Judy Jetson takes hair very seriously. I just called them to make an
appointment for a somewhat radical hair transformation and they grilled
me about what kind of hair I have now, exactly what I want done
color-wise, and then decided in the end that I should first come in for
a consultation to discuss what needs to be done and then, after my
stylist and I have come to an agreement, make an appointment.
Stay tuned for photos of my new ‘do.
Cinematical picked up on my post about a Netflix/Match.com dating service, and in the comments someone pointed out that it already exists: Matchflick!
And Netflix also has its Friends feature, which I have never actually
utilized so I don’t know anything about it. But I’m guessing it could
be extended to be more Friendster-like.
But someone else at Cinematical pointed out that they prefer not to
hang out with people who have the same movie taste as they do, because
they are usually pretentious snobs. I don’t specifically agree with
this, because I tend to lose respect for people when I hear they like a
movie I loathe, unless they can offer a good defense of their tastes.
But I can understand this guy’s impulse–I tend to not like
movie-obsessives in general, and prefer to hang out with people who
know about stuff I don’t know about. I guess the ideal person for me is
someone who knows how to talk intelligently about film but doesn’t feel
the need to do so all the time.
This is what stared back at me from my window a few moments ago:
It was enormous! This isn’t my photo, but one I ripped off the web. I didn’t have time to run and get my camera. My amateur researching suggests it may be a Golden Eagle. I have never seen such a big bird in my life. It was bigger than a racoon! And it just sat there staring at the ground, waiting for some poor squirrel or mouse to show itself and be devoured. It was a fearsome creature. I even went out and talked to my neighbor I’ve never met before about it. Her name is Jean. Her husband is an artist. She has seen lots of cardinals around lately. Somerville is being overrun by wildlife!
I guess I’ll never be the seafaring type, I am now nauseous just from
watching a boat get tossed around on the ocean in a few episodes of the
shakycam extravaganza World’s Deadliest Catch.
I would be hooked on the show if it didn’t make me want to vomit. And
I’m sorry if I set back the women’s movement a few decades when I say
that I felt a voracious urge to be the woman on the boat cooking up a
monstrous meal for these fishermen who are risking their lives every
day out on that deck. And I do mean a voracious urge, like I felt it in my ovaries.
I wonder what Steven Pinker would have to say about that.
One good idea: getting a Li’l Piston (fresh mozzarella) sandwich from Diesel.
Look at these pictures of a cool building being constructed in Japan. Apparently it’s going to be six floors of Prada.
Now that might be an online dating service I’d use:
My book suddenly turned epistolary halfway through and my interest has ground to a halt. Plus it’s starting to feel like it’s romanticizing depression and mental illness (oh and the Holocaust too), which irritates me. 
So I put it down and watched The Dreamlife of Angels. It was even better than I remember it being. And for awhile I was amazed that it was written by a man–it’s about a female friendship and it’s spot-on–but the more I think about it, I’m not so amazed. So many movies about women written by women turn into Beaches or Boys on the Side, but this one is nothing like that. And I think it may be because the writer has the advantage of not being a woman, of seeing women from the outside, in an environment that includes men and everything else. So many films by women assume a certain secret bond between women, which may or may not be real but which men have no access to regardless, and I think that outsider status in some ways helps a person to observe behavior better. Sometimes you’re too close to your own gender. Especially in film, which is a visual medium that necessarily stays on the surface of characters (unless you want some lame voiceover of a character’s throughts), someone with skill at looking from the outside rather than from within might create a better film character. Also, a man may be less concerned with creating “empowered representations of women”, which of course can lead to very problematic representations of women, but I think also might in some cases, such as this one, lead to more real characters. All too often in films about women you sense political agenda at work, and the characters aren’t allowed to just be characters. It can be oppressive. I’m trying to think of films written by women that don’t fall into this trap…the only one I can think of is the truly harrowing Hysterical Blindness. There must be more, but I’m drawing a blank.
This is not to say that all men write women better than women do, of course. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary all over Hollywood (and indie film too). Shitty stereotypes certainly still exist. But a good writer who is a man may have an edge. And likewise, women may have an edge in writing about men. I know that when I showed a male friend a rough draft of the novel I wrote, he said it was very hard to read because he saw himself in the male characters, and that the novel sees through all of the self-protective behaviors that he and most men engage in. Which could not have been a better compliment. But the female characters in the novel–a mess. I’m way too close to them, and it’s a shitty novel for that reason. I had to put it away (a year ago) and will get back to it eventually once I have more distance.
This is a very dull movie except for one thing: Tea Leoni. My god, the
woman shredded this film. I am too sick to put words together
intelligently at the moment, so I will let Cinetrix do it for me:
Yeah, what she said.
From the book I’m reading:
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
–T.S.
Eliot, The Four Quartets
It’s so nice to read for pleasure, with no guilt, now that the semester is over.
When I read about this list of the Top 100 Voices In The Movies (via Cinetrix),
I instantly thought “Jean Reno,” the owner of what to me is the sexiest
voice ever, anywhere, in the movies or not. And sure enough, he’s on
the list. But #83? Come on. That’s far too low (or is it high?) on the
list. But maybe the criteria are more complex than simply “sexiness.”
If I made a list of the sexiest voices in the movies, he’d be No. 1,
for sure. And Jimmy Stewart, Woody Allen, and Steve Buscemi would most
definitely not make the cut.
The Kiarostami documentary Close-Up is worth seeing just for the scene where some guys in a car stop to ask directions from a man holding two giant dead turkeys, feathers and all. He gives them directions and before they drive off he holds the birds up to the window and says “You need a turkey?”
These bizarre and mundane moments are typical (and so endearing) of Kiarostami–all of his films are have numerous scenes of people driving in cars. More action takes place driving to destinations than ever happens at the actual destinations. In fact, the camera usually stays behind in the car even after the passengers reach their destination. This happens in Close-Up, in the opening scene when a reporter and some policemen are being driven to a house to arrest a man who has been impersonating the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. They finally find the house (with the help of the turkey-man) and the reporter goes in alone, leaving the driver with the policemen, who make small talk about their families. Then they are re-joined by the reporter, and the police take the man away, and we stay behind with the reporter as he goes house to house looking for a tape recorder. We don’t even get to see the spectacle of the “event” taking place. This scenario happens in several Kiarostami films. It is a very non-Western approach to storytelling, and one might say that Kiarostami is much more interested in “the journey” than the destination, but even that seems like too Western an idea. The journeys he documents are not necessarily life-changing or even dramatic ones. He just seems to think that the important stuff is in these small moments, connections between people, even fleeting or mundane ones, even in the face of larger, more “important” events.
And this goes for more than just driving scenes. In The Wind Will Carry Us, what I remember more than anything is the endless string of scenes of the main character trying to get cell phone service. He climbs up a hill, and back down, and up again, over and over, getting and then losing reception repeatedly. He tries this for days, never really completing his important call. I still remember the sound of the rocks and gravel crunching under his feet as he climbs up and down, up and down. So much screen time is spent on this, an activity that would definitely have been cut out of any Hollywood movie, that it is more memorable to me than any spectacular action sequence in any big-budget film.
It takes some getting used to, but it’s a wonderful way to make movies. And despite the focus on nothingness, Kiarostami’s films are among the most cathartic I’ve ever seen. They all seem to involve characters enduring great emotional and existential suffering, a suffering that is ultimately unburdened in one way or another. In Close-Up, the Makhmalbaf impersonator (Sabzian) confesses his crimes and explains why he ingratiated himself into a family by pretending to be the filmmaker–his own broken family and poverty and failures in life, the acceptance and love and respect they gave him when they thought he was the filmmaker, which he had never experienced before–and Kiarostami’s compassionate questioning of the man comes across as possibly the most caring he has ever experienced in his life. Likewise, at the film’s end (SPOILER AHEAD), when Makhmalbaf himself meets him to pick him up from jail, it is a great catharsis when Sabzian stops in his tracks and bows his head and begins to cry when he sees his hero. “Don’t cry,” Makhmalbaf says, and hugs and kisses him. “Who are you today? You want be me? I’m tired of being me.” He then drives him home–on a motorbike, no less, so he gets to hug his hero for the whole ride. It is an ending that provides great compassion and relief, both for Sabzian and for the audience.
From the Village Voice:
Amen, Caryn, have you been reading my blog?
[...]
“Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Rom�o Dallaire,” follows the former United Nations general back to Rwanda a decade after the genocide he and his peacekeeping force were helpless to prevent. This harrowing film is more effective than last year’s overrated Oscar winner,
“Born Into Brothels,” which begins as a heart-wrenching vision of children in Calcutta’s red-light district but turns into a self-aggrandizing account of efforts by the film’s co-director, Zana Briski, to help them. The sight of impoverished children is always touching, but it doesn’t always make a good movie.[...]
There are still documentaries transformed by an artist’s vision, though. Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man” (opening in August) is built around video shot by Timothy Treadwell during 13 summers spent living among grizzlies, before he was eaten by one. Mr. Treadwell’s own hyperactive commentary would have made for something like a nature film on acid. Mr. Herzog’s editing and narration turn it into a study of Mr. Treadwell’s outsize, self-invented character, and of the motives behind such heroic posturing. In the flood of cheap-and-easy nonfiction films, “Grizzly Man” is something increasingly hard to find: a documentary with imagination.
I’ll let you know about the substance-to-style ratio at Silverdocs next month…
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