Movies I Will Talk About This Year
In Order of Most Interested to Least Interested:
- Prometheus
- The Master
- The Amazing Spider-Man (chosen solely on the strength of its most recent trailer and hopes that Jesse Eisenberg plays Venom, uncredited)
- Men In Black III
- Rock of Ages
- Brave
- Moonrise Kingdom
- The Bourne Legacy
- Les Miserables
- The Great Gatsby
- The Hobbit
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Snow White & The Huntsman
- That’s My Boy
- Here Comes the Boom
- Ryan Gosling Is a Gangster and Loves Emma Stone
- On the Road
Did I miss any?
Recently I watched Alien and Aliens for the first time, and then I read the Wikipedia pages for them and realized I should have watched Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem first because they are prequels. But now I know that the Aliens must have defeated the Predator because there are no Predators in Alien, so: spoiler alert.
Anyway, Alien was brilliant and slow-paced and cerebral and scary and 70s, and Aliens was a movie about how much it sucks to get bedbugs and also how much it sucks to be a woman when Paul Reiser really wants to kill you and make more money. I don’t care for James Cameron; he is good at short-attention storytelling and not so good at complex ideas, but I still haven’t seen 85% of Terminator 2 so maybe I’m getting it all wrong. But the last 30 minutes of Aliens were really badass because it really sucks to get bedbugs.
I heard “Magic Man” while driving home from work, and I was reminded how, when I was 14, I learned the very important lesson that when a dude starts talking about his ex girlfriend the first or second or third time you meet him, you run run run away. It was all because of Swingers, in the scene after this one, which I memorized as a teenager, along with Clerks. For a while having those movies for immediate reference was detrimental, but by the time I got to college it left me well-versed in a certain brand of dude bullshit. Unfortunately, there were many other brands of bullshit to wade through, but I came out on top, hey!
Anyway I’m heading to Vegas for the first time in my life on Friday, and everything I know about Las Vegas I know from this movie and Go. Other lessons I’ve learned: don’t search for just “Swingers” on Youtube, and no matter how wordly you are, if you memorized Swingers at 14 all you will always want to say before your first trip to Vegas is “Vegas Baby Vegas.”
Another disappointment that happened this weekend was when I dreamed I saw the Moonrise Kingdom trailer, and the trailer in my dream was Gwyneth Paltrow in a role that was something like Charlize Theron in Young Adult (a movie I really liked!), but instead she was more likeable, and talking shit a little bit like Courtney Love did in Behind the Music. I dreamed the one way that Gwyneth Paltrow could be endearing again, and it was amazing. In my dream, the trailer for Moonrise Kingdom was a trailer about adults.
So you can imagine how disappointing it was to watch the real Moonrise Kingdom trailer and find out that it’s just a bunch of little kids running around in animal costumes, like Wes Anderson is Max Fischer making the same play over and over again. (I am a huge fan of 4/6 of his films! And this one could be good too, I guess.) Also I was never a huge fan of the Anna Karina archetype, so it will be difficult for me to get past it when it’s pasted on a 13-year-old girl. Gwyneth-Courtney is much cooler is all I’m saying.
This weekend I watched Trainspotting for the first time in probably a decade, and these are the thoughts that happened:
- Trainspotting is an after-school special, and aside from the hyperstylized British coolness of it all, it’s just another movie about selfish twenty-somethings. The fact that they happen to do heroin provides the opportunity for a few more gross-out scenes and a lot of preachy preaching— but not about being a dipshit, just about doing heroin.
- But goddamn that club scene is enabling. Even though Diane is 14, she’s still cooler than I am at 28. At this point I have been in any number of clubs and met however many dudes, and none of those encounters even comes close to Diane’s seduction of Renton, even though I was dancing with dudes to “Atomic.” This movie doesn’t over-glamorize heroin, but it sure makes casual sex with strangers who you meet in skeevy clubs seem pretty appealing. I blame a lot of high expectations for nights out on watching this movie repeatedly when I was 15.
- It’s pretty wonderful that Kelly Macdonald now has the strongest career out of all of them.
- Renton is such a shithead, but Ewan McGregor was extremely attractive at 25. He’s good-looking now, sure, but all that time I spent cutting pictures of him out of magazines back then was well-spent.
- Sick Boy was the background of one of my teenage websites (Christian Suburbanite), so I was pretty into him, but now he just looks greasy.
- Why doesn’t my blu-ray player fucking work like a normal DVD player used to. This player— and every other blu-ray player I’ve ever encountered—is a piece of shit waste of money. Everything about this blu-ray just makes me want to tear my hair out.
- The set design in Trainspotting is actually really cool.
- Trainspotting isn’t a great movie, and I can’t believe I let it teach me about being cool, but at least it’s pretty to look at when it’s not busy being gross.
- Oh and the soundtrack is so boss. I didn’t buy the soundtrack at the Wall, but there was a skip on the cd I’d bought elsewhere, so I put one of the extra Wall stickers I had saved from another wrapper on it, and then replaced it at the Wall. I felt like more of a badass doing that than I did when I was doing some of the things that people in this movie do. Thanks, Lifetime Music Guarantee.
Fight with Knives endorses Drive.
Type.
It’s a lovely summer night, but I’m exhausted and on the depressed side of things, not to mention broke as broke, so I figured it was time to watch a movie. In my Netflix queue, I passed by an Ingrid Bergman movie that actually looked pretty great and It Could Happen to You. I put on Sid & Nancy for three minutes but the sight of Courtney Love crying, “She was niiiiice” made me think that maybe I wouldn’t actually like Sid & Nancy.
So I’ve settled on an Australian movie from 1979 called My Brilliant Career. It is about a plain but plucky red-headed girl from the bush who is given a second chance at society by her grandmother. In one scene, everyone stood around a piano singing “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” moustaches flashing. Our not-so-plain-in-nice-clothes heroine is sassy— oh my, the sass— but all the gentlemen love her. And even though a handsome, available gentleman already proposed (she turned him down because she didn’t love him and she wants to marry for love) her primary love interest is Sam Neill, so I keep expecting the raptors to open doors.
“It’s bad enough being born a girl, but being ugly and clever…” You tell ‘em, you sassy redhead.
Oh, and she recites poetry. Oh, she just tipped the canoe over so both of them are in the water!
Tomato cream sauce is on the stove, and this Friday night is turning out a-ok. I wonder if the plain redhead will get a handsome husband. Ta-ra-ra-boom!-de-ay!
The billboard for this movie (as seen at Broadway and Washington, Minneapolis, and probably every single streetcorner in LA) lists the penguins’ names: Nimrod, Loudy, and Bitey.
Now, my recollection might be entirely wrong, but the premise of Mr. Popper’s Penguins is about an English gentleman who loves and cares for several mischievous penguins that probably had adorable names. I guess it is ok that the patriarchy has devolved from a top hat into such a basic state that studios give the penguins the same name that a 5-year-old would give a penguin (that’s how the kids understand it, see? the penguin is Loud and Jim Carrey is Obnoxious so collectively we call the penguin “Loudy”), but I’d like to think that 5-year-olds are less mean-spirited and more imaginative than calling a penguin that nips things “Bitey.”
Anyway, I’m pretty glad I don’t have children so I am not forced to watch this dreck because they would be all “Mom, why can’t we go see Mr. Popper’s Penguins? You love books and this is based on a book you loved as a child.” And I’d say something like, “Because it ruins your creative spirit and makes you an awful person. Go make your own penguins in the backyard. Maybe we can see Cars 2, but I want you to know that I’m pretty upset that it’s not even one of the good Pixars.”
Not to be the person who complains that the movies ruined her favorite books. I’d just rather get it out there that this is why I’d be a terrible parent.
And also: they can’t touch Teddy Bears Go Shopping. It’s totally not marketable. At all.
The Best Minds of My Generation and Odd Future [bothoverused]
This weekend I watched two movies about mid-20th century obscenity trials: Lenny and Howl. Both are on the ‘flix so you can repeat this experience for yourself, if you’d like.
The former was directed by Bob Fosse, whose sharp-cuts-to-crowd-members style differs from the long, lingering shots that I love in most 1970s cinema. Fosse’s directing often feels super contrived for me (you should be feeling this way now), but I appreciate that he forces his actors to move— so that Dustin Hoffman running excitedly down a hallway becomes Dustin Hoffman skip-dancing down a hallway to his girl. I liked Lenny because I liked the acting and I like the focus on Lenny Bruce’s work (with which I was not super familiar) as well as the emphasis on hipness. However, hipness was given as an explanation for heroin use and lady mistreatment but only hints at the fact that Bruce’s work was often a translation of a very specific trajectory of cool: jazz and beat poetry.
And for a movie about the work of art that is the hub of cool kids, Howl was certainly uncool. It’s not terrible, but you’re probably better off just watching a bunch of interviews with Allen Ginsberg, listening to a recording of him reading “Howl,” and putting on Waking Life absentmindedly, then turning it off halfway through and switching to an episode of Mad Men (the one where Peggy smokes pot and Kinsey recalls his time in the Tiger Tones). Again, the movie attempted to provide some context for the “Howl” obscenity trials, but the only scenes that really resonated with me were Ginsberg cuddling with Neal Cassady, howling at the sky with Peter Orlovsky—the scenes with sweet movement. But for all of Howl’s sweetness and mention of friendship, there was no demonstration of that onscreen— just a celebration of Ginsberg’s genius, without much Kerouac and without much Cassady. (This, I think, is because if you spend enough time with beat writers, you realize that Ginsburg is the only one worth his salt— and I say this as one of the many many NYU kids over time who wrote her entrance essay on On the Road— but on screen I’d like to see the interaction in a less romantic, more tangible friendship and professional influence.)
Both Howl and Lenny use the biographed’s work as a thread to connect the film, as a way to demonstrate how ridiculous obscenity trials are, and as definitive statement to the fact that true genius in retrospect could never be considered obscene. Neither Howl nor Lenny questions the creators of great poetry and great comedy as anything but brilliant.
I think obscenity trials are bullshit— the First Amendment is great, y’all!—but genius and its motivations and should always be questioned, especially in the case of work (art) that uses how we talk about sex and the body as a means of expression, and of professional advancement. Both Bruce and Ginsberg got in trouble mostly because they used rhetoric of homosexual sex to make artistic and political statements; if they had just focused on women really who would have much trouble with that? nudes have been around forever. Both films depict the beauty of the female body, address sex as this beautiful, hilarious, even foreign thing— of course it should be depicted in art.
So both of these films (well, mostly Lenny) got me thinking about Odd Future and Tyler, the Creator and rape rap because I’ve been reading about it, on occasion. How do we get from obscenity trials to popular rape rap in 50 years? (I am pretty sure we get there because women’s opinions aren’t actually considered in movies about obscenity trials, and also openness about sex in all forms is something that happened as a consequence of the sexual revolution and also the women’s movement of the 1970s and not actually something that resulted from the genius of men who were poets and comics.)
And both movies seem to condemn the aggressive questioning of “obscenity” in the name of art, which (again) shouldn’t be done really in a legal context— but it absolutely should be done. We should be able to clearly articulate the connection between obscenity—and violence—and purpose.
Well-used obscenity has a purpose, and if that purpose is just “to shock” or “to express my frustrations at women” then that is not much of a purpose, no matter how formally good the art behind it is.
All art is a decision, every word is a choice, and we can choose to consume it or reject it or at least think a little more about its context.
Generally I am opposed to the questioning of taste. Why do you like this? is usually a terrible question and generally implies some superiority in part of the asker (although I think part of being a high-functioning consumer is being able to explain why you like the things you like, if only to yourself).
But if you’re talking to an adult man who likes music specifically about violence against women, Why do you like this? is a perfectly legit question. Like, really, if you are over 25 and not severely uncomfortable with vivid descriptions of rape, I am allowed to question you about your taste and make you feel uncomfortable.
The nice part about my life now is that I don’t hang out with people who talk about Tyler, the Creator on places other than the internet, but if it comes up: I expect you to be able to defend your decisions of taste on the matter of work that vividly depicts rape, gentlemen! I will ask you about it. I will go out of my way to make you uncomfortable, because that’s what the “goofy kids boys will be boys” or “lots of artwork is obscene” angles make me feel.
Because obscenity is a choice and is not a matter of genius.
Kickstarters I Support: Our Nixon
Generally I am not in favor of overtelling stories of rich, powerful white men, but with Richard Nixon I always make an exception. I have a soft spot for the paranoid and insane, particularly when they are leaders of America who were genuinely smart and knew the system unfathomably well—even if they were more than a little bit evil. Also, the amount of amazing scholarship and art that has derived from the public persona of Richard Nixon is really astounding, and there are always new ways to tell Tricky Dick’s story, it seems.
From the description:
But they also filmed each other: Chapin goofing around with his camera; Ehrlichman clowning with Kissinger on the beach; and Haldeman filming Higby filming Haldeman at the Great Wall of China. Ehrlichman filmed birds. He was especially fond of hummingbirds. The home movies record every aspect of their experience of the Nixon White House, from the prosaic to the profound. These four men carefully documented their time with Nixon because they believed that Nixon would transform America. And in a way, they were right.
Please tell me you are exactly as excited about this as I am. Nixon now, more than ever.
