Movie movie movie party movie
Sunday October 31, 2004 – 10:36 pmThat’s what my calendar looks like for the past two weeks, it’s crazy. I’m lovin’ it though, I’m having so much fun. So yeah, happy belated Halloween! I had my holiday fun on Saturday, I met up with Eric Z. and his pal Geoff and went to a bar close to my house called Silvie’s. We saw some bands that were dressed up like other bands: INXS, the Faces, the Traveling Wilburys, the Smiths, Creedence and maybe one or two others I’m forgetting. It was good times and I ran into a few other people I vaguely knew as well, like Todd from U.S. Maple; Edward Burch; and Alex, a guy who drummed with Archer on one tour I did way back when with him and Sam. So yeah, I knew some people and therefore had fun even though I didn’t make the effort to dress up like a cowgirl like I was maybe gonna do. I chickened out, basically. Without the toy guns it just wasn’t gonna work.
What movies did I see? OK: I’m not good at giving movie reviews but I think I can do the thumbs up - thumbs down routine here.
1) The Machinist - Thumbs up. Saw it with Sarah and already talked about it here so I won’t rehash.
2) I Heart Huckabees - Eh. Thumbs down. Saw it last Sunday with my other Eric(k) pal, Erick B. We agreed that it was too dumb, too feel-good, not a complete waste of time but in the end, pretty much just a buncha nothin’. I’m sure it was a lot of fun to BE in that movie, and I guess it’d be great as an airplane movie or something, but I wouldn’t recommend seeing it in the theater. But hey, it was a cheap matinee at the Davis, so I’m not really complaining.
3) Sideways - Thumbs up! Saw a preview of it with Eric Z. Came in with no expectations and really liked it. It’s about two old college buddies on a wine-tasting excursion through California. And I don’t know a damn thing about wine so if somebody like me can enjoy that movie, you’ll like it too I’m sure.
4) Primer - Thumbs up! Oh yeah!!! I saw it today (=yesterday) with Erick B. and we both dug it. It’s not for everyone though, you gotta be a pretty much of a geek to appreciate this fully. It’s a hardcore techie science fiction thing, my favorite, favorite kind of movie on earth. But unlike most sci-fi movies it uses no special effects to speak of but just relies on great dialogue and a really imaginative, fucked-up storyline. Loved it. I would see it again two or three more times to try to figure out the stuff I missed the first time. Erick and I both agreed, however, that in terms of fucked-up movies that might require repeat viewings, Memento had a better payoff. But then, Memento cost a lot more than $7000 to make…!! The fact that I’m even comparing those two movies says a lot about how great Primer is.
OK, I’m falling asleep now. Thanks so much to all the pals mentioned above for being so good to go and fun to hang out with. Not-A-Dates are where it’s at!! (grin)
November 1st, 2004 at 8:47 am
Edith, I told you Primer looked freaky weird.
November 1st, 2004 at 12:28 pm
You did. So what should I see next? Tell me. :-)
November 1st, 2004 at 1:24 pm
I heard Saw is terrible, so I wouldn’t recommend that one… ;)
November 6th, 2004 at 3:29 am
Time to ad my two-and-a-half-cents-worth (or 3000-characters-worth) in the movies dept. I saw an unsettling, poignant, incredibly sad but still resilient It’s unforgettable: a visual array that puts you right there in the midst of his growing up from childhood, tortured & alienated adolescence on into his present life having survived and, it seems, worked through (in the process of putting this epic story of his life on film) much of the crazy shit life dealt him. It’s his own cinematic confessional, cathartic self-therapy. You say to yourself: "ohmigod, all of my own private hell or dysfunctional family shit looks like a stroll in the park compared to this guy’s story He’d been filming his life since he was 11 (on 8mm, then video), and he’s now 31. The film made history when it debuted last year at teh Sundance Film Festival as THE first feature to be edited completely with Apple’s iMovie software. It cost only $218.00! But it’s as good or better than any big budget Hollywood fiction or low-budget documentary. It’s both sad and horrific what a mis-daignosis of crazy that results in years of electro-shock "therapy" can do to a mother, and how being raised by very seriously messed up grandparents can ruin a life. What’s really a miracle (for lack of any other way to put it) is that he survived all the shit and went on to make this document of his own grim past. The catharsis he underwent just by putting this film together really seems to have been part of his own healing process, and what brought him back from the brink of his own self-destruction. It’s a reality-check for anyone who feels like they’ve been dealt a shitty hand by the fickle hand o’fate. Both music and his rich fantasy-life are what saved him, in some very real ways, growing up with so much abuse, neglect and craziness in that family. Music once again, proved to be a lifeline, a salvation, for this lonely, traumatized boy. So, while it’s not what you could call a fun night at the movies, it IS an amazing testament to this boy’s self-directed salvation. And there’s what can only be described as perfect use of Stephen Merritt and Lisa Germano songs that seems as if they’d been written for the film. (There is also a very good original musical score I didn’t even realize was there until I saw it credited at the end of the film). To say it’s deeply affecting is an understatement. But do go and see what can be done using $200 and iMovie and a life story crying out to be told painfully, mercifully, with style, grace and love. Not too many movies meet or exceed those qualities. I’d like to know what you think of it. So, I hope this doesn’t scare you away from seeing it. It’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment. (I didn’t give away anything about the film, either.)
November 6th, 2004 at 6:58 am
?!? Might help if you told us the name of it Clay…
November 6th, 2004 at 12:01 pm
Tarnation
November 6th, 2004 at 12:06 pm
Huh. I think Erick Blake saw that and told me about it… if it’s the one I’m thinking of, he didn’t like it, he said he felt manipulated and wasn’t buyin’ it. Couldn’t sympathize with the dysfunctional family, or something to that effect.
November 6th, 2004 at 3:06 pm
Just got back from Primer. Yeah, it was really great. I was ready for it to be weird and freaky and technical, so I paid attention and I think I understood most of it, until just about the very end. I think I understand what’s happening in the very last scene, but I think I may have missed a couple of things. But yeah, really great film. Ex-pecially the first part, in which they’re building the machine and trying to figure out what it does, and using all sorts of scientific methods to figure out what’s going on.
November 6th, 2004 at 4:40 pm
Yeah, I can see how some people could feel manipulated by the story. "Tarnation"…what exactly does that word mean, anyway? He does use a lot of fancy graphic tricks (multi-images, flashy stuff, lots of text, words, hmmm, all that wordiness must be part of why I liked it, even though I found all the visual text bothersome). Sure, he was playing with the possibilities that iMovie offered him. That could be annoying. What got to me was just how fucked up those people were that were his family. It was painful to watch at times. I was surprised he was willing to expose all this about his family. So he could be seen as really pissed off, and channelling that anger through the film (instead of going crazy like his mother and grandparents). He’s saved all this foptage and sound clips for 20 years, so it’s a distilled recollection of his experiences. So the film was a kind of exorcism of a lot of bitter memories.
The idea of whether anyone watching it buys the authenticity of it or not is debatable. I just took it as real, so didn’t feel manipulated. It could all be a drama queen obsessive self-portrait. Or he could be accused to manipulating our emotions. I think any film does that. (Republicans who actually went and saw "Fahrenheit 9-11" said they felt very manipulated, but they haven’t been able to refute any of the facts presented in it) It’s not an either/or experience to watch it — while he was over-the-top a lot of the time, like anything, it is more complicated than that. When a film moves me as much as this one did, I think it’s well done and worth seeing. Lots of different kinds of movies can do that. This was just one of the strangest. Another early and good example of a film diary was a 1967 fake documentary called "David Holzman’s Diary", another first film, considered a breakthrough independent film at the time. It is one of 100 or so films in the Library of congrss’ National Film Registry of classics to be kept along with ones like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Star Wars and The Godfather".
November 7th, 2004 at 10:11 pm
Tarnation: The act of damning or the condition of being damned.
Regional Note: The noun and interjection tarnation illustrate suffixation, the addition of a suffix to a word. Tarnation and darnation (the latter probably having come first) are both euphemistic forms of damnation. Tarnation seems to have been influenced by tarnal, another mild oath derived from (e)ternal! The Oxford English Dictionary cites late-18th-century examples of tarnation from New England, indicating that it has been part of American speech since colonial days.
Thanks dictionary.com
November 7th, 2004 at 10:18 pm
(Pocket Matt, my always-handy reference guide… ;-)