Some days you just can’t help but be Defeated.
It happens.
If you remain that way too long, you’ll end up in depression. So don’t do that.
But while you’re there, you might as well let the world know that it has made its point, and it can stop kicking you in the head now.
My last movie review was for Rubber, which seemed a little thin despite some tearing down of the fourth wall by staring-into-the-camera goofiness. Then I saw I’m Reed Fish. There’s someone looking into the camera there too. There’s a strange self-consciousness going on. And that oddly makes the film ring truer and more real.
There is so much depth of detail in this movie. They just keep throwing it on, shovelful after shovelful. It’s like some great big Russian novel. But it’s not. You won’t even notice all these details falling onto you. You won’t brush your shoulders off once. 20 minutes into it, I was all “Wow I’m only 20 minutes into it, and there’s been all this!” 70 minutes into it, I was like “Wow, there’s 20 minutes left. And think how dense the first 20 minutes were…”
This is a very realistic comedy about a guy trying to figure out what to do with his life. It’s not over-the-top or bizarre or anything. His life is a little bit easier than mine ever was. It’s also a little bit harder.
I’m Reed Fish has it’s heart in the right place. You probably won’t learn the lesson that Reed learns, but you’ll know a lot more about zorses than you ever thought you would.
I didn’t see any acting going on. The actors were the characters. And so were the characters. It’s an OK affectation that forces the audience to at least do their own share of the work. I liked it because it wasn’t a cliche. It will be now, though.
Another reason I like the movie, Reed looks more like his father every day. I can identify with that. And also he really knows how to be ashamed of himself.
I really really really wanted to love the movie Rubber. I don’t think it’s about prophylaxis. But maybe it is… Hmmmmm.
It’s about an worn out tire from the side of the road that goes on a killing spree. Kind of like Natural Born Killers, but not really.
Near the beginning this guy looks straight into the camera and talks about pointlessness in movies. How some of the main or best parts of a movie are actually pointless.
As a fan of Harry Nilsson, I tend to think that everything has a Point! so I sorta took issue with this. Or at least I didn’t take it at face value. I really don’t think that the movie is about not having a point. I think it’s much, much more than that.
There is pretty much no suspense or chills in the movie, despite it ostensibly being a horror show. The photography is great! The depth of field is often very tight, letting just a little bit of the tread be in focus… And the self-actualization of the tire is a thing to behold.It really is a character.
It was filmed in the California desert, somewhere near Joshua Tree, so the landscapes are awesome.
Ultimately it’s a comedy. My wife laughed out loud when a car hit a chair and it collapsed into a pile of sticks. The chair, that is. It’s the one that collapsed.
Some people would say that the movie needs more pointless moments like that, to be more funny or more absurd or weirder. I would be in their camp, but I still don’t think that stuff is pointless. It’s a movie about movies, and I love the ending.
It’s a genre movie. One of its main points is that a real turkey can kill off a genre’s entire audience. And a bad ending can turn off your only fan. But it just takes 1 happy viewer to justify a sequel. So, yeah, this movie makes a lotta points if you can just read thru the visual puns and metaphorical stuff.
It kinda has a similar vibe to The Movie Hero. But it’s not a romantic comedy in that sense.
The problem is, I can’t really recommend this movie to anybody else. I don’t think that any of your are cool enough to get it. I certainly know that I’m not cool enough to get it. But I got some of it. And I wish that there had been more of it to get, whatever it is.
If you’ve never seen A Fish Called Wanda, you’ve made a terrible mistake.
John Cleese, of Monty Python fame (some people prefer his work in Fawlty Towers but that stressed me out a little — all that frustration and yelling!), wrote this amazingly tight script. There is not a single loose thread in the whole plot. And the characters are all amazingly clear and defined and real and well-motivated.
When it came out, there was an uproar. How dare someone to say it was funny to make fun of a funny stutterer?! And the animal rights groups were kerfuffled over the entertaining cruelty to animals. And the Americans were still uptight about always losing wars. What a difference a few years makes. The movie pretty much found a way to offend everyone. I miss those days.
I didn’t realize Jamie Lee Curtis was ever actually that young.
I can’t believe that Kevin Klein hasn’t changed much in the intervening years. He really holds up. I wonder what’s his secret?
It’s summer. It’s hot. I gotta rest. Go take a dip in the pool. Don’t EAT the FISH!!!
Go ahead, call me stupid. I know you want to.
Next time work inexorably brings you to Del City, Oklahoma, why not take lunch or dinner (or both!) at the Jeon Ju Korean Restaurant.
They have both hot and cold running BiBimBop. I prefer the hot, but during summer months have been known to order cold. Don’t forget to stir it all up first! There are a few other dishes to choose from, each perfect in their own way. You can’t miss!
The restaurant is tidy and very tastefully decorated. They grow their own herbs in European AeroGarden, so you know they’re fresh.
They’ve had good local reviews. They’re on FaceBook, and even have their own classy Flash-based website.
Besides the BiBimBop, I really like this shaved ice, condensed milk, and fruit plate called Potbingsu that is too tasty to turn away on a summer’s day.
Give them a try, will you? I want them to still be there next time I’m inexorably in town.
Imagine traveling the world, staying someplace entirely new every few weeks.
Or you could actually do it. Glenn the Bad Dahli Lama does that.
Most people I meet really aren’t comfortable with the idea of traveling. There’s so many things to go wrong. Breakdowns, break-ins, murdered in your sleep! There are so many reasons for not traveling.
So we watched this movie called Art of Travel. It’s about some kid from Malcolm in the Middle graduating from high school and having his wedding blow up in his face so he goes on his honeymoon anyway all alone. And he never comes home again! Scary, huh? Sounds like a horror film.
It’s a fun movie. There’s some nudity, but nothing that’ll frighten off too many people. They actually went to Machu Pichu with the actors and shot footage from more than that one point of view that shows up in all the other pictures. And it wasn’t rainy or otherwise blurry or super wide-angly. There’s a train ride or something that looks like green-screen work, but mostly it really looks like they really went to all the places they talk about. How refreshing.
Travel, of course, is a metaphor for life. That’s why so many people are afraid of it.
In these travel movies lately (I guess I’m thinking Southbounders here), when people go someplace else, they get naked. It’s like “What’s the use of being there with your clothes on?” I guess you really haven’t been someplace till you’ve been someplace naked. Someplace. If you think about it, no matter where you go, you’re always naked under your clothes. Someplace.
At Amazon and IMDB, people complain that he’s running away from his life. Metaphorically, that’s not possible. He’s actually running headlong into it.
And they often find the whole movie to be unlikely and implausible. They ask, “Where’d the money come from?”(Parents, college fund, odd jobs. He might be an undocumented alien worker!) “Why would the European girls seduce him?” (After hearing his sob story, maybe they felt sorry for him.) “Why didn’t the FARC folks blow them all away?” (Because they had been travelers too!)
Unlikely things happen when you travel. Happenstance happens. Most people treat travelers better than they treat their own family. And besides, if the FARC had killed them all, it would have been a very short movie.
So now I’m even more inspired to take a trip. I can feel it in my teeth. Or maybe I’ll just imagine it like everyone else.
Where do you imagine going to?
This is so un-chronological. First we watched Waitress (made in 2007), which had Andy Griffith. Andy was also in Play the Game (2009). Marla Sokoloff was in that as well. Because of that movie, we watched Love on the Side (2006). As I recall Marla’s also in Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) with Jennifer Garner (and why haven’t they ever got around to making of sequel from that?).
But this post is about Love on the Side, which in Canada is also known as Deluxe Combo Platter, which is just a little bit too suggestive if you ask me.
Unlike Play the Game, I could watch this with my mom and not be too embarrassed. Somehow instead of ever being vulgar, it just gets earthy. I think that’s the Canadianness showing through. There is some nudity, which of course is un-American, so you might not want the kids in the room. They can watch it later while you’re sleeping. Meg Tilley is awesome and over the top. I never knew she was so funny!
So, it’s another waitressy movie. Again there’s the older, more worldly waitress, like Diane Ladd. In this case it’s Ms Tilley. Our hero is the younger waitress, as usual. That’s Marla. She has a relationship that doesn’t work out the way you’d expect. There’s a cook and a mortician. I love his assistant. It’s just your basic waitress movie.
The characters are great! They start as stereotypes and then get turned on their heads and into real people. You’ll recognize everyone one of them as someone one you know. There’s a strange feeling of reality that you don’t usually get in comedies. I’m still wondering what the foods were metaphors fors.
There are these black and white segments that briefly comment on what’s going on. And a lot goes on. It lasts 102 minutes, but seems longer. It’s not that it gets slow or boring, it’s just that there’s a lot happening.
A couple of beats don’t get set up just right. The uncle is not around enough. The boy’s superhero fascination is mentioned but never dramatized that I could tell. The New York City apartment is barn-sized. But these are small nits to pick out of lots of big fluffy hair full of mousse. Don’t worry about it.
It’s not a formula movie, despite being in the waitress genre. There’s some intelligent points made about body image and fulfilling your dreams. And there’s a lot of heart.
So go ahead and order up some Love on the Side, but do it Dolly Parton, not all Ally McBeal.
My poems never rhyme. They do come out with a lot of assonance, but I’m not always sure about the “onance” part.
So here’s one about September 11 and a few other bad things:
It only takes
an instant and
everything
is forever
different.
This one is less depressing:
I work in the gorilla morning. When
the sunshine of my marker reminds me
of the lackadaisical sky, I can.
If the smell of linoleum and tux-
edos doesn’t blind you, nothing will, nor
would you want it to, till later maybe.
Now when and where you say, it goes that way.
Steaming coffee mingles with the rugged
mist and wafts of Sierra junipers.
Groundbreaker day, May 1988.
Nobody knows how to pronounce Appalachian Trail, but that doesn’t stop them from making movies about it.
The Appalachian Trail, as we’re told in the opening narration, is some 2168 miles long, stretching from Maine to Georgia, going through 14 states. Each year a few hundred people hike the entire trail. They’re called thru-hikers. Most of them start in Georgia in March, hoping to get to Maine before the Winter snow closes the trail at the last mountain in Maine. A very few leave from Maine, and take a less crowded hike. They’re called Southbounders.
The movie follows a gal down the trail. She meets a couple of other people. There’s some trail lore. There’s a couple of cases of happy hippy hiking outfits.
There’s very little conflict in the movie. There’s some between the girl and her parents. They don’t want her going for a hike. They want her going to med school. But it’s just a voiceover flashback and it’s gone.
So how come the movie is not boring?
Maybe I’m just enamored with walking for six months, come rain or come shine. Wouldn’t it be cool to just go? And walk and walk and walk. Sure, some days would be hot and sweaty and rainy and ticky. There might be bears or mice eating your food. In all these years, there’s been very little violence reported along the way. Most folks are too tired for that.
The acting is not bad. Southbounders was the earliest job listed in IMDB for Amy Cale Peterson, the gal. Since then she’s been in The Event and The Office, The Defenders, and other things with The in the title. The fellow providing comic relief, Christopher McCutchen, has not been in anything before or since. His acting seemed a little awkward but natural, at first, and then he just kept getting better. Some folks think he’s a really funny guy.
It’s like a hike, with new vistas opening before you, beckoning you on, till the whole trip is over and all you have are the memories. And the blisters on your feet. But there’s no blisters from this movie.
Metaphors are like smiles… or is that similes?
So I’m watching Prelude to a Kiss. And it’s an OK love story. A little quirky. I like that.
Once upon a time, Alec Baldwin was quite the leading man. Back then he wasn’t built like 30 rocks. He could cry on cue.
Meg Ryan was cute as a bug’s elbow. Under proper lighting conditions I guess she still is. You can’t say the same for me. Oh well.
Then all of a sudden about half way through the movie, everything turns bad. And then it gets worse. Meg’s got less than a year to live at one point. And I was really stressed out! What a horrible position for someone to be in. Not, Meg, but Alec. Having to watch the person you love just fall apart before your eyes.
One reviewer (I don’t recall IMDB, Amazon, or what) said the whole message of the movie was summed up by Patty Duke’s line about accepting the person you’ve married, not the ideal you had of them. Maybe so.
If your spouse was replaced by someone who looked exactly like them, and acted a lot like them, would you ever suspect?
Someone else said the movie is a metaphor for AIDS. I can see that. It could work for a lot of other devastating problems as well. Mental health issues, drugs, whatever. So in that way it could represent any issue that’s turns your loved ones into unrecognizable strangers. Ouch.
For half the movie, Meg Ryan is playing somebody else. They didn’t telegraph this by suddenly giving her a German accent, or a facial tick, or any change of body language. There is a difference, an extra languor, that works just about right. Maybe she’s really not somebody else… It would have been a sure-fire giveaway if her eyes were glowing red.
But the old guy, for most of his screen time he’s supposed to be Meg Ryan. I didn’t buy it. I almost did, before he ever talked. But as soon as he opens his mouth, I know it’s not Ms Meg. He did a good job of mimicking her eyes, but none of the rest of it worked for me. If Alec Guinness hadn’t dropped out of the production, maybe he could have pulled it off.
Stanley Tucci is in it!!! Since it was once a play, you’re supposed to listen to the words. They’re very illuminating. There’s more characters, clearly drawn, here than in most movies. There’s more ideas in this movie than most. You’ll enjoy thinking it about it later.
The more I think about it, the more I like this film.
