bitterisataste . . . words and ramblings . . . v.6.0

Monday, January 28, 2008

this entry brought to you by wolfmother, "joker and the thief"

THE GOOD

Fried Green Tomatoes I'm going to come off as a "man who doesn't get it" in my review here of Fried Green Tomatoes, but I went into it knowing that it was a movie about womanhood and self-empowerment, and I have no problem with that. If I ever have a problem with these kinds of movies, however, it's that they too often start leaning towards schmaltz and forcing the viewer to feel a certain way, rather than just letting it be. Example: In the first third of the movie, one of the main characters, Ruth, marries a wife abuser, and must be rescued by her peppy friend Idgie. We know this guy is a wife beater because he is the epitomal wife beater, glowering and villain-like, who might as well be put on a stage of a talk show and saying "I wanted some goddamn cookies! Of course I hit her around!" The movie's set up is that Kathy Bates' character, Evelyn Couch, is married to a neglecting husband, goes to a nursing home and befriends an eccentric, possibly senile, but kind and friendly old woman who spins a yarn of her friends from when she was a young woman in the first quarter of the century in the South. The story of Idgie Thurgoode and Ruth Jamison are so inspiring that Evelyn finds herself a completely different person, finding fire in herself she never knew was there. The problem is that I found all this stuff unnecessary. It's a hoot to see an empowered Kathy Bates run into the car of two snotty brats and chortle the immortal "Face it, girls, I'm older and better insured." But these sections of the movie seem to exist solely to pander to the audience. The old woman's yarn is of two old friends, one prim and proper who would grow to be married to the aforementioned wife beater (Ruth), the other a tomboy who would turn into a drinking, cussing rapscallion who spends her nights going from bar to bar (Idgie). The two of them find one another again in adulthood and save each other from their miserable lives by opening up a town-renown restaurant. The story then takes an unexpectedly dark turn when Ruth's wife-beating ex-husband ends up murdered, and their black friend is blamed for it because of racist motivations. The final act involves the two women getting their friend free and out of jail, and this story by itself is powerful and satisfying enough that it doesn't need the framework of an old lady using her story of women empowerment to empower a down-and-out friend. Yes, it further circulates the idea of sisterhood, and this case, sisterhood from one generation to another, but it bogs the movie down in self-importance and schmaltz. I enjoyed Friend Green Tomatoes, but would have enjoyed it more if it felt confident enough of the story in the past to feel it didn't need the unnecessary present-day stuff.

Anna Paquin I came across a picture of her recently, and apparently she's shooting a movie right now where she's blonde. And it got me thinking about her and I thought, my god, she's turned out to be a beautiful woman, hasn't she? Sure, she's got a noticeable gap in her teeth, but she has easily a pair of the sexiest lips ever.

Alicia Silverstone Speaking of hot actresses with sexy lips, what the hell happened to Alicia Silverstone? After a quick look at her IMDB page, it appears that she's still working-- but I can't remember a damned thing she's been in since Batman & Robin. There was definitely a point in the mid-90s where I thought she was getting overexposed and didn't think she was hot enough to back up that overexposure. But there was indeed a time when I loved her just as much as everyone else, and I wonder why she disappeared.

Psychonauts We'd previously owned Psychonauts when it first came out, but Michelle got around to playing it before I did. I watched her play the majority of it, and even played the really hard segments for her-- so by the time she beat it, I'd seen about 75% of it, and played about 10% of it-- I was no longer in the mood to play. Then we went by Blockbuster and I looked in the used games, and found Psychonauts for five bucks. This is the best 5 bucks I've ever spent. Psychonauts is one of the most hilarious, most likeable video games I've ever played, and it's been a sheer delight going through it again. If you can find it and you own an X-Box, pick it up.

Fan-Made video for Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage" Ordinarily I don't like videos where somebody edits, say, a movie, so that it fits music. I think it's one step above those idiotic videos you see on Youtube of Dragon Ball Z edited to "fit" a song. But this one's an exception. When I heard the song "My Body is a Cage" off of Arcade Fire's second album, Neon Bible, I didn't exactly think of a duel between two gunslingers in the old west, but some genius edited the climax of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West so that it goes along with the song perfectly-- it's nearly tear educing, and both elements perfectly complement the other. Definitely worth watching, and exactly what the Internet is for.

THE BAD

Heath Ledger's death I'd only seen Heath Ledger in one movie (well, technically two-- he played a son in The Patriot, but I absolutely hated that movie and can't even remember him being in it), and that was Brokeback Mountain. And I loved Brokeback Mountain, and loved him in it. The promotional images of his Joker from the upcoming The Dark Knight were absolutely transfixing, and I would have put him on a short list of actors who I most looked forward to seeing more of. I say short list because I'm not much for the kind of movie viewing where you watch movies for specific actors-- I'm more of the kind of guy who sees a movie for a director. With Ledger though, I was genuinely excited to follow his career. And then, well, you know what happened. Except that nobody apparently knows what happened. It seems so far to be an accident, and if that's true, it's immeasurably sad. If you think about it, it's been a long time since a famous person has died where they were in his position-- young (in fact, exactly two months younger than myself), and right at the place where the whole world was opened to him and he could essentially have any career he wanted. Who was the last person that this happened to? River Phoenix?

Tom Cruise frothing at the mouth talking about Scientology If you have even a shred of respect for Tom Cruise, you will completely lose it when you watch this video-- and although it's 8 minutes long, you have to see it. There was apparently some sort of award ceremony for Scientology-- I don't really understand why or what for, but I'm not supposed to-- and Tom Cruise won "Most Awesomest Scientologist Lifetime Achievement Award in the Field of Tom Cruisey-ness" or whatever, and this was the video they played before he accepted it. And it's fucking frightening. Even if you completely ignore all the bizarre, nonsensical, Scientology-specific shit, it's still a very disturbing video. Even if you switch any specific term that you don't understand-- say, "SP"-- and replace it with a term used in mainstream religion-- say, "Jesus"-- you'll be baffled at how Cruise cannot create a complete thought using his brain and mouth muscles that doesn't ramble and go on several different directions all at once without coming to any end. It's 8 minutes long, and the only message you can get from Tom Cruise's insane ramblings that is a complete and cohesive thought is "Scientologists are superior to other people, and I have no problems with letting people know that." Then when you add back in all the Scientology garbledy-gook, it takes on a whole new layer of freakiness. Check out the statistic at the end of the video, when Tom Cruise's grinning visage takes the stage-- it says something like "20,000,000,000,000 HUMANS FACE-TALKED! TOTAL GLEEBLOR HAS ALMOST BEEN ACHIEVED!" It's like listening to the rules of Blurnsball, a fictional sport on the show Futurama, which was explained by the writers was set-up so that no human being could possibly understand it-- only real people believe it. The fact that The Church of Scientology has tried to suppress the video knows that their inner workings are shameful, and that must mean they know they're full of shit. Otherwise wouldn't they want other people to see this to be interested and also become Scientologists?

Public bathrooms with no toilet paper I don't use public restrooms very often, but at work, since I'm there 8 hours a day, I tend to get comfortable enough to drop my loads. I normally compulsively check to see if there's toilet paper, but earlier this week for some reason I didn't check, and guess what? No toilet paper. Now, if the store hadn't been open, I'd've just hunched over, opened the door, and tried to dash over to the paper towels (the other stall didn't have toilet paper either) and back, hoping nobody else would walk in. But the store was already open, so anybody could potentially walk in, not just the 8 or so of us who work overnight. So I sat there. For twenty minutes. Waiting for someone to come in so I could ask them for a little help. I was absolutely miserable. It's not that I minded sitting on my ass for twenty minutes, but being without toilet paper is like being without gas when you're out in the middle of nowhere. It's just frightening, you feel like you're trapped.

The New American Gladiators I don't really like sports, never did, so I guess it's not all that surprising that I was never into American Gladiators when I was a teen. I remember I watched the show more than once. I definitely liked it the first time I saw it. But after a few episodes, it started to seem like watching Double Dare on a regular basis. Remember Double Dare? At first it was awesome watching kids get slimed. Then after a while you realized the physical challenges and the final endurance race basically never changed, and basically you were watching the exact same thing over and over again, and you found yourself only caring about whether or not you could get questions right-- and caring about Double Dare for the questions seemed against the point. American Gladiators got the same kind of fatigue-- there was only a certain amount of games the contestants could play, except there was no question segment for you to play at home, so you were just watching the exact same thing week to week, only with different faces on the contestants. I don't see how the new American Gladiators could possibly keep any momentum going for an entire season due to this exact problem, although I haven't actually seen it.

Celest and the cat For some reason, Celest has got it in her head for the past few weeks to constantly molest the cat. At about the age of 4, Sliver started getting really mean to her and would randomly swipe at her and growl-- this wouldn't happen often, but it was all of the sudden and there'd be no warning. Weeks would go by without anything, and then suddenly he'd swipe and Celest wouldn't even be paying attention to him. Well that hasn't happened in a long time, and the cat has been surprisingly tolerant of her. And she has suddenly become obsessed with him. It seems like every time I turn around she's trying to pick him up and hug him, or she's leaning on him, or etc. It's obnoxious! I know he's adorable, but leave the goddamn cat alone!
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with love from CRS @ 10:14 AM

Monday, January 28, 2008

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