So much has been stuffed into my brain the last 48 hours that I can’t think of much other than “sleep” but I can’t sleep right now because my brain feels too stuffed. Right? Right.* Instead I’m going to spend a few minutes writing about movies and then go try to join the spooning that my cats are doing right now on the rug. Sometimes they let me.

Desk Set : watched last Friday w/ Katie & Sky
This movie wasn’t half as fun as I thought it would be. I love me some Katherine Hepburn, or at least I thought I did, but I spent much of this movie confused because she was laughing her crazy head-thrown-back New England laugh and I didn’t understand what what so godamned funny about the plot. Maybe you had to be there. The clothes were great and I took some small pride in the fact that the librarians were better than a machine (even if they were rattling off complex, memorized answers just like robots most of the time). Anyway, this is one of those LIBRARIAN movies that you’re supposed to watch and so I watched it and I think Party Girl should be our group movie if we get to vote on it.

Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’italiana if you’re being fancy): watched last night w/ Sky
This movie was hilarious and I really enjoyed that they made a totally hot lady (Fefe’s wife) look “ugly” by giving her a unibrow and a mustache. Those hips were out of this world. Also the weird dubbing was pretty great and I loved all of the clothes and I’d like to live in a castle now.

Visual Acoustics: watched tonight w/ Sky
This film has been selling out @ Northwest Film Forum – so much so that they were showing it in both theaters tonight. It’s a documentary about Julius Shulman, a world famous photographer who is best known for capturing modern architecture in Southern California: Case Study Houses, Palm Springs, etc. He was a swell guy and the documentary had a lot of great footage of him visiting with all sorts of people: previous owners of houses, new owners, and architects. Shulman was a pleasure to watch, and his photographs were amazing. That’s about all that was good about this documentary, though. There were all sorts of woozy special effects, random Jib Jab style animations, a not very cohesive story line and weird edits throughout. It seemed more like a really long Power Point presentation (with some video thrown in) than a film. A few times they didn’t give names of people who were talking until they’d been on screen for a minute or so – super frustrating.

It wasn’t an awful documentary, but it wasn’t a good one, either. I’m a connoisseur of the documentary film, and it makes me cranky when I see half of Seattle lining up to see a mediocre one when there are so many AMAZING ones slipping under the radar every day. I also take issue with people who assume documentary making is easy, or easier than making a fiction film.

* Brain is stuffed due to entirely new job in entirely new place which I don’t really want to talk about because I’m still trying to reconcile myself with the fact that I have an entirely new job in an entirely new place

Indian Pizza is life changing

Eating: Italian Food. I’m on an Italian kick, or something in the Universe is consistantly directing me towards tomatoes. I made a huge lasagna last week, Jaime and I hit up both an Indian Pizza joint (Zante’s, amazing) and a Greek Italian restaurant while I visited, and last night Sky made us a delicious batch of fettucine alfredo with crisped kale and onions on top – mmmm. Sweets. I finally visited the fabled Miette in the Ferry building. I brought back some cookies for Sky, but ate some delicious macaroons and an Old Fashioned cupcake while there. Man oh man.

Playing: I’m not a big game player, but Jaime and Mike introduced me to Plants vs. Zombies and I played all 60 minutes of the free trial version with Sky watching and giving me tips on where to plant stuff. He’s even less of a gamer than I am, so that was pretty fun.

Listening:

• The Replacements’ Don’t Tell a Soul
• Magnetic Fields: i – this album was in the car when I drove to Half Moon Bay, so I’ve got the songs running through my head

This actress' facial expressions and body language were just amazing

• The Hangover (2009) – this was funny, watched it with Jaime in SF (I also thought it was clever that the Hooker With a Heart of Gold character literally wore a gold, heart shaped pendant)
• Spring Breakdown (2009) – Jaime and I rented this straight-to-video based on a recommendation from Bitch magazine; I think we needed to be drinking wine coolers, as the reviewer recommended
• Extract (2009) – watched alone in SF, cute, but I was sleepy and maybe would like it better awake
• World’s Greatest Dad (2009) – it was nice to see Robin Williams not playing a nanny or some other family-friendly character, wish he’d let go a bit more (I love CRAZY Robin Williams)
• Nights of Cabiria (1957) – we watched this last night; it made being an Italian hooker seem romantic and sweet

Wow – two hookers in one post, sweet.

I tried to watch all of the original Grey Gardens a few weeks ago, but couldn’t get through it. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me – this was supposed to be one of those seminal, amazing, cult-audience-having sort of films. A documentary that changed the face of documentaries.

The fact is there was too much yelling in the original – I couldn’t hear what either of the Edies was saying most of the time because of the talking at the same time/yelling at each other setup. I did enjoy the fashion and the accents, though.

I watched the new version of this story last night. It recreates some of the original footage as well as presenting much of the lead up to the documentary – how the Edies got to where they were. It was fascinating, and I was totally flabbergasted with how well both Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange embodied the Beales – the mannerisms, the tics, the accents, everything! It was uncanny. And awesome.

The costumes were what got me, though. I couldn’t stop staring. The getups that Little Edie came up with when she had just a few pieces of clothing were so clever – it’s not surprising to learn she was a fashion plate when she had more at her disposal. Apparently the director did all sorts of research on the ladies and learned a lot of their back story based on “clues” dropped in the documentary. Fascinating.

So I guess I’ll be one of those unhip folk who like the remake more than the original. I’m sure the former is a better piece of film work and I’m sure it did change the face of documentary making. However, the latter was more fun to watch and suited my mood.

I haven’t seen any comments on my posts in awhile, which can mean a few things:

• my posts are not inciting enough
• my posts are not exciting enough
• you do not like the light aqua background of this website and have decided not to read it anymore
• I’m not updating enough

So in order to address some of these possible issues, I’m going to post more. More frequently, that is.

Today for your reading pleasure, is a very quick review of a movie we saw Tuesday night. Moon was playing @ the Harvard Exit, so Sky met me at the library and we grabbed some tasty cold food at Byzantion before shuffling into the air conditioned theatre.

I didn’t know anything about the movie going in to it, and I think that made for the best experience. So I won’t tell you anything about it except that: a) it’s got Sam Rockwell in it, playing a character named Sam, which I found kind of disctracting, and b) it’s directed by the spawn of David Bowie.

It’s May, which means just one thing to many Seattleites: the Seattle International Film Festival!

Sky and I didn’t get into the swing of things until late in the festival last year, so this year we tried to get a jump on it. Last Thursday we decided to see whichever film looked best that night. The winner was I’m Gonna Explode, which was conveniently playing just a few minutes from our house.

Maru and Román, two teens in I'm Gonna Explode

We totally lucked out in the festival draw. The movie was fantastic: a great, modern teen love story set in Mexico. The characters were rich, the soundtrack was great, and I really enjoyed the pacing and camerawork. My favorite thing about the film was the depiction of the teens – they were saavy, hip, and weird. I feel that so many portrayals of non-Americans don’t show any individuality, they are so based on cultural stereotype. So that was refreshing.

I also enjoyed the depiction of a sexually awakening girl – she wanted to do it, but was freaked out about doing it, and didn’t want the guy to expect her to do it, even though they both kind of knew he did. It was all very layered and enjoyable to watch. Thumbs up!