A friend had introduced me to "Reservoir Dogs" soon after it came out on video and I quickly became a Tarantino junkie. When I found out that "True Romance", a movie he'd written but not directed was coming out, I was pretty pumped to go see it.
The release of this movie happened to coincide with me being introduced to a rather nice young woman by mutual friends. As these things go, I asked her to a movie but somewhat selfishly, decided that I really wanted to see "True Romance" so I suggested that this be the movie we go see. She hadn't heard of the film or Tarantino or "Reservoir Dogs" so agreed. I mean, to her the title had "Romance" in it and it started Christian Slater who'd been in "The Legend of Billie Jean" and "Young Guns II" - how bad could it be?
I picked her up and while waiting for her to get ready, checked out her movie collection. She had a VHS copy of every Disney movie ever released and really, not much else. "Oh-oh" I remember thinking. But I was *really* excited to see the Tarantino film and the thought of doing a quick switch to a different film didn't even cross my mind.
Well, you can imagine how things went. The film about a young couple (one a comic store loser, one a hooker who his boss hires for him as a birthday present) who accidentally end up in possession of a suitcase full of cocaine. It contains all the elements of the best (you may choose to put that word in quotes, depending on your personal taste - I know she would've) elements of a Tarantino movie - violence, dark humour, pop culture references, a wicked soundtrack. One scene where a mobster ends up beating the hooker (who'd been left in the room while her boyfriend goes to get ice cream! ) was so disturbing that I was cringing in my seat (and not just because I was on a first date with a Disney chick sitting beside me!)
The movie ended, I took her home and we parted ways. Believe it or not, I think we may have seen each other a few more times after that although honestly, I think the magic was gone about two minutes into the movie where it became clear that this movie wasn't anywhere near "The Lady and The Tramp" but would be a really intense version of "The Loser and The Tramp".
TL;DR: For a first date, I took a huge Disney Fangirl to a Movie That Ranks Near The Top of "Films That Most Frequently Use The Word 'Fuck'" right up there with "Eddie Murphy: Raw" and "The Departed".
Oh, and the movie also features perhaps the greatest scene of dialogue in the history of film between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper...
We watched Ricky Gervais' "The Invention of Lying" tonight and it's a fairly subversive comedy in a thematic area that doesn't get a lot of attention from Hollywood.
You can imagine the pitch: "It's like Jim Carrey's "Liar Liar" except nobody can tell a lie, not just the main character."
Except instead of sticking with that easy out and resulting cheap comedy, Gervais takes it to a pretty dangerous place - in a world where no one can lie, religion doesn't exist because that's too big of a leap of faith to be possible in an otherwise completely honest, logical world. But when one man discovers the ability to lie, this literally leads to the creation of religion since no one has the capacity to understand that the tale he spins of a "man in the sky" could be anything but true.
(Now if Hollywood would just make a film version of one of my all-time favourite novels which also has "the Big Lie" as its main theme, we'd really see some subversive ideas on celluloid! )
Boldly contradicting themselves like they have many times before, movie execs cite the quickly shakey-cammed "Star Trek" as an example of how Internet piracy is devastating their industry - even as "Star Trek" is easily shown to be one of the most profitable movies of the year indicate that the movie industry is probably doing just fine, thank-you very much.
It's that same logic that considers every Britney Spears song that's downloaded equal to one lost sale. Right.
Now I find "Womanizer" as catchy as the next person but I'm not ponying up a single loonie less a penny to buy a copy. But that's not to say that a copy may or may not reside on my hard drive. (I just looked - it doesn't actually. Uhm, whew! )
I do understand the arguments that the movie industry is making. Right now, it's really only a matter of tech know-how (and it's not that hard) and bandwidth speeds that prevents more people from downloading movies the way they currently download music. But the solution isn't to cling to old business models and technologies but to innovate in ways big and small. Because the pirates will always be one step behind them no matter what!
When I'm forced to choose, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is one of the movies I often pick as my favourite movie of all-time. "Breakfast Club" pretty much defined my high school days with its perfect delineation of the main high school cliques (as well as being a script which is the rare example of not having a wasted line or scene) and "Some Kind of Wonderful"...well, I'll just say that one reminds me of high school a lot too!
So first it was Michael Jackson and now it's John Hughes and it feels like a lot of MAJOR 1980's-defining icons are dying WAY earlier than they should. I mean, obviously, we're all going to feel older as we get older. But it's like that game that you sometimes play - "how old do you feel?" and for me, the answer is usually much younger than I am.
Except that lately, I'm feeling my age. Not numerically but in the sense that I no longer feel like a young person. I feel like a...well, not a middle-aged person either but whatever the step is between the two.
I don't fit into the 18-25 demographic anymore, let alone the 26-35 one. I have a kid. And a mortgage. (I think) I've finally accepted that there's no way I could ever join a rock band (which was always a possibility in my 20's - lack of talent notwithstanding! I'll do a blog post about my "folk punk" band, The Banned, someday! ) Or pick up and move to Europe for a few months like I did at 22. Or the fact that I'm generally going to bed by 10pm (if not earlier) and getting up at 7am (if not earlier) every morning.
Shea and I had a backyard fire the other night which we stayed up quite late for, enjoying one of the few nice evenings we've had this summer. It made me wonder when the last time I stayed up all night was. And it had been so long, that I couldn't even remember when this was something that used to be a regular occurrence. Similarly, I can't remember the last time I was rip-roaring drunk (er, but that would be expected now, wouldn't it? ).
I haven't looked this forward to a movie since probably "Batman: Dark Knight" which completely lived up to my expectations plus more. I hope this one does the same - one of the best books I've read (and re-read) in the past year or two.
- Just watched "The Reader" and after a slow start, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable film. Plus I don't think it's a spoiler to mention that a helpful prison librarian plays a small part in the movie near the end - always a bonus to see librarians in films and a double-bonus to see them in non-stereotypical roles.
- Shea and I also watched a documentary called "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" which was awesome! I'm not sure where my interest in censorship/freedom of expression issues began but suspect it probably came from a couple different places. The biggest was the realization early on that any book that was supposed to be "bad for you" actually probably had something in it that was, well, if not "good for you" at least, that was going to show you something you probably wouldn't get anywhere else - sex, violence, drugs - whatever. The other big memory is going into the library when I started high school (our high school went from grade 7-12) and seeing they had a copy of "Mein Kampf". At the time, I was like "holy shit - they have THAT book here?" Of course, I immediately checked it out, expecting (and it's sort of shameful to admit this now) that it would be like some weird army instruction manual written by an over-the-top cartoony super villain. Of course, you start reading it and it turns out to be the rather mundane ramblings of what sounds like a mid-level bureaucrat - at least for the first few pages (perhaps the Lex Luthor stuff comes later?) I returned the book, partly relieved and partly disappointed that the book wasn't what I expected. But at the same time, I learned the incredibly valuable lesson firsthand about how important it was for me to have access to that book and to make that decision for myself instead of having someone else - whether it was a teacher, a member of the clergy, a civic leader, or even a librarian - to make that choice for me.
- finally, we also watched "The Wrestler" last weekend and I was about as pumped for this movie as anything that's come out since probably Batman last summer. Unfortunately, that created a situation where I allowed the movie to become this perfect creation in my mind and there was no way that it could live up to what I expected it to be. It's too bad that it wasn't the opposite experience - that I'd heard little about the film and happened upon it in the local art house cinema or something. I think that would've had a big impact on how I reacted to the movie. I've done that before in both ways - to use two movies from the 80's as examples, I remember hearing amazing things about "Crocodile Dundee" of all things but by the time it got the theatre in my small town, it turned out to be a pretty funny comedy but not the funniest movie of all-time that I'd built it up to be in my mind. On the other end of the spectrum, I went to see "Dirty Dancing" when it also came to our small town theatre and honestly, I can't even remember why I went - this definitely wasn't the type of movie I usually attended. But, going in without knowing a lot about the plot or the actors or anything, meant that it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable movie going experiences, probably of my entire life. And I still can't turn the channel when that movie comes on late-night TV!
On a completely unrelated note, "Slumdog Millionaires" was great and I'm really looking forward to seeing "The Wrestler" tomorrow whenever it hits the theatres in this town.
Last night, we watched Tim Burton's "Big Fish". I barely remember hearing about this movie when it came out for some unknown reason. I only picked it up now because it was recommended a couple times in a thread I posted on AskMetafilter asking for suggestions of works about fathers and sons (a big theme in my recent reading and viewing).
The movie was pretty good but the father-son thing didn't hit me as hard as promised in that thread - perhaps because I was expecting some big sentimental or tragic ending. It was a touching enough film but didn't reach the next level. (And for those who say it's Burton's masterwork, I think I'd still take "Edward Scissorhands". Hell, I might take the first Batman over this one!)
In the end, more than the father-son theme, it was the other themes in the film - the idea of how you live your life, how you remember it for yourself and how those memories are passed on to others, whether they are children or others you come into contact with, are what define you is what really resonated.
Then tonight, Pace had his first ever "real" (ie. not grandparent, not other relative or family friend) babysitter and man, there's another transition moment - thinking back to being the babysitter yourself twenty (holy shit - TWENTY?) years ago and now, it's some teenager coming over to your house with a backpack full of homework and you're the one saying "here's our cell phone number and he likes toast for his nighttime snack and there's pop in the fridge - help yourself and did I give you our cell phone number?" Shea and I went to the "Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (I joked to someone that it was that or "Marley and Me" but this one had a longer running time meaning we'd be out of the house longer so we went for it!) and I really liked it.
(Shea always teases me that I let reviews - whether I read them before or after a film - influence how I feel about a movie too much. There's a bit of truth to that - as soon as I get home tonight, I get on the Net to read Ebert and Salon's reviews and they both felt the film was lacking. Ebert was actually pretty harsh about the film.)
So yes, a couple negative reviews do temper my enthusiasm for the film. But it's not like I now hate it because Ebert thought it wasn't realistic. Brad Pitt, besides being one of the few men on the planet I would happily sleep with (er, too much information) is also a really good actor who rarely to never disappoints. (Note to self: time to re-watch "12 Monkeys")
And, as with "Big Fish", the themes running through the film about aging, family, memory and love all resonated heavily. (And there were a couple scenes, especially near the end, that caused the waterworks to be turned on for the person sitting next to me too. )
Anyhow, I have a feeling that if we watch a movie tomorrow, it'll probably be about...death and dying and memory and love and family. Hmm, now where's my copy of "Ghost"?
(Oh, one last Benjamin Button thought - I'd love to see the very similar "Time's Arrow" get a film adaptation someday. One of my favourite novels of all-time which I highly recommend to everyone.)
) was so disturbing that I was cringing in my seat (and not just because I was on a first date with a Disney chick sitting beside me!)
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