I watched Michael Clayton. I am Geo Clooney's biggest fan. OK no I'm not. I'm not even at the bottom of that list. I do think he's one of the most beautiful people on the planet, and I do have fantasies of him being drunk at the same bar as me... of course he'd have to be REALLY drunk, and the bar would have to be nearly empty-but whatever, it could happen. I'd pay for cab fair. Because as they say, "a pretty person that goes out with a ugly person gets at least cab fair..." OK so anyway, Geo aside that movie was mediocre at best. Tilda Swinton is a damn fine actor. And I got the feeling that the stakes were really high in this story. I felt it from the opening lines all the way to the end. "The stakes are high," I kept telling myself, "so pay attention to this movie." I couldn't get over Tilda Swinton's character-was there some sexism going on? Here's the thing-she was in this very real position of terrible power. She's the leader of some massive multi-national corporation. She couldn't really hack it. And you know this fact from the first moment you see her, crouching on the restroom floor with sweaty arm pits. You know she can not hack this. And then the movie...well moves, and it moves fast. You better not look down at the popcorn, just reach in and grab... because you will miss something... and then there's the fact that she was really frumpy looking and there are strange scenes where attention to her physical appearance is heightened as she is rehearsing the lines of an interview that she is going to be giving. Then, so you know it's an interview there are cuts back and forth between her putting on her nylon stockings, which are clearly business and not pleasure, and her in the conference room in front of a camera talking about how she is ready for this position of terrible power. Geo is a card playin' "fixer" for a law firm who drives a fancy car (that belongs to the firm) dealing with his business (a bar he tried to buy with his junky brother) who has a son from a previous marriage, and basically his life is falling apart around him. The stakes are high, don't forget this. But I never really could figure out which stakes were really the highest, it was like doing ten huge lines of cocaine and then trying to organize an office party. You know that there are a whole lot of office politics and you have to keep all of these in mind as you plan the seating arrangements, and you also feel like it's really important and it has to be done RIGHT NOW, but you can't prioritize, you can't sort it out, and it's going SO Fast. SO FAST. That's how that movie was. I didn't ever really figure out what these stakes were. I never quite got why it was so tense. I didn't figure out why George Clooney gets in that cab at the end of it and slowly a smile spreads across his face. Oh I mean I get that he calls Tilda's character out on some serious broken laws (murder and attempted murder to name a couple). I understand that he pulled his brother in on the bust, thereby paying his brother back for his fuck-ups. It just didn't mesh well with me. All of these things that wrapped up in the end, just didn't match the feeling throughout the rest of the movie. The intrigue, the fast, and deliberately confusing pace, the quick cut, MTV editing... none of it matched the actual pace of the story. So I guess I finished the movie wanting to take a nap, but not really understanding why.
I re watched Hustle and Flow. Now THERE's a quality movie. Unsentimental, but so so so so touching, and real and clever and original, but not so original that it's unfamiliar. I really like that movie, and you know, it's hard out here for a pimp. Seriously. GREAT movie. What I love about it is that this guy really is a pimp, and he is a fucking pimp, an ass hole, he beats his bitches. There's no glamorizing it. And the women are not glamorized either. But they are humanized, and that is the key to a really great story. I can't say enough that I think the best stories are the stories about people who are actual. And Terence whooseewhatsit is a damn fine actor and put so much into that character. I really think that movie is one of the best movies of the last fifteen years. And I wonder if the fact that it's about black people, or if it's because it's about poor black people, but it didn't really make it as huge as it should have. Although it was critically acclaimed. and the song won an academy award. I believe that was the same year as Crash and Brokeback Mountain... Fucking CRASH won best movie-what a JOKE was that... such a horrible waste of celluloid...
so the other thing I have done this weekend was play on the internet. So what kinds of things are on the internet that I want to share with all my fans? YOu know all thousand gazillion of you reading this blog? Do you know, the other day I was walking down the street and someone came running up to me saying "JESUS LANDSCAPING OH MY GAWD!" and she asked for my autograph... she even asked my to take a picture with her. What else could I do? I said, "well, I'll see what I can do"
internet trash:
The marketing campaign for the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall has hit the streets. It's horrendous. OK not really. Initially it's really clever. Unfortunately when you figure out that it's a campaign for this movie, you are truly disappointed. Well I was. Here's the campaign:
So these billboards are posted everywhere. ANd if you go to the website that is posted beneath them, you are taken to a really poorly written blog about some girl that dumped this guy and how he is over her and how much he hates her. You can tell it's some sort of mass marketing thing, but you have to keep searching to figure it out. A LOT OF HYPE for this:
Plot synopsis:
Guy gets dumped by girl- presumably Sarah Marshall. He decides to go Hawaii to forget her (the movie is called Forgetting Sarah Marshall) but she ends up there too, with her new boyfriend. It's a comedy, if you hadn't guessed.
At any rate, I know I shouldn't judge a picture by its marketing campaign, but I gotta tell you that if it needs this much covert marketing... well there you have it, the marketing is covert for a reason: whoever is producing this movie paid a really good ad agency for it. And this ad agency must have seen the movie and figured that it would be best to be covert about it. Since the movie sucks, let's be really creative and covertly bring people to it.
I could be really wrong. Maybe it's just a fantastic movie. But really, I'm not interested in watching more movies about a guy who's heart has been broken by a girl and then an hour and some minutes of some adolescent man-child basically throwing a temper tantrum about it. It's not funny. It's not clever. My advice to the boys out there writing these scripts is: unless you're Woody Allen, and my guess is you are NOT, you might want to tell a different story.
Honestly I'm just pretty much sick of seeing movies by and about boys. Women aren't doing it enough. And often when they get the chance to do it, it ends up being by and about boys anyway (Diane Lane in the past five/ten years is a good example of this). I'm guessing the women aren't to blame for this. OR at least entirely to blame for this. There are amazing women out there writing and acting, and I'm sure that there are even some amazing women out there that are directing, producing and editing...but no one's giving them ad campaigns like I hate Sarah Marshall That campaign cost money.
So I spend a lot of my time impatiently between movies about women. I'm annoyed by this. So on this I agree with the poor man-child who wrote this movie: I also hate sarah marshall.
Also this weekend: I work with adults with developmental disabilities. One of my clients went sky diving yesterday. I am really proud of him. How cool is that?!
No comments:
Post a Comment