tipsy televisualist: Your Oscar/Leap Day 2016 Edition!

How long has it been since I did a tipsy televisualist post?  Hannibal was still on the air & inspiring cocktail creations.  While it will be sorely missed, we should focus on the good things that Saint Chiara, the patron saint of Television (yes, really), brings us.  

Like the Oscars!  Which, for as much as I snark on them, I do actually have a great deal of affection for them and the telecast as it was basically the equivalent of Christmas Eve/Day in my house, with my parents letting me stay up as late and as long as they ran.  Plus? Sometimes deserving stuff actually wins!  Or someone has a cool dress!  Or makes a good speech!  Yes, they're horrible and awful and silly, but once you accept that they can be both silly *AND* sublime, watching can be a great deal more fun.  Why not have a little bit of faith that the Leap Day lining up with the end of the festivities and AMPAS making membership changes might help us make a leap forward in terms of representation in the nominated films?  And, if they don't, we always have snark and a stiff drink to cope. 

So no matter who you're rooting for or how they turn out, you will either need to drink from joy or to drown one's sorrows, so let's break out our best mixologist outfits and hit the red carpet stumbling.  The following cocktails should help you endure however long the telecast runs over and might help make you the host/hostess with the drink mostess of any Oscar Party you're throwing:

What You Need:

• A Publicist
• A thoughtful speech that you wrote down and pretend to have forgotten while acting fake humble
• A Bottle of Gin
• A Bottle of Grand Marnier
• A Bottle of Cuervo
• A Bottle or Two of a dry-ish Prosecco/Cava
• A Six Pack of Kaliber, by Guinness
• Sugar Cubes
• Bitters - Orange, but pick up Angostura while you're at it
• Fresh Lemons/Limes (or the Real Lemon/Lime Juice bottles)
• A Cocktail Shaker - the Metrokane Bullet is the one I swear by

Optional:

• "The Perfect Drink For Every Occasion" by Duane Swiercynski
• A lovely Champagne Pommery tray, to remind you of one of cinema's greatest drunk/hungover performances - Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story"
• F. Scott's "On Booze" - to remind you to moderate yourself, lest you end up as a dead failed alcoholic screenwriter 

The Drink: Kaliber Beer, by Guinness:

inspired by: Brooklyn, Sobriety

        

the backstory: I know you're thinking "wait a minute, Hunter, the first tipple you're 

recommending is non-alcoholic beer?"  What the heck?  So I've been on new anti-depressants these last few weeks and have been trying to take it kinda easy,  drinking wise.  During this time, I've gotten to know and loathe many a N/A beer.  This?  Is different. Makes you feel like you're actually drinking a real beer.  It has the weight/heft and taste profile of Guinness, not sad malt flavored water.

drink whenever: Brooklyn is mentioned/wins, someone thanks their sponsor/etc., someone mentions on the red carpet that their fur/jewelry is faux, a celeb's substance abuse issues are joked about by a presenter/host/etc.

The Drink: French 75:

the recipe:

• 1.5 ounces of gin
• one sugar cube
• 3/4th ounce (fresh, preferably) lemon juice
• Put the above into a cocktail shaker with cracked ice, shake vigorously to chill the mixture and to dissolve the sugar cube, pour into a champagne flute and top with the Prosecco/Cava.

mixologist note: While the stars may be sipping Veuve & Cristal, you shouldn't be.  It is foolish to waste a good champagne on a champagne cocktail that is gonna add sugar & gin to the mix.  Stick w/ a moderately priced decently dry bubbly.

drink whenever: a European wins or presents, a non-American name is mispronounced/mangled, the award is given to such an undeserving winner that you wish to throw your hands up and surrender, as the French are wont to do.

The Drink: the Leap Dave Williams:

the recipe:

• 2 oz. gin
• 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
• 1/2 oz. Grand Marnier
• 1/4 oz. lemon juice
• Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, along with a citrus twist.

mixologist note: this recipe is adapted from the aforementioned "Perfect Drink for Every Occasion" - which states its origin as the Savoy Hotel in 1928.  I've renamed it in honor of one of 30 Rock's most delightful spoofs.

drink whenever: you escape from Mickey Rourke's sex dungeon, the sight of Julianne Moore or Boston being mentioned (re: Spotlight) triggers terrifying flashbacks to her accent, you find yourself thinking wistfully about Tracy Jordan's EGOT, someone does not employ the correct pronunciation of the word "camera," someone is being played off:

         

The Drink: Cuervo with No Chaser:

the recipe:

• duh

drink whenever: #OscarsSoWhite has you so exasperated that you find yourself turning to praying to Queen Bey to give you/us strength so that we can get in formation.

Not a cocktail person?  More of a wine guy?  Well, there's only one to serve.

Find out who your true friends are.

 

I Feel Love: AMERICAN HUSTLE

Finally, a chance for The Academy to placate those who continue to bemoan the 23-year-long injustice of Goodfellas not winning Best Picture.  David O Russell gets all up in classic Scorsese and may have found the chocolate to his peanut butter in the process, finally making a near-perfect Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of a movie out of his “let’s toss everything together and see if it’s tasty” approach.  I’ve seen less delighted folks on Twitter dub this “Mediocre-Fellas” which may be amusing, but is totally unfair.

I like Scorsese as much as the next cinephile, but in a LOT of ways, I find Gangster Mode Marty to often be the least interesting Marty.  The Departed was in no way the Best Picture of that year, much less the best thing Scorsese has done in the last decade.  (That would be The Aviator, folks.)  Worst of all, even the worst attempt at the next “great” crime movie tends to have no trouble getting made and is over-praised by sheer virtue of its genre because it’s butch and is thus automatically awesome since "wouldn’t it just be SO COOL, dudes? To be Mickey or Nucky?"  Do we really NEED another “Magic City” or “Mob City” or American Gangster or Gangster Squad on our screens this year?  Much less this glut continuing for the next ten years?

Yes, as it turns out. What we needed is David O Russell.  His faster, funnier, looser touch cuts a swath through the solemn self-seriousness that plagues so many of these also-rans as they try desperately to convince us that they’re not making a shallow crime movie, they’re making a Scorsese-level smart one.  I don’t think Russell is trying to convince us of anything, much less the beaten-like-a-dead-horse trope that “crime doesn’t pay.”  Crime, as it seems here, seems to pay AWESOMELY.

It looks awesome, sounds awesome, and dresses awesomely while also being utterly ridiculous-slash-patently absurd, even when shit gets dangerous and real.  Like the con men and women of the film, David O Russell has confidence. Supreme confidence that crafting a sublimely entertaining movie IS art, in and of itself.  You know, like the ultimate master craftsman of artful entertainments Steven Soderbergh does.  Surfaces can be substantial and don't let anyone tell you any different.

This is one of the least Oscar Bait-y Oscar Bait movies in recent memory, in the best possible way. It glibly tosses aside the “oh, I’ll just make a boring prestige biopic that dully and dutifully recounts events because as long as I have great actors, I’ll win statues” formula (I’m side-eyeing you SO HARD still, The Queen) with its cheek-tonguing opening punchline that “some of this actually happened."

Like the hair, American Hustle is big, bold and brassy.  It’s funny in parts, it’s sad in parts, it drags in parts, but it never stops being eminently watchable and utterly original.  It’s got a song in its heart, a boogie in its shoes (and nights) and a throbbing rock-hard erection in its bell-bottoms.  That’s right, it’s not only straight-up hilarious, it’s also straight-up horny as hell.  You thought carnality and sexiness disappeared from American movies - movies made by and for grown-ups with grown-up desires - by the time the 70s ended.  You thought now such things could now only be the province of premium cable dramas.  You thought wrong.  David O Russell has come along to restore your faith and should be awarded handsomely for it.

Have pretensions of prestige all you want, but watching attractive people wear great outfits and say clever things as they try to talk each other into fucking * IS* one of the great sublime pleasures of movie-going.  And it’s art.  If you think otherwise, might I remind you of the first movie to pull off the total Oscar sweep a la Silence of the Lambs or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?  Yeah, that happened one night.  One Oscar night long ago, a funny-sexy-flirty flash of the gams was deemed as worthy of recognition as the BIG DRAMATIC ACTING of playing gay, crippled or fat.

Most importantly, for someone who gave up on one of those premium cable dramas early on as “Boardwalk Empire” made me feel like the new slogan should be “you’re not just an HBO subscriber, you’re also Paz de la Huerta’s gynecologist,” this movie does accomplishes a rare and refreshing thing by being a mob movie/con caper that’s ALL. ABOUT. THE. WOMEN.

David O Russell gives them the best outfits, the best lines, and the biggest moments.

He lets them be funny and crazy and sad, fierce and vulnerable and fearless and scared, totally open and totally inscrutable.  He lets them be human and complex.  He lets them be everything, usually all at once.  (“Everything.  All At Once.” is totally the motto on the Russell family crest.)

His camera might as well be the hands of a moon-eyed, punch-drunk, horny teen who just landed a chance with the Prom Queen, because he can’t keep seem to keep it off them for more than a minute. But he not only passes the Bechdel Test, he can’t seem to pass up a single opportunity to interrupt the ostensible plot to give Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence another line to knock out of the park or scene to steal. He treats them lavishingly and lovingly, basking in their incredible beauty AND their formidable talents.  He never stops tossing them the keys so they can take over driving the plot.

There is no doubt that he’s just as intensely and insanely in lust and love with them as the dudes he’s written to be crazy about them are.  Amy Adams’s con persona consists of not changing her appearance whatsoever and adopting an ever-shifting English accent.  That’s all she needs to do to convince people she holds the title of Lady Edith.

The homage to the greatest romcom con woman of all time couldn’t be clearer and Russell creates a movie worthy to be called a delightfully duplicitous,  Dionsyian-driven, disco-dancing daughter of The Lady Eve - by way of classic Scorsese meeting a Soderbergh caper.

All while being undeniably a David O Russell movie.  Impressively, he pulls off the feat of not only working in an entirely new genre than his last two pictures, but manages to reunite all the main actors from those films - half of which he directed to Oscar wins - while avoiding the reunion trap of relying on the same tricks that won previous praise.  Instead, he is constantly remixing and refreshing his troupe in ceaselessly-shifting narrative and emotional combinations from scene to scene.  He can toss in new performers like Louis CK to great effect while driving his old reliables to different heights, exposing previously untapped qualities and new depths of talent.  I mean, who among us would have believed in Amy Adams's sex appeal enough to let her play the part of an absolute sex bomb goddess?

Is it perfect?  No.  Is it shaggy?  Yes.  Shaggy and messy and too much is this man's wheelhouse.

Jennifer Lawrence's long-suffering Rosslyn can’t seem to help herself from saying whatever she’s thinking or doing whatever she wants, like starting kitchen fires by putting metal in the microwave - or as it's dubbed here, “ the science oven.”   David O Russell works the same way – but his “everything AND the kitchen sink AND metal in the science oven” approach has never been more enjoyable or more expertly accomplished.  He’s gone from indie auteur to enfant terrible to persona non grata to Oscar comeback kid in the span of two decades.  Now he finally has the clout and freedom to make pretty much whatever kind of movie he wants and, my god, we should let him do it.

Because a slightly imperfect but totally refreshing take on a moribund genre is a dozen times more satisfying than a boring but perfectly plotted prestige picture.  Give me a romcom/dramedy about mental illness-slash-sports-movie-slash-ballroom-dancing-let’s-put-on-a-show movie rather than a solemn self-serious take on the struggles of bipolar disorder.  Give me a con caper with a screwball comedy love quadrangle interrupting a mob movie period piece. Give him an Oscar, give him these actors, give him all the money he needs, and give him a leash long enough to let him explore and explode whatever genre he wants to do next.

Given how the dancing sequences were among the best scenes of SLP and the bravura sing-along Jennifer Lawrence does here of “Live and Let Die,” I’m personally hoping he’ll tackle a musical.  How amazing could it potentially be?  This amazing: in American Hustle, he manages to take the song *most* overused by cinema to signify how wild-and-crazy the 60s/70s were - "White Rabbit" - and manages to do it in a way that's so fresh, funny and fantastic that I actually gasped.

Will his next movie be pitch-perfect?  Probably not.  Will it be shaggy?  Undoubtedly so.

Will it be as well made, acted the hell out of and superbly entertaining as American Hustle is?  Who knows?  If we've learned nothing else, we've learned that David O Russell will never stop surprising us.  But no awarding body should wait to reward his talent two-decades down the line with an unwarranted better-to-recognize-you-later-than-never Departed-style win when he's earned it now.

gold men & metallic boleros: 2013 OscarBlerg - HOBBITTIME

So, I am DETERMINED to participate in what I recently dubbed the Annual OscarBlerg this year.  For those of you who know me but not my friends, Holly, Livvy & Jesse have been a part of an online Oscar roundtable for years and it is AMAZING and BITCHY and silly and serious and brilliant and fun all at once.  In other words, it approaches the Big Awards exactly as it should be approached.

[The title/heading, for what it's worth, stems from the insane METALLIC PYTHON BOLERO that Jennifer Hudson wore to pick up her 'Dreamgirls' trophy.  It was so spectacularly bizarre and WRONG that Holly and I not only screamed out simultaneously when it appeared on the red carpet, but also clutched each other for reassurance whenever it appeared.  We regularly bring up said METALLIC PYTHON BOLERO without context and mention that we must 'Never Forget' its insanity.]

Alas, I am SEVERELY behind in my viewing this year.  Without any good excuses as to why.   Should I not manage to binge the unviewed nominees in a mad rush over the next week like LiLo binges on cocaine or Hathaway snorts up attention, I still want to make *some* contribution.  So I shall be covering what I *have* seen, film by film rather than by category.

Let's begin with the spiteful, irrational rant that will likely result in Livvy hopping on a plane to LAX ASAP to punch me directly in the face.  Ready?

The film: 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey'
Nominated for: Best Achievement in Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Achievement in Production Design, Best Achievement in Visual Effects
Snubbed For: Nothing.
Should Be Dropped From these Categories: All of the above.
Deserves?: Hooooooooo, boy.  Here we go:

So, at the end of Susann's novel 'The Love Machine,' a character ends up being at a party in which someone is beaten senseless with an Oscar and somehow sorta takes the fall while the circumstances make it falsely seem like this was part of a gay crime of passion.  [The details *may* be Seconal-hazy, but I believe those are the basics.]  *That* fate is kinder and better than what Jackson & company 'deserve.'

Retroactively revoking all the LOTR statuettes as though they were caught doping is better than they deserve.  Having everyone believe that the only reason they won in the first place is because of a Palance/Tomei name-calling snafu is better and kinder.

No, what Jackson and every single person on the crew of this "film" - which, yes, the airquotes around film are deliberate and we shall get to that momentarily - is no less than a burgundy-lipped Melanie Laurent gathering up every single hard drive in existence containing the 48 FPS 3D HFR LOTR:TH:AUJ and setting it ablaze while forcing Jackson and company to watch as their cinematic crime burns and the avenging angel cackles magnificently.

Truly, words fail me at trying to capture the visual experience that was viewing this in HFR.  And, yes, I saw it at a VERY good theater displaying and projecting it in the quote-unquote 'proper' or 'intended' fashion.  (Alas, this dreck ended up being the very last thing I saw at Grauman's Chinese before they lamely were sold and became TCL Theaters)

It wasn't merely 'different' or 'new' or 'unsettling.'  It was ACTIVELY WRONG.  And bad.  It looked bad & wrong.  Unnatural and too natural at the same time.  Far too real-slash-far too fake.  Any sort of motion or action - especially motion within the frame *combined* with camera motion - seemed like it was being played on fast-forward rather than unfolding naturally.  The bizareness of how HFR ruins the simplest cinematic action was jarringly noticeable in any close-up of hands - which, this film has a lot of.

Note that all the nominations for this film fall under visuals.  And I will not argue against the fact that the many accolades and awards that the LOTR franchise are merited.  But not anymore.  What previously looked *right* and good and correct now looks flat-out wrong.  The wiglines and the seams and the sets all *show* now.  You aren't being magically transported to Rivendell anymore.  You are being shown what Holly and I both dubbed a Kinkade Painting.

The thing is, the decision to shoot and distribute this in HFR wasn't a spur-of-the-moment undertaking.  It was carefully thought out and planned - and yet, the visual shoddiness and wrongness made me think that no one on-board even looked at dailies at any point during the years of production.

How visually wrong is HFR Hobbit?  I would rather sit through a Stephen Sommers's film festival because at least Sommers is not serving up mediocre visuals while screaming at me that this is the FUTURE OF MOVIES.

Stop the future, I want to get off.

The ego, audacity and sheer hubris displayed by Jackson saying at the first hint of criticism that "NO NO NO, the audience will get USED to it after 10 or 20 minutes" or "Well, LIFE doesn't have a frame rate so this is more true to life!" or "it makes the 3D smoother!" (it didn't do so remotely, BTW - the 3D Imax Visual Feast of the Year was Prometheus, by a mile) is making James Cameron seem humble and grounded.

'girls' on film.

Quick question: have you seen both episodes of Girls?  Second question: if no, has that stopped you from writing/blogging/snarking about Girls?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

(If not, you can watch the entire first episode on YouTube here.  HBO is worried that job-challenged 20something women might not be premium cable subscribers, so they're trying new things.)

Here's the thing - as the Firewall & Iceberg Podcast so brilliantly put it recently, this is what happens when a niche show gets hyped up beyond belief.  Despite what the bloggers and the NY echo chamber and everyone else has been writing about for MONTHS (seriously, when it finally premiered, wasn't it a letdown because you thought it had been on for a season?), this is NOT a show for everybody.

But that's okay.  It clearly is not being conceived or made as a show for everybody.  HBO shows are automatically not 'huge' hits in the way network shows can be.  It's a different model.  And within that model, there is going to be a range of shows - from 'it's not TV, it's HBO' to 'it is TV, only with more tits and ass and blood' (hey there True Blood!) to 'we don't know what this is yet but let's put it on.'  Girls, IMO, falls into the last category.  Which is fine.  And totally okay.  What is totally not okay is rather than saying 'oh, this isn't for me but I can see how it can be for someone' is to say 'UGH, LENA DUNHAM IS FAT AND WHITE AND DUMB AND PRIVILEGED AND THIS SHOW DOESN'T DESERVE TO EXIST.'

Firstly, if Lena Dunham is 'fat,' I am going to go up to every single woman whom I am friends with and give them a hug.  Then I am going to take a long hard look in the mirror.  I'm not going to lie - I used to be a lanky bastard, now I'm more Jason Segel-ish.  (I love you antidepressants but I hate your weight gain!).  I'm blessed-ish with a good face and a sense of hunor.  I might not have a six pack.  Neither does Lena. But, odds are, neither do you.  Here's the thing, saying "I didn't get a boner when she showed her tits" is not an adequate or appropriate dismissal of the show itself because she is NOT showing her tits so you can get a boner.  Based on how the sex scenes are written/staged/acted/etc, it is safe to say that titillation is not on their agenda.  How often did you complain about Turtle and Drama pulling in extremely high quality poontang despite their less-than-conventionally-attractive looks?  Oh, you didn't?  But that's different, Entourage is just a fantasy, just a TV show or whatever.

Well, my dears, so is this.  It might be in a more indie mode or hailed differently but all art is artificial.  Taking an insular view of a certain demographic of Brooklyn girls in their 20s is not far removed from an insular view of Hollywood Brotastic-ness which, despite SEVEN SEASONS, never achieved the level of satire it promised.

Which is where we get into the 'white and privileged' criticism.  Yes, Girls is.  And so?

It is beyond disingenuous for white liberal writers to pull out the 'UGH, it's a portrait of NY without (m)any people of color and therefore it is BAD and SHOULDN'T BE ON TV!'  if they have remained silent about, say, How I Met Your Mother.  Or Bored to Death.  Or Friends.  Or SATC.  Or Louie.     This is entirely different than, say, looking at it in a larger perspective of TV's lack of racial diversity.  Or people of color wondering when the show that's 'the voice of a generation' is going to come along for them.  Is Girls racist?  Uh, maybe.  Depends on how you qualify 'racist'.  But as Maureen Ryan brilliantly put it - "Girls Isn't Racist, Television Is Racist (and Sexist)."  This is a conversation that needs to be happening, definitely.  But it is unfair to use the lack of diversity to dismiss the show offhand - without engaging with the show's content itself - and not condemn a bazillion other programs.

And here's where the show's content becomes crucial - that issue of privilege.  Firstly, being the daughter of the drummer of Bad Company is NOT the same thing as being Chet Haze.  I will pay 30 bucks cash money if you can find me ANYONE in the midwest (outside of film geeks) who knew who Lena Dunham's parents were before the coverage of this show/the press for Tiny Furniture.  So can it with the "this was greenlit because of nepotism" shit.  Seriously.  Going back to the aforementioned Firewall & Iceberg Podcast, they pointed out that NO ONE disses J.J. Abrams or Joss Whedon on being able to work in the industry because their parents did.  More importantly, this show is not acting as though the issue of privilege isn't an issue.  Quite the opposite.  It is, somewhat, the entire point of the show.  These people are, without a doubt, privileged.  And yet they think they are worldly and cultured rather than insulated.  They have 'first world problems' and yet, to them, their problems are so overwhelming and the end of the world.  That's the central conflict.  That's the satire.  That's the point.  You can dismiss it as being upper-class or Brooklyn or overly white or whatever.  But the show is aware of that.  So are the characters but not nearly as self-aware as they'd like.

Bad sex?  Struggling between ideals and reality?  Thinking one's worldliness is greater than it is? Welcome to being in your 20s.  Yes, it spoke to me.  As a white gay dude.  Not a fat rich NYC nepotist chick.  But if it didn't speak to you, that's cool.  But say that.  Or say 'I thought this scene was bad' or 'the acting didn't do it for me.'  Don't say "THIS FAT RICH WHITE CHICK DOESN'T NEED A PLACE ON MY TV."

Art earns itself the right to exist by the virtue of the content itself.  Not whatever qualities the artist has.  Or, in other words, if you have ever watched Chinatown and thought 'damn, that's a good movie' rather than 'Roman Polanski is a rapist and a horrible person and I must dismiss this now,' then shut your face.  That 'right to exist' can be granted by many things, but one of the main ones is, as they told us in screenwriting classes, 'having a voice.'  Which this does.  Clearly and distinctively.  It may be drawn from Woody Allen or Whit Stillman or whatever, but it is still a unique voice.  I picture that in a year or two or five, film types will know what you mean by 'Lena Dunham-esque' or 'get me a Lena Dunham type' as well as 'Wes Anderson-y.'  You don't have to like her voice.  You don't have to listen.  But you shouldn't try to silence it for reasons that have nothing to do with the show or the voice itself and have everything to do with white liberal guilt/hating fat chicks/etc.  If it speaks to your experience, great, but if it doesn't, that's okay.  But you can't dismiss that experience itself anymore than you can condemn the works of Spike Lee for being 'too black' or Hitchcock for being 'too British' without coming up with an actual criticism about the work itself.

Is she the voice of our generation?  Doubtful.  Is she a voice of a generation?  Definitely.

oy, these shadows BE DARK.

My reaction to the Dark Shadows trailer. I'm not going to link to it because if you're reading this on the interwebs, you've seen it by now. Firstly, the music cues are really lazy to me. 'Superfly' is an awesome song but it's as fresh as using 'White Rabbit' during a 60s psychedelic scene. Actually, firstly, WTF? Secondly, really lazy music cues. Thirdly, this is going to be lengthy because I am going to get into not just the trailer itself, but cinema at large.

For me, what's so frustrating is that I genuinely WANT the Goth Trio to be better. They are all genuinely talented individuals and were once actual iconoclasts. But they frequently default to all the depth of, as someone at the pink place so brilliantly pointed out, cosplay.

I think Burton is many things - criminally overrated. Stuck in a weird developmental phase like some sophomore who took a class on existentialism and went to Hot Topic to express his pain and then never left. The man's films aren't directed so much as they're production-designed. Which, hell, Wes Anderson is guilty-as-hell of at times, but I also think his films, for all the actors-in-a-dollhouse-under-glass, almost always break out of that dollhouse for portions of their running time to deliver an emotional wallop. If you can think of the scene where Ritchie slits his wrists in the Royal Tenenbaums without being torn to shreds inside, I don't know how your heart works, man.

Most importantly - I don't think Burton, as a filmmaker, has shown much growth for such a long career and for so many films. The fact that his next project is literally remaking his first film, for Disney, when the result of the Frankenweenie short film in '84 was that Burton was fired from Disney for being too weird says *everything.* I know few people in this age think it, but selling out is still possible.

Seriously, think of the massive leap in, say, Fincher between Se7en, Zodiac and TGWTDT. Or Anderson from Rushmore to Tenenbaums. Think of Marty and his sweet, glorious Hugo. Which was the work of a man smarter, faster, better, stronger at filmmaking than the one who made The Departed or The Aviator. Or, if not better, different. I am not sure how much the Burton of 2012 is *different* than the one of 1984. Except, if anything, more cynical. More commercial. More satisfied to slap a crazy wig on Johnny Depp and call it character development and call it a day and call up Buena Vista for his big fact check.

Also, I know that my generation has known nothing BUT post-modernism but, I'm kinda sick of it being the default mode. I don't want an ironic detachment or distance all the time. Why can't I simply have a dumb teen party movie rather than a dumb teen party movie done as a fricking youtube video? How awesome - and rare - would a genuinely gothic or supernatural film or a feature of a daytime soap be that actually nutted up and was like "yes, we are actually taking this seriously." And not by claiming to be "based on a true story" shakycam mockumentary.

Saw what you will about the Pirates films but I do feel that the people behind them started out with an attitude of "hey, let's make a pirate movie!" - "like, a full-blown Captain Blood old-school swashbuckler?" "yes" - "even though that hasn't been done in years and kids might find it dated Cutthroat Island bombed hardcore and this is based on a themepark ride?" "Yes. PIRATE MOVIE. FULL STOP." Captain Jack might have been wacky but the film, to its credit, treated the Will/Elizabeth plotline - both action-wise and love-story-wise - for what it was. Swashes, they were buckled, as they darn well should be.

This feels to me like Burton took a look at the source material (which I just found out is indeed streaming and will watch as my BFF is a hardcore fan of the show and I have to see this Burton craziness due to allegiance to her) and instead of wondering, "I wonder what about this genuinely appeals to people" said "FUCK IT, I'll do it for the LOLZ" and then winking "Isn't the very idea of a melodramatic vampire soap opera HILARIOUS!? Isn't this premise essentially ludicrous!?"

Which is kind of annoying and patently offensive to anyone who has ever been a fan of melodrama or the supernatural or daytime soaps.

No. No premise or genre is, essentially ludicrous. A lot of people find musicals off-putting or stilted or dated but that doesn't mean that the genre itself is OMG PEOPLE SINGING AT RANDOM WTF HA.

Disclaimer: Because I am so torn by Luck's end - absolutely deserved due to the horse deaths and yet also JUST as I finally nutted up after 6 unseen episodes and started watching them on the DVR - I went into classic 'avoid promising shows I actually enjoy watching because all you will get is CANCELLATION and PAIN' mode by revisiting my favorite bad televisual boyfriend on Hulu Plus.

Yeah, you know I'm talking about Glee. What absolutely floors me about the show - to the point where I simply can not look away but must bear full witness to the trainwreck - is how often it FAILS outright at being a musical. Or, simply, frequently, doesn't want to be a musical. A musical has characters burst into song to express what they can not say. That is what it is. That is what it does best. And yet 80-90% of the time, there are these blah, samey, stagey production numbers - this is not Idol or the Voice. This is not supposed to be a talent show. It's supposed to be a musical. Or worse, literally spelling out in the most basic expository way what the purpose of the character singing the song is in dialogue moments before they sing it. Imagine Tony turning point-blank to a character or camera and announcing, flat-out, "I am now going to demonstrate my love for Maria by singing this song about her, called Maria." Good job, champ, but now you no longer need to sing this song because you just said it. Or, god, the absolute worst, doing virtual shot-by-shot remakes of iconic music videos. (Yes, I just finished the MJ episode.) I love Jane Lynch as much as anybody but a carbon copy of her as Madonna via Fincher is as semiotically and spiritually empty as Vaughn as Perkins by way of Van Sant by way of Hitch.

That makes no sense. Stop couching it. Stop distancing it from the thing it needs to be. Look, Milch could blow the Western's conventions to hell and back again, reinventing it and becoming something new and classic at the same time. But there were times when Deadwood, being a Western, needed to have a saloon, some whores and some guns.

Ditto Buffy's breathtaking implosion of pop-culture meets high-school meets horror cliches. Ultimately a show about a blonde Van Helsing (obligatory sidenote of: TWO. HUNDRED. MILLION. DOLLARS) needs to shove some stakes in some undead hearts.

Because Glee, when it actually IS a musical? When it actually does that thing that it is supposed to do? And, frankly, should be doing all the time since highschool is the emotional equivalent of a Michael Bay movie with even the most banal of things exploding into fireballs because so much hormones? When it lets the characters dream? When it lets them sing what they cannot say? It is glorious. Think of "Loser." Think of Kurt's beautiful, epic "Rose's Turn." Beiste doing 'Jolene.' Basically, think of any number that was born out of a need greater than "this is MJ week" and "we need to sell songs kids like on iTunes so MOAR KATY PERRY." It is astoundingly rare that more than one or two of these numbers happen per episode. And yet - they are what a musical is. Emotions can not be said and so they must be sung.

Don't be afraid to be what you really are, Glee. It's the irony of ironies that you keep telling that to the characters, to the audience, CONSTANTLY. To the point where it is literally the only "theme" in the work, displaying it with as much insight as "Free to Be You and Me." But the show can't tell that message to itself.

STFU, Kim Novak.

I simply *had* to post using that headline, because it's probably going to be appropriate only once or twice in my Life.

So, I haven't seen "The Artist" yet - in large part due to the fact that is playing NOwhere near Amishville, PA (also, Weinsteins, the official film website should take a page from Fox Searchlight and list future opening dates/cities) - but am aware that it is a near-silent film-about-filmmaking. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to know that, generally, when writers/directors make films-about-filmmaking, they are going to reference, pay tribute to and otherwise homage/rip-off other movies. There's a grad-school thesis just waiting to be made simply by doing an annotated version of "Hugo."

If you haven't seen Dujardin and Michel Hazavanicus's work yet, get thee to Netflix Streaming to watch "OSS 117" for a pitch-perfect recreation and simultaneous parody of early Bond films. So, while I haven't seen "The Artist," I have a vague idea of what they're going to try for. Now, apparently, one of those filmic quotations/homages in the movie is the use of Bernard Herrmann's iconic score for "Vertigo" during a crucial sequence. Now, one would think this would be no big deal considering that a quick look at the composer's IMDB page shows that that fine piece of music has been featured in everything from "A Single Man" to "Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle."

No biggie, unless you're Kim Novak. According to Deadline (which, ugh, I know), she is none too pleased . And by none too pleased, I mean, she feels like hearing "Scene d'Amour" makes her the equivalent of Lisbeth Salander:

---------------------------------------------------------

Los Angeles: “I want to report a rape,” said Kim Novak, the legendary star of “Vertigo,” “Picnic,” and many other revered classics. “My body of work has been violated by ‘The Artist.’ This film took the Love Theme music from “Vertigo” and used the emotions it engenders as its own. Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart can’t speak for themselves, but I can. It was our work that unconsciously or consciously evoked the memories and feelings to the audience that were used for the climax of ‘The Artist.’”

Novak went on to say that “The Artist” could and should have been able to stand on its own. “There was no reason for them to depend on Bernard Herrmann’s score from ‘Vertigo’ to provide more drama. ‘Vertigo’s’ music was written during the filming. Hitchcock wanted the theme woven musically in the puzzle pieces of the storyline. Even though they did given Bernard Herrmann a small credit at the end, I believe this kind of filmmaking trick to be cheating. Shame on them!”

This kind of “borrowing” could portend a dangerous future for all artists in film. “It is morally wrong of people in our industry to use and abuse famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what the original work was intended. It is essential that all artists safeguard our special bodies of work for posterity, with their individual identities intact and protected."

---------------------------------

YOU DIDN'T WRITE IT, BITCH. Also, hearing a piece of music you DID NOT COMPOSE is NOT the equal of rape. Here's Wagner's prelude to Tristan und Isolde - which a sharp-eared listener will notice bears a remarkable, sometime note-for-note similarity to Herrmann's score.

This is as bad as Johnny Depp comparing posing for pictures in a glossy magazine to rape. Celebs? Stop comparing anything to rape EXCEPT actual rape. Seriously. Stop.

In sum, shut the fuck up, Kim Novak.

a cinema on a desert island

So, the fabulous Matt Zoller Seitz wrote an article recently for Salon in which he asked us, what, if we could somehow take a perpetually functioning DVD/Blu-Ray player to a desert island -- one run by solar power or coconuts, one presumes - we would be watching.

He allows for a single short film, one self-contained season of a television show and ten films. However, the last part has a caveat -- for example, because "Carlos" played Cannes as a single five-hour film from the the French TV miniseries, it qualifies as a single film. However, film trilogies, franchises and whatnot do not. The first two "Godfathers" are separate works.

Part of this is easy - one simply thinks of what films one has watched the most. But the other part -- I am shutting myself out from all future works, from all the films and shows yet to be made, from all the ones I have not yet seen - is hard. The question, quite simply, is what can I watch over-and-over that still has hidden depths I have not yet seen? Once the novelty is gone - once the third-act twist has been revealed, once the dialogue has been memorized - what remains?

So, with that in mind:

Short: Hotel Chevalier

Season: Twin Peaks, Season Two

Films:

1) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

2) Bringing Up Baby

3) Citizen Kane

4) Fanny & Alexander

5) Gone with the Wind

6) Lost Highway

7) Out of Sight

8) Umbrellas of Cherbourg

9) Vertigo

10) Zodiac

Look for justifications to appear shortly. For now, I will merely say that several on this list fall into the "stop whatever I am doing and watch them in their entirety, should they appear on TV, despite the fact that I have seen them all before and own them on DVD."

(Honorable mention using that criteria: Bring It On. It is a constant delight.)

counterprogramming

Now needs a new dictionary definition, because why waste time with this:
-------------------------------------------------------
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This

coun·ter·pro·gram /ˈkaʊntərˌproʊgræm, ‑grəm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[koun-ter-proh-gram, ‑gruhm]
Pronunciation verb, -gramed or -grammed, -gram·ing or -gram·ming.

–verb (used with object)

1.	to schedule (a broadcast on radio or television) to compete with one on another station.

–verb (used without object)

2.	to engage in such scheduling of broadcasts.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
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When one could simply show this?:

[Shamelessly ganked from Salon's uncanny Meryl v. Joker side-by-side; via Universal Studios/Peter Mountain; Warner Bros. Pictures]

I don't want to rain on the nonstop buzz of The Dark Knight hype machine, but while everyone is OMGHeathIsTehBestActorEvah!, can Miss Amanda Seyfried get some love? From her ingenious comic timing in Mean Girls (justly and acutely analyzed here in Salon), to brilliantly inhabiting the Laura Palmer-shaped negative space on S1 of Veronica Mars and now her totally Emmy-snubbed work this season of Big Love. K. and I marathoned it on DVD and I was more and more impressed by her in each episode. Some of the best work of portraying the unbearable lightness of being a teenage girl since Buffy, maybe ever. Coltish yet confused, ripe yet weary. SNUBBED, I tell ya!

Amanda is working it like no other in the new t(w)eendom VF spread, though. Almost outshining Blake Lively and if you've read my GG posts, you know my crush on Blake (well, B as S, really). Kristen Stewart (whoever the frack she is) looks like Alexis Bleidel gone horribly awry.

No doubt, I'll rant more about the Emmys later but congrats to Amy Poehler! Remember, she's being nominated (and hopefully winning) for two now.

Ohh, shit. I think I might already need to take out a restraining order on Salon's behalf against TDK's fanboys. Back off my gal Stephanie Zacharek, okay? I don't always agree with her and her reviews sometimes have some left-fieldy remarks, but she's one of the most interesting, *engaged* and thoughtful critics around, and those are becoming few and far between. She LOVES film and adores actors (scroll down) in a way few seldom do - and has the internet so eroded what film criticism means that it's now okay to criticize (by which I mean "rip to shreds with personal attacks") someone because she *dared* to criticize a movie you haven't even seen yet?

You know, as someone who went to film school and has been known to get deconstructiony from time to time and yet tries for a popcult irreverent blog, I - like many others, such as poor Glenn Kenny - are trying to figure what is and should be happening in the world of film criticism. But we deserve better than fanboy hive mind bullshit and anon flame attacks.

However, feel free to flame away anonymously in the comments because at least I'll know someone is reading.

ask and ye shall receive....

Well, that was weird.

No less than 24 hours after having an insatiable curiousity about Gay Zombies, MySpace has a banner ad for this "mockumentary" [please, someone, banish that word] entitled American Zombie. The tagline?

"We're here. We're dead. Get used to it."

Stop INVADING MY BRAIN, universe! This hat is made of the *really good* tinfoil, okay?

Meanwhile, in non-Gay Zombie news -

Last week, I was depressed. The kind that needs industrial-sized Manhattans and impulse buying in grocery stores. I went to get Maraschino cherries and their sweet juices for said Manhattans. I ended up with a shit-load of nacho ingredients. Along the way, I spied this:
I hate to go all CopyRanter because he'd dissect this better than I, but I have to.

Vertigo is many, many things, such as:

• A side-effect of this blog, along with dry mouth and unquenchable bloodlust.
• One of Hitchcock's finest works.
• A so-so U2 song [even after the brilliant explanation by Jane Avril, the "uno, dos, tres, CATORCE!" *still* bugs. Said explanation is that the band went back to the same producer for their 14th album as they did for their 1st-3rd. It's a giant shout-out to Steve Lillywhite that annoys almost all who hear it. Plus, the video took place in a Target ad.]

But it is NOT - NOT a good name for a candy lollipop. Even one that tastes like a massively artificial chocolate-covered strawberry. I can picture some exec thinking that naming a candy "Vertigo!" is, like, totally rad and is an X-TREME candy or whatever. And then I hate them.

What remaining hate I have is directed toward ABC and their fucking new Jimmy Kimmel campaign smeared over seemingly every bus in Los Angeles.


The ad reads "Be A Good American. Jimmy 5 Nights a Week."

What. The. Fuck?

Besides having an ear-splitting radio ad that changes Franz Ferdiand's "Do You Wanna?" into "Do-Do-Do You-Do You Do You Jimmy?," ABC is under the belief that if you throw enough money into it, slang will come.

No. You can't just INVENT verbs from proper names!

And then USE them with disturbingly masturbatory over/undertones [i.e. "12:05 am - Time to Jimmy."]

And you especially can't do this with a word that is already a verb [i.e. "jimmy a lock."]

What the hell is WRONG with you?! I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE YELLED AT A NETWORK LIKE THIS!!

Seriously, I was indifferent to Mr. Kimmel beforehand. Now? Filled with white-hot hatred.

there are no small parts...

Only gay zombies?

So. A while back, certain people [namely me, Kay Rose, Holly Magnolia, Livia Harlowe] and I were talking about how there are no brief/funny puns involving gay zombies. And there aren't.

The sad thing is that I own this book [a gay spoof of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books from my/your childhood], which includes ZOMBIE DRAG QUEENS. But no humorous puns or cool slanguage.

I've seen this awesome YouTube video [entitled 'That Guy (of the Living Dead)'], which involves bears + gay zombies. Still no good puns are coming to mind.

Why is this important, you may ask?

Well, I helped out making a friend's film -a nifty little horror-comedy-totally Maegan Poland thing entitled "10 Signs Your Roommate is a Serial Killer." Anyways, I had to play dead.

So we took pictures of me made up and dead. I totally look like an awesome gay zombie.

And since things only matter when they're relevant to me, I now MUST resolve this burning question of "why are there no fantastically witty yet concise gay zombie puns?"

I probably am not as up on my horror knowledge as other people and therefore can't apply my fancy film school edumacation...

[I *still* somehow never managed to see any of the Romero stuff - I genuinely think the only "zombie" movie I've ever seen is 28 Days Later.]

But this is bugging the fracking HELL out of me.

So far, the only thing our friends have come up with is "Night of the Lisping Dead."

Which. Come on. We have to do better than that, don't we?

best. week in film. ever.

A long, long time ago, I went to a private, conservative high school.

In this place, a younger, no less wise huntergrayson wandered about, feeling alone and confused.

Then a mad hatter arrived to take over the theater program. Said mad hatter started offering film classes and, well, my life as I know it now sorta began then.

Keep in mind that this was before the DVD age reached full swing. So the mad hatter would show me mysterious bootleg VHS tapes that were burned from laserdiscs. [Yes, they really existed, look it up.]

Besides introducing me to the works of David Sedaris, that man is responsible for my first viewings of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

And the insane musical I just now discovered came out on DVD - Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here. There's a fruit hat, dancing bananas and a number that's a swooning psychedelic tribute to polka dots.

I can NOT WAIT to see this again. I can't...put it into words. It's just something you have to experience yourself.

Also, a brief review:
Running with Scissors - written/directed by Ryan Murphy:

For someone who balances so delicately on the razor's edge of camp every week on Nip/Tuck, it is surprising that he would make a movie so....dull. So inert. Bear in mind that I haven't read the memoir - my viewing companion had and is a HUGE Burroughs fan.

But the movie kinda sucks. It has no momentum, no "oopmh." It's a string of vignettes pieced together as a feature film- pearls through a necklace whose string gets more frayed as it goes along. The emotional modes are only two -- blankly delivered psychobabble talk about "feelings" and such or over-the-top screaming matches. And that's it. It's either one or the other rather than the rich and varied shades of melodrama that Murphy's TV show consistently delivers.

A more fitting title would've been, "Powerwalking, then Sprinting, with Scissors."

While the acting is decent enough across the board [look for Gabrielle Union to prove her dramatic chops in a "blink and you'll miss it" role] only two actors manage to seem like real people rather than cardboard characters. The first is Alec Baldwin, who earned Salon's Honorary Oscar in part for his turn here.

The other? Gwyneth Paltrow. Yes, her. I tend to stay away from her gossip threads because while she's probably an insufferable person, she has never ceased to remain a compelling screen presence in my eyes. Given how the entire film is barely distinguishable from a sad Tenenbaum retread, Fishstick must be commended for not doing Margot, part deux.

Evan Rachel Wood's faux-punk "fuck you" posturing sometimes makes her seem like early Avril Lavigne. Joseph Fiennes? Yet another screen role where "crazy" is little more than a collection of tics and business. Cross doesn't get much to do as Augusten, despite being the author of the memoir. Bening, is, of course, fantastic and startling. But none of them hold a candle to what the talented Miss Paltrow does here --

She makes you believe her. Oh, she's a nut. A spoiled brat and a space cadet rolled into one. But she is so deeply wrapped up in herself -- so uniquely on her own wavelength - that you can't take your eyes off her. You begin to believe her madness and start counting the seconds until she appears again.

At one point in the film, she claims that her cat is speaking to her and is begging her to keep her in a laundry basket-shaped prison.

And while the rational part of you says "Oh, that's terrible! Free kitty!" The other part of your brain starts to think, "well, maybe the cat *did* speak to her via its purrs."

Kudos, Fishstick. Kudos.

wearing my geek badge with pride....

Okay. I know it's uncool in this day and age to be genuinely sentimental about anything. Especially - with all the blogs and the Defamer and the snark - about the Oscars.

But. Growing up? It was pretty much my favorite night of the year. Almost on par with Christmas. Not that I remember the winners or the moments - my memory is fuzzy at best and non-existent at worst - but the important things - the buildup, the dresses, the thrills? Are ingrained in me as long as I can remember. I remember my parents letting me stay as late as they lasted [on the East Coast no less!] I remember being so tired and frustrated the next day - frustrated because how many fifth graders can dish gossip and fabulousity in small-town suburbia?

But. But. I believe in the Oscars. What they represent and what they promise. Because, despite what anyone says, film is THE art form of the 21st century. And no matter how many times they get it wrong, no matter how many boring montages they put out?

Watching the canonization [or the attempt to canonize] of a medium as it's still evolving is....something that is so NOW, so thrillingly new and modern and exciting that...how can you not love it? And because cinema is so good at straddling the line between art and business, between the masses and the select few, between individual entertainment and community spectacle? That holds so much promise...so much potential - that to deny their power is to deny the trials and the triumphs that make us human.

Sure, I realize that for a shy, creative [i.e. 'gay'] desperately depressed boy from Tennessee who wanted so much to run away from anything ordinary that the glamour of Hollywood could appear to fill you/us/me to the brim with hope. It can offer an escape for all of us.

Allowing that - I don't subscribe to the US idea of 'celebrities - they're just like us!.' No. Screw that. As my teacher once said, 'movies are life as it should be.' Why not give us something to aspire to? Something to inspire us.

I don't want them to be 'just like us' I want them to be beautiful and terrifying that we can study yet never understand. I want them to wear things that are stunning or strange. I want them to have gigantic/excessive/'spontaneous' displays of emotion that play every emotion like a note on a piano until they reach places that make you mere humans seem totally dead inside [which means that, sorry haters, I adored Misses Berry and Paltrow.] Make you seem like old-school Cenurion model Cylons. I want them to carry themselves with such fucking confidence that they soak up the gaze of a billion fucking eyes worldwide and you can tell that they're thinking 'is that all you've got?' I wish them to flub, to fume, to fail spectacularly and then recover so well that all is forgiven, forgetten, and fantastic.

I know I'm not the first person to say this but, really, modern celebrities are our Greek Gods. And I'm okay with that. The Gods, if you know your mythology, felt free to come down from Olympus to mingle and mate with us mortals. But they're not us. They look like us, they play with us and they entertain us. But they're not just like us and they never will be.

Since I'm not exactly a religious person, cinema is as close as I get to God. Think about it. A gathering where you sit, surrender to a higher power and FEEL. Together.

It helps, of course, that I just saw 'Zodiac' with a huge group at the Arclight, in the Dome, in digital with seemingly all of this great, weird, disparate city of Los Angeles. [somehow I completely blanked that my friend I talked to 12 hours earlier was going to the same show...then Calliope brought her brother and his girl...and pretty much half of H'wood- an Office confab, the Best Week Ever crew and maybe Caroline Rhea, depending on how much work she's had done.]

I'm not exactly good with scary movies - especially one that, since it's unsolved, is way too real - and by 'not good,' I mean 'am a total fracking girl.' Seriously. I couldn't deal with the requisite nervous laughter [which, to be fair, was completely justified because the humor *was* weaved into the script.] Half the time I couldn't console the actual girl clutching my arm.

But all of us screaming, laughing, watching at the same moments? Breathing the same air, the same mood, the same dream [because cinema is nothing if but a shared dream...not that I can link to the requisite academic papers right now]?

That's fracking transcendent, right?

My one qualm? Robert Downey Jr. as a substance abuser? How much miscasting is that? :)

ETA: All men should be required to wear 70s slacks. Seriously, come Zodiac's DVD release, you'll be able to tell the religion of each of the cast's members.

down with love!*

Okay, several days late and many, many dollars short -

But apparently the Valentine's Day movie at the Arclight was Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I've said it before, I've said it again. Despite it's canonization, despite it being a cultural touchstone for zillions of women - there is *nothing* romantic about this movie. Nothing.

Sure, on the surface? It certainly seems romantic. It has Audrey Hepburn, after all! And diamonds! Who doesn't love diamonds!? You watch it with someone you love and it seems like a tale of love overcoming all odds.

But then. Then one night you decide to watch it in the middle of night, alone. And it cuts you deep. You realize that it's actually the tale of two horribly damaged people who are so self-destructive that the only chance they have for a semblance of "happiness" is to be with each other.

It's much, much more blatant in the novella - but Holly Golightly is basically a golddigger one step removed from prostitution. But she has such style, you say! But she perfected the Little Black Dress!. Uh huh. And Carrie's increasingly outlandish outfits on SATC were meant to be taken at face value. [a Salon article that I can't find right now points out that Holly was intended as satire of the elite or something].

This is a woman who runs as soon as the going gets tough - who pushes away people as soon as they manage to crack her tough exterior. She even ran as far as she could from her family because they knew the "real" her. The awkward redneck and not the ideal that she puts forth. And because she saves some cat after she threw it out in the rain, she's now capable of love? No. Sorry.

Paul/Fred is basically a closeted "kept man." Holly is a whore. And these are the people we're supposed to root for?

And it's not just that they're terrible people - because, hey, I'm a terrible person as well and believe that hopefully I can find love. It's just that there's not much poetry, not much romance in the film. It's become seized upon and re-marketed as someone's "idea" of romance - flowers, diamonds, pink and girly - without anyone bothering to note the film's all too painful and real emotional undercurrents.

Besides the fact that I've been man enough to chose Kate, when I think about romance, about love, about lust in the movies -

I think about the sweet longing in Katherine's voice as she says, "My, she was yar." I think about Barbara Stanwyck's legs, in both the Lady Eve and Double Indemnity. The purr in Clooney's butterscotch voice when he tells J. Lo, "it's not a game, it's nothing something you play." Eva Green in a beret, smoking...Eva Green in a shower, wet. I think of James Bond saying "Tracy" is the sweetiest, happiest tone imaginable as Diana Rigg skates up to him. Heck - I even think of Audrey Hepburn smoldering with Cary Grant in Charade as not even really, really obvious rear-projection ruins the moment.

But most of all? I think of a gas station, somewhere in France. Snowfall. Catherine Deneuve and a Michel Legrand score all begging us to remember when we were young and everything seemed possible.

The only moment of Breakfast at Tiffany's that sticks in my subconscious is "Moon River." But the song itself reduces me to tears almost everytime I hear it.

* - actually a good movie that proves that, despite Studio 60, Sarah Paulson is capable of being funny.

comeback?: I never left, beyotches!

For reasons that will be apparent in forthcoming days, my year in film, TV, etc. pretty much came to a crashing thud last week. Naturally, I'm still planning to see all the fantastic Oscarbait pics and the TV year doesn't really end until the last Battlestar Galactica of 2006 (12/15/2006, before the big Sunday move of '07), but, yeah, the arts kinda died a little, for me, over the week of Turkeyday.

That said, I'm trying to move toward optimism, toward celebration rather than fear, apathy, dullness. Let's start handing out the fun "Stuff That Rox My Sox" awards for 2006, 'kay?

The "COMEBACK?: I never left, beyotches!" award goes to:

Desperate Housewives (9 pm/Sundays/ABC) for its surprisingly dark turns this season.

I know. I *know*, right? But the thing is I've been there since the beginning, since before the hype, the catfights, the obscene ratings. And this season is pushing us to places that aren't just "shocking" or "controversial" (which the show never really was, to someone like me who watched Nip/Tuck and Twin Peaks) but are downright unsettling.

We're talking pedophilia.

We're talking a character most never really liked getting gunned down and you still feeling it, gasping with dread in the pit of your stomach, watching with uncertainty as Felicity Huffman goes iridescent with rage, fear and madness.

We're talking suggesting that Orson may indeed be Bree's soulmate due to their love of Martha Stewart-level cleanliness, even though he's probably a psycho adulterer-murderer-dude (but isn't Bree as well, kinda?) They would be able to get the blood stains out of the carpet...together!

What strikes me is the increasingly tossed-off quality to the enveloping darkness. Rather than a wink-wink-nudge-nudge "oh, aren't we being subversive!" quality, the show just kinda tosses bits and pieces of truly pitch-black humor aside and let's it hit you on the rebound.

I'm talking Dixie Carter's "Well, it's one way to kill time while you're waiting for death"

Or Bree's skewering of her friend with "We all have convictions, Susan. I believe Mike's last one was for manslaughter."

Or Gabby's truly awesome line, "I look like something Ike Turner would hit." *

Whoa. Like all good laughter, it comes with a sting.

If you've never watched the show because it's overhyped and popular, well, guess what, kiddies? High school is over. Hating something because it's popular is just as stupid and simplisitic as mindlessly liking something because it *is* popular. You're a sheep, just of a different wool. S1 and S2 are out on DVD, and the latter isn't nearly as bad as everyone suggested. And included the awesome "everyone dead is alive again" finale.

Plus, with people like Kathryn Joostyn, Dixie Carter, Alec Mapa and a zillion others (including, as Evany on TWoP has pointed out, half of Roseanne), Wisteria Lane has become a rich, fully lived-in place, perhaps the wackiest this side of Stars Hollow, sure, but an unceasing delight of randoms, guest stars and HITG!s.

There's a woman who walks her cat on a leash.

Cat. On. A. Leash. = Comic Gold.
--------------------------------------

Superduper bonus points:
For adding megagenius Joe Keenan to the staff, who not only is behind Frasier's greatest years (and wrote "Bang," the aforementioned Huffman showcase and one of the finest hours of TV this year. period.), but is also a genius, wicked satirist in his novels. My Lucky Star is all of 8 BUCKS at Amazon (hence the linky-linky) and it's the funniest send-up of the TomKat madness there is (though it was written prior.) He makes madcap screwballs like Bringing Up Baby seem sedate.

Bonus points to Dougray Scott. For being mad sexy.

Didjaknow that amnesiac James Denton is a fellow Tennessee boy? True story, he went to UTK.

ETA: I started writing this at the beginning of watching "The Miracle Song." Holy. Fracking. Shit. That final scene between Matt Roth and Felicity? That's darkness. That's pure black as vinyl, night, coffee sans cream darkness. Simply bone-chilling. Who would've thought that a mainstream, hit show would *dare* to go to such a place five, ten years back?

* - there's nothing funny about domestic violence. except when there is. see what i mean about the unsettling?

Sophie's Motherfracking Choice:

5 PM on SciFi: King Cobra. With Pat Morita and a cast of thousands. Dozens. Whatever.

Same time, different bat channel: USC versus Notre Dame.

Now, you know I don't know nothing about football. But. Still.

I wanna watch the game to see K's cousins weep. (True story: they flew into LA to watch the game. And didn't buy her a ticket! And K went to SC and they're ND alums. It's both schools! On her turf! Rudeness, much.)

Plus, Masa + beer and/or scotch, plus flipping back and forth to Cobra? Potential best day ever. The game can be no more confusing/exciting than King Cobra. Perhaps I will finally understand football.

I wish I had a fancy TV that could do picture-in-picture, but I don't. It's too bad my parents don't love me enough to get an HDTV. Hint hint winkwink nudge nudge.