b l o g o s

netflix blogging: thanksgiving break edition

On Thanksgiving night, having stuffed ourselves for hours, John and I came home at 6 and crawled into bed to watch Tina Fey's 2008 film Baby Mama. Now, I love Tina Fey. I do. And she looked really great in some of those dresses and suits, especially the short sleeved navy dress one with piping, and those pre-Sarah Palin Sarah Palin shoes. Amy Poehler has some hilarious scenes--my favorite is the one when she is trying to take the horse pill--and Steve Martin's long ponytail is a character unto itself.

But I was still underwhelmed by the flick, actually. I'm not sure if it's because it's hard to make comedy out of reproductive choices or because my sense of humor lost its vital fluids to my digestive processes, but this movie didn't do it for me.

Tonight, though, we watched Definitely Maybe, and I admit, I liked it. The narrative frame--the youngish dad telling his daughter a "mystery love story"--kind of worked. And yes, it was sappy, and even maybe a tad predictable, but there was something compelling about watching it all play out. There was recognition. There was reversal. More than once, in fact. And the three women in the movie are all, of course, so very lovely (especially Sacha Baron Cohen's pardnah Isla Fisher, left). This movie definitely isn't for everybody, and maybe I liked the early- to mid-nineties setting with Bill Clinton as a minor character, or maybe I just like the novelty of being narrated into the position of a bright and sympathetic eight year old, but yeah, I kinda liked it.

girl talk

JM and I have recently taken to the album "Feed the Animals," a wild mash up by a guy who calls himself Girl Talk. The music he samples is so disparate and from such distinct moments that it can invoke a clanky mash up of memories if you're not careful. He uses this music without permission of course, and the New York Times has called him "a law suit waiting to happen." Say what you will about this Pittsburgher with an engineering degree from CMU, he has a tremendous ear. He and his saran wrap-covered laptop are coming to town soon, but alas, the show is sold out. (It's okay, I may have averted a seizure.) Oh! And his videos are cool too. Here's a sample (snort), in which my grad and undergrad years are laid right next to each other:

And here he is at work.

And finally, this one is my favorite song on the album, quite possibly because of Rich Boy ("candy red lollipop" ) flipping into some Rod Stewart:

 

time out for my current musical obsession

In case you missed Fleet Foxes on Letterman last night, check it out here. They were really great imo, and this particular song ("Blue Ridge Mountains") shows a little bit of everything they're about: all those instruments, beautiful harmonies (other songs make more of this), and Robin Pecknold's vocals of steel. The dog diving and Seth Rogin diving weren't too bad either, but the commercials nearly killed me. 

netflix blogging: margot at the wedding

Last night JM and I watched Margot at the Wedding, the Noah Baumbach film from last year. I loved The Squid and the Whale and so was already ready already to like this. And it didn't disappoint me (though JM tells me the critics weren't fans). First off, the casting was terrific. How unexpected to see, in the same film, John Turturro, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman, and (pictured above) Jack Black, who for the first part of the movie sports a mustache that, as his character Malcolm puts it, "is supposed to be funny."

And it is. Also funny is the Garfield mug (pictured above at Black's elbow) which shows up in one key scene when Malcolm turns into a sappy, blubbering mess on the phone to his fiance (JJL). Baumbach has a way of making things into near characters, and the mug, along with a giant tree in the backyard, both work in this way. The difference though is that the tree is far more central to the plot, but not nearly as funny (to me at least).

Anyway, Kidman plays Margot, sister of Pauline, played by Leigh. They work quite well together--both are kind of pillish, slightly self-obsessed, brutally other-critical, and, well, pretty fucked up. The kid who plays Claude has a lovely face and even lovelier crazy hair. And while it's certainly not a comedy, it gets wincily funny at times, and almost always, those times involve Malcolm. Whether he is talking about serious shit with his gut hanging over the band of his underpants or wielding a chainsaw while confessing transgressions to Pauline on the day of their wedding, Malcolm is in fact the star, from the moment he zooms up in his beat up ride to retrieve Margot and Claude at the train station. His zany neuroses outstage Kidman's lovely lines, Leigh's paranoid but truthful zingers, and Claude's awesome hair. And with his insistence that brilliance and fame are in fact a zero sum game, his resulting unwillingness to be around successful people, and his deep unhappiness wrapped with a thick coat of cynicism, I swear I know him from somewhere. Probably graduate school.

netflix blogging: rocket science

A couple others have started netflix blogging, so why not jump on in? Tonight JM and I watched Rocket Science (trailer below), a Rushmore-meets-Election venture with very good writing and quite compelling supporting characters. We both particularly liked the slightly unhinged, but also in his own way tender, thief brother, oh, and the tantric couple playing orchestral versions of violent femmes songs is also pretty amusing. And with Eef Barzelay (the singer and guitarist from Clem Snide) in charge of the score, well, what's not to like?

there will be dip

E! and I were right in our hunch that the perfect precursor to Superbowl XLII would be a movie about prospecting for oil. The question is this: by the end of the day, whose face will we have beheld the longest?

animal costumes, choreographed cycling, shimmery blue eyeshadow, and sparkly tights

what more could you ask for in a music video?