Winter’s Bone

So I saw this movie today.

Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) sets out to track down her father, who put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she fails, Ree and her family will be turned out into the Ozark woods. Challenging her outlaw kin’s code of silence and risking her life, Ree hacks through the lies, evasions and threats offered up by her relatives and begins to piece together the truth.

Based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell.

I don’t know that I enjoyed it, quite. It was really interesting to watch. The story was mundane and scary at the same time. It felt more like watching a documentary than a movie. Not in a voice-over narrative way, just in that the things in the frame were so… normal. They were so everyday. There was no Hollywood there, nothing was pretty or freshened up or clean. But at the same time the dirt and the mess and the cheap, falling-down ugliness of it all was not overdone. It just… was. My thought while watching it was that 100 years from now, if someone wants an accurate picture of this slice of Ozark life, then this will be the film to view. Or an accurate picture of what the heck people in America actually look like. What they wear and what their hair looks like and what they do. People with no money for highlights who can’t afford to buy whatever they want, even at Wal-mart. This was a movie about those people. And I think it more accurately reflects modern American life than a million rom-coms sets in Manhattan where people with no jobs live in giant apartments. This is a place where the front yards are littered with dogs on chains, and empty bottles of Mountain Dew. Where no one’s clothes match, and they’re just there to keep the elements out. Where people are fat and wrinkled and scarred and grimy.

I recommend it highly, not because it will make you feel either sad or happy, or that it will transport you to another place, like wonderful movies do. Just because it was such an odd feeling to see something so real up on the screen.

Housekeeping note: an old lady sat NEXT TO ME at the theater. NEXT TO ME. NO seat in between as buffer. How many laws does this violate? Naturally I got up and moved. What the hell, old lady?

Movie Review – “Grimm”

Since subscribing to Netflix I’ve mostly been watching things streamingly. Getting a DVD in the mail and sending it back seems very 2007, somehow. I wasn’t sure if I would ever use the mail-order DVD service at all. But they have a decent selection of foreign-language films, and as I was watching one of them I realized there was an option to turn the subtitles completely off – and hey that’s cool. If I can do that, I can practice my Dutch. (Last time I tried to watch Dutch movies it was with the movie “Karakter” on VHS, and you can’t turn the subtitles off. It’s so distracting, at one point I taped paper over the bottom of the screen.) For years I haven’t been able to listen to anyone speak Dutch except on internet radio, and I don’t want to lose all my spoken language skills, so I started ordering Dutch language movies. But here’s the thing. Dutch movies come in only three varieties, as far as I can tell.

1. Movies about The War in Dutch or in English (if you have to ask which war, you’ve never seen a Dutch movie. ) – these movies can be good or bad, it’s a mixed bag.
2. Movies made by Dutch people,  not about the war, filmed in the English language – these movies can be good or bad, it’s a mixed bag.
3. Movies not about the war, filmed in the Dutch language – these movies care almost invariably bad. The movies that cannot get funding to be made in English are apparently never supposed to be made at all. And I am not saying that I LIKE it that way, I am only saying what I have observed to date.

So anyway, I know by renting a movie in Dutch I am taking a chance that it’s going to blow. However, it’s nice to practice my skills, as I said, and I can always just have in on in the background while I do other things. Even with that low standard, “Grimm” is going to earn a menstrual cup rating from me. Here’s the official synopsis:

Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam defies tradition in this absurdist, darkly comic retelling of the classic “Hansel and Gretel” fairy tale. Brother and sister Jacob and Marie (Jacob Derwig and Halina Reijn) are abandoned by their family in the forest, with no other guidance than a note advising them to travel to Spain to visit their wealthy uncle. Embarking on a surreal odyssey, the siblings find their fortunes taking a number of unusual turns.

Now, you can’t tell it from that very small cover art there, but those are two grown-ass people on the cover. A Hansel and Gretel rehash with grown-ass people at the center makes no sense. Sure, they’re left alone in the woods by their father. But they’re not retarded – why don’t they go do something for themselves? Sitting on the ground and crying as an adult is very tempting, I agree, but it’s not really a workable life plan. So they’re promptly taken hostage by a farmer and his wife, and the man is sexually molested at gunpoint, while the woman is locked in a shed or something.  (Of course, it’s only molestation b/c the farmer’s wife is meant to be perceived as unattractive. If she’d been “hot” it would have been a fantasy seduction scene. Don’t even get me started there, though.) They escape by knocking the fat farmer and his fat wife through a cement wall (Ha ha! Nothing funnier than fat people falling down! ) and then promptly turn to a life of crime/prostitution.  They kill their first john, find a gun, and take off for Spain on a motor scooter. Once there they do more crimes, then get taken in by some Spanish guy who marries the girl while the guy mopes around being all incestuously love-lorn. Then we get all urban legend, as the guy is knocked out and his kidney snatched for the dying sister of his sister’s new husband. Confused yet? They make their magical escape, then hide out in a Spanish ghost town, disinfecting his wound with out-of-date eggnog, and then riding a donkey and practicing archery until the evil bad husband comes to “claim his wife” and they kill and bury him in the middle of the ghost town. After which point the girl says “I want to go home.” and they head off for home on the motor scooter. Begging the question, if they had a home to go to – why did they travel to Spain in the first place?

Ugh. It was a hot nonsensical mess. It MIGHT have been more interesting if the actors were children. You can see children making these choices, and forgiving them, or at least having empathy. But with grown people playing the parts you can’t feel anything but disgust for their idiocy.  Anyway, it blew.

But it was still nice to listen to Dutch being spoken. Let’s hope the next movie will be a smidge better though.

If I Strep for You, Will You Strep for Me?

OK so day two of being home with what I can only assume is strep throat. (Thanks again Dave, you fuck.)

I can only assume it’s strep because I refuse to call my doctor about it. For two reasons, at least.

One of which reasons is fuck doctors, they’re always wrong and assholish, and my primary care physician is way out in West County. Guess what I don’t feel like doing with the sorest throat this side of the Grand Canyon, and swollen glands? If you said “Drive some random, fucked-up, roundabout non-40 way to west fucking county to see some bitch doctor who’s probably going to misdiagnose you with an anal fissure?” you win. (I would also have accepted “Spend 45 minutes on the phone with your doctor’s cunty staff where they question all your symptoms and tell you things that you know for a fact are medically untrue?”)

The second reason is that the treatment for strep (characterized by a sudden severe sore throat, usually presenting with a fever and w/o regular symptoms of a head cold) is antibiotics. But whether you take them or not, strep subsides on its own within 3-7 days. I don’t want to take any antibiotics, and knowing that I can cut out the whole “dealing with cunty staff/driving to WC” part of this equation means: fuck a bunch of calling my doctor. I don’t want to take any antibiotics anyway, so I am skipping the whole modern medicine scene.

That said, I am just waiting around to get better, and bored out of my mind. I watched two movies yesterday that had been on my Tivo since we had free HBO back in January. One of them was Juno, and one of them was Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. Both of them were fair to middlin’   movies, and both featured Jason Bateman. Way to be ubiquitous, Jason Bateman.

Juno was OK I guess. For some reason, since everyone made such a big deal about her use of language in the movie I expected to notice it more, but I didn’t notice it at all. Which means that either everyone else made too big a fuss over it, or I talk like that in my head. It had some very nice moments in it, and kept my interest, which I think is the intent of movies. I thought that the mis-characterization of abortion protesters as these innocent, naive kids from your high school who say things like “bornded” and only kind of mildy rebuke women walking into clinics was practically crimianlly negligent, but then again I have actually worked at an abortion clinic and walked through those protesters, so it’s not surprising that would tweak my buttons.

Perv Alert

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium was obviously not geared at my demographic, and as such it had several moments which either lost my interest or made me feel uncomfortable. When that mother discovered Jason Bateman (a total stranger) together with her son in her son’s bedroom, playing dress up with the door closed… um, well, you could just tell that this was a kids’s movie by the fact that she didn’t mace him and call the cops.

Then in one of the last scenes of the the film, Natalie Portman gives up her dream of running the emporium, and takes a job playing piano in a hotel lobby or somewhere. Since she spent most of the film looking like this:

I was excited to see her looking very sleek and sexy all in black with slicked-back hair and red lipstick.

Until I realized that being styled this way was supposed to represent all the bad, bad trappings of being adult and un-magical, and that in keeping with the spirit of the film I should much prefer Natalie look like this:

(Which shows how in tune with her childlike side she is! It’s a new look I am going to call hyper-unsexualized!)  Than like this: (not a scene from the movie)

Naturally I felt somewhat conflicted.

I’ve also been reading a little bit, although I have to admit that I fall asleep pretty quickly when I lay down to read. I’ve been sticking my head in Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, which I actually haven’t read yet, even though I bought it the week it was released. I’ve been having a problem reading non-fiction for the last year or so, especially when I agree at the outset with whatever the author is discussing. I mean, I am already an atheist, so do I need to read his whole book on how I should be an atheist? I accept the premise, I am not sure what else I am supposed to glean here.

Same thing with a lot of the political books that have come out lately. I get it, right wing fundies are assholes, Bush was a bad man, Cheney is a corrupt motherfuck. Do I have to read your whole deal to get the details, or can I just stipulate that I agree?

I know, I know, I need facts and to be better informed. And I will totally buy the stuff to support the authors. It’s just hard to make myself read a whole book on a topic I totally agree with when I started. Like a lecture on night being darker than day, I am not sure why I have to sit through it, exactly. Is this GenX Interwebs addict ADD rearing its misshappen head at me?

Anyway, rounding out day 2 of being at home and I am bored, bored bored. Going to work tomorrow no matter what, and going out drinking tomorrow night too. Alcohol kills bacteria, and I hear tequila is particularly good at it.

Persuasion

On the hopeless romantic front, I started re-reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion last week, which put me in the mood to watch the 1995 Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root film version this weekend. And then I rewatched the last 20 minutes again today.

I think that as I age mature I am almost coming to have more of an affinity for this novel than I do for Pride and Prejudice. I know, say it ain’t so. But I think it might be so.

There’s something about the characters of Anne and Frederick that seems more familiar to me. Maybe because now I understand more about loves that are long lost, and the way that your family and friends play their own parts in relationships. It really is impossible to love in a vacuum, and the way that the people you love respond to each other, and the way that influences the decisions you make, affects every relationship.

Or maybe it’s just because I want to go back to Bath. Maybe I don’t even know why – I am just in a Persuasion kind of mood. Maybe it’s just because Ciaran Hinds plays the part of Frederick so very hotly, and Amanda Root’s wide-eyed vulnerability as Anne touches my heart.

The way the film is made is so understated, just as the novel was written. So much is left unsaid, but is still perfectly shown through the character’s expressions and subtle movements. The scene at the end where Anne’s hand is engulfed in Frederick’s gigantic paw is so laden with meaning that your TV screen practically melts.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the film, you should.

“All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when all hope is gone.” - Anne Elliot, in Persusion

The New World

Why are you saving me? I look like I smell bad.

Watched the movie “The New World” over the past two days. I totally see why it tanked in theaters.

It has all the ingredients of a win— Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, history, drama, sexual tension, beautiful scenery, starvation. You know, the basics. But even with these building blocks of excellence, this somehow manages to be one of the most disjointed movies that I’ve ever seen. I kept watching, hoping for it to speed up, clear up, something. But no. Where you wanted some exposition, all you got was another low-angle shot of wind through trees. Also – why was everyone such a mumbler? We’ve already got Colin Farrel fighting his accent, and Christian Bale fighting his teeth – do we need them to mumble through, too?

There was pretty much no character development, leaving you to apply your own explanations for the actions of the main players, who all seemed to be dramatic and torn for no fathomable reason. Things happened for no reason, in no order, with no explanation, leading to lots of questions on my part.

Was that one guy her brother, or what? What the frack was happening in that hut? Was that a dream or a hallucination? Why did they save him, then decide to kill him? Where did his armor go between when they shoved him in the hut and when he appeared before the chief?

I don't want you to notice my incongruously clean white teeth, so I will cover them with my hand, so coyly.

Why did these two fall in love? Were they bumping uglies out in the woods? Why so ambiguous, director-man? Why didn’t he just marry her then? No one seemed to care. I didn’t see her helping the colonists, when did that happen? Why didn’t he take her back to England when he went, then? Why the heck would he have her told he was dead? Why did she think she was married to him? They didn’t show them getting married – was that what was happening out in the woods when we cut away to wind in the trees for the 1674th time?

This movie needed some serious subtitles, and it also needed whatever that’s called when they flash some pertinent information up on the screen in between scenes. (While we were showing you yet another 45-second shot of a wind-blown field of grain, most of the colonists died, Pocahontas gave Smith a stellar BJ and all the fish died of fish cholera. That’s why we have all these starving, unintelligible orphans milling about. Now back to the action.)

The actress who played Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) was as effective as she could be, considering the weird, rambling dialog she had to work with. Her primary function seemed to be looking perpetually hard done by, and her lips made her look as if someone had just smacked her in the mouth a minute ago, off-camera, so I guess that helped her to achieve the director’s goal – whatever that was.

Anyway, this movie aggravated me enough that I wanted to write it down, because this could have been an interesting story, but literally lost the plot and ended up sucking as a history, a love story,  and even a cautionary tale.

Who Cares What the Devil Wears?

Last night, on the recommendation of a colleague, I watched The Devil Wears Prada.

Meh. I think he’d told me the 2 funny parts from it. The dealing with insane demands from reality-detached bosses hit too close to home to be funny, and I don’t care about fashion enough to be interested by Anne Hathaway’s Chanel boots. (Plus the rest of the characters’ chiding of her for her “fatness” at a size 6, and her triumphant “FOUR!” at the end of the film were honestly revolting.)

What I really thought about the film was that it was sappy and sentimental. And even though Streep’s character was an irrational, sadistic bitch, I didn’t see anything too shocking in anything she did. I mean, at least she was a competent sadistic bitch. The plot pinnacle where she screws over her long-time employee’s future dreams for happiness to ensure her own – was I supposed to be shocked? That’s what anyone would do. She should give up her own job to make someone else’s career better? That’s nonsense.

Anne Hathaway’s wide-eyed “I can’t [go to Paris instead of] Emily, it would break her heart!” was pathetic. There’s heartbreaking in business? Well, sure I guess there is. But that’s not what we base our decisions on. We base our decisions on what makes sense for us and our careers. Breaking the heart of someone who isn’t able to get the job done is not a factor in business. And walking away from her responsibilities in Paris, after her “epiphany” about how she didn’t want to be like Streep, that was just irresponsible, selfish and immature. She was there, being paid to do a job. She can wait to quit until she gets back. You can’t leave your employer in the lurch like that. And the idea that Streep’s character would respect her for that is pure nonsense. You do not walk out on a job you’ve agreed to do, right in the middle.

Anyway, it left me wondering if I am more of a cold-hearted bitch than most. And not caring overly if I am. I treat the people around me at work decently, but don’t let their feelings take precedence over making the right business decision.

The best thing about the movie IMHO was that guy she screwed in Paris. I do not normally (well, ever) go for blondes, but he was delectable. Plus had his shit together, plus wasn’t an overly-sentimental piece of foppish hurt-feelings like her soulful wounded-puppy boyfriend. And her supposedly cutting “I’m not your baby!” as she walked away from him was retarded. No, you’re not. You’re last night’s piece of ass, actually.

Whatever. Told you I was dead inside.

I love to live behind the times

So, in keeping with my love of catching a trend so far after it was popular that it’s almost counter-culture again, I finally saw the movie Boondock Saints a few weeks ago. It was one of those movies my Tivo decided I would like, and I was bored and stuck on the couch so I decided to check it out. It was on FX or Spike though, so immediately I could tell that there was going to be an issue with most of the actual dialog being bleeped. The intro scenes are pretty captivating though, and I couldn’t turn it off despite the long protracted silences where most of the characters had their lips moving, but all sound was removed. I thought as I watched it – “I have to see this in the uncut form.”

Then, wonder of wonders, it shows up at the local independent theater as a midnight movie the weekend before St. Patrick’s day! Sweet! Finally seen in all its “Fu*king, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck.” glory – it was pretty much covered in awesome sauce. (and of course, being one of only two people in that theater over the age of 30 = priceless)

Now this morning I spot this bit of news on these here intarwebs: Saints Rise Again with ‘Boondock’ Sequel

Troy Duffy, genius-to-be who was lost in the carnage that is Hollywood, as well as the writer/director of The Boondock Saints, has posted a video officially announcing the sequel that the entire cult following has been clawing and scratching for like Britney Spears at a “Free Crack Samples” stand — The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day.

So yet again, I am so far behind a trend that my actual discovery of it comes at the point where it is back to being “alternative”. Yay me.

Movie Review – Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

12/23/2007

Plot Summary: Barber Sweeney Todd returns to London to seek revenge on the corrupt judge who stole his wife and child, he joins forces with the macabre Mrs. Lovell and many meat pies are made.

For some reason I thought this wasn’t even coming out until Christmas day, so when I was perusing the web this afternoon and saw it was at the Moolah I jumped up and ran to the next showing. Burton, Depp, Carter, Rickman – gotta love that, right? Well, not necessarily – if you remember the Corpse Bride. Blech. But anyway, I was not overly disappointed here. The costuming was lush and scary and filthy and somehow lurid. (One more crotch-shot of Sascha Baron Cohen or Alan Rickman in their bulging manpris was going to make me embarrassed, seriously)

The sets were perfect. Both the costumes and the sets had that whimsical touch o’ Burton that one expects, but not so much that you got turned off from the story. JDepp, well yeah – he was perfect. Helena BC was also wonderful, the quality of her voice amazed me. (So did her boobs actually. I heard that she was pregnant during the filming, and it showed in the rack. I say – rock that rack, HBC!) Alan Rickman is the sexiest old lecher in modern film making, and there was this beautiful, dirty-looking little Calvin Klein model of a boy in that movie from whom I am sure we will be seeing much more. Those are the good things.

Bad things: the sound! OMG the sound, the score, the acoustics where I was, whatever – but I could only understand about 50% of most of the songs. Since you needed to understand those to get vital plot points, this was a bit difficult. JDepp and HBC both mumbled their respective ways through a lot of the songs, especially in the first 1/3rd of the film – if I’d been listening to a foreign language rather than just Ye Olde Britishe Englishe I would have thought they’d done beautifully. But it was just one of those situations where the score was way too loud and the singers not great enunciaters (?) and it was frustrating.

Also, there was a group of fuckwits standing in front of, and blocking, the ticket counter in a way which would take a diagram to fully explain. Note to Fuckwits: When someone repeatedly hollers “Excuse me!” over and over, and you have to get out of the way so they can get where they’re trying to get, since there’s no other way to get there; DON’T go right back to wherever you were standing like an amorphous mass of liquid gelatin grimly intent upon seeping into every empty particle of space in a given area, K? And when the same person turns and finds her path away from the ticket counter blocked yet again by you and your wrinkly group o’crones, the second round of “EXCUSE ME!” is not accidentally over-loud. K? No need to grimace and make your visage yet even more creased and cragged. Oh, and get the fuck out of the way, too.

I’ve heard people crab about the amount of blood. Well, there was enough blood to make it over-the-top and mildly silly. To make it theater – and it’s supposed to be theater, so I think it worked. And yeah, it’s a violent story and it had a lot of violence and that much violence makes people laugh, somehow. Anyway, it was not that bad. There was an equal amount of blood as there was raging bad teeth. Burton seems to glorify in these extreeeeeeeeeme closeups of crooked yellowed teeth, because somehow crooked, rabbitty teeth = Teh Evilnuss. And it works. Also Depp builds a clockwork machine, because there’s no way there could be a Burton movie without a clockwork machine, but I won’t spoil that part.

Overall, see it, yeah, but I am going to look forward to getting it on DVD so I can adjust the sound manually.

Underworld: Evolution

02/11/06 – “Underword – Evolution“

Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy, Derek Jacobi, Tony Curran

Directed by: Len Wiseman

Rating: Totally Off the Rag

Plot Summary: Picking up where the first film left off, the story of the Lycan/Vampire war continues, and we learn more of the orgins of both races, as Michael and Selena both struggle to understand what he has become.

I have to say, I don’t think that critics understand movies, or the people who love them. This film has been widely panned, so much so that I had a soupçon of doubt that I wanted to see it, but in the end I knew I would. Though I did have to see it at the most ghetto-fabulous theater in town and had to go in the middle of the day so I wouldn’t get shot. I can’t believe how quickly films turn over in this town.

Anyway, I loved it, and though it was perfect. As the first film ended, the only thing I could think of was how badly I wanted to know what happened next, and this film scratched that itch to perfection.

The action picks up quite literally where the first film left off. The same night as Selene killed Victor, as she and Michael race to find supplies and cover before the other death dealers are after them. Michael doesn’t know what he is, but he does thank Selene for saving him, telling her that he “wasn’t ready to die.” Scott Speedman is a very understated actor, and he is perfect for the role of Michael. He does remind me a bit of that role he played in Felicity, so I don’t know if he has a broader range than this type of character, but I suspect so. He doesn’t steal scenes, and that’s what makes him so effective. He is very in tune with a character who never wanted the spotlight or what’s come to him, but is facing it calmly, with what we can surmise is his customary calm and quiet strength.

Of course, Michael doesn’t want to accept a fate of living on blood, and one of the few problems I had with the plotline was that Selene and Michael never fed. Selene gave Michael some of her blood when he was wounded, and in the end Selene takes the blood of another vampire, but as far as we are shown, neither of them takes in any sustenance throughout all the action. I found that a bit odd, but then, I suspended my disbelief enough to believe that vampires and lycans are hunting each other in the middle of this east-European country and no one is aware of it, so I don’t know why this niggled at me.

Selene thinks her only hope is to wake the last sleeping elder, Marcus. Kraven, from the last film, has the same idea. Without spoiling you too much, I can say that Marcus does awaken, and the results are not what you might think. The film takes us on a fast-paced journey, in which we learn more about the history of both lycans and vampires, Selene’s place in the intricate plot that’s led us to this point, and a bit more about Michael, though not as much as I would have hoped. (Underworld III, I hope?)

Selene and Michael break their palpable sexual tension in a really well-done sex scene. It was a bit more than I am used to seeing in movies, rather graphic – and I had to wonder what it was like for Len Wiseman to direct his wife in a such a scene. Or maybe he got off on it, I don’t know. We do get to find out what Selene wears under all that latex though, and the scene between her and Michael is soft, and tender and very satisfying to see. It comes at a perfect point in the film’s action, when you’re thinking “can’t these two catch a break already?” I have to say that the paint splashing scene (no, not during the sex scene) was oddly long, at least twice as long as it should have been. Half the action would have been twice as good. In the accompanying scenes Speedman explains so much of Michael’s character and feeling for Selene without speaking that I couldn’t help but be moved. But I am a closet romantic, afterall.

I think the film was well-served to have the same director, as it fit seamlessly in with the visual style of the first film. Everything was perfect, from the sets to the costuming, Selene’s blue-glowing eyes, the transformation of the lycans (OK, that was a little choppy, but overall impressive) and the moody, tense atmosphere of the film itself.

As for Kate Beckinsale’s performance; I have such a hard time believing that the actress that plays Selene is the same innocent girl who played Hero in Kenneth Brannaugh’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” There is nothing of that sweet little white-gowned girl to be seen here. Selene has a stern, emotionless control of every situation that allows her to live through it – it’s only with Michael that she shows any more tender emotion. But when she does it is very believable, as well as her grim determination when she sets emotion aside and continues to do her duty as a death dealer.

Obviously, I loved this movie. I think of this series as a sort of mega-budget graphic novel. Self-contained, interwoven stories that leave you hungry for more. I want a new chapter every month, dammit. I want more and more of these characters and this world. I sincerely hope that the box-office returns are enough to warrant “Underworld III” and I will be first in the line to see it, moronic movie critics be damned.

Mirrormask

10/03/05 – “MirrorMask“

Starring: Stephanie Leonidas, Gina McKee, Robert Brydon (II), Jason Barry, Dora Bryan

Directed by: Dave McKean, Screenplay by Neil Gaiman

Rating: Totally Off the Rag

Plot Summary: Helena is a fifteen-year-old girl working for her family circus, who wishes–quite ironically–that she could run away from the circus and join ‘real life’. But such is not to be the case, as she finds herself on a strange journey into the Dark Lands, a fantastic landscape filled with giants, Monkeybirds and dangerous sphinxes.

This movie is a whole-mind experience. The visuals are awe-inspiring (though it’s a bit disconcerting to step inside Dave Mckean’s head after seeing his work on the page for so long.) The score is perfect. Brilliant. Perfect. Love it. The story is very simple, yet full of characters you feel as if you know, or want to know more of. Monkeybirds? I want a whole documentary just about their lives. The gatekeeper sphinx? He wants a short story all about him. And I would *dearly* love a really useful book. And the visuals… wow. Also the costuming and creature work. The actors were wonderfully cast and did a great job. I could listen to Valentine speak for the rest of my life – but maybe that’s just my American fetish for Scottish accents. :)

Well – obviously I just can’t say enough good things about it. As a long-time Gaiman fan I couldn’t wait for Mirrormask to hit the theatres, and now I can’t wait to go back and see it again. Kudos to Gaiman and Mckean on the realization of this project.

Movies Which are Depressing

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou just totally reeled me in. Had no idea it was going to be real. I loved it. I really love Wes Anderson’s films which show us in all our morbid human weakness. But, depressing.

Had one of those puttering days that may or may not be the sign of being a grownup. Didn’t go out but got much satisfaction from cleaning out drawers and closets, purging my life of unwanted necessities. I just want less stuff. And the addition of a new cabinet in my bathroom has made me happy to a?strange degree. Finally, a place for the towels to rest.

Dreamed last night for hours and hours. Michael C. from The Shield was the husband to this woman who was sometimes me, and also the leader of a huge S&M cult. They were abusing their daughter and when the woman found out she tried to get away. She was locked in a house and there were ATV chases, near escapes, bondage, exploding poop-filled toilets, a bathroom that was filthy and no one’s responsibility to clean, a man picking up a turd off the floor, dolphin poop dripping on my leg (poop’s been a dream theme lately) Michael C trying to rape this woman’s best friend with a picture frame, mutiny in the S&M club, and women willingly being crucified while supporting their body weight with their feet on wooden spikes.

It wasn’t a nice dream. It may have something to do with my neighborhood blowing up on Friday.

Peter Pan

12/31/03 -  “Peter Pan”

Starring:Jeremy Sumpter, Jason Isaacs, Lynn Redgrave, Ludivine Sagnier, Olivia Williams

Directed by:P.J. Hogan

Rating: Slender Tampon

Plot Summary:  Peter Pan is the boy who won’t age, who lives in Neverland with other ageless kids, the Lost Boys. Peter and Tinkerbelle, a fairy, give three children: Wendy, John, and Michael Darling the ability to fly; and soon they’re off to Neverland, where they’re soon in battle with the evil Captain Hook and his band of pirates.

Loved it! Loved it! A wonderful adaptation of the classic novel, with all the great details and none of the Disney saccharine crap. The sets and the scenery were so beautiful, just the way you’d want and expect Neverland to be. I have to admit I had a little bit of creepy pedophilia vibe going on at the beginning (especially with all the recent Michael Jackson revelations of how he’s obsessed with Peter Pan). It’s sad to say that as an overly-sexualized adult, I just kept expecting these two good looking young teens to make out or something.

I won’t tell you the story, you know the story. I will just say that the actors were fabulous, especially Tinkerbelle and Captain Hook/Mr. Darling. Go see it, it’s a treat for the eyes, and unless you’re oversexed like me, it’s an innocent story to soothe the soul.

Kill Bill Volume I

10/12/03 “Kill Bill”

Starring:Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba

Directed by:Quentin Tarantino

Rating:Slender Tampon

Plot Summary: Uma Thurman is going to KILL BILL, in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film about a former assassin betrayed by her boss, Bill (David Carradine). Four years after surviving a bullet in the head, the bride (Thurman) emerges from a coma and swears revenge on her former master and his deadly squad of international assassins, played by Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox and Michael Madsen.

I was mildly interested in going to see “Kill Bill.” Like many of the people I have spoken to, when the first trailers came out I was thinking “pass!” But once I heard more about it and saw some better, more updated trailers, I was interested. I am a big “Pulp Fiction” fan, I hated “Reservoir Dogs” and I could take or leave “Jackie Brown.” So, I was prepared to be entertained, without expecting too much. That said, I really really enjoyed “Kill Bill Volume 1.”

The action is so over the top, gory and cartoonish that you can’t help but be drawn in, with trademark QT mind-fucks and scenes shown out of order, so that much of your time is spent having “aha!” moments. Of course, Quentin’s view of the world is a dark one indeed. He seems to have a talent for treating the most horrific of human behaviors as if they were mundane, everyday things. Which they probably are, though we don’t like to admit it. Like Buck “I came to Fuck” the male nurse who rents out his comatose patients to friends, and even supplies the dodgy looking tub of crusty lube. He’s also careful enough to note that “her plumbing’s all messed up so you can come in there as much as you want.”

After waking and ridding the world of Buck, Uma (we never learn her characters name, at least in Volume 1) proceeds with singular resolve to dispatch with the team of assassins in Bill’s hire who massacred her wedding party on her wedding day, leaving her and her unborn child for dead.

Even though the world is dark and pessimistic through QT’s lens, it’s got a gritty, if over the top, realism and sense of honor in its characters, as evidenced by Uma Thurman’s character’s words to the 4-year old daughter of the woman she’s just killed. “When you’re grown up, if you’re still raw about it, I’ll be waiting.”

Tarantino uses several interesting effects (blood geyser, anyone?) to make his cinematic point, one of which is a beautiful anime sequence to develop the character of “Cottonmouth.” Though I am not a fan of anime I really enjoyed it, and saw that it was the best way to move the plot along, while giving us a break from all the blood and gore that we’d already taken in. And blood and gore there are aplenty. But in such a way as to be non-disturbing. There are more severed limbs in this film than you’d find at a tree surgeon’s convention, but the violence is not realistic, plus it’s a girl who’s doing the perpetratin’ so it’s all good…

I recommend KBV1 – and will absolutely go see KBV2 – though I do think the studio gouging us for double the admission price sucks. From what I have read, they intend to release the DVD and rental in two phases too – capitalistic bastards.

Underworld

09/22/03  “Underworld”

Starring:Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy, Danny McBride, Michael Sheen

Directed By:Len Wiseman

Rating:Off the Rag

Plot Summary: Set in the secret nocturnal and supernatural world of vampires and werewolves, two groups that have been at war for centuries, this is the story of a romance between a female vampire warrior, Selene (Beckinsale), who’s famous for her strength and werewolf-hunting prowess, and a peace-loving human, Michael (Speedman), who wants to end the war.

I have to say from the beginning that I have NO idea why the critics are panning this movie like they are. From the previews I had wanted to see it, but then several reviews I read, most notable that in Salon led me to believe I was in for a clichéd groan-fest when I agreed to go with friends to see this movie on Saturday night. I was very pleasantly surprised. (note to girl at the front of the 20+ person line at the only open cashier window: Saturday night at 7:20 is NOT the time to start asking the cashier what each movie at the cineplex is about. Really.) Anyway, I was snuggled into stadium seating with my large rootbeer and very meager expectations, when I was confronted with the lovely imagery and sound of this film.

As one would expect of a vampire film, the lighting is dark, the city is that ubiquitous metropolis you can’t quite place, and everything looks slightly damp. The heroines dress in black leather, the bad guys skulk in sewers and have ratty facial hair, and the blondes are all only out for what they can get.

This being the tone, let us follow Selene (Kate Beckinsale) into a world where humans exist as only so much temporary background noise/food source. On an immortal scale, the vampires are at war with the Lycans (werewolves.) Like several middle eastern conflicts raging today, it’s a centuries old war that no one can quite remember why they’re fighting, but the vampires have the distinct upper hand, having hunted the Lycans to near extinction. This is why Selene is surprised when her crew of three vampire “Death Dealers” is attacked in full view of the public by three Lycans. She’s even more astonished when one of her team is killed by a new Lycan weapon – a gun that shoots bullets filled with ultraviolet light.

Selene soon sorts out that the Lycans were hunting a human man that night, and not for food. She tries to tell the vampire coven leader (Kraven – it’s a terrible, obvious name, and I hate to even type it here, so I am going to call him Jeff) Anyway, she tells Jeff that she thinks they need to further investigate this, but he’s just way more interested in getting into her hot, tight, little black leather trousers. (Which I can’t quite understand, because I think there would be sweatiness issues.)

Determined to follow up on her own, Selene soon finds that everything she thought she knew might be a lie, and the people she thought she could trust are the ones she’s soon to be running from. It’s a very well thought out plot, and the story is obviously the set up for a franchise. I for one can’t wait for the next installment.

The effects in this movie were well done. The Lycans and their transformations from human to wolf and back were subtle and scary and shown only in glimpses, so your imagination fills in horrors beyond what film could have possibly shown. The worst of the violence is handled that way throughout the film, so you KNOW that the one guy just had his head ripped off and the bloody stump of his spinal column is probably sticking out and covered in gristle, but all you see is shadows, and all you hear is crunching noises. It’s much more effective than gallons of red corn syrup or crazy CGI effects.

The lighting and photography were stellar, and the soundtrack was impeccably selected (Skinny Puppy and Lisa Germano together on a disc? It’s genius.)

I highly reccomend this film, for anyone with a taste for the intelligent vampire genre. Reject all the stuff you hear about this being a lame “Matrix” rip-off – those reviewers didn’t have an idea in hell what this movie was trying to do.

Official website Underworld

The Magdalene Sisters

08/16/03 “The Magdalene Sisters”

Starring:Geraldine McEwan, Dorothy Duffy, Anne-Marie Duff, Eileen Walsh, Nora-Jane Noone

Directed by:Peter Mullan

Rating:Off the Rag

Plot Summary: an unflinching and compelling emotional drama, charting several years in the young lives of three “fallen women” who were rejected by their families and abandoned to the mercy of the Catholic Church in 1960′s Ireland. While women’s liberation is sweeping the globe, these women are stripped of their liberty and dignity and condemned to indefinite sentences of servitude in The Magdalene Laundries, in order to atone for their “sins.” The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed in 1996, and only since has the true horror of conditions in these institutions begun to emerge.

It’s difficult to know how to begin to talk about a film like “The Magdalene Sisters” It was a powerful film to watch, and as a woman it is a frightening story to try to absorb. Denial would be so much more comfortable.

Like a Catholic nun of the order of the “Sisters of Mercy” who spoke after our viewing of the film, it would be easier to label this film a piece of “artwork which is dramatized and changed for emotional effect.” But that would be a further rejection of the truth for women whose voices have already gone unheard for far too long.

We follow three young women on their journey to the Magdalene Laundries. Margaret, raped by her cousin at a wedding, her crime was making public what happened. Bernadette, an orphan, whose sin was only being too temptingly beautiful. Rose, who had a baby when she wasn’t married. These three girls arrive at the Magdalene Laundries on the same day, with no explanation of why they’ve been sent there, no word on how long their “sentence” is to be. They are told only that they are there to atone for their sins, by working beyond human endurance, as Mary Magdalene did, in order to get into heaven.

In a way that vividly reinforces how female sexuality is and has always been repressed, feared and demonized, these women are removed from society for “sins” from which their male counterparts suffer no consequences. The beautiful Bernadette is told that men will be tempted to sin, and she must be removed from society to remove the temptation from them. We never learn what happens to Margaret’s rapist, or the father of Rose’s baby. Presumably they do not pay for their actions, while the girls are made to work from sunup to sundown for cruel, capricious and sadistic nuns, subjected to physical and psychological humiliations beyond endurance, and kept under lock and key in conditions it would be generous to call spartan.

The film is a clear indictment of the Catholic church – which certainly needs indicting, and not nearly enough of an indictment on an Irish society and government so cowed by the power of that church that they did not act on women being deprived of their basic civil liberties.

But the Catholic church has spoken -  scolding both the Toronto and Venice film festivals for giving this film their highest honors, and calling on Disney to sever contact with Miramax, who are distributing the film. Even today the documentary on which this film is based “Sex in a Cold Climate” has never aired on Irish television. The “magdalenes” who still live in Ireland are too ashamed to speak of their experience. Only those who have escaped to other countries are able to speak about what happened to them.

This was a disturbing film to watch, and it was frightening and inspiring at the same time. Much in the way of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” it brought vividly home the way in which society wants to control women by controlling their physical autonomy. How men are allowed and expected to have sexual thoughts, actions, desires, and how women with any of these are to be punished and degraded. But while “The Handmaid’s Tale” is, for now, in the province of fiction, “The Magdalene Sisters” is all too real.

Check out Miramax’s official website here.