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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.