11 March, 2010 | Comments
The difference between my generation and the young ones today? We had The Lost Boys. They have Twilight.
RIP Corey Haim. The 80s icons are dropping fast. Makes me feel old before my time.
Archive for the 'film' Category
26 January, 2010 | Comments
It’s that time again – I must dust off the academic portion of my dissertation and begin working on it again. Chapter 1: Fight Club. You all know I love Fight Club. It’s a brilliant indictment of capitalist-patriarchy and the damage it does to men. That’s not the dominant interpretation of the film, but that’s how I read it. All of the issues in Fight Club are relevant to women as well, even if on the surface it’s very ‘male.’ Anyway, the next month will be spent writing the novel and finishing this chapter on Fight Club. How I’m going to do all of this work on top of teaching remains to be seen.
Perhaps in related news, my novel is becoming increasingly violent. It’s always had shootings and bombings, but you can distance yourself while writing about that kind of violence. Now I have beatings and torture, which is very up-close-and-personal. At first I found it difficult to write about such things because I was disturbed that these ideas and images existed in my mind, but now I sort of enjoy it. The people being beaten and tortured are really vile, so they deserve what they get (think Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’). Because of that, it’s sort of cathartic. I’m not sure how I’ll reconcile the feminist ideals of my novel with the violence, except to say: Why should women have to play nice? It certainly hasn’t gotten us very far.
25 August, 2009 | Comments
I finally went to see it tonight. Awesome, totally awesome! This summer has been terrible for movies, at least in my view, but Inglourious Basterds is spectacular. The best movie I’ve seen in a long time. I loved every second of it. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, obviously – it’s extremely violent (I covered my eyes during the scalpings) and the rewriting of Jewish history may be offensive to some (as in this piece by Daniel Mendelsohn from Newsweek), but I really felt the film and its ideas were exhilarating, particularly in a year that provided us with that Nazi sob story otherwise known as The Reader. I thought Brad Pitt would be in the whole film, but he was maybe in a third of it. My favorite thread in the film was the Jewish woman living in Paris who owned the cinema. That part was great.
I couldn’t possibly write a review of it now – there’s too much to process and think about – but I wanted to post this because the film has gotten some bad reviews, including one from that dope at the Guardian who gave it one star. One star! What movie did this guy watch? Don’t let bad and mixed reviews scare you off. If you like Tarantino films and if you’re in the mood for a WWII Jewish revenge fantasy with lots of subtitles, then you won’t regret going.
24 August, 2009 | 3 Comments
I went to see The Time Traveler’s Wife tonight. What I really wanted to see was Inglorious Basterds, but I didn’t feel like hanging around Leicester Square for nearly two hours waiting for it to start. I thought since Eric Bana is in The Time Traveler’s Wife I’d enjoy it, even if it were cheesy, but I was wrong. In this horrific movie, even the talented and beauteous Eric Bana comes off dull, charmless and without any sex appeal. Who thought that was possible? He even spends a lot of time naked, but I still almost fell asleep at least twice. The guy who directed this film should be banned from Hollywood forever.
Bana and Rachel McAdams have zero chemistry in this film. McAdams just isn’t a leading lady in my view. She has no star quality at all. I can imagine her on television, but she can’t carry a film. The casting isn’t the only problem though. The story’s premise is just ridiculous. I’m perfectly willing to buy into time travel within a story, but it makes no sense here and has no internal logic within the story. Back to the Future was nutty but it made sense as a story. This doesn’t.
7 August, 2009 | 1 Comment
“His name is Blane? That’s a major appliance, not a name.”
Our 80s icons are dying – first Michael Jackson, now John Hughes. Does this mean I’m getting old? If you weren’t a teenager in America in the 1980s, then you can’t possibly understand the significance of John Hughes’s movies for so many of my generation. I wasn’t allowed to see Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club when they first came out. Were they rated R? Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Some Kind of Wonderful were movies I went to see repeatedly. So many of us girls wanted to be like Andie in Pretty in Pink. I still listen to that soundtrack. The Some Kind of Wonderful soundtrack is excellent as well – a real favorite. It was like a Golden Age of teen movies – nothing in the 1990s or 2000s can compare. And female stars like Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy actually looked like real girls, not the peroxide plastic Barbie dolls of today.
4 May, 2009 | 4 Comments
Tonight in the Times I read a story about the murder in Pakistan of a well-known singer, Ayman Udas. She was murdered by her brothers, apparently for bringing disgrace upon her family by divorcing, remarrying and singing on television. [Here is a clip of her singing on YouTube.] This murder happened in Peshawar, an area that is increasingly being taken over by the Taliban. According to Radio Free Europe, “In January, a dancer’s bullet-ridden body was left in the center of Swat Valley’s capital of Mingora — not far from where Udas grew up — with a note warning locals that “un-Islamic voices” will no longer be tolerated.” The article also states that other female performers are being threatened.
While this story is yet further proof of the troubling situation in Pakistan, it also puts so-called “honor killings” back in the news, since Ayman Udas was murdered by her brothers for disgracing the family’s honor. I’ve written many times before about honor killings, yet no matter how many of these stories I read, I still cannot understand the psychology behind this practice. While it’s obvious that human beings are capable of the most horrific acts, it seems to go against human nature to murder your own family members. Sure, anywhere in the world you’ll find parents killing their children, children killing their parents, siblings killing each other, etc. But these crimes are aberrations, not part of a persistent cultural practice like “honor killings,” where teenage girls and adult women are murdered by male family members. I just cannot fathom the hatred and dehumanization of women that has to exist in order for two brothers to shoot their sister in the chest three times – which is what happened to Ayman Udas. And she’s not alone.
In doing some research for this post, I came across a story about 16-year-old Naile Erdas, who was raped and became pregnant. After she gave birth, she returned home from the hospital and was shot dead by her brother. In January, a Turkish court sentenced her entire family to life imprisonment for participating in this act, which is one of the harshest punishments ever for an “honor killing.” The average sentence for an “honor killing” is normally six months, so I hope this case sets a precedent.
19 March, 2009 | 5 Comments
Very sad news about Natasha Richardson’s death. When I heard the news I couldn’t help but think about my trip to the theatre last October to see her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, perform in The Year of Magical Thinking. That play, a searing one-woman show, had Redgrave portraying a mother struggling with grief over her adult daughter’s death (based on the life of Joan Didion). Now the same exact thing has happened to Redgrave in real life. The similarities are striking.
I never saw Richardson on the stage, though I remember liking Widow’s Peak, which also starred Mia Farrow and is a nice light-hearted Irish film from the early nineties. Worth checking out.
22 February, 2009 | 8 Comments
Since it’s the Oscars tonight, I thought I’d post a link to this article “Don’t Give an Oscar to The Reader.” The author makes a number of strong points. I didn’t completely dislike The Reader, but there are many things about it that are disturbing in terms of how it handles the Holocaust. The article I linked to places The Reader into a genre of “Holocaust revisionism,” which is along the same continuum as Holocaust denial. Very disturbing.
I know someone who is from a cultural background that’s, well, let’s just say hostile to Jewish people. This person saw The Reader and told me that he didn’t understand what the big deal is about the Holocaust. He said that anyone who participated in the Holocaust was just doing their duty for their country, even if it was wrong, and that they shouldn’t be blamed for it now. This person thought The Reader was just a nice romantic film. This encounter I had really highlighted the danger of a film like The Reader, which I think is irresponsible in so many ways. And I’ve had more than one debate with people about whether Kate Winslet’s character in the film was a Nazi. **Spoiler** She says in the film that she joined the SS and then took a job as a prison camp guard. She’s a Nazi! Why is it hard for so many people who see the film to admit this? She built relationships with Jewish women in the camp, then sent them to their deaths at Auschwitz. Plus she let 300 innocent women and children burn to death inside of a church. There is no way to rationalize these actions. There just isn’t. Many years later she felt no guilt about this whatsoever. She’s a monstrous person.
8 February, 2009 | 2 Comments
I went to see The Reader this weekend. I don’t feel like writing a review, but during one of the *many* scenes where Kate Winslet appears semi-nude, the woman sitting behind me whispered to her husband: “Look, she has stretch marks!”
Sigh.
4 February, 2009 | 3 Comments
I have a long day of writing ahead of me and I really needed to laugh this morning. Voila! The Christian Bale rant that I wrote about yesterday has been turned into a dance mix. As the Guardian says, “It’s the expletive-strewn nervous breakdown you can dance to!” OMG, it’s hilarious! Be warned about the language…
Guardian link: Christian Bale’s Rant Is More Embarrassing for McG
3 February, 2009 | 26 Comments
I hereby retract my crush on Christian Bale. What a complete psycho! Listen to this audio tape of him going absolutely crazy on the set of “Terminator Salvation.” [Be warned this is laced with mega profanity.] The person he’s screaming at is the cinematographer, who screwed up a shot. Apparently, this happened just days before Bale was accused of assaulting his mother and sister – a charge I didn’t believe at the time, but now I do.
If anyone I worked with talked to me like that, I’d walk out and never return. Sure glad I don’t work in Hollywood with these a**holes.
1 February, 2009 | 5 Comments
Matt Damon is going to be appearing in a 4th Bourne movie. Yay! And once again, he’s trashing James Bond:
“They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people…He’s repulsive.”
Oh Matt, when you talk like that you make my heart swoon!
21 January, 2009 | 1 Comment
Since I’ve been thinking a lot about American power this week – the reality of it, not speeches filled with lovely rhetoric – I decided to watch Syriana, a movie I quite like. I’ve included the trailer below. If you haven’t seen this film, I highly recommend it. It might be a nice counter-balance to what’s in the news this week. [BTW, not to be completely shallow, but I normally do not find George Clooney attractive at all. But put 30 pounds on him and give him a beard et voila...that's a George I can appreciate!]
9 December, 2008 | 13 Comments
I have been a bit stressed out lately, what with having four jobs and working full-time on the PhD. [After this week, I'll only have three jobs. Hurrah!] Still, I think breaks are important, so on Sunday I took a break to see The Baaeder-Meinhof Complex. A two-and-a half-hour blood-soaked German movie about terrorism might not be the ideal way to spend Sunday afternoon, but I have a particular interest in the themes of this film, given what my novel is about.
Well, what an amazing film! I had never heard of the Baader Meinhof Group or Red Army Faction, a left-wing “urban guerrilla” group that committed terrorist acts (bombings, assassinations, kidnappings) and bank robberies in West Germany primarily throughout the 1970s. The group was formed by student radicals amidst the political turmoil of the late 60s, who were against the Vietnam war, Western imperialism, capitalism, etc, etc. They were an extremely violent bunch — from the film, it didn’t seem that peaceful protest à la Martin Luther King was even considered as an option. It was all about guns and bombs.
There are some who worry that this film glamorizes the Baader-Meinhof group and thus terrorism itself, while others in Germany have said this is the first film that actually hasn’t glamorized the Baader-Meinhof group and shows them as heartless, savage killers. Since I don’t know the history or context of all this, I can only say that to me, it did glamorize them to an extent (there can be no doubt about that), but this is balanced by horribly graphic scenes of the group machine gunning people to death and shooting them in the head. Only an extremely sick person would find that glamorous or appealing.
On a sort of related note, after doing some research into this film, I am now acquainted with the term Prada Meinhof, which refers to the way left-wing figures (Che Guevera, the Baader-Meinhof gang) have become “chic,” with their images emblazoned on t-shirts and worn by morons who are slaves to capitalist consumer culture yet think they’re somehow revolutionary. [See this Guardian article from 1999: Come the Revolution, We'll All Be in Combats.]
Part of what makes this film both fascinating and disturbing is that some of the views of the group are appealing, at least to those of a liberal persuasion. [And for the record, a great many of their views, not to mention their actions, are morally repugnant and indefensible.] During the 70s, the group had widespread support in West Germany. I found myself agreeing with some of their views – the anger they felt resonated with me on some level. This was more at the beginning of the film, before they murdered innocent people and started robbing banks to fund themselves. Much of what they were so angry about are issues that are extremely relevant right now — war, Western imperialism, capitalism, globalization, etc. It’s interesting to juxtapose the reaction of people in the late sixties/early seventies to these issues (anger, passion, protest, action) with the reaction of Americans and Europeans to the same issues today (complacency, apathy, ignorance and insane adoration for middle-of-the-road Barack Obama, who is heralded as a “left-wing” hero and savior). It’s sad how far we haven’t come.
4 August, 2008 | 6 Comments
In this edition: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Blindness, Revolutionary Road
I don’t always write enough about books on this site, which is strange, given how obsessed I am with all things literary. I think I feel that if I write about books, I have to provide insightful commentary and a proper review. That’s too much pressure and too much work. I’m doing a lit PhD, so literary analysis is indeed work for me. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I just have no interest in writing book reviews. I’m not sure why. I like reviewing films and plays, but not books. Perhaps books are too personal to me. I would rather write about my response to a book, rather than reviewing the book itself, if that makes sense. So I will just write about books in a different way and see if that works.
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I have just started reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I was inspired by the recent article in the Times, Ten Things You Need to Know about Haruki Murakami, who they label “the coolest writer in the world today.” I was in the mood for some good lit in translation, since I feel like being transported to a foreign locale right now. I want to see the world through eyes that are far different from mine. I’ve read the first chapter so far and I’m hooked, though we’ll see if the whole 600 pages sustain my interest. (I am hopelessly picky about books.) The only Japanese fiction I’ve ever read is a few books by Banana Yoshimoto, who was quite trendy and popular when I was younger. If I remember correctly, it was her book Kitchen that I read and perhaps something else. So I’m excited to explore a bit of the Japanese literary landscape.
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One of my favorite novels of all time is Blindness by José Saramago. When I heard recently that this book had been made into a film, I felt disappointed. This book cannot be translated to film. This is a dark, twisted book filled with depravity. In an unnamed country, one by one all of the citizens begin to go blind. Eventually, everyone is blind and society descends into anarchy and chaos. It is highly allegorical and surreal. It’s extremely difficult to read not just because of the writing style, but because of the subject matter. You can take the bare bones of the narrative and create a screenplay from that, but the soul of the book would be lost. This book does not belong on the screen, it belongs in the mind of the reader. Saramago refused to sell the rights for years. The LA Times quotes him as saying, “Cinema destroys imagination.” Unfortunately, he changed his mind. The director of the film “reports that he softened the film’s disturbing (but not graphic) scenes of sexual violence after ‘the audiences didn’t react well at the first test screening; some people even walked out.’” Yeah, well, that’s not surprising.
14 July, 2008 | 2 Comments
I went to see this film, which is the true story of Barbara Daly Baekeland, who married the heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune. The morally bankrupt American socialite’s big claim to fame was having an incestuous relationship with her homosexual son and then being murdered by him. I’m pretty sure the subtitle of this film is, “Be grateful your family isn’t this crazy.”
14 April, 2008 | 7 Comments
Today I saw the acclaimed Coen brothers film at the cinema. I know, I’m behind the times. Here is my review:
Good flippin’ grief.
I think that about covers it. I mean, come on. What the heck was that all about? While I admire the skills of the actors and filmmakers, I think it was a deeply flawed film overall. More specifically, it featured a deeply flawed narrative. Actually, I would describe it as an anti-narrative. This review from the Washington Post is one of the only negative reviews out there (and I think it’s right on). I don’t understand the universal acclaim for this film at all. I could write more about it, but the whole experience has drained me and I’d just rather forget about it. One thing is for sure — tonight I will have nightmares about this face (and haircut):
Oy vey.
[tags]No Country for Old Men[/tags]
28 March, 2008 | 1 Comment
I went to see this movie tonight in Leicester Square, which cost £12.50 (that’s $25 — no joke. There’s an interesting article in the Times today called Goodbye to Rip-Off Britain, which forecasts a recession coming and an end to these insane prices — could it be?).
This Boleyn movie has gotten pretty bad reviews, so I don’t know why I wanted to see it. I felt like a costume drama, I guess. To my surprise, it really wasn’t bad. I was engrossed throughout. Though this is not a serious historical epic, it does remind one of the way women in the upper classes were pimped out by their families like whores — and that’s no exaggeration. Women were used, abused and then tossed aside like trash or, in the case of Anne Boleyn, murdered. [Of course, this still happens. Lady Di, anyone?] The 500 years that have passed between now and then have somehow lessened the horror of Henry VIII’s reign, which I don’t understand. Henry VIII is like a cartoon character to us now. In the gift shops around London, I see Henry VIII stuffed toys and finger puppets being sold for children. Would you let your kid play with a stuffed toy of Saddam Hussein? Frankly, I don’t see much difference.
Many of the reviews have discounted this film as a bodice-ripping romance. While any movie with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson doing English accents can’t be taken entirely seriously, a film that features scenes of rape is not romantic. But then I guess not all film critics recognize rape when they see it.
14 December, 2007 | Comments
Since Atonement has finally been released Stateside, I’d like to link to my review of it from when it opened here in October. Atonement got rave reviews in Britain, so much so that I hesitated to post my own review, a review that complimented the film’s strengths but considered it to be a big failure overall.
I predicted that the American critics would respond in the same glowing way that the British did and they have for the most part. The film has also received seven Golden Globe nominations. While most American reviews have been positive, reviews in the New York Times and the New Yorker have been much more critical and expressed views similar to mine. Thank heavens for that. The deep flaws in this film should be blindingly obvious to any seasoned film critic.
7 October, 2007 | 4 Comments
I saw Atonement yesterday. Finally, a major film that opens over here before it does in the States. I’ve never read the novel upon which this film is based, nor any novel by Ian McEwan, though I did rub shoulders with him once when he was awarded an honorary doctorate at one of my many college graduations.
As I watched the film, I was thoroughly engrossed by it. I’m not a fan of Keira Knightley, but she was *almost* tolerable in this. The male lead, James McAvoy, is someone I am not familiar with, but he reminds me of a young Russell Crowe. That, my friends, is a good thing.
The first hour of Atonement is exquisitely done. It’s absolutely fantastic to watch and it’s ingenious in the way scenes are played from one character’s perspective and then re-played from another point-of-view. This first part takes place on a lovely English country estate and besides admiring all aspects of the production, I experienced major home furnishings lust.
The next part of the film takes place during WWII on the battlefields of France and in the hospitals and air raid shelters of London. Like so many films and stories about the War, it descends into sappiness and melodrama, which was a disappointment after the outstanding first hour. I resent it when filmmakers try to capitalize on the audience’s strong emotions surrounding WWII. That’s lazy film-making.
