Thanks for the Memories

Since the most recent celebrity death is the first I've actually really cared about, I thought I should say something. (Honestly, I thought Farrah was sad and I watched in utter fascination at the spectacle that followed Michael Jackson's death.) I didn't think about John Hughes the person, but the work of John Hughes has had a big influence on me. I haven't seen a lot of his movies, I was born too late to catch a lot of them when they were big, but I love the ones I have seen.

I vividly remember the first time I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I was on a boat and I was about eleven or twelve. It was hilarious. A lot of the humor I was way too young for, but I still found so much that made me laugh. It gave me this idea of what I wanted from high school, this sort of nebulous feeling or concept, which I never found, but it made thinking about it in middle school a lot less scary. And I've always kind of secretly wanted to be Ferris Bueller, just to be that cool. I was never cool in high school. Sort of like I've always wanted to be Humphrey Bogart. Not a serious aspiration, just a passing fancy.

My parents brought home The Breakfast Club. It's really because of them I've seen all the "important" movies I've seen. They had a mental list of films they thought I "should" see. It's good. When I was younger I had horrible taste in film. Well, not horrible, just more adventurous. I would see anything if I liked the back of the box enough. I saw some weird stuff. Anyway, The Breakfast Club was one of the ones they thought I "should" see. I'm glad they did. I loved it. It's a big talking movie, and we don't have enough of those. For an art form that came from the theater (I presume) we have remarkably little talking in our movies. And this was a movie that talked about all the hard things. I'd never seen that in a movie before. It made everything so much more real. I was fascinated.

That one, especially, made me want to write movies. I wanted to write things like that. Maybe I will some day. It was one of the first times I'd ever wanted anything to do with that profession, up till then I'd always wanted to be an ornithologist. So I'm sad about John Hughes because his movies have meant so much to me.

Comfort Food

Movies are like my comfort food. Some people, when they're really upset, go eat a special food or go on a walk or do something important to them that calms them down. When I'm upset, I watch a movie. Sometimes I can't decide on a movie. Then I'm really upset.

I crave movies like people crave food. Lately, I've been craving Billy Elliot, not sure why, I have. So when I was visiting my cousins last weekend in Seattle, we rented it. It's a really good movie. I was reminded again just how talented Julie Walters is. It was directed by Stephen Daldry, who's directed three feature length films, all of which have received Oscar nominations. Pretty good track record. The whole piece is a lovely juxtaposition of UK Miner's Strike, very macro drama, and the Billy's coming of age (of sorts), very micro drama. Robin Black told us to always have two story lines going - that way one can support and play off the other.

To continue in the Stephen Daldry vein, I'm in a The Hours mood. (I've mentioned two of Daldry's three films, kudos to anyone who can name the third) I feel a bit like that scene in the kitchen with Meryl Streep and Jeff Daniels where she totally loses it and starts sobbing against the oven. I feel a bit like that. I wonder what my shrink would think of that.

But I know myself well enough to know movies, as much as I love them, will not solve my problems. They'll make me feel better, but they won't sort things out for me. That'd be pretty cool though. I bet Humphrey Bogart could handle my life much better than I do. Unfortunately Bogie isn't available, so I can't hide in a movie, I have to go figure it all out for myself.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Now that I've seen Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince three times, I thought I should write something about it. I don't really consider myself a Harry Potter fan anymore, not in comparison to how I used to be. I was just about the perfect age for the Potter books. Sorcerer's Stone, (I always knew it at Sorcerer's Stone, not Philosopher's stone) came out in 1998, when I was eight years old. I was enchanted. No pun intended. I waited patiently for my Hogwarts owl until I was about twelve. By the time the last book came out, Harry and I were the same age. I thought that was a good way to end it. The events of the seventh book made me cry on a cross country plane from New York to Seattle. That was embarrassing.

And after the books, I considered that chapter of my life closed. I still read the occasional Harry Potter fanfic. But you know the Judy Garland song, thanks for the memories.

And these goddamn movies just keep drawing it out.

Okay, that makes me sound bitter. I'm not. I just feel a twinge of guilt when I see the people on opening night who's costumes are so much more hardcore than mine and knowing that just a short time ago I would have been that hardcore about it. It's kind of like a moving apart from a relationship. You're still friends, and you still love them, but they don't really have a speed dial number on your phone anymore.

After all this ruminating, I still enjoyed the movie. I think it's my favorite so far. They've been getting progressively better. It had good comedic moments. I always thought the movies made somewhat light books way too dark. I really liked the costumes. The kids are getting to be better actors. As usual, the older actors stole the show. Jim Broadbent was excellent and Helena Bonham Carter was terrifying. Dumbledore, my favorite character from the books, wasn't as stupid or as harsh as he had been and I appreciated that a great deal.

People have been hating on the movie because it wasn't close enough to the book. I think they're expecting way too much. I went into the theater expecting to be entertained, and this movie entertained the shit out of me. Perhaps I was able to reach this nirvana because I don't really remember the sixth book and didn't reread it. I think the movies and the books are separate entities and trying to push the together is unreasonable and unrealistic.

And for other Harry Potter inspired commodities, try Wizard Rock. I recommend the band The Moaning Myrtles. I acknowledge that I know absolutely nothing about music produced within the last thirty years, but I like The Moaning Myrtles. And one of the singers goes to school with me.

Or, even more intense, the Harry Potter musical, A Very Potter Musical. I haven't seen all of it yet, but it's hilarious. Draco Malfoy gets a whole new life from the somewhat pathetic creature he's become in the movies. Watch it in multiple youtube parts here.

The Caine Mutiny

Almost a week ago I watched The Caine Mutiny and then forgot about it. I didn't forget it intentionally. It was a really good movie. It also has Humphrey Bogart in it. I have been a Bogart fan longer than I've been a Meryl Streep fan. I've also been working on seeing all of his movies longer than I've been working on the Meryl Streep Project. I'm not going in chronological order for Bogart, some of his earlier stuff is way too hard to find, I'd never get to the good movies. But I've been trying to see all his movies since I was about thirteen or so.

The first one I saw was Casablanca. I think. Or maybe it was Sabrina. But Casablanca was a much more vivid experience. My mother brought it home. Probably from the library. A lot of my favorite things have come from the library - The Avengers DVDs, Keeping up Appearances episodes... mostly British TV. We watched the movie, I was enjoying it. Ingrid Bergman came on screen. In those days, when the most beautiful woman in the movie came on screen they liked to let you know by making the camera all fuzzy. So the camera went all blurry, and there's Ingrid Bergman. This vision. This goddess. I was thirteen and I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.

This isn't quite the scene, but it will do.

Of course, then I watched Night in Casablanca, the Marx Brothers spoof of the original film. It's not my favorite of theirs, but it has one of the best chase scenes they did and one of the best openings.

And now I've totally deviated from the original idea: The Caine Mutiny. Based on a Broadway play which was based on a novel by Herman Wouk. It's not my favorite Bogart movie, but I still really liked it. It just wasn't that happy. But it's good. It's about this guy who's some lower ranked officer in the Navy, I don't know these things. He's kind of obnoxious and I had the feeling he secretly wanted to be Lieutenant Cable in South Pacific, but wasn't pretty enough. Lower Ranked Officer (LRO) gets assigned to this boat called the USS Caine. Other viewers besides me will probably get the biblical reference here. It took me twenty minutes. The boat's kind of a piece of shit. All the crew are slackers. LRO, because he's kind of high and mighty, gets all sniffy about it and is really happy when a new captain, Bogart, arrives. It soon becomes clear that Bogart is nuts. Having Bogart play anything but Mr. Awesome was a bit jarring. In this one he's nuts. The crew realizes that they're basically fucked and with a little help from a typhoon, they get to a mutiny. There's a trial and really not enough action and adventure. The ending is excellent though. I sat for a minute afterwards and said, "Well fuck." You know, one of those.

Prince Caspian

On Saturday I watched Prince Caspian on netflix watch instantly.  I'm a big fan of the watch instantly section of netflix.  It's good for people like me who are kind of impulsive and don't have a lot of patience.  I watched Swing Vote because it was there.  And it has Nathan Lane in it.  I will see anything Nathan Lane is in.  Even if it's terrible.  Case in point.  Swing Vote had moments, I remember chuckling, but I don't remember why.

The watch instantly section is also bad for people like me who have the attention span of a goldfish.  I've seen most of The Big Sleep, half of Blade Runner and the first fifteen minutes of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.  They're all good movies, and I intend to finish them, I just keep getting distracted.

In light of all that, I'm kind of surprised I made it through Prince Caspian.  No Nathan Lane, not really a very thought provoking film.  But it wasn't too bad.  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  The whole thing would have been greatly improved if Nathan Lane had been in the cast, but the several seconds of Tilda Swinton mostly made up for it.  I liked Liam Neesen as Aslan, and Eddie Izzard as Reepicheep the mouse.  Reepicheep was my favorite character when I read the books.

Out of Africa

I finished Out of Africa.  It only took me nine months.  It's a really long movie, okay.  

I didn't think it was that bad.  Not a waste of three hours of my life.  Meryl Streep is fantastic, as usual.  I refuse to like Robert Redford in anything but The Sting, which is an excellent movie and made me want to be a card shark when I was ten.  This would be a realistic goal if I had the patience for card games.  I have problems sitting through a game of cribbage.

Filming on location was a great decision.  The shots of Africa make up half the movie.  The other half is Meryl's accent and syphilis.  

Next up is Ironweed.  I think.  My list is buried somewhere on my desk and finding it would involve getting up.  Movement is overrated.  

I've been reading a lot of plays during my lunch break at work.  On Monday I finished Rabbit Hole by David Lindsey-Abaire.  It's a beautiful play.  You know everything you need to know about the characters by the end of the first scene.  The crafting is excellent.  I discovered they're making a film version of it with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as Becca and Howie.  I think Eckhart's a capable actor, he was great in Thank You for Smoking and The Dark Knight.  I used to love Nicole Kidman more than life itself, but I haven't been really impressed with what's she's been doing lately.  According to imdb, Diane Wiest and Sandra Oh are also in it.  After seeing Wiest kick ass in All My Sons in New York, I'm sure she'll be wonderful.  I hope it's good, I really hope it's good.  I just enjoyed it so much, I want them to do it justice.

I got through half of Spring Awakening (play version) and got bored.  I'm sorry, I tried, it was just dull.  Now I've started The Birthday Party by Pinter and so far it's good.  My cousin lent me an anthology, I have a lot of Pinter in my future.

I really didn't expect to watch a Meryl Streep movie last night, but somehow ended up watching one anyway.  I assumed that as soon as my friends got bored of Guitar Hero World Tour they would transition straight into DDR, but that was not actually the case.  We played Wii sports for a bit, I am terrible at tennis, then we projected Mamma Mia on to the wall.  It was unfortunately not the sing-along version because the boys needed a compromise or the movie wouldn't have happened at all, but we survived.  And once again, we had to confirm that Meryl Streep was not dead.  

We took a break to welcome in the new year with Martinelis and the fireworks display around the Space Needle on television.  The fireworks had a surprisingly cinematic theme, so I thought I'd share it.