see him with his brother, I realize he is an asshat. His brother’s much cuter.

Other Son: Oh, come on. I’m just here.

Blond Son: I will maul you in front of my brother to get a rise out of him.

Girlfriend: That’s it. We’re through. I’m way too cool for you – I’m going back to my aerobics class, where I wear a hoodie and a dress over my pants.

Blond Son: Argh! I will beat up on you for embarrassing me in front of my girlfriend, my brother!

Other Son: What? But I’m just here!

Blond Son: Take this glass coffee table to the back of the head! …Whoa. Other son?

…Are you…dead?

…Seriously? How could falling through a coffee table have possibly instantly killed a young, healthy man?

Dead Other Son: No idea. But I think I really am dead. Man!

Blond Son: Oh, shit! And I’ve been such an asshat all this time, and now everyone will really, finally let me have it!

Everyone: Yes. We will. You’re really what’s wrong with everything.

Blond Son: I really am.

(Credits.)

Posted in Humor, Movies | 3 Comments »

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December 13, 2007

Log Lines for Possible Made-For-TV Christmas Movies

A woman finds that she has turned into a Christmas ornament on a tree. Finds love with an adjacent ornament.

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A woman finds that she has fallen in love with a Christmas ornament. Christmas ornament becomes real man.

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A family man finds that he has fallen in love with a real woman, who has become a Christmas ornament, who has fallen in love with family man, who owns Christmas tree. Man divorces wife and marries Christmas ornament. Christmas ornament turns back into real-life woman.

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Dog eats Christmas ornament. Christmas ornament lives in dog’s stomach, converses with other small, anthropomorphic, holiday-themed items dog has eaten.

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Dogs, cats, and other anthropomorphic animals reenact the nativity.

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A woman, watching an animal reenactment of the nativity, falls in love with the male director of the nativity. The animals all talk, and plot ways to set the man up with this woman.

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A woman and man are estranged, and an anthropomorphic dog who loves Christmas brings them back together.

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An anthropomorphic dog hates Christmas, but is taught to love it again by a talking baby.

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A talking baby wants its lonely mother to meet a man for Christmas. Talking baby makes this happen, with the help of an anthropomorphic hamster.

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A talking baby consumes an anthropomorphic hamster over Christmas, and is brought to the hospital by its lonely mother on Christmas, and its mother falls in love with the lonely, grouchy, career-obsessed E.R. doctor.

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A teenager, who has to miss Christmas to go to the hospital when her infant sister consumes an anthropomorphic hamster, finds love with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, who is spending Christmas in the E.R. because it is a warm place to sleep.

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A boy from the wrong side of the tracks learns the true spirit of Christmas when, going to the E.R. for a warm place to sleep, he is forced to pitch in with several touching emergency cases.

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A boy from the wrong side of the tracks spends Christmas in an abandoned subway tunnel with a mangy, anthropomorphic dog. Boy and dog discover the joys of Christmas, and fall in love with a reformed prostitute and anthropomorphic female dog respectively.

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A Grinchlike madam and her employees learn the true meaning of Christmas when one of the women gives birth to a talking baby. Is the baby in fact Jesus? The whorehouse becomes a convent, and there is a musical number.

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A talking baby plays Jesus in a nativity scene. (Also, the baby can and does talk to hamsters.) One year, the baby becomes too old to play Jesus. The baby (now a toddler) prepares to throw himself off the Brooklyn bridge. An angel comes and tells the baby that he (the baby) really has been Jesus the whole time. It wasn’t acting at all!

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An angel is lonely. Talking birds help the angel meet a lonely woman for Christmas.

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An orphan child accidentally shoots an angel, then shoots self in remorse. The dead orphan child becomes an angel, and helps all orphans enjoy Christmas.

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A widower is lost late at night; hits an angel with his car. The man brings the maimed angel home for Christmas. The man’s talking baby helps the angel and the man fall in love, and all three ascend into heaven.

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A talking baby is distressed about poverty in Africa. With the help of many anthropomorphic animals, the talking baby convinces America’s financial upper class that he (the baby) is in fact Jesus, and that a massive redistribution of wealth is required for Christmas, or all will go to hell. World peace and happiness ensue, until God smites the baby for blasphemy. Angels forcibly reinstate the status quo.

Posted in Humor | 1 Comment »

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