On the face of it, the movie Sugar and the HBO series Eastbound and Down don't really belong in the same blog post. Except that at one point while watching the movie I found myself thinking the two main characters, Miguel "Sugar" Santos and Kenny Powers, could easily cross paths, though that would probably end badly. Both the movie and the film also happen to be about baseball players--indeed, both Powers and Santos are pitchers, and both characters' situations offer commentary on U.S. professional baseball. Both heroes suffer; they struggle with the ladies and with their slumps. Life without baseball is fairly unimaginable. The similarities pretty much end right about there. Well, actually they don't. But I don't want to give any spoilers.
So I'll stick to character analysis. Miguel is far too humble and serious to live his life by Powers's mottos: "If at first you don't succeed, maybe you just suck," and "Why give 100% when 35 can get you paid and laid?" Nor would he write--ahem co-write--a memoir titled "You're Fucking Out, I'm Fucking In," a memoir Powers listens to on cassette while driving in his truck and also while lifting weights. Powers is far more hilarious and infinitely more quotable, thanks to the work of EBD's creator Will Ferrell (who also plays a hilarious bleach-blond BMW salesman).
And however much you might enjoy sitting around with friends recalling curse-filled zingers delivered by Powers, like we pretty much did all weekend with C and E, Sugar is the character that will actually stick with you, his courage matched only by his comparative silence.
1. the premise, a comedian with a terminal disease, is pretty clever. it seems like it's born directly from kenneth burke's "perspective by incongruity." but maybe that's just because i happen to be writing about that idea at the mo.
2. adam sandler does cruel as well as he does funny.
3. jonah hill is the big treat of the movie. god, that kid is hilarious. and his eyes are so blue!
4. judd apatow outdoes himself on the dick-and-ball jokes. as E! said in a phone convo today, "I like a good dick-and-ball joke." and these are quite funny.
5. why don't more movies incorporate stand-up comedy?
6. why does seth rogen always look like he has a tidy wad of skoal underneath his lower lip? srsly. it's even more pronounced now that he's lost weight.
7. kudos to judd apatow for finally having a relatively interesting woman character (i'm thinking here of daisy). next time he ought to consider giving the interesting woman more screen time.
8. wilco with the great product placement!
9. in addition to the dick-and-ball joke, judd apatow has also mastered the roommate fight. well done.
1. It didn't have the predictable cast of dude comic actors (e.g., no Bill Hader, even though I think he's funny.) 2. I have never been to Vegas. 3. Zach Galifianakis. 4. it's summer, and my critical acumen seems to drop as the temperature rises, hence i am able to almost ignore the fact that there are, like, no women in this movie. 5. that ridiculous wedding band singing about nymphos. 6. the trunk scene. 7. the breakup scene. 8. Ed Helms's non-cosmetic toothlessness (thanks to E! for this tidbit) 9. "Carlos." 10. it combines hi-jinx with mystery, with a little narrative help from roofies.
As JM was putting this movie into the dvd player, he turned to me and said "this is about a dog that gets lost." I looked at him suspiciously--he knows I couldn't watch that movie amores perros past the opening scene because of dog-on-dog violence or some such. so i said "does it get found?" I really, really wanted to watch a movie, and this was the only one we have on hand, so I asked hopefully, "does the dog have lots of adventures?"
So we started Wendy and Lucy with one whippet splayed over my stomach and the other hogging one side of the couch, both with their shiny green PA tags (yes, we registered our dogs before our car, so what?). I won't give anything away about what happens, but this is a very good movie. Sucks all the life out of the romance of living in one's car on a cross-country trip, but maybe I only have that romantic view because I've never done it. It's probably pretty hard to render loneliness cinematically, but the filmmakers and the actress (Michelle Williams) do a pretty smashing job.
On the flight home from London, I selected the movie Twilight for my personal seat-back viewing pleasure. My niece is bananas about the book series, and the one thing I knew is that the "star" vampire, Edward Cullen, is supposed to be unbearably good looking. Given my abiding love for Buffy, how bad could it be? The answer is not bad at all. Not at all.
When I was telling E! about it, she mentioned a Swedish teen vampire movie called (this is the translation) Let the Right One In. I placed it right at the top of our netflix queue, and we watched it last night. Holy crap, now THAT's a teen vampire movie.
As movies, these probably couldn't be more different. Twilight has a hip, smooth soundtrack, and Let uses a strained, slow piano track. One vampire (Cullen) is pretty much across-the-board good, especially vis-a-vis his human love. The other one, Eli, is more complicated, beginning with the fact that she is only twelve (or as the character puts it "twelve. more or less") and yet wields so much power. Twilight is an expensive production with some crouching-tiger style special effects, which push it toward the fantasy genre, whereas Let relies on jittery loping movements and old-fashioned film speed to render the superhuman ability to move and move stuff, which yanks it over to the horror genre. What's more, Let has English dubbed in, and the lines are read in a rather deadpan fashion with voices that don't always match the characters, which makes it even creepier.
And yet the similarities across the genre are fun to note. They both stage the daily vampire drama of getting just enough to eat but resisting eating the "wrong" thing--something we can all relate to!--against the most mundane and youthful school scenes, the high school parking lot in Twilight, the playground in Let. There's talk of a prom in one and going steady in another. Both feature the most beautiful, fresh-faced main human characters who are far from naive. Both take place in gloomily gorgeous places--the Pacific Northwest and Stockholm. And both leave lingering the unworked-out (unworkoutable?) plot of human versus vampire lives, necessarily out of sync.
If you're looking for rental recs, I can think of a worse weekend activity than a teen vampire weekend fest. Might as well throw in Lost Boys for old time's sake. Here are the trailers for you, in case you want a little... taste.
Last night JM and I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which confirmed for me that you are not only the most adorable actress in Hollywood, but you are also among the most talented.
Sure, it helps that your character Maria-Elena was written rather brilliantly and seemed already fully sketched well before you appeared on screen. Indeed, the first part of the movie is spent waiting for you to appear, from the moment we learn from the other characters about how the tempestuous and mercurial Maria-Elena stabbed her ex husband and later tried to kill herself. Most actors would have a hard time stepping into such an overdetermined narrative, but not you. You filled it up. Made it a little funny, even.
sincerely,
debbie
p.s. congratulations on your oscar.
p.p.s. you make me want to start drinking diet coke again.
when i am old and retired and reflecting on my life, one of my favorite mundane
things to remember will be this: going to see a movie and then calling up e! to talk about it. e!, you see, has all of what andy on the office calls "the dets" about movies she likes, like about how guns 'n roses was the only band that granted permission to use their actual song for this film. we talk about problems with movies (e.g., the way this one glosses over health care issues) and things we loved (me: those beautiful tights in the match against the staple-gun guy; e!: rourke's hair-as-character; both of us: omg, the deli slicer scene), and how hot (marisa tomei!) or not the actors were and why or why not. if one of us is, say, on a long solo road trip, and the other one is on a long solo run with a high-quality headset/mic, we can easily log upwards of forty minutes on one movie. and i even forgot to ask her to settle a discussion JM and i had about whether an actor would take steroids to bulk up for a role like this. i mean, if art imitates life and all.
JM ordered up this dvd, and I picked it out of a lineup. Plotwise, the film is Godzilla meets War of the Worlds, and stylewise it is Blair Witch Project meets 28 Days Later. Both of those last two scared the bejeezus out of me, so. Oh yes, and there are an awful lot of 9/11-ish details too: the mass exodus via the Brooklyn Bridge, papers floating after major explosions, dust tunneling between buildings. Oh, and terror. There's a lot of that too.
Cloverfield, as you Lost lovers may know, was made by Lost creator J.J. Abrams, and I can see the resemblance--the characters never exit the way they enter, very beautiful long-haired women, always some sort of military presence.
The plot is basically this: a bunch of twentysomethings are having a goodbye party in a cool, huge, exposed-brick type place with a socially awkward fellow making the rounds with a digital handheld when something attacks Manhattan!
The beginning of the film tells us that the recording was found in the area "formerly known as Central Park," a sure bet that things do not go all that well for the party-goers. The only thing novel about this film is the way the recording is dubbed over another recording of a happier day (about a month earlier) when the party's guest of honor made it with one of the really beautiful women. So on occasion there's a user error in the recording of horror night, and bits of that other day pop up. The splice-y effect is rather jarring, and it's a nifty way to layer plots. Again, not all that new, unless it is considered in the camera-as-character vein. Then it's pretty interesting.
Oh, and there's an awful lot going on in this film with what Ali G likes to call techmology. Those twentysomethings sure do like to send text messages and capture shots of tentacular jurrasicky monsters with their cell cameras. So maybe it wasn't that good, but I didn't get bored for a minute.
If you've seen Cloverfield and hated it or loved it or (like me) didn't feel all that strongly one way or the other, you'll probably like the South Park spoof. Go here for a clip.
And why the hell is this movie called Cloverfield? I gather it's the name of the monster, but no one knows that in the movie, because no one really knows WTF is going on in the movie.
Cloverfield is rated PG-13 for "violence, terror, and disturbing images."
Spin: A waterlogged sample of a voice croaking, "You can dance" opens Animal
Collective's ninth album, and it's a sign of what's to come, even if
the trio take their time before dropping a beat. Two-plus minutes of
woozy ambience waft by as singer Avey Tare wishes, "If I could just
leave my body for a night." Then, suddenly, the dam bursts and "In the
Flowers" floods the senses with rib-rattling bass and a giant 4/4 thump
that could be transmitting from a Berlin superclub.
Rolling Stone: Merriweather is the soundtrack for the ultimate hippie/ambient
tribal dance party, a giddy, freewheeling, psychedelic beast of an
album, full of big beats, trippy drones and glistening synths dancing
around the band’s rich, reverb-drenched, fugue-like vocal layers.
Pitchfork: Since their inception, Animal Collective have wandered the territorial
edges of music, scoping out where boundaries had been erected and
looking beyond them. They've punctuated perfectly likeable indie rock
songs with bleating vocalizations. They've seeded pretty instrumentals
with irritating noise. They've juxtaposed West African rhythms and
melodies cribbed from British folk. They've stayed on a single chord
for 10 minutes. But Merriweather feels like a joyous meeting
in a well-earned, middle place-- the result of all their explorations
pieced together to create something accessible and complete.
Pop Matters: Did you think this was going to pan Merriweather Post Pavilion? Sorry, can’t oblige—I’m as guilty as the most effusive critic of Animal Collective-love. So here goes. Merriweather Post Pavilion
is a masterstroke, a release so fun to listen to it makes you actually
hopeful for the new year, not just for music but for life in general.
It’s musically sophisticated, of course, boiling up the band’s
characteristic components of techno, tribalism, drone and noise with
gorgeous melody into an addictive optimism.
New York Times: For a group that has rarely seemed concerned with accessibility,
“Merriweather” is a significant step toward a more polished sound and a
wider audience. The album has received rapturous advance praise from
many blogs and music magazines — the music site Pitchfork.com
gave it one of its highest ratings since 2004 — and the band quickly
sold out a release-week tour. Peter Berard, an executive at Domino
Records, said the vinyl edition of the album essentially sold out Jan.
6, the day it was released.
Baltimore Sun: The processed sounds bleat, converge and tumble. Beats pulsate as
majestic choruses build and build before giving way to layers of fuzzy
synths that churn and then disperse. At times, one song sounds like
three different tunes.
Boston Globe: Forget that latest national unemployment report or the news from the
Middle East. Here's the real proof the world's gone topsy-turvy: Animal
Collective, the wildest purveyors of tribal psychedelia this side of
the Amazon Basin, have written an album about getting old. And not just old, but all domestic and stuff.
Robin Pecknold, lead singer of Fleet Foxes: What a beautiful thing. This record makes me want to cry. . . . I saw Noah Lennox backstage at the
Pitchfork festival and could hardly contain myself, like meeting Elvis.
I bumbled a couple dumb words and cursed myself for looking like a
Black Crowes monster.
Back in graduate school all the cool kids were into indie filmmaker Hal Hartley, and I started watching his movies too. The Hartley film that stuck with me was Henry Fool. How could a movie about a garbageman poet not stick with someone getting a PhD in English and teaching composition, especially with teachable scenes like this:
Fay Grim is Henry Fool's sequel, released nine years later. It features the same actors, even the kid who plays their son whom HF takes drinking and smoking when he was 5. And of course there's the striking and subtle Parker Posey, who gets some choice lines in HF, like when she (as Fay) claims that her brother's poetry brought on her period a week and a half early. As you might be able to tell from the title and the movie poster, Fay is front and center in the sequel, which is rather unexpectedly wound around an espionage scheme. And if you haven't seen Henry Fool, then by all means, rent or netflix them both.
Recent Comments