Romance and Cigarettes

Romance and Cigarettes

John Turturro, 2005

The best cast film ever. It's like John Turturro, writer and director, wrote the script with the personalities of his friends in Hollywood, then got them to come down for filming. I mean, the smallest possible parts are played by Amy Sedaris and Eddie Izzard.

It's the sort of nepotism from which everybody benefits. It was truly a delight to watch a most bizarre combination of Moulin Rouge and American Splendor—the white trash musical. Where all the dysfunctional adulterers and their children in crappy ticky-tacky houses lipsynch to bad pop music.

Which description will make you think this film could be little more than tacky melodrama all on its own. Thus we come back to the cast, and add to it deft direction and succinct writing. Turturro has written the last couple months of an everyman's life and manages to express the poignancy of every day leading up to the end. Seriously difficult without drooping over into the cartoonish.

He accomplishes this by giving each character our everyman, Nick Murder (James Gandolfini), interacts with complete characterization. There are a few flat characters, but they have 5 lines between them. And, even then Gene Vincent, Frances, Fruitman, and the Policeman are positioned with such conflicting one liners to what their characters are doing, and how they are directed to play it off, that they pop.

Next tier up we have Nick and his wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon)'s daughters and neighbors. They each have the same amount of pop, but because of two or three whole scenes they are allowed to dominate.

At the top we have Nick, Kitty and Nick's mistress Tula (Kate Winslet), and man do they sizzle. Or, at least, the women do. I've never seen The Sopranos, but I don't think Gandolfini is doing much different here. Maybe yell and kill a little less, sing a little more. But he doesn't have to. That's the beauty of being an Everyman.

Sarandon, though, really pulls a new face every shot. She bounds from disgust and a caricature of hatred to flat concentration to pure mothering condescension. Winslet, accordingly, spits out the most amazing strings of hyper-sexual, cockney vulgarities while throwing her body around in a way actresses just don't do anywhere else.

And, on top of that, there's singing involved.

You get the idea that it's one of those French New Wave things, where Turturro wondered how best he could throw his own art-house weight around in the film world. But, at the same time, he only sticks in a song when, if you were the character, you would cease expressing yourself fully if you didn't sing. Your pain just would not be expressed fully without various electricians and dustmen dropping their jobs to dance around you, helping you express this new loss.

It's well done. Thanks to most of it being lip-synched, the choice of songs being common and popular, and the blocking, editing and dialogue blending the uber-real through surreal dream-like sequences into full song and dance, it feels genuine. It's genuine in a way that High School Musical would hemorrhage and Mystic River tries just so damn hard for.

Thank you John Turturro.

Psycho

Psycho

1960, Hitchcock

But, its 31 minutes in and so far, she is not dead, but I don't want Nomran Bates to kill her! He's so cute!

Yes, I know that's the point.

Who is this actor? Leigh is still alive and I can already see he's brilliant.

We all go a little mad sometimes. Norman Bates. Mother. I thought the only cliché to come out of this movie was a shower scene and killing the lead actress off early in the plot, like within 20 minutes. But, she's still alive, 44 minutes in. And I've already encountered three more cliches! It's amazing.

Here's a thing, by 1960, we had color movies pretty regularly. But Psycho is in B+W. It's for the blood, isn't it? People like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino go to great lengths to get the color and consistency of blood correct and artistically satisfying. This is the fourth Hitchcock film I've seen to date, and unless I'm missing something, Hitchcock doesn't really do blood.

No, he does lighting and blocking and sound. Like, how clearly important this money in the newspaper is. That's what all the tension hinged on in the first part of the movie, do we continue to have it so prominently lit because that's what will bring justice to Bates?

Oh Norman Bates, you are exactly my type. Tall, awkward, obscure hobby.

If not for that slug of a mother. It's his dead mother right?

Minute 64: "It's linen day... I don't know, creepy smell!"

Best delivery of a line ever.

Yep. Dead Mother. Freaking brilliant.

Have you seen the trailers for this? The fabulous Mr. Alfred Hitchcock taking you on a tour of the Bates estate? Accompanied by the sort of quaint fuddy-duddy music you may get on an antiques road show circa the time Monty Python started making fun of them. Clearly, Hitchcock himself considered this only scary in so far as the murderer was as normal and attractive as anyone you'd find. Normal – Norman. hm. I guess we're lucky that even Mr. Rockwell was named such a subliminally ordinary name.

What makes her even more normal than normal is the supreme Victorian taint that holds over on everything Mother owned. All lace and doilies. Like the owners of Lady and later The Tramp. If I didn't think it too personal a vendetta for him, I would that Hitchcock was out disarm Walt Disney specifically of his idealistic representation of the post-Victorian stability of urbane America.

But no, it's just that Hitchcock is out to create tension and fear in the same way that Rockwell and Disney created comfort and peace by using exactly the same tools of intimacy and familiarity.

Anyway, this trailer probably holds more craft in it (like trailers today) than the movie. It contains more misinformation than a Clancy novel and more misdirection too. As The Fabulous Mr. Alfred Hitchcock walks through on his tour, he point out every room and object that was of significance in the film, from the stuffed birds and peep hole in the motel parlor, to the bedrooms and clothes in the house. Yet, with each, he immediately dismisses the ones that have true interest and dwells on the ones that are meant to lead us to the obvious conclusions.

That is, he takes more time, gives more weight to the stuffed birds and sink print of Mother, while tells us The Son's Bedroom and This Picture in the motel are uber significant, then uses the cheapest, oldest trick in the suspense book – literally “but it's not important” or “but we'll stop here, I have something better to show you”.

And right until the end (like the two hour sensations Rear Window and Notorious) Hitchcock keeps up with the road show music and his goofy composure until the tour is suddenly over and the trailer film cuts to the most famous scream in film history.

Freaking. Brilliant.

But why Hitchcock didn't let us see Bates throw his voice ever, I don't know. The only improvement I'd make – 40 years later – is to let Bates physically speak in Mother voice in the fruit cellar. The clothes are startling enough, yes, but one more shot, 3 more seconds of film, of him yabbering, would have sealed it completely.

Cowboys and Aliens

I personally have always wondered why aliens didn't strike before 1950. I figured for a long time any aliens landing/abducting prior to that would be hailed as God (hence a couple books of the Bible, see Daniel and Ezekiel). But now, this coming summer the sexy team of Jon Favreau, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and Sam Rockwell will bring us the most ridiculous play on words I've heard.

Yet, Cowboys and Aliens looks like it will be nothing but impressive fun.

If I am not back in the states for the premier I expect one of my bodily extension-people to do so for me.

Lisbeth Salander Will Kick Your Ass

Steig Larsson's Lisbeth Salander Series, otherwise known as The Millenium Trilogy

(2005, 2006, 2007)

The stunning trilogy best seller smash actually demanded I read all of it. It only lacks good language, and even that I'm still (after 2100 pages) debating. A) it's translated from the Swedish, so who knows how poetic it really is. B) It can be very subtly brilliant. We'll get to it later.

Kiddo drops books at any stage because they become boring or too full of holes. The fact that the first three in a row of government/police intrigue books she tried ended in less than 10 pages means whole genre is shunned to crap (excluding all Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler novels which one can read for dialogue alone and not care a whit about the plot).

That is, I only read these guys because my mother spent a significant amount shipping them to me, and I have caused too many arguments about what and is not crap literature with her.

Even so, the first 50 or so pages of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are financial intrigue bullshit and I almost tossed it. But I'm glad I did, because very shortly after that, the character Lisbeth Salander started fleshing herself out: Modern Pippi Longstocking, viking goddess. Absolutely the best actress I can think of to play Lisbeth Salander is Dani, the Suicide Girl from Californication.

She may be, and correct me if I'm wrong here, the first anti-social hacker queen to make it into popular literature. And Larsson knows how to turn the whole affair to make her magnetic – not just in saying 'she was magnetic' as almost any other thriller jockey would. She's even referred to as Pippi Longstocking in conversations with her co-protagonist Mikael Blomkvist—it makes sense. Father as King of the Cannibals to the slip-shod wardrobe.

Blonkvist ain't bad either. I hear he will be played by Daniel Craig. It fits. He's James Bond if Bond had become a gritty investigative reporter. Down to the inexplicable sexuality.

What saves him, and consequentially everything, from becoming a simple Bond cookie cutter is how he deals with that. Instead of picking up and dropping chicks willy-nilly, Blomkvist puts effort into warning them off – he's a ramblin' man and doesn't want you to cry.

This attitude in turn plugs into the attitudes every character has towards sex – not a one of them is exempt from mentioning their sexual preferences, and not once is it explicit, and NOT ONCE is it taboo. The original title for Dragon Tattoo, I gather, was Men Who Hate Women, and when everything is said and done, that is the absolute theme of the trilogy.

More than half the cast is female. Every one of them is competent, strong, intelligent, and sparsely described physically. The men with whom they interact either treat them respectfully, or are misogynistic nuts. For every misogynist there is at least one abused woman. Sometimes the abuse is extensive enough that Kiddo here had to skim through some paragraphs.

The plots, both individually for each book and over-arching, all deal with woman abuse and the good-souled people who must live with it and combat it—even in as sophisticated a country as Sweden. All intrigue and language aside, reading how women like Salander, Erika Berger, and Modig react to crazy situations is genuinely empowering. And I generally despise openly feminist stuff. The point here is not to burn a bra but to point out how counter-productive, illogical it is to treat women as inferior. In extreme cases, how down right evil and destructive it is for men to abuse them. The only point it misses out on, in Kiddo's pasteurized mind, is how equally illogical and counter productive it is for women to treat women in the same ways. But that is for another time.

And before we go too over the original word parameters here, let us look at language. The language is nothing special. No one vocabulary word stands out, no sentence is complex. Benefits of this are the quickness it affords the reader to clip through. Where it becomes interesting, and highly skilled, is how Larsson shifts point of view. The point of view shifts between characters incessently. One paragraph often has three characters thinking at once. The Iowa school of Flannery O'Connor ass kissing would condemn it out of hand, without considering just how complex it becomes, or how multi dimensional the scene becomes. It's cubist.

Eg: In the same scene in a restaurant in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Blomkvist “noticed he looked vaguely eastern European and was staring at him. Then he saw the sub-machine gun.” while Berger “sat paralyzed as he [the eastern European] raised some kind of gun and aimed it at Blomkvist.” and several minutes later Modig “saw a Swedish army model M/45 sub machine gun.” (p 452-4).

In the same scene: “instinctively [Blomkvist] threw himself at the attacker instead of crouching down or taking cover” while “Berger instinctively took cover when the second series of shots was fired.”

These are the most extreme versions of this I found, but the same tool is employed constantly to make every scene pop. A sensible person will now say “But, that makes for a repetitive book” and the reader of these books will tell you each is perfectly developed simply by what they notice within the same rooms, and how they each ask the same question that it does not matter.

What is astonishing is how perfectly the story ends. Not just how the plot concludes (which is brilliant) but how the perspective of the omniscient narrator shifts dramatically from a cast of several dozen rounded individuals to Salander. Salander, you see, is the least sociable person in the world. As soon as she is free from any obligation to interacting with this tapestry of Stockholm, she does, and therefore, so does the narrator. It's actually shocking in the abruptness.

Brilliant.

Not to mention the number of times coffee is drunk throughout.

Fringe - Pilot

Fringe – Pilot

2008, J J Abrams

If any one in this melodramatic day in age could remake The X-Files, it's J J Abrams. His flair for cliffhangers soaked in liquid crack make for one swift-paced paranormal noir. However, his obsession with starting things in flying machines almost made me get off the pony.

We all know first impressions are made within nano-seconds and humans are more judgmental than god (how else could they create such a creature) so the ever fecund well of “new ideas” Mr. Abrams sells may want to cut back on its sale of Airplane Openers and NonSequitor Animals. Also, hire Gillian Andersen to play herself since this blonde lady, however lovely her green eyes may be, is not as cool as Scully.

She has one facial expression: mulling/tense. Luckily she's offset by the Mulder of our new series played by Joshua Dawson, or something from the late 90s teen hearthrob felicity sisters... I don't know. It seems he may naturally have the same mulling/tense fixation, which I'll attribute to Abrams' lack of direction, but he does say fun, almost spontaneous things. Plus he's a magnetic genius of a ramblin' man with a closet full of goofy-sounding run ins with Iraqis and card sharks. If this were big budgeted enough, I'd call for George Cloony to play this kid, but What's His Name is almost as good. And he's boosted in eccentricity with a mad scientist of a father-sidekick.

These two are the most fun thing about the pilot. There's no doubt the idea of putting the father back in an asylum and the cute genius deserting out blonde heroine for more profitable, less complicated ventures.

Clearly, Mr. and Mrs. Mulling-Tense are going to get it on. I don't think Abrams is messing with 4 seasons and a movie's worth of time building up sexual tension though; there are already instances of female self-sacrificing and male protecting in a The Cell-like hallucination scene. Instead, I predict they'll make the beast with two backs in a particularly tense alien holding chamber then squabble in a Ross-Rachel sort of way. Periodically we'll manage a good streak of this nonsense, and really get some sweet paranormal stuff investigated, but it'll always be there.

Anyway, the hallucination is the high point of the episode. All else is bogged down in faux emotional tension between Fake Scully and her last partner (with whom she was having an illicit affair), and full on accusations of Halliburton esque corporations working on higher levels of secrecy with the federal government than it's own bureau of investigation.

Thick, thick, thick. If Abrams laid on any more we'd all be wearing virtual reality helmets and spontaneously being impregnated by aliens. I wonder if it'll take him three seasons to get to that point, like it did Chris Carter.

Ie. I will watch the rest of the first season, already downloaded onto my hardrive, but I'll be deleting the episodes as I do, to make room for Italian zombie flicks.

SteamPunk

This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. For many years I've wanted my very own soder iron, and now I want many other tinkering tools!

http://thetentacleparadox.com/blog/

SteamPunk computers. The perfect antidote to technology retarded wishers for corsets everywhere.

All The Worriers

Like all self respecting intellectuals, I read alot more than required. Things like cereal boxes, shoe polish, blogs, novels, textbooks, dictionaries, DVD special features that you know were only stuck in there so's to have another feature to advertise.

Now I can read in Romanian, and a little in Russian, I read even more. Ads I never cared about etc.

One of my favorites are publisher and editor blogs online. Though, recently they've started blurring. Only one, http://blog.nathanbransford.com/, doesn't constantly whine about the end of the world as we know it. The world is always ending for someone and the book people of the western world think its their turn.

They kinda have a point. Kindles and Nooks and iPads I'm sure do hit book sales. But they just haven't figured out how to manipulate them enough legally and monetarily yet. There's been some squabbles, some legal battles, and the big wigs are catching on, but it's slow.

Besides, I was just doing some selfish research of place to publish my poetry. Along the way I found out about the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters in 1915. My first reaction was, shit! I hope that's still in print!

I looked it up on Amazon (sweet savior angel of the publishers as far as I can tell) and lo! I have my choice of about 17 versions of paperback and one for Kindle.

The copy I want is actually published by http://digireads.com/ . An adaptor. I chose it because of it's cover design.

You see, I am one of that elite group of intellectuals who gets off on reading and writing. Kindles are indeed sweet, and I will probably own one eventually, but I love the paper, I love comparing the galleys of books, how their cut, what font they choose, where the text lies on the page (you know there's a science to this, some newer mystery novels and such actually are printed HIGHER on the page so there's more thumb holding room at the bottom and the physical act of reading in bed is more ergonomic?) What paper/plastic combo ratio is used on the cover (Compare that Girl With the Something series to a paperback from 5 years ago. They've invented a cover and spine that doesn't get permanent wrinkles in it or break if you rough it up!)

Etc. etc. etc.

Books aren't going away. Consumers are like 5 year olds. they want what they want when they want it. And they usually get bored just as quick.

Did you know there is a profession that sells books by the foot for rich kids who want their shelves to look intelligent regardless of content? Nouveau Riche will save us yet! Quail Not!

PS. If anyone wonders what I'd like for Christmas, it's this $8.99 version of The Spoon River Anthology...

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterly's Lover

DH Lawrence, 1928

My inner rebel wants to write a whole review here, without mentioning sex.

There is more description of the coal mining industry and the “gruesome” nature of the industrialized Midlands of England, and the metal effects of World War 1 than of sex. Granted, porn was not yet an acceptable form of entertainment in Modernist England and America, but, really, people. If I have to read one more review of the sex content of Lady Chatterley's Lover I may have to write strongly worded letters to the reviewer.

I worry, though, that I am only getting snippets of review, that, perhaps, I am reading the passion for or against writ sex in a spin zone where publishers and publicists are peddling more copies of this treasure of a book. To which I say “Fuck you” and would probably add “Cunt” in there somewhere too. If they will get worked up over these words, written in the basest collier vernacular of the time (Hello, Mark Twain disciples, this might be a second bible for you!) but are you really going to toss out at least 200 pages of subtle social criticism because you are too faint hearted?

Bloody hell.

Lawrence is, as far as my uneducated view can see, the British version of Hemingway. His language reflects the warbling, ornate entrails of Victorian everything, as Hemingway uses the sparse, bruising inheritors of Stephen Crane and Dreiser. Sometimes he goes a sentence or paragraph too far in making his point, as Hemingway does one too short. In this way they are both writing for the intelligentsia of the time. Both write about men and women wrecked by World War 1. Both even write about sex, and the desire for it. Hemingway just didn't have the balls (and in The Sun Also Rises, quite literally) to go all out with it.

Other things Lawrence doesn't hold back on are extended metaphors. He used the phrase “bitch goddess success” so many times frustration levels rise to orange and I start wondering if he didn't write this book with the purpose of killing his career. Around this, clearly his favorite illustration of the zeitgeist, he spins as many dog metaphors as possible. This person is a dog, this person another dog, they have dog like features and our eponymous hero, the Lover, Oliver Mellors, has a loyal dog which follows him. He starts following Lady Constance Chatterley around like a bitch in heat, which she does accordingly. It amounts to this wrecked generation being abased to animal level.

At which point, is it really surprising that Connie falls to the animalistic level of infidelity? Or Mellors encourage it? Or Sir Chatterley condone it?

Yep, that's right. Lawrence writes a novel about an affair so detailed that you know all the cuckold's feelings on the topic as well. It's both sympathetic and admonishing to all parties concerned. Above all the affair is merely an extended metaphor in and of itself to the real thesis of Lawrence's: “World War 1 destroyed the minds and souls of all touched by it, here are the reasons.”

But I overlook one thing. This is what everyone was using extended metaphors for at the time. So, the sex itself was the groundbreaking thing. Fair enough. Can we still read the other 200 pages?

Am I wrong? Have I read too many Anne Rice novels, too much Anais Nin? Am I desensitized to sex, or is there something more here? If you only know Lawrence and Lady Chatterley's Lover for it's sexual content, you haven't read it. Tochka.

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2

Jon Favreau, 2010

Disclaimer : I am in love with Rober Downey Jr.

I'll try to be unbiased.

But I adore Sam Rockewll (they even let him dance! Do yourself a favor and watch "Moon"), and Don Cheadle (voice to melt you, body to make you go grrr...) too. Now if Marvel convinces John Cusack and Adrian Brody to support Edward Norton in the next Hulk movie, I will sell my soul to them.

Not Mickey Rourke though, especially not as a Russian. He does the accent pretty well, but he does not look the part. And his hair --- what? Gwenth Paltrow can be fun and snippy as Pepper Potts, but something about her puts me off. I love looking at Scarlett Johansson, but she can't act her way out of a hat box. Also, she has this weird butt-thrust posture that tries being sexy, but just comes off as off balance. Without them, Iron Man 2 would have been perfect, and humanity doesn't stand for that.

So, equalized, we have a sequel. Longer, more effects, new threats blah blah blah. At times the melodrama threatens to subsume the balance, but usually something light and slapstick pulls it down. Like between Tony being kicked out of his old CEO office and finding the key to the universe, he has to carry a 3D city model home in his roadster. On the cusp of the third act, between the darkest point (symbolized here in a self-perpetuating motion paper-weight thing) and the first step to victory, Tony has humor. He's the hero we need in these Empiric days. Even so, Favreau insinuates just enough pan flute that I almost cried when Tony (Downey Jr.) has his emotional climax three minutes later.

The biggest problem is just the looseness of it. Like almost all sequels, it's just not as tight. I'm trying to finger it, but there aren't scenes I'd cut out. Even the big action scenes aren't too long, really. All the drones landing in the final action scene morphs perfectly into a rhythm that is often lacking in action films not starring Zhang Ziyi. The Friend on Friend scene with Rhody steals a suit is only long because of necessary dialogue.

It's probably the over-explanation of everything. Literally every plot development gets explained at least once blatantly by one or another character. I realize that by using words like “ostensibly” (see below) I am in a bracket above the average viewer of comic book films, but come on people. The screen on that diabetes reader machine said “Blood Toxicity: 19%”. If you can't figure out what is going on here, you need read some more Aesop fables. If you can't see that Natalie Rushman is playing a whole different role than that of simple secretary when she lays out Happy Hogan in the boxing ring, you haven't ever seen an action movie or a detective movie before.

Ostensibly, Tony Stark is being poisoned by his own creation, knows he's dying, gives away his company and gets sloppy with his suit while dealing with a suddenly greedy government. He has a new assistant, Natalie Rushman (Johansson) who turns out to follow up on that tantalizing nugget of awesome after Hulk (yes, Marvel turns out to have contemporary genius over DC: planning and management).

So much so that not only does Hulk have a way open, but Iron Man is set for at least 5 movies in this run with Downey Jr. One would almost think his producer wife may have designed the whole thing herself to keep him occupied.

I don't follow Marvel, but the characters are pretty fun, and seem well enough developed. The relationships, while not complex like a Russian novel, are indeed engaging. Tony doesn't follow up on the hot chicks (various) only to sacrifice the hard won trust and affection he has with Pepper Pots (Paltrow). Natalie Rushman, the obvious sex bomb centerpiece, doesn't seek to seduce anyone. And Samuel L. Jackson puts in a cameo as the mysterious ringleader of the Avengers, Nick Fury. He and Tony actually haggle over what the organization is, what Tony and Iron Man's place in it will be, and act generally, uncliche. I didn't know it was possible.

Oh wait. Stan Lee is one of the writers.

Oh wait. I already mentioned the obvious planning going into all this.

Huh.

Usual editing mishaps and stuff. The usual questionable abilities of various things. But overall, damned enjoyable. Just block out some glaring offenses to your average intelligence.

Une Femme est une Femme

Une Femme est une Femme

Jean-Luc Godard, 1961

Fun even if you don't speak French and don't have subtitles.

I'm pretty sure this pseudo-musical was designed to showcase the cuteness and prettiness of one Anna Karina (not to be confused with the more notorious Karenina of Russian/feminist/novel/Oprah fame). The more obstacles get thrown in her way, the cuter her pouts, shouts and pancake flipping antics become.

Jean-Luc Godard's (of French New Wave fame...ie. This movie is a keystone of his) uber-feminine plot gracefully blends traditional and mod views on feminism. As Angela, Karina stirs it up with bright aplomb. Angela is a burlesque dancer whose biological clock has starting ringing with a vengeance. Her live-in boyfriend, Emil, wages against the idea of having a baby, they fight and Angela raises a bluff that their mutual friend would be more than willing to help her out in this problem.

That's it. The whole plot. Nothing else really happens. At least that my non-French ears can pick up. It's almost two hours of haphazard singing and dancing where the music will unexpectedly drop out, or one foley track of footfalls, or a car, or bird, or page turning, will be all you can hear. Since the characters are so edgy (who in Hollywood would ever make a burlesque dancer someone light and breezy) and the experimentation with the sound is so off beat—literally—the plot doesn't have need or time to develop beyond this. The whole thing is almost a single set piece.

The introduction alone is fifteen minutes long. It gives all the character development and exposition you need. Then credits are given with self-aware poses by Angela and the friend she may or may not sleep with later. And the cartoonishness does not end there.

When the couple argues about whether to have a baby or not, Godard injects Bugs Bunny-esque squeaks, springs, rim shots, canned laughter, and horns. If he wants to lend strength to a statement, he puts some echo on it. Clearly, Godard thinks little of the musical genre. Clearly, he likes the idea of mocking the status quo as much as he likes looking at our heroine.

At the height of the plot, she and this friend are in a Paris bar, trying to get in the mood. Since this is Godard's stab at the musical movie genre, the friend soothes Angela by putting a franc in the jukebox. While the quirky French pop song plays it's length we watch Karina's range of caricatures of Distress. Each new face in a new shot. What would otherwise fall into a boring morass of overwrought melodramas, thus stays all of adorable, self-deprecating and interesting.

Godard doesn't stop at sound. Like Woody Allen's Annie Hall there is a scene where subtitles show what the characters are thinking at each other. Interiority unconfined to montages and lengthy monologues or, in the case of standard musicals at the time (Oklahoma, Seven Brothers for Seven Sisters, Fiddler on the Roof) five minute solos.

He also experiments with colored lighting. Although he will perfect his technique in Contempt with Brigitte Bardot, you can already see a stylized genius. Blocking wise, Godard actually has Angela flip a fried egg into the air, run down the hall to answer the phone, say something like “hang on a minute” and run back to catch the falling egg. As with everything, the editing is less obvious. Quick cuts of characters' expressions to keep up pacing and emphasize interiority: Emil at the strip club, apparently waiting for Angela's show, shot of stripper fully dressed, shot of Emil—nonplussed. Shot of stripper less one layer, shot of Emil—nonplussed. Until the stripper's in a thong. We know Emil is a loving and considerate boyfriend because of this sequence; he doesn't show emotion until Angela comes out.

Because of all this overt choice in colors and sound one need not speak French to know what's going on. Even though the average American would be bored and off put by the starts and stops in music and sound, they would understand almost every word (and if not every word, then definitely the plot line). They won't get the jokes that the book covers give in a bedroom fight, but they'll get there is a fight using book covers. Either way, it's pretty damn funny. Especially, with the thunder storm going on outside to build up the cartoon tension.

If Godard had chosen just one of these to run with, and kept to a serious film he would have had something sensible for critics to talk about forever. With all of them, I bet film scholars are floored, if not just baffled. It'll take awhile for Une Femme est une Femme to resurface to mainstream criticism, but it's still fun.

Jenny and Johnny

Jenny and Johnny

Jenny Lewis and Jonathon Rice

2010

That's right. I am almost on time with this one. The new, eponymous, album has been out and available for less than a week. Thanks to my aunt Kristin, and her sending me an iTunes card for my birthday, I made my first digital music purchase! Woo. It was easier than my GenX hangover soul had anticipated. I was rewarded with – a bit above average pop music.

Jonathon Rice is known as Jenny's boyfriend, and Jenny Lewis is known for her agnostic gospel music with band Rilo Kiley and her two solo albums. These 5 – 9 albums, depending how you count them, are never not brilliant. They also have really nice guitar layering, Jenny on rhythm guitar and singing, and some highly talented man (Mward or Blake Sennet, Elvis Costello) on melody guitar. Her vocals absolutely steal the show, and she's one of the few artists I want the entire discography for. Even Led Zeppelin made music I'm not hot on enough to keep em around.

At least I have hindsight with Zep, they've released all they're going to do (No, Robert Plant will not rejoin them, no, that drummer-son is no excuse). But Jenny is still producing a bunch. And this may be where we depart as worshipped and worshipper. I admit, I was expecting more of the same, if not, more of lovable stuff to sink my teeth into. Even her worst things on Under the Blacklight and Acid Tongue were fun and full and it only took me a couple listenings to get into. This whole album seems like that.

What made her music above average were shrewd lyrics and hypnotic vocals. The music, without a superior musician helping, is basic enough that even I can play it on the guitar. I thought at first this Johnny would be the next filler of that role, but he doesn't add much except to harmonize. The harmony is pretty good though. His voice is of a timber, or something else technical, that works beautifully, melts into Jenny's that you don't find with her other partners. It works. But it cuts the hypnotic power of Jenny's solo voice in half, reducing the vocals to just above average and vaguely interesting. Even then, if these two develop their singing relationship and they use real harmony, and not just singing the same thing at the same time, they could really have something.

The other side of Jenny I adore: lyricist. This woman is brutal with her beliefs and extended metaphors. She is not afraid to use death threats, impersonate teevangelists, hookers, and 15 year old hitch hikers. She is unaplogetic for breaking up with people, and doesn't whine when she, herself, is dumped. Not only is it rare, but her book of collected lyrics could very easily stand as a contemporary sort of Bible for the agnostic zeitgeist of GenXers like me and Millenials like the bulk of her fans.

And it's not all lost. Romanticizing Los Angeles in its dark and glittery glory is still on the plate, they have a song called Switchblade, and Big Wave is a critique on idiots who live on credit. Showing fun ironic and surprising choice chops, they chose David Hockney's painting A Bigger Splash for this socio-political almost protest song.

There is not too much a lack for emotional brutality: one of them doesnt “think two heads are better than one” and one of the two “will forgive you if [they] outlive you” and not a second before. There's even a lovely image of snake bite that shows up in at least half the songs, and then cemented on their homepage and myface page with a snake infinity symbol. Nice. I like this longer lasting show of thought consistency. Shows they aren't just screwing around and kinda dumb like various artists out there. You'll notice the big ones (Zep, Gaga) really know who they are and even if their sound changes, their singer/song writer personalities do not (hobbits, fame).

As good as that is, there is some preachyness here that didn't exist before. I cannot accept a bible thrust on me. Thus I like Church of England but not most Catholicism. So when the leader of my church says

“If you don't believe in history then take what you're given” I get a bit uneasy, but then I hear :“If you lose your fear of god, then you're an animal” and I'm a bit queasy. They're telling me I'm below them? Or is the animal metaphor a good thing? Are my leaders animals? Do they show their teeth to everyone? I... uh...

Whoever writes their publicity stuff (both Jenny and Johnny seem shy of publicity unless they're really performing) makes a serious note and devotes a paragraph to to pointing out this is NOT Rilo or Jenny Solo. It's a new creation and it's exactly what they want it to be: mainstreamish, popish.

I guess the important thing to note here is that Johnny is not just another man Jenny leans on to take her solo work to the next level, he's her boyfriend, and really, her equal in musical output quality. So, the album is called “I'm Having Fun Now” and maybe she is. Maybe this is more important for her. And that's a good thing. I like my prophets to enjoy what they're doing. Besides, I have to keep buying what she (and whoever, I hope she knows it doesn't matter to us) puts out since I don't yet know when it's going to truly start sucking.

A Change in Altitude indeed.

A Change in Altitude

Anita Shreve

2009

At my mother's insistence, I have made my first venture into the world of non-snob lit. I have often wondered how bad writers become writers, popular writers, respected writers. Published writers. I consider myself pretty good, a bit lazy in craft and theory, and badly in need of a diligent editor, but pretty good. But, am I published? Am I cared for by thousands of women who thank me and implore me to connect with them again and again? Hell no. Thus, it is time I cut out this engrained snobbishness brought on by being raised to know my Valkerie truer self, and becoming addicted to intelligentsia college bilge.

And you know? Ms. Shreve is not bad. Yes, her exposition is obvious and she spends so many pages on describing people's clothes and appearance and obvious traits that she seems more like a writer of Sweet Valley High chain novels, yes her language is consistently basic, and sometimes the pace is slow, dialogue always pretty blasé. Nothing ever stands out in the book, and I have to wonder if there isn't a certain talent in that. I mean, she works in about 20 swahili terms into her 336 page novel, and I doubt anyone else could make this feat appear natural.

I imagine, and will explore a bit more, that this is the plateau of literature between The Devil Wears Prada and Infinite Jest that hits the smarter edge of your average reader. People who are damned intelligent and just don't care to be intellectual about it. It doesn't seem like too bad a place to be. There's for sure more of them than there are off-the-deep-end narrative nerds.

Shreve follows a pretty standard Everywoman through the overly analytic thoughts of, I don't think I'm out on a limb here, every woman. Shreve ignores emotions a woman's psyche wants to ignore until, just like in life, they get brought up. The genius of this is not just pciking and choosing these things, but exagerrating them.

Instead of her heroin, Margaret, ignoring the annoying/flattering crush a married man has on her and having it come to nothing, that very willful ignorance causes the death of that man's wife! This of course leads to strain in dull Margarets fresh and adorable marriage. The rest of the book (up to death takes maybe a third) is dealing with that and both symbollically and realistically getting over it.

In order to do this, Shreve weaves in half of Kenya's stereotypes and a couple genuine seeming characters who seem actually to have been researched from somewhere in history and almost developed into classic characters, readers will wonder about and chew on forever. Shreve doesn't ever make that cross over herself, though. It's sad, she seems so close to taking this Margaret from Everywoman to Jane Eyre, but doesn't. Why? Margaret has a hobby turned profession (photography) and complex meditations verging on the detail Milton gives Eve before she loses Paradise; Margaret embarks on all sort of adventures, initiates and follows through on all sorts of things which just don't quite develop her. Two thirds of the way, a reader who took one psych class once can tell Margaret has developed a form of major depression, but she doesn't ever develop anything else. No matter what she does, the way she things and the way she deals with things don't change or adapt. Argue for one or two instances maybe, or that “just because she doesn't change doesn't mean she's a bad character” and yea, sure you're right, but she will never ring in your imagination the way Becky Sharp or Emma Bovary or Constance Chatterly, or even April Wheeler does. The Everywomen of other books will haunt you, Margaret __________... Mc something (literally Mc something. The name is mentioned once, in conjunction with her husband and I can't believe how perfectly I can only remember she is Margaret Mc something.)

Point is, yes, it's a lovely study of far off Kenya with all sorts of references to names of lesser known plants and animals and the swahili phrases and the names of tribes, but I just can't bring myself to feel like this Kenya stuff was simply a set drop to make an otherwise boring human being seem interesting. And it doesn't even work.

That said, I did enjoy it. I guess I don't have to want to scribble all over my books with exclamations and epiphanies and connections all the time.

American Splendor.... uh, I don't know... I'll just get on with my job which I hate and maybe tell you about it later. Jazz is good.

American Splendor

Shari Springer Berman
Robert Pulcini

2003

HBO doesn't do bad things, and I'm a comic nerd. Go figure I'm drawn quickly then, to American Splendor, this cool looking, new (ha, I'm so behind the curve) movie.

The introduction is brilliantly put together: Super heroes, comic script, little boxes and gutters of the comic itself. Original, recorded straight off the vinyl Amazing Stories sort of music... I shifted my butt around in excitement. Doesn't get better than witty, self-deprecating, comic-oriented stuff with good music! Glad I wore the comfy pants. All that jazz.

They say, or have said, or have been known to say, that if you like a movie in the first 10 minutes, you'll like it forever, and vice versa. If this were true, American Splendor was shooting right into the top 20 at least of Erika's Bestest.

Cut immediately to a stylized soundroom where the only color is an glass of orange soda. The real life Harvey Pekar is doing, and receiving direction on the intro voice over we just heard. The Meta Meter shoots through the roof. Cool. I'm a Post Post Modern sort of girl, I can dig it.

The rest of the plot and film, though, pings back and forth between this painfully realistic style, like we got in The Savages and Dreiser novels (which, awesome enough, Pekar as Guy Playing the Real Guy (something only Paul Giamatti can do) derides later in the film) with the Guy Playing the Real Guy and this uber clean Gattaca colored Real Guy set.

The uber reality of it all does everything it can to be awkward too. Giamatti must have studied a bit of Chaplin and mime to get papers to cram that awkwardly and phones to not sit in cradles that on cue. It's where the humor is. But, like with writing that is bad, the more awkward you force characters to interact, the more the humor dims.

By an hour in, the audience has been let down to the depression that Pekar and his character, Pekar, feels about the routineness of everything. Every once in awhile there's a glimmer of the splendor in living such a typically humdrum American life, but the continued meta narrative (see Giamatti walk to the set of Letterman, watch Pekar on Letterman, see Giamatti come off the set of Letterman) bogs itself into a pander to Pekar himself, and kind of an ass kissing of him in a way that made me wonder why, if he let into Letterman so hardcore in the eighties, then why is he letting this happen?

Long story short, there's barely any plot other than shooting the comic with actors, and continuously proving it so with shows of the page, and framing the actors with the original gutter.

Though, with a comic so stagnant and depressing that Alan Moore had to make a caricature of it in his own comic Promethea, what else could I have expected.

It's good; well put together, beautiful editing, acting, all that. . . it's just as bleh as the subject matter.

Chick Lit

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/08/25/129423107/women-who-read-are-not-marshmallow-peeps-and-other-humble-suggestions

This woman has a point.

I'm reading Anita Shreve for the first time, and it most certainly is not The Devil Wears Prada. Unless the page of purposely awkward trying on of hiking boots for an ultimately lethal climb up Mount Kenya with some British Ex-Colonists, counts as Shoe Porn.

It doesn't.

No, the plot is great. The characters obviously fleshed out. The relationships complex. The women are photographers -- creators! not the objets d-art. Awesome. So, not Chick Lit. I'll give you.

However. These things that are great are all told to the reader. I am an intelligent person, and a damned discerning reader. Personally, I'm almost insulted when I find out the plot is great, characters fleshy, relationships complex, when the exposition spends 60 pages telling me so in no uncertain terms.

The difference, Ma'am, between Chick Lit and seriously taken NYT revered contemporary literary fiction is the reader is allowed to make up their own minds about these things. And if, like Franzen, you are good at it, your reader will come to the conclusions intended.

Women do it too. Don't worry.

Zadie Smith, White Teeth -- Go!

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale

Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Alice Munro

Mary Gaitskill

Ursula Leguin

Isabella Allende

Maybe you just want a separate type of Easy To Read/By Women type of fiction? Somewhere for Anita Shreve/Jodi Picoult? Nicholas Sparks might want to me on your list...

Why do we have to keep arguing about stuff like this? Can't we just get along?

American Beauty

American Beauty

Sam Mendes (1999)

There is no end of existent praise for this film, and I tremble to add to it. Color palette, characters, dialogue, acting, direction, story—all first rate. This is the first movie I ever watched and thought “wow, that's a perfect movie.” Not only can I find no actual fault in it, but there is no bad or unfinished taste left in my mouth from it. Maybe a bit calculated in feel, but even that fits with the film's being from the protagonist's post-death point of view.

What's neat is that, originally, this death was meant to be the focus of a court room drama. Again, set post death, from his perspective, but with a court room frame. The stoner kid and his camera on trial for the murder. I'm glad they went without it. Without, there is a lovely ambiguity and no chance for easy answers or for the entire affair being reduced to a game of clue and/or episode CSI.

Edited aşa, we are presented with our narrator and a vivid cast of secondary characters who add to each other and interact seamlessly. Many movies have tried pulling this off and few succeed. Most end in a series of vignettes that somehow tie together, like Love Actually or Babel. Time gets chopped up evenly on the storyboard, so the characters balance out—time wise. So, the audience is supposed to sympathize with all of them... equally...

Nice sentiment, whatever.

Many movies, like Across the Universe, try pulling off the one story from different perspectives, or a small community interacting, but only American Beauty realistically gives all its secondary characters enough weight and depth that they could support their own full length stories easily.

But that would be moot if the courtroom had been allowed to prevail.

As it is, we just have a narration of the last year of Lester's, Everyman's, life circa 1997. If we'd opened with a courtroom, the drama would focus on the verdict, but this way the drama is subsumed so that when scenes where violence happens that violence is all the more harsh. A plate of asparagus hitting a wall is hardly tense if compared with the possibility of some kid's brain frying for our entertainment/justice. Everyman's life would be mundane except for his death, but this way the fascination in an ascent to self discovery.

Similarly, the growth of the supporting characters is allowed to flourish without a courtroom. American Beauty, though ending with the death of our protagonist, churns up the possibilities of life and stirs the viewer's own desire for sublime within the ordinary. Besides, the children of the doomed have plans for their life! If the courtroom had been allowed to prevail, we would no doubt see these plans thwarted and therefore end on less uplifting note.

Of the three children in question, the daughter's growth, is probably the most important for the viewer. As the actual spawn of the dead protagonist it is her human responsibility to carry on his work. Thankfully, Ball made another crucial choice: he did not hit us over the head with this symbol. No, she, like every teenager, hates her parents. Furthermore, her actions hinge on so many different people's opinions of her that, while the courtroom scenario would allow her more screen-time (being the girlfriend of the “murderer”) the whole fiasco would stunt all the blushing promise of growth she shows when with him. In the scene with the famous plastic bag, she doesn't necessarily see the beauty he does in the bag, but the beauty in him for his simple and sublime love of the world. What Lester achieves just before death, she achieves – albeit vicariously – appreciation of the sublime in the mundane before leaving home to fulfill it.

The daughter's catalyst, Ricky, is a rather dashing allegory for turn of the century go-getters. Highly motivated both to appear perfect to parents and to make it in the world as yourself – freak or whatever – by whatever means necessary. It probably goes without saying that I have a giant crush on this character. As a person, he doesn't grow. This is probably why he is, bizarrely, the center about which this glorious film tilts. By staying still and letting other people meet him, he forces the whole machine a-lurchin'. Finally he makes a move for himself and delivers the crux of drama for both the courtroom version (being the one left holding the bag^) and the ambiguous version (taking the daughter off to freak central New York).

If Ricky were accused of murder, Carolyn's, the wife's, role would become wormish and all over despicable, rather than just confused and mildly hysterical. She is an obvious suspect, and her character, at the time of murder, is motivated to do nothing but cover the truth of every one of her actions. From the very beginning, except two quick shots, she is nothing but fake to everyone she interacts with. Getting Nailed by the King, and a small gasp just before Lester gets beer on her $4,000 sofa upholstered in Italian silk. These are minute and quickly covered up. Otherwise her pure self is expressed through guttural screams in private, and are quickly reprimanded and suppressed. Thus, if she were to be confronted as a witness she would only squirm and rely on her facade self. Without the courtroom, she is released from the forced growth of her little motivational tapes, thus sent in a different direction.

Lolita's^Ω role would be swallowed and reduced to tertiary rather than secondary if the courtroom reigned. As it is she acts as the perfect foil for daughter's role and the driving force of the protagonist's. However, because of shots of her washing her face, and crying on the stairs, we see her unstaged actions and therefore glimpse her motivation. With the addition of the courtroom, she'd be simply a witness, and an unreliable one at that. As an unreliable witness her character would lose any dignity regained by the soda/sandwich discussion, and be doomed to ridiculousness.

Most insignificant out of the lot would be Ricky's parents. Though they have small amounts of screen time, they are Lester and Carolyn's dysfunctional alter-egos. They would only be included in the trial as Ricky's parents. I doubt the fathers role as actual killer would be brought to light. This is infinitely depressing from every angle. The movie would suck. Totchka.

Last, but not least, the super cute gay couple that are Lester and Carolyn's hyper-functional alter-egos. They'd be even less of characters than they already are. They'd be passing thoughts, and trivialized baubles. As it is, they are clearly the hyper-functional end to suburban life. And that is nothing but awesome to me.

There you have it, American Beauty, not Crime Scene Investigation: Suburban Melodrama.

The Fall

The Fall

Tarsem (2006)

Mr. Ebert says you should watch this movie just because it exists. Mr. Wilde says that art exists only for this reason. As an addict of aesthetics, especially when they agree with my own sensibilities, this movie is far and away the most beautiful thing created in the last ten years. Actually, I'll get back to you on whether its the most beautiful thing from the last century. What comes close? Hmmm... a couple Picassos, Maybe some Miles Davis. Henry Fonda's face? Well, if you combined these things and added the cutest child ever to act and strung them into a complexly plotted and tightly executed conglomeration of sight and sound, you'd get Tarsem's movie here.

Plot: girl breaks arm picking oranges in orange county. Hospitalized. Man paralyzes himself jumping from a moving train to horseback as he is a stuntman in early Hollywood. Hospitalized. When bones are broken and people are confined, unlikely friendships form and stories are told. The movie follows two plots: the story that he tells her and the story of their interactions with various doctors, nurses, priests, other patients... As the two plots intertwine, we learn more about each of their lives. As with all friendships, the more we learn of each character, the more complex plot. That is, he decides to commit suicide and enlists her in smuggling him morphine pills.

I mean, you just don't get more original or interesting or complex than that!

But! Its awesome does not end there!

Filmed in over 20 countries with a minimal of computer imaging, The Fall questions the power of imagination in a time period where people decided that moving pictures were both the new life and ultimate death of imagination. While it makes no effort to assert philosophy, The Fall exudes simple, childlike morality which is actually refreshing in our super gray world of ambiguity. What is bad? What is wrong? Manipulating children into aiding suicide: its bad, its wrong, it may be the ultimate bad wrong you can exert with your power as an adult. What is selfish and useless? Suicide. Period.

Tarsem sees little point lollygagging about thought-heavy things once these black and white morals are dealt with. Because of its moral simplicity the story becomes doubly potent and heart breaking—you as viewer are sucked into the child's earnest perspective, pretty much regardless of how cynical you may think you are.

To make this all the more realistic, our lead actress, Cantica Untaru, is a young Romanian lass who actually barely acts. She was told “this is a movie set, this is your co-star, this is the story.” Beyond that, most is ad-libbed. Her costar, Lee Pace, who I hope to see in many more things, knew what he had to say and where the story had to go, but beyond that... They even went so far as to not let him out of character the whole time so they were constantly interacting, as his character is paralyzed from the waist down, this includes him being in a wheel chair for the whole of filming. It comes through most poignantly. Love it.

Lemme see... Special effects are minimalist. It's one of the main appeals of the film as a whole. That fade from butterfly to island? Done the old fashioned way-with splicing of gelatin, not with photo-shop. I don't even want to try and comprehend how long it took them to set up the one desert shot that segues between the marriage and the death sentence scenes. Colors are all more vivid and enhanced, but not annoyingly so. Wash out filters are only used subtly, most glaringly in the last scene where Orange County and Alexandra's experience of it are nostalgia-ized with a sepia hue, but again, its acceptably subtle. Black and white is used only because it has to be in the plot. Slow motion is used perfectly – not too much. Supporting cast, supports. Everything that seems out of place or odd is only as such because it fits the mind of an 8 year old in a foreign country imagining a story being told to her by an almost stranger.

When you're finished watching this the first time, you are nothing but stunned. Done the second, you start thinking about it, realize there's nothing to think about beyond the mastery of the film-making itself. Every detail your over analytical mind tries to pick apart and apply some obscure philosopher to just points back to the plot. Third watching, you start wondering how the hell long the story boarding must have taken.

Yea.

Damn.

Ultimate Romance -- Punches Titanic in the Face

The Notebook

Nick Cassavetes (2004)

I don't think I've yet posted my American Beauty review, but I can proudly admit that American Beauty as a close second favorite movie of mine, makes me cry almost every time I watch it. At the plastic bag. Yep. It's a new definition of – something. Je ne c'est crois. But everyone cries at triumphant/tragic love stories. Everyone cries when they see The Notebook. I don't wanna admit that! But it's true. It got me. The damn melodrama got me. It is really, really good.

Maybe it's because I watched Married Life so many times I fell in love with Rachel McAdams (young Allie). Maybe it's all the amazing costumes from anywhere between 1920 to 1965 that never cease to make me drool. Maybe I was in a moment of weakness and in the overwrought string orchestra got under my eyes.

It's not though. What sets this movie apart, and ultimately puts it at the top of its class, is the all encompassing melodrama of the plot. Seriously, what I said about Bill and Ted being the pinnacle of stoner comedy? This is the be all end all of romantic melodrama. James Cameron, eat your heart out, Titanic only comes kinda close. I'm yet to read the novel Nicholas Sparks wrote that this movie is based on, so I don't know if the book is this tight, but the plot has all the stops pulled. He does not stop with their meeting.(See Serendipity) Or their marriage (Sense and Sensibility), or even their first kid (The Young Victoria). It stops at the end. Sparks does not shy from his heroes, Noah and Allie, having rough patches and fights and other relationships. He doesn't preserve one in pristine good looks (see Titanic and Love in the Time of Cholera). Sparks and Carravetes declare that shit happens and that a love preached about in romantic comedies can not only prevail, but champions over things and even knows the perfect time to quit. I live in contempt of movies that preach “great love” and then never show it to me. As much as I will watch Pride and Prejudice over and over, I feel cheated. No such loss of pain and loss of gain here.

So, plot. Each set piece eats the heels of the one before in sparky timing (sorry, I had to. I dedicate this review to my friend Faith, and she would appreciate a good pun). If ever there seems peace between the characters we can always flash forward in time to see the couple old and her gone with dementia. The heart strings get a-tugged lickety split. What's even better is we aren't told this right away, in fact we don't know factually she is Allie until she “meets” her children, and don't hear Noah's name until the third or fourth false ending, but if you haven't got that figured out within 15 minutes you have never interacted with Story. Normally I'd call the director out on this sort of easy tension, but here, there are so many tiny scenes building the characters that even I, the eternal cynic, thought Allie might choose The Guy Who Plays Cyclops. The Guy Who Plays Cyclops is a totally likable guy. She even loves him. Narrator tells us so.

(I could go off on a tangent here about meta narratives – turns out our narrator is Allie herself writing the title notebook so Noah can read it to her over and over until she remembers, and Noah is the one telling the story and so we don't know if she really did or if she is just writing that to make everyone feel better about her difficulty in choice between the two handsome men, but! This is a plot movie, it does not call for analysis. And I'm afraid analyzing it would ruin this warm feeling it gave me...)

I could yell about the intrusive music, or the sap upon sap, but I can't. It's not just the writing. The acting is great. I mean, they aren't finding new ways to express pain or joy, not really, but McAdams and Ryan Gosling (Young Noah) manage the gamut of emotions demanded by a life (short of the tragic loss of a child or something. Noah comes close with his best friend getting shot in the war, but it's not that sort of drama). Now, Gena Rowlands and James Garner, they find new ways to express those emotions. And damn are they good.

Also good about these characters is their roundness. Noah is not John Cusack or Tom Hanks or any Strong Romantic Lead. He's a lumberjack who reads Walt Whitman – more like Will Hunting, but without succumbing to cliché. Allie is a little closer to ruin. She's a manic pixie dream girl to be sure, but somehow stays fresh as a real person. She grows up, chooses things grown ups choose. She's not a stunted Natalie Portman in Garden State or Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown.

Sparks gives each a dream, a fear, and each a parent or two for developmental purposes. Most surprising is the lack of Noah's mom. Normally a writer would jump on that, exploit it, it's not even mentioned. I am now going to read this book and if it's in the book I'm going to be disappointed, but here, its spare and touching in a way that mentioning would have just gummed into soap opera. This, and many other details are all that harnesses The Notebook from being just another tearjerker with new actors. It is a fully functional romance unafraid of where the love it preaches may wander – in sickness and in health. Finally.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Stephen Herek, 1989

Discarded as stoner fluff and left for dead by the non-cult-flick-fanatics, Bill and Ted are not ever to be underestimated. I can't really critique it. I suppose that is why critics don't like it. They can't pick it apart and piss on it with their Derrida and Schopenhauer. I've said it before and I'll say it again—whatever.

This film is perfectly put together. Direction: Like Casablanca, it does nothing but point at nothing but the characters and what they're doing. Invisible. This is a talent I think has gone unappreciated a damn long time. I say “Bravo” nameless director, whoever the hell did this totally awesome flick.

Acting: exactly what its after. Where this movie comes out ahead of things like Waynes World is that those really are clueless teenagers, and I'd be willing to bet that that is what they wore to their audition. Wayne and Garth, on the other hand, kinda contrived and overly caricatured.

Plot: a fantastic spin on Candid-like picaresque. Oh! And its got one of those moral thingys. Aren't people always praising those? “Be Excellent to Each Other.” If the world were run by Bill and Ted, like the plot supposes may well happen, it would be a pretty radical place – both literally and how they, themselves, use it. Speaking of which, if you're seriously going to argue that its too 80s kitsch, you need to reconcile with your own poor choices and grow a sense of humor.

Why, I ask you, can people not love things for being perfect incarnations of what they are aiming for?

MY RESPONSE:

I love this movie for so many reasons, many of which you have listed above. It's a history nerd's wet dream in terms of absurd treatment of massive historical figures. That combined with the fact that they take nothing serious in the movie(Socrates is dancing to rock music, for fuck's sake!) makes it so much better than like you said, Wayne's World or something like that. Perhaps Dude, Where's My Car matches it for foolishness, but only because it goes for what Bill and Ted did 15 years prior. I never realized what you meant by the camera work until I thought about it, and agree. I think it would be nice if more movies were done as such. Good camera work is good when it plays well. Most of the time, however, it's mostly people imitating Guy Ritchie or someone similar, who actually know what they are doing when moving a camera around in a scene. Some call it poor directing, I call it letting the actors do their fucking job. And for the two dudes in this movie, its being as stoned as possible.

I believe its one of the first stoner movies that didn't try too hard, and was given to rest after a 2^nd, less good iteration. Unlike Cheech and Chong, these two knew when to stop and let this film grow into the amazing hit it is. I first saw it in High School and still list it as a favorite when people ask about stoner comedies. Pure fun.

The People's Pasta

The People's Pasta

Erika Ostergaard and Kraft

This delightfully flavorful dish is both easy to make and bright as the sun as seen while on acid. Conceived by a homesick lady with little to no flavor in her daily food, the only difficult to find ingredient on the list is Kraft cheeze flava.

1 pack Kraft cheeze flava

1 plate left over macaroni (plain as intended)

1 Tbs sour cream

1 Tbs mustard

the left over half of sausage

Take plain mac and sausage from fridge.

Sprinkle with contents of flava pack

Microwave 1 minute

Remove and stir; the juices of the half of sausage should be enough to get the first bits of cheeze sticking

Microwave another minute

Remove, stir in sour cream and mustard

Enjoy!

Taste Tester 1: Excellent. The excess of cheeze on so few noodles really kicks up the flavor.

Taste Tester 2: I don't like the clumps of cheeze, but they blend in with the clumps of sausage.

Taste Tester 3: I would never eat anything that wasn't organic, but, because this sour cream is straight from the cow, I'll make an exception for the cheeze.

And there you have it folks! Having scarce supplies and a Proletariat attitude will get you everything.

Time Magazine Vol. 175, No. 18

Time Magazine, Vol. 175, No. 8 | 2010

Richard Stengel, Managing Editor

I'm a recent recruit to the crowd of serious magazine readers. Usual fare for me is Juxtapoz or Giant Robot, personal favorite High Fructose. Magazines that follow art culture of graffitti fiends and guys in Japan who make sculptures of giraffes out of Celophane and then position them around cities to look like they're eating telephone wires. I bust out the $7 an issue for these guys because you just can't capture that shit online. You have to be able to hold these images, and, lets face it, for $7, frame my favorite whole pages and call the layout “art” itself. Especially HF. I rub the paper they print on across my cheeks it's so plush. Long story short, the most serious magazine I read on a regular basis is Zoetrope, France Ford Coppola's venus fly trap of short story fodder for his movies/films/whatever.

So, here I am, coaching Moldovan boys how to play American football. Already completely out of character, I pick up a spare issue of Time to peruse. Lady Gaga and Bill Clinton are posed side by side on the front cover, how serious can it be?

Turns out, not very. I have inadvertently started my readership on the “Special Double Issue” with “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” Yes, that is the gamut. Lady Gaga → Bill Clinton. As, thank the gods, columnist Joel Stein points out “Putting together the most influential list is easy,” if you wanna rub shoulders with the right sponsors and advertisers and subscribers to your magazine. Radhika Jones, assistant managing editor, describes the list building as “really fun” especially when they pair the worshiped with the worshipful writer. More on that later.

So, the issue is split four ways: Leaders, Artists, Thinkers, Heroes, and each gets 25 guys/gals. This is impressive. I'd have expected them just to outright schmooz Halliburton heads or Presidents of politically friendly countries, but this way Time points out that not every one is equally influenced just by art or just by politics. It encompasses all facets of life. All facets of our—dare such a frivolous person as me use a German word—zeitgeist, as the title of this magazine boasts. Sweet.

Better yet, upon checking with Matt and Martin, my fellow coaches who are way more in tune with the world than me, a lot of these names are not widely known by most people. I was going to learn! I live in a village where electricity works 60% of the time and internet 40%. so have little contact with the real world. Lady Gaga and Bill Clinton I've heard of (my Moldovan students LOVE Gaga) but Admiral Mike Mullen, Annise Parker, Robert Pattinson, Didier Drogba, or Glenn Beck... Nada.

The downfall started with some of the choices I did recognize. Sandra Bullock? They justify this with how much money she made last year. Even though she made 4 movies in one year (hard work to be sure) and they were each big popcorn flicks and seen by apparently tons of people, is it Ms. Bullock doing the influencing? Do the movies cause their viewers to change their mindsets? I'll give you Gaga. The woman is not only makin' the big bucks and being listened to by everyone from my basically illiterate Moldovan 5^th graders to people I term “uber intellectuals” in big name universities. And she has, as leader of her own haute couture art/music factory Haus of Gaga, revolutionized the concept of a music video from regular slut-fest with glitter to fine performance art. Not to mention acceptance of homosexuality.

Turns out the choosing is quite like a popularity contest. People are chosen based on a poll taken on Time's website. Editor Jones also points out that they narrow this contest by looking for “who had a good year,” making the zeitgeist captured significantly more narrow. Not bad.

But, really, Ashton Kutcher?

And then it got worse. Guess who wrote Mr. Kutcher's profile. None other than Mr. Sean “Diddy” Combs, a man who is so effective at changing people's hearts and minds he's influenced his own name into 5 or 6 incarnations. Allow me to clear my throat: “we are yin and yang: I am in your face, but he is understated, cool, sauve.” A) this is not a comparison to you, sir. B) maybe “what he and Demi do with Twitter” is influential, but what do they do? I didn't even know he still did anything except shoot camera commercials where Demi is conspicuously not present while he flirts with a dozen scantily clad chicks who apparently get off on candy pink hand held digi-cams. Advertising cameras and tweeting with “positive messages” does not a mogul make. Sorry Did, Diddy, Sean, Sir Combs, Puffy.

But, let me explain. I didn't originally think Time was letting cool people write these. I was just expecting Time freelancers and columnists to pull names from an Editor-chosen hat. I opened at random and was reading happily through the Leaders section til I got to Sarah Palin's blurb. Let me preface: I have nothing against Sarah Palin. She's done damn well for a lady with 5 kids. Has a killer bod, friends in high places, a good shot, damn good taste in shoes—she's on my shortlist of people to invite for my ideal dinner party. Sarah Palin's blurb however, and here's where I have to admit I was being a sloppy reader, did not strike me as well written. It was nothing short of—earmuff the children—ass kissing on the part of whoever this chump masquerading as a writer was. What the hell?!

Exhibit A : “The independent, patriotic spirit, attitude and soul of our forefathers are alive and well in Sarah.”

Exhibit B : “Her rugged individualism, self-reliance and a herculean work ethic resonate now more than ever in a country spinning away from these basics that made the USA the last best place.”

Exhibit C : “We are driven to be assets to our families, communities and our beloved country connect with the principles that Sarah Palin embodies.”

uh... Righteously angered I checked the byline. Who the f*** is Ted Nugent and why is he allowed to write in a public place? I was informed by my fellow football coaches that he is a former rock guitarist who likes guns. I see the connection, but is anyone else in the world a little freaked out by people vehemently agreeing with each other?

I mean even General Petraeus manages to keep it in the foxhole when talking about General McChrystal.

Anyway, between this Nugent/Palin fiasco, and other has-been music kids (P-Diddy, Cyndi Lauper, Stevie Nicks) trying to reinvigorate their own influence over ears by sucking up to currently influential music kids I was pretty much done with the whole issue.

But all that fury dissipated when I encountered others. Fusion chefs (David Chang) and leaders of far off countries (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) and doctors (Namperumalsamy) and prisoners (Nay Phone Latt) and lawyers (Elizabeth Warren) are extremely influential in the world whether most Americans know who they are or not. And their writers, even if not pros were well structured and actually answered the question: “Why is this person influential in the world of 2010?”

I rescinded. The contrast allowed me not only to learn about both cool people and shite people, but also the difference, at point blank range, between good reporting and propaganda. Time also did a pretty bang up job on letting opposite ends of party crazies praise each other. If Second Amendment nut jobs like Nugent get to do Palin, and Palin gets to do Beck, then it's only fair for the hippy liberal fruits that Hil-Dawg Clinton does Nancy Pelosi and Bono does Bill (Clinton, of course!). They even go so far as to go for Posh Spice doing Marc Jacobs and Robert DeNiro, Ben Stiller. It's one big, happy nepotisim!

Thank Thor people like Yukio Hatoyama, Ron Bloom and Steve Jobs were included and people like Joe Stein and Salman Rushdie get to write some. I would definitely cry if they'd left off Steve Jobs. Oh, and Banksy. A name I finally recognized! At last, mainstream America recognizes graffiti as a mogul-esque something or other that, even when they don't know it's you, they are influenced by what you're spraying. Time gets it overall. Phew for my time ghost.