A Sunday read

(Note: I tried to make this Courier, as it should be. WordPress didn’t agree)

EXT: Day

A house. Light-colored, slightly yellowish, with a slanted roof. It stands alone, and it’s quiet. It’s a sunny day, clearly the afternoon. The air is hazy.

A car. It’s first heard, then seen coming up the driveway. Out of it step a middle-aged MAN (dark hair, avergage heigh and build, jeans) and a twenty-something GIRL (blonde, also in jeans, sunglasses). The girl streches, lets her arms fall back. She points up with one finger.

GIRL: hear that?
MAN: what?

4 effin’ 1

Look: I don’t like sports. I don’t like engaging in them, and I don’t think watching them is particularly interesting. But every two years, for a few weeks in summer, I make an exception for the boys in orange. So tonight, I was sitting there yelling at the screen with the best of them, my hopes soaring with every attack from “our” side, my heart beating faster every time a ball came way too close to the hero-like Edwin van der Sar. I cheered and I whooped, and while my francophile side tried to murmer a faint “Allez Les Bleus” every once in a while, I quickly shut it up.

I repeat: 4 fucking 1 - excuse my French.

This, of course, following a 3-0 against the reigning world champ, a match I unfortunately did not see because I was… otherwise occupied.

Which brings me to the dearth of updates lately. It’s a combination of factors: my thesis talk got scheduled two months from now (which means I truly should get a move on), a math assignment from hell that has me throwing up my hands in despair ten times a day for the past three days, and… well. there’s this boy. And it turns out that when it comes down to it, I’d rather snog than blog. At least for now.

Anyway, Hup, Holland, Hup, as we say, and I promise there WILL be updates again. I’ve given up hope for a weekend double feature (for last weekend, as you might recall), but I’ll try to get a Sunday reading up, I have unfinished pieces about Logan’s Run and Point Blank, and I’ll be watching Touch of Evil with faithful commenter Kaj this Monday.

Oh, and if you have no idea what this whole piece was about? There’s a European Championship going on. Of football (I refuse to call it soccer). And while I’d pretty much given up on the team before it started (I wasn’t the only one, either, bookies had us at 14:1), we might actually get somewhere this time. And when the whole nation gets up, dressed up in the ugliest color, and cheers, who am I to stand aside, uncaring?

Sydney Pollack is no more

Every morning, my radio switches on for about ten minutes, and it’s the news that wakes me. Usually it flies right past me: the sound is enough to wake me, but I’m still too groggy to pay attention to all the horrors happening daily in this world of ours. But every once in a while, a headline will wake me right up.

“Sydney Pollack overleden”

My first reaction was “nah!”. It just didn’t seem possible: to me, Sydney Pollack was, and always had been, about 65, perpetually the slightly dodgy older guy with a glint in his eye and a skeleton or two in his closet. I’ll admit he wasn’t a must-see director for me - I really like Three Days of the Condor, for example, but his later work seemed well-crafted, but not particularly exciting. As an actor, however, he was always a welcome presence. His part in Eyes Wide Shut was both amusing and more than a little sinister. And I’ll remember him not by his very last acting performance, but rather by one from 2007 that slyly nodded to the films he directed in the 70’s:

Sydney Pollack: 1934 - 2008

Iron Man & Gender Politics

I haven’t written a review of Iron Man here yet. It’s partly because I already wrote one, partly because everyone else already seemed to have said their bit (and gotten responses), but mostly because I didn’t really think I could add anything different to the discourse.

Good thing there’s such a thing as commenters.

Happy Birthday Orson

Not too long ago, Jonathan Lapper over at Cinema Styles started a discussion about pseudonyms. I blog under my own name, though some think it’s a pen-name as it’s quite unusual, and linked both to Harry Potter and a certain transsexual rocker with an angry inch. I like writing from a personal standpoint, and as in the beginning the only people who read me were people I knew, it never made much sense to hide my identity.

I stand by it. And I’m not ashamed of anything you might find when googling my name (no, not even that). But there are times when I wonder what image the results might give of me to a potential future employer or date (come on, you’ve all done it). What they might think, for example, of a confession like this one: I have a huge crush on Orson Welles, who was born 93 years ago today (thanks to Daniel for pointing that out)

Schlubs

Jeff Wells is on a crusade. A holy enterprise of grand importance. He’s spotted something wrong with the world (of film), and he’s not going to stand for it. The phenomenon he’s discovered is to him a sign of the impending apocalypse, and he sees himself as the last defense.

The big threat? Schlubby guys getting beautiful girls in movies.

Michel Gondry: je t’aime

I’m not actually supposed to write about Be Kind Rewind yet. Not until May 15th in fact. But my editor (commenter Remko) can be assured: a review this is not. It’s a declaration.

Michel, Michel… I just wish I could live in your head. Share your brain, see the world as you do. I want to be as wildly creative, and have as much fun as you do creating. Making something where first there was only a spark of imagination.

I owe you an apology, too. When I first saw and fell in love with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I gave all the credit to Charlie Kaufman. I empathized with Kaufman, because if Adaptation is to believed, he’s a struggler like I am, a laborer, someone for whom creation is hard, sometimes excruciating, it’s work. Kaufman reassures me that just because I sometimes yell in frustration at dear old Larry because a sentence won’t come out right, doesn’t mean I should give up. I’ll never get to his level, but it’s a comfort, somehow, to know even geniuses can have a hard time.

Quoted

I am… amazed. Flabbergasted. And somewhat intimidated, seeing how every word I write now will be weighed against the fact THAT I WAS QUOTED IN THE F***ING WASHINTON TIMES.

Ahem. Excuse the yelling, But you’ll understand this has me slightly psyched. Or, you know, absolutely manic with glee. The jumping up and down and grinning uncontrollably kind.

I almost feel I need to give some kind of acceptance speech. Thanking Paul, for organizing the Muriels and making it such an inspiring environment, his friend Victor for apparently pulling some strings, and Craig for devoting a post to my little triumph!

Joining the Fray

Mick LaSalle wrote about some classics he had not seen: To Kill A Mockingbird, Blade Running, An Affair to Remember, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Young Frankenstein. He proceeded to watch them and give his thoughts, summarily dismissing 2001 in particular. Kevin Lee from Shooting Pictures, who’s on a quest to watch all 1000 films on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? list, took offense, and responded. The blogosphere - in particular Jonathan Lapper (Cinema Styles) and Dennis Cozzalio (Sergio Leone’s Infield Fly Rule) - continued the discussion. Jeff Wells of course did also, calling LaSalle’s post “brave”, and eliciting almost 300 comments I don’t have the time or energy to go through.

Who am I to stay behind? Below is a copy of the comment I left on Jonathan’s blog - and I definitely recommend going over there to read his post first. I’ve only seen 2 of the 5 films on LaSalle’s list, and probably somewhere between 100 and 200 of the Shooting Pictures list, so I might not seem equipped. But with the film canon growing bigger and bigger, and more movies worth seeing coming out all the time, it’s worth considering how completist we can be. You’ll find the comment after the jump.

“First of all: Papa Smurf didn’t create Smurfette - Gargamel did! She was sent in as Gargamel’s evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village. But the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her. And as for the whole gangbang scenario - Huh! I - it just couldn’t happen. Smurfs are asexual, th-they don’t even have…reproductive organs under those little…white…pants. That’s what’s so illogical, y’know, about being a Smurf.

-

Y’know what’s the point of living… if you don’t have a dick?”