Silkwood

I finished Silkwood!

I want a prize.  I'm way too exhausted to write anything remotely coherent about this film, but it's good.  See it.  It's so depressing... but see it.  Cher plays a lesbian.  Kurt Russel cries.  Meryl Streep has the worst hair in the entire world.  

But it's a very good, very passionate film.  I don't know how Nora Ephron wrote this and Bewitched.  They're totally different animals.  She's got way more depth than I thought.  And this is a Mike Nichols, Meryl Streep collaboration, they work together a lot and they're brilliant.

I'm in Idaho for the weekend for my cousin's wedding.  I'm supposed to be watching Falling in Love next.  Not sure when that's going to be happening though.

Meryl Streep is not dead

I'm not seeing Mamma Mia today, even though a friend called and asked me to come.  There's a concert today at the Capitol and I'm going to that instead.  The things I do for live music.

About thirty seconds after my friend hung up I got a call from her boyfriend.

"Lena," he said.  "I could have sworn Meryl Streep was dead, but she's in Mamma Mia."

"What?" I said.  "She's not dead."

"Really?  I thought she was dead."

"No."

"I thought she was like eighty and had died a long time ago."

"No, she's only fifty nine."

"Oh."  He might have said something after this but I was giggling too hard to hear it.  "Well thanks for straightening me out."

"No problem.  Thanks for making my day."

Sophie's Choice

Another one of those 'if I don't write about this now I never will' posts.  

I really don't have much to say about Sophie's Choice other than I finished it, but I'll make something up.

This movie reminded me of two things - The Great Gatsby and Romeo and Juliet.  We had to read Fitzgerald's classic 'Lost Generation' novel the summer before junior year.  I remember finishing it and saying "wait what?  Did that just happen?  That sucked."  It's a beautiful book, but wow it's tragic.  And, we as readers, are along for the ride.  The book is on autopilot, all the characters do is react.  There is very little thinking or active participation on the part of the players.  All the events seem to be predetermined.  Now this could be viewed as really sloppy on the part of the writer, but Fitzgerald pulls it off.  He's spent enough pages of narrative pouring life into his characters that even the fucked up journey they end up on is believable.  Sophie's Choice is the same way.  In my opinion, it was more the work of the acting than the writing, but the characters work for where they end up.  And now that I think of it, the characters kind of run parallel too.  Stingo (played by Peter MacNicol) is Nick Carraway, while Nathan and Sophie (Kevin Klien and Meryl Streep) are Gatsby and Daisy, their emotional issues and past experiences make up Tom and the rest of the characters.  Kind of a stretch, but it sort of works.  That's interesting.  

And Romeo and Juliet, not because of the love story, though I guess there are similarities.  Every time I see Romeo and Juliet, and this is the genius of Shakespeare, I have to remind myself of the end.  I want them to make it.  I want Juliet to wake up in time to stop Romeo from stabbing himself, even through I know the ending.  Sorry about the spoilers there, but really, if you don't know the plot of Romeo and Juliet, you need to get out more.  Sophie's Choice is doomed from the first moments, we all know it.  But I'm still rooting for a happy ending.  That's why it was so hard to watch, it's so painful.  It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't been seen.  This movie is incredible.

For me, it wasn't incredible until close to the end.  Sophie finally starts talking about her choice, I don't want to give it away.  The look on her face...  There's so much raw pain in that look, it was hard to watch.  Meryl won an Oscar for this one, she deserved it.  And not just for the Polish accent.

I went to go see Gonzo: The Life and Works of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson with my parents tonight.  It's an interesting film, I liked how much time they spent on his writing techniques and styles.  And Johnny Depp narrates.  After the movie we walked outside and saw this giant parade making its way down the sidewalk.  They were all following a rather ragamuffin brass marching band who were later identified as being from Rhode Island.  We followed them for about a block and I stopped with a group of people I'd never met before.  

"What are they doing?" a girl wearing a Michigan t-shirt asked me.  I explained what someone else in the crowd had told me.  "Oh," she grinned at me.  The band stopped and a member attempted to shout directions to their show over the noise of traffic.

"I don't know if you know sir," another girl next to me called.  "But you have a monkey on your face."  And sure enough, the guy playing the snare set was wearing a gorilla mask.  She turned to me.  "Do you have any glue?"

I stared in horror.

"For my shoe," she said and showed me where the heel was coming off.  "I've been walking weird all night.  People keep asking if I'm drunk.  No, my shoe's just broken."

"Oh," I said, quite relieved she wasn't asking me for strange drugs I'd only heard of in a documentary about children in Bagdad.  "No, no glue.  Sorry."

I'm three minutes into Silkwood and all I can say is whoever did Meryl Streep's hair should probably go cry in a corner.

FLW and SotN

I'm supposed to be studying right now.  Instead I'm listening to Jane Horrocks and reading the New York Times.  Such a rebel.

I finished the French Lieutenant's Woman yesterday and Still of the Night this afternoon.  I don't really want to write about them, but if I don't now I'll never get around to it.

Last night I watched Batman Begins.  It was awesome.  But it was really weird Meryl Streep wasn't in it.  I kept expecting her to show up and beat the shit out of Katie Holms.  That would have been awesome.

FLW wasn't bad.  I didn't think it was as good as KvK, but it wasn't bad either.  The plot's hard to describe but not really that confusing.  It's a movie within a movie.  Most of the screen time is set sometime in the Victorian period.  I hate calling it that.  Victoria ruled for 63 years, from 1837 to 1901.  Lumping all that into one era just seems unfair to all the history that happened in those 63 years.  Look at the past 63 years.  Life in 1945 was totally different than it is now.  Calling all of it the Victorian Period is way too general.

Now I want to stick it in a slightly more specific time period.  The theories of Darwin are mentioned quite a bit in the movie, they could have been mentioned more in my opinion.  Darwin published his On the Origin of the Species in 1859, so it must have happened after that.  Now the characters are only floating in a 42 year period instead of 63.  I feel slightly better.

Okay - that was a tangent.  As I was saying, most of the screen time is sometime in the late 1800s watching the tale of this scientist (Jeremy Irons) and a scarlet woman (Meryl).  A bit of time is spent with the actors making the movie about the scientist and scarlet woman.  These two are having an affair and their story kind of mirrors their characters.  A movie within a movie.  Despite the fact that the original book the movie was based on had three alternate endings (making it possibly the first Chose Your Own Adventure novel ever) the historical plot is kind of predictable and melodramatic.  Because the modern lovers aren't confined to Victorian prudishness I thought their story would have been way more interesting to explore them and what they go through, but we didn't spend much time with them.

Not much else to say.  It's good, not really my kind of movie, but it's good.  Meryl Streep wears the coolest cloak ever.  Cooler than Lord of the Rings.  Or, if you really want to be internet-geeky LotR.  As I said before, this is my favorite Meryl hair so far.  It's short and red and looks fantastic.  Jeremy Irons wears some pretty awesome sweaters.  

Still of the Night was fun.  It's a thriller about this shrink (Roy Scheider) who's privately investigating the death of one of his patients with the patient's mistress (Meryl).  Very exciting and dark creepy shadows and all that.  Directed by the same guy who did Kramer vs. Kramer.  I really liked it because I like mysteries and thrill stories.  The ending was so entertaining, I was terrified.  And it's a good surprise.  It was definitely worth digging it up on ebay.

Now I'm forcing myself through Sophie's Choice.  Not having fun.  Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie, it's just so unhappy.  It's like dinner at a restaurant.  The waitress brings some happy for the appetizer, but the it's an entree of pain with a pain salad and side of pain.  With pain and chocolate sauce for dessert.  Meryl's great, with a pretty zany accent, but it's one of those 'this can't go well' movies.  More when I finish it.

Kramer vs. Kramer

Sometimes I worry my room will eat me.  The dirty clothes on the floor, the stacks of paper, the piles of books will swallow me up.  The funny thing is I can usually find whatever it is I'm looking for.  I don't usually lose things.

Still haven't seen Mamma Mia! (I've started using the exclamation point even though it makes my inner grammar nazi gnash its teeth) and that makes my soul cry.  I was on the phone with my cousin tonight and we tentatively discussed seeing it together next week.

Finished Kramer vs Kramer yesterday, more on that later.

Instead of finishing The French Lieutenant's Woman tonight (I know, I'm never going to finish this), I researched just how awesome Mamma Mia! actually is.

*side note: I really don't know why I've taken this as a personal campaign.  If anything, tonight has shown me the film is doing just fine on its own.  But I'm taking each bad review personally.

So, New York Times wasn't so kind to it, for, in my opinion, extremely stupid reasons.  And really, the same reasons I've been seeing in the other bad reviews.  The main reason for hate is it's silly.  Or, even better, it's entertainment.  What the hell do people want out of movies?  I really like movies that make me think, I really do.  But I don't want to see them all the time.  Isn't it a bit silly to hate on a movie for doing exactly what it promised to do?  It's not supposed to be Shakespeare or Hemingway for that matter, it's supposed to be fun.   I liked Roger Ebert's review because he acknowledged the movie for what it is and said it wasn't his sort of thing but still tried to give it a fair look.

I really shouldn't be saying all this without seeing the movie.

So, some other stuff I can say without seeing it.  CBS news critic David Edelstein was vicious.  Really.  In this scenario he's Lord Voldemort to the Times' Peter Pettigrew.  I thought that was unnecessary, but oddly enough, a majority of the comments on the article agreed with me.  There were seven pages of comments, and because I have no life, I read them all.  3.2% of the comments agreed with Mr. Edelstein's assessment, 93.4% didn't agree at all.  Some even went as far as to attack Mr. Edelstein and his credibility as a reviewer.  Not that I condone that at all...  And 3.2% of the comments had absolutely no relation to the article and I didn't have a clue what they were talking about.  I just thought that was an interesting set of statistics.  

Mamma Mia! also did better than Hairspray (last summer's piece of awesome) on its opening weekend.  According to ABC News, Hairspray grossed $27.5 million.  Mamma Mia! sailed by that mark with $ 27.6 million.  Okay, not quite sailed, but close enough.

And, the strongest proof that Mamma Mia! is awesome is that The Stranger liked it.  The Stranger doesn't like anything.  Okay, I'm sure they've liked some stuff, I just can't come up with any examples at the moment.  But the review of Mamma Mia! was strangely positive.  According to reviewer Lindy West, her expectations were so low "they dug a hole all the way to China and were walking around upside down asking for a fork" but still, Mamma Mia! "entertained the shit out of me."  Not bad.   Her only complaint was that, for a musical about Abba, there weren't enough gay characters.  The song Mamma Mia will always remind me of the ending scene of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, so maybe Lindy West has a point.

Okay.  Kramer vs. Kramer.  Ten word summary: wife leaves husband and son, later wants custody of kid.  I don't have much to say.  I saw it.  It took me three days to get through because it's a subject that terrifies me.  My parents are together and I can quite confidently say they're staying together, but the idea of them splitting up still haunts me in my sleep.

As my dad said to me when I started this movie, "It's Dustin Hoffman's movie."  It is, he owns it.  I found out later, he was pretty involved in writing it.  So, without Dustin Hoffman this movie wouldn't have been that great.  But I don't think it would have been that great if Joanna Kramer had been played by anyone other than Meryl Streep.  It's a balance.  Neither parent is perfect but neither parent is the axis of evil either.  If the woman had simply been a creepy raving bitch it wouldn't have been realistic.  And I think the reason Meryl makes it work is something she said in the documentary in the special features.  I don't remember the exact wording but she said she's always felt the need to defend her characters in some way.  And that's what she does in this movie.  We have sympathy for her or we lose the humanity of the movie.  There's got to be a pull to both of them.  

Ultimately it's a film about love.  From the parental perspective, loving the kid to want them around all the time and knowing what's best for them.  Loving them enough to let go.  And something Dustin Hoffman said in the special features documentary.  The idea that love doesn't always end with a marriage, no matter how much you want it to.

I want to watch this one again later, lots to think about.

Hopefully finishing The French Lieutenant's Woman tomorrow.  It includes my favorite Meryl Streep hairstyle so far.

The Seduction of Joe Tynan

Wow, so much has happened lately, I don't know where to start.

I went to see the Rocky Horror Show with a friend at midnight last night.  To those that have never seen the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

VIRGINS!!!!

To those that have never seen the live show:

BORING!!!!

Seriously, man up.  The movie is great, really, and I highly recommend it, if only to see Tim Curry in a corset and fishnets and Susan Sarandon be a total whore.  But the movie is the pansy version of the live show.  And it's just so much more fun.  We went at midnight so the sober people were definitely outnumbered by the wasted.  Part of Rocky Horror's charm is this wonderful thing called Audience Participation.  It involves throwing things, like toast and cards, blowing on noise makers and shouting 'asshole' and 'slut' at select moments.  The wasted were very into last night.  They had a running dialogue going with the narrator who had no problem talking back to them and making fun of them.  

A memorable moment in the show was when Columbia gets high off her ass and leaps at Frank to tell him "this is some really good fucking shit."  She then wanders off into the audience to tell us how a guy sitting in the third row is her grandmother who is actually Jesus.  As soon as she gets the muchies she hops back on stage and tells us all to shush  because her crotch is talking to her.  But it's a little fuzzy because she hasn't waxed in a while.

So yeah, that was fun.

My Seduction of Joe Tynan movie was finished yesterday!  I finished watching it this morning and it's kind of awesome.  I don't know why it's not easier to find, it's not a bad movie.  The picture quality sucked ass, but it was fun.

The plot's kind of boring, there's a senator from New York who's working to oppose a Supreme Court nomination while having an affair with a lawyer helping him and his married life falls apart.  It's kind of predictable.  It'd be a hell of a lot better if we hadn't already seen The West Wing and known that political drama could be so much better written.

Ironically, Alan Alda, who wrote and stars in Joe Tynan, won an Emmy for his work on The West Wing.

What makes Joe Tynan awesome is the random shit that just happens.  Rip Torn plays a republican senator who's most memorable scene, in my opinion, is when his aide enters his office and he tells him he's reading.  The noble aide attempts to keep talking about whatever vital information he's got, but Rip Torn says "Can't you see I'm reading from my pad here?"  The camera pans down to a pair of gloves and a purse on the table.  The aide gets a horrified expression on his face right about when I started giggling.  As the aide leaves we see a pair of feminine feet sticking out from under the desk.

Did the random oral sex from the anonymous bimbo have a point?  Nope, it's just there.

Meryl Streep, who plays the affair, and Alda who plays the senator, have surprisingly good chemistry.  The scene with their first kiss was really.... hot.  I feel weird typing that, but it was.  It was a really good kiss.

The best scene of the movie is right after they have sex for the first time.  They're in bed, drinking cold beer and some sort of unspecified food item.  Alan Alda makes some sort of comment, I don't remember, about how his wife is pretty wonderful.  Meryl Streep, without batting an eye, reaches over, lifts the blanket, and pours a bottle of beer on his crotch.  It's wonderful.

That scene made the whole ordeal to watch this movie worth it.  In the end it came to thirty something dollars to get it off ebay and have it transferred to DVD.

And the end's sort of a let down.  I'm stealing this phrase from Bridget McManus (I love you Bridget), it was like a bad orgasm.  There should be this big climatic scene where he's forced to chose between his wife and family and his career and there's nothing.  A lot of confetti, that's it.  But the beer scene made up for it.  And Meryl Streep in aviators.  She laughs a lot in this movie, I noticed that.  She has a wonderful laugh, she should laugh in movies more often.

Now I'm half way through Kramer vs. Kramer, I should finish tomorrow.  Not much laughing in that one.

The New York Times trashed Mamma Mia yesterday.  I haven't seen it yet so this may be a little premature, but screw you New York Times review.  Mamma Mia can be campy and awesome, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Questioning my Existence

I'm playing in the pit for a local show of "Children of Eden."  I play cello, I have since I was nine.  Down there with me there are two percussionists, a guitar player, electric bass, two keyboards, French horn, oboe, some assorted winds and an extremely ornery conductor.  Unless you count guitar and bass (which I don't), I'm the only string player.  It's a lonely existence.

During break tonight I said to the keyboard players, "Why am I here?"

They stared blankly at me.

"I mean, " I said.  "You guys play the rest of the string section, why do you have me?"

"I don't know," Jamie, one of the pianists, said.

"I'm just questioning my existence." 

"I've played cello a bunch of times."  She pointed to one of the settings on the keyboard.

"I have 'play if no cello' written in," Michael, the other one, said.  

"That's a hard instrument," Michael the flute player said.  "If no cello."

"Yeah," Piano Michael agreed.  "But it's okay, it's all programed in."

I felt really necessary.  

Jamie ate one of her M&Ms and made a face, "These taste weird," she informed us.  "Here," she passed me a yellow one.  "Try this and see if it tastes weird."

"So I'm your guinea pig?" I ate it.

She grinned coyly at me.  "It tastes like poison," she said to Flute Michael.

I swallowed,  "Great."  And my mouth tasted like plastic the rest of the evening.