SaraGrace.blogspot.com

2004-01-30T09:18:00.000-08:00

BEHOLD THE COUP: I just noticed on Karie Bible's great email service, Film Radar, that THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED is playing Saturday at the Egyptian, at 3:30 and 5.

This is a terrific, TERRIFIC documentary - I wrote about it HERE (http://www.saragrace.blogspot.com/2003_03_01_saragrace_archive.html#90805386). Go see it.

Yes people, it's been so long since I've blogged that I forgot the html tag for links! Fuck.
The fact that I'm blogging this should speak to how much I think it's worth seeing.

DOCUMENTING THE GAY SPIRIT: Another great doc now in theatres is MY ARCHITECT, about master architect Louis Kahn, by his illegitimate son (what a stupid, outdated term, but you get the point). A graceful consideration of ego, architecture, and the personal casualties left behind great men.

2003-12-20T14:07:00.000-08:00

From the department of 10 minute reviews...

Last night I saw The House of Sand and Fog, a textbook tragedy in that a good, honorable man's situation and human failings lead to his complete and total undoing. Ben Kingsley emerged so clearly as the protagonist - due both to his performance and the script - that it was almost tough to tolerate Jennifer Connely's character, who's a real fuck-up. Almost an antagonist--not the anti-hero that I think (?) was the script's intention. Connely herself gave a good performance, but her character simply had more agency than it deserved. Her most sympathetic moment was her brief, spot-on revelation: "My father worked 30 years to pay off this house and it took me 8 months to fuck it up."

It's a very good movie, with one major flaw that almost derails the entire effort. The villain in the story is a philandering cop who abuses his badge and goes from Daddy dearest to deranged criminal in a week's time. His part is crucial, plot-wise, to get us into the tragic third act -- and sadly he's the weakest character in the script. That was a big problem for me, because it made me feel like I could see the man behind the curtain--the writer--who's not telling a true story of human suffering, but is actually a sadist who'll do whatever he can to make sure his audience suffers through his grueling plot machinations. As soon as I felt those machinations, I pulled back.

But maybe it's odd to demand that your tragedies be realistic. The Greek tragedies are very telegraphic, and though they never made me weep, I think they were supposed to have that effect on the Greeks--that's "catharsis," right? But actually, I'd have to go back and read them, because it could be that while they're highly stylistic, from a human behavior point of view they're very precise.

And The House of Sand and Fog clearly worked as a tragedy for many in the audience. A woman two rows ahead was openly sobbing, leaning on her boyfriend's shoulder, her hair mussed and her shoulders shaking. I *was* in low-blood sugar mode, it should be pointed out, which does put a chill on my empathetic abilities - and still I did shed a tear or two. But I tend to be a wailer, and I wasn't anywhere near it.

It was also an invested crowd. The theatre was barely a mile from the L.A. neighborhood that has the largest concentration of expat Iranians in the United States--all people who fled from the Shah as did the story's protagonist.

The third act holds one of the most arresting sequences I've seen in a movie in the last year -- right up there with the Pipping singing/Feromere (sp?) sequence in the new LOTR.

***

2003-11-02T00:31:00.000-08:00

Mom, this is for you. :-)

Saturday, as research for the boss's movie, I got to go for a "hop" in a Stearman biplane, a cute little aerobatics craft with an open-air cockpit, fixed landing gear, dragging tail, and one giant propeller in the front. The Steerman was the primary training plane for WWII aviators.

In preparation, I had donned a scarf, so that when they put the leather cap with the radio on my head, I would be like Snoopy, WWII flying ace! But alas, when Margi, wing walker and co-owner of the biplane, strapped me in, she said it could choke me and made me take it off. Poop.

Notice how I casually threw in that Margi walks wings. You may have thought I was embellishing. I am not. Margi straps herself to the wing and does trapeze artistry and ballet style moves--while the aircraft is in the sky. She demonstrated for me on the ground, wearing grey, calf-high cowboy boots and a red striped sweatshirt. She's got a much more glam getup for her actual performances. She says the act of wing walking is pure living; everything else is just going through the motions. Needless to say, most of us enjoy the motions enough to keep our seatbelts on.

So yes, here I was, seatbelted securely into this aerobatics biplane, a cool wind on my face on a sunny day in Camarillo. But did I really want to be so attached? I looked to my left and my right. Duct tape was wrapped around the crosshatches connecting the upper and lower wings. Its purpose was unclear, but it was nevertheless far from reassuring to this Flying Ace. Fortunately, I had a parachute strapped to my rear end, and had been shown the triangular pull tab for deployment. Less fortunately, I realized as we sputtered down the runway, I had not been shown how to unbuckle myself from the seatbelt.

Ah well. No matter. Hartley, my pilot, had assured me that in 50 years of flights he had never bailed. Anyway, Hartley had a rip in his brown leather flight jacket where the left arm connected to the bodice that I found reassuring. He was no fly-by pretty boy, not in the least. He had hundreds of thousands of miles under his belt and a wife who walked on wings. Good enough for me.

After what seemed a very short zip down the runway, we were off. I almost wish I could tell you that it was such high-speed terror that my heart stopped beating and vomit, formerly a turkey sandwich on wheat, trickled down the shiny red side of the plane. But no. As we left the ground, my fear evaporated. Flying in one of these things is a graceful crawl through the air. The landscape rolls by underneath, and the ground doesn't seem so, so far. The horizon is all askew, this way and then that, but it's just the way things are.

And what beautiful landscape. The sky was a stand-up November blue, the clearest it ever gets since it had rained the night before. Puffy white clouds a la the Simpsons butted up against snow-capped blue-brown mountains to the North. Beneath us were the strawberry fields of Camarillo and a few lazy lines of winding traffic. To the west, the ocean was a deep Pacific blue. Normally, when I fly to the coast in a 747 and look down at the water, the phrase "a watery grave" resonates in my noggin. Today I instead saw a marvelous home for whales and other happy marine life of the sort one sees drawn in crayon in coloring books.

As testimony to the beauty of it all, I didn't even feel the least bit of vulgar consumerist stirrings when I noticed the outlet mall I had driven by on the way to the airstrip. No, not even a flutter.

My nostrils were cold, my cheeks were ruddy, and I'm pretty sure I had gotten more than my standard dose of oxygen when Hartley's voice came through the mike:

"OK, your turn to fly."

I froze. Here, now, was the terror.

"Push left on the joystick and at the same time slight left on the rudder peddle. Only, watch your toes, because at the top of the peddle are the brakes and you DON'T want to brake because this is a very bottom-heavy aircraft."

My fear, rather than paralyzing me like it does in nightmares, turned me into an automaton. I followed orders. I banked right, pushing ever so slightly on the rudder. I banked left. The plane actually seemed to obey me. This was even more petrifying. Was that acid after all I now tasted in my throat?

I took my right hand off the joystick to flick the switch to tell Hartley calmly to resume the controls, please. It might have come out, Please, God, take back the controls, now, fucking now, now, now!! However, I'll never know, because when I flicked the switch, all I heard was dead air.

The radio was out!

After a long moment there was a crackle and then came Hartley's voice. A relief--or did I detect a rigid note of fear?

"I have to take back the controls, now."

That was followed by a loud shriek on the radio and some more dead air. Suddenly the noise from the engine (or was it the propellers?) grew louder. Was this normal? Hartley? Hartley?! I peered at him in the round mirror above and to the left of my head, but I couldn't read him. He looked concerned, I'll say, but the sun was in his eyes and his face was permanently craggy with worry.

Since I'm writing this dispatch you have probably surmised that we did not die, burrowed into the wet agricultural earth or in a fireball on the tarmac beside the Commemorative Airforce Hanger. In fact, I didn't even have to deploy my parachute. We had merely lost radio contact with the tower, so Hartley brought us in. However, upon landing we found out that the starter, which gets the propeller going, had gotten stuck in place and burned itself out. As Hartley said, "Your maiden voyage and you broke the plane!" Good-natured Margi assured me he was joking. Still, I felt bad. My initial anxiety had no doubt caused the short. Electronics, the world's only legitimate empaths, sense these things.

Electrical short aside, what an awesome experience. Thanks to Hartley, Margi, Mike, and the boss for getting me up there.

2003-08-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

I guess I could write something about the recall here. Nah.

Hmmmn.

Well, here's what I'm listening to lately. And reading. And watching.

Beck's Sea Change, esp. track 9. Well, all of them. Over and over.

Battle Royale. Government-enforced Survivor with Japanese highschool kids and Uzis. Terrific. Really.

Finding Nemo. Saving Nemo? Whatever. Probably the first and last time I'll ever be an Ellen fan.

2 Weeks Notice. Yes, really. Cute, actually. A throwback to Bringing Up Baby - also saw recently - without as good talent in the leads. Alas. If they had picked up the pace, really hit that clippy snappy tap routine that Hepburn and Grant do with dialogue, it might have gone somewhere.

Vanity Fair. The book, not the glossy. Though I did read that article about JFK Jr. and his wife and her coke problem. What utter trash.

Half Magic. A lesser children's fantasy story.

Stepford Wives. Consciousness raising, baby. I prefer Rosemary's Baby.

A TV show about conjoined twins being separated, followed by a televised breast reduction surgery. Also some MTV show about a model with a pink poodle. This is what happens when you get cable for the first time in life, I suppose.

Tart. A slightly more soap-operatic Metropolitan. Not half bad.

Cocteau's Sleeping Beauty. Burns the images into your mind. Must be the black and white.

Justin, track 6. Shoot me now.

Profoundly Disturbing: Movies that Changed History. Joe Bob Briggs (relatively) new book. The art dept. did a really nice job on it; great photos. And of course, fun insightful essays.

Meow-meow. Cool tunes.

That's enough for now. I'm so scattered these days, I don't know how to blog anymore. Must focus. Oh, I know, something worthwhile: Happy 26th to Nakrack, aka Havendish, aka Nathan! Have a good one!

2003-06-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Well, posting obviously hasn't been happening lately. It's in part because I'm super busy... many of you probably already know next week is my last at Reason, the happy place that's been my professional home for 3 years. I've been crazy busy trying to wrap things up -- and meanwhile have been doing stuff for my new job as a writing assistant.

In conjunction with that, I'll be spending most of the summer in Martha's Vineyard. I've got a number of personal writing projects waiting for attention, so it's hard to say whether or not I'll be posting. Perhaps I'll just let things go dark. Maybe you can email me if you want to be alerted if I start things up again?

If I do, I will attempt to blog something more interesting than the lame things I've been slapping up here recently. It's like a really bad diary, with all the juicy stuff cut out!!!

2003-05-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, vampires ruled my anxiety dreams. Every loved one had become a pale and despised creature of the night, and I'd have to stake them through the heart--always a bloody mess--or become one.

Now I just dream that all my teeth fall out. This is either progress, or another sign of the long road into humdrum adulthood and all of its mundane paranoias.

The toothless dreams are almost worth having, though, for the moment when you half wake up and run your tongue over your teeth and find not even one that wiggles.

That's relief.

2003-05-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

THAT's ENTERTAINMENT: Ebert on the Brown Bunny.

2003-05-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

Today's a bit of a crazy day, and unfortunately I left at home the blog post I wrote this weekend, reviews of some film shorts by students from my alma mater, UT-Austin. The screening at the DG on Thurs made me proud. Also saw a great band Sunday, my friend Paul's The Boxing Lesson. One to watch.

I'm so lucky to know so many talented people. Keeps me from staring at the wall too long.

2003-05-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to comment on this interview right now, so for the moment I'll just put it out there:

"There will never be absolute integrity in the [film] business. But never before has there been such a rash of shit films, and a void of meaningful American work, that has seen the theatre screen, as there has been over the last ten years. At least when your kid is sent to school and fed McDonald's or whatever sugar water and fried lard they serve him at lunch, you know the government has issued limits on the amount of feces that is allowable in his food. Using that as a parallel, there are no equivalent limits for the cultural shit we are being poisoned with these days. Considering how many brilliant and talented people there are in this country, it's a scandal.”
—Filmmaker Tim McCann ("Revolution #9," "Nowhere Man") in Film Threat.

2003-05-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Oh crap, I can't help myself. Now I have to post the whole song. Lyrics from this site. By the way, if I were a DJ for a Top 40 station, before I had to kill myself in despair, I'd play this song back to back with AL's Sk8rBoi (or however the hell you spell it). Avril and 50 Cent, they're like this, I swear. Just hook Avril up with a Benz. And 50 Cent with some blonde extensions.

UPDATE: Ok, I tired of seeing this, so I'm cutting it down to its bare essentials.

[50 Cent]
If I fell off tomorrow would you still love me?
If I didn't smell so good would you still hug me?
If I got locked up and sentenced to a quarter century,
Could I count on you to be there to support me mentally?
If I went back to a hoopty from a Benz,
would you poof and disappear like some of my friends?
[snip]
I'm staring at ya' trying to figure how you got in them jeans
[snip]
I love you like a fat kid love cake
You know my style I say anything to make you smile
[snip]
Could you love me in a Bentley?
Could you love me on a bus?
I'll ask 21 questions, and they all about us

2003-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO 50 CENT: In case you're wondering what the top finding of a Google search for "I love you like a fat kid love cake" is, meet Louisiana Smith. This signifies some deep universal meaning, I know it.

2003-05-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

Here's Emmanuelle's take on God's Barbie. Her sudden vision last night enabled the below post. I am so glad to know I am part of a hallowed community of frightened Jan-watchers.

2003-05-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

ANTHROPOLOGY: Sometimes, on the RARE, ever so rare, Saturday mornings when I'm nursing a deathly hangover, I like to watch Trinity Broadcasting Network (when I haven't timed my pain correctly to watch Relic Hunter).

It's all about Jan Crouch. I am perpetually amazed that this woman exists. Right now, she's somewhere out there in the world. In Newport Beach, California, in fact. Where else?

What's she doing, at this exact moment? Taping down her wig? Eating marmalade and toast (meaning we'd have something in common)? Tearfully taping a segment, so moved by a letter from a God fearing 8-year-old that she doesn't notice when her 20-inch mound of hair slips, the tippy top leaning toward hell? Watching Jane Fonda videos? Who knows. Every possible imagined scenario fills me with frightened awe.

When I was 12, my parents accidentally sent me to a Born-again Christian summer camp. My brother, who was 8, was saved and accepted Jesus into his heart about 3 times during those weeks. Rebirth held sweet rewards. Tootsie roll pops, for example.

For me, it was a period of incredulous observation. One I'm so glad to have had. I did enjoy reading Revelations in the dark under the covers in the middle of the night with my bunkmate (a girl who warned me that if I didn't go to sleep with a bra on every night once I "developed," my boobs would sag to my knees by age 18. For my first two years of wearing one, my bra and gullible me were rarely separated).

I liked imaging the jeweled gates of heaven, the rapture, judgment day, which is all right there in great detail in Revelations. Unfortunately, that summer in camp pretty much pushed me off the path of righteousness.

2003-05-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

Ah, procrastination of my work moves from staring out my window and at the fishtank to blogging.

Friday night I was filled with civic pride and booze after a pub crawl along Pico Boulevard here in my own neighborhood. We headed West, pioneer style, but for the high quotient of heels and slingbacks among the womenfolk. The leader of our wagon train was a slave driver, prodding us out of one watering hole after another with finesse and, when called for, dexterity.

We started at a warmly lit Mexican restaurant full of highly spirited patrons (god bless Tequila), moved to a pitch dark hipster haven martini bar where I drank something pink and strong called The Diva, then to a place called the Arsenal, where chic globe lamps and lots of lush red play against type. Next was Flints, where a giant crystal chandelier hangs over a formal dining room with a high ceiling and regal cranberry-ivory striped wallpaper. It was, according to legend, once a private supper club. Now its just a place to get a drink (or dinner) and pretend you’re about 80 years old and still like to foxtrot. Fading glory epitomized.

Onward we traveled, ho, to the Joker, a dank hole-in-the-wall that’s one of the last bastions of working class Santa Monica. Finally, we ended at The Daily Pint, which feels working class but is generally full of fresh faced young urban professionals, well heeled but resolutely non-hoity toity, in good SM fashion. We were just in time for last call. After a few swigs of Boddington, I took to the street, where I had a conversation about magical L.A. with one of my new drunk buddies.

2003-05-07T17:20:00.000-07:00

My friend tells me today that she once had a boyfriend whose kisses always tasted a little like fried okra.

Yes, that's right, fried okra. And she loved it! She loves fried okra.

And so I'm reminded that it really takes all kinds.

2003-05-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

MORE MUSICAL SHENANIGANS: Paramount plans to deliver Grease III, still set in the '70s. For Olivia Newton John fans (all six of you), check out Toomorrow while you're waiting, in which aliens kidnap her band, whose groovy vibrations can save their dying civilization. Must be seen to be believed.

The same goes for the Takashi Miike flick I watched last night, yet another musical. The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) is bizarre, Dadaistic fun about a family who runs a quite unlucky guesthouse. I loved the first hour--until the very moment I fell asleep. (It was late and I had gotten up at 5 a.m.)

2003-04-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

Jack Black to rock with Richard Linklater. Dude.

Saw some great shorts yesterday at the Internat'l Cinematographers Guild Festival. The writing in two really stood out: Marked and especially The Night Before, about 3 boys in a hospital the night before their operations.

2003-04-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

SILLY NOSTALGIE: A trip to one of the UCLA coops today had me fondly remembering my own college cooperative days. My friend Glenn built a wooden fold-down bar over his bed and was open for business most weekend nights. Drinks were a dollar. Irish whiskey was the house specialty. Red Sox memorabilia hung everywhere. We sang "Angelina" out loud through clouds of cigar smoke. It was good wholesome fun.

Angelina
(Louis Prima)

I eat antipasta twice
just because she is so nice
Angelina
Angelina
the waitress at the pizzeria
I eat zoop-ing minestrone
just to be with her alone
Angelina
Angelina
the waitress at the pizzeria
Ti vol-glio be-ne
Angelina I adore you
E vol-glio be-ne
Angelina I live for you
E un pas-sio-ne
You have set my heart on fire
But Angelina
never listens to my song
I eat antipasta twice
just because she is so nice
Angelina
Angelina
waitress at the pizzeria
If she'll be a my My Car-ra mi-a
then I'll join in matrimony
with a girl who serves spumoni
and Angelina will be mine

Those were good days. Fortunately, so are these.

2003-04-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

Poor is the new rich. You heard it here first.

2003-04-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

Props to Mox for a lol funny post today.

2003-04-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

OVERHEARD:

Guy #1: I learned two things in life real early: Don't fuck with doctors or judges, because they can mess you up for life.

Guy #2: Oh man, I know it. A while back, I was facin 10 years jailtime. I got that bumped down to five right off the bat. Cost me $50 K. I served two and was going to walk at three, but then i told the judge to his face he could take his goddamn motherfuckin self, take his courtroom and fuck hisself with it. And you know what? He made me do the whole five years. Shiiiiiit.

2003-04-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

EASY GO, EASY GO: Well, I've finally paid my taxes. It was just my lifetime savings, you know, no biggie. (Tho that's more a statement about my net worth than it is about the tax rate.) Still, it was the most I've ever had to pay--the equivalent of a month's rent. Yikes.

2003-04-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

JAZZ HANDS, EVERYBODY!: Columbia is remaking the '60s musical "Bye, Bye Birdie," with 23-year-old USC graduate Jon Chu directing, I read in the Hollywood Reporter.

OK, I'm a wee bit skeptical about where this musical trend is going—but I'm also looking forward to it. Because I have to say, the revival has been all good, so far. We've had Magnolia, the fabulous Moulin Rouge, Hedwig and the Angry Inch—at the Fairfax Laemmle here in LA they have a midnight dress-up sing-along screening once a month. Even the ultimate rosy-cheeked classic, The Sound of Music, has found a kitschy new life in the theatre, a la Rocky Horror Picture show. You haven't lived until you've seen a cute gay man sing Leisl's "I Am 16 Going on 17." And, of course, tthere's Chicago, a smokin' show and film adaptation.

These are not Ginger Rodger's progeny; they're her red-headed stepchildren. Of course, now that they're a proven cash cow, we can probably expect the big players to suck all the subversive creative energy out faster than you can say "Roxy." (Not to suggest that Chicago is by any means subversive. Still, it's stylish.)

And then there's the movies that have become live musicals, reportedly with great success: The Producers, Hairspray, etc. L.A. POSSE: The Producers will be at the Pantages in a few weeks, if you haven't already heard.

I think I heard that the Broadway hit Urinetown is also headed to the silver screen...

2003-04-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

I like J Lo as an actress. Nevertheless, cringe. twitch. PUKE:

Yahoo News (4/8/03, 5 p.m. ET) -- Jennifer Lopez and her fiancee Ben Affleck are talking about making a new version of the classic film, Casablanca. According to London's Express, the celebrity couple is considering the roles played by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the legendary 1942 movie.

The next movie for both Lopez and Affleck will be Tough Love, formerly known as Gigli. The film has been troubled by terrible audience responses to test screenings and is currently being reworked. It's still tentatively scheduled for an August 1 release.\

Don't kill the messenger.

2003-04-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

Go watch Rhys Southan's hilarious freedom ad, "Consuming Hypocrisy." It's competing against 24 others, so don't forget to vote.

2003-04-03T16:25:00.000-08:00

Los Angelenos: Thanks to a heads-up from my French informant, I'm going to be screening some films next week at City of Lights, L.A.'s French film festival. For the full schedule, visit the official Website; the Weekly's write-up is here.

I was glad to see that the Weekly gave high marks to the picture I thought looked most interesting, based on the festival's synopses: Une Part Du Ciel (A Piece of Sky):

"When a young female factory worker is sent to jail for a violent act, two co-workers discover that their lives are defined by compromise. Shifting between the personal and the political, between the factory and the prison, these women reveal their true selves and create a newfound friendship."

2003-04-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned my infatuation with the giant squid, he of the huge, liquid eyes, super intelligence, and mysterious air? Oh, giant squid, I am yours. Well, here's a COLOSSAL squid. I feel faint...

2003-04-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

I've calmed down a bit today. But the future is depressing.

2003-03-31T19:06:00.000-08:00

A PERSONAL NOTE FROM A FALLIBLE BEING: I've been largely quiet about my anti-war stance, largely because I've been afraid that disgust and yes, fear, of the course of history attacking Iraq seems to lock us into has made it difficult for me to think clearly. Or I've been afraid that my seemingly rational arguments against war are based on false premises. That is to say, I've lately been more solicitous of what I didn't know than what I did.

But at the moment, after listening to NPR and reading war coverage these past few days, I have only this to say: What a total fucking mess. It keeps ringing in my head. I want to weep or scream when I think of those kids out there in the desert, being shot at from behind, crashing in helicopters...or Iraqi civilians, their houses and friends blown to bits by a government who's the devil they don't know.

People say, "Oh, we knew it wouldn't actually be easy; all the military cakewalk talk was just to freak out the Iraqis."

Well, fine. I'm keenly aware that my info is infuriatingly limited and manipulated. But what I see in all the media that's available to me is a growing list of military and civilian victims of powerful Executive arrogance.

So go ahead, tell me I'm anti-American. Tell me I'm smug. Tell me I'm an idiot. Tell me I'm craven. Or even use my favorite new rhetorical weapon among war advocates: Tell me that I'm acting out the role of the little woman, as though decrying an unnecessary war were merely a less palatable version of baking brownies while barefoot and pregnant.

Tell me what you want. This is a total fucking mess. And what I am is angry.

Or sad. My thoughts go to the families, friends, and comrades of the dead.

And yes, I know such emoting does not an anti-war argument make. But for what it's worth, surely very little, I'm taking this moment to tell you how I feel.

2003-03-31T09:48:00.000-08:00

The three best movies I've seen in the past year—Sex and Lucia, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and now Talk to Her—have been in Spanish. I'm glad Jose is helping me relearn the language, even if it is overwriting my French.

2003-03-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

UNHAPPY RABBITS: A favorite line in All About Eve: "You're not going to ... [Eve pauses in horror] ... Hollywood?"

2003-03-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

Oh brother. This is hilarious.

2003-03-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

What's all this talk on blogs about people doing their taxes? Isn't that what 7-11:30 p.m. April 14th is for?

2003-03-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

ENVIRONS: A real wind is blowing on the West Side today. And last night. My street this morning was a mess of fallen palm fronds, like there had been a tornado. The intrepid Mobius Cat has been on an exploratory mission throughout.

I get the strangest juxtaposition of soundbites during my 10 minute NPR listens on the car right over. Yesterday, I heard about villagers carrying a jar of brains and a severed hand after their town was bombed, saying, "This is liberation?" Today I heard Tony Blair--really, a quite good orator--announce that our resolve is firmer than ever and that we have every confidence that the Iraqi people want freedom. (Well, yes...)

2003-03-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

TECH UPDATE: OK everybody, my problem is fixed. I went into my ARCHIVE TEMPLATE and discovered...there was no archive template there anymore! Just a weird error message. So I had Jesse send me his, I pasted it in, et voila! All the archives are now easily accessible. I'm sure everyone is as thrilled as I am.

In fact, I am so full of joy to have solved this problem that I'm finally going to dive into links madness. Watch the sea monkeys grow! Jesse gets to be first since his archive template came to my rescue.

2003-03-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that my archives stop back in September! When I try to "republish," I get "Archives error." The Blogger help page won't come up. Does anyone know how to fix this problem?

2003-03-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

My musings on Salam Pax are here...

2003-03-25T12:46:00.000-08:00

I recently received a letter from a Reason reader purporting to be from Weed, California. Because we do get a lot of crackpot letters (though this did not seem to be one), I thought I'd better make sure there was, in fact, a town of Weed in the fair state that is my home.

Indeed, there is, 50 miles from the Oregon border, at the foot of gorgeous, snow-capped Mount Shasta! Go see the gorgeous pics, here and especially here.

But did you check out the Chamber of Commerce's URL? www.weedchamber.com! lol! I started wondering whether these folks might have a sense of humor, or else ambitions to develop a certain kind of agro-tourism. So I decided to e-mail the Chamber of Commerce. Today Karen Heiser, manager, emailed me back with this clip from the web site for the Weed Historic Lumber Town Museum:

"Many families made Weed what it is today, and helped it grow, but the credit for the existence of the town must go to Abner Weed. He gave the town his own name, Weed, because he believed in its possibilities. It is interesting to note that years later, when well-intentioned people wished to change the name to one they considered more poetic, or high sounding, the citizens of the town would have none of it. They honored Abner themselves by keeping his name; Weed.

2003-03-24T15:46:00.000-08:00

MEME OF THE DAY:

You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the US of arrogance and Germany doesn't want to go to war.
—Anonymous

UPDATE: Blogger Steve Charak wrote to tell me that Chris Rock is the originator of the rapper/golfer portion of the quote. Thanks Steve!

2003-03-24T07:57:00.000-08:00

At last night's Oscars, Adrien Brody stole the show. Michael Moore tried to. Moore was the Oscar's baseball-cap wearing monkey, smacking his lips, but alas, with the gift of speech. Making some specific statement against war in Iraq would have been one thing, I would have been all for it, but bitching about the 2000 election? I wish someone had thrown the baffoon a banana.

Brody meanwhile gave one of the best speeches I've ever seen. It started by shocking Halle Barry with a dip and a kiss on the mouth (she did NOT handle it gracefully, insert Simpson's bully laugh here), gained momentum when he ordered, ORDERED, Gil Cates and his henchmen to let him talk beyond his alotted time, and ended with a tearful, respectful call for peace. What a guy.

The Pianist did much better than I expected, tho in retrospect it makes total sense. It was the academy's contribution to These Serious Times. I'm not saying it didn't deserve to win on artistic merit alone--I haven't seen it yet, damnit--just that these things affect what kind of movie people want to celebrate.

Richard Gere kept his big mouth shut. Not even a few props for his man in Tibet. I speculate that his publicist told him to can the supercilious political haranging that he's become infamous for, but my Oscar-watching buddy submits that the dapper Steve Martin was waiting in the wings, ready to retailiate with a gerbil joke or two.

I predict that the star of Y Tu Mama Tambien, who gave the sexiest presentation in history, is getting about thirty calls today to star in major Hollywood motion pictures.I was impressed that Almodovar's Talk to Her won...now I'll just have to see it. I'm a fan of the guy, but I would have picked Y Tu Mama instead. I've seen it after all.

Nicole Kidman's speech was a mess, poor girl. Something about art and dead people, I don't know. Maybe she was off-kilter because she forgot to eat...for the past two months. Those arms frightened me. She was calm, cool, and well-spoken when she accepted her Golden Globe. She may just have gotten nervous, trying to pull a Julia Roberts or Halle Barry and give the kind of speech everyone gushes over the next day.

But all in all, people played it safe. Hollywood stars may be insular and self-serving, but they also know who feeds them (or in the case of Nicole et.al., who, I don't know, buys their real estate). Actually, though, since 80 percent of box office takes are international now, not domestic, does American opinion matter so much?

More later, need to go beautify (replay Simpson's ha-ha here) and leave for work....

2003-03-20T16:39:00.000-08:00

I saw footage of a "vomit-in" once. They ate red, white, and blue mashed potatoes and threw them up to protest...well, I don't remember what. But the concept in general is kind of cool, in my opinion. Even admirable.

2003-03-20T16:33:00.000-08:00

I think by now everyone's heard about the Baghdad-based blogger Salam Pax, but I just don't think it's possible to overemphasize the impact and quality of his blog. Dip way back into the archives, too.

I've been getting pretty depressed reading news coverage. Despair and helplessness, helplessness and despair. What really gets me is the various NPR reports with "tales from the front." I almost started crying in the car last night during an interview with a low-level officer about preparing for battle. He said something like: "Now some of these kids are going to panic when the bullets start flying; it's just natural. They've never been in combat. They're kids. So you can't go Twinkie, you've got to be loud to keep them in line." When I hear these stories I never fail to visualize them, filling in plenty of awful details, and inserting my brother (who's a student at Westpoint) into the image. It's horrible.

2003-03-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

"When I first heard about film school, I thought, What's the punchline?"
—screenwriter William Goldman, speaking last night in Hollywood

Tonight I'm hoping to blog more about his talk. Usually "writers on writing" lectures involve a lot of pretensious, portentous musings and I avoid them, but Goldman (who's my hero, anyway, for writing The Princess Bride) was good entertainment.

2003-03-16T07:24:00.000-08:00

I've always been fascinated by the mechanics of a coup, and though I've had plenty of opportunity to read in the paper about how it works--top army people defect, communications and major government buildings are seized--my image of what those crucial hours would look like has been still fuzzy, as it probably is even for those people who awake, turn on the news, and are told they have a new president.

Last night I saw an amazing SXSW movie that changed that. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a spectacular documentation of the Venezuelan coup. A group of Irish filmmakers were inside the presidential palace throughout the event, filming Chavez as he was forcefully removed by generals, cameras still rolling for his victorious return just days later. (A grinning Chavez addresses the filmmakers as he's led back to his palace offices: "Hey, show me the video of when they took me away!)

The most fascinating moments are when Chavez's Cabinet, with the help of soldiers still loyal to Chavez, retake the palace and try desperately to regain power. With Chavez still imprisoned on some island, they lock the new regime's attorney general in the basement and set about retaking the state news Channel 8 and broadcasting their win. The questions of rule become quite specific and yet chaotic. What determines who's in charge? -- Control of a geographic locale like the palace? Control of the media? Backing of military brass? Backing of military underlings? Support of the Bush administration and the CIA?

Ultimately, power in Venezuela was returned to Chavez largely because he had the popular mandate and the Constitution on his side. Whether you like Chavez or not, if you're a supporter of democracy, that's clearly the only possible happy ending.

2003-03-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Austin, Texas. On the highway a billboard ad for Texas-brewed Zeigenbock beer reads, "Kicking around punier states since 18XX." (Can't remember the year.) Damn straight.

The SXSW festival is on here, and the locals are a bit disgruntled by the putsch of their town by outlanders. While it's none too serious, hospitality has diminished slightly as the price of wristbands has rocketed up. When I first got to UT in '95, an all-music pass was around $65; now it's $120. I don't know how much the film pass is this year. Individual shows can be up to $25! It's kind of silly, actually, to come at this time of year and NOT buy a pass; there's always tons of good music in Austin, but this is the one week of the year where it's really expensive. (Although by LA standards, it's pretty decent; shows are usually $10.)

So the big news at the festival is a semi-surprise performance by Blur, which has a new album coming out soon. I sat next to their replacement bassist, a guy with very bright blue eyes, on the plane. Given that the Austin Chronicle says they're also playing without guitarist Graham Coxon, it hardly seems like Blur at all. Maybe it's like the Blue Man Group, and there will soon be alternate Blurs in New York, Chicago, and Vegas.

2003-03-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

I am here today to report to you on an untold brutality of the Drug War: The scores of innocent victims who have to wait insufferable amounts of time in line for club bathrooms because the stall's being used to snort coke. The long lines are not only unpleasant, but can lead to unspeakable violence when the line gets rowdy.

If cocaine were only legal, bathrooms could go back to being bathrooms.

2003-03-07T16:53:00.000-08:00

Friday! Friday! Friday!

I'm about to take off from the office.The first thing I'm going to do is go buy Devil's Knot, Mara Leveritt's book on the West Memphis Three (see post on Paradise Lost below), which is reviewed by the terrific Damon W. Root in the 4.03 Reason. Unless it's too expensive, in which case I'm going to hang out in B&N for a while and "consider" whether I want to purchase it (read: I'm going to read as much as I can before employees start giving me hag eyes). I'm still obsessed with getting all the facts right now, and am finding this difficult online.

Later tonight, barring total exhaustion or some grand new all-consuming obsession that I discover at B&N, I'm going to meet some people downtown to check this out: www.popomatic.com.

Yes, I've had too much coffee. And Diet Coke. And coffee.

If you're looking for a fun link, go read/view Lane McFadden's photo essay on the Nenana Ice Classic, wherein we discover that even (or esp?) deprived of the temptations of decadent civilization, people will still find crazy ways to spend money and entertain themselves. Sweet humanity, how you move me!

Lane's blog is fast becoming one of my favorite sorts of blogs, what I am starting to call the "value-added blog." I think former Reason intern Jeremy Lott once used that term, but I have assigned a radically different meaning to it. By value-added, I mean blogs that give you not only the sense of a person, but the sense of a place. That's what this blog was originally meant to do, but oh my brothers, have I strayed.

The all-time king of this format is probably Tony Pierce's bus blog. And besides Lane and Salam Pax (below), there's also Moxie, who's done some great LA pics and anecdotes, and Stacey Nightmare... Ain't No Bad Dude did a great production blog from Eastern Europe, and I've seen a couple of more. I think when I finally get my blog roll togethere, I'm going to put a special section for such blogs, right at the top.

Eventually, I will develop the capability to post photos, and will hopefully join the ranks of value-added blogs (not that you NEED photos to do that, obviously). But for now, I am repressed by the horrible jackbooted poor man's Blogger, which let's me do nothing, nothing, nothing, but absolutely free of charge (the rat bastards).

2003-03-06T16:01:00.000-08:00

Iraqi blogger Salam Pax writes: "After the oil wells in Kuwait were set on fire and the whole region covered in the blackest and ugliest cloud it rained for days on Baghdad washing everything with black water from the sky, the marks took a year to wash out. I think Salman Rushdie would have found this very amusing, characters in his novels are always haunted by things past in the strangest ways, the shame of your actions following you and then washing you with it’s black water, no ablutions for you Mr. H watch your city covered with the shame of your actions. We have an expression which roughly translates to "face covered with soot" (skham wijih) which is used to describe someone who has done something utterly disgraceful. Getting your city covered with “skham” once has to haunt you for the rest of your life, now we get “skham from the sky II – the return of the evil cloud”. The world is just a re-run of bad movies, but Mr. W. Bush already beat me to that expression."

2003-03-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

I went to bed last night very, very frustrated. No, dear reader, not *that* kind of frustrated. Sheesh!

I was frustrated because I watched the documentary Paradise Lost, about the three Arkansas teenagers who listened to Slayer and were therefore determined by their town to be satanic cultists who gruesomely murdered three little boys. (OK, that's not the whole story, but that's the gyst of it.) This despite lack of physical evidence and any number of holes in the prosecution's case. I wrote an entry on it at home, but my attempt to email to my office was failed so I'll post it later tonight. In short, I couldn't fall asleep because I wanted to skip off to Arkansas immediately and review every document of the case. Or start writing jail correspondence to Damien. For the record, I don't find it impossible to believe they were guilty, but there's NO WAY that there wasn't reasonable doubt. In fact, there was more reasonable doubt than incriminating evidence.

At one point, one of the kids' lawyers strangely tries to convince him not to hang out anymore with Wiccans. How about: Don't hang out with retarded people who are going to tell police that you castrated a little boy and murdered two others, whether it's true or not. (No folks, that's not REALLY the moral of the story.)

Anyway, more later. On another subject, I'm definitely going to go see MacHomer : MacBeth as a one-man show, featuring 50 different voices from the Simpsons. Link via Michael via Shawn.

2003-03-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

Below are the best lyrics of any song any time any day any place any where any one any ANYTHING... they hang on the wall of my house so they should hang somewhere here too:

Drowse, by Roger Taylor of Queen (from the album A Day at the Races, which miserable me doesn't even own...)
(1976)
---------------

It's the sad-eyed, goodbye, yesterday moments I remember
It's the bleak street, weak-kneed partings I recall
It's the mistier mist
The hazier days
The brighter sun
And the easier lays
There's all the more reason for laughing and crying
When you're younger and life isn't too hard at all

It's the fantastic drowse of the afternoon Sundays
That bored you to rages of tears
The unending pleading, to waste all your good times
In thoughts of your middle aged years
It's a vertical hold, all the things that you're told
For the everyday hero it all turns to zero
And there's all the more reason for living or dying
When you're young and your troubles are all very small

Out here on the street
We'd gather and meet
And scuff up the sidewalk with endlessly restless feet
And half of the time
We'd broaden our minds
More in the poolhall than we did in the schoolhall
With the downtown chewing-gum bums
Watching the nightlife, the lights and the fun

Never wanted to be the boy next door
Always thought I'd be something more
But it ain't easy for a smalltown boy
It ain't easy at all
Thinkin' it right, doin' it wrong
It's easier from an armchair
Waves of alternatives wash at my sleepiness
Have my eggs poached for breakfast I guess

(spoken)
I think I'll be Clint Eastwood
Oh no, Jimi Hendrix, he looks good
Let's try William The Conqueror
Now who else do I like?

2003-03-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else noticed that The Life of David Gale (as seen in previews) bears uncanny resemblance to the movie-within-a-movie that Robert Altman relentlessly mocks in The Player? To be fair, though, it looks more like the movie as Altman's smarmy artsy writer duo originally pitch it, and less like the hero-action movie with a Bruce Willis finale that the Hollywood machine ultimately cranks out. Still, I think Altman's equally snide about both versions...

2003-02-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

I'm curious about Laurel Canyon, Lisa Cholodenko's new movie, out next Friday. Here's an interview.

2003-02-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

I've somehow missed talking to Luke Ford at all the packed LA Press Club events, but now am completely intrigued following his performance on the LA blogger panel this Saturday (where I again managed not to talk to him). Here are his comments on the event.

2003-02-21T17:46:00.000-08:00

OK, one more, can't help myself, I'm addicted to Stacey. I hope she doesn't mind all these repostings. GO TO HER BLOG!

"Everyone is a total fucking douche bag!
Just kidding! LOL! Just trying to get your attention!... In other news, I hooked up this really great guy, let me tell you about him!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, he is unemployed right now (more time to spend with me, awes!), he was in jail for the past year (he's totally buff, MMMMMM), he can drink me under the table (so he's a lot of fun at parties, esp. when he does his funny "I'm gonna break stuff and say I own you, bitch!" routine) and he has a neat glass eye! Yeah! We're going to get matching tattoos (his idea)! There's nothing like a new relationship to make you feel good about yourself!"

2003-02-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

More absurd hilarity from Stacey Nightmare:

"Here's a fun Game!
Spot the nastiest, grossest person in the room and pretend you must marry him or her because the customs of your society demand it! Pretend you are an impoverished Indian girl in the 19th century- you pretty much have no choice!"

2003-02-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

Love this girl. Hysterical and completely certifiable. Link via Christopher Scheer.

2003-02-20T11:18:00.000-08:00

WHY I'LL TAKE REALITY TV OVER REALITY: Last night, shortly after Trista said yes to Ryan in a world where Iraq doens't exist, I got a call inviting me to a shotgun wedding on the beach. Except no one's pregnant. My friend's long-term boyfriend, an army translator/biochem Ph.D student, has been called overseas, and they want to marry before he departs in March.

I can't think of a couple that strikes me as more in love and ready to marry.

But this isn't the kind of romance they deserve.

2003-02-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

TRISTA, I SCARCELY KNEW YE: Well, I totally underestimated Trista. She picked Ryan. It was quickly clear last night, since the narrative was favoring Charlie. But until then, I had been hoodwinked! Bravo, producers! You did good. I thought for sure she'd go for the slick L.A. guy, not the shy mountain man sweetheart. I didn't think she was really looking for love, and though it's even more scary that she was, I'm still happy for her.

Incidentally, I'm now in love with Ryan, even if he is the worst poet in the world and paints like someone who dresses sets for porn films.

So the only question is, how long will it last? Will Ryan move to LA? We had to laugh when Trista went to try on rings at Harry Winston, hands shaking with emotion, for the SECOND time in a year...

2003-02-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

Here it is: A rare retraction at this Web site, where we believe that the most foolproof form of fact-checking is to avoid the use of facts.

The post below should have said the SECOND hour of Joe Millionaire was the worst hour of television ever. I only half-watched the first hour, splitting my attention between the telly, reading, and painting my toenails, so I'm not really qualified to judge whether it was any good. And since my esteemed friend Jesse Walker wrote to tell me it was in fact a fine hour of TV, I'm going to go ahead and trust him.

Yes, this retraction is mostly an excuse to tell the world that JESSE WALKER was among the 40 million viewers of Joe Millionaire!

What do you think, folks: Will he tune into The Bachelorette tonight?

I'll be watching, at rapt attention, even though there's no "twist." It's all about Charlie, mark my words.

One last thing: Jesse came up with the best Joe Millionaire twist of all: It should have turned out to be the butler's dream!!! Such a move would have given the hilarious Paul Hogan, a diamond among quartz, more lines and more screentime, plus it would push the envelope of reality TV to its farthest limits!! It would be...EXPERIMENTAL REALITY TV!!!

2003-02-18T17:01:00.000-08:00

Joe Millionaire last night was the worst two hours of television I've ever seen. Except for Paul Hogan's butler monologues, which were very cute.

Evan and Horse Girl could only have been less entertaining if they had been in the living room with me, peeling my fingernails off with needlenosed pliers and "eating my brains out," to use an oft-replayed Evanism.

And poo on Fox for showing those still shots of tied-up hands, instead of Sara's actual bondage flicks. If those silly tickle movies are pornographic, anything's pornographic. Joe and the butler drinking tea on the castle steps is pornographic. Sara making slurping noises with Joe in the dark is CERTAINLY pornographic. And Teletubbies is Deep Throat for the short set.

Or maybe they just omitted them because they didn't want to pay what the "porn" producers were asking. Whatever.

Though Evan and his top pick may not be the world's most artful communicators, this much was clear from the look on their faces when they accepted the $500,000 each: They expected (or felt they deserved) a few mil more.

2003-02-18T16:43:00.000-08:00

Chicago is razzle-dazzle fabulous and must be seen in the theater.

2003-02-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

TENACIOUS D TO STAR IN OWN MOVIE. Happy Sara is.

2003-02-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

I rarely write about dating here; I leave that to the pros. But today I'll make a pre-Valentine's day exception. Why? My aloofness about Valentine's Day, which persisted even through all the spam, is now over. I'm joining in the groupthink, the water cooler discussion, the talk show grist.This morning, every Web page I've been on has at least one pink headline. The LA Times Weekend section is entirely devoted to terribly wry treatises on challenges to romance, love, and devotion in the City of Angels, the modern age, the Internet, etc.

The fact is, in an age where you can Fed Ex your sweetie your underwear, romance is easier than ever. And what age gave people more chances at love and romance, with more people, and with more types of people? In this town, a midget could walk down Sunset Blvd. nuzzling the neck (er, knee) of an obviously pre-op tranny and people in their SUVs would tilt their heartshaped heads to the side and remark, "Oh, how sweet."

Hmmm. Maybe that's an exaggeration.

Did everyone go read that Armed Liberal dating advice linked to on Instapundit? I'm relinking it here because it is so, so right and the behavior is so, so common.The problem with the guy who talks his head off isn't only that you get the impression that he's self-absorbed. Hey, let's be honest: to a certain degree, all singles are. And plenty of self-absorbed guys have gotten laid. The real problem is that he's failed to master the art of conversation. You don't want to be the one asking all the questions. You want to be answering them, too. You want to be kept on your toes by witty barbs and interesting follow-ups. In short, you want a conversation, not a chance to be Barbara Walters.

btw, some of the comments to the Armed Liberal are even better than the post itself.

2003-02-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

So some little marketing elf put me on da mailing list fo' Camel Magazine, da slick promo style mag produced by Camel Cigarettes out of London." It shows yo' ass izzall kinds of bomb diggity places where yo' ass can smoke bomb diggity tobacco, in bomb diggity parkas wit bomb diggity muthas who like bomb diggity things n' shit. That sort of thing." It gots be put out by da Richie Rich kids of tobacco execs, because a bunch of da staff bios be like things like, "When so 'n so ain't vacationing in Swiss ski camps, tha dude's snorkeling in South America 'n clubbing in Paris, know what I'm sayin'? " I probably gots on they list by selling my identity fo' a free pack of smokes some drunken evening n' shit.

Anyway, here's da reason I'm blogging that shiznit: The cover of this glossy tobacco product has a picture of two rosy-cheeked models wearing fur against a snowy background n' shit. The brizzle model is smoking cheerfully n' shit. The headline?

"Survival Instinct, know what I'm sayin'? "

Too funny, know what I'm sayin'?

(That's a post from a couple of days ago, translated by Tha Snoop Dog Shizzolater. Sure to be one of the year's most successful viral marketing campaigns. Shizzat.)

2003-02-11T15:59:00.000-08:00

Make that $29.99.

2003-02-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

FAULTY NICHE: If anyone wants to know how to buy a dozen long stemmed roses for $39.99, I can tell you. For the past two weeks, I've been getting five spams a day on the subject. If if wouldn't forever cement my e-mail on their marketing lists, I'd send responses:

Dear e-retailer,
I am single. I am female. I am considering a switch to Suave haircare products to save money. I DO NOT WANT YOUR DAMNED THORNY PLANTS.
Warmest regards,
SGR

2003-02-07T16:17:00.000-08:00

So some little marketing elf put me on the mailing list for Camel Magazine, the slick promo style mag produced by Camel Cigarettes out of London. It shows you all kinds of cool places where you can smoke cool tobacco, in cool parkas with cool people who like cool things. That sort of thing. It must be put out by the Richie Rich kids of tobacco execs, because a bunch of the staff bios say things like, "When so and so isn't vacationing in Swiss ski camps, he's snorkeling in South America and clubbing in Paris." I probably got on their list by selling my identity for a free pack of smokes some drunken evening.

Anyway, here's the reason I'm blogging it: The cover of this glossy tobacco product has a picture of two rosy-cheeked models wearing fur against a snowy background. The girl model is smoking cheerfully. The headline?

"Survival Instinct."

Too funny.

2003-02-05T09:44:00.000-08:00

ANOTHER REASON TO GET CABLE: Steven Soderbergh is developing an HBO series "set in the world of political consulting." He'll direct the first episode, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Even though I seem to like everything Soderbergh touches, political consulting would not have been my first choice for his first TV foray. Or second or third.

2003-02-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

OK, I didn't see The Guru this weekend. DVDs instead of movie theaters is one of my brilliant new financial austerity measures, which generally last about 1.2 weeks. So I rented a beautiful, joyful movie that made me cry and that I now urgently recommend: Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding. I still haven't seen My Big Fat Greek Sitcom, but I'd bet a lifetime of romantic happiness that this is twice as good. (Which brings me to one small side effect of MW: Way to make a girl feel lonely. But in pleasant, luxurious, and hopeful kind of way.)

For some reason I was under the impression that it was told from the point of view of a fish, but I was secretly glad that wasn't actually the case. (Can anyone can tell me what movie, no doubt simultaneously released, that I'm thinking of?)

2003-01-31T17:02:00.000-08:00

ZEITGEIST IN TURBAN: No one else seems excited, but I can't wait to see this movie. New-age spiritualism sendup + Bollywood style musicical + Grease reprisals + that hot guy from East is East? Sold!

2003-01-30T16:05:00.000-08:00

Funnies from the Greenpeace "Green Sex Guide," via Sam Smith's Progressive Review:

9. Role playing games can be fun as long as both partners are consenting and comfortable with the boundaries. So if you and your partner want to dress up and play "George Bush and Corporate America at the Earth Summit" or other S&M style games, agree on what's permissible and what's not up front. And remember that games - like fantasies - are not real life.

2003-01-30T15:56:00.000-08:00

Last night I met the guy whom I'm going to be teaching reading and writing to. He seemed pretty cool--low-key but very enthusiastic about picking up the English. I think we'll get along well. He's 29, moved to the states at age 11, so his spoken English is very good. He told me that he does upscale carpentry and refinishing for a company in the valley. At home in Michoacan he started working at carpentry at age 6, but not making fancy cabinets, needless to say, and more for barter than for cash.

But it was his friend, we'll call him Pablo, that was really the trip. He's a fast talker with big, big plans. When he finishes this damn literacy program, he's going to learn Aztec, Mayan, and Terrusco, the Indian language that still survives in his region of Michoacan, and create an online dictionary of them for the world. He's also going to go to UCLA, and be an actor and a rap star. I made him rap for me, but he didn't get farther than, "My name is Pablo, oh yeah, oh yeah." Big talker for sure, but likely to be very successful at whatever it is he does do.

Michoacan was the state where the migrants chronicled in Ruben Martinez' terrific Crossing Over came from. Cool random coincidence. Or not. Michoacan, Jalisco, Oaxaca, and Guadalajara seem to be where most of L.A.'s immigrants come from, at least to judge by their commercial presence (restaurants, carnecerias, panaderias, and whatnot).

2003-01-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

Hi all! After 25 hours of loading, unloading, setting up, shooting, setting up, shooting, loading, unloading, shooting, etc, the short is all captured on DV. We never got the grocery store, damnit. So I rewrote the thing, in a way that's more visually satisfying but (I think) less satisfying as far as the story goes. Who knows. We'll see.

Even though I was a zonked out loon most of the time, the shoot was great. I didn't realize how much I missed working with people and working with my hands. There's also just something special, so very human, about getting together with people to work on a creative endeavor. Sitting around this tiny apartment, surrounded by hundreds of pounds of equipment, sofa turned on its side, actors rehearsing lines, techies talkin' shop....

Whoa, have to go to lunch. More later.

2003-01-23T09:04:00.000-08:00

25TH HOUR suffers from too much directorial ego.

Here we have a fine script about three childhood friends, one of whom has one more night to kill before doing 7 years hard time for dealing. Writer David Benioff, working from his novel, opens up that night to us, offering up an experience that's fascinating, horrible, confusing, pained. Friendship, guilt, doubt, fear, cynnicism, grief, envy, regret.... how does it feel to be locked out of one life, one idenity, and locked into another, as skinny friendless Blue Eyes in an overcrowded prison? Who will you be when you get out?

This was a story that deserved a cinematic space gentle enough to let the characters breathe. A Spike Lee (actually SPIKE LEE!) Joint--always a celuloid sledgehammer--wasn't that space.

In my book, the best kind of director knows how to be an auteur, but also lets the material direct him.

2003-01-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

Don't ask me why that post is fucking up. I just work here.

UPDATE: Answer: Because I'm an idiot. It's fixed now. Thanks, Julian.

2003-01-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

THE LAWN JOCKEY: Watching Joe Millionaire the other night, for the first and last time, my roommate and I noticed something curious. In the scene where Joe and one of the toothy blondes are getting tango lessons in Paris, there was something fuzzed out of the background. What, what, what was it?? Was it a.... black lawn jockey?! Nah, couldn't have been, but for a minute there...and would they have fuzzed it out? (Probably.) Did anyone see what was really there?

In any case, in trying to explain to my roommate what the hell a lawn jockey was, I suddenly realized I knew almost nothing about them, other than that they're the ornamental artifact of some pernicious stereotype...but what? or?

So I present to you with several varied lawn-jockey histories, here, here, and here. The third link has a photo, but I could swear I've seen black lawn jockeys without the obviously offensive red lips .

2003-01-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

SQUEEZED: Los Angeles is not a happy home for a low-budget filmmaker. Just try booking a 5 a.m. shoot at a hole in the wall corner grocery--or any grocery. They demand insurance. They demand money--and not small change. Says one clerk, "I was once paid $9K for 20 minutes!" We explain we don't have that kind of money. "Of course you do! You make movie! How you make movie with no money!"

As my director said, "Even the shop owners have agents in this town!"

Complicating negotiations is the fact that the independent grocery business in L.A. is run by mostly non-English speakers, which gives you some insight into the hardiness of the entreprenurial soul (or the degree to which L.A. is a multilingual city). But I have high hopes that my own corner liquor store, run by two Indian brothers, one who speaks perfect English, the other one who's learning, will support its best customer and let us do the shoot for cheap. Heh. "Everybody's got a dream. What's your dream?"

I know there's an Apu-Simpson's plot in here somewhere. (Apu visits LA, where the Indian grocery owners drive swanky Mercedes and take cocktails poolside, renting their shops out nearly full-time. They don't even have to cashier; an actor does it. Moves to L.A. but then back to Springfield when the octuplets dye their hair blonde (or when the family orApu gets corrupted in some lalaland fashion. In the meantime, the Simpson's visit them. Hilarity ensues.)

SITCOM IDEA: An agent whose full-time job is representing two blonde beer commercial twins is the envy of all his male friends--but in fact, he can't STAND them. Every episode is a comedy of their errors, with him left to clean up the mess.

2003-01-22T08:34:00.000-08:00

WHOIS MARY ROSH: Julian Sanchez is my new favorite badass gumshoe detective.

2003-01-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

CRUSHED: I finally watched Blue Crush this weekend. I love dumb surf movies, epitomized by Point Break, and expected this to be my new favorite. It wasn't. It was basically the topsy-turvy version of North Shore: Instead of haole boy surfer meets island hula girl, trains and almost wins surf competition, it was white Island girl surfer meets haole boy, trains and almost wins surf competition, despite near-drowning incident 3 years previous. Fair enough, but North Shore, which is not a very good movie, was a tiny bit better. Why? I was too distracted to analyze it (maybe that itself was the problem), but I think it was a)better surf photography, and b) more and better training montages. There was a lot of talk about Anne Marie being in training, but not a whole lotta training goin on. (Blue Crush takes place over the course of a week; North Shore over a summer.) I did like Kate Bosworth--she gave a very likable performance.

Next up: Big Wednesday, the reputed king of surf movies.

2003-01-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

2003-01-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

William Gibson, author of a couple of my favorite books, on drugs and creativity here. I'm enjoying his blog, but really hope it doesn't slow him down from writing another book. I should probably quit my own blog and use the extra time to read Idoru...

2003-01-12T18:57:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am. I'm going to make an effort to start posting again. Trying to blog lately has been like trying to clean up my bedroom when it's really, shockingly messy: I just don't know where to start. Also, work has been crazy, and I've been busy doing some outside writing projects and getting ready to shoot my second short, a black romantic comedy called The Interloper, at the end of the month. Factor my new Kavelier and Clay obsession into the mix, and there's really not a whole lot of time left over.

I played reluctant social butterfly this weekend and went to three parties (yes, this is going to be a "what I did this weekend" post. i'm too tired to come up with anything else.): a 40th birthday party, a mah jong party where I not only learned to play (badly) but got lessons in Cantonese, and finally, a birthday party for the dear Moxie (check out her own write-up of the event). Awesome hosts, awesome guests. One party also had an oddly high ratio of naked people as the night wore on, but who would want to hear about *that*?

(OK you pervs, one small, guaranteed unsatisfying detail: That party was in the former home of Orson Welles, as I was told about 12 times by various people making chit-chat. When the current host of the manor stripped down and joined many naked others the pool, I suddenly imagined Welles himself paddling around, bare and big like a manatee, and was both amused and a little frightened by the image.)

Onwards and upwards. Here's the story of my most recent (fortunately, oblique) brush with police. I left Friday's party around 2 or 3, to stay at my friend Michael's house in Hollywood rather than drive my "spirited" self all the way back to the Westside. We played ditties (mostly Heart and Soul) on the piano for about an hour before falling into the deep, dull sleep of the blitzed.

But the phone, which doesn't give a shit how much we had to drink, rings shrilly at 5 a.m. Michael answers and a girl launches into a barrage of questions: Do you have a friend over? do you know Anita? do you know where Anita is? Are you Michael? All of these questions, particularly the last, are deeply confusing to Michael. "I don't know any Anita," he tells the girl.

Strange enough. But then....

A knock at the door, half an hour later. Again, Michael answers. He discovers who but a friendly neighborhood policeman on the other side of the peephole. Greetings, ociffer!

Seems that a magazine with Michael's name and address on it was found in the apartment of a girl, Anita, who lives above him. Anita is missing. For some reason, the cops think that knocking on Michael's door at 5 a.m. will help find her.

Needless to say, they were incorrect. I personally checked his closets and the most incriminating thing in them is a sack of golf clubs.

2003-01-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

WHOA NELLY: I'm back in LA and am bursting at the seams with bloggable tidbits. But for now I have to catch up with work life and life life, so check in later this week. For the time being, there's a post below that I wrote over the break but forgot to publish...
In the meantime, I saw Catch Me If You Can, an enjoyable, stylish film that's about 20 minutes overlong. I'm warming up to Leonardo, I think.

2002-12-26T13:56:00.000-08:00

Hmmmn....not a lot of blogging happening here. Mostly because I don't generally blog about my personal life, and the last few days have been almost 100 percent personal life. I'm tempted to start an anonymous blog, because it could be ever so much more interesting.But that's for another day.

For now, I need to go get ready to eat raw fish with an old chum.

Here's Roger Ebert interviewing Steven Speilberg if you'd like something to read.I really like Ebert's interviews (and admire his reviews although I often don't agree), but I have to admit I'm mostly posting it for his passing mention of a certain "public service prank."

2002-12-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

Leaving tonight by sleigh. Actually, by bankrupt airline. Will be blogging from home in Washington, DC. Happiest of holidays to all!

2002-12-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

Incidentally, I'd give Maid in Mahattan **1/2 stars.

2002-12-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

Four days ago, in the darkness of night, someone sliced open my head, gently removed my brain and replaced it with a mound of pink fiber glass insulation.

So I should have been in the perfect mindset today to see Maid in Manhattan. I really wanted to like it. I endeavored to check my usually robust cynicism at the door.

Sucker! It was still disappointing. The Cinderella in this story may be ambitious enough to juggle her oddly precocious 10-year-old son, her ghoulish sidekick maids, her noble butler-supervisor, her lowly, degraded mama, and her dashing senatorial boyfriend. Not so the screenwriter, who ended up with a story that’s spread too thin and feels more like an exercise than a fairy tale.

Don’t blame it on J. Lo. I was rooting for Jenny, and she glowed, despite everything—even despite shiny pancake makeup layered on her face two inches thick. Ray Fiennes (sp?) was his usual dashing self, but his role was so undemanding his dog Rufus might have out-acted him. (Yes, in the movie he really has a dog named Rufus.) Natasha Richardson was dynamite as a bitchy Sotheby’s ho, the only successfully funny character role in the ensemble.

But overall, the movie was pleasant in its mediocre moments, annoying in its many precious ones. It goes last on my list of Cinderella stories. Drew Barrymore’s Ever After is the best from recent years. I think I even prefer Pretty Woman; it’s more fun when the heroine’s a hooker, and Laura San Giacomo’s Kit made a much better sidekick than Jenny’s horny maid buddy. In fact, all the ancillary PW roles were better. And David Bowie’s Fame was on the soundtrack. Even bookended by Roxette, that puts it in another league.

Now I think I’ll go watch Roman Holiday for the third time this week.

(Incidentally, I wrote this yesterday right after the screening but Blogger wouldn't post it.)

2002-12-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

I'm sick. Sicker than I've been in about three years. Flu.

Proof: Yesterday I watched five hours of mostly daytime television. Today I ask myself, can I mine any lessons at all from those five hours, which encompassed Oprah, Dr. Phil (first time I'd ever seen him), local news, Dharma and Greg, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends and Will and Grace. Oh, and some of a crappy mockumentary about a beauty pagent, "Drop Dead Gorgeous." It did have one funny gag, featuring Denise Richards (Richardson?) singing a love song to Jesus in the talent competition. (Needless to say, I don't have cable.)

Frankly, I didn't learn much. But here's a list of issues covered in the various shows, in order: male rage and wife beating, moving past trauma through forgiveness, spontaneous human combustion at gas stations, menopause and vanity, black stereotypes and vanity, using secrets to fuck with people, man-dog love, and escaping your fate.

Put that way, it doesn't sound quite as horrible as it really was.

2002-12-11T17:57:00.000-08:00

The original Wassup! commercial still brings me joy. Maybe, if we could rip into the universe's deep fabric, we'd find that the entire cosmic purpose of Budweiser's existence was to distribute the Wassap short to the world. The idea gives me peace.

2002-12-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

PAPA'S BRAND NEW BLOG: Reason's new blog, Hit & Run, is off to a grand beginning.

2002-12-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

CRAZY, SEXY, COOL: I went on a Soderbergh binge this weekend and saw Solaris, The Limey, and Out of Sight, which I had already seen. Soderbergh is smart. He picks smart scripts (maybe with the exception of the mediocre Erin B.) and then pushes them further.

But what's especially alluring about the director who launched his career with *Sex, Lies, and Videotape* is that for all his abilitity to mine the subtleties of lonely existence, etc., his always fine talent is at its finest when portraying giddy but sophisticated seduction.

The most compelling sequences in *Solaris* and *Out of Sight* are the romantic ones. It's the carefully chosen unsynched lines of dialogue, the shallow focus, and the cool music. It's George Clooney, naked. But it's also that in both films, it's not just the man who's up to the task--the women are equally bold, equally provocative, equally involved.

Still, *The Limey* might be my favorite of the three, even though there's not quite a romance. There are so many flashbacks, flashforwards, and imagined possibilities in the film--sort of Soderbergh's M.O. taken to its extreme--that it feels like the troubled recollections of an extremely articulate consciousness. I love that.

2002-12-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

No time to post today, so I refer you to my morning Reason column, on last night's torturous Whitney Houston interview.

2002-12-04T12:43:00.000-08:00

I neglected to post this November review of Josh Olson's *Infested,* which played recently at the Hampton Internat'l Film Festival and will be out on video sometime soon. Watch it! The Variety review (only some of which is below) is so positive you'd think Olson paid him off--except that I've seen the movie so know it's dead-on. (tee hee. DEAD on. Get it? excuse me now. i'll shut up.)

'Infested' a Fun Cult Horror
NEW YORK (Variety) - A fun cheapo horror romp that makes no claims to profundity but displays truly acerbic wit and a deep conversance with the genre, 'Infested' sics swarms of mutant flies on a bunch of thirtysomething 'whiny self-absorbed twits' and turns them into killer zombies. In the best self-reflexive manner of postmodern horror pics, frosh helmer Josh Olson unleashes the subversive forces of an iconic '60s movie, 'Night of the Living Dead,' to wreak havoc on the conservative complacency of that '80s granddaddy of yuppie angst pics, 'The Big Chill.' Too low budget for multiplex audiences, 'Infested' could develop strong cult video and cable followings.

Action begins as a circle of old school friends, reunited for a funeral, are forced to re-examine their lives by the younger girlfriend of the dead guy a la "Big Chill," but familiarity with the original is by no means a prerequisite to relishing Olson's savage dismantling of Lawrence Kasdan's monument to neo-bourgeois self-importance. Olson gets lots of comic mileage out of his characters' narcissistic self-absorption.

2002-12-04T09:15:00.000-08:00

As of last night, it's official: I'm entirely done with this season's 24. It's silly and boring. (Apologies Kiefer, I still love you.) The 20 minutes I watched last night was a better soporific than money can buy. Skip it and rent last season on DVD.

2002-12-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

No time to post today, playing catch up. Joyous weekend/holiday. Thanksgiving at home, then fun, quick stay in bucolic Las Vegas. Won $12 on video poker. Ate a lot of chilled shrimp. Marveled at gaudy wonders. Wandered about in the rain. Much fun. Many questions, among them: Why hasn't the Titanic casino arrived?

2002-11-27T11:31:00.000-08:00

SARA IN WONDERLAND: Happy thanksgiving, turkeys!!! I love holidays. I love vacations. I love the fact that I woke up this morning singing, "Painting the roses red! Painting the roses red!"

Here's the piece I wrote for reason this morning.

Because of my guest and the unfortunate kidnapping of my home computer, I probably won't be posting again until Monday.

2002-11-26T12:29:00.000-08:00

I'm involved in a fun listserv/blog debate right now with a certain Roahn Wynar and some of my other former Daily Texan colleagues. Roahn has created a list of Forbidden Plot Motifs for movies, suggesting screenwriters just avoid them entirely.

He does a good job identifying common plot devices/motifs, but the actual critique misses the point.

A common archetype only becomes "cliché" when it's presented with a shortage of creative detail. Much good writing takes all these common archetypes and disguises them as fresh, unique human stories; stories we believe in.

Your critique has to be leading you astray when it puts a movie like Lord of the Rings on the list. We *like* stories about the little guys fighting the big evil; they appeal. What makes or breaks the movie is the specifics: who are the guys? what's the nature of the evil? These details needs to fascinate. LOTR is an especially impressive feat because it has opened fantasy to people whose brains are either too narrow or too dull to appreciate it: It has made cool people identify with hobbits, who are the most uncool creatures in Middle Earth.

Or The Sixth Sense. Children *are* creepy. Especially ones who see dead people.

Speaking of sci-fi, I saw the original *Solaris* (1972) last night. Great movie. A bit too long. But it too could be said to revolve around a theoretically potential-for-forbidden motif (or two or three): psychologist hired to determine reality finds himself among the confused. K-Pax is an example of a movie that uses that cliche in a far less successful capacity. But it was bad writing and a hammy version of self-discovery, not the plot convention itself, that wrecked K-Pax. (which wasn't nearly as bad as some other movies that came out that year, incidentally)

You have to add value to a cliche to make it great. Too many Hollywood scripts don't manage that. Nevertheless, no motif should be forbidden.

2002-11-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

OLDER NOT WISER: So yesterday was my birthday. I'm 25. I had planned on turning 24 again this year instead, but I keep letting everybody in on the secret so I'm not sure it's going to work.

According to my former roommate Rene, the grand old age of 25 means that my frontal lobe is now fully developed so that I can leave all the crazy irrationality of my youth behind. Frightening, until we consider that Rene, mad Frenchman that he is, is 60 years old and given to temper tantrums.

(There was more to this post but it was hangover-induced raving so I deleted it.)

2002-11-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

GRRRR: Who do these Daily News valley girls think they are? "L.A. leads U.S. in murders!" the Daily News headline blares; "an outbreak of gang violence has turned L.A. into the murder capital of the U.S." the story opens. Of course, the stats show that scaled for population, we actually have LESS murders than Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Less murders than the City of Brotherly Love, for Christsake!

What is this, retaliation because Angelenos think they're better than those who live over the mountains? I, of course, have infinite admiration for all those who have turned the 405 into less a highway than a chapel for contemplative meditation. (Don't you think that's a nice way to think of it? I do.)

Actually, it appears that the police, who have dealt with a string of murders in recent weeks, are the ones who framed the story that way. But boy, the Daily News went and ran with it.

And yes, the article pisses me off even though the author could have used my own neighborhood to pepper up his story. A guy was killed in a gang incident across the street from my apartment. I just don't understand what sensational newspaper articles, ones that scream out to readers, "Stay home! Be afraid! Let the police do their work!" add to anyone's quality of life.

Well, anyway, I'm proud to have now lived in two of the nation's Murder Capitals.

2002-11-19T14:41:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I quit nearly a decade of vegetarianism after a beer-and-potatoes diet led to a near mental breakdown on the streets near Berlin's Zoo Station. My first post-veg meal was a McDonald's Fish Filet. My, she was yar! Since then, I've developed a real taste for flesh, but I still have crises of conscience every so often.

This weekend the LA Times Mag had an article about The Guru of Happy Cows, Bill Niman of the Niman ranch. Why are his cows so happy, you ask, as they await their day in the slaughterhouse? Well, besides getting to roam around acres of luscious grass, THE COWHANDS CONVERSE WITH THEM. Yes, that's right, they chat up the future Filet Mignon of Chez Panisse and the other trendy restaurants that stock Nimans.

Part of the reason big chefs like Niman's meat is that he doesn't use antibiotics, which makes their uppity customers happy. I'm pretty ignorant on that issue and don't really care one way or another. I'm just glad the cows get talked to. (Though if that isn't shining evidence of so-called runaway capitalism, I don't know what is. We're so rich we talk to our cows! Bitchin.)

But I also like this Niman guy's general philosophy. He's been criticized for a recent deal to supply Chipotle, partly owned by the McDonald's corporation; people say he's supporting the Big Evils by doing business with them. He refutes that by saying such deals are the only way to change the industry on a larger scale. Make change from within has always been my motto. And in Niman's case, make a killer profit doing it.

So, I decided I had to try this meat, which supposedly tastes better. (Anxious cows secrete something that makes them tougher, we learn.) And lo and behold, there it was at Trader Joe's: Niman's London Broil for $5.99 a pound.

Well, I'm no steak connoisseur, but it seemed pretty average to me. Then again, as someone relatively new to red meat, the error might be mine. I don't really know how to cook it. I just threw the thing in a skillet with some salt and pepper and cooked until it was only a little pink. Next time, I guess I'll marinate first.