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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Kirk's Blurty:
| Sunday, October 25th, 2009 | |
| 1:04 pm | Ann My sister Ann died early Thursday morning. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer in June. From the beginning she didn't catch a single break medically speaking. A week after learning of the diagnosis, she confided to me just how bad it was, how it was already advanced. She found a doctor she liked and decided on a treatment plan. She did two regimens of chemotherapy but neither had any significant effect. The four months since the diagnosis passed so fast, and none of us could keep up, that is, even when I thought I was facing the reality of this, I couldn't quite grasp just how fast it was progressing. I don't think anyone could. Several years ago Ann's best friend, Val, died of ovarian cancer. Val lived with her cancer for years, at a couple points so much time had passed that I thought she must have beaten it. I think now, though I was unaware of it at the time, I must have unconsciously used Val's experience as a template. At any rate, none of us thought time would be so short. Ann had been in the hospital for pain issues and was released on Monday. I was in touch with either her or with Rob, her partner for more than 20 years, nearly every day and we planned to drive down to Salinas on Thursday. However on Wednesday evening we got a call that things were not good, so we all drove down that night. Several friends were already at their house, and we spent several hours there, visiting and talking with Ann one or two people at a time. There wasn't time to talk about all the things we would have liked to, but it was a good visit, Ann was lucid and glad to see everyone, she would get short of breath easily and had to talk slowly, but she said she hoped to have three or four more weeks to see more of everyone. We left late that night and planned to visit again maybe the next day. Ann passed away around 4 a.m. the next morning, October 22, the same date our dad died in 1994. She was 47. My sister had an amazingly accomplished life. She was easily the smartest one in our family, she earned a PhD from Berkeley and a JD from Boalt School of Law, and taught (at different times, sociology and criminal justice) at the Univ. of Texas El Paso and then at San Jose State Univ. She traveled extensively, she loved dogs, and she was most responsible for introducing me to Led Zeppelin. We fought like demons as kids and were great friends as adults. I'll miss her terribly. I should say that having Mary-Jane in my life has made all the difference going through this, on my own I would be a complete wreck. I mostly worry about my mom and about Rob. I should also say that Ann could not have had a better and more supportive partner than him. At a later date I'll try to post some pictures here. |
| Friday, October 2nd, 2009 | |
| 12:13 pm | The World Will End on Sunday, October 4 We have an appointment with Dish Network, that is to say, yes, after 40+ years of resistence, cable TV is coming to the Lucas household. So sad. Changing technology forced our hand. First came the switch to digital. Helpfully, Pres. Obama moved the date from February, when shows were still airing new episodes, to June, when broadcast TV isn't showing anything that anyone needs to give a shit about. So we got the digital converter (w/ coupon), hooked it up, all was fine. Well, except that with the converter, we could no longer record on our vcr, only play. But it was summer, and we didn't need to record any broadcast shows. Digression: I will concede that we have been cheating for some time, in recording cable shows next door thanks to my mom getting cable a few years back. This allowed us to watch Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, Damages, Saving Grace. btw, you know what spurred my mom to get cable? The local NBC affiliate, after some arcane dispute, moved from SF to San Jose, which, so we were told, would make NBC reception in Oakland iffy. We waited it out, and our NBC reception was fine. But my mom semi-panicked and was all, "You mean I might not be able to see The West Wing? Fuck that noise." Ok, she didn't actually say that last part, but she was rather attached to The West Wing, so she got cable. Anyway. But now it ain't summer no more. The final nail is that Comcast (aka The Worst Company on the Planet), which supplies my mom's cable, is forcing her to get some converter box thing which I suspect will render her own vcr obsolete. So reluctantly, we had to concede that action must be taken. (Note we are not ourselves going with Comcast, not after the nightmare of our cable internet experience.) So I'm here to apologize for the whole world ending thing. Oh, and I'm no expert on these things, but if you see a plague of locusts on the horizon come Sunday, it might be best to stay indoors. We're truly sorry about all this. |
| Monday, September 7th, 2009 | |
| 6:53 pm | Netflix August: The Quickening Race You to the Bottom Amber Benson! And this was almost, almost a good movie. An indie flick about a straight gal and a bisexual guy who both have boyfriends but are secretly having an affair with each other. It's quite watchable and has some good moments but in the end really needed a better script. Nice to see Amber in a starring role, and she's quite good as a character alot bitchier and more assertive than Tara. Battle Royale Cult Japanese movie set in a near future where every year a randomly selected class of school kids is deposited on an island, given randomly selected weapons, and told they must kill each other until just one survivor is left. Played straight and ultra-violent, it's very effective, unapologetic pulp, in spite of some decidedly variable acting. The teenagers behave like recognizable teenagers, which adds to its lurid effect. If it's the kind of thing you go for, it doesn't disappoint. Then Mary-Jane went to England for a couple weeks, and I saw a couple horror flicks solo: Eden Lake I picked this after reading a favorable write-up in Empire magazine, and I should know better. It's part of the sub-genre of which Deliverance is the gold standard, i.e., normal people find themselves hunted like animals in some remote location. In this case, a young couple are vacationing in a wooded area by a lake, get on the wrong side of a group of teenagers, things go from bad to worse, and so on. There's an art to this sort of movie. Arguably my favorite horror movie, the original The Hills Have Eyes, is a variation of this sub-genre. The trick is to walk the line between suspense and sadism. Eden Lake, while not quite torture porn, errs way on the side of sadism. I do not recommend this. My Little Eye A rare animal, a horror flick that Mary-Jane had seen and I had not, which she recommended. Five people, as part of an internet reality show webcast thing, agree to spend six months alone in a house in the middle of nowhere, with no amenities and no contact with the outside world. A million dollars to each if they last the full six months, and nada if even one person leaves early. Things are not as they seem. In spite of blatantly stock characters, this works as a tense, suspenseful little movie, with a genuinely chilling ending. |
| Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | |
| 11:12 pm | Netflix July: 3D: The Revenge Blind Shaft Chinese movie about two miners supplementing their income by killing other miners. Simple, effective story, but mainly this is interesting as a picture of how the poor live in modern rural China. Shock Corridor The word 'potboiler' seems to have fallen into disuse. Too bad, it's a good word. This is a Sam Fuller potboiler from the early '60s--starring Peter Breck of The Big Valley!--set in an insane asylum. I found it a bit too pulpy and over-the-top. I'd recommend The Naked Kiss as a better Sam Fuller potboiler from the same period. Previously seen by Mary-Jane, unseen by me. Same for the two movies below. Roman Holiday I haven't seen many Audrey Hepburn films, for some reason. Sabrina and the suspense movie Wait Until Dark, and that's about it. Roman Holiday is as charming as advertised, much as I remember Sabrina to be. Happy-Go-Lucky I hadn't seen a new Mike Leigh film since Career Girls, and Mary-Jane recommended this after seeing it last year in England. It's about a schoolteacher called Poppy who has what seems an impossibly optimistic outlook on life. She takes some getting used to; in the first 15 minutes, you wonder if her elevator goes to the top floor, she seems almost to not live in the real world. Her bike is stolen, so she decides to take driving lessons, and ends up with Scott as her driving instructor, an angry misanthrope who is essentially her polar opposite. There's not a whole lot of plot, you meet various people in her life and follow her progress learning to drive. Those scenes are somehow funny while at the same time excruciating, as Scott brings out the worst in Poppy. He's so angry and humorless she can't resist needling him constantly, and to be honest, I was half afraid the movie might turn into Taxi Driver at any moment. But it doesn't. It ends up being something remarkable. Eventually you realize that Poppy very much lives in the real world. She sees people clearly, and genuinely tries to connect with them. She's not insipid or daft (which one might think if not really paying attention) but is unapologetically herself and sincerely interested in people. It might be wearying to be around her all the time, she never shuts up and half of her jokes are lame, but there's a real goodness there, without judgment. Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, I'm completely unfamiliar with her, but she's amazingly good. Recommended. |
| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | |
| 10:52 pm | Netflix June: Electric Boogaloo 4 movies, first time we've managed one per weekend for a whole month. Let's Scare Jessica to Death Will mentioned this once a long time ago, and I'd heard of it for years but never saw it. This is a low budget horror flick from 1971 about a woman just released from a mental institution who, with her husband and a friend, goes to live in a remote house in the country. And starts seeing/hearing things. Are they real? It's an effective little movie with one major handicap, which is the lead actress gives a really weak performance. Great final scene, though. Deliverance Previously seen by me, unseen by Mary-Jane. What can you say? It's Deliverance. Third time I've seen it, hasn't lost a thing. Still brutal, still a classic. I don't imagine it helped Georgia's tourism industry much, though. Mary-Jane commented that she previously hadn't realized that there was a time when Burt Reynolds was hot. Idiocracy Two people volunteer for an army experiment in which they're put in hibernation and wake up 500 years in the future. In spite of being chosen for being average, they find themselves the two smartest people in the world in a dumbed-down future which is sort of half consumerist nightmare and half Jerry Springer. (Karl's Jr. ad: "Fuck you--I'm eating.") This is a great idea that is about halfway successful. It's very funny in places--the monster truck rally/rehabilitation scene is brilliant. But oddly, the movie seems hampered by being ruthlessly committed to its premise. That is, the main characters (and the audience) are so surrounded by wall to wall stupidity that the effect alternates between hilarity and despair. It's often really funny, and then it starts to just wear you down. Kind of fascinating, actually. I have no idea if this effect was accidental, or intentional. Infernal Affairs The Hong Kong flick that was remade as The Departed. Cop goes undercover in the mob while simultaneously a gangster infiltrates the police dept. Two moles, and neither knows the other's identity. Paranoia and suspense ratchet up from there. Excellent and highly recommended. Best Hong Kong movie I've seen since Hard Boiled. |
| Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | |
| 10:53 pm | Netflix May: A New Beginning 2 movies. Partly because we're prioritizing season 2 of Breaking Bad, which we're about halfway through. I was right that the first season mostly sets the table for the meth hitting the fan in s2. The show really hits its stride, it may be the best thing on TV that I'm currently watching. More on this when we finish the season. The Dead Girl This was very good, I recommend it. A drama from a couple years ago, it begins with a young woman's body found in the desert. The movie is told in five chapters from the point of view of different characters whose lives are affected, some who knew the dead girl and others who did not. That could sound gimmicky but it isn't really. Various roles are played by Toni Collette, Rose Byrne, Brittany Murphy, and Marcia Gay Harden, who are all quite good. On a side note, I keep noticing Toni Collette getting cast as characters who are supposed to be seen as unattractive. Really? Only in the movies, man. Fight Club Previously unseen by us, yes that's correct. We now have to resign our membership in the Never Seen Fight Club Club. Which leaves only five Mongolian goat herders as active members. Sorry, guys. (I have, however, still never seen Titanic. Go me.) So what do I have to say about this? Um, mostly that I should have seen it ten years ago, when it was all part of the zeitgeist and stuff. It's weird for a movie from 1999 to seem almost dated. (I had the same sensation when I finally saw The Matrix, long after every other sentient human on Earth.) Not the movie's fault, of course, but it was next to impossible to separate the it from all the cultural whatnot that hangs off it. Also, because it's so much entered the culture, we knew going in about the big reveal late in the movie. That can't have helped. So. I dunno. It was never boring, and frequently funny, but I may be in Roger Ebert's camp of not entirely getting it. And the whole thing of seizing the day and reclaiming one's life or vitality or whatever by purposely getting punched in the face repeatedly--which the movie seems to take seriously--um, no. In conclusion, I'm glad I finally saw it, but I suspect that for me the essential David Fincher film will always be Zodiac. Lola update: Miss cat seems to be doing fine, we give her antibiotics (which she loathes) twice a day, more followup x-rays to come, but she does seem to be past the worst of it. Oh, and a word about timing. We got Lola on May 15, 2004 (I'm blessed/cursed to remember such things), so this May was five years we've had her. She went into the hospital on May 14. Also, May 18? Was our 6th anniversary. Lola's outlook appeared bleak on the day. We did nothing. Didn't even exchange cards we'd already bought until the following Saturday. Finally, you might recall Lola came home on a Friday. That was good, aside from the obvious reason, because on the Sunday two days hence we went to a play called The Lieutenant of Inishmore. This is a very violent (seriously; splatter-movie violent) black comedy about Irish terrorism whose plot revolves around a murdered cat. I couldn't make this stuff up. |
| Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | |
| 11:21 am | The Cat in the Plastic Bubble This is maybe not the best year for cats. The last nine days of (mostly) hell: Lola got sick rather suddenly, stopped eating, became very lethargic, her breathing quite labored. We took her to a pet hospital on Thursday; it became clear her breathing was the major issue, though on Thursday they weren't too alarmed after measuring her oxygenation. Just as well they kept her overnight though, as she declined severely Friday morning. She was put into what they call an oxygen cage. Or as we soon came to refer to it, the bankruptcy cage. And the ordeal started in earnest. They determined that Lola had some sort of lung infection, but the immediate difficulty was ascertaining what kind of infection. They couldn't put her under a general anesthetic because due to her breathing difficulty, she likely wouldn't survive it. So they had to mildly sedate her so they could stick a needle in her chest to get a sample to analyze. This was less precise but the best option available. Initial tests were inconclusive, so they sent samples to a lab to grow cultures to hopefully get some answers. The rub: results from this would take several days. In the meantime we visited Lola every day, and they started her on broad spectrum antibiotics. Essentially, the hope was this was what she needed anyway, though they needed the cultures results to be sure of this. So the oxygen cage, as hinted above, is rather expensive. Though we were determined not to ultimately let money decide fate, the reality was also that this was not a situation that could go on indefinitely (i.e., Lola in the oxygen cage 24/7). So we had the dual stresses of, is Lola going to die, and how much the financial damage was mounting by the day. Visiting Lola was good and at the same time hard. Good in that she always perked up when we came, and that it was clear that in the cage with heightened oxygen, she wasn't suffering. But the latter is also what made it hard. The head trip is that we were visiting our cat who A) was not noticeably suffering, and B) was nevertheless in a dire situation. The cage created its own false reality. It's essentially a large crate of glass, big enough for a cat to move around in, and with two portals that we could open so we could reach in and pet Lola. In it, every day she looked like we could just take her home. But outside it in regular air, she would almost immediately go back to very labored breathing. So the daily routine became, wait for a call in the morning to Mary-Jane's work with an update, which she would then call me at work to relay any info, and after work drive to San Leandro for a visit and further update. The ongoing hell became hearing, day after day, some variation on, "she's doing about the same". Also that no, the cultures results weren't back yet. The thing to understand is, "doing about the same" was not good news, or even neutral. Lola had to improve, significantly, to have any chance of surviving. Each day of "doing about the same" felt like inching closer to an execution date. The money issue would force itself back into our brains. Lola did improve slightly, as far as her breaths per minute, and the percentage of oxygen the cage needed, as days went by. Just not enough. We'd ask, is the improvement enough to get her out of the cage? No, not yet. Despite all our rage, she was still just a cat in a cage. (Sorry.) There were two days, Monday, and then again Wednesday, when despair sank in and we were convinced Lola wasn't going to make it. Wednesday's visit, as it happened, the pet hospital was extremely busy (the nature of any emergency room), so we could only make a brief visit, but the doctor couldn't see us unless we wanted to wait a very long time. So we left and told them we'd call later that evening for an update, which was fine. I called after 10 p.m. and pressed one of the doctors (Lola's main doctor had left by then) about weaning Lola off the cage. And this time, instead of the usual answer, they seemed to think they could try that. Thursday morning, at long last: qualified good news. Lola was off oxygen for ninety minutes and did ok. She had to go back on it after, but still. And: the cultures results came in, and confirmed that the antibiotics she'd been on almost a week were the right treatment. (Bacterial infection. Origin, unknown.) Thursday after work, the discussion with her doctor actually involved us taking Lola home on Friday, possibly. And Lola actually tried to climb thru the portals for the first time. Friday came, and Lola was off oxygen and doing fine. Late afternoon, we came and got her. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So miss cat is back home. We have to give her oral antibiotics, and we'll bring her back to the pet hospital in several days for another chest x-ray. We are watching her breathing closely, and how much damage there was to her lungs is still unknown. But, for now, a happy ending we didn't always think we'd see. Insane props to Lola's savior, Dr. Panek (like Pascoe's doctors a year ago, another female and rather young star of the veterinary world). And to Lola, for hanging on and rallying like a warrior. In a related development, the pet hospital now owns our house, and currently we're residing in a doorway near a liquor store on East 14th St. |
| Friday, May 8th, 2009 | |
| 12:32 pm | Better Dying Through Chemistry: Netflix April Belated, and abbrieviated. I've mostly been preoccupied with various iPod-related activities lately. So the science of capturing album cover art is somewhat inexact, I've found. I was especially amused with three instances of iTunes finding the wrong album cover. Ha. Anyway. Zero movies. We decided to watch another cable show (because gosh, it's not like we're ever behind in watching stuff, it's not like we have piles of stuff we still haven't watched, oh no), and that would be Breaking Bad. This is about Walter White, New Mexico high school chemistry teacher, who has a decent if somehow slightly disappointing life, a family he loves, and nagging money issues. Then he collapses one day, is taken to a hospital, and finds he has terminal lung cancer. Oh, and he's a lifelong nonsmoker. Also, his teenage son is developmentally disabled, and his wife is pregnant. So you have a straight arrow kind of guy who's always played by the rules and is suddenly up against it, with a prognosis of two years. What does he do? He decides to go into business with Jesse, a former student who now sells meth. See, he's a chemistry teacher. Many years ago, we find out, he was almost a very big deal in his field, but somehow that eluded him and he ended up instead talking chemistry to bored apathetic students. But he knows his stuff, and finds he can cook a much purer product than the lowlife competition. And he's determined not to leave his family in economic desperation when he dies. So there's your premise. Very good show. Bryan Cranston is rather amazing in it. The first season is a mere seven episodes (the second season is airing now, and we're taping it), so it mostly is setting things up. (This takes all 7 episodes because Walt and Jesse A) screw things up in major ways, more than once; B) get their signals crossed repeatedly and are dealing with disparate things in their own lives; C) change their minds a few times about whether this is really a (*ahem*) good idea.) It manages a mix of despair and absurd/grim humor without being tonally jarring, and somehow, despite Walt's truncated future, the episodes don't play as depressing. Walt's character is handled with finesse. It's not like he turns into Bruce Willis, he remains the same guy, very out of his element. But he knows the science, and intuitively uses that to hold his own among lowlifes. And he's desperate. But yeah, it seems this is entertaining foreplay for season 2. Good stuff. Back to movies for May, or at least, the rest of May. |
| Monday, April 6th, 2009 | |
| 3:52 pm | My sundial broke, so... (I got an iPod.) |
| Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | |
| 11:59 pm | The guy that played Lorne Andy Hallett, who played Lorne on Angel, died. He was only 33, and apparently had had heart problems the last several years. Man, that's a shame. I know almost nothing about him, apparently he considered himself more a singer than an actor. All I can say is he brightened every Angel episode he appeared in, and not just visually. One of those characters it was always a pleasure when they showed up. I'll remember him fondly. |
| 11:29 pm | Too Fast, Too Netflix: March Only two movies, March kind of flew by. The Times of Harvey Milk Documentary made in 1984. It was good. All the archival T.V. footage was from stations I watched growing up. I kept saying things like, "Isn't that Barbara Rodgers? Wow, look at Dennis Richmond's afro." Having seen the movie Milk (which is excellent), I can say say that Josh Brolin looks exactly like the real Dan White in that, disturbingly so. Anyway, this is an incisive time capsule of the Bay Area in the late '70s. Donny Darko Cult movie that neither of us had seen. Though it doesn't completely hold together, it's overall quite good. Very early David Lynch-ian. You know how there are kinds of movies, not referring to genre like comedies or westerns, but to a certain filmic viewpoint? Within a few minutes, I recognized this was the kind of movie I generally find pretentious and annoying. But I didn't, in this instance. It impressively maintains a somber, forboding tone throughout, even with sporadic appearances by a giant rabbit named Frank. Also, President Roslin is in it. As ever, she's very good. |
| Thursday, March 26th, 2009 | |
| 12:24 am | They were robots We saw the finale just before heading off to Carmel for a couple days for Bill Shatner's birthday (and mine, a day later). James Tiberious is 78. And today, so is Spock. We took Pascoe, as Carmel is possibly the most dog-friendly place ever. Though we stayed off other people's lawns. Granted, it's been many years since Clint Eastwood was mayor there, but still. Anyway, thoughts on the last Robots to follow. ( Read more... ) In other news, I got a belated birthday present today, sort of from myself. A year or two ago, Julia & Nigel, my sister-in-law and almost-brother-in-law, gave me an amazon gift certificate, and I ordered the 2nd season of one of my favorite and seriously underrated shows, Once & Again. Which was out of print, it turned out. Months went by, occasionally I would get an email from amazon asking if I wanted to give up on it or if they should keep trying to find it. I wasn't bothered, we're always behind on our dvd watching anyway, so I never canceled the order. I'd pretty much forgotten all about it, and then today I get an email telling me it's finally on its way. Sweet! |
| Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | |
| 11:56 pm | Bride of Netflix: February The Philadelphia Story Previously seen by me, unseen by Mary-Jane. Ok, reassessment time! I saw this probably at least 15 years ago, and loved it. And as far as the level of craft, the acting, writing, directing, it holds up. Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, directed by George Cukor--how could it not? What I somehow missed entirely on my previous viewing was the utterly toxic sexual politics. Hepburn is Tracy Lord (yeah, one letter 's' shy of a porn star), a strong-willed daughter of a socially connected family. That is, she's more or less playing herself. She's divorced from Grant and about to remarry. Stewart plays a newspaper reporter. (Her actual fiance is more a plot device than anything, and not terribly important.) So it's a basic 1940s comedy setup, deftly executed. Ever wonder what it must have been like to be Katherine Hepburn as a young woman? Let's venture to say it was no doubt a challenge. The social mores of the day (and/or the Hayes Code) apparently made it necessary to put such a woman in her place before the final reel. So Tracy is lectured twice in the movie--once by Grant, who's penchant for drink was apparently a large factor in their divorce, and once by her father--on what is her basic Failing as a Woman. It seems to amount to being too morally rigid, which is to say, too intolerant of the failings of men. Oh yeah, her own parents are also divorced due to her father's philandering. In one scene, her father actually says that his adultery is indirectly Tracy's fault. I'm very much not kidding, or even exaggerating. Worse, the film seems to endorse this view. Jimmy Stewart manages to go the entire movie being nice to Tracy, which makes him far and away the most likable male character. Of course, it's just a movie. Hepburn, though, had to live this sort of thing, and managed to thrive. Go her. 24 Eyes This is a wonderful Japanese movie from the 1950s about a schoolteacher in a rural village and her 12 students (hence the title). It follows the relationship of the teacher with the students from their childhood to young adulthood, and comments on Japanese society from the late 1920s through the postwar years. It has a couple utterly heartbreaking scenes and an underlying tone of sadness yet somehow is ultimately uplifting. I learn from the dvd special features that apparently this is a classic and beloved movie in Japan. I love Japanese film and I've sought them out for, hmm, at least 20 years. The frustrating thing is that for anything older than, say, the 1980s, what's known in the west is essentially the films of Kurasawa, plus a couple of Ozu and a couple more of Mizoguchi. This movie (not by any of those three) I had barely heard of. I miss things I don't even know I miss because I don't know they exist. It's one reason I think we'll stick with Netflix even though we don't have the free time to fully take advantage of it; their selection is impressive. Come and See Oh my. Continuing the above theme, I had never heard of this film until seeing a mention of it a few years ago in Empire magazine. To my knowledge it was never released in the U.S. This is a Russian movie from 1985 about the German invasion of Russia in World War II. I've become fascinated with the Russian war experience in the last few years. I read Antony Beevor's brilliant book Stalingrad, watched an excellent BBC documentary on the subject. Now this, this is a masterpiece, a cataclysmically brilliant movie. It's set in Belorussia, contains no conventional battle scenes, but follows a boy of maybe 14 or so who runs off to join the partisans fighting the German army. What follows is a succession of surreal nightmarish scenes I can't adequately describe but which seem to capture the incoherent random madness and cruelty of war, in particular war waged on civilians, like no film I've ever seen. The dialogue is sparse, scenes are stretched out languidly or brutally (or both), exposition is minimal. A number of indelible images. We watched straight through without a pause. It ended, I could only say, "That was harrowing." Mary-Jane: "That was easily the best World War II film I've ever seen." Yep. Unforgettable stuff. |
| Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 | |
| 11:25 pm | Chronicles of Netflix: January Three movies, which will probably be typical. We really only have time to watch movies at home on weekends, or holidays. The choosing of titles is split evenly, and we're trying for variety, between old and new, different genres, etc. So let's get it started... The Big Lebowski Previously seen by Mary-Jane, unseen by me. (I know, I know.) I've long had mixed feelings about the Coens. Their work ranges from movies I love (Blood Simple and Fargo), to movies that are almost great (Raising Arizona and No Country for Old Men), to movies I actively dislike (Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing). I'd put The Big Lebowski in the almost great category. It's wildly uneven, but the parts that are funny are really funny. Jeff Bridges is predictably great, he always is, and it gives John Goodman probably the best role he ever had (outside of Roseanne). Though I'm not quite sure what the point of Sam Elliott is, other than, it's always good to see him. Hud Previously seen by me, unseen by Mary-Jane. One of the three essential Paul Newman roles. He plays an absolute shit heel, who underneath it all...is an absolute shit heel. Set in small town Texas, Hud Bannon is hated by his father, revered by his newphew, and lusts after the family cook (which is mutual, until he fucks it up), while he drinks, screws, and aimlessly drifts through his life. Great sexual tension between Newman and Patricia Neal, who was never better. The newphew is played by Brandon De Wilde, the kid from Shane. De Wilde died in a car accident in 1972. He was thirty. Le Petit Lieutenant A French police drama about a rookie detective. This is a good movie, not outstanding, and mainly recommended for the performance of Nathalie Baye, one of the luminous French actresses of the generation that produced Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Stephane Audran, Isabelle Adjani, etc. Baye plays the ranking detective who mentors the young lieutenant. She's a recovering alcoholic, not embittered but somewhat worn down by years and years of police work, jaded but not without warmth. (In other words, a role an American actress of similar age could only get on cable TV.) The film ends with an extended, wordless closeup of her face, and the play of emotions is breathtaking. |
| Friday, January 9th, 2009 | |
| 1:51 pm | Can you feature that awful creature... Bob Wilkins died. This will only have meaning to people who lived in the Bay Area in the '70s, and watched late night TV. [article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/09/DDQS15665F.DTL&type=entertainment] He was the host of Creature Features, which showed mostly very bad horror movies on Saturday nights throughout the '70s. (I later came to realize that similar shows existed all across the country, but back in those pre-internets days Chicago might as well have been Kuala Lumpur, and we all thought we were unique.) Mr. Wilkins was distinguished by very dry wit, a phenomenally understated manner, a huge cigar, and brutal honesty. Week after week, he would tell us just how bad tonight's movie was. It was part of the appeal, plus, on the rare occasions when he had a good movie and said so, you knew it wasn't b.s. He sometimes had guests on the breaks, and while most of these were forgettable, he once did an extended interview with John Carradine about his career which was just amazing. He quit the show in 1979, which continued for several more years with a different host. One thing I took from all those late nights was that somehow a bad horror movie has inherently more interest than a bad movie of almost any other genre. I still think that's so. Also, the opening theme was killer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MrQYSNYLVc&feature=related So we're back, and apparently Majel Barrett died. (I think this is the first time I've found out about a death from a blog comment--but thanks, Katherine. The Brit papers were all over Harold Pinter, but somehow I didn't see any mention of the most famous computer voice ever.) We've finally succumbed and become Netflix kids, though the problem of finding the time to watch many movies at home remains unchanged. I'm thinking of tallying here what we do watch on Netflix, which shouldn't be hard since we'll be lucky to watch much more than one a month. I'm becoming convinced that P@ is a cyborg. I mean, three kids, a job, all the usual modern hassles, and you still watched 199 movies in a year (more than one every two days)? But if P@ doesn't require sleep, then maybe it makes sense.. |
| Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | |
| 5:02 pm | Meow, it's cold inside This being an even-numbered year, we are once again off to England for Xmas. So to all, may you & yours have a stupendous holiday. Oh, and that thing a couple other people have mentioned about not sending cards this year? Us too. Just no time. So we're having a rare genuine cold spell this week (meaning, temperatures as low as the mid-30s, uncommon for the Bay Area), causing us to feel more than the usual quotient of guilt re: the pets, specifically Lola. While Pascoe gets to spend two weeks next door at my mom's house, Lola will find herself in a house where suddenly the heating grates stop working. Yeah, same as in '04 and '06, but it's colder this year. (Plus as far as she knows, Pascoe is going to England with us; she won't know he's just next door.) So I'm thinking of asking my brother, on particularly cold days, to come over and turn on the heat for an hour or so. Al Gore wouldn't approve, but Lola surely would. I was going to mention a few other things, but time runs short. Let's see... Why am I still watching Heroes? There is absolutely no justifying it. It goes from the ridiculous to the exponentially ridiculous. Plus they killed Veronica Mars. (Oh, sorry. But really, as far as spoiling this show, as Lt. Worf once remarked, "You cannot tarnish a rusty blade.") Make me stop. Paul Newman died awhile back. I meant to write something here but never did. He was one of my favorites for as long as I can remember. Also--Mary-Jane has never seen Hud, The Hustler, or Cool Hand Luke. This shall be remedied. Politics. Um, no. I think I underestimated how beaten down I was by the past 8 years. Every time lately I think of addressing some of the myriad things in my head, it defeats me. So instead, here's Steve Earle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Af5SahC1DE See you all in 2009! |
| Monday, November 17th, 2008 | |
| 2:14 pm | Book meme Self-tagged, from Amy. List 6 book-related things about oneself, then tag six other people. I'm not sure I know six other people, so 86 that part. I don't read enough books. This is partly due to the annoyances of being a grownup, partly due to reading newspapers and magazines and such, partly due to not being a fast reader. But mostly the first one. A continual regret in my life. This is an annoying trend. I will always have a list (really, an actual list, not a mental one) of at least 20 books on deck that I intend to read. My system is to not pick my next book until I finish the current one. (Well, sometimes I'm reading more than one book at a time, but nevermind that now.) There's been an annoying tendency the last year or so where I will hear about a movie verson of a book that is due to come out in a few months or next year, and it will be a book on said list. I hate this. Because another rule of mine is that while I'm happy to see a film version of a book I've read, I never read a book if there's a movie version that I've already seen. Because I'm willing to be spoiled in one direction, but not the other. (There are rare exceptions. The Godfather was one, because my dad told me the movie was infinitely better, the book merely "a good trashy novel" as he put it. He was correct. Or I might make an exception for something considered to be a giant of literature.) So when this happens, I can either shun the movie, or make sure I read the book before the movie comes out. And I hate outside events manipulating my reading. It irks. For some reason this is happening alot recently. I did read Watchmen (Simon: you were right, it is deep stuff). I'm currently reading The Road. And I shunned the movie version of Blindness, which helpfully tanked and was gone within a week or so anyway. I look down my nose at science fiction and, especially, fantasy. Again, there are exceptions. The Road, after all, is a dystopian story (though since it won a bunch of awards the literary community is apparently pretending it's not science fiction; issues much?). Short stories, in particular. And Phillip K. Dick. It's not like a rule or anything. But after reading alot of science fiction in my youth, as I got older I found much of it, well, poorly written. I seem to be much more amenable to science fiction in the mediums of television and movies. Fantasy, the interest was never there. No Harry Potter for me, and Tolkein? Oh hell no. Somehow, Amy is still speaking to me. (Horror is another matter entirely. I like reading horror.) I was doublecrossed by the Oakland Unified School District. In elementary school, I volunteered to read The Count of Monte Cristo, and did so. It was easily the longest book I had ever read in my young life, some 450 pages, and I was somewhat pleased with myself. Years later, I find out that what I read was a condensed version. Apparently the real deal is like 1300 pages. Man, was I bummed. Stupid Alexandre Dumas. I keep all my books. I only wish I always had. Among the Gone Forever: my older Star Trek books, and my Peanuts collections. *sigh* I have no name for this. There's this weird phenomenon that can happen. It's rare, and in fact hasn't happened to me in well over a decade. It's where a book will just have some vibe whereby I can't continue reading it. To try to explain, I'm not talking about a book being bad, or boring. I don't mean I become convinced that I won't like it. It's more like, I just can't get into it, but that phrase doesn't do justice to what I'm talking about. And I don't mean that it's too much of something, like grim, depressing, or violent. I like grim, depressing, and violent. Perhaps some question of tone? I can't really define it. Two somewhat famous titles where this happened to me are Fahrenheit 451 and Beloved. I do plan to go back to them one day and try again. |
| Friday, November 14th, 2008 | |
| 2:00 pm | A lonely vampire in the snow I've been thinking that the popularity of vampires is totally out of control. You'd think there would be occasional lulls, in between Anne Rice and Buffy and whatnot, but no. It's apparently a neverending assembly line. There's a vampire show on HBO now, and it's possible I'm just not travelling in the right circles, but it seems like no one is even noticing. Too much product? I mean, if even the Mormons are doing it... (Which makes me wonder, does this mean the Mormons find vampires less objectionable than gays?) This isn't meant as a criticism, just an observation. It could be worse. George Lucas could decide to do three more Star Wars movies. (Or really worse: George Lucas could decide to do a vampire movie. Though at least that might answer the question, is it possible to create a vampire with absolutely zero charisma?) So a week ago we saw a Swedish vampire movie. You have to admit, the concept alone of the preceeding sentence almost has you buying a ticket, right? This movie is called Let the Right One In, a great title in my opinion. Also, happily, a seriously great movie. [General plot outline follows, nothing too specific or spoiler-ish.] This is about a 12-year old boy who befriends a 12-year-old girl. The girl is a vampire. They bond in a halting sort of way, mainly through mutual isolation. The boy is shy and sometimes bullied at school. The girl, well, is a vampire, and not part of any group or quasi-family. It's just her. The tone is contemplative, I could say existential or just very Swedish. Being a vampire is seen as a sad and lonely existence, and the matter of killing people to live is viewed as dreary and exhausting. The girl, Eli, accepts what she is without self-pity but also without particularly enjoying it. There is a forward-moving plot but mainly the movie is concerned with observing these two characters. I don't know how widely this will be released, but I highly recommend it. Oh, one of the critical blurbs on the newspaper ad literally says, "Go see it before an American version ruins it." No joke, apparently there will be an American remake sometime in 2009. See this one instead. |
| Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 | |
| 8:00 pm | ABC calls it Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States. And he carries Virginia, heart of the Confederacy. Goodnight folks, I'm off to bask in joy & relief & amazement for the next several hours. Well done, America. |
| 6:49 pm | Oh------Hi----------Oh! Ohio for Obama, + New Mexico = 25 Electoral votes. I do think that's all she wrote. Now come on, Virginia! Dear Rest of World: Sanity returns in January. Woo-hoo! |