steady as she goes

Moving to Wordpress

2010-08-28T22:34:00.001-05:00

Hello to my many fives of readers! I am just checking in to say that I am moving this blog over to Wordpress, since Wordpress is a little easier to use and people can comment without having to sign up through google or blogger. The link to the new blog is:

http://steadygoing.wordpress.com

Someday I might get my own domain and link it there, but for now, Wordpress it is. :)

See you over there, in that corner of the internet!

We need to talk about Predators

2010-08-08T16:09:00.002-05:00

My awesome cousin Clare and I went to see Predators on Wednesday night. Interesting fact: We would have seen it on Friday or a weekend (or at any time not at 10:15pm) but it was so fast on its way out of theaters that it wasn't even *in* houston theatres for this weekend. So, 10:15. Wednesday night. Predators.

Let me describe to you the kind of people in Houston who go see Predators on a Wednesday night at 10:15 besides ourselves:

Teenagers

Two guys who seemed to be on some kind of man-date. If only we had been able to take a picture of the sartorial wonders one of them was displaying: tan baseball cap (with American flag, natch), tan t-shirt tucked into (belted) camoflage pants with cowboy boots. Now, I am not sure that I can verbally do justice to these last two items of clothing. The camoflage pants were actually kind of shiny, as though they were formal camo, for special occasions. They seemed to taper down* and end at the cowboy boots, which were brown and also shiny. It was really clear that this outfit had been put together with great care, as though he was going hunting in a really fancy game preserve that also housed a movie theater which was showing Predators.

The movie itself was pretty awesome. When it was over we actually had to stop ourselves from thinking that hard about it, so flimsy was the plot and so numerous the holes therein. For example, if Laurence Fishburne's character had been on the planet for ten seasons, how long is a season? We're given to believe that a season is actually quite long, but at the end (spoiler alert! YOU KNOW YOU CARE ABOUT THE ENDING OF PREDATORS) when Adrien Brody and the chick are walking away they see more crates (and, presumably, people) being parachuted on to the planet. Does that mean that a season is only, like, three days long or however long it takes the batch of prey to die?

It's questions like this that keep me awake at night, people. Anyway, the plot (as it is) in a nutshell: Adrien Brody and a bunch of other people (including Machete and Topher Grace) wake up mid-air over a TERRIFYING JUNGLE. Once they land they realize that they're not on earth, that they're all lethal badasses of various provenance, and that they're in Very Big Trouble. After removing the various ethnic characters using alien dogs and a cleverly disguised booby-trap (No. Seriously. Machete lasts literally twenty minutes into this movie, and the African dude about thirty. It's sad.) they find a strung-up predator that looks like the Predator from the first movie and Laurence Fishburne, who has gone crazy from being on the game preserve planet and tries to kill them. Another question posed by this movie: if Laurence Fishburne has survived by running and hiding and scavenging, why did he look like he'd spent the last ten years on the sofa, eating In-N-Out burgers? It was hard to suspend my disbelief to accept that this guy a) was once a badass, in-shape warrior and b) had survived on his own on a prison planet when he c) looks kind of like a paunchier, more African-American Mickey Rourke.

Anyway. So yadda yadda yadda, the Predators are coming, suddenly there are two kind of predators (WTF?!@?) and then EVERYONE DIES. Everyone, that is, except Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, and Isabela, the Hot Chick of Unspecified Origin. (Oh wait, Guatemala, because she told them all about the Predator in a handy bit of exposition.) Now, from the beginning Topher Grace is like "Waaah, I'm a nerdy doctor, I shouldn't BEEE here." And of course you know this is no tragic mistake, this dude is probably going to turn out to be a dyed-in-the-wool crazy person. And you'd be right! At the end he's all ready to kill Isabela in some unspecified cruel way and he's like "I LOVE THIS PLANET. CLEARLY THIS IS A PLANET FOR ME SINCE I LOVE TO KILL PEOPLE." And when Adrien Brody comes and saves them (blah blah, he was going to steal the alien craft but had a crisis of conscience, they've fallen down a hole, blah) the following exchange takes place:

Topher Grace Is A Serial Killer to Adrien Brody: You're a good man.
He gets ready to shoot Adrien Brody. Adrien Brody uses his whippet-quick killer reflexes and stabs Topher Grace in the jaw with his own, presumably-poisoned knife. (long story.)
Adrien Brody: I'm not good. I'm just fast.
Topher Grace: *gargle*

Later, he asks one of the Predators to help him because he's "One of you!"

Now, asinine dialogue and ludicrous characters aside, this movie was pretty fun. There was lots of shooting, lots of running, lots of people getting injured and or slaughtered in their attempt to escape the Predators. I didn't really understand why it needed to be a jungle (again); I mean, if the Predators' cloaking mechanism can bend ambient light so that they can be invisible to the human eye, why not be in the desert? Why not be in the mountains? We're fighting TWO WARS in the desert right now and that is a pretty tailor-made premise for a Predators flick RIGHT THERE. My only complaint would be that it took the actual Predators too long to show up, and when they did, I was deprived of the multiplicity of Predators that I felt I was promised. io9 does a very good rundown of this problem here.

Anyway, I loved it overall, and I'm probably going to buy it on DVD. Only so I can experience Adrien Brody doing his deep-register I'm A Badass voice in the privacy of my own home.

*They looked kind of like these. Only, you know, SHINY. But not, like, disco-shiny. Just shiny shiny.

Dinner for Schmucks...

2010-08-03T17:50:00.004-05:00

...Intermittently funny. My mom and I kept having what we call "Lucy Moments." This term derives from those moments when, watching an episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy does something so spectacularly ill-advised and stupid that you have to cover your eyes or leave the room in sympathetic embarrassment. From the moment that Paul Rudd hits Steve Carrell with his car, these moments come thick and fast.

The dinner portion in Dinner for Schmucks only took up about a fourth of the movie, if that, and full of characters that we didn't get to see enough of (Chris O'Dowd's blind fencer anyone?)The rest of the movie was entirely comprised of one horrifyingly awful situation after another, my favorite being when Barry (Carrell) awkwardly intercepts an IM from a woman that Tim (Paul Rudd) had had a one-night stand with years back, which (of course!) led to her showing up at Tim's apartment and wreaking unspeakable shenanigans involving spanking and schoolgirl fantasies all over his business. Lucy Punch, the actress playing said crazy stalker, is an actress that I've only seen in Hot Fuzz and an episode of Poirot (where she played a missionary who was sleeping with her cousin. GASP.) She is a perfectly charming actress that I will now never be able to look at again.

The major bright spot for me was Jemaine Clement as Kieran, the artist that Tim's beautiful and mildly exotic girlfriend Julie represents.* Kieran is hilarious and pompous and totally in control of his schtick, which somehow never wore thin the way that Barry's did. In this day and age of sensitive spectrum diagnoses it was awkward to see a character who was clearly not stupid so much as actually mentally delayed in some way be the butt of so very many sex jokes. (He couldn't find the clitoris of his horrible ex-wife! He suggested that she had put it in her purse! Hilarity!)

I did do a lot of laughing in this movie. I don't want to make it sound like it was just one big cringe-fest, but I did cringe a lot, and actually had to leave the theater when a hilarious phone mixup (Their phones look just the same! IT IS SO EASY TO MIX UP PHONES IN THIS DAY AND AGE!) caused Barry AND the horrible Darla to join Tim and his potential new clients at brunch, only to have Julie show up mid-proposal. So very, very awkward. These Swiss clients, played by David Walliams and Lucy Davenport with scary blue-eyed perfection, were also sadly underutilized.

Ve do not understand vat is going on here.

I've also had a debate with my parents over the proper translation of the title of the original French movie, Le Diner de Cons. An article in the Houston Chronicle said that this title contained both "idiot" and the French word for, presumably, "cunt." I disagree. I seem to remember that "cons" was a word for idiots. Any of the three people who read this blog who know something about this are welcome to raise their hands and provide clarification. IMPORTANT ISSUES.

*I wish that the movie hadn't ended with her losing her chance at a big museum show in San Francisco only because she got back with Tim. Spoiler alert! in case you've never seen a romantic comedy ever!

Links Heard 'Round the Internet

2010-08-02T14:11:00.003-05:00

This afternoon I'm going to see Dinner for Schmucks with my mom (Shut up, Paul Rudd is super cute and I like Steve Carrell, also David Walliams and Jemaine Clement) so here are some fun links:

The Awl continues the longstanding tradition of being awesome with an awesome series called "Understudies," long-form essays about various musicals including one by my pal Jaime Green about Spring Awakening, which I fully admit I have never seen. (The show, not the essay. I read the essay, and it rules)
Jo Walton (who also rules: read Farthing and Ha'penny right now, do not pass GO, do not collect $200) asks why Susannah Clarke's (rule-y) novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell hasn't been more influential over on tor.com

And, finally most important of all:

CENTURION IS ON VIDEO-ON-DEMAND. This is, for those of you who don't follow these things, a) a Neil Marshall movie, he of The Descent and Dog Soldiers and Doomsday b) about the Roman Ninth Legion, which disappeared in Scotland after being fucking slaughtered by a bunch of Picts c) starring everyone in life I have ever loved, including David Morrissey and Michael Fassbender. You can bet your ass this is what I'm going to be watching tomorrow morning.

I wrote this on a plane, yo

2010-07-31T19:16:00.001-05:00

I’m composing this in a word processing document as I am flying home to Houston. The past four days have been more than slightly ridiculous. In addition to interviewing, packing to come home for two weeks, not knowing if those two weeks would turn into two months, three months, four, I also had to be packing up all my shit to move out of my apartment.

For various insane reasons relating to my quasi-employments and my parents desire not to be guaranteeing the lease on an apartment that I might be forced to vacate at any moment I had to leave my beautiful orange room in Lord Washington’s Fort, the apartment my buddies and I had occupied for a year in Washington Heights. We all got along really well as roommates, even when we had disagreements about decor or cleaning out the stupid drain catch (which no one ever really mastered the art of, except Steph, who just started using her own).

It’s going to be really strange not going home to that apartment when I get back to NYC, and I’m honestly a little verklempt thinking about it. Those guys are my pals, and that room was my home, and I’m really going to miss it. I am fairly confident that I will be able to find something in the way of housing- I’ve already warned my friends who offered me couch crash-age that I will be cashing that shit in.

Being at home is going to be great. I haven’t seen my dad since Christmas and my mom since March, and since I lurve them, I’m going to spend a lot of time hanging out and they’ll probably be like “don’t you have friends? get out of the house.”

I’m also going to try and see approximately 100 movies when I’m at home since they’ll be a full FIVE DOLLARS CHEAPER than NYC. I haven’t seen Inception yet because both times that Raygan and I attempted to see it the showings were sold out. For the whole evening. At almost every location within a twenty minute subway ride. We were just standing there at a loss, indignant that the most media-y city in the city would be filled with people wanting to see a wildly popular movie. There were two guys behind me in Starbucks discussing the plot about a week after it came out and I wanted to turn around and punch them in their macchiato-ordering faces. They should have gotten themselves a Cone of Silence and written SPOILER ALERT all over it. I also want to see Salt and Predators, which will hopefully not have left theaters.

AGH TURBULENCE BRB

(Now when I’m on planes and there is turbulence I think of that scene in The Day After Tomorrow where there is the crazy insane turbulence and Emmy Rossum is all “Everything is fine! They’re still serving drinks!” and then the turbulence gets so bad the drink cart careens down the aisle and almost hits Jake Gyllenhaal in his impeccably well-groomed face.)

... and now, watching The Mummy. Gotta love travel!

Rediscovering my love for The Candybutchers.

2010-07-26T15:36:00.005-05:00

I dated a kid briefly in college- I say "kid," but in reality he was 28 and not very bright, and at 18 I think I had my shit way better together than he did- but the one good thing that came out of the relationship was the copy he gave me of The Candybutcher's excellent album "Hang On Mike." Here is a crappy version of their song "What To Do With Michael"

And a much better version of "Nice to Know You" with bonus Carson Daly:

I think my favorite song from this album is "Hang On Mike," followed closely by "Painkillers." Definitely worth checking out.

What I Watched Last Night: Pig-Faced Policeman Edition

2010-07-26T14:17:00.010-05:00

Last night I had a hilarious double-feature of the 2006 whimsical fairytale romantic comedy Penelope and the classic 1985 Hong Kong cop movie Police Story. Imagine the dreams I had last night: horrifying and hilarious nightmares of Christina Ricci fighting pig-nosed Chinese businessmen, throwing briefcases and leaping off escalators, all the while being sexily pursued by James McAvoy and Burn Gorman.

Penelope tells the story of a girl who is the victim of her wealthy family's curse: many generations back, some douchey grand knocked up a servant, whose subsequent suicide caused her witchy mother to hex the family: the next Wilhern girl would be born with the face of a pig. Six generations later Penelope is born to Richard E. Grant and Catherine O'Hara, both charming and underutilized in their roles as harried parents to a pig-faced daughter who they must hide from the world while simultaneously trying to find Penelope a fiance.

You see, the curse can only be broken when "one of [the family's] own" accepts her for who she is, "till death do they part." Her mother kicks the husband hunt into overdrive, searching for seven years for a man who will love Penelope enough to marry her (and her sizable dowry) without running for the hills. This would all be more convincing if Penelope were actually, you know, ugly, but at its worst the nose is just charmingly snubbed and not really all that monstrous:

OK, so maybe that is a little gross. Anyway, if you guessed that the plot of Penelope would involve a swindler trying to get a photo of Penelope for a tabloid, then falling in love with her, then leaving her for reasons that aren't quite what you expect, causing Penelope to strike out on her own and make friends, then returning home to get married only to discover mid-vow that she loves herself the way she is, thus (spoiler) breaking the curse, then you'd be TOTALLY RIGHT. It turns out all she needed all along was to LOVE HERSELF. As Catherine O'Hara points out, the curse could have been broken ages ago if she had just accepted her daughter as who she was. Then they wouldn't have had to go through all the agony of hunting down every eligible "blue-blood" in the land.

Penelope herself borders right on the edge of Manic Pixie Dream Girl-hood but is never really fleshed out enough, nor is James MacAvoy as brooding, be-emo banged, down-on-his-luck blue blooded gambler suitor Max:

Not visible: the Emo Bang of Intense Emotion. Visible: McAvoy's champ-like brooding skills. Also invisible: the tree he is brooding in. Seriously. A tree.

BROODING. IN A TREE.

Anyway, I thought the touch at the end of having Max kiss Penelope while she had her mask on, thus signifying that he Loved Her Even Though Her Nose and Presumably Her Ears (And, Possibly, Hind-Parts) Resemble a Pig's was very sweet. The message of "Accept Yourself and Dudes will Find That Sexy" is also kind of nice, although I'm not sure how losing the pig nose worked with that. And I wish that what looked like the beginnings of a romantic subplot between Reese Witherspoon's spunky vespa deliveryperson and the bar owner had actually happened. They looked cute! He knew her usual! They made adorable and awkward wedding-related small-talk! Alas, twas not to be.

My roommate Raygan rented both Police Story and Police Story 2, which I haven't seen yet. What I love about Police Story and about Chinese movies in general (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland alike) is that they like to signify the mood change with really ridiculous music shifts: like, "THIS IS A COMEDY, LISTEN TO THE HAPPY CLARINET MUSIC." Since there are lots of cute comedy moments in Police Story, including Jackie Chan's character duping Selina with a fake intruder, only to get totally hosed by actual attackers later, this music change happens a lot. I can't wait to see the sequel.

Jackie Chan's friend learns the hard way that both home invasion and people getting injured are HILARIOUS.

Did I mention that I am unemployed?

2010-07-26T13:56:00.002-05:00

I casually referenced it when telling the story of Man Who Is Actually a Crazy Conspiracist Teabagger In Real Life, but I don't think I've elaborated for the three people who read this blog, including my parents (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) just how I came to be haunting this starbucks instead of being at my Nine to Five.

I had long felt that I was spinning my wheels in my previous position. Between supervisor turnover, personalities not meshing, and my own lack of enthusiasm for the job I was so burnt out that I was basically an emotional wreck, left weeping and cowering, spewing gibberish and rolling my eyes in a corner every morning before heading out into the world. I said before how I uncomfortably related, through gut-busting laughter, to the Hyperbole and a Half blog post on "This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult." The way she describes her cycle of guilt and inactivity was a basically pitch-perfect portrait of the way I worked at that job.

Since leaving, however, I have achieved magical new levels of Gittin' R' Done. I have, as previously stated, managed to get out of bed every morning before noon. I have signed up with two temp agencies. I have interviewed for a part time position at a literary agency that would be BALLER, and another EVEN MORE BALLER position at a women's film organization. (The Jen Udden Wheelhouse, Let Me Show You It.) I have had some great informational interviews and I have more on the horizon. I'm basically making it work, one day at a time, like an alcoholic. (Did I mention I'm also drinking less? GO ME.)

Anyway, the immediate result of me quitting my job without having anything else lined up has been me having to give up my fabulous room in Lord Washington's Fort, the beautimous apartment I have been sharing for the past year with my pals. I'm now homeless and semi-jobless (I consider temping a job, even if I haven't actually gotten a temp job yet) but I seriously cannot describe how much happier I am. I don't dread waking up in the morning. I don't hate Sundays for their proximities to Mondays, which mean going back into the office. I'm moving on with my life and pursuing my dreams. (CLICHE ALERT.) It's too bad that the Montage of Jen Changing Her Life would be super boring and look a lot like me sitting at a table with the same watery-ass iced coffee for hour upon hour, typing!

I'm headed home to Houston this Friday, and when I quit my job I told myself that this trip could turn into a long-term one if I didn't have anything lined up in NYC. I'm starting to think that even though I don't have anything solid I have a shot at putting it together, inch by inch, cobbling together a life out of temping and part-time interning and whatever else I can scrape together. We'll see how it goes!

My unemployment is off to an... interesting start

2010-07-19T11:09:00.004-05:00

On my first day of unemployment I managed to not only wake up before noon, but actually shower, put on clothes that aren't sweatpants, leave my apartment, and decamp to the local starbucks* to be moderately productive. Yay for adulthood!

Now, not wanting to be an asshole, when this older looking black man with an oxygen tank was looking around for a place to sit, I offered to share my table. I know how annoying it is when someone is taking up a table and doesn't want to share- after all, I had my headphones on, I was in the zone, it won't be a big deal to have a pal at the table.

We exchanged pleasantries about the weather (it is hot as balls) and I kept on working, sending out email after email to people who might be able to point me in the direction of gainful employment. At some point we started chit-chatting, as two people sharing a table are wont to do- he offered me his receipt that was stamped for a $2 drink as a thank you for letting him share my table, and I was like aww, sweet, you don't have to do that.

At some point he started telling me about his life, and as the conversation progressed it got very wierd, very quickly. He's telling me all about how he keeps busy, you know, with his LAWSUIT AGAINST OBAMA.

Here, in bulleted form, is a list of the forms of crazy this man talked at me about:

obama not being a real american
said president trying to 'forcibly convert' all united states citizens to Islam
Also, in between his busy religious activities, trying to merge the US with Mexico and Canada, thus depriving us of our sovereignty
the mosque being built downtown being built with billions of dollars of al qaeda money, as a monument to the vanquished world trade center

Insanity.

Day 2 has been much less exciting. I sent approximately five thousand emails to various MHC alums who work in film asking for informational interviews, a phrase I hate, but hopefully that will net some valuable information. I'm meeting Raygan's cousin for drinks tonight to talk about other part-time work, and tomorrow I have not one, but two interviews with temp agencies and a quasi-date! So, all in all, life, it's pretty good. Now if only I had brought a cardigan with me.

*blogger's spellcheck wants me to capitalize this. I REFUSE.

I'm apparently the last person on the internet to know about this:

2010-07-14T22:18:00.003-05:00

Hyperbole and a Half

This post hit uncomfortably, hilariously close to home. (Clean all the things??)

Only two days left at my job. Strange feelings setting in.

What I Watched Last Night: Hungry Like the Wolf edition

2010-07-10T16:54:00.006-05:00

Hunger (2008) dir. Steve McQueen

Do you like my wildly insensitive title? Do you like the way I reduce the Troubles and the 1981 Dirty (or Blanket) protests in the Maze prison to an overplayed Duran Duran reference?

Well I'm not proud, but I don't have a whole lot of time to pull together my thoughts on this movie, which I watched last night in fits and starts. Pausing frequently because literally shit got really real, and became very, very difficult to watch.

Hunger tells the story of the 1981 hunger strikes in the Maze prison and the death of their leader, Bobby Sands, in a manner both loose and terribly, terribly focused and specific. Almost wordlessly, McQueen uses his camera to capture small glimpses of life in the Maze: the blood on a prison guard's hands, the almost-artistic swirls of brown (oh my god is that what I think it is holy fuck it totally is oh my god) on the walls of a prison cell, a trembling guard after administering a brutal beating. I say "wordlessly" and "almost" because there are very few words in the movie, the bulk of them during an extended twenty-two minute scene between Sands and a priest, as they dance around each other on the morality of what Sands is about to do, about what he's about to ask others to do:

Towards the end of the movie, as Sands is dying in his bed, the camera dances around him like an anxious parent as a flock of birds flutters and retreats- it's a scene that breathtakingly combines Sands' hallucinations and reality, as he dry-heaves without the strength to hold himself up.

Steve McQueen, the director, is apparently primarily known as a visual artist and also sharing a name with another BAMF, Steve McQueen.

One of these things is not like the other, although both rule.

You can really see it in the really painterly way he composes his shots. Aaagh. I really have many Feelings And Thoughts about this movie but they'll have to wait.

A Bout de Souffle: No one is immune to the sexy allure of submissive American expats

2010-07-09T15:04:00.007-05:00

I went and saw Breathless at the Film Forum on Wednesday with my pal Katherine, knowing next to nothing about it except that it was Godard's debut feature, that it started the French New Wave of cinemaaah, and that Jean Seberg has really, really cute hair:

(Seriously. How cute is this hair? I have the Poor Fat Person's version of this haircut right now, and I'm not ashamed to say that when I was bored while watching the movie-which was frequently-I would try and figure out how she got it to look like that. Combined with my acquisition lust for every item of clothing she wore in the entire film I think that it is safe to say, in the end, that I'd really rather I looked like Jean Seberg.)

The "plot" in a nutshell: Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose abs of glory half-concealed by giant waist-high boxers were the most exciting thing about the extended bed chatter scene, but I digress) steals a car, kills a motorcycle cop, goes to Paris where he reconnects with his sweetie, American expat journalist/newspaper vendor Patricia (Seberg), they loll about on a bed talking about Art and Literature and Music, they have sex, she tells him she's pregnant and that the baby is HIS oh noes, and then he gets caught and shot by the cops. FIN. (Literally, FIN, which maybe I have seen parodied on Clone High too often to take seriously.*)

If I had seen Breathless when I was younger, I would probably have responded to it really strongly and positively. I would have coveted not just Jean Seberg's terminally cute hair and adorable minimalist wardrobe but her very existence: her tiny flat in Paris, her fraught relationship with the sketchy Michel, her ennui about her life and her inability to give a serious think to anything, really. Maybe I've officially joined the rank of The Olds, but when she sighs "Michel, I'm pregnant" in the same tone she uses to declare that she's bored or annoyed I just want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her for being an idiotic cliche. Watching Patricia follow Michel around at 24 doesn't feel like I'm watching the ebullient spirit of the New Wave or whatever AO Scott would have me believe. I am not turned on by Michel's hipster insouciance and faux-Bogart posturing. I am infuriated that after Michel shrugs off shooting a cop to death with a gun she's basically like "Sigh. Shall we steal a Cadillac?" as though it's a game that isn't particularly fun, but she's going along with it anyway because to put up a real resistance to it would be too difficult.

What Breathless reminds me most of on further reflection is Lost in Translation. I saw Lost in Translation when it came out and thought it was the absolute shit. Charlotte (ScarJo, who is super pretty and who I loved in Iron Man 2) also didn't know what she wanted, and felt out of place, and resented her husband for dragging her around Japan when she didn't want to, and also judged the vapid ignorance of the movie stars her husband hobnobs with. As a judgey, indecisive person myself, I could and do still to a certain extent relate to this kind of hipster posturing, one of my very, very worst traits. "Evelyn Waugh was a man" etc. At seventeen I thought that Lost in Translation perfectly captured some kind of phantom rootless feeling felt by all expats, and that her rootlessness was glamorous.

This comparison isn't quite cohering the way I want it to. The parallel I am trying ham-handedly to draw is between Patricia's desires to just be able to think about something and her lack of resistance to Michel and Charlotte's half-silent, semi-dazed wanderings through Japan. The desire to connect with anyone when you're abroad and don't know anyone and sometimes you just kind of graft yourself onto the first person who understands you, man, and that shit doesn't always work out well. Michel seemed quite predatory to me, and I think that's why I didn't respond to him as a kind of lost soul the way some reviewers seem to. Beyond than the obvious stealing, cheating, and FUCKING MURDERING he also badgers Patricia. He doesn't leave her alone when she asks him to. He steals a key and stays in her room without her permission. I'm sitting there, feeling intensely, intensely bothered by all this watching the movie- like, is nobody going to call out Michel for being an enormous, predatory douche?

In his article about this 50th anniversary print of Breathless (which, to be fair, was a great print, and the translation I am told is much improved) A.O. Scott uses words like "heady," "historical significance," "entirely original," and then rolls out this peach of a paragraph:

It still, that is, has the power to defy conventional expectations about what a movie should be while providing an utterly captivating moviegoing experience. A coherent plot, strong and credible emotions and motivations, convincing performances, visual continuity — all of these things are missing from “Breathless,” disregarded with a cavalier insouciance that feels like liberation. It turns out that a movie — this movie, anyway — doesn’t need any of those things, and that they might get in the way of other, more immediate pleasures.

Other, more immediate pleasures are what are going to strand Patricia in Paris knocked up by a dead cop-murderer with no money, guys. Beyond my rather Puritan moralizing about this movie-which, I admit, is very pearl-clutching, Nancy Reaganesque, I know, I know, Jesus- things like "coherent plot, strong and credible emotions and motivations, convincing performances, and visual continuity" are all things that I highly value in a moviegoing experience. I don't think that by throwing all that shit to the wind you get a good movie. Instead, you get Breathless, a visually intriguing puff pastry. A.O. Scott says it is a movie that feels "cool." Cool to me is some soulless bullshit. Lost in Translation is "cool" and ultimately it's an empty movie. I felt the exact same way about Breathless.

Who loves ya, Baby? I kind of might but I kind of might not. Don't my shades look cool?

* Whisper. WHIIIISPER. WHISPER!

Breathless at the Film Forum

2010-07-07T15:21:00.003-05:00

Going to see the 50th anniversary of A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) tonight, a movie I have never seen but which is apparently super super amazing and important. And, subtitles! But, AIR CONDITIONING! Everybody wins.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled foolishness

2010-07-06T15:25:00.002-05:00

BEHOLD! The trialer for Predators, which I am totally going to see despite the fact that it takes the Bechdel rule and sets it on fire with a bazooka.

I'm just a Jealous, Fat, Petty, Outrage-Machine

2010-07-06T14:05:00.004-05:00

Recently Jezebel (which I am not ashamed to say I read regularly and enjoy) posted an interesting piece on the gender dynamics of The Daily show in the wake of their hiring of Olivia Munn, regulation hottie, to be the first new female correspondent in seven years.

The piece pointed out that while The Daily Show is a fairly left-leaning, often hilarious show whose politics most Jezebel readers would probably agree with, their record on letting women's voices through is pretty dismal. Only something like three or four of almost 20 writers for The Daily Show are women. Counting Munn, the only other female full-time correspondent is Samantha Bee. Munn was chosen after an "exhaustive" search that included several female comedians. In addition to her time hosting Attack of the Show on GTV (which I fully admit I have never seen, but now knowing that she once licked the port of a Wii while her male-cohost told her to "lick it, lick it, put your tongue on it" I think I can safely say that I will never, ever seek it out) Munn has also written a book and is, as I said before, super hot.

Now, the gist of the article was basically this: TDS, which has a kind of progressive outlook, is not progressive in terms of who is involved, and that maybe The Daily Show could increase its already-considerable liberal street cred by, you know, maybe making their demographics reflect the actuality of the human population a little more. That maybe equality of numbers is, you know, a good thing. And that maybe the women who make up more than half of the viewership of late-night television (and the population! of the world!) would appreciate having themselves reflected a little bit more in these shows.

But the women of The Daily Show didn't like this at all. Olivia Munn, in a fit of sisterly feeling, said that

“I never tried to use anything besides my own sweat and blood and talent to get somewhere. I think that anyone who’s out there trying to bring down why any woman would get anywhere, or why we’re different, just needs to f***ing turn her f***ing computer off, take the sandwich out of her mouth and go for a god**mn walk f***ing walk. You know what? Just walk it off, b***h. Just walk it off, b***h.” hollywoodlife via ontd

Her sage advice and opinion is that the writer of the post and the commenters on Jezebel agreeing with it were 1. lame, lonely blogging hermits who 2. need to stop eating, fucking fatty and 3. just get some fucking exercise. Leaving aside the stunning originality of these statements (Really? Feminists are fat? People on blogs are losers who are chained to their computers? WOW) what is even less surprising is that the women of The Daily Show came back today with an open letter to Jezebel and the author of the post that just as staggeringly missed the entire point:

"And so, while it may cause a big stir to seize on the bitter rantings of ex-employees and ignore what current staff say about working at The Daily Show, it's not fair. It's not fair to us, it's not fair to Jon, it's not fair to our wonderful male colleagues, and it's especially not fair to the young women who want to have a career in comedy but are scared they may get swallowed up in what people label as a "boy's club." the daily show

Like, what does that even mean? That by pointing out a gender imbalance, by pointing out that the women at the top of this successful, important, funny, popular show are hugely outnumbered by men is somehow hurting the women who have already made it in the door?

At first, reading the TDS women's rebuttal of the Jezebel piece I felt a little confused. Their arguments seemed pretty valid- women make up 40% of the staff of The Daily Show, they contribute in a lot of ways, Jon Stewart is Totally A Great Guy- but something still didn't sit right with me. I looked at the helpful list they provided at the bottom of the post, with their names and positions and the length of their involvement, and thought, wow, there sure are a lot of assistants on here. Luckily, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown was there to articulate my feelings of helpless discomfort:

"Yes, women is what we are, and also we work at The Daily Show. We are all sorts of things: Production assistants! Administrative assistants! Writers’ assistants! So many of us women are assisting! Why, we even sometimes get our jokes on the air! But not our names, apparently, in many cases, or our faces, in all but three cases. Just because our names do not appear on the writers’ credits — just because we do not, as the saying goes, “get credit” for our work — this should not imply to you that our work is not valued! We are women! This is enough!" tiger beatdown

Over on Slate, Emily Gould, former writer for Gawker, in a post entitled "Outrage World: How Feminist Blogs like Jezebel gin up their page views by exploiting women's worst tendencies" wrote that the concern over Munn's hiring and the gender balance at The Daily Show was pure, slut-shaming jealousy:

"Paradoxically, in the midst of all the deeply felt concern about women's sexual and professional freedom to look and be however they want, it's considered de rigueur to criticize anyone, like Munn, who dares to seem to want to sexually attract men."

And:

"They're ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism."

Furthemore, Jezebel commenters who point out the privilege of the white and rich and thin are "bitter." Comment views are accompanied by an ad for Cheetos. The benefits of articles about the problems of body image in mainstream publications are completely nullified when accompanied by a picture of a thin woman. And on, and on, and on.

So what Emily Gould (and Olivia Munn) would like us to take away from this is that:

1. Jezebel writers and those who agree with them are jealous, ugly, fat, lazy bitches, who are just jealous because Olivia Munn is super hot
2. You should be glad that women are employed at the Daily Show in any capacity
3. Worrying about the makeup of the people at the top, their salary breakdown, promotion patterns, etc. is being a jealous hater
4. Oh, and did we mention, you're a fake feminist if you don't support any woman who gets promoted anywhere at any time?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the whole situation makes me sad. Instead of saying "hey, maybe we don't have a good gender breakdown, but here is what we have, and how it affects the writing" the Daily Show issued a self-serving rebuttal saying "Hey everything is fine and also Jon Stewart is awesome." Emily Gould, whose writing I usually admire, turned to the age-old "Those bitches are just jealous" line. People: the numbers matter. Where women are placed in the hierarchy matters. How often they get promoted matters. The titles they have matter. The contributions they make matter. The attitudes they take up in order to get their voices heard matter.

To go at it from another perspective: 18% of plays produced last year in New York were written by women. That means 82% of all the productions in New York, arguably the most important center for theater in the country, were written by men. These. Numbers. Matter. And blithely dismissing concerns about gender parity by saying that the critics are just fat, jealous bitches is only making everything worse.

UPDATE: The NYTimes ArtsBeat blog has joined the conversation.

And now, the final word on how bad Jonah Hex was

2010-07-06T10:27:00.005-05:00

Courtesy of Defamer:

"Despite being the worst-reviewed movie of the summer, Airbender didn't flop in the same way that, oh say, Jonah Hex fell of its horse and lay weeping and farting in the dust. You know how much money Jonah Hex made this weekend? None. Because they took it out of the movie theaters."

Via Defamer: Vampires Defeat Airbenders at Bunker Hill

Things I've Learned From the Internet, Bookmark & Blind Side Edition

2010-06-29T08:27:00.005-05:00

It's been a crazy couple of days- my sister was in town, we hung out with my aunt, a great deal of wine was consumed and I started a new project about a Doomed Arctic Expedition, but, more importantly, I finally saw The Blind Side!

No joke, I was prepared to not like it, since it is a clear-cut manipulative tearjerker that doesn't even try to hide the formula and, dammit, I'm an INTELLECTUAL. But no! Sandra Bullock was adorable, as usual, and though her performance wasn't necessarily Oscar-worthy, who actually deserves their Oscar anymore? Jennifer Connelly beat out Helen Mirren the year she won for A Beautiful Mind, to which I say if you did not cry during Helen Mirren's scene at the end in Gosford Park you have no heart. For cripes sake, Crash won Best Picture. (Come to think of it, wasn't Sandra Bullock in that, too? Oh well.)

Anyway, I thought it was sweet, and the guy who played Michael was adorable, and the kid who played the younger brother was just-this-side of annoying. I found it impossible to believe that Tim McGraw (Mr. Sandra Bullock) would be that easygoing about bringing some random-ass person into their house on a semi-permanent basis, no matter how deserving, but hey! it happened In Real Life, so clearly he didn't mind that much! The nicest touch was all the family photos at the end over the credit sequence. All in all, my Heart Was Warmed.

There's not really a lot coming out this week that I'm interested in seeing, although I haven't seen Toy Story 3 yet. I think I'm avoiding it because I know I'm going to cry my face off. If you don't believe me, please come to my house sometime when we are all watching Steel Magnolias. We are giant cliches of Southern ladies. Even my dad gets in on the weepy action (although I think the last time he cried during a movie was when we caught a rerun of Deep Impact a few years back. I AM CRYING THINKING ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW.)

Anyway, linkage:

Speaking of crying, if you don't weep while reading this story of two DC-area men who got married after being together for sixty-two years then there is something wrong with you.
Celebs: they are just like you, pretending to read smart books. Is there some kind of Hollywood conspiracy against "genre" fiction? Why isn't there a mystery novel ANYWHERE ON THESE LISTS? Does anyone actually sit around and read Tolstoy and Graham Greene exclusively? Don't any of these people just want a potboiler in their lives occasionally?
In other News About Reading, this great bookstore my family and I visited in Toronto called This Ain't Rosedale Library might be closing. Visit them & throw them some support, if you can. When we were there I picked up a copy of Nicola Barker's whackadoo, intricate novel Darkmans and a copy of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's The Fire Engine That Disappeared, an awesome novel if you are into sad Swedish policemen investigating crimes in places where it is cold and people have casual and detached attitudes towards sex. (Which I am.)
Gawker asked if nepotism should always annoy us, and I said yes, yes it should, but then I calmed down when The Awl pointed out exactly how many books the nepotist (nepotee?) had sold, but then my rage came back when I remembered that this kid got a job at SNL ten minutes after graduating.

That's all for now. And since my friend Meg has been torturing me with stories of dead baby pelicans in the Gulf all morning (Seriously, BP, light a controlled burn and then throw yourself into it) here is a picture of a non-oily creature:

Kitteh! via cuteoverload

Did I ever tell you that I stole it?

2010-06-28T16:25:00.005-05:00

So I'm done with the new season of Doctor Who, having watched four episodes last night one after the other like some kind of crazy person / person with no life. I am hard pressed to think of an episode that turned me off this season- even kind of lame episodes like Vampires of Venice were better than what felt like the emo sobfest of Tennant's first season, after which I stopped watching.

Anyway, the two-part finale was absolute genius, and I think it would be impossible for me to love Matt Smith more. When he was initially cast I was suspicious of his youth (he's 27, guys! He's a CHILD!) but he has this look about him- I know, I'm going to say it, prepare yourselves- he looks like an alien. His face is wierdly ageless, with its almost complete lack of eyebrows and that ridiculous shock of hair swooping down over his brow. And he's a great actor. I think everything that I loved about Tennant's Ten was just Tennant- charm and ebullience and barely-suppressed rage. In Amy's Choice you can see every one of the Dream Lord's remarks hit home on Smith's expressive face.

"Friends. Is that your word for the people you acquire?"

It is hot as balls in my apartment right now, and since I stayed up so late last night, I think I'm going to hie my hiney to bed before I get silly.

Look at his faaaaaaaaace he's an alien!

What I Watched Last Night: Two-Day Catch Up Top Chef Edition

2010-06-24T09:48:00.005-05:00

The night before last- Doctor Who Season 5

My good friend Mallory had been berating me for weeks- months even- about how I was a bad fan because I hadn't watched any of the new Doctor Who episodes except for that one with Tony Curran as Vincent Van Gogh, because, did I mention that I love Underworld: Evolution? I quit watching new Who about three-quarters of the way through the first Tennant season. I don't quite remember why I stopped. Maybe my lingering adoration of Christopher Eccleston's Nine and his enormous ears was getting in the way. Tennant's first season seemed unusually full of maudlin nonsense, and so, weeks before Rose even got dumped in that alternate dimension I had already quit. I realize that quitting that early means I missed some of the best stuff, like "Blink" and the entirety of Donna (except for that one episode, you know, that one. The wedding one.)

But now, I'm back, and I'm never leaving. Matt Smith's Eleven is a revelation, all coltish and manic trickster energy, and in the six episodes I've watched he still seems to be learning how to coordinate his limbs. Amy Pond is a great companion, with a background and a personality and a complete, refreshing lack of any father issues (so far. I'm only up through "Flesh and Stone.")

I'm sure there are other places on the internet that discuss new Who in a much more intelligent way, but I love, love, love the way the Moffat era is shaping up. Even the requisite and really uneccessary Dalek episode was pretty great, with the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill, and the hilarious experience of hearing a Dalek ask the Doctor if he would like some tea.

Ultimately, I think Doctor Who will always be about the perils of non-action in the face of evil or wrong. Intervening in the lives of others can bring pain and suffering (as it does time and time again for the Doctor, no matter which face he's wearing at the time) but the worst kind of suffering is that which is brought about not by making the wrong choices, but by making no choice at all. When the Doctor tells Amy and Vincent Van Gogh not, under any circumstances, to follow him, Vincent turns to Amy:

"You're going to follow him, aren't you?"
"Of course."
"I love you."

Of course Amy is going to follow him, because hanging back is the worst option to take, in the Who or the real world. If something happens to the Doctor while she hangs back she will bear the responsibility for his injury (or death! it can happen!) Amy is going to follow the Doctor because the Doctor always goes in. I think that's the choice that the show asks us to make, time and time again.*

Other things I've loved so far:

"We have no need for comfy chairs, sir."
"Yogurt is horrible. It's stuff with bits in."
"Let's get you sorted!" "That's what I've been trying to tell you!"

Last Night- Dance Your Ass Off, Design Star, Next Food Network Star, True Beauty, Top Chef

In addition to terrible movies and good science fiction shows I also love reality TV. Specifically, I love competition shows and shows about hoarders. Since I don't have cable I usually get together once a week with my awesome aunt who also lives in the city and we watch the shows we both like. My favorite of last night's block is clearly Top Chef, which last night had what might be the best Quickfire challenge I've ever seen: the chefs had to cook a sandwich in pairs, wearing a two-headed apron, only using one hand each. Literally one person had to be the right hand and one person had to be the left. Either someone at Bravo is a massive Evelyn Evelyn fan or they just had a stroke of genius. It forced the cheftestants to work together in a way that they literally never have before. The one guy's fear that his partner would cut off his hand: hilarious.

Less amusing was a strain that occurred in two shows last night, Top Chef and Design Star: the idea that if a contestant didn't make their ideas heard they were "allowing" themselves to be bullied. I think that kind of misses the point of bullying- the point of bullying is to win. Sometimes, standing up to the person who is asserting their opinion does not result in that person taking your ideas into account. The people who sign up for reality shows are not rational actors, and someone like Crazy Nina is not going to listen to sweet, porcelain Emily because she was clearly cast as the crazy bossy contestant, and that is her role. The same thing happened in Top Chef when Kenny knew they didn’t have enough vegetables in their school lunch but “allowed” Angelo and his partner (whose name I forget- Tracey? She talked adorably about raising her partner’s kid) to ride roughshod over his suggestions. Since Angelo & Tracey (?) had immunity, the assumption on the part of the judges is that Kenny needed to assert himself and make himself heard more on the topic. This mentality doesn’t take into account the realities of the competition reality-show dynamic, which is that in any situation where contestants have to work together, if someone has immunity & a personality like Angelo’s, that person will end up being the leader by default and won’t really be into taking ideas from someone who doesn’t also have immunity.

I hope that made sense. At any rate, on Top Chef the lady who was a self-taught caterer got sent home for her too-starchy, two-pound-of-sugar pudding, and Texas Tera got sent home on Design Star for painting a room yellow. My fervent hope is that next week on Food Network Star horrible douche Paul gets sent home for being a terrible, un-charismatic jerk. And like the adorably outsized (personality-wise and otherwise) dancetestants on Dance Your Ass Off, my thoughts on this particular motivational weight loss program will have to wait for another day.

*And yes, I realize I'm doing analysis on a show about an alien who travels through time in a police box picking up women to hang out with. I KNOW THIS.

Green Hornet Trailer

2010-06-22T11:13:00.002-05:00

I really like that the awesome Jay Chou is front and center with Seth Rogen in this trailer and not some afterthought (like, here's my generic Asian driver!) I have very high hopes for this movie. Also, Seth Rogen looks good. January!

What I Watched Last Night

2010-06-22T10:49:00.005-05:00

Needing a little emotional pick-me-up last night I turned to that happiest of six-hour miniseries, the 1996 BBC Pride and Prejudice. Others will tell you that the Kiera Knightley version was just, like, so great, but those people are wrong. Colin Firth is the O-G Darcy, and if anyone wants to say that Kiera Collarbones is a better Elizabeth than Jennifer Ehle, well, you should just punch that person in the face.

It's really at the point now where I hardly watch the show anymore. I listen to it in the background and dig the music and then somehow, like magic, I know when my favorite scenes are going to come on- when Elizabeth is going to rescue Georgiana Darcy at the piano, when Darcy is going to lay the epic bitchslap down on Caroline Bingley, when Lady Catherine De Bourgh is going to talk about the barouche box like it's a vehicle sent straight from Jesus for the conveyance of poor relations. While reading or checking my tumblr obsessively for someone to please post the G-D Green Hornet trailer already (sidebar: it looks awesome) something happens and I somehow know from hundreds of viewings that it is Time To Look Up, and I do, and it's magical.

This is not to say that I don't recognize that re-watching (almost) all of a six hour miniseries adaptation of a piece of literature which I have also read hundreds of time isn't a colossal waste of time. I could be doing innumerable other things with my evening- cleaning my apartment, working on one or more of the 23402834 writing projects I have going on right now, thinking up a solution to the problems in the Middle East or finding a way to fix the oil spill in the Gulf. But since last night I felt down I decided to turn to my old pals the Bennetts. I decided to watch Elizabeth and Darcy go from hate to grudging respect to "Crap, now that I love this person my sister has gone and eloped Dang." I decided to say, like Mary, that I take little pleasure in a ball. I decided to watch Mr. Bennett win the award for Father Who You Thought Was Only Benignly Neglecting His Children, Only It Turns Out He Was Actually Being A Terrible Parent Cause Lydia Turned Out To Be A Flighty Skank.

One of the reasons it's so easy to watch P&P in one massive glut is that the DVD has divided it into two parts of three hours each- back in The Day, if one wanted to watch it, one had to get up every hour to change the VHS. Now one just pops the DVD in and three hours later Mr. Darcy is getting his ass handed to him. Colin Firth is brilliant in this scene and it's here where contrast between this version and the feature film is really pronounced. The subtle winces he makes as Elizabeth tells him just how much she dislikes him are so much more evocative and true to this buttoned-up character than Matthew MacFayden's emo twitching. In the new movie, I kept expecting MacFayden's Darcy to run off to the woods and write poetry and cry. Firth's Darcy is controlled to the point of icy coldness to just about everyone. It's not until Elizabeth's and Mr & Mrs Gardner's visit to Pemberley that he comes out of his shell. Contrast this to Darcy's goopy proposal in the rain on the porch of a neoclassical temple in the new version. I'm sorry, did I stumble into a Stephanie Laurens novel, or is this one of the classic pieces of English literature?

Afternoon linkage

2010-06-21T16:17:00.004-05:00

It's 5pm and my work brain has shut down for the day, so here are some Interesting Things from the Internet:

Sady Doyle, my new personal hero, does two fabulous and hilarious takedowns of the new movie version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. That first one there features Amanda Hess of the Sexist! (Quote: Behold the Goofy Hat of the Ubermensch.) Also, check out Tigerbeatdown contributor Garland Grey's epic screed against Sex and the City 2.
I wrote about Jonah Hex, as did many Other People. Including this dude, who really sincerely loved Jonah Hex, and hated Toy Story 3. To quote his review: "Like Orpheus in the underworld, Jonah suffers knowledge of anguished life and the threat of mortality. And like the hero of Crank, Jonah fights to stay alive." Yes, those are real published words! Thanks, New York Press!
The Telegraph compiled a list of Britain's best 20 novelists under 40, and unlike the New Yorker list, actually includes genre writers. Win: Genre writers, Zadie Smith. Fail: their flippant dismissal of gender imbalance ("we frankly failed, if it matters, to achieve a gender balance – 13 out of the 20 are men"- emphasis mine. Yes, it matters, thanks)
I learned that more books than are necessary contain the phrase "Somewhere, a dog barked."

Anyway, it's the end of the day (Sweet Jesus! Hooray!) and I should get some stuff done before heading home and hanging out on the internet some more. What are you reading, nonexistent readers?

I come to bury Jonah Hex, not to praise it.

2010-06-21T11:10:00.007-05:00

In keeping with my innate ability to at least attempt enjoy the heck out of almost any piece of cultural garbage, this weekend I hied myself down to the Battery Park cinema and paid $13* to see Jonah Hex. Yes, that Jonah Hex, the one the AV Club gave an "F" to and called "a film... so stitched together, it’s a wonder it doesn’t rip apart in the projector." The one currently batting at 14% on rottentomatoes.com. The one that only made $5.1 million on its opening weekend. To put that last number in perspective, Toy Story 3 made $41 million on its opening night.

A rational person might ask themselves "Why?" when faced with the sight of an actual person who paid actual money to see Jonah Hex and didn't then sneak into another film (like Toy Story 3). This is a valid question. After all, what kind of person would willingly pay to see a pseudo-gothic Western based on a long-running comic book directed by the guy who helmed the animated Horton Hears a Who and written by the goons who wrote Crank? The answer is: this person, right here, who owns all three Underworld movies on DVD.

I went to go see Jonah Hex for the following reasons:

1. Michael Fassbender
2. Josh Brolin
3. Daniels from The Wire
4. an un-credited Jeffrey Dean Morgan
5. Will Arnett
6. Aidan F-ing Quinn
7. Oscar Nominee Michael Shannon (No, really)

Look at that cast. Those are some GQMFs right there. That is a gigantic aggregation of on-screen talent and I didn't even list John Malkovich**. I thought, surely this group of people, assembled together in one project, will produce a film that is at least moderately worth watching. These terrible reviews can't all be correct.

Jonah Hex tried even my ability to find entertainment in a shitty movie.*** From lopsided-flashback beginning to abrupt and unintentionally-humorous end, Jonah Hex is a movie that has no idea what it wants to be when it grows up. All the things that looked awesome in the previews- horse mounted gatlin guns! Michael Fassbender's wierd maori chin tats! -were bright moments in a gray sea of confusing vengeance metaphors, strange red-tinted fight dream sequences, and a plot that focuses around the theft a superweapon invented by Eli fucking Whitney for the sole purpose of destroying the U.S. It was an apt metaphor for this movie when, towards the movie's climax, when President Aidan F. Quinn is making a speech on the steps of the half-built Capitol building, the crowd in attendance doesn't number more than 500 people. Only 500 fictional CGI people cared about this President's speech enough to show up. (Let's not even go into the historical accuracy of this cinematic depiction of the Centennial- in reality, the big shindig was in Philadelphia, and ten million people went.)

The frustrating thing about this cinematic half-assery was that Jonah Hex did not have to be a terrible movie. Jonah Hex has been running since 1971, and has some great storylines that could have been mined for adaptaion (including, apparently, a jaunt to China, if Wikipedia is to be believed which, I get, doesn't necessarily have to be) Even the origin story of Jonah Hex is pretty cool: Hex's face is disfigured by the Apache tribe that adopted him as a child as punishment for breaking the rules of sacred battle (no joke!). In the film, Hex's face is branded and his family slaughtered as vengeance for the death of Quentin Turnbull's son, Hex's best friend. This version of the origin story makes sense- it gives Jonah a Big Bad to fight against, and provides personal motivation for his journey. But even this version of the story doesn't get the treatment it deserves. As one review pointed out, the moment where Hex decides to mutilate his face even further rather than bear Turnbull's brand is shown in an off-hand moment told in a (fucking) flashback. (If anyone can point me in the direction of the review that made this point, I'd appreciate it.)

Before I wrap up, let me just address the hot elephant in the room: Megan Fox. Now, a lot of people don't like her, because she says ridiculous things in interviews, and is famous for being hot in the Transformers movies, and has an assortment of stupid tattoos. These things are all true. But in a movie where the wittiest banter is between Josh Brolin and a dog, having an actress rise to the occasion of being hot and occasionally shooting guns is actually kind of an accomplishment. Her character, Lilah, is a version of a character from the comic, Tallulah. In the comics, Tallulah is also disfigured and, after hooking up with Hex, becomes a badass bounty hunter herself. How much more interesting would that have been?

All in all, Jonah Hex rose to every poor expectation I had. The actors were completely and utterly wasted on this movie. (As the Pajiba review says, "they assembled a fucking amazing cast and then wasted them like showgirls pre-pretty button pushing at casino buffet salad bars"). DC Comics better think long and hard about their strategy for movie adaptations going forward, because if Jonah Hex is the quality of film they're planning on producing, they might as well set their entire back catalog and all their money on fire.

* Not counting popcorn and soda, for which I had to take out a loan)
** Or Wes Bentley. Or Tom Wopat
*** For perspective, I own and have watched more than once the Doom movie on DVD. In my defense, I got it for free.

Cannonball Read #2: Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess

2009-11-23T17:01:00.004-05:00

I was inspired to read Pontypool Changes Everything after I watched the Bruce McDonald-helmed film adaptation, Pontypool (which I found about through a review on Pajiba.com and through io9.com, proving that I am Queen of the Nerds for All Time Unto Eternity.) Prisco had many nice things to say about Pontypool the film, including:

None can hold a bayberry candle to the taught tension of Pontypool,
which is something like Talk Radio meets 28 Days Later. A
shock jock banished to the hinterlands of rural Canada finds himself trapped in
the radio station while a mob of seemingly insane maniacs spouting gibberish lay
siege to the building. With a minuscule cast, just a spectacular splash of gore,
and a veritable straightjacket of tension, Bruce Macdonald creates an
outstanding pseudo-zombie cocktail and an even better psychological horror that
should make M. Night Shamalyan weep with shame.

I really enjoyed the movie, though I thought it was a tad overwritten in places (paging Captain Exposition, you're needed in the basement of this small-town radio station for a Code 3 Background Description.) I've always been fascinated by the way speech influences thought and vice versa* and was intrigued by the premise of the movie. And McDonald's taut direction, especially towards the end, as things got Increasingly Dire for Grant Mazzy and his cohorts, kept me nervously clinging to the edge of my seat. So, when my natal day delivered a $50 Amazon gift card to my door I decided to get the movie's source material, Pontypool Changes Everything (along with Jeff Vandermeer's superb Finch, which I'll be reviewing next, and the 2-disc Star Trek DVD, see aforementioned Queen of All Nerds Bow to my Magnificence.)

Pontypool is to Pontypool Changes Everything what Ragtime! The Musical is to E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime: Features some of the same characters but takes vast liberties with the arcs those characters take. Normally I'm the first person to be up in arms about big deviations from the source material when adapting for the screen, but in the case of Pontypool Changes Everything the complete restructuring of the novel for the screen managed to convey the bleak tension of the novel.

Pontypool Changes Everything is set an unspecified amount of time after a virus has decimated vast swathes of Canada. Those infected with the virus are frankly called Zombies by non-sufferers in the book but are referred to elsewhere in interviews by Burgess and McDonald as "Conversationalists." I like this term better- those afflicted are first overwhelmed by a sense of having lost hold of their language, then moved to repeat certain words over and over (in the book and movie, usually terms of endearment) and finally moved to end their suffering by chewing their way through the mouth of an uninfected person.

Yes, seriously.

Post-Plague Canada has largely shuddered into a kind of bureaucratic detente around the outbreak- those who are diagnosed with the disease must register, and generally go days or weeks before manifesting symptoms. High schools are given over to the cataloguing and autopsy-ing of the dead (By Dr. Mendez, a central character in the movie but only tangential to the book's plot.)

Grant Mazzy who in the film is a shock-jock talk radio personality is a well-respected and famous TV anchor in the book, and takes up few pages of Burgess' time as he paints a portrait of every facet of society as it is touched by this insane disease. An addict named Greg, diagnosed but not yet manifesting symptoms, attends NA meetings with his Higher Power (who may or may not turn out to be a real person.) Greg is a volunteer at the TV station for Mazzy, who solicits sexual favors from the other volunteers on staff while being a passionate volunteer for various charitable causes. Pontypool, which Mazzy says "changes everything," is a kind of Ground Zero, the point from which the infection spread (though this is unclear.) A brother and sister, orphaned by their parent's zombification early in the book, live in an idyllic, incestual paradise in a shack outside of Pontypool, living on the flesh of dead zombies. Their child is born with full command of the English language. Les Reardon, a former mental patient who is trying to revive Pontypool's amateur dramatics league, is the first person we meet in Pontypool Changes Everything. As the world crumbles and Les witnesses increasingly terrifying and horrifying scenes, the lines between his schizophrenia and his dawning Conversationalism blur as he fights to save his child.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Pontypool Changes Everything. Neither the movie nor the book is perfect, but both convey the feelings of the Conversationalists who become increasingly haunted by their inability to verbalize themselves, their anxiety over what is happening, or the certainty that they are about to do something horrible to someone else.

*I know I usually twitch when I hear the phrase "I've always been fascinated / intrigued by X" but it seemed to work here, so forgive me. I'll take off my beret now.
** There are undoubtedly many smart things to be said about the homage Pontypool Changes Everything pays to Neil Stephenson's magnificent Snow Crash, but I haven't read the latter in years and I'm sure someone else on the interwebs has already made these comparisons.
*** I totally typed this review with "Jim Sturgess" as the author instead of "Tony Burgess."

Prisco's Pontypool review on Pajiba.com
Pontypool Changes Everything on Amazon.com

Cannonball Read #1.5: Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey

2009-11-09T10:32:00.003-05:00

I can't really count this book towards my Cannonball Read total because I didn't finish it, but I have to write the review simply to state the following:

This book, beloved of many a fantasy fan, is 900 pages of turgid foolishness.

There. I said it. My sophomore year roommate is, I'm sure, rethinking our friendship after reading that, but seriously: Turgid. Foolishness.

Kushiel's Dart's protagonist is the mother of all Mary Sues, Phedre no Delaunay. Cursed with a scarlet mote in her left eye (no joke) she is destined to experience pain and pleasure as one- basically, destined to be really, really into S&M. This leads to lots of creepy scenes of her in her childhood getting really turned on by getting pricked by a pin and, eventually, to being sold into indentured servitude and semi-whoredom.

It is this servitude that basically lost me from the beginning. In the land of the novel, Terre D'Ange (it's France! But sexier.) the ruling tenet is "Love as thou wilt." This seems to only apply to the upper classes, who run around having various sexual escapades with various paid and unpaid companions until one wonders who actually does the governing. Maybe I'm missing The Point of the book, but isn't grooming children from a young age for work as sexual companions, you know, wrong? Basically setting it in a fake version of our world, where this kind of activity is OK because it's justified by religion and is a way of life, doesn't take the squick out of it for this reader.

There is a plot in Kushiel's Dart, sandwiched in between scenes of Phedre getting the crap beaten out of her while having sex and loving it , which involves attempts by various groups to take over Terre D'Ange. These attempts are strung together with the kind of overly complex worldbuilding that requires vast lists of character names and group definitions. The betrayals and plot twists are broadcast hundreds of pages in advance, thanks to Phedre's inability to tell a story without inserting ominous warnings: "If only I had known then that this woman was actually a horrible manipulative jerk!" etc., etc.

For me it was Phedre's failures of narration and her utter unbelievability as a protagonist that made me unable to get into Kushiel's Dart. She's not just beautiful, she's mesmerizing, with an "imperfection" that actually makes her hotter. She's not just naturally smart, she's been educated by her master to know history and politics and singing and art. Not only can she read, she also speaks rare languages that really come in handy when she has gets sold into slavery with the Skaldic peoples (proto-faux-Scandinavia, if you can imagine). Everyone is really impressed by her diplomatic abilities. Oh. And she really really loves sex.

From wikipedia:

A Mary Sue ... in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".

That's my criticism in a nutshell. Phedre no Delaunay isn't a character: she's a weird non-human who does Everything Better than Everyone Else and who everyone in the book eventually falls in love with / devotes themselves to / has sex with. Coupled with the labyrinthine, nonsensical plot, the awkward sex-scenes, and the aforementioned squickiness involving training young people to be sex slaves, I had to put this book down about 200 pages from the end.

Once again: Turgid foolishness.

Cannonball Read #1: Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

2009-10-30T23:52:00.002-05:00

I bought this book on Wednesday, thinking that I would start it Thursday morning so it could be an official Cannonball Read book. Boredom on the uptown A train changed that plan, however- it runs local after 10pm, and living in the hinterlands of Washington Heights, the rides can stretch on for hours without entertainment.

The problem came in when I realized that Winter's Tale is one of those books that once you've started in, it grabs hold of you by the lapels and stares you down until you've read the whole thing in one or two orgiastic, page-turning sittings. If the doors to the train had opened to reveal that I'd ridden all the way to 207th street without getting off I would not have been surprised.

Winter's Tale is, quite simply, a great fucking book. It is a towering piece of writing whose phrases wrap themselves around you and linger well beyond the turning of the final page.

Winter's Tale is, according to its back flap, about a burglar, Peter Lake, who falls in love with a consumptive millionairess named Beverley Penn in the dimming days of the Belle Epoque. It's about that, sure; but it's also about snow, and machinery, and bridges, and justice, and most of all, it is about New York City. There are those who wander around eulogizing the New York City of days past, of the gritty "real" LES and the days when you could get a hot dog for twenty-five cents and the hepatitis came free. I'm not one of those people, but reading Winter's Tale made me long to see the city as it must have looked at the beginning of the last century, when there were still open spaces to be found and the land below 14th street was divided up into narrow warrens with gangs and wars and mud and tuberculosis. One of these gangs, the Short Tails, plays a vital role in the story- it is they who, led by their leader, Pearly Soames (what a name!) are chasing Peter Lake at the beginning of the book. It is while running from Pearly Soames and the Short Tails that Peter Lake meets the white horse. Oh, did I mention the horse?

To try to summarize the plot would be not only futile but foolish, as the best thing about this book isn't so much the plot (which is intricate, and foggy, and amazing, like trying to navigate the West Village if you've only lived in New York for a short time and couldn't tell Grove street from a hole in the ground). The best thing about this book is the feeling you're left with as you're carried along by the words, through hundreds of years of mechanization and progress, through the streets of a city that is, at its heart, anarchic and strange, and which ought to resist attempts to make it orderly for its own damn good.

"So with a city, which if it is to make its mark must be spirited, slippery, and ungovernable. A tranquil city of good laws, fine architecture, and clean streets is like a classroom of obedient dullards, or a field of gelded buls- whereas a city of anarchy is a city of promise."

This evening, as I was about 400 pages in, I got on the C train headed downtown and a woman excitedly started pointing at my hand and smiling. I took my headphones out and she said "Isn't that just the best fucking book you've ever read?" Ladies and gents, I'm not sure if it's the best fucking book I've ever read, but it's pretty fucking close.

"And then he was suddenly overwhelmed. It was as if a thousand bolts of lightning had converged to lift him. All he could see was blue, electric blue, wet shining warm blue, blue with no end, everywhere, blue that glowed and made him cry out, blue blue, her eyes were blue."

winter's tale by mark helprin. 748 pgs

I was tall, and I was slim, and I had a leg for every limb

2009-10-16T13:04:00.004-05:00

That title is meant to tie into the "Cannonball" theme of this post but it probably makes no sense to anyone who isn't a fan of Texas-based celtic band Clandestine. (Which, I guess, is everyone but me.)

Anyway! I'm doing the Pajiba Cannonball Read. 52 books. I'm not entirely sure if it's 52 books in 52 weeks, or 52 books as fast as my little eyes can read them. It's entirely possible that every single one of these books will be Nora Roberts or Stephanie Laurens titles that I'll have to cover in brown paper to read on the subway, just to maintain my street cred.

Anyway. I never update, duh, but things are going really, really well. Perhaps two "reallys" are an overstatement- things are going well, I'm pretty happy, and The Great Foolishness has come to a merciful end. It actually came to an end back in July, but I've been too busy to take note.

I was just about to write "anyway" again but then decided that three paragraphs beginning with the same word is re-dun-tarded. So I ain't doin it. Instead, here's a picture of Raptor Jesus:

GRS (thanks, Elizabeth Bear!)

2009-05-31T10:55:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting in the Thirsty Mind, working on the GRS (or the Giant Ridiculous Screenplay, inspired by Elizabeth Bear's Giant Ridiculous Dog.) It's coming along nicely, thanks to my installation of Freedom on my computer, which enables me to avoid temptations like writing this blog post and checking twitter every five minutes.

This has been such a nice weekend. We drove out with Miz Taylor on Friday night and I spent yesterday in a state of heavenly bliss. I took long walks, I drank my favoritest coffee in the world (Rao's!), I had lunch at Tailgate, I walked some more, I wrote some, I read some, I fell asleep in an adirondack chair. We wrapped up the night in true Mount Holyoke style, huddled under blankets watching a movie on Sarah's laptop.

Even though I've been feeling Super Nostalgic all weekend, the great thing about this visit is the nice nudge it has given me in the direction of actually moving forward with things. It's not a Grand Revelation, per se, but it is nice to know that this place will always be here, that I will have had my time in it. And that whatever I do in the future, I need to do it wholeheartedly, because though the alma mater doesn't care what I do, it does care that I am doing it with all of myself.

Oh goodness. Someone's been breaking into the self-help section again. /ridiculousness

Anyway. We drive back tonight, and tomorrow night Coraline opens for the world to see. CRAZY. It should be a fun evening!

How Sadly this weekend...

2009-05-28T23:44:00.003-05:00

This weekend I'm driving out to South Hadley to visit campus & hang out. I am very excited about this. I am also excited about the Coraline musical which officially opens on Monday. It's apparently changed a lot since I saw it way back at the dress rehearsal... who knows. I am so ready for the opening to be over.

Fingers crossed for a friend at an interview

2009-04-10T11:28:00.003-05:00

My friend Katherine is at an interview right now, just down the street. As soon as she gets out we're going to get lunch. (On an unrelated, food-centric note, Ian gave me a brownie earlier. I haven't touched it yet, mostly because I can smell the sugar through the cellophane and it's giving me a headache.)

Went and watched Fat Couples (Biggest Loser!!) with J1 last night. My ability to predict with confidence the winner of eliminations is quickly failing me. I think I've guessed wrong the last two weeks: last week I thought they'd send Ron the Jolly Brown Godfather packing, and this week I thought Laura (who wielded Ultimate Supreme Godlike Power) would kick Helen to the curb. Instead, she sent Tongan Seth Rogen home and we all cried a little bit and then got happy because his daughter wears cute little glasses.

I am looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend. Steph & I are going to watch Supernatural tonight. We are both totally addicted to that show, thankyouverymuch, because of this guy:

We have totes only seen him in two episodes so far (not counting the annoying recaps that play before every ep) but we're finally caught up on DVD to John Winchester's Tortured Yet Hot Return! It's going to be a great evening.

If you hate something, do something about it. If you hate something, change it.

2009-04-06T21:08:00.002-05:00

So it's 10:00. I'm watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall and drinking a mimosa I made with a bottle of DKNY champagne stolen from the rtbp opening night party. I am on my little red couch, in this apartment that I probably should have vetted a little before committing to it, thinking that I should clean my room.

I have spent more nights like this in this apartment since I moved in than doing anything else. Tonight it's a movie. For the past month I've been alternating between NCIS and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Last week I discovered the joy that is Supernatural. I haven't written a word of anything that wasn't twitter or this fucking blog post in weeks.

I have absolutely no excuses. The gala is over, and even with The Great Foolishness at work I still have plenty of extra time. I hate that I've been talking about being a writer for fucking ever, I've been talking about losing weight for fucking longer than that, and have done no work towards either. If the Malcolm Gladwell theory of genius is that you need 10,000 hours to be good at something I am a failure at just about everything.

I don't know what the point of this self-indulgent ass post is, but I thought I'd make my triumphant return to blogging a good one. After all, what's the internet for?

H.P. Lovecraft + Michael Phelps: The Same Person?

2008-08-11T11:41:00.005-05:00

While watching the Olympics last night I noticed an uncanny resemblance between ...

H.P. Lovecraft, writer of awesome stories involving horrifying tentacled monsters

and...

Michael Phelps, Olympic gold medalist and possible superhuman.

Coincidence? I think not. My friend Raygan thinks that "Clearly, he attained immortality and superhuman physical prowess though his congress with Nyarlathotep." To which my friend Shane replied, "Swimmer, Raygan! Clearly it was the Deep Ones, not Nyarlathotep!"

Anyway you slice it, the resemblance is uncanny.

All Aboard the Failboat! (Or, a Rope of Sand)

2008-06-28T09:44:00.007-05:00

In its ongoing effort to destroy the last great good thing on television, the Weinstein Company has made the following ridiculous changes to the format of Project Runway:

1. Selling it to Lifetime TV, where all challenges will probably revolve around what one should wear when escaping from one's psychotic ex-husband/lover/father/stalker, preferably with one or more frightened children in tow

2. Moving it from New York, a legitimate capitol of fashion, to Los Angeles, where people like that vacant girl from the Hills worked at Teen Vogue and has a "career" in "fashion"

3. Today announced that the show was being taken over by Bunim-Murray production company.

Don't know who Bunim-Murray is, and don't want to read the article? Well, here are some of their past reality show highlights!

For E: Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Living Lohan
For Oxygen: Bad Girl's Club
For Lifetime: America's Psychic Challenge (!!)

And, my favorite:

21 seasons of The Real World. Yes, ladies and gentleman, the company that steered the ship of the Real World from the calm seas of docudrama to the retarded ocean of famewhoring is going to be handling the delicate flower that is Project Runway.

Why did the Weinstein Company feel like they had to mess with a good thing? In the slew of ridiculous competition shows out there (like America's Best Dog, which I didn't even know I needed in my life) PR is– was– the best. The contestants, for the most part, were legit designers who had either experience or talent. The show's drama didn't derive from picking Homophobic Redneck A and making him live, eat, and work with Flamboyantly GayGay Homogay B. The drama unfolded when real people got tired, when they'd been working for a million hours straight to make a dress made of toilet paper and dammit, they probably just all wanted coffee and a few moments of sleep. Drama emerged from personalities clashing– over design vision, over sharing space, over working together.

That kind of drama is the kid we all experience in our daily lives. For instance, if there were a reality show like PR about "World's Best Barista" at my old work, we'd have cast of "characters" and a psychotic "boss." But fights always came from personalities fighting in context, personalities clashing in the middle of working towards something else.

The Benim-Murray brand of drama is none of those things. The Bunim-Murray brand is about Drama!!!1!1!, about picking bland caricatures and pitting them against one another to ensure for the most scandalous footage. The Bunim-Murray brand is about TV. Project Runway was about fashion and TV, about collecting a bunch of people together who all loved doing the same thing and making them work their skinny-denim covered ases off to get the prize. Unlike Bunim-Murray's past efforts, the fame that came with Project Runway has felt like a happy addition, a means to an end. You don't hear Christian Siriano say "Oh yeah, I totally want to present at crappy reality TV awards shows for the rest of my life, and walk red carpets for events I've been paid to attend." You hear him say "I want to be the next Alexander McQueen."

It's infinitely frustrating to see the Project Runway transition drama go from terrible to shitstorm in such a short time. In the months since the Weinstein Company has announced PR's move, so many people are now saying that it's going to blow that when it does move to Lifetime, I'm betting that the first season will have high ratings, but not as high as in the past. Every season the ratings will go down. Dollars to donuts Tim Gunn will leave. And Bunim-Murray, instead of looking at how great the show used to be, will only look at the stereotypes. They'll cast ever more flamboyant gays, and ever more idiotic bigots, and then make them sew a dress while suspended over a lake of flame or something. Viewership for PR will decline, and decline, and decline, and soon it'll be like The Real World. I'll hear about a new season of it and think "Wow, that used to be good back in the day. I wonder if I should tune in now." But I won't.

It is my goal in life to be as cool as this man:

2008-06-23T01:16:00.003-05:00

Seriously. Look at that mustache! That hat! the way his collar folds down so precisely over his debonair little bow tie! Never in my life have I ever looked this cool, even in my attempts at drawing on moustaches with eyeliner on Drag Ball. In my future sartorial attempts I will attempt to fashion myself after Hercule Poirot. Maybe without the mustache.

I just got done watching Death on the Nile with my godsister, who is about to move to Austin. Sad, sad clown. She is finishing up her thesis for her master's, in international community development (or something). She's going to be working at a costume shop in Austin, which is somehow quite fitting, since she's always been putting together her own clothes and remaking things. We are going to get together for an evening of Highlander tomorrow evening. I am quite excited about that.

I've also joined a book club- Eva D at the theater mentioned it at the cast dinner for Present Laughter, and the first meeting is on Wednesday. I guess technically the first meeting was last week, but nobody read the book. This week the book is The Geography of Bliss, so I've got to go get my hands on it. In the meantime I've got the newest of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series, some wonderfully terrible vampire romance novels set in Louisiana. They're fabulous, and full of awesome vampire / human love triangles. Sookie Stackhouse is, herself, a psychic barmaid, admired by not one but TWO powerful vampires! She's got to fight the evil forces of the undead AND the vampire and human bureaucracies that conspire against her! It's seriously one of the most entertaining series of books I've gotten involved in in a long time.

Nothing new on the job front. No news from Exxon-Mobil, but it is the weekend so I might have to wait a bit. No news from Borders- but they did say that they'd be making calls this week. I've decided to apply for a Fullbright- Claire is going to help, because apparently her dad used to do a lot with the Fullbright people. I want to go back to China, hopefully Beijing.

I've also put in an application for a personal trainer at the Y. There's a request form! Not like the old days, when you'd just walk up to the desk and whoever was available would put you through your paces. Under "Reasons for wanting a personal trainer" I wrote "Weight loss- 50+ lbs." In all seriousness it's more like 75 lbs. Actually, probably 85. I want to be 150. God, I've let myself go. Still! There's no time like the present, and once I break some of my nastier habits I should be OK. Claire & I are going to start at Weight Watchers, and it'll be nice to have someone my age to do it with. Lord love her, but it's hard to deal with my mom. She has this disapproving look- this "Are you going to eat that? Really?" look that just drives me up the wall and makes me want to go consume my weight in lard. Well, maybe not lard, per se. Just the 99c tacos at Jack in the Box. SO GOOD.

The genius of Katt Williams.

2008-06-21T22:38:00.001-05:00

He was at the Toyota Center tonight but we couldn't get tickets, so this will have to tide me over until the new stuff comes out on DVD:

Seriously, people.

2008-06-21T16:26:00.004-05:00

When you've got four kids in tow, please make an effort to show up ON TIME for the show you've purchased tickets for. We're very glad that you are introducing little Timmy, Tanya, Tiffany, and Thomas to the theater at such a young age- but could you perhaps make an effort to get them here on time so we don't have to disturb everyone who COULD get here on time to get your ass in some seats?

Also, I know you think that little Thomas is "mature" for two, but let's face it. HE IS TWO. Child can barely walk on his own, much less sit through an hour-long piece of live theater. Three and up means three and up. And we can tell when you're lying.

And no. There are no bathroom breaks. EVER.

I love working at the theater, most of the time, but dealing with the children's theater is ridiculous- a bunch of self-absorbed yuppie parents that just can't handle their children. When I tell your kid to stop running around the lobby, don't then tell that kid to stop running. Clearly if you were concerned, you wouldn't have waited for a stranger to do your parenting for you.

I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?

2008-06-21T01:00:00.004-05:00

So, I'm a college graduate. Instead of instantly finding fame, fortune, or at least a passable job, I've been crashing with my parents and doing some serious navel-gazing. This last part hasn't been too difficult, since I've gained a full forty pounds since I started college and now have what my friend affectionately calls a "Food Fetus," a gut the likes of which Larry the Cable Guy would examine with boozy jealousy. Seriously. Freshman year I was a hottie. My physical deformities notwithstanding, I seriously haven't been this directionless in my entire life. When you're in college you know what to do- the steps are clear, the options are elucidated and you know what path a choice will take you down. Now it's the "real world" and all the shit that I've talked about doing is a possibility- but the only one who can make it happen is me, and I'm not exactly kicking my ass about getting it done.

So since I've been home I've gotten myself about eighty percent unpacked- there are still two boxes of books out in the garage, and those have to wait to move in until we resolve the bookshelf situation in my room. The situation being, there aren't any. Or rather, there isn't space on the bookshelves that are in here for my many copies of the complete works of Dorothy L. Sayers and the ouevre of Nora Roberts. My room is a strange hybrid of me when I was 14 and my mom's stuff, with my computer on my grandmother's desk and my cardboard standup of Legolas standing in front of my mom's collection of back issues of Food and Wine. I haven't done anything to this room since I was 16. I still had a Hanson poster up in my closet, for crying out loud.

I feel wierdly stagnated. I feel, in the words of the fabulous Daisy Steiner, like "there's something I've gotta be, I just don't know what it is! I'm like a rabbit, trapped in the headlights of the twenty-first century!" Well, not quite, but mostly. I want write but every time I sit down to actually do some writing it's like I have a mental block that prevents me from putting anything down on the page. I'm living with my parents, which is awkward and horrible because I feel like they're watching me, all the time, looking to see if I'm horribly depressed or sad or whatever. My mom thinks I'm a mess, and I probably look a mess to her but I'm mostly a mess because she won't stop insinuating that I'm an alcoholic.

Yeah, it's an awesome time here in my house... on the whole, it could be so much worse. It's not so bad living here- it's free, and they've stopped freaking out (mostly) if I come in late, and after I yelled at my mom she has stopped mentioning outright that I need to lose weight. (Small victories, people. Small victories.) Tomorrow I'm house managing, which will get me a little bit o' cash, and I hear back next week about the gigs at Exxon-Mobil and at Borders, both of which will also get me cash money. I'm going to apply for a fulbright, which my friend Claire has promised to help me with. It's nice to have goals. Maybe now I can get those last two boxes unpacked.

2008-06-12T01:06:00.002-05:00

Easter & Placebo.

2008-03-23T21:33:00.003-05:00

I spent most of today with my friend Niki's family- she of the forcing me to watch The Other Boleyn Girl- and at this moment am on my couch in my apartment, filled to the brim with sweet potato pie and biscuits, listening to Placebo's album Meds and most emphatically not writing my research proposal for my foucault seminar.

Easter in my family was always a big deal in that it wasn't made into a big deal. When we were all younger the family gatherings on this day always included an easter egg hunt, my cousins and my sister and I running around whichever backyard the festivities were held in looking for plastic eggs filled with chocolate. We haven't had an easter egg hunt in forever, pretty much since my cousins got to high school- with only two younger kids, it would be a pretty lame hunt. The hunt always followed the big Easter meal, which always followed a service at church in which the Alleluia banner got dug up and we all sang "Up From The Grave He Rose." The monday after Easter my friends would usually compete to see who got a larger chocolate bunny in their basket. It wasn't until I got to college that I found someone who actually got gifts for Easter-- Jesus is risen, have an iPod.

When I was about eight I asked my mom why we didn't get Easter baskets. All my friends got them; I had very dim memories of being in our old house when I was about three, getting a small chocolate rabbit on Easter morning. Mom replied that "They've taken Christmas- I won't let them have Easter, too."

I didn't really understand her meaning when I was eight. I was more pissed about the fact that I didn't get chocolate when EVERYONE ELSE I KNEW was put into a semi-diabetic coma from overconsumption of Peeps while I was praying and chasing my cousins around the yard. I understand it now, though, and understood it even more when I was in line at starbucks and saw a little book next to the register. I forget the title, but it was some kind of children's book and the tagline was "Finding our Easter friends!" Kind of a Where's Waldo*, but for bunnies. Or something.

They have, for all intents and purposes, taken Easter. It's been coopted as another excuse to sell candy and Hallmark cards, just like Christmas. This is nothing new, of course, and I shouldn't be surprised. It does make me sad, however. Today, eating ham around Niki's dining room table, I was reminded of those Easters with my family back home. Easter is about Jesus and family; having woken up too late for the one, I'm glad I got to experience the other, even if I'm far from home.

*Speaking of Where's Waldo, the people who brought you "There Will Be Bud" bring you this magical gem:

The Other Boleyn Girl

2008-03-22T22:22:00.009-05:00

Last night I got a call from my friend Niki: "We're going to see The Other Boleyn Girl. Get your shit." Having not only no choice in the matter but nothing else to do with my Friday evening, I duly got my shit and drove to the Hampshire Mall to see Eric "HotBody" Bana make out with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

Um, I mean, see an exciting historical drama about Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. I think the movie's title was a bit of a misnomer- which Boleyn girl, exactly, was the other one? I think we're meant to think that Mary (Scarlett) is the "other" one, since Anne was the one who actually married His Burliness Henry VIII. Accordingly, Mary begins the movie looking wistful and obliging in the background, happily marrying some guy named William (who disappears WITHOUT EXPLANATION as soon as Mary and His Hotness start doing the wey-hey-hey) and taking a backseat to Anne, who we are told early on is the Special One Who Will Undoubtedly Make Her Family's Fortune If Only She Could Control That Stubborn Unwomanly Independence. The minute poor Queen Catharine pops out a stillborn son the Boleyn's creepy uncle, the Duke of Norfolk (does David Morissey play anyone but creepy, creepy bastards anymore?) gets all excited, and decides to parade the girls in front of the frustrated Henry in an effort to secure the family fortunes.

Of course, this is all accomplished with tons of heavy-handed meat metaphors (literally- think butchers, giant hunks of steak, and gutting a chicken. Not what I wanted to see after consuming my body weight in popcorn) and the wierdly explicit machinations of Creepy Uncle and the Boleyn girl's worthless dad. What I was waiting for, though, was this:

That smoldering stare. That manly beard. Those sleeves. See, what I was really juiced about in this movie was the fabulous, crazy-pants Tudor fashions for the dudes. That my friends is a lot of fabric for one dude, King of England or no.

Oh look! There they are again! Another, more different set of princess sleeves for King Hotface!

Look at that. Look at that. That is one hot mess of sleeves on that man there. Henry is channeling his inner fierceness, and it's clear to see how we got from that to this in only four hundred years:

picture from projectrungay.blogspot.com

I tried to find the picture of Christian strutting his fierce behind around in this outfit, but couldn't.

Beyond His Fierceness Henry VIII, the movie was pretty good. Like I was saying earlier (before I got distracted by the Sleeves of Doom) it stopped being about Mary and started being about Anne really, really quickly. After inexplicably falling in love with the king after some pretty intense horizontal-mamboing, Mary gets knocked up: thanks to the truly advanced, enlightened prenatal care of the period she gets locked up for her trouble. During the waiting period Anne proceeds to be what my friend Beth (who came along for the ride) called --repeatedly--a "big whorebag" and uses her feminine wiles on Henry. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Beyond the world's largest sleeves and England's most famous golddigging ho, the movie was pretty sweet. There was a lot of riding to and fro by unaccompanied women, which was pretty awesome, a truly vomtastic near-incest scene, and Scarlett Johansson doing a pretty good job. Natalie Portman's accent slipped in and out, changing regions and even countries from scene to scene. (Why am I supposed to think that she's the world's greatest, most intelligent actress again? Oh right! Thanks, Elle!) Eric Bana was hotness personified. Poor Kristin Scott Thomas looked put-upon for two hours, and her "I told you so, you horrifying shit" slap to her husband's face was EPIC. All this movie really needed was a scene in which minstrels seranade someone, and it would have been cheese-tacular. I can't wait until it comes out on DVD. I am going to screencap the shit out of this thing.

Riding the Awkward Express all the way west.

2008-01-18T19:47:00.001-05:00

So I'm in the third week of my internship at a non-profit Off Broadway theater. I'm interning in Development, just like at school, but instead of dealing with bitchy alums I'm dealing with bitchy theater patrons. I should suggest the "No-Crank" policy- it works for MST, it can work for these folks. They're all pretty nice at my office, managing not to hew too closely to the theater stereotype--my immediate superior is clearly an ex-musical theatre girl, and her voice goes up to ungodly octaves when she says thank you (which, being a development associate, she does all the time).

My Immediate Superior is very superior indeed. She's been there for a while, and gets into that groove where she knows what's going on and then, when explaining it to me, leaves out some vital piece of information, which leads inevitably to me doing something wrong. This necessitates me having to re-do whatever it was, sometimes three or four times. I'm sure the Executive Director thinks I'm a total dumbass, because I had to re-do the thankyou letters about six times.

I did hope that there would be some cute male, straight-type interns there, and lo and behold, the good lord gives me Carl, the Enigmatic Literary Intern. He's British. He's got gorgeous hair. He sits on the couch in my line of sight, reading in an adorable way all day. Have I said word one to him? No. I'm riding the aforementioned Awkward Train, and I ain't a-getting off.

Review: The Big Over Easy

2008-01-12T15:14:00.000-05:00

Jasper Fforde is my hero. I have devoured almost the entire Thursday Next series, and then I found out that unbeknownst to me he had an entire other series—of mysteries! The Big Over Easy is the first featuring detective Jack Spratt and his sergeant, Mary Mary, and is a wonderful send-up of the hard-boiled branch of detective fiction, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, true-crime publications, the criminal justice system, and sacred relics. With a little mythology thrown in for good measure.

Detective Jack Spratt is the head of Reading, England’s Nursery Crime division, which suffers from a perpetual lack of funds, manpower, and respect from the other branches of the police. Sergeant Mary Mary has just transferred in—she got stuck with the NCD instead of with her idol, Friedland Chymes. Chymes, a kind of Sherlock Holmes, has an ego the size of Minnessota and a personal vendetta against Spratt. Spratt is given one last chance to save the NCD when he begins investigating the death-by-falling of Humpty Dumpty. Was the big egg man pushed from his favorite wall? Was he shot? Was he poisoned? Was he fertile? Was he drunk? And just what do genetic splicing, black-market spinning wheels, and a visit from the Jellyman have to do with anything?

The Big Over Easy almost defies description. Half the fun is just trying to figure out the references Fforde crams each page with. There are aliens in this strange other-England, aliens who are quite boring, really—they speak in binary, and have no concept of how to interact with people. Mary Mary is from Basingstoke, which is nothing to be ashamed of. Miz Hubbard is the most crotchety landlady in existence, her dogs perpetually boneless. And the heroes of Reading are the unsung heroes of the Nursery Crime Division, where everything usually works out the way you’d expect it to.

The greatest part, for me, of The Big Over Easy was Fforde’s imagining of a police force more concerned with plot than justice—The Knox Decalogue run amok. The chapters are headed with hilarious faux news clippings—“Police Shocked to find Butler Really Did Do It”—“Chymes Undertakes Effort to Break Fastest Solution Record; Dismayed to Learn Murders Can’t Be Ordered For the Purpose”—and the desire for a good story will lead men (and women) down dark roads. Fforde gives us a glimpse into that world we escape to when we read mystery novels (particularly those of the Golden Age and before)—if Sherlock Holmes were really all the police had to solve crimes, there’d be lots of dashing about in hansom cabs in the fog and precious little of the police methodology that Spratt and his coterie use. Even if nobody believes them when they say that the wolf was just a victim of porcine-on-lupine torture, the NCD still has to try.

Review: Maisie Dobbs

2008-01-12T15:10:00.000-05:00

I had no plan of action when I walked into Murder by the Book, just a $25 gift certificate and the vague knowledge that I prefer Dorothy L. Sayers to, say, Janet Evanovich. Thankfully, the store’s shelves are dotted with post-its carrying recommendations from the store’s owners and other customers. Several of the books that came with the highest marks had already been cleaned out—thank you, post-Christmas. I managed to pick up two great books, one of which was Maisie Dobbs .

I’m a sucker for anything set in the years after World War I, so Maisie Dobbs seemed like a good choice. The titular character, Maisie, is a girl-genius ex-Red Cross nurse embarking on a career as a private detective. Shortly after renting her own premises she begins investigating what looks like a fairly routine case of infidelity: the wife of a wealthy industrialist has been leaving home twice a week the minute her husband leaves the house. The enterprising Miss Dobbs follows her to a graveyard, where her quarry visits a grave with only one name on it—Vincent. After befriending the woman, Maisie learns that Vincent was an officer who, disillusioned with the war and the way veterans were treated, renounced his surname and all his fortune to the guardianship of The Retreat—a retirement home run by officers, for officers. Especially those with massive, brutal face injuries.

If The Retreat turned out to be the Camp Singalong of the post-traumatic World War I set, then Maisie Dobbs would probably end on the page when Maisie tells the would-be cuckolded husband that his wife isn’t cheating, and hey, maybe he could treat her nice once in a while. And since The Retreat is capitalized, you know from the start it’s going to be extra ominous.

The rest of Maisie Dobbs is part mystery, part stroll down particularly a bombed-out section of Memory Lane. Maisie must, predictably, come to terms with her own Inner Demons before she can solve this mystery—demons involving a hot doctor and slogs through French mud. I burned through Maisie Dobbs in about a day thanks to my wicked commute and enjoyed it for the most part. Maisie herself hovered just on the edge of Mary Sue-dom—did we really need a description of her early life, how she excelled at everything while being charmingly poor with a colorful, Cockney father and a dutiful desire to do right by her family. All in all, Maisie Dobbs was a charming read. Still not sure if it deserved the glowing accolades written on post-it notes all over Murder by the Book, though.

Absolutely fentestic

2007-10-16T18:18:00.001-05:00

I am vaguely aware that 'fen' has some kind of nerdy meaning- but be assured that the fen in my title has nothing to do with that. Instead, it has to do with this:

Why is Emma Thompson so awesome? I re-watched Stranger than Fiction a few days ago after purchasing it for the low, low price of $6.99 at Cumberland Farms. Why was a gas station selling DVDs? Let alone awesome ones? Usually those racks in gas stations are filled with Steven Segal movies and selected episodes of The Love Boat or something. In addition to the aforementioned masterpiece I also purchased Batman Begins. Mmm... Christian Bale. Poor guy- you can totally tell that the onerous task of eating five cheeseburgers a day in an effort to de-skinny himself from Machinist took a big toll on him- he's all puffy. He's still handsome, don't get me wrong-- he's just got that little bit of chub around the neckline of his Batsuit. Mmmm. Batsuit.

More Stephen Fry hilarity:

Hot Fuzz

2007-04-20T19:02:00.000-05:00

I love movies. I've always loved getting lost in movies. I watch my favorites over and over again, drifting away for a few months only to drift right on back when I need that special kick. Lately, though, I feel like all the movies I've gotten excited about have been pretty bad. Or I've loved them, and the people I've been with have hated them. (Raygan, I'm looking at you.)

Today I went to see Hot Fuzz. I went with my newish friend Steph, who I've worked with for about a year and a half in Development and have only recently become friends with. (She also owns the car that nearly hit me freshman year- but that's another story.) She's a film major and we had planned on going to see Grindhouse, but it being 3 hours long was a problem, so our mutual love for Simon Pegg propelled us into the Hampshire Mall Cinemark for the two hour, shoot-'em-up joyfest that is Hot Fuzz.

I recognized almost every actor in this film. Most of the older ones I didn't know (and this movie is surprisingly heavy on old people,) but everyone else? This is about how it went.

"Is that... hey, it's Martin Freeman! And Bill Nighy!"
"Oh, Jim Broadbent. Why are you so cool?"
"Hey! It's BILL BAILEY! Sing us a ballad, Bill!"
"Hey! It's that obnoxious Kid With Cellphone in Shop from Shaun of the Dead!"
"Hey! It's Magpie from Idiot's Lantern on Doctor Who!"
"Hey! It's TIMOTHY DALTON!!!!"

I'm actually surprised that no one hit me. Thing is, nobody could hear me, because we were all laughing too hard. Hot Fuzz is HILARIOUS, and as Steph rightly pointed out, it's not a spoof. Neither is Shaun, really- they're homages to the genre film without being stupid, like the Scary Movies. Moreover, the endless references/homages to buddy-cop bonanzas like Point Break　don't come off in a pretentious, Look-I've-Seen-This-Movie-And-I-Will-Prove-It-With-This-Gun kind of way. The references are subtle and flat out hilarious. And I will bet anyone not to laugh at Nick Frost's borderline-retarded punning, or the "Model Village" shootout at the end that had me literally doubled over, crying into the back of the seat in front of me, with abdominal pains because I was laughing so hard. I defy anyone not to laugh at a box-cutter wielding Timothy Dalton, or Simon Pegg trying to catch a swan. (Hell, Simon Pegg doing just about anything ends up being funny. I'd hate to see him try his hand at drama. It might not work out so well for him.)

All in all, an extremely enjoyable afternoon. The previews were fun, too. There's something called Run, Fatboy, Run starring Simon Pegg and that guy who played David in Shaun coming out, but on IMDB it says it's written by Michael Ian Black (eh, ok) and will be directed by David Schwimmer (oh, God.) Yes, that David Schwimmer. Unless there's another one. But it looked amusing, so I'll probably end up going. I felt dirty laughing at the preview for Delta Farce (starring Larry the Cable Guy) and I won't go see it, because the jokes got old by the end of the preview. It started on a high note (come on, dumbasses accidentally invading Mexico is pretty funny, when you think of it) and then it became pretty clear which direction it'd be going in (fag jokes and Mexican jokes, and more gay jokes to top it off.) So none of that for me. And then came the preview for Balls of Fury, what appears to be a kung-fu ping-pong epic, starring CHRISTOPHER WALKEN. And then, THEN! something called Death at a Funeral starring Matthew MacFayden (hot,) the girl who played Lizzie in Our Mutual Friend, Alan Tudyk (hot and ginger,) and the other half of the british actor population that weren't in Hot Fuzz.

So, yeah. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing tonight. Steph is having UMass boys over, which could be either really good or really awkward, and I'm not sure I'm equipped with enough alcohol for it to be good. I might just read a bunch of Middlemarch and try and get ahead before I have to film the Ridiculousness tomorrow. I can always decide to not be lame and go to the party later, right? Right. Off I go then.

New blog, new me

2007-04-17T21:47:00.000-05:00

There's not a lot of words that make me feel ooky inside, but I'd have to say that "blogging" is one of them. I've kept a livejournal since, oh, forever- about 2001. Somehow that seemed less pretentious. "Everyone uses blogger. Everyone keeps a blog. I keep a journal." I guess I didn't get (in my high school mind) that just because other people use something isn't a good reason not to use it.

That makes no sense in print.

There are lots of things I like about LJ that Blogger doesn't really have- namely, the community aspect. There are lots of things I don't like about it, though. And instead of altering my existing journal (or journals- I think I have three, at last count, all mostly un-updated in any substantial fashion for months or weeks or even years) I have decided to start a new one. And the best part about it is that nobody will care- I don't know many people on blogger, I'm not going to seek out new people, and I'm certainly not going to tell people about this blog. (Eew. Blog. Gross.)

So yeah. First post, new blog, new me. Welcome, nonexistent readers.