Could the Academy Awards have been any more boring? It would be easy to say “no,” but there’s always next year to prove me wrong.
Category: Movies
Saddamy
Huh? Saddam Starred in Gay Porn Films
The article is dated April 10, but I swear it must be a typo — the ‘0’ accidentally added when an intern fell onto the keyboard laughing while typing an April Fools story. If that’s not the case, the boys in the U.S. propaganda department are getting a little out of control.
(link via Trash Addict)
What I’m Thinking About Now
I’m not feeling very comfortable posting anything but war-related stuff here at the moment. Whenever a potential post of a more inane, light-hearted or frivolous nature pops into my head, I get a slightly queasy feeling. My daily life seems a bit more mundane, not so important. Finding silly things on the web to link to for a laugh seems downright inappropriate.
Speaking of inappropriate, that’s what the Academy Awards ceremony will be this Sunday if a war has just begun. But the show must go on because there’s money to be made. The producers have a Plan B, which likely means that celebrities will have to turn those smiles upside-down and put on their “serious” faces. There will be a last-minute rush to exchange designer gowns for ones of more somber tone. Joan Rivers will not have comprehended the “tone it down” memo, and will be out on the red carpet, fully-medicated, asking, “Who did your Nair, darling?!” Can you imagine anything more pathetic and tedious and than a night full of movie stars trying to look telegenically sad? I can’t. If Hollywood wants to send a message about what’s important and what’s not at this moment, shut the show down.
Okay, that was a rant that went a little off topic. Getting back to my own content…
I’m not sure how long this feeling will last. Likely, it will slowly pass, but who knows. I have a four-day weekend coming up in a few days and I’ll be wanting to post some thoughts and pictures from the trip I’m taking to Northern Honshu. Also, I don’t want this to become an all-war, all-the-time blog. But for the moment, it just feels right to focus on the coming conflict.
The Two Towers
I remember watching the credits roll after seeing The Fellowship of the Ring more than a year ago, thinking what a long time a year would be to wait for the second installment.
That year and several months seems to have gone fairly quickly. I just got home from watching The Two Towers, which opened in Japan last weekend. My first impression is that I enjoyed first episode more, but that may just be because of the anticipation and raised expectations. I still thoroughly enjoyed The Two Towers, and can’t believe another year will have to pass before seeing the conclusion.
Random Links
Domo Darko. Starring Domo-kun, and set to Gary Jules’ beautiful remake of Tears For Fears’ Mad World, which was used in the movie, Donnie Darko. (Another Domo-kun site, this one explaining that when domo-kun is in a bad mood, he breaks wind.) Thanks for the Domo Darko link, Greg.
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The Kids look more gorgeous than ever. Someone please put them back on TV on a regular basis.
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If there’s anyone (after the Bush administration, of course) that deserves to be relentlessly mocked, it’s television news. Here’s a recent bit from Jon Stewart’s excellent The Daily Show that manages to kill two birds with one stone.
A Snowy Day
It’s been snowing pretty heavily here since late last night, so there’s a good amount of snow on the ground. I’ve been ensconced in the comfort of my warm apartment all day, relaxing, writing and reading. I was supposed to have returned some DVDs today, but the thought of riding my bicycle a considerable distance on snow-covered sidewalks hasn’t sounded appealing. I’ll deal with the late fees.
I watched Le Grande Blue last night for the first time. I was a bit disappointed — too much buildup, I suppose. Rosanna Arquette was terrible. I read somewhere that the best way to watch the movie is to turn off the dialogue and enjoy the music and images. Good suggestion.
My First Note
In a recent letter from my mother, she enclosed a bit of my past that she’d wisely saved for a time when I’d need some stray bit of fluff to post on a personal website.
Apparently, what you see above is the first note I ever wrote. I forgot to ask my mother if she remembers when I wrote it, but I’d guess it was when I was around eight.
What I lacked in penmanship and spelling, I made up for in sass. And I doubt I grabbed $50 from the money jar — it was more likely 50 cents.
The movie I was referring to was actually Cat Ballou, that classic western romp starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin. This would have been the first of several times I saw this movie when I was a child, and I loved it.
When I wrote this note, my family was living in Denali National Park in Alaska. We had no television reception in our tiny Park Service community and it was before VCRs caught on. For audio-visual entertainment during the long winter months, the community association organized movie nights (once a week on Fridays, with a repeat of the same movie on Sunday). Each family got to choose one movie each winter. This method of choosing movies ensured an interesting selection, but a bad pick one winter could leave your family the butt of jokes until the following year when another round of picks offered redemption.
The first movie I saw after my family moved to Denali was the Peter Sellers’ movie, The Party. I was seven at the time, and for weeks afterwards a friend and I would re-enact, on a snow hill, the scene at the beginning where the soldier keeps getting shot when he tries to play his bugle.
Narcotic, Anti-narcotic
Last night I watched Mission To Mars and Requiem For A Dream. The first almost put me to sleep (what a waste of Mars). The latter made it difficult to get to sleep — not exactly something to send one off to slumberland with sweet dreams.
Silent Running & Solaris
Images from the just-released film, Solaris remind me of Silent Running, one of the first sci-fi movies I ever saw. I must have been around 10 years old, and was enthralled despite the fact that it’s a fairly boring movie.
Judging from reviews for Solaris, the two movies sound similar in their spare aesthetic. Neither of these movies are from the Star Wars or Starship Troopers branch of science fiction.
Silent Running, for those who don’t remember this gem from the 70s, starred Bruce Dern as a botanist aboard an enormous spaceship filled with plants. The ship, one of series a botanical “Noah’s Arks,” contains remnants of the last surviving forest from Earth. Conflict among the small crew leaves Dern the only human aboard.
To say that not much happens during the movie is being generous. But something about it stuck in my head and has never left. As a child, being lost in space with robot friends and lush gardens seemed a lot more romantic than it does today. These days, I know I’d get lonely fairly quickly. I’d still want to go for the ride, but couldn’t I bring some friends? Ones that won’t go insane, preferably.
Short Films
Hollywood movies generally show up in Japan three to six months after they are released in the States. And then they are shown at expensive theaters where your ticket doesn’t even guarantee you a seat. If you happen to live, as I do, in a slightly sleepy city in the mountains, that expensive ticket doesn’t even get you a decent venue. All this helps explain why I’ve only seen one film in a theater in the six months I’ve been here.
If I can’t see the movies, though, I’m not going to miss the trailers. Every once in a while, I’ll spend a good chunk of time on Apple’s “Trailers” site, perusing the movies I won’t be seeing at a theatre near me soon.
I watched a batch of trailers last night, and…
I hate it that I’ll be missing Almodovar’s new movie, Talk to Her. Even if it’s released here in Japan during my stay, the subtitles will be in Japanese rather than in English.
There’s an art to making a good trailer, though the talentless advertising hacks in charge usually screw it up. Case in point: The Hours. Watch this trailer and tell me that, towards the end, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of those bad Michael Douglas suspense movies. Please, please, please let the movie be better than this trailer makes it out to be.
Ben Affleck as Daredevil? They’ll have to change the tag line from “The man without fear” to “The man without charisma.” Click below to see a real superhero.