Mar 31 2006
One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Fly Away Home"
Fly Away Home (1996): "If you possess an ounce of cynicism, fly away home now."
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Fly Away Home (1996): "If you possess an ounce of cynicism, fly away home now."
Just what the hell counts as Bollywood? Or Screwball Comedies? How about Hammer Horror? Does it involve assault with hand tools?
Stop asking stupid questions! Green Cine Movie Primers explains it all.
"I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen." – Carson McCullers
But Dave and I have resumed our mindless chatter on movies called Talking Pictures. Waste 45 minutes here.
SF Gate has this analysis of why the cupcake has returned to fashion.
The next time someone tries to tell you how great things were then and how crappy they are now, please direct them to the following...
"Let others praise ancient times. I was glad to be born in these"
--Ovid (via The Writer's Almanac)
Flickr's creators are going to be on the cover of Newsweek. Damn (via Laughing Squid).
Oh and can anyone get the "How Geeky Are You?" quiz to load?
Please do yourself a favor and see Tsotsi, playing at a movie theater near you. I'm recommending it highly even through praising a Best Foreign Film Oscar winner from South Africa featuring poor black teenagers seems like peddling liberal guilt. I even saw it in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco where the only person of color was a starling alit on a telephone pole across the street. For shame!
Dave had recommended I check it out after sending me a few kwaito (a Johannesberg-hybrid of house music and hip-hop. It kicks ass) tracks from the soundtrack. Dave is black which is less rationalization than turnabout. I've made him see more than a few holocaust movies in the 12 years of our friendship Besides his people are from Ethopia not South Africa. Mine had all emmigrated to America before the holocaust. Kindly forget the preceeding two paragraphs.
Tsotsi's a movie about a violent young man who in the midst of a crime, discovers he's unwittingly kidnapped a baby. His heart doesnt' turn to mush. He doesn't even become a nice guy. Like The Accidental Tourist (which takes place in Baltimore, where Dave and I met), the film spends its entire running time leading up to a simple gesture. It's only after we get there that we realize how profound that gesture is.
Tsotsi doesn't milk poverty for cheap sentiment the way I thought City of God (Dave loved it. Kevin hated it). It exists fully inside the slums and upper middle class suburbs of post-Apartheid Johannesberg. They the whole world not a microcosm of a lesson for us all.
Here's the deal. See this movie. It's 90 minutes, breathtaking, intense, powerful. If this isn't why you go to the movies, get over it and thank me later. Or thank Dave who got us here in the first place.
Camp (2003): "Cram 3 movies into two hours and you'll probably get one decent one out of it"
Title: Whores on the Hill
Author: Colleen Curran
Backstory: Purchased from A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books after reading an article about "Prep Fiction."
Notes: Like my father before me, I love entertainment about teenagers and high school. Having enjoyed the heck out of Prep, I figured this might be a darker, racier take on similar subject matter. I was right.
Verdict: Whores on the Hill meets your expectations then races past then. The plot is unapologetically trashy. Three girls in a Catholic school stay out late, drink too much and have lots of sex. There's enough "my school skirt flited up" to satisfy several manners of pervert (including me). But Curran doesn't stop there. She hurls in scorn, violence and tragedy yet never apologies. Her characters don't ask for our pity or sympathy. They don't learn from their mistakes and they certainly don't grow up. Much like Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, Curran's novel indirectly argues that being fucked up holds more lifeforce than being healthy. She doesn't accuse "normal" people of fraud the way Welsh does but she doesn't deny her heroines the joy or liberation recognizing their sexual power. In an ending as hardened as it is melodramic, Curran argues that if we think young female sexuality is inherently denegrating and dangerous to its pracitioners, well then maybe that's more about us than it is them.
I appreciated her for it.
"Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch."
Dirty Pretty Things (2002): "Possibly the best movie ever made about organ theft"
Hard Candy. May be this decade's Two Girls and a Guy, a movie that is very uncomfortable to see in mixed company but you'd be missing out not to.
My friend Leslie Guttman attended her first SXSW Interactive this year and volunteered to write up her findings for this here blog...
Our SXSW journey began Friday in Dallas, when we spotted the distinguishing markings of the tribe: wire or Clark Kent glasses, black leather and L'Oreal Excellence HiColor RedHiLights ... We landed in Austin, and after a quick luggage drop-off, headed out to the Salt Lick for barbecue, where we learned that meat is a side dish: "I'll have the meat ... and the meat." ... Home to peruse the beloved Skymall catalog taken from the seat pocket before dropping off. It's hard to describe how much we love, and have always loved, Skymall. The newest nifty item on the list is the "Alive Chimpanzee" robot from The Sharper Image. "So real, it's unreal!" (pg. 29).
Meanwhile, Saturday found us at Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert's presentation: "How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times." He gave the following formula: Expected Happiness = (odds of gain) X (value of gain). We found this panel both entertaining and esoteric, yet the gist seems to be in making good choices and filtering your own mind. For example, 7,380 people drown each year, according to Gilbert's statistics, as opposed to 90 people dying yearly in tornadoes, yet of course, TV coverage has our minds focusing on the latter as more of a scary possibility. He also noted that variety makes decision-making laborious: In one experiment which you may have heard about previously and which this space would dub the Whole Foods Theorem, people were more likely to buy gourmet jelly when they had six kinds to choose from rather than 24. Moving on ... we made our way over to Wisdom of Crowds with James Surowiecki. There, it boiled down to mimicking Google when it comes to decisions and solutions - randomize your connections for an aggregated body of knowledge representing the best criteria possible from which to choose from. Sort of like Skymall.
Noted: At the women's panel on increasing visibility on the Web: As soon as a Web page flashed on the PowerPoint screen showing a comic of a woman saying "If I had a hammer, I'd smash patriarchy," one of the three brave guys there (two of which were no doubt journalists), got up and said, "Later." And in other news, our leftover chicken from the Salt Lick was still in the car and needed to be tossed. After "tossing the chicken" became our new catchphrase, and we sang Copa Cabana in the car on the way home substituting Austin's beloved Taco Cabana, we went to bed in a quiet neighborhood south of the Convention Center where people don't lock their doors and a big dog slept well.
Monday found us: Listening to porn princess Joanna Angel talk about how she made her site a success with viral marketing, and watching the discomfort, awe, fascination, admiration and uncomfortableness of the crowd. Full disclosure: For this poster, porn is exploitive, not libertarian, no matter how many truly beautiful tattoos and well-written music features and reviews it has on it.
Nerve co-founder Rufus Griscom told us how he got Louis Rossetto to invest in the start-up days - asking for a tiny amount but the privilege of leveraging Louis's name, and a bigger chunk of cash, said Griscom, then came in later. And then we headed over to a citizen journalism lunch spearheaded by Adam Weinroth of Pluck, which is bringing traditional media companies in the blogosphere, and no longer kicking and screaming.
OK - what more can we tell you about our stay in Austin? Beautifully bat-infested, cowgirl capitol, people whose warmth is equaled only by their generosity. A reporter friend was just standing at the airport curb waiting for a Supershuttle when three nice ladies on their way to a basketball tournament decided to give him a ride. We found the SXSW organizers frighteningly efficient, totally normal, and possessed with good fashion sense. Like every good Southerner we grew up with, they know how to throw a party. We'd toss our chicken here anytime.
So last night my friend Lucia and I go to see The New Pornographers/Belle and Sebastian double bill at the San Francisco Design Center. I've been to the SFDC for the expos like APE and can say now, without remorse that with expos it should stay. The Concourse, where the concert was held, is a long, narrow, level space that muddies sound only slightly less than a wind tunnel. Since it's general admission (even though my ticket assigned me, inexplicably, to seat 458) and the floor is as flat as the deck of an aircraft carrier, there are about 6 good viewing spots in the whole place. The spectacular New Pornographers thus sounded like their songs have been left in the dishwasher and looked like the back of some guy's knit cap.
I'm ready to leave but Lucia and I are having a fun chatting so I decide to stick it out for a little B & S. Chunky black glasses and cute indie couples (CICs) are everywhere. They haven't budged an inch for the insanely dancable Pronographers so I'm thinking the set-in-a-limoge-box sound of the headliners won't be any different.
Lights go down. Stage bathed in purple glow. Crowd faces forward. And then the world explodes.
Screaming, clawing, siren-grade wailing. Cute indie couples are throwing fists in the air and, from the sounds of it, panties and related underthings at the band. We can't see anything but the sound is that of an impending riot. Lucia turns to me and says...
"Jeez, it's like fuckin' Motley Crue just got in"
And which point we raise the sign of the devil and thrash. The CICs don't even blink.
That made it all better.
Someone sent me this. You can make your own cubist drawings. I dig dig dig (dig cubed).
Author Elmore Leonard, who turns 81 this fall, is both blogging and podcasting, plus cranking out a novel every 2-3 year (which he writes in longhand) and shepparding many of his old books onto film and television. His blog may be little more than a collection of press clippings, run by his indefatigable researcher Gregg Sutter (Leonard claims not to own a computer) but still, I'd like to have this kind of energy at that stage of my writing career.
Back home in San Francisco now after almost 3 weeks away. I've got a giant mountain of catching up to do, hundreds of emails, a project for the San Francisco Film Society, more podcasting and writing and gearing up for book #2. Plus, life is changing in radical ways, most of which I can't address right now.
I feel horrible, listless, sad, tired all the time. Though I know some things just need to be worked through rather than around, I don't care. I'm being a brat. I just want it to be different right now. Which is the one thing it can't be.
Wherein we discuss why life is like a giant boulder right now.
MP3 File
Unzipped (1995): "The business of fashion is equal parts vision, talent and hot air, pretty much in that order."
“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open....”
--Martha Graham (via Buzz, Balls and Hype)
Flightplan (2005): "A thriller with no tension is like a very long flight with no movie."
For anyone who has ever felt like an outsider...
"Find the others" --Timothy Leary
(spoken by David Pescovitz at the Bloggies this morning).
Wherein we discuss what SXSW has become, why no one is to blame and that morning after feeling.
MP3 File
I've never read Dooce which makes me of one three bloggers on earth who'se missed out. Heather Armstrong, who runs Dooce, is currently yapping on a stage with Jason Kottke in the SXSW keynote. It's so popular that I'm in an overflow room next door gaping at them both on a giant flat screen TV.
In resdesigning and consolidating my sites (the battered husk of my professional site is here), I've been thinking a bit about its design, which isn't in my natural set of skills, but I dig the little tiny navigation menu Ms. Armstrong has at the top of her page (see?). Too bad we're almost done. Perhaps iteration 3.0 which should come along the Tuesday after my 43rd birthday.
Wherein we discuss how huge SXSW has gotten and if I still have a place in it.
MP3 File
Wherein we discuss the coming tsunami known as South by Southwest Interactive.
MP3 File
Now how often do you get news that good and have it have nothing to do with breasts?
According to this news story, President Bush's approval ratings are the lowest of his presidency, just 37% with nearly 70% of thise polled saying the country is on the wrong track. I'll be mentioning this to Baratunde, whom is here in Austin and I had dinner with last night. He's probably over the moon.
My del.icio.us folder is piling up so I thought I'd empty these out before the festivities begin this weekend.
*Record labels are now delaying release of legal downloads in order to spur on sales of new albums. Sounds like desperation to me because as Tim Quirk of Rhapsody puts it "very single track that you are worried about is available for free whether you want it to be or not."
*An assload of articles in US News & World Report about the current state of the publishing business (via Readerville).
*R.I.P Octavia Butler. Same to Kirby Puckett.
*Trader Joes is heading to NYC.
*Jesse James Garrett on why Myspace's hideous design actually works (via Matt Haughey).
*The Get Human Detabase. On a crusade for improved customer service.
*Urban Noir on NPR. Which rhymes. Oh and features my friend Laura Lippman (via Tigerbeat).
*Now that I'm in Austin, posting switches to audio for the duration of the festival.
Then it begins again...
The Polyphonic Spree is blogging the recording of their third album at The Fragile Army.com. I just saw them on Austin City Limits which was a lovely surprise.
Guess where I am?
A raft of theories put forth by SFGate. Dave and I touch on almost all of them.
Since we are way behind on our next episode of Talking Pictures, Dave and I did an ichat session about last night's Oscars. See below...
So, Crash, huh?
What up with dat?
Well, do you want my theories or do you want to start with yours?
you start
Okay, theory the first - Lionsgate is then new Miramax.
ohhhh
They have mastered the art of the Oscar campaign.
Just as Miramax did with Shakespeare in Love, Lionsgate has done with Crash
Right, isn't this Mirimax minues the Weinsteins?
I don't know who the new Weinsteins are in this paradigm, but the results are the same.
I mean the Weinsteins are no longer at Mirimax
Right. Which makes this transition possible.
so perhaps lobbying isn't as part of the corporate culture
How do you mean?
I mean, Weinsteins leave, no guard comes in. Weinsteins are way into intensive lobbyng campeing.
Maybe their replacements are not
takes money and time afterall
Right. And both the new Miramax and the Weinstein Co. are so new, they haven't gotten their A game together yet.
Although New Miramax probably gets some credit for the Tsotsi win.
did they distribute it?
Yeah.
And The Weinstein co. had Transamerica
I think it was also the only foreign language nominee on Ebert & Roeper
Really?
Yes
Reviewed that is
Wow. Great film by the way.
You've seen it?
Yeah. Saw the director speak, too. Cool guy.
Nice
Theory the second on the success of Crash...
Please...
The power of the screener/The power of the actor...
?
Lionsgate sent out a shitload of screeners a month or two ago to remind people...
...how awesome Crash was.
All of these went to Academy members.
right since it was a summer release most likely
Many to actors, the largest voting block.
And, if what Sam Jackson says is true and other actors vote for their friends...
the "don't forget us" move
There are more actors in Crash than just about any other nominee.
I have to give our mutual friend Justin credit for that last insight.
even though Brokeback is really more of an "Actor's Film"
Yeah. This is one of those instances where the ensemble award at SAG is eerily prescient.
Sure. Hey, how do they define an ensemble? More han 3?
I'm not sure. I think Brokeback may have been up for the same award.
heh?
Best Ensemble.
yes but why? Does ensemble mean "# of actors above the title?"
Or "# of people you can recognize?"
Practically speaking, number of people you can recognize.
so its highly subjective
I mean, Hustle and Flow was also nominated, and there are no above the title names in that.
right
and Hustle and Flow has a single lead character
Right, but many strong supporting performances.
right
Finally, the suspicious cut to commercial before the acceptance speech for best picture was really over...
...made me think that Jack just made up the winner.
ghetto with a capital G
that's some People's Choice award sh*t
So what are your theories?
Well first it was not latent homophobia as many in my hometown are predicting
Yeah, that doesn't really make any sense.
or else, Brokeback wouldn't have swept every other award show in sight.
Right.
When is Oscar voting done?
The final polls closed on Feb. 28th.
So perhaps it was a late voting year, after many of the award shows had already run and voters were suffering from Brokeback burnout
That is one theory.
Did Brokeback peak early?
Perhaps. Also, Crash takes place in L.A. a backlash to productions leaving town at an alarming rate?
leaving the country even?
True dat.
Also easier to relate if it's in LA.
right, hometown self-loathing, a perennial favorite
also, racism has simply been in the news more than gay issues (see Katrina)
Right.
I wonder now if they couldn't have invited Kanye West to the proceedings just to drive the message home further.
George Bush hates black people, but you guys are ok.
then if Brokeback won, he could have said "George Bush Doesn't care about Gay people"
Right.
Let's talk about John Stewart as host...
Indeed.
Personally, I was tickled.
the audience, not so much.
and I kind of resent news articles claiming he'd bombed like it was some empirical fact.
Only minutes after the show was over.
now why did they say that?
Oh, quick side note, speaking of Katrina.
yes
Remember how there was a controversy about photos of white people "retrieving" goods and black people "looting"?
yes..
Look at this headline:
"Three 6 Mafia Steals Oscar Song Award"
I'm just saying.
"steals" as if someone else was a lock on that award before the Three 6 snuck in the building, uninvited, and ran off with it.
I'll admit, I thought Dolly Parton was gonna win, but why don't they just say "Three 6 Carjacks Oscar with Baby Inside"
and leaves it for dead at Freedomland.
So the new title of the Stewart article adds the word "review"
That makes more sense.
"Review: Stewart Disappoints As Oscar Host"
Hey the Three 6 were the only ones to thank both Jesus and Gil Cates which used to be De rigour at the Oscars
And George Clooney!
so they were doin' it old school
yes, 30 years ago, everyone was thanking George Clooney when they won
They will be.
of course
So did Stewart "dissapoint?"
I thought Stewart was hilarious, and so did the folks I was watching with, but the audience didn't seem sure they should be laughing or not.
Yes, I wasn't quite sure why
I got the sense that Hollywood folks liked the Daily Show.
too new york? Which is what they said about Letterman the year he hosted
It's funny, Stewart was on Larry King last week talking about that.
hmmm
He said if you watch it now, Letterman actually rocked the house.
I didn't see that show
The whole Uma/Oprah thing had a punchline that killed.
killed good, killed bad?
Killed good. But people only remember the first part of that bit, which didn't.
what year was that?
1995
Speaking of which, could there have been a more useless time filler than montage-o-rama?
I'm telling you, that was the "Remember movies? Well they've been around awhile"
"Hey, remember when movies didn't suck?" "That was great!"
As if to say "Kids are growing up without any knowledge of "To Have and To Have Not" what a crime!
And really, with netflix, and TCM aren't times just fine for classic movies?
oh and 80 million AFI specials?
Exactly. Old films will benefit from the long tail.
indeed
But the other message of the Oscars was go to theaters, not netflix.
Yes, as evidenced by the Sid Ganis speech, there is panic in the land about people not going to the movies
But what they really need is a montage about a time when going to the movies didn't suck.
yes, how about a montage tribute to the actual starting time of a movie?
Or a montage to the properly framed screen and the theater that doesn't resemble an airport lounge?
And to people shutting the fuck up during the movie?
and to the cell phone not ringing at least twice?
So was the 80's the last time it was fun to go to the movies? And does that make us old farts?
oy, jeez, really?
I only started noticing about 5 years ago that going to the movies at a regular old multiplex is a curiously joyless experience.
What's the last truly great moviegoing experience you can remember?
jeez, March of the Penguins, Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, last summer
I have to go back to seeing a sneak of Dogma at Hopkins.
really, that long? Nothing at the Alamo during SXSW?
Actually, Red vs. Blue at the Alamo was kind of awesome. Although that wasn't technically a movie.
right
Back to the Oscars for a sec
Best actress: Is it me or are Best Actress award winners getting younger and younger?
It seems to me that, since Paltrow won for Shakespeare in Love that the Best Actress awards has become kind of like the "Prom Queen" award
I think you're right.
If you go back ten years, it's Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange and Frances McDormand
where you not only win for a performance but for embodying all that is good about young womanhood
If you go back five it's Hilary Swank and Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry.
I agree. Ageism has crept into the Best Actress category.
Then again, it crept into available roles long before that.
right. You member Jessica Tandy won the award in her 70s
Here's another montage: "Remember when we weren't afraid of old people?"
lol
So are you disappointed that Philip Seymour Hoffman didn't bark his acceptance speech?
eh what?
Apparently, PSH made a bet in college that whichever of his roommates ever won an Oscar would have to bark their acceptance speech until dragged off the stage.
I didn't know that
I think I would have been disappointed if he did bark the speech.
Speaking of disappointing speeches, what's with Robert Altman's cloying "Hollywood is A-Ok" speech?
Does that sentiment make any less sense than his sand castle analogy?
I agree that it would have been more satisfying for him to say, "You know what? Fuck you guys!"
sure, hes 81. He's had a good run
Exactly. Incidentally, if they're really dissatisfied with Stewart as a host, I say next year they go with Clooney.
Jeez, he pratically hosted this year
I know. "Everybody Loves Clooney"
He gives good speech.
If I won an Oscar, I might want him to give my speech.
sure but do you need to present if you are the shoe in nominee?
Just seems like overkill
He wasn't a shoe in. the odds favored giamatti
really?
Yeah. blowback for Sideways.
I suppose. Okay, same question then for Witherspoon
What did she present?
eh, something before the best actress was announced
I suppose you could argue that she was the biggest star nominated, and that her presenting had more to do with that, but I see your point.
indeed. So Dave, final thoughts?
Can we weep a little now for Memoirs of a Geisha winning 3 awards, including cinematography?
Yeah, what up with dat?
Frankly, it probably deserved those cosmetic awards, but it still irks me that a movie with a rep worse than The Ringer got those kind of kudos.
someone was doing a lot of apologizing.
or stuck on the idea that an awarded movie must have a lot of period costumes.
Your final thoughts?
next year's host: Dave Chappelle
Now there's a guy who'll say, "You know what? Fuck you guys!"
but say it very nicely
While smoking.
lol. Your final thoughts?
I think next year, you're going to see the return of the big-ass blockbuster best picture.
Much the same way Titanic followed English Patient
ahhh the Titanic effect?
took the words right out of my mouth
the only question is, what will it be?
hmmm......
I think it'll be Snakes on a Plane.
on title alone
no doubt.
See ya later.
See ya in Austin.
Sweet!
A real life Simpsons intro. They said it couldn't be done. Lord, the day has come (via Waxy.org).
Is a wiki dedicated to The Muppets (via Micropersuasion).
Now there's a mashup I hadn't thought of. Anybody wonder how long these things take? These folks synced up the dialogue and everything.
My latest book review for the San Francisco Chronicle. I loved this book.
I so want rotating electrical outlets in my house. Like now (via BoingBoing).
I'd really like my Canadian Blogging Friends (CBFs) opinion on this here article in the NY Times Magazine last week about the cooperative ethos in Canadian music. Right on the mark or a lot of "Oh those nice folks to the north" stereotyping?
Canada, the floor is yours.
Four Brothers (2005): "60 minutes worth of plot should equal a 60 minute movie, shouldn't it?"
So it would seem I'm only a %5.47 web slut which is either 1) a blessed relief or 2) means I need to work harder to overcome my conversative midwestern upbringing.
You decide (via Violet Blue).
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
