Golden Globes 2009 Recap: What Grew Out of Beyonce's Neck?

Without any fanfare, the Golden Globes are on! No musical number, no host, no montage, just presenters trying to shut up the diners guzzling champagne at their big round tables. Jennifer Lopez takes the stage in a golden diaper. Dear J-Lo, when you broke out in the Grecian goddess look the first time, we all applauded. The second time, we thought, hey, cool, it's her thing. Now, many years later, gazing upon your slicked back hair and your draped pelvis, we're tired of it. Maybe you could do something else. I suggest high tech. Hey, the Golden Globes are in HD! It's awesome! Amy Adams looks completely perfect and adorable and dewy. She looks about 12!

Best Supporting Actress, Movie: I pick: Amy Adams, and I swear she said she was 17! Winner: Kate Winslet. Kate Winslet is aging beautifully. She also looks completely buff and thin. She reads well from a white piece of paper. Her husband is hairy in the face, and looks like he realizes how lucky he is. Oh my goodness! I didn't realize she was married to Sam Mendes. She addresses her children, and it's cute.



Sting is introduced as a composer and social activest. He is similarly hairy in the face. Dan says, "It's Grizzly Sting."

Best Original Song: I pick Bruce Springsteen. Winner: Bruce Springsteen. Bruce and Sting awkwardly hug and Bruce giggles. Is that Mickey Rourke in a pimp costume? Mickey Rourke is wearing, and I am not kidding, purple satin and sequins, nails filed into points, and blonde streaks on nutbrown hair. Mickey Rourke has lost his mind.

Best Supporting Actor, TV Comedy: My pick: Anyone but Jeremy Pivens. Winner: That British guy that always plays the dad in stuff, for his portrayal of Thomas Jefferson in some TV movie. You remember him, he was Mr. Dashwood.

Best Supporting Actress, TV Drama: My pick: Anyone but that girl from Treatment. Not Diane Wiest, the other one. Winner: Laura Dern. Laura Dern takes the stage in a really pretty and modest homecoming dress, hair as fabulous as a kindergarten teacher at lunch. I mean, seriously, I think she has a scrunchy in her hair.

You know what? Burn After Reading was not that great. Brad Pitt's surprise violence was the highlight of the movie. Not to give things away but when a man's face getting punched and shot is the bright spot of a film, you are one step ahead of a fart movie.


Tonight, there are two types of neck. Those adorned with nothing but the modest sweat of a proud female whose earnest work has paid out in honor, and those thick with massive ropes of jewelry. The jewels are IN. We want big chokers, drizzly Egyptian style necklaces. Beyonce Knowles' necklace is like a big diamond daisy with her head being the slick, fruity stamen, and we LOVE IT. Steven and Marty agree, okay? We are over the "economic downturn" look. Except for you, J-Lo. You need to step away from the body shimmer.

Best Supporting Actor, TV Drama: My pick: Anyone on earth but Gabriel Byrne. Winner: Gabriel Byrne. I'm so sorry, people but I freakin' hate that show. Treatment, you know what you did, and I hope you're sorry. Gabriel Byrne isn't even there to pick up his award for looking emotionally constipated. What a blow to the art of film-making.

Best Actress, TV Drama: My pick: Whichever one is not in the audience and therefore cannot speak. Winner: Anna Paquin. I've never seen any of these shows. Now I have been bored into a coma by Anna Paquin's navy blue "gown" and her refusal to wear neck jewelry. Nothing is working for her -- the shape of her head, the kindergarten-picture-seagull eyebrows, the gap in the teeth, the weirdly orange "gold" cuff bracelet.

Um, I just saw Drew Barrymore in the audience. She looks like an angel wearing a cloud. Drew, I love you.



Outstanding Animated Feature: My pick: Wall-E. Winner: Wall-E. So deserved! Wall-E was awesome. Not to say that I didn't deeply enjoy Kung Fu Panda. I did. But Wall-E was beautiful. The director says, "I love you to my family and my kids. You inspire every emotion that I try to capture on screen." That's kind of nice!

Best Actress in a Comedy Movie: Wow, Johnny Depp looks young again. I guess he is over the haunted meth addict look. Emma Thompson looks rather radiant too. She is probably still on the meth though. You know Emma. I'm so distracted by Johnny Depp's youthful appearance that I forget to make a pick, but that girl from Happy Go Lucky wins it. She seems delightfully pleased. She's wearing a giant skirt with one of those meshy leotardy tops. Everyone's makeup looks so wonderful; I love the HD! Also the very close, strange, realistic sound. Emma Thompson looks beautiful and happy in a nice shawl. Marisa Tomei looks hectic in a sort of cardigan.

Jake Gyllenhaal has no blood in his face. He looks like he shot someone and he's scared we'll notice. Go home, Jake. Hide the body.

Wow, Drew Barrymore is now presenting. She looks completely fantastic. I think she's presenting something about TV, but the misty blue layers of her dress, so fluffy and yet so fitted, are too beguiling. I cannot care or notice what she's saying. There does seem to be some kind of skeletal husk, maybe a future echo of her own dear self, but clad in black and with more veins on her forehead, standing beside her. It speaks occasinoally. Tom Hanks accepts an award.

Look! It's Demi Moore! We all know now that this is a dress that made Rachel Zoe die. She dies, right? It's so bananas that she died. Do you die? She died, because Demi killed it. There's a kind of leash wrapped around her throat with grommets in it. I fail to die. I'm sure it looked better on a giraffe in fashion week.

Best Supporting Actor, Comedy: Heath Ledger wins. And he is dead. I'm sure he will appreciate the standing ovation. I know I do. Everyone loves honoring a dead guy with an award. It makes the whole thing seem so damn meaningful. Here's my cold confession: I didn't think he did that great of a job as the Joker. Sorry, it had to be said. The person accepting the award said, "After Heath passed on, you see a hole ripped in the future of cinema." Okay, yes, Brokeback Mountain. But also... A Knight's Tale. Okay? Some of us do remember.

Hi! It's Tom Brokaw!

Hi! It's Maggie Gyllenhaal in a chiton made out of blue leopard print. I am not even kidding. I wish I could say that it was not chiton made of blue leopard or that she did not have robin's egg blue eye shadow on or some kind of grapes dangling from her ears.



Laura Linney has won something. She is firmly in the Drew Barrymore camp of gauzy and fitted floaty gowns. Hers is butter yellow. She looks actually completely awesome. The other one who looked pretty darn young and radiant was Catherine Keener.

Best Screenplay: Dr. Dorian's girlfriend is presenting from the "jeweled choker, yo, economy bite my botts!" camp. She's wearing a faux chenille gown with a corset top. Totally gross. But she has one of those lovely plastic-looking cleavages. I have to say I'm completely impressed with how great everyone looks in HD. For the record, I completely don't know what any of those movies were or who won.

AMY POEHLER IS PRESENTING! You can't spell presenting without REPRESENT! Okay, well, you can, but I love her.

Best Actor, TV Comedy: Nominated are Alec Baldwin and Steve Carrell and David Duchovny and two other dumb guys. ALEC BALDWIN WINS! AND BEATS MONK! Alec Baldwin absolutely should have won, this was fairness on a biscuit, if only for that scene where he plays all of the family members of Tracy Morgan, all at the same time. That scene was my super fave.

Renee Zellwegger presents, wearing a Morticia Adams style gown and a spiderweb on her head. No, we will not take you seriously as a goth. It is not stately. It is not glam. Rethink it.

Best Actor, something something: Apparently, this "Recount" movie was really big. Super. Yet Paul Giamatti wins for playing John Adams. Was this some kind of miniseries or something?

Best TV Series Comedy: Glenn Close is presenting in a gold brocade Japanese top and gold pants. It's like if Jennifer Lopez' outfit went off to the senior center to have a swim and some clever seventy-year-old amazed all her teeth-clacking friends by sewing it into a pantsuit. Winner: 30 Rock. Tina Fey looks like Liz Lemon would look. Tracy Jordan speaks for the show, announcing that Tina Fey agreed to make him the show spokesman if Barack Obama won. He sounds like Tracy Jordan would sound. Oh, it's all so just.

I feel like I want to take a break and watch something else for a while. I mean, are we really discussing the relative charms of Mamma Mia and a movie about the Holocaust? Pierce Brosnan is completely drunk. Too drunk to read. Meryl Streep does a cannonball into the ocean.

Best Soundtrack: Slumdog Millionaire. Wow, people are standing! Who is this guy? He looks so small, and yet, he causes such a stir. Sorry, small Indian man, but pulling out an index card makes me push fast forward.

Best Actress TV Comedy: Christina Applegate is wearing a beautiful, beautiful, amazing necklace. It's flowers, in a chain, irregularly sized, assymetrical, and kind of gold/silver. Beautiful. You know whose hair I want? I want Mary Louise Parker's hair. I wonder how long it takes her to get that just-fought-a-war-in-the-wind look? I love it. Tina Fey wins, and now has to speak. She's wearing a dress cut down to her waist with a shawl collar around the back that looks like a robot part. She is a funny lady.

I fell asleep for a moment and missed something. Someone directed something, but look! Here is Sigourney Weaver. She has very stiff, very purposefully frayed bob, and she's wearing a dress like you might wear to a museum luncheon, except it's two feet too long.

Best Actor Movie Comedy: Sandra Bullock wears a faux chenille chiton in white. No neck jewels. Colin Farrell wins. He's holding onto the kitten head hairdo with both hands, people. It may have gone out with 90210 but he's never giving in.

Penelope Cruz is wearing taupe. Hey, hold on. Can you think of one person, one measeley little feeble person who wore an actual color tonight? It's all about the cream, the white, the black... can we we find any color in the crowd?

Best Picture Comedy: Winner: Vicky Christina Barcelona. Congratulations Woody Allen! Hey, Woody Allen directing that huge airgun guy from No Country for Old Men -- I have to see this movie. Javier! You slay me! It looks like I want to see Slumdog Millionaire too.



Best Actress Movie Drama: Well HELLO Cameron Diaz in pink! A warm pink, even rose. Who cares that her hair looks blue/grey! She presents with Mark Wahlberg. Winner: Kate Winslet. How nice! She hugs her hair husband and cries. Does this mean she won the best supporting *and* the best actress? No one can believe it! Her nose is turning red! No, don't cry! Read your little paper! Ooo, when she was mentioning the other nominees she forgot Angelina Jolie and then said, "Oh, God, who's the other one!?" Hahaha. Now she's telling Leonardo DiCaprio how much she loves him. It's all very breathless.

Best Somethingorother on TV: Madmen! Never seen it, no idea what it's about, don't care. Someone wearing red is onstage though -- red tulle no less. Oh, it's Zoe Bartlett! How pale of her. Well, I shouldn't complain. I did ask for color. Good for me -- I got it in the freakin' eye.

Best Actor Movie Drama: Hold me, they're showing Mickey Rourke again! Oh, CRAP -- he won. I'm trying to stuff myself under the sofa at this point. He literally FELL up the stage. Fell as in drunkenly, folks. Okay, now if we must, we can truly analyze the outfit. Black sequinned scarf. Purple satin lapeels on a velvet sport coat. Amber plastic glasses. Greasy hair with blonde streaks. Moustache and tiny goatee. Faux tan. Brown silk pocket square. He is using bad grammar on purpose. And the chisel that split my skull was one of those wallet chain things, attached to his belt buckle and winding around to his ass. Oh, the pain. The pain of it all. He keeps saying "balls" and "son of a bitch" and referencing his recent down-and-out status. We get it. You've been through the wringer and you came out in purple and black sparkles. Glorious.

Best Picture Drama: Slumdog Millionaire.

END. I have a few images embedded above. For more, go see the official gallery.

There Will Be Wide Expanses of Nothing

We watched this movie on Eleanor's birthday. She selected it. In the afternoon, she called me on my mobile and said, "Can you make this happen? It's all I really want, just 'There Will Be Blood,' okay?" And I said, "Well, there will also be cake," because I wanted to assure her that we would truly be celebrating, not just the usual chinese food and art films. And she said, "Okay, I will be there after 7:30." At 7:00 I called home and said to Dan, "Oh, Dan, please go and trade in whatever girl movie I had on the cabinet for 'There Will Be Blood' because it's Eleanor's special birthday wish." And then he said, "Okay." And then I said, "Can you please also wrap the present that's sitting in the front room?" And he said, "Will there be anything else?" Or something else to show mild loving exasperation with all these tasks, and I said something like "Thank you so much for helping me," because I was really grateful, feeling sort of tired and rushed, and he warmly told me that I was welcome.

If you felt like maybe fast-forwarding through the last paragraph, to get to the pay-off, and you kind of let your eyes wander down the screen to find the point of it all, and then coming to the end of the paragraph you felt like I just nattered on about things that were possibly poignant to me but hardly poignant to anyone else, then you get a small sense of why we watched "There Will Be Blood" on 1.5 speed. You can still hear the talking, okay? It's just that on the long shots where someone is trudging across the badlands, he trudges a little faster. On the endless lingering shots when someone is peering into the distance, or the fire, or the dirt, having complex masculine emotions down deep inside, he peers a little quicker.

Is that a crime?

Well, what if I told you I was making it easy for you in paragraph one? For example, I told you how I was feeling twice, when I could have just described the motion of my eyebrows and expected you to intuit it. I also did not include the 30 minutes I spent listening to my four-year-old daughter's wandering narrative based on the pictures in Peter Rabbit. A time I spent silently listening. I didn't include the time it took to drive home, during which I was almost motionless, staring straight ahead, and the kids were listening to Geggy Tah.

After five minutes, we said, "Maybe this is a movie for men?"

After thirty minutes, we said, "It ain't no 'Boogie Nights'!"

After an hour, we went to 1.5 speed.

We went back to the regular speed for the "I ABANDONED MY CHILD. I ABANDONED MY BOY." part and it was totally not worth it.



In the end, we were unmoved. To be fair, the movie suffered in comparison to the brilliant, amazing, wrenching, hilarious, explosive "No Country for Old Men." Let's face it: Coen > Tarrantino. But Anderson 2008 < Anderson 1998.

Across the Universe: Movie Review

If you like the Beatles, you will like this movie. If you aren't a fan, there is absolutely no point in watching it. There are no interesting characters, and there is no plot. There are, however, really interesting covers of Beatles songs. So, that is attractive.



It's like "The Science of Sleep" but with really no characters and more music. It's like "Moulin Rouge" but with no very great acting. There are thirty Beatles songs in it. People sing a lot. The same people sing song after song. But he's not Jake Gyllenhaal, and she's not Chloe Sevigny.

Some of it was amazing -- puppets, masks, special effects, beautiful. Some of it was very very clever -- "I Want You" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun" in particular. Some of it was, okay, schlocky: "Dear Prudence" and "All You Need Is Love." Okay, listen, I told you no one is going to win a reward for writing this or acting in it. However, it is very engaging. And I do love the Beatles. If you look at it as a very very long music video with regrettable interludes of talking and historically romantic layers, your expectations will be correct.

Sweeney Todd and Cloned Beef

I am a big fan of Tim Burton. I am a big fan of musicals. I abjectly love Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. And I really like steak. My prediction was that watching Sweeney Todd was going to be the pinnacle of my existence thus far, and that eating cloned beef was going to be pretty much unnoticeable and unexciting. Unfortunately, the movie failed to deliver the kind of rapture I was anticipating. I was ready to revise my top ten list, people! I was ready to make space next to Evita and The City of Lost Children and The Nightmare Before Christmas! We even imposed on our only local relative so we could go and see it in an actual theater. But Sweeney Todd failed to transcend.

The whole thing was a little claustrophobic. The shots too tight. The storyline too controlled. The surfaces too grimy. Where were the sweeping shots, the dazzling landscape, the bitter contrast between in and out, Halloweentown and Christmastown, the woods and the hearth, the suburbs and the castle? In one number only, Burton emerged: during Mrs. Lovett's "By the Sea" song, we saw everything his movies can be: it was like Big Fish and Corpse Bride all in one song.

But that was all, really. The rest was very tight, very close, very monotonous. Johnny Depp looking haunted next to this window, Johnny Depp looking haunted next to that window, and Helena BC rushing up and down the stairs. Did I love it? Well, yes. Of course. Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman sang a duet, using their own voices. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen made me laugh. The two little birds he cast to play the young lovers were swell. But it just didn't go there, for me. It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't grand. Dark is great, terrible is great, but I need a more expansive scope, a broader arc, a higher swell. Dan says my expectations were too high.

But never fear. A light is dawning on the horizon. Surely cloned beef will satisfy my intestines, where Sweeney Todd has failed to thrill my soul. Or, at least, it will go through my digestive system completely unnoticed, a perfect simulation of regular meat that came about via the original reproductive process. People are cranks. They say it's unnatural, weird, creepy; some even say "abominable." Ever the optimist, I approach my cloned beef consumption with a bright spirit. No, it won't be labelled. No, I won't have any idea when the cloned beef is about to pass my lips. But I have faith that when I spoon up that next bite of chili, so full of such a technological wonder, that I, like those poor souls in Mrs. Lovett's shop, will eat hungrily, happily, without concern. Forget the barber upstairs, people, and enjoy your damned meat pie.

Renee Zellwegger is Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Before Chick-lit, there was Mary Gaitskill's novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin. My graduate school conspiritors/comrades and I always held this book up contemptuously as one of those books where women sit in the bathtub (no bubbles) and contemplate their thighs (the shape) and feel dreary. That may or may not have actually happened in the text. I may or may not be unfairly remembering this novel as one characterized by half-drawn curtains. I do think that this book is what Chick-lit was, before Chick-lit realized it would be better if books about women didn't make readers want to drink poison. That maybe comedy would occasionally be nice. Anyway, the title of this book has stuck in my mind, across the long merry years, and it's what I was thinking of this week as I watched Renee Zellwegger first in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and then in Miss Potter.

Bridget Jones was a screaming nightmare from start to finish. Not funny, nonsensical, and hard to watch. Everyone played their characters so firmly and purposefully and dutifully that we ended up with a Bridget too ruddy, too shiny, too stiff, a Colin Firth with too giant a brick up his too pearly ass, and a Hugh Grant aping across the screen as such an unredeemable playboy, my arms fell off. Nothing good. Particularly nothing good about Renee Zellwegger's complexion. It'll put your eye out. If you're seeking a really exhaustive collection of unflattering necklines, this movie is a must-see. Otherwise, skip. If you haven't already. Which I had. Until now.

Miss Potter, on the other hand, was a mild delight. Ewan MacGregor was freshfaced and bouncy. Renee Zellwegger wore those long heavy skirts like in Cold Mountain. And Emily Watson, who I have relentlessly loathed, ever since she spent all of Breaking the Waves running around in Scotland crying, "JAN, JAN" and biting her lower lip, was actually fantastic. I almost forgive her all that Scottish snivelling. Yeah maybe it wasn't Scotland. Whatever. In this movie, she was kind of horse-boned and likeable. The movie was nearly great -- of course I did *want* to like it, so I may be feeling generous in my response to it, but I really feel like at times it was piercingly beautiful, and really fell through a thousand meanings at once. Not the whole time. But some of the time.

Happy New Year

I've been trying to watch the movie "Miss Potter" for months. It's one of those movies that I have to bring into the house at the proper time, to prevent marital unrest. It seemed like tonight was the night: husband is mildly ill, swamped with work, and looking forward to playing Age of Empires for a couple hours before falling into a Nyquil fog.

Me: Hi. Will you watch Miss Potter with me tonight?
Him: Miss Potter. What's that about?
Me: Love in the 19th century. And Aunt Jemima Puddleduck.

I would say it has Renee Zellwegger but that is not a selling point. He likes to see the whole pupil, if you know what I mean.

Him: Um, yes. Whatever. I'm probably going to die in a few minutes anyway.
Me: YES! I promise, you don't even have to watch it. You can pretend to watch while you play the game. And I won't bring any more chick movies into the house this year.
Him: Urg.

AND AFTER ALL THAT. THE DISK WAS CRACKED. CURSED BLOCKBUSTER ONLINE. CRACKED.

So we watched "Trust the Man" on HBO On Demand instead. It was actually pretty great. Applause, David Duchovny. Applause to you.

1408 is Great

When I first saw this poster, browsing Blockbuster Online, I thought maybe John Cusack and Samuel Jackson had been teamed up in a historical drama about the year 1408. Maybe John Cusack would put on a corset, and Samuel L. Jackson would stare into middle distance and contemplate oppression. As it turns out, not.

I sometimes feel hesitant about movies based on Steven King stories. After all, Lawnmowerman. You know? But I have never been disappointed in either John Cusack or Samuel L. Jackson, so I trusted these actors. And 1408 was fantastic.

Here's the premise: John Cusack is a writer who goes around debunking hauntings. He publishes books about the "Most Haunted Country Houses" and "Most Haunted Mansions" etc. but he does not believe in ghosts, he has only eye-rolling for wide-eyed proprietors and their warnings of locking your door against spooks. In the first scene we see him investigating a bed and breakfast that's supposed to be haunted but turns out to be about as spooky as a mushroom omelet. Then he gets an anonymous tip: Don't stay in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel in NYC.

When he arrives in New York to stay in room 1408, after having to sue the hotel for the right to do so, hotel manager Samuel L. Jackson gives him dire warnings against it, as well as a whole dossier of pictures and case files from suicides in that room. Many, many suicides, usually after less than an hour in the room. John Cusack rolls his eyes and marches upstairs, enters the room, and closes the door.

After this point, all the other actors and actresses in the movie fade into the background, and it's John Cusack's stage. Whenever I see a great performance like this, I think, "Who else could have pulled this off? Nobody!" This may or may not be true, but Cusack's natural sneer, his indifferent posture, and his cool factor really made this character work. Totally, totally amazing. It was so creepy, so ghastly, so horrifying that I almost crawled into my husband's armpit for safety.

There was no gore. No decapitation. No severed leg flying through the air. This was not Saw or Hostel or Grindhouse or any of those bloodbaths. This was pure, tight, excrutiating psychological thrill, and it was perfectly, perfectly executed. Okay, well, the ending was a little loose, but... I'm glad of that. I needed a little breathing room by the end of the movie.

I wholeheartedly recommend this. It's the best kind of horror movie. No disgusting tearing apart of flesh, nobody burned alive, no goofy monsters, and you can go to bed and sleep well, because the situation is so specific (just in room 1408!) that you don't have to worry subconsciously that the horror is going to get into your house.

Five pumped fists for 1408.

A Very Important List

1. Maybe writing is just lying.

2. I'm cutting out of my writing group again tonight.

3. I've started walking to the art museum to think. During the walk, you know, not at the museum. When we get to the museum, we turn around and go home. Map My Ride tells me it's 3.6 miles round trip. This is about as much as I can do with inappropriate shoes, a stroller, a dog, and another child on a bicycle. We've done it twice:

The thinking must be happening between reminding the boy to watch for driveways and reminding the dog to keep up. The girl doesn't need reminded of anything but she does need to be hydrated.

So far I've had two ideas, both unrelated to the novel. Two ideas in seven miles is a number I'm comfortable with. I'm not crowning myself Pope or anything but I'm satisfied.

4. "The Libertine" was like the opposite of "Shakespeare in Love." Like all opposite pairs, they have some things in common: 17th century London, playwrights, female actors, and a bunch of people scrabbling around in the street. Strangely, in the time between Elizabeth and Charles II, London got a lot dirtier and nastier. John Malkovich was the king with a prosthetic nose. It was almost possible to forget he was John Malkovich. I never forgot Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp but the remarkable thing was that during his performance I never even caught a sniff of Jack Sparrow, or Ichabod Crane, or Willy Wonka, or J.M. Barrie. He's a master.

5. "Deja Vu" was pretty dreadful. The movie requires such a radical suspension of disbelief that I needed a special crane and a permit from the city. On the other hand, it was nice to see that not every time travel movie ends with the lesson of time travel: "Travel to the past all you want, but if you try to stop something from happening, you'll end up causing it." Are you listening, Sandra Bullock?

6. "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Snakes on a Plane" both started out with someone getting their head beaten in. From there, the two movies diverged in pretty much every way possible.

7. Samantha Morton is not Samantha Mathis. Samantha Morton never played Princess Daisy in "Super Mario Brothers." Samantha Mathis did. Therefore, my shock that Samantha Mathis was playing the female lead in "The Libertine" was misplaced.

8. Chloe Sevigny was in "Zodiac" as a dull, smart girlfriend of Jake Gyllenhaal. I liked her in this role. Between this, that, Big Love, and the other thing, I am ready to forgive her for her slouchy, droopy-lidded performance in "The Last Days of Disco." It's been ten years. I'm over it.

9. We couldn't finish watching "Zodiac" because of all the one month later, six weeks later, three days later, two years later. We never found out what happened. Robert Downey Jr. is so awesome though. He is made of awesome.

10. Speaking of Robert Downey Jr., "Fur" was bad. Susannah says the crime was taking Arbus' asthetic fascination with freaks and sexualizing it. I agree, but felt that the biggest problem was Robert Downey Jr. with all that hair on him.

Shopgirl and Broken English: What is Wrong with these Movies?

What is up with you, Ms. Zoe Cassevetes? What is going on, Mr. Steve Martin? There are actually six movies here, each of these stories being broken down into three different mismatching parts, so variant that they're almost in disagreement with each other.

"Broken English" is not a movie in three acts, it's a movie in three movies. In the first movie, Parker Posey stars as a drunk, irritated single girl in her thirties who's striking out in love. She dates a gay guy. She dates a guy who is hung up on his ex. She dates a famous guy who has another girlfriend. She dates a marmoset. It's wacky, it's dry, and everyone is walking around with a cocktail having good lines. I am all over it. Whee!

Then Parker Posey meets Julian, this French guy in a straw hat who is wearing a linen or, wait, was it seersucker blazer over a grey v-neck t-shirt. I don't even want to talk about his shoes or his scrawny bullet head. We are comfortably assuming that he's going to be another awful lesson in what not to date, when we realize, wait, we are supposed to be loving him. This is when movie #2 begins, which is about their very serious and interesting and important romance, except that I never buy they are in love, because of his bobbly head and her constant drunkenness. Movie #2 goes on way too long. They take a bath together. He keeps kissing her on the forehead. I get fidgety. All the shots are very close and making me regret our HDTV. Parker Posey has a panic attack over a plate of cannolis and I know what she's going through.

Fortunately, movie #3 is about to begin. Suddenly, Julian McFrencherton is leaving for Paris immediately and after he shakes off the unflattering Parker Posey hanging on his abdomen, he goes. He leaves her a number to reach her in Paris. Now the camera backs up to a comfortable distance and the movie becomes a Lifetime TV Drama about how Parker Posey must now go off to Paris and find him. Except drat! She loses his number. Most of movie #3 is about Parker Posey and her totally best superfriend, who looks like what Portia de Rossi would have looked like if she had turned to drastic cosmetic surgery to make her look the way she looks, trip around Paris. It is neither picturesque nor droll. It is kind of desperate. Skintight Portia de Rossi leaves, Parker Posey stays, and there are scenes on public transportation where the Eiffel tower is seen going by.

She finds him. They have a conversation in a deli. The end. What do all three of these movies have in common? In all of them, I love Parker Posey, but I hate what she's doing to me.

Now, on to Shopgirl I, II, and III.

In Shopgirl I, Claire Danes is a moist, long-eared gazelle who works at Saks and has trouble finding a boyfriend. She briefly dates Steve Carrell, played by Jason Schwartzman, but he's so flaky. It is from this movie that most of the trailer is harvested, making us think the movie is a comedy. There is a funny bit with the cat.

In Shopgirl II, Claire Danes is a pensive gazelle who works at Saks and has a weird, tense relationship with a rich and taciturn Steve Martin, who gets to kiss her, fondle her, and pretend to have sex with her. At one point, she stops taking her anti-depressants and has some kind of awful breakdown. Awkward for them, awkward for us. But at least, during that scene, she had a facial expression.

In Shopgirl III, Claire Danes is an emotionally matured gazelle who realizes that Steve Martin is never going to love her properly, so goes back to Steve Carrell, played by Jason Schwartzman. He has fortunately spent the second movie on tour with a band listening to self help tapes, and now knows how to comb his hair and wear white suits. She becomes a famous artist and is happy with her dopey boyfriend, although she still secretly deeply tragically hopelesly pines for the immortal pleasures of Steve Martin and his old richness.

What do these three movies have in common? Claire Danes' hair is never mussed. Steve Martin's voice is never raised. And Steve Carrell looks even hairier than he normally does.

I understand a three act structure, I really do. But if I go to the bathroom watching "Singles" I don't want to come back to "Remains of the Day."

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Apparently everyone else on earth read this book in high school, and saw the movie too. Alright, well, I went to a Lutheran high school, and explaining the catheters made out of condoms (and reused!) might have given my freshman English teacher a few more questions than he was happy with. Not that he would have been thrilled about my ending a sentence with with. Twice. Actually he was really cool, and let us do Lord of the Flies as a feature video set in the hallways of our school. But I digress.

I found this book at the thrift store and bought it to read, and at the exact same moment, Veronica found it at her father's house, and took it home to read. This kind of literary synchronicity cannot be ignored. There must be significance.



Ken Kesey said he was too old to be a hippie and too young to be a beatnik, but he and his gang, the "Merry Pranksters" raised plenty of hell in their day, despite their lack of a popular category. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was his first novel, written mostly in graduate school, which gives everyone a little bit of undeserved hope.

I think the novel is brilliant for two reasons.

First, there is the narrator. The book is told, not by the main character, or by a disinterested narrator, but by a crazy person. So all the descriptions of the ward, Nurse Ratched, the crazies, are filtered through this altered consciousness. Kesey stays just on the correct side of being cute about it. Cuteness would have killed it, but as it was, Bromden's narration perfectly cranked up the feeling of being in another, twisted, horrific world. No external voice could have accomplished this. His point of view, maintained throughout, also helped us see the change in his mental state, happening so slowly that we almost don't notice it, without being told about it. So, at the end, we believe he is fully okay to go out into the world, although we witnessed the extent of his initial lunacy, because we also witnessed his progression back to functionality.

The second reason I loved this book was for its hooks. Instead of an either/or hook (will the world be saved? will the lovers unite?) there was a complicated engine. Because Bromden is pretending to be deaf and dumb, the very first page of the book presents a compelling reason to read on -- will he eventually speak, what will make him speak, and what will he say? The other question, "Will McMurphy defeat Nurse Ratched?" is also complex, beyond a yes-or-no answer, because the battle is being fought on such strange territory.



I read McMurphy as explosive humanity, glorious deviance -- the ability to see through rules and definitions to the agendas behind them. Therefore dangerous to stability and predictability that these rules and definitions provide. I read Ratched as establishment, enforcer, the hand on the lever that runs the gears. She could not suffer McMurphy because he understood her and was not afraid of her. In the book, as in life, she possessed the ultimate weapon, because even though she is an ideological fraud, she has all the physical power.

Veronica read a lot more gender issues into the book, which made a lot of sense as soon as she explained it to me. There was a viscious smart professional and a friendly stupid whore, and really no other women portrayed in the book. McMurphy could be read as the ultimate heroic male -- beyond the manipulation of the stifling woman, but ultimately brought down by her.

A few words about the movie:

Great. Brilliant. It did not have the same message as the book, and it did not have the same intensity. Having read the book just before I saw the movie, I didn't feel like a lot of the movie made sense without the stuff in the book, but taken on its own terms and without that prejudice, it was fantastic. Because of Jack Nicholson. He is an amazing actor. I mean, that's kind of retarded to say, at this point, but having just seen him in The Departed and now this, it is so interesting to me how he can play two different characters, and use all of his signature expressions, moves, inflections, etc, and still have the characters be so essentially themselves. It's a mystery!