That's the title of a demonstrative speech I gave in the sixth grade. I was a natural talent then, and I have turned it into a science now. When are my two essays, research work, lines, and choreography work due? That would be.... just under twelve hours from now. How many of those five things are done? Two. Go me!
Well, everything else is pretty near done... or, you know, not totally far away from being done... Okay, two things are very close to being done, and the other one I'm going to work on right now, as soon as I update my blog, and maybe knit a round, and read some online comics, and maybe talk to a friend...
Eh, yeah, I know. I know. It's disgraceful. I know. But it will be done, and it will be done on time, and then I will start rehearsals with a relatively clear conscience. Yes. This will happen.
In other weekly news, my sleep cycle has continued disastrous, (well, it would be awesome if I were planning to go to California, say, tomorrow. Since I'm not, but instead planning to reintegrate myself into English society tomorrow, it's a little more worrisome.) For the last four days I've tried to get up at a reasonable hour, but my sleeping brain is a stubborn bastard and knows I set my alarm not because I need to get up but because I think I ought to get up. My sleeping brain has no patience for that kind of nonsense. I hear the alarms, I vaguley remember thoughts along the lines of "make the bad noise STOP", I remember turning off the alarms, and then my memory fades out. Not because I stumbled out of my room to get a cup of tea, no, but because I stumbled back into bed and curled back up under the covers. Then I wake up AT SUNSET, and it's the most depressing thing in the world, and I stay in bed for another hour being miserable that I slept the whole damn day away.
That is something else, however, that will stop tomorrow. Because TOMORROW, I am going to get up, and be awesome, and turn this stuff in, and go to rehearsal all afternoon and evening.
Plus, don't even get me started on the drama of trying to get my laundry done.
I got around to lots of things, though, while I was busy NOT getting around to my paper. No, I did! I watched two movies that I own but had never seen before the other day. One was The French Lieutenant's Woman, with the amazingness that is Meryl Streep and the sexiness that is Jeremy Irons. I have to say, however, that having heard that it's the most romantic movie ever made, I was expecting it to be more... romantic. Meryl Streep IS amazing,but if it had been any other actress in that role, I would have hated her and might have stopped watching altogether. I might have stuck around for Jeremy Irons, who is gorgeous, and was very sexy back before I was born, seventies hair and all. But the love story.... kind of eh. They look at each other longingly a lot, and sometimes kiss passionately in exotic locales. But dude, you can do that with practically anybody. I look at my fridge longingly a lot (though I have yet to kiss it passionately in any locale, exotic or otherwise). Conversation? Mutual interests, besides showing the whites of your eyes? Compatible personalities? Huh, what? Disappointing.
The other movie was a documentary entitled Shakespeare Behind Bars. I love it passionately. In fact, I loved it so much that I'm a little hesitant to recommend it, knowing that if someone had recommended it to me at any point before I watched it myself, I would have put it aside forever. I don't know if it's just a quirk of me or if it's common to everybody, but as soon as someone tells me a movie is "really good" because it will "make [me] think," or it's "really deep" or any nonsense like that, I write it off. I still haven't seen The Hobart Shakespeareans, mostly for that reason, even though I know it's good and I know I'll like it. The same thing almost happened with Slings and Arrows, although I got over that. Some part of me is always like, "movies and TV are for entertainment, not thinking! Screw you!" and I never see it.
I would hate for anyone to write off Shakespeare Behind Bars for that reason, so I won't say that it's deep (it is), that it will make you think (it will) or that you really should see it before you die (you should). I'll just say, I loved it. It's a documentary about a program at a high-security Kentucky prison where the inmates spend nine months of the year working on a Shakespeare play. They cast themselves, they have a volunteer (from outside) as a director, and they just go embrace the text and knock themselves out. And it's absolutely amazing. The doc is about the year they did The Tempest, but you don't have to know the play, they explain the plot and themes and all. Not surprisingly, they really go for the theme of forgiveness (a prominent one in that show), and explore it through all the characters. The actor playing Antonio gets put in solitary confinement, and they have to recast. The actors in general go all the way -- the guy playing Miranda is a thirty-something man, and he absolutely relates to it and draws it right into his life. And they all tell you what their sentences are, and why they're in prison, and then they do Shakespeare, and it's mesmerizing. Even if you don't like Shakespeare. Even if you don't like documentaries. Especially if you don't like prison inmates. It just blew me away.
So that is what I have to say about it, and if it doesn't put you off, may I suggest renting it as soon as possible. Shakespeare Behind Bars. Crazy good.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have lines to learn.
Showing posts with label Movie Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movie Review. Show all posts
22.9.07
Barrel Of Cute
Contrary to my expectations, Stardust really was as good as everyone was saying it was. Claire Danes is good, the little puppy they got to play her boyfriend was good, Robert de Niro is one of my personal heroes, and it was as funny and cute and touching as could be. Definitely kind of a dorm room movie; maybe some up and coming young generation of college students will worship it like my college friends and I worship The Princess Bride.
It is really a lot like Princess Bride, and there were some homages in there that just had to have been intended. The reviewers were all comparing it to that, and it has sort of the feel of Princess Bride's younger, higher-budget, slightly more shallow, but nevertheless cute sister. And if I had been seeing it with Jay, or Silent Bob, or Mr. Irish, or Little Joan and the Sweet D boys, it would have been a double feature and we would have screamed and giggled and filled in lines.
(As it was, I almost couldn't resist when Yvaine asks rhetorically "Let's see, murdered by pirates, having my heart cut out and eaten, or meeting Victoria. Which one sounds like more fun?" The correct answer is, of course, "Murdered by pirates is good!" but I didn't want to sound like a nutcase to the ever-sweet Ozma, with whom I went. But I did mention to her how much I would LOVE to see de Niro's Captain Shakespeare team up with Wallace Shawn's Vizzini. That would be SO COOL.)
It is really a lot like Princess Bride, and there were some homages in there that just had to have been intended. The reviewers were all comparing it to that, and it has sort of the feel of Princess Bride's younger, higher-budget, slightly more shallow, but nevertheless cute sister. And if I had been seeing it with Jay, or Silent Bob, or Mr. Irish, or Little Joan and the Sweet D boys, it would have been a double feature and we would have screamed and giggled and filled in lines.
(As it was, I almost couldn't resist when Yvaine asks rhetorically "Let's see, murdered by pirates, having my heart cut out and eaten, or meeting Victoria. Which one sounds like more fun?" The correct answer is, of course, "Murdered by pirates is good!" but I didn't want to sound like a nutcase to the ever-sweet Ozma, with whom I went. But I did mention to her how much I would LOVE to see de Niro's Captain Shakespeare team up with Wallace Shawn's Vizzini. That would be SO COOL.)
26.8.07
Total Waste
I meant this to be an actual review, but I also meant it to come out days ago, and now it's late, I'm sleepy, and I'm trying to finish up so I can close my computer with a clean conscience. So I will confine myself to an observation, rather than a real review.
With installment number five, Harry Potter has so very much become the new Star Wars.
Which is really sad, you know? Lots of potential, very mediocre execution. Oh, it hasn't hit Jar Jar Binks level, or the hideousness that was Padme and Anakin's romance. And you know, it wasn't unexpected. The first installment was pretty sucky. But they'd been getting better! Three! Three was good! Four... well, you could make excuses for four. But five has landed us squarely back in the realm of shiny pictures / wretched dialogue.
And I mean it. Just wretched. That snort you heard on Sunday night, three counties away? That was me, when Harry comes out of the elevator at the Department of Mysteries and explains solemnly to his friends, "This is it." Thank you, Explainy McExpositionpants. I think there were a couple of newborn babies in the audience who were just a little unsure of the implications of the crashing music and the fact that the plot has been leading up to this for the past hour and forty-five minutes.
There's a lot to like -- the acting, for example, has dramatically improved (pun intended); Luna and Umbridge are both excellently cast. The condensations of the plot make sense and aren't too jarring. And the visuals are VERY shiny. (Although the wizard fight at the end borders on ridiculous.)
I just wish, for once, that the different elements of the movie industry -- the people who do script, music, acting, camera work, could trust in each other -- and in the non-brain-damaged audience -- and inject their work with some subtlety and power, rather than beating us over the head with everything. If the music is going to crash dramatically, you ... don't actually need the line of dialogue that explains what's going on. If you're going to have a line in the script that explains interrogations, you don't really need a visual of them happening. Reinforcement, not redundancy, people! Not that difficult!
Oh, wait! I was mixing my mediums. That's what you get when you have theater!
With installment number five, Harry Potter has so very much become the new Star Wars.
Which is really sad, you know? Lots of potential, very mediocre execution. Oh, it hasn't hit Jar Jar Binks level, or the hideousness that was Padme and Anakin's romance. And you know, it wasn't unexpected. The first installment was pretty sucky. But they'd been getting better! Three! Three was good! Four... well, you could make excuses for four. But five has landed us squarely back in the realm of shiny pictures / wretched dialogue.
And I mean it. Just wretched. That snort you heard on Sunday night, three counties away? That was me, when Harry comes out of the elevator at the Department of Mysteries and explains solemnly to his friends, "This is it." Thank you, Explainy McExpositionpants. I think there were a couple of newborn babies in the audience who were just a little unsure of the implications of the crashing music and the fact that the plot has been leading up to this for the past hour and forty-five minutes.
There's a lot to like -- the acting, for example, has dramatically improved (pun intended); Luna and Umbridge are both excellently cast. The condensations of the plot make sense and aren't too jarring. And the visuals are VERY shiny. (Although the wizard fight at the end borders on ridiculous.)
I just wish, for once, that the different elements of the movie industry -- the people who do script, music, acting, camera work, could trust in each other -- and in the non-brain-damaged audience -- and inject their work with some subtlety and power, rather than beating us over the head with everything. If the music is going to crash dramatically, you ... don't actually need the line of dialogue that explains what's going on. If you're going to have a line in the script that explains interrogations, you don't really need a visual of them happening. Reinforcement, not redundancy, people! Not that difficult!
Oh, wait! I was mixing my mediums. That's what you get when you have theater!
10.5.07
Hurray for Hollywood
Wow, is Spider-Man 3 the most manipulative movie ever or what? Okay, I actually have reason to believe that 300 is more manipulative still, but Spider-Man 3 is the most manipulative movie I've seen in recent memory. (Now, Sam, was the American flag thing really necessary? Look into your soul and get back to me on that one, huh? Because I think you could have gotten along just fine without it.) Everything you've read in the reviews is true; there is too much going on but it is nevertheless a satisfying wrapup. And some of the manipulation works really well -- SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT okay, I was totally cheering when Spider-Man and the New Goblin teamed up; that was fucking awesome and totally unexpected END SPOILER ALERT END SPOILER ALERT -- and it's not like the other Spider-Man movies aren't also totally manipulative. And yet ... I came out not sure what to think about it, ironically because the movie was so clear about what I ought to be thinking.
Other than that, I'm having a lovely time in Durham, staying with Ella and her husband, spending most of my time sleeping, watching TV, drinking tea and going to the bookstore. I think I'm going to break down and buy Bill Bryson's new book, which is on sale all over Europe, because the first hundred pages or so were wicked good. Yes, I know I have neither very much money nor very much suitcase room. I have the self-discipline of a six year old.
Other than that, I'm having a lovely time in Durham, staying with Ella and her husband, spending most of my time sleeping, watching TV, drinking tea and going to the bookstore. I think I'm going to break down and buy Bill Bryson's new book, which is on sale all over Europe, because the first hundred pages or so were wicked good. Yes, I know I have neither very much money nor very much suitcase room. I have the self-discipline of a six year old.
30.4.07
A Surprise
So, I totally didn't hate The Departed at all. I actually kind of liked it. No, seriously. I thought it was a pretty good movie and I enjoyed watching it. Hey, I'm as surprised as you are, especially since all anyone would tell me about it was that it was super violent and directed by Scorcese. (I didn't think I liked any Scorcese movies at all, but I kind of liked The Age of Innocence. Not as good as The House of Mirth, but what can you do?) But this one was very good, I thought. I liked the story, I liked the characters, there was genuine tension. It also made me wicked glad I'm a girl and not sleeping with two guys from South Boston. (Not that I have anything against guys from South Boston. Isn't Matt Damon originally from there? See, nothing against them. But I'm still glad I'm not in any of the situations depicted in that film because I would go off the deep end.)
20.2.07
Vienna, Day 1
Four Things That Are Annoying:
1. That each country in Europe feels the need not only for a different language, but a different fucking keyboard contraption. In England and America, you have QWERTY keyboards. Okay, I complained about them when I was young and learning to type, but now I know how to type and they work fine. In France, you have AZERTY keyboards, which are annoying but which I have gotten used to. NOW, in Austria, they have QWERTZ keyboards. This is driving me completely insane. There are, like, ten letters that I can count on to be there when I need them. Don't even get me started on punctuation marks. Typing now makes me want to cry.
2. My normal February cold, which arrived promptly on schedule the day I was supposed to be leaving for Paris, and which now keeps me up for two hours at a time every night coughing my lungs up. Shut up, stupid cold. I'm tired enough without your influence, and now all my hostel roommates want to kill me.
3.The book I finished on the way here, Andre Norton's Wheel of Stars. Dear Andre Norton, Since you are neither Madeleine L'Engle, nor Ursula Le Guin, nor Robin McKinley, I must insist that you stop pretending you are, and therefore stop writing books which feature the end of the world because of the stupidity of mankind, the joyous reuniting of two identities into a whole person, or a perfectly normal young woman who suddenly discovers that not only does she have magic powers, but she is some sort of last true hope for mankind. Look on the bright side, Ms. Norton: you are also not Mercedes Lackey, so perhaps if you set your sights a little lower, you can write lovely, decent page turners set in an entirely fantastical environment. Play to your strengths, my dear. Love, petitechica.
4. The fact that it apparently takes four hours to get to Prague from here. I refuse to believe it is that far away. On the map it looks like it should be two or three hours, not four. Now it will be much more of a pain in the ass to take a day trip up there, but I shall go anyway.
Four Things That Are Awesome:
1. The shopping in Vienna. The shopping in Vienna is totally fantasic, and if I had had any money yesterday I wouldn't have it anymore. All the bookstores have a nice, relatively big English language section, the clothing and shoe stores are fantastic, and the souvenir shops don't annoy me as much as usual because lots of them sell Mozart CDs. Also the downtown area is completely gorgeous beyond all reason, it's like you walk along, la de da, and suddenly there's this completely beautiful building right in front of you. Not every building is beautiful -- lots of it is just very commercial, it reminds me of downtown New York -- but that makes it all the more startling when one does suddenly pop up.
2. The St. Stephen's Cathedral, which I randomly stumbled into yesterday. This has to be the most Gothic building I have ever seen in my life. It's all dark and broody and archy and full of gargoyles. I had no idea it was there but now I think it is extremely cool and one of my favorite cathedrals.
3. The movie Hollywoodland, which I saw last night, in English, because Austria loves me. Damn, that movie was completely excellent, and everyone should go see it immediately. Adrien Brody is gorgeous, but more than that the acting is really good, the camera work is really good, the story is suitably twisty, it's just all around awesome. I have to say, the noir genre is completely growing on me. The mystery genre in general, really, but particularly the subset that is noir. I blame Veronica Mars, and also all the Bogart movies I got for my last birthday. I know I like the mystery genre because the detectives are usually so cool, and they have a way of making me feel both really smart and totally in awe of their intelligence at the same time, which I like. They can even be a little smug, and that's okay, as long as they're smug in the direction of people around them instead of in my direction. Julian Kestrel, Veronica Mars, Philip Marlowe, I even picked up a Thursday Next novel yesterday and was liking her. (This means I'm going to have to check out both Lord Peter Wimsey and Sherlock Holmes books again, now that I sort of like mysteries; this genre has been growing on me so totally slowly that it's hard to know what I'll like or won't like at any given time.) Anyway, Adrien Brody as Louis Simo definitely goes on the good list.
4. My hostel, which has cleanliness, relative privacy, and free lockers that come with your room. One of the best hostels I have stayed at, so I really hope they don't hate me for coughing so much.
1. That each country in Europe feels the need not only for a different language, but a different fucking keyboard contraption. In England and America, you have QWERTY keyboards. Okay, I complained about them when I was young and learning to type, but now I know how to type and they work fine. In France, you have AZERTY keyboards, which are annoying but which I have gotten used to. NOW, in Austria, they have QWERTZ keyboards. This is driving me completely insane. There are, like, ten letters that I can count on to be there when I need them. Don't even get me started on punctuation marks. Typing now makes me want to cry.
2. My normal February cold, which arrived promptly on schedule the day I was supposed to be leaving for Paris, and which now keeps me up for two hours at a time every night coughing my lungs up. Shut up, stupid cold. I'm tired enough without your influence, and now all my hostel roommates want to kill me.
3.The book I finished on the way here, Andre Norton's Wheel of Stars. Dear Andre Norton, Since you are neither Madeleine L'Engle, nor Ursula Le Guin, nor Robin McKinley, I must insist that you stop pretending you are, and therefore stop writing books which feature the end of the world because of the stupidity of mankind, the joyous reuniting of two identities into a whole person, or a perfectly normal young woman who suddenly discovers that not only does she have magic powers, but she is some sort of last true hope for mankind. Look on the bright side, Ms. Norton: you are also not Mercedes Lackey, so perhaps if you set your sights a little lower, you can write lovely, decent page turners set in an entirely fantastical environment. Play to your strengths, my dear. Love, petitechica.
4. The fact that it apparently takes four hours to get to Prague from here. I refuse to believe it is that far away. On the map it looks like it should be two or three hours, not four. Now it will be much more of a pain in the ass to take a day trip up there, but I shall go anyway.
Four Things That Are Awesome:
1. The shopping in Vienna. The shopping in Vienna is totally fantasic, and if I had had any money yesterday I wouldn't have it anymore. All the bookstores have a nice, relatively big English language section, the clothing and shoe stores are fantastic, and the souvenir shops don't annoy me as much as usual because lots of them sell Mozart CDs. Also the downtown area is completely gorgeous beyond all reason, it's like you walk along, la de da, and suddenly there's this completely beautiful building right in front of you. Not every building is beautiful -- lots of it is just very commercial, it reminds me of downtown New York -- but that makes it all the more startling when one does suddenly pop up.
2. The St. Stephen's Cathedral, which I randomly stumbled into yesterday. This has to be the most Gothic building I have ever seen in my life. It's all dark and broody and archy and full of gargoyles. I had no idea it was there but now I think it is extremely cool and one of my favorite cathedrals.
3. The movie Hollywoodland, which I saw last night, in English, because Austria loves me. Damn, that movie was completely excellent, and everyone should go see it immediately. Adrien Brody is gorgeous, but more than that the acting is really good, the camera work is really good, the story is suitably twisty, it's just all around awesome. I have to say, the noir genre is completely growing on me. The mystery genre in general, really, but particularly the subset that is noir. I blame Veronica Mars, and also all the Bogart movies I got for my last birthday. I know I like the mystery genre because the detectives are usually so cool, and they have a way of making me feel both really smart and totally in awe of their intelligence at the same time, which I like. They can even be a little smug, and that's okay, as long as they're smug in the direction of people around them instead of in my direction. Julian Kestrel, Veronica Mars, Philip Marlowe, I even picked up a Thursday Next novel yesterday and was liking her. (This means I'm going to have to check out both Lord Peter Wimsey and Sherlock Holmes books again, now that I sort of like mysteries; this genre has been growing on me so totally slowly that it's hard to know what I'll like or won't like at any given time.) Anyway, Adrien Brody as Louis Simo definitely goes on the good list.
4. My hostel, which has cleanliness, relative privacy, and free lockers that come with your room. One of the best hostels I have stayed at, so I really hope they don't hate me for coughing so much.
12.2.07
Feminist Thoughts About the Movies
So I made it all the way through Breakfast At Tiffany's last weekend, for the first time since I lived in Anderson. I didn't love it then, and I like it a lot better now, possibly because I find Holly sympathetic instead of ditzy and annoying. But there is one part of that movie that I just cannot stand, and it's the romance between her and George Peppard's Paul.
I know this is supposed to be one of the huge romantic movies of the century, like Casablanca or Gone With the Wind, and it's not that I blame Paul for finding Audrey Hepburn fetching -- she is fetching, she's a size negative two, she dresses great, she's very charming. But while Audrey Hepburn manages to convey a certain amount of depth of feeling, and control, and sense, George Peppard acts like he just figured out he wants to take a swan dive into her pants. Once her ex-husband shows up, he starts acting hurt and put out whenever she talks to other men, even though he hasn't yet broken it off with his 'decorator.' There doesn't seem to be any depth of feeling in his side of the relationship at all, and then suddenly it's "you belong to me."
Okay, I think my real complaint is that the relationship seems to have two elements -- comfortable friends and crazy obsessives. Like, they're walking around New York stealing masks and goldfish, getting crackerjacks engraved, and it's kind of cute and adorable and you could do that on a date or with a big group of friends and it would remain sort of cute. And then there's no middle ground, where they both sort of want to change their lives to be together, no, from there it's straight to the whole, engaged powder room wham bam thank you ma'am aspect of the movie.
And the movie sort of goes on too long in general -- I watch it in sections, usually -- but the relationship between them is just paced wrong, and messy. I heard from the Divine Dictator once that in the original Truman Capote story, Paul is gay, and I have to say that makes a lot more sense to me. The relationship would seem much more equal, if they were friends and did their wacky zany adventure type stuff and he wasn't trying to get into her pants. She could get him restarted on writing, he could get her out of jail, it would be sort of sweet. But then I thought about it more and decided it's okay if he wants to get into her pants, if it happens more gradually. It's the immediate leap that drives me nuts and makes me not like the romance.
(God, and you know what else has a horrible romance that made me cry? The new Charlotte's Web, which I saw in French last weekend. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Fern supposed to be, like, NINE? Regardless, Dakota Fanning looks about SEVEN AND A HALF, so giving her this TWELVE YEAR OLD GUY to squire her around the fair and hold hands with her on the ferris wheel is SICK AND WRONG. And DON'T GET ME STARTED about how she makes her mother so proud because she was in jeans the whole damn movie and then suddenly, through the magical influence of Ferris Wheel Boy (who has seen her keep a baby pig in her desk, so he can't be THAT particular) she wants to wear a cute yellow dress and ribbons in her hair. GIVE ME A BREAK. I mean, okay, yes, it is fine to want to look pretty to impress people, whatever, but not that young, and not that drastically. The producers seemed to think it was funny. Whatever. Shut up and go back to the fifties.)
And actually, you know, as long as I'm rambling to an un-captive audience, if I were back in the fifties, do you know what I would want to do? If I had the means, I would totally become one of those female sugar daddies like the decorator in Breakfast at Tiffany's, or Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Think about it! Wouldn't that be completely awesome? You could stylishly lure struggling young writers into your web of deceit and your huge bank account, you would call the shots in the relationship because you write the checks, you'd get great sex no matter your own age, and then, when you started losing interest in the young earnest writer type (as you inevitably would, they're all the same) you could pull some strings and have him meet a doe-eyed young thing, preferably engaged to someone else, who would make him feel like he still had balls, and then he (thinking it was entirely his own idea) would leave you and you could find another one, and lather, rinse, repeat! And once that started to get tedious, as it would after a couple dozen, you could liven things up by shooting your last one into your swimming pool and going insane! See, I'm totally right, that would be fantastic.
Now, after that whole entry, everyone is sort of looking at each other all, "Damn, no wonder bitch is single, the bitter old hag," but there are plenty of functional and adorable relationships -- fictional and real life -- that I think are awesome and give me hope for the future and all that jazz. And it's easier to find them in more modern movies, sure, but there are plenty of old movie couples who do great. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are always awesome. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Gene Kelly is kind of a dick, but I don't really have a problem with his relationship with Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain. Audrey Hepburn does just fine as long as she's opposite Gregory Peck instead of George Peppard. I mean, yeah, they're old movies, so you generally get the hero teaching the heroine some Important Life Lesson that your average five year old has already got a pretty good handle on, but whatever, evil villains often act like five year olds too, you can overlook it. As long as it's not the BASIS of the relationship, like it is at Tiffany's.
I know this is supposed to be one of the huge romantic movies of the century, like Casablanca or Gone With the Wind, and it's not that I blame Paul for finding Audrey Hepburn fetching -- she is fetching, she's a size negative two, she dresses great, she's very charming. But while Audrey Hepburn manages to convey a certain amount of depth of feeling, and control, and sense, George Peppard acts like he just figured out he wants to take a swan dive into her pants. Once her ex-husband shows up, he starts acting hurt and put out whenever she talks to other men, even though he hasn't yet broken it off with his 'decorator.' There doesn't seem to be any depth of feeling in his side of the relationship at all, and then suddenly it's "you belong to me."
Okay, I think my real complaint is that the relationship seems to have two elements -- comfortable friends and crazy obsessives. Like, they're walking around New York stealing masks and goldfish, getting crackerjacks engraved, and it's kind of cute and adorable and you could do that on a date or with a big group of friends and it would remain sort of cute. And then there's no middle ground, where they both sort of want to change their lives to be together, no, from there it's straight to the whole, engaged powder room wham bam thank you ma'am aspect of the movie.
And the movie sort of goes on too long in general -- I watch it in sections, usually -- but the relationship between them is just paced wrong, and messy. I heard from the Divine Dictator once that in the original Truman Capote story, Paul is gay, and I have to say that makes a lot more sense to me. The relationship would seem much more equal, if they were friends and did their wacky zany adventure type stuff and he wasn't trying to get into her pants. She could get him restarted on writing, he could get her out of jail, it would be sort of sweet. But then I thought about it more and decided it's okay if he wants to get into her pants, if it happens more gradually. It's the immediate leap that drives me nuts and makes me not like the romance.
(God, and you know what else has a horrible romance that made me cry? The new Charlotte's Web, which I saw in French last weekend. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Fern supposed to be, like, NINE? Regardless, Dakota Fanning looks about SEVEN AND A HALF, so giving her this TWELVE YEAR OLD GUY to squire her around the fair and hold hands with her on the ferris wheel is SICK AND WRONG. And DON'T GET ME STARTED about how she makes her mother so proud because she was in jeans the whole damn movie and then suddenly, through the magical influence of Ferris Wheel Boy (who has seen her keep a baby pig in her desk, so he can't be THAT particular) she wants to wear a cute yellow dress and ribbons in her hair. GIVE ME A BREAK. I mean, okay, yes, it is fine to want to look pretty to impress people, whatever, but not that young, and not that drastically. The producers seemed to think it was funny. Whatever. Shut up and go back to the fifties.)
And actually, you know, as long as I'm rambling to an un-captive audience, if I were back in the fifties, do you know what I would want to do? If I had the means, I would totally become one of those female sugar daddies like the decorator in Breakfast at Tiffany's, or Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Think about it! Wouldn't that be completely awesome? You could stylishly lure struggling young writers into your web of deceit and your huge bank account, you would call the shots in the relationship because you write the checks, you'd get great sex no matter your own age, and then, when you started losing interest in the young earnest writer type (as you inevitably would, they're all the same) you could pull some strings and have him meet a doe-eyed young thing, preferably engaged to someone else, who would make him feel like he still had balls, and then he (thinking it was entirely his own idea) would leave you and you could find another one, and lather, rinse, repeat! And once that started to get tedious, as it would after a couple dozen, you could liven things up by shooting your last one into your swimming pool and going insane! See, I'm totally right, that would be fantastic.
Now, after that whole entry, everyone is sort of looking at each other all, "Damn, no wonder bitch is single, the bitter old hag," but there are plenty of functional and adorable relationships -- fictional and real life -- that I think are awesome and give me hope for the future and all that jazz. And it's easier to find them in more modern movies, sure, but there are plenty of old movie couples who do great. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are always awesome. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Gene Kelly is kind of a dick, but I don't really have a problem with his relationship with Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain. Audrey Hepburn does just fine as long as she's opposite Gregory Peck instead of George Peppard. I mean, yeah, they're old movies, so you generally get the hero teaching the heroine some Important Life Lesson that your average five year old has already got a pretty good handle on, but whatever, evil villains often act like five year olds too, you can overlook it. As long as it's not the BASIS of the relationship, like it is at Tiffany's.
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