Four of Them

-An anthology in the vein of Paris, je t'aime. Common denominator? Natalie Portman.

-This is...a cute mess. A bland look at love amongst New Yorkers, mostly in the East and West sides, predominantly white, entirely straight. They vary from standrad romantic comedies (Shunji Iwai's Orlando Bloom and Christina Ricci-starring segment) to slice-of-life 'New York Moments' (Yvan Attal smoking-on-the-sidewalk vignettes) to culture dramas (Mira Nair's Gujarati Irrfan Khan and Hassitic Natalie Portman segment) to baffling fantasy-realist tragic-dramas (Shekhar Kapur's adaption of Anthony Minghella's screenplay, starring Julie Christie, Shia Labeouf's vaguely Slavic accent, Shia Labeouf's pronounced limp, and Shia Labeouf). Some are notable, like a mediation on the aftermath of a one night stand between a younger man (Bradley Cooper) and an older woman (Drea de Matteo).

-There's the token old person tale, this one starring Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach. There's the actor-to-director one, Natalie Portman's quiet father-daughter short (which I've heard was awful, but really, it's not terribly offensive, offbeat and intriguing, not brilliant, but not terrible), there's a lot of twist endings (Brett Ratner), some transitions (starring Justin Bartha, Emilie Ohana, and Eva Amurri). But really...it's not good. It's not bad, but it's not very good. Pleasent, fluffy, sometimes weird, but washed in this coat of sameness.

-I'm fucking sick of that Radiohead song. Shut it up.

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Once they hit puberty, it can go three ways: Jodie Foster, Hilary Duff, or Lindsay Lohan.

I know, fairly random people, but it was the top of my head's fault, you see. It has no feet to think on.

They can go the route of Lindsay Lohan: a mess of drugs, arrests, and bad pop music. People are exasperated with the chick, but you know, if she doesn't die or get twenty to life for killing some dude, she'll emerge from this haze in demand for movies wanting notoriety, or at least notability, and reporters wanting...I dunno. The same thing.

They can go the route of Jodie Foster (and maybe future Emma Watson): Go to college, emerge smelling like roses and dignity, do some quality films, collect some Oscars, be awesome.

Or, finally, they can go the route of Hilary Duff: Too clean for scandal, too boring for celebrity, too flat for acting note. It is her career that depresses me the most. See, I was trying to decide whether I should watch a film from the library, or one of my high-piling collection of unwatched, neglected DVDs (thanks a fucking lot, Netflix. You ruin lives), and one of the library ones was War, Inc. At this point, I only remember two bits of the advertisement: Joan Cusack yelling through a video-thing, and Hilary Duff dropping a scorpian down her pants.

It wasn't scandalous. Some media tried to make it so, but the world greeted this faux-transgression with a hurricane-winds 'eh'. Because at that point, only fifty percent of her original audience remembered who she was, and everyone else never cared in the first place. She's been lounging about indie comedy hell for a couple years now, turning out mind numbing titles such as According to Greta and What Goes Up. In all of them, if Wikipedia is truthful (shut up), she plays a Lolita/self-destructive type who's trying to fuck someone for the sake of it. One of these roles is someone trying to break out. Multiple ones is someone who failed the first time, and overcompensating.

And then she did Community. My favorite show. Wherein she didn't have enough screentime to suck. But cred points anyway, because that was an excellent episode (trampolines!). At last count, she was doing a remake of Bonnie and Clyde with Kevin Zegers and Thora Birch, and wrote a young adult novel.

A young adult novel. For fuck's sake.

That is why she depresses me most of all. She's just...boring.

End.

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-Yeah, I'm giving reviews subtitles now. Helps me concentrate.

-Kleinman (Woody Allen) is a clerk waken from a 'deep sleep' in the middle of the night by a vigilante mob, looking for a serial killer dubbed 'The Strangler' (although he reportedly also slits throats), who bully/demand him to get dressed and meet them downstairs. He does, but nobody is around, and as the story progresses, nobody tells him what his part in 'the plan' is, so he's left to wander around.

-Anyway. Mia Farrow is a sword swallower named Irmy, whose clown boyfriend (John Malkovich) has just cheated on her with the circus tightrope artist (Madonna, not sucking for once). She's left to wander around the city Kleinman lives, taken in by a brothel (where local student John Cusack gives hr 700 bucks to sleep with him), then brought to the police station during a raid, where she meets Kleinman.

-It's all one big parody of German Expressionist films (particularly Fritz Lang, and M), and Franz Kafka. As my only experience with Allen films thus far have been Celebrity and Husbands and Wives, this is a nice breather from bourgeois couples yelling neurotically at each other.

-And, of course, a lovely cast. Lily Tomlin, Jodie Foster, and Kathy Bates play prostitutes at the brothel Irmy stays at, Julie Kavner is Kleinman's jilted ex-fiancee, Eszter Balint shows up briefly as a starving young mother, Donald Pleasence is a really intense doctor, and Kurtwood Smith is one of the mob. And John C. Reilly is in the background for five seconds as a policeman. Which is weird.

-So, yes. Tis funny and witty and clever and not annoying at all.

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-Maggie Cheung plays herself, an actress flown in from Hong Kong to play the lead in a remake of Les Vampires, whom the director (Jean-Pierre Léaud) saw in an action film and was hypnotised by her (some would say 'turned on'). Not speaking a word of French (in-movie), most of the movie takes place in English, a bridge language between the French crew and herself (although she speaks it much better than everyone else).

-An oddly engrossing film on the mechanics of making a film, a criticism of French cinema in general (it's all self-service, no regard for audience, etc), although the lead character adamently defends it, and her director's odd choices, from hostile crew and reporters.

Spoilers ahead

-The end, in which director (Rene, if I haven't said his name yet) has been replaced with a friend director, after a nervous breakdown, and this guy has replaced Maggie with another actress on the film (though it's implied she'll also be fired), as he says he needs someone to represent Paris underground, not "Fu Manchu". The cast and crew sit down to watch what Rene had edited before leaving, and I think it's a lovely statement on the overall misjudgement he was under when he decided to make the film: starting as a silent, shot-for-shot remake of one part of the serial, before morphing into a chaotic mess of scratched film (with his fingernail, it looks like, painting outlines, circles, backgrounds, etc), going in and out of focus with occasional screeching. He was motivated by his enchantment with Cheung, and as production went on, he realized just how unsuited that ideal was for an actual film. So he ended up with what he really wanted: a weird, experimental short film with Maggie as the centerpiece.

-Or whatever. It's quite a good movie. Almost two-thirds in English, for those averse to subtitles.

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-Not the 2009 Park Chan-Wook film. Although it is about vampires. Terrible sorry.

-A woman (Chantal Contouri) is kidnapped by a blood-drinking cult called 'The Brotherhood' (aren't they all?), due to her ancient lineage.

-David Hemmings!

-I won't lie, I watched the first half of this last week in a sudden urge for cheesy 70s horror, and the rest this morning. Any enthrallment I had previously had all but disappeared. I am significantly less interested. You get the idea, yeah?

-Chantal Contouri bugs me.

-This film, dearies, stopped making sense at the thirty minute mark. Not only is Contouri's Kate the biggest idiot the world has ever known (as all horror movie female characters are in their respective universes), the plot becomes a stew of half-hearted escape attempts, drug-induced hallucinations, gratuitous neck-biting, tubes of blood running from neck veins to giant tubs of food coloring that, nonetheless, made me cringe, as all neck related things do. And there's a bit of nudity, if you dig the whole blood-out-of-the-shower-nozzle deal.

-Right. Ozploitation, bitches.

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Amber at nostomanic is giving away button-swag, and I, for one, will partake.

Now enjoy this:

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-Rainer Werner Fassbinder's first international film, a disabled 12-year-old girl conspires against her parents (Margit Carstensen and Alexander Allerson) and their respective lovers (Anna Karina and Ulli Lommel).

-One day, I'll go into detail about exactly why I both hate this movie (for its cold intellectualism) and love it (because it's kind of badass). But I'm tired, and I've got homework, and it's not like anyone will be reading this anyway.

-All I can say: an army of grotesque and terrified dolls will haunt my sleep.

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Sure, it's noticeably and annoyingly not mine, but fuck that noise, I got shit to do.

And now I can go back to giving you (yeah, you. With the face.) you're semi-daily half-thoughts on movies you've never heard of! And trying to catch up on that NaNoWriMo thing. And doing homework, if I've got the time.

And, yo! When I got this, I found this collection of 50 horror movies for 15 bucks! 15, I tell you! Metropolis (who am I to argue that this isn't a fucking horror movie?) and Nosferatu and Night of the Living Dead! And stuff!

So...how bout The Walking Dead? Halloween? November? That episode of Community I missed because I had to pick up this damned thing? Hilariously inappropriate fedoras?

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-This version of Death Note, in case you didn't hear, was bloody fucking dubbed. But I watched it. Just for you. And to shut my stupid-ass sister up.


-And my, was this dubbing horrible. I mean, at first it was decent, but then people started, like, talking, and it all went downhill. DEATH TO DUBBING!

-Also, the effects sucked royal. Ryuk, our resident Shinigami and noted Awesomesauce (in the fucking manga, at least), is designed like the special effects guys misread the isntructions, thought they were designing him for the tie-in video game, realized their mistake, and fearing the wrath of studio executives, fled to Guatamala, leaving the designs to their fate.

This is him. This is what he looks like.

-I can't even tell if L is awesome anymore! Kenichi Matsuyama plays him, but the voice actor ruins any semblence of Matsuyama's potential goodness. I can't do it.

-ALso, they add a fucking girlfriend. Like, I get why they did it, and it makes sense by the end, but c'mon.

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-So, because my computer needs to get its shit together, I'm stuck with my Parent's computer, and as the risks for walk-ins is incredibly high, I'm forced to PG-only movies on Netflix. Honestly.

-Which leaves me: Best voice cast ever. That I can think of. At the top of my head.

-Bill Hader (Most undervalued castmember of admittedly abysmal SNL) plays Flint Lockwood, an inventor (who has a Nikola Tesla poster on his wall!) on an island obscured on maps under the 'A' in 'Atlantic', where everyone is forced to eat sardines after the sardine factory closes down. The horror.

-Anyways, he builds a machine that can turn water into food (hilariously, astoundingly impossible, and even if it were, how would that help, say, Ethiopia? One could argue their lack of food directly stems from their lack of water), but shit goes wrong, it ends up in the clouds, it starts raining cheeseburgers, Anna Faris is a wannabe weathergirl, James Caan is the dad with some bitchin eyebrows, Mr. T is a cop who loves his son, Bobb'e J Thompsan is his son, Bruce Cambell is the glutonous/nefarious mayor, Neil Patrick Harris is a monkey, etc.

-Why, this shit made my day. I was expecting, y'know, silly invisible-but-for-the-speed-of-nine-year-olds gags and whatnot, but this waa actually pretty awesome. I kind of wanted to slap the second half in the face, though.

So, here's how shit goes: Tritram Spencer at Waiting for John was so good as to blitz me with a cameo in one of his (weirder) posts:

(click to embiggen)

I did some motherfucking Trick r Treating, where I wore my normal clothes and asemi-nice coat I got two years ago and called myself a serial-killing hobo, my sister got lots of birthday presents, I got none (if I can't even count on her friends to get me something, who can I count on? Who!?)

And then life took a break so I could fall into a candy coma. Good day, all.

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-Following the life of Dorothy Parker during her time with the Alonquin Circle, a group of writers, actors, and such who met everyday at the same table at the Alonquin Hotel.

-Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is kind of amazing as Parker, getting the voice down and all that.

-Matthew Broderick plays Charles MacArthur, who is a douchebag in this. Gwyneth Paltrow keep showing up as a fictional actress for some reason. Maybe as an excuse to go topless. I don't know. Also, Stephen Baldwin.

-Why is it these biopic movies of awesome people always attract the biggest notable casts? Chaplin, etc. Though it might be because this particular film was directed by Robert Altman.

-I'm afraid I'll be without computer for a few days, starting when this battery goes out, so sorry if this is rather short. And shitty.

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-Junkies Dexter (Scott Speedman) and Royce (Wes Bentley) find themselves chased by gangsters and satanists when their friend Mathilda (Taryn Manning) supposedly overdoses.

-This was cute. Sometimes funny, sometimes amusing, sometimes stupid, but it was always consistantly cute.

-Bentley is a funny, if not entirely original, stupid one of the pair. Speedman plays straightman/serious guy fine. Manning spends most of her time dead or unconscious. There's the funniest pack of devil-worshippers committed to cinema. Some medieval midgets. The director of Empire Records.

-Still. I refuse to believe people would be fighting so hard to get Canadian money. It looks like the stuff seven year olds make for their parent's birthday.

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-The affair between Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis).

-What a silly movie. Neither good nor bad, just silly. I'm not just talking about the curiously anochronistic vocal stylings of the cast, in which you've got uber-American-sounding DiCaprio and English Thewlis against the French actors and actors about them, all speaking English to the point that I was somewhat taken aback when someone'll mention that, hey, we're in Brussels. It's Thewlis's weird performance of lip-smacking and whining, DiCaprio's somewhat good, maybe his most interesting, acting that, nonetheless, cannot make the more Rimbaudian language sound less ridiculous out of his mouth, like a high school junior forced to recite from the textbook in front of the class.

-Also, this is the movie where DiCaprio still looked, like, twelve. So, in the end, seeing his get down with an Eithiopian (back when Ethiopia was called something else) woman, in this little mustache to signify age, I laughed. The. Entire. Time.

-Some excellent score, but overall, it's just...silly.

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Because she lives somewhere in the West Coast now (the land where they probably sell scripts next to the candy bars at checkout lanes), and for my birthday, which is precariously close, she sent me the shooting script for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! WOOT!
Not this copy, of course. And I she posted a nice card on it so I'd be able to differentiate between all the things she got my sister. But HAZZAH!

In other news, if you can read this without ad-bombardment, I salute ye. Because I can't. Because for some now-unknown reason, my page keeps redirecting to various ad sites after five seconds. This is bad.

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-This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Like, ever.

-I mean, I go in expecting some dour philosophical waxing and lots of screen-chess I'd offer some highly valuable advice to ("Yup, that's a Bishop. It sure does go that way."). But, dude. It was funny and sad and sweet and horrific and dude.

-You can tell how serious this is when I forgo psuedo-intellectual faux-criticism for pure, fangirlish squeals. This shit is hardcore.

-I mean...for good reason, the opening scene and the penultimate shot are the most iconic, but there's so much more...Death (Bengt Ekerot) is a dry, amiable dude who slacks off on the job to play some chess with a medieval monk (Max von Sydow, before he started playing all those Nazis) who's Time has Come. As the game goes on for awhile, the monk and his squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) go about the countryside, avoiding the Black Death and picking up various passengers, including a family of actors/jugglers (Nils Poppe and Bibi Andersson), and their young son.

-I'd watch this again. It's just so layered, this time around, I watched on pure superficial level (story, acting). But next time, I gotta look into the themes. And junk.

-I like this Ingmar Bergman guy. Except every time I read his name, I think of Ingrid Bergman. Hm.

-So, anyway. Go watch this motherfucker.

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Today, me and me sister were having one of our ego-boosting "You're funnier", "No, you're funnier" bullshitting meats when I, being the brilliant rascal I am, outlined the two different kinds of funny, to maybe move the whole thing along. It goes as such: charismatic funny, the kind of sociable humor that the whole room will laugh at, and the purest form of isolation comedy, the stuff so funny only two people in the room will get it, and only one of them will gather enough courage to laugh. Discomfort humor, you'd call it.

Judd Apatow, for all intents and purposes, is of the charismatic variety. While, in retrospect, his humor isn't any less offensive than your average Adult Swim original programming, it's mainlined, the so-stupid/sweet-it's-funny kind of manchild heroism even the stoniest cynic and hardened critic can giggle at.

Todd Solondz, meanwhile, runs on fuel made of crew cuts and dead rainbows. His movies are funny, but only if you want to be a horrible person for the five seconds it takes for you to chuckle. You fidget at his misery porn and nod in appreciation of the witty satire within it. If The 40-Year-Old Virgin is cinematic potato chips, Welcome to the Dollhouse is deep-fried dolphin.

This isn't, of course, limited to the godfrosaken realms of film. The AV Club had an article awhile ago, Discomfort Comedy We Can and Can't Take, that has a plethora of television nasties you love, but can't sit through. So, yes, I'm bogarting their idea, but I'm citing it, so shut up.

What comedies do you find fidget-uncomfortable?

Oh, by the way, Sugary Cynic, in a lapst of judgement, allowed me the opportunity to win her banner quote contest (which I totally fucking did), for which the prize is a lovely Paint drawing from the very same Sugary Cynic, so I chose Dr. Frank N Furter, Mr. Pink, and Willie Garson doing battle with Big Man Japan. The result:

Let's all give her a hand. For doing her best in a bad situation.

Gnight.

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-Believe it or not, my dears, there is more to this movie than the butter scene. There's the finger scene too.

-Of course I kid. This is actually pretty good. Brando is brilliant, but in that accessible way I find disquieting on him. And he speaks French in what I assume is an American accent (it all sounds just French). Maria Schneider, too, brings her own kind of charisma to a role that is often dismissed as naked prancing.

-Anyway. Not much to add, otherwise. I quite like the last ten minutes.

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Spammers may be bad, but CAPTCHAS suck hard. Don't use CAPTCHAS.

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Bonjour, mes bons copains. Pour au demi-âne fait les études pour mon quiz français prochain, je vous donne un poste court dans la LANGUE FRANÇAISE WOOT! Parce que j'ai cru qu'Emma Stone-hosted le sketch satirique de SNL l'autre nuit baisait assez adorable.

C'est par un traducteur, parce que mon manuel n'a pas presque assez de mots de juron. Comme, sérieusement.

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But as luck would have it, my DVD copy is dubbed. Fucking dubbed. And I can only switch the audio to French or Spanish.

I don't care about your international appeal, studios. Do not fucking dub your fucking movies.

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-A failing encylopedia salesman (Javier Cámara), and his faithful wife (Candela Peña), get roped into making porn films (under the pretence of international audiovisual sex education encylopedias that are a huge hit in Scandanavian countries).

-Funny. Darkly so, sadly so, but still funny. For Ingmar Bergman fans, anyway. And, hey, Mads Mikkelsen!

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-Fritz Lang's first talkie, Peter Lorre's first big non-comedic role, and the first film about a serial killer. What I'm saying is, it gets a lot of shit done.

-Fritz Lang has the worst luck, though. I mean, the Nazis loved his movies, and he hated their guts. Poor bastard.

-Anyway. This might be the first classic foreign film I've ever watched entirely without getting up to harass someone. It's that enthralling.

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-The homoerotic tensions between Japanese and Korean soldiers and the various prisoners of a WWII POW camp.

-Specifically: The young camp commander, Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also did the lovely score), Jack Celliers (David Bowie), a rebellious British prisoner with the best blonde dye job this side of World War Two, Lt. Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti), the only one of the prisoners who can speak both English and Japanese, and therefore acts as liason between the two, and Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano, in his first major acting role), seemingly ruthless but develops a begrudging friendship with Lawrence.

-There's an extended flashback that features David Bowie, 1980s David Bowie (already well into his 30s-40s) in schoolboy garb, hanging out amongst his supposed schoolboy peers, and generally pretending to be, like, 16. Therefore, I refuse to take that scene seriously.

-Nagisa Ôshima, from the two movies I've seen of his (this and Taboo, the latter of which expands on the ideas of the former), he's really fascinated by gay Samurai.

-Jack Thompsan, with his North Africa-stationed British uniform and glorious mustache, reminds me of the dad from The Wild Thornberries. Remember that show? I fucking do.

-G'night, ladies and gentlemen.

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-Nanako Matsushima stars as Asakawa Reiko, a reporter who happens upon the tape (you know the one) while investigating the urban legend surrounding it. Now, she, with the (somewhat forced help) of her ex-husband (Hiroyuki Sanada), have one week to get to the cause and cure of the damned thing.

-Okay, hear me out: what if you just watched the tape every week after the first time? Wouldn't that just keep giving you one week to live, every week? Or what if you fell into a coma within the one week? How could Creepy Little Girl scare you to death? Whatever.

-I will make an argument I have never made before and will never make again...the remake was (technically) better. The acting, the cinematography, the effects, the story, the pacing, the sound, everything.

-But what this had that The Ring didn't was good ol' Japanese atmosphere. The quiet, subtle feeling of dread not present in most American films, the kind of tension that makes you jump at the slightest tweak in soundtrack.

-Anyway.

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-How rad is that poster?

-In George Lucas' first feature film (y'know, before he got all George Lucas 21st Century-y), Robert Duvall stars as a man living in (what else?) a dystopian, underground society where people roam about with shaved heads and white clothes, taking pills to both suppress sexual desires and allow them to work their long shifts at dangerous machinery. Of course, he stops taking his pills, and begins to fall in love with his female roommate (Maggie McOmie), who has also stopped taking her's. If you're thinking this is some freaky-ass love child of 1984 and Brave New World, then I'd say you're fairly astute with vague descriptions, and you might have a future in this business. This parentage, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing.

-While not exactly a defining film in the dystopian genre, or even particularly notable, there are some notably shining moments here (as all films have, even the ones starring fat suits). The messy, chaotically edited, gloriously schizophrenic opening scene, wherein we're introduced to all the major characters, the society, and the mechanics of the bureacracy in maybe one minute. All scenes in the so-called 'Limbo', where law breakers are sent for the rest of their days. The wonderfully weird facial twitches of McOmie. Don Pedro Colley.

-Almost a comedy, guys. Everything, especially death, is left ambiguous.

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And has decided to bar me from all non-copy-and-pasting, non-Netflix related activities. If I missed you, well, then, what can y'do?

This also includes embedded links, because, y'know, pop-ups.

http://ifihadablogpart2.blogspot.com/2010/10/play-party-and-wake.html

(I like the cut of this dude's jib, I do)

http://finalgirl.blogspot.com/2010/10/shocktober-lena-headeys-top-20.html

(LENA HEADEY!)

http://nostomanic.blogspot.com/2010/10/amber-update.html

(because this chick's funny)

http://www.annehelenpetersen.com/?p=1755

And, of course, all of you are special. I just don't know it.

Have a nice day.

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