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.