But he doesn't have the good things

Bizarre and Vivid Dream

2006-11-01T16:58:00.000-05:00

This is actually from over a year ago, but I just found an old post I wrote about it on a forum, and thought I'd copy it here.

I had the most bizarre and vivid dream last night.

It started with me being hanged for a crime I didn't commit! The perp was a random guy I went to high school with and haven't given a thought since. Where did that come from? But I didn't actually find out what the crime was and why I was the accused/convicted one until very late in the dream in a weird flashback moment.

The dream actually started with the hanging. It took place in a weird schoolroom, but the odd thing was, the hanging was bungled and I survived, I was only knocked out. But apparently everyone thought it worked. I had something over my face and couldn't see, but I was dragged away on the floor, taken for dead. Finally whoever was dragging me stopped for a minute and I looked out from whatever was covering my head, saw that he wasn't looking and bolted. I found a door to this little building and ran out on the street. It was in downtown Manhattan somewhere, but I didn't recognize the neighborhood. I could tell the guy who had left the body must be running after me, so I went into the first store I saw, a little Chinese pottery and art store, and looked around for a while.

The store walls were all windows, so I could see the guy who had followed me run by. Eventually I went out and ran a bit more till I found a group of churches to duck between. I finally went in one where there was some choral music coming from no where and just a few people sporadically sitting around in the pews. One of them gave me a blanket to wrap around myself--people had been starting to stare at me. I must have looked the worse for the whole hanging thing.

After what must have been hours of sitting huddled under the blanket in this dark almost empy church, I finally left...

I can't quite remember what happened next, but somehow I met up with a group of friends one of whom resembled, but was not exactly, Diana, and another was my roommate Claudia. But there was a whole gang of them, and they had a big loft apartment over a store they ran, but some of them were not cool with pretending I was dead, which is what they had to do. And the police showed up at the store! Fortunately it was really crowded, so we were able to slip out without me being seen. Finally, they decided it would be a good thing to keep me away from the store for a while, so they took me to a late night showing of Ran!

The dream sort of skipped the movie, and the last part of the dream involved us sitting around on and under some scaffolding at night, next to the Villiage Voice building, having a picnic. It was during this part of the dream that I "saw" the crime for which I'd been accused--it was as though I was just watching it from across the street--it involved that guy from high school getting into a fight with a construction worker, and I was there, and tried to step into stop the fight, and the construction worker guy ended up being killed by the high school guy, who fled, and there I was with the body.

After "seeing" this, then the scaffolding we were all sitting around and under started to break and one other guy and I had to save the people who were sitting on it from falling ...

And then I woke up.

28?

2006-09-25T16:46:00.000-04:00

My 28th birthday is just about a week away and that sounds like a very adult number. Of course, several of my close friends are over thirty--some are fifteen or more years older than thirty, so in perspective, it still seems pretty young.

Still, it's interesting to hit a time in my life where I realize I'm no longer just in the first stage out of college. I'm apparently in the beginning of a career, a life. Choices have been made, relationships have been forged.

Of course, it could all change tomorrow and I wouldn't be that far behind if I started all over now. But I don't have any big starting over plans at the moment.

I don't really feel like a "real" adult yet. I feel a lot like a kid playing house but with a bank account. But that's cool with me. I'm not ready to "find myself" I guess, so in the mean time, playing house is just fine.

Remembering

2006-09-11T10:14:00.000-04:00

So, I guess it's time to revist what 9/11 was like.

It happened two months before I moved to New York, having just graduated the previous spring, so like most of the world, I mainly watched it on the news.

I was living with my folks for a few months between school and moving to the city, waiting tables at the local Olive Garden. I had had a late shift the morning before and was working lunch that day and I woke up at quarter to nine when my father rang from the office to tell me to turn on the TV. My mother was out running errands. I watched the news of the second plane hitting. I was listening to the radio while driving to work as the first tower fell.

When I got to work, the radio was on in the kitchen and we listened in between serving guests (who mostly seemed totally oblivious to what was going on). About half way through the shift, the manager got a TV hooked up in the back so we could watch the news coverage. There weren't many people coming in, so I got to go home early.

When I got home later that afternoon, I made some calls and sent some e-mails. I was moving to New York from DC and I had friends in both places I was worried about. I heard back, surprisingly, from everyone I knew within a few hours. My mother and I baked some frozen pizzas and sat in front of the news and my dad joined when he got back from the office. I think we pretty much stayed there all night. It was just too unbelievable.

I'm back.

2006-09-10T17:24:00.000-04:00

I haven't been here in a long time. A year has gone by.

What has happened?

Not a whole lot. I've seen a LOT of movies and a lot of theatre too.

I've also moved from being just the admin at my job to taking some more responsibility managing the accounts for three sales territories. I basically get to babysit orders, make sure they get entered, manufactured, and shipped on time and in good quality. It sounds a lot easier than it is. Trust me.

I've also had my first print articles appear this year, in the pages of The Sondheim Review which is a small step but maybe someday might lead to some bigger and better writing gigs.

Today I spent most of the day copying CDs and DVDs for various people which I will be mailing and trading in the next week. I'm actually leaving the apartment now to go spend the evening trading discs and having dinner with a friend.

Yes, I am a nerd.

Yesterday, I went to see Hollywoodland. Eh. It was ok. I got tired of it pretty fast; the murder mystery side of the story seems very convulted, and, as my friend said, it was a total Chinatown-wannabe. Except here, there's no crime! Eh. Not great. But not bad either.

Movies Watched in the Last Week

2005-08-03T11:21:00.000-04:00

Heights

I didn't know till I read in the credits after the movie that it's based on a play, but I looked it up and the basis was just a 25-minute one-act done by Ensemble Studio Theatre five years ago. Written by someone named Amy Fox. Basic idea: five or so New Yorkers going about their separate lives but they all eventually intertwine. But it's really about the main girl, Elizabeth Banks, and her impending marriage to the hottie James Marsden who has some ... questionable things in his past. Glenn Close plays Elizabeth's mother, a Broadway actress about to open in a new production of Macbeth. It's interesting, but most of the movie is spent setting up interesting characters and situations that don't go anywhere. Only the central relationship ends up getting some resolution, which itself is a little easy and pat. That said though, despite some hand-held camera stuff I don't like and some bad music, a lot of the movie is surprisingly life-like.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the original and the new)

My peanut M&Ms were better than the new movie. It had some laughs, but it was another example of movies today. Dumb made-up psychologizing to explain enigmatic characters (that's not in the book) which takes away any time we might have to actually get to know the characters for real, so it's just plot point, plot point, plot point. All Tim Burton movies look and sound alike and now he's been seduced by CGI and even the faces look computer-generated. I will say for him that he has a pretty good sense of humor and Johnny Depp has some fun.

I was surprised that the original movie, even though it's in some ways less faithful to the book and has time taken up with songs, still manages to crack the characters a lot more successfully. There, we get a lot of Charlie at school, Charlie with his mom, his family, Grandpa Joe's infirmity, etc., all things we just glide right by in this movie in order to have this made-up flashback stuff about Wonka. The thing is, the Dahl book sees Wonka as mysterious and somewhat inexplicable--the way all adults appear to children. It's Charlie's world we understand most, and this movie spends all its time trying to explain Wonka and it doesn't work with the material.

The Return of Martin Guerre

Pretty great movie. Beautiful, for one thing. The production design is both gorgeous and authentic. The clothes and sets looked lived in.The performances, especially Depardieu and Nathalie Baye as his wife, are great.It's a very interesting and true story, though the film does apparently have its fictional elements. I've never seen Somersby, the American remake that takes place during the American Civil War, but that doesn't sound like a good idea to me.One interesting thing: in the movie, the young Martin can't consummate his marriage because he is thought bewitched, which is apparently true. But it does turn out he was married when he was ELEVEN years old. Maybe he just had to ... hit puberty! LOL.

The Piano

It's interesting. Not going to become my favorite movie and I HATED what Sam Neil does to her at the end, but it's an evocative movie and the performances are very good--including the little girl who got the Oscar. That was SOME sex scene! My goodness. Elements of the movie reminded me of Julie Taymor and Titus. All that shadow-puppetry stuff with the axe is foreshadowing I guess, but there are a lot of other striking unique images. I think it's a cooler looking and seeming film than it ends up being.A lot of the story is left loose-ended. But still interesting. I would have preferred real music though, instead of that nouveau contemporary piano stuff. It just doesn't sound right for the period.Also, there's a vaguely contemporary attitude about Victorian mores, I think. Hunter's character is non-conformist and rebellious against her oppression. Even her muteness may be a choice, but it also feels like a comment on the silencing of women's voices in a male-dominated society. I just don't think the real story and idea is as deep as the movie makes you think it is.

Double Indemnity

Well, it's pretty arch and calculated, but pretty good flick. Barbara Stanwyck is SO the person to play that role. And Fred MacMurray is well-used too. The dialogue sometimes gets going so fast and sharp that it took me out of it, but overall I can see why it's seen as such an important movie. And what an interesting choice to have him confess right at the beginning.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

I liked it. I haven't seen a lot of Allen, but it's less funny and more morally overt than other ones of his I've seen. Nevertheless, good performances all around, and life-like. I guess the toughest thing about the movie is it's hard to like anyone in it. The only real problem I see with the movie is that it isn't telling me anything I don't already know moralistically and it seems to be trying to reveal something ideological about morality and religion. But in so far as it's about the characters' own personal struggles with their morality, I liked it a lot.

Chinatown

2005-01-18T15:32:00.000-05:00

I can't help comparing it to The Aviator, since I saw them both recently and they're both pastiche films basically covering the same era, though of course the similiarities stop there, pretty much.

Nicholson is great. In recent movies (didn't see About Schmidt) I've found him to be a little self-parodying, which I don't find as engrossing as the rather simple performance he gives here. Faye Dunaway is stately and beautiful. She's another performer who later moved into a self-parody, but here has a naturalism to go with the movie-star appearance. John Huston, who directed the arresting, recently-viewed Red Badge of Courage, gives an excellent, creepy performance as the bad guy.

The romance between the two of them feels a little forced, as though they just had to put in a sex scene between the leading male and female despite it not really making sense.

It's a pretty interesting story, with plenty of surprises and it generally held my interest, though it's not short. It's MUCH more satisfying than The Aviator. Unlike that film, this one was able to use the period setting without a contemporary comment on it (i.e., "weren't people quaint and silly then"). I'm not sure if I'd put it up on the Greatest Films of All Time list, but it works in almost every way.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera

2004-12-27T13:47:00.000-05:00

You Can't Make a Silk Purse Out of a Sow's Ear.

Given that the 1986 stage original POTO was mainly exceptional for producing such spectacles as falling chandeliers and locales that can literally change in a film-like manner before the eyes in the live theatre, a movie adaptation will be at an immediate disadvantage. That Lord Lloyd Webber's wall-to-wall songs don't so much propel the plot or reveal the characters as much as they bring the proceedings to a crashing halt doesn't help matters.

So, despite some exciting visual feats and a hilarious but brief turn by Minnie Driver as Carlotta, the opera's reining diva (singing dubbed by English Opera singer and former London-stage Carlotta Margaret Preece), the film, unsurprisingly is endless and bad.

Other than Preece's vocals and some satisfactory snippets from Patrick Wilson's Raoul, the singing is all sub-par. Emmy Rossum, in the central role of Christine, is likeable, pretty, and completely wrong. Her singing sounds about like the average soloist of the average American High School choir. Not bad, but when her opening night song ("Think of Me," a bland pop tune serving in the place of an actual operatic aria) gets a stunning ovation from the opening night audience who expected vocals on the level of Preece's, the film loses any credibility it may have had up to that point. Rossum is a starlet to watch, though. She's genuine and attractive, trying her darndest to make us buy things like dialogue that inexplicably rhymes (these are "recitatives" in the stage show which are spoken in the film, presumably to add to the movie's believability, if you can imagine). Sarah Brightman, who created the role in the stage production brought a gothic weirdness to the proceedings which helped the show's unbelivability. Rossum is American and contemporary, and like the rest of the movie, fails to make the outrageous believeable. Gerard Butler's Phantom is super hot despite the mild skin affliction under the mask, and his singing, though not very good, is passable and has something akin to a rock style.

Is it a terrible film? Well, the art direction is probably too good to call it terrible. But for all its loudness and the occasional effective cinematic moment, it's really just long, loud, and boring.

More Movies

2004-11-08T10:13:00.000-05:00

The More the Merrier

Simple and charming. The premise itself may seem dated, but the cast is all so excellent and their performances so immediate that it holds up surprisingly well. The biggest surprise is how completely sexual the relationship between Arthur and McCrea becomes. There's a scene where he's fondling her on the steps in front of the apartment which is so hot I can't believe they got away with it. Charles Coburn as the older Benjamin Dingle is completely hilarious.

I saw the remake, Walk Don't Run, first, and I thought it was very fun at the time, though this one is definitely better. It was not a bad property for Cary Grant to do his only? non-star/leading-man role but he's still Cary Grant, and his relationship with Samantha Eggar isn't as inherantly funny as the Coburn/Arthur one.

That's Entertainment III

I think my favorite thing was the side-by-side comparison of the Joan Crawford/Cyd Charisse versions of "Two Faced Woman." Neither of them really seem quite "right" but at least Charisse looks fantastic and is doing the dancing. Too bad that was the one that got cut.

Gone With the Wind

The new ultra-resolution DVD is a stunner. Details are so clear you'd think you were in the room with them.

As epic movies go, it's probably my favorite. For some reason, Scarlett continues to compell throughout, and the relationship between her and Rhett is surprisingly real. Despite her fixation on Ashley, you can tell from the begninning that she and Rhett are meant for each other. But there are many great turns. Melanie isn't the simple goody goody she might be, but the strongest and most virtuous person you can imagine; she's the kind of good that can see past social mores and always do the right thing. When she accepts Scarlett (and denounces India), she's right. Scarlett may have feelings for Ashley, but the compromising position in which they are found is really innocent, and at that point, Scarlett has, for whatever reason, effectively saved Melanie's life, and found food and clothes for her when there were none.

I love that Belle and Melanie are actually the most morally good people in the whole movie. Actually, the one who seems the most contemptible to me is Ashley. We don't know if he's really led Scarlett on before the beginning of the movie, but we do know that he doesn't deny Scarlett's claims that he's afraid to marry her; he does say that he's marrying Melanie because they "understand each other" but he never really says that he loves her, and we don't really know that he does until the very end. Maybe he doesn't himself.

Dracula (1931-Universal original, 1931 Universal original with Philip Glass Score, 1931 Universal Spanish language, 1921's Nosferatu, 1979 Universal remake with Frank Langella, 1992 Francis Ford Coppella)

I think the 1931 original is the best. The 1999 Glass score elevates it, I think, but some of it doesn't seem right to me. For one thing, some of the movie's most effective moments are so because they are silent, and there's practically wall to wall music with the new score. Also, Glass sounds like Glass, and sometimes you wish that he could evoke something a little more specific for the material. The Spanish version is pretty amazing to see, with a lot of surprisingly fluid and interesting camera-work--much more innovative than the Lugosi version.

The 1931 is absolutely contemporary (the Stroker novel was less than 35 years old at the time), and it works as a rather immediate piece. Lugosi is not as arch as you might think; he's got that accent, but it's actually quite an understated performance. Many of the special effects seem hopelessly fake and obvious now, but it's still effective.

The 1979 movie is quite different but uses some of the same script, and one moment which sticks out as much less effective than in the original is the moment when Dracula attempts to compell Van Helsing to "Come Here" with a vampiric gesture. In the original, it's probably the best moment in the film, scary, and quite subtle. In the 1979, the moment is abbreviated. Maybe they were afraid it would seem to hoaky if they let it go on, but it's less effective.

Langella's Dracula is quite interesting. He reminds one more of the Rice Vampires in his elegance and the romantic way he portrays it. There are still some hoakier effects, like the David Bowie-esque entrance through the windows with smoke everywhere, and that odd laser show love sequence. I don't mind the changes in the story, though I wonder what they thought would be helped by switching the names for the characters of Mina and Lucy.

The 1992 movie might have been quite good--it's certainly the most faithful to the original novel, but it's got several marks against it. A. Ryder and Reeves pretty much wreck every scene they are in--they're both completely miscast B. It's too over-the-top with both the sex and the blood. I don't mind bringing the Vlad the Impaler story into it; it gives the story a bit more of an epic romanticisim, but I don't think it's necessary either. Good music score.

Wyler-a-Thon

2004-10-25T16:29:00.000-04:00

Jezebel (1938)

Strangely enough, Wyler actress Miriam Hopkins (who played Martha in These Three and Aunt Lily in The Children's Hour among others) had starred in the Bette Davis role on Broadway in '33.

Wyler's Scarlett O'Hara movie is surprisingly compelling on its own despite the obvious similarities to GWTW. Davis probably would have done justice to Sclarett, but with Julie, whose journey from selfish to selfless is somewhat less epic, she has to accomplish more with less, and benefits from it. Her attempts to manipulate George Brent and Henry Fonda are less childish than Scarlett's ploys for Ashley and thus her eventual redemption--which comes from her love for Fonda--is all the more satisfying as it is the turning around of an adult's nature, rather than the simple maturation from child to woman. It probably helps that Davis has a much more dynamic object of affection in Henry Fonda than Leigh has in Leslie Howard!

One thing I found pretty interesting was the treatment of the slaves; not that they get treated more as full people than in GWTW, but at least here one of the sympathetic characters is beginning to side with the abolitionists, and even Davis seems like she relates to the slaves more on the level--not as subhuman. It's also pretty interesting how the effects of the Yellow Fever here anticipate the effects of The War on the South in GWTW.

The red dress sequence does seem like such a GWTW ripoff I'm surprised they included it.

The Children's Hour (1962)

I haven't gone back and looked at These Three yet. More on that later....

Hepburn seems miscast to me though she's sympathetic and doing a good job in spite of it. Somehow though she seems too sophisticated and just doesn't quite seem like the girl who has started this little school with her best friend from college and is keeping James Garner at bay. MacLaine is one of my favorite actresses and she's better cast. Fay Bainter (who's also great in Jezebel) is terrific as Old Mrs. Tilford, and Hopkins is also great as Aunt Lily.

I found the beginning to be slow and it wasn't really holding my attention, but once they get to the main conflict, it's pretty engrossing. One of those movies that makes you want to shout at the screen. MacLaine's final big scene is pretty heart-rending, and Hepburn is right there with her. It's a tough movie to like though. The perceived abhorrent nature of homosexuality and the final results of it are pretty tough to swallow.

Ben-Hur (1959)

I guess I'd never seen it all before, certainly not in wide and on a big screen where I could really comprehend it.

I don't know if it's the best of its kind, but I thought it was pretty amazing. The way the Christ story plays out as a backdrop to the Heston story serves it well. What a great choice not to show us his face. When you first see those hands pouring water into Heston's mouth, you know whose they are. Of course, it's a little bit telegraphed by some ooh-ing in the underscoring (which is one of the weaker elements of the movie) but still...

The chariot race is pretty incredible, not only in the physical stunts, but the editing! Matching shots in such circumstances is always difficult, but it's managed brilliantly. Even cutting from the close-up of Boyd and Heston fighting over the whip to a long shot of the same thing looked like it matched exactly. Very tough to do. I was also pretty surprised how graphic it was. Those couple of amputated limbs in the boat crash were a little more than I needed. Geez!

This movie sure does have some serious pleasures for the gay viewer. Oodles of man-flesh, not to mention the rather erotic relationship between Boyd and Heston. I mean, the spear throwing? Hello!

Also, since I've seen quite a lot of Shirley MacLaine recently, I took a detour to watch Being There, which without even thinking about it also had another tie-in to Wyler. Early on, when Sellers is looking at various TV shows, one of them is an old scratchy black-and-white movie...which turns out to be Jezebel! Being There isn't my favorite movie, but I love Sellers and MacLaine in it. I guess it's the precursor to Forrest Gump, but I like it way better than that movie...

The latest movie watching

2004-10-20T13:22:00.000-04:00

Broadway: The American Musical, the PBS series. I spent over six hours with the whole thing this weekend via the new DVD.

I won't say I'm the most knowledgeable Broadway fan, but I think I've seen and read a fair amount more than the average and so my feelings about a show like this are going to be mixed. On the one hand, it's nice to see a documentary series focus on one of your big interests. On the other hand, it's difficult to ever think they got it right. Oh well.

What a Way to Go

Just brain candy really, but Shirley MacLaine is so great at this kind of thing--taking comedy deadly serious, but not so serious it stops being comedy. And a supporting cast of men not to be believed. The bath scenes with Paul Newman are enough to recommend the movie by themselves!

Intermezzo

It was fun to finally see this movie which I've wondered about since they talked about it in the Gone With the Wind documentary as the movie with which David O Selznick bribed Leslie Howard (with a co-producer credit) in order to get him to do GWTW. Ingrid Bergman is always great even in less than stellar movies, and she is here as usual. Quite fun to see her do some pretty great faking of playing the piano. The movie looks pretty amazing in the new DVD, and as is becoming the norm, a movie that was once a scratchy relic is now revealed as a compelling story (admittedly with a sentimental musical soundtrack). The movie concerns a great violinist (Howard) who is married and has a young daughter. He befriends a promising young pianist (Bergman) and they fall in love. He leaves his wife and daughter and goes away to live with Bergman. Before long though, Bergman, though still in love with him, realizes that he belongs with his family, and that she belongs starting her own career, so she leaves. Howard, however, still plans to divorce his wife, until a near-fatal accident involving his daughter brings him back to the family, and he finally remains. I like the idea of the movie--that you can screw up, and yet still get your life back on track if there's a lot of love and understanding around you. But I felt so repelled by Howard's character throughout it was hard for me to like the movie. I thought both his wife and Bergman deserved better.

Some of Babes in Arms
Eh. This is the Big Movie from that year? (Not Wizard of Oz?)

Ziegfeld Girl

Lana Turner isn't bad, but it's hard to believe Garland is the second banana here, and even harder to believe is Jimmy Stewart! in this movie. Bizarre. AND the footage of the so-called "Ziegfeld Follies" is in large part taken from The Great Ziegfeld from a few years earlier. The set for Judy's big moment at the end is a recreation of the very top of a huge set from the earlier film, and it cuts out to that footage after a close-up on Judy. Hilarious.

In Cold Blood

Richard Brooks' film of Truman Capote's book based on Perry Smith and Dick Hickock's murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959 and their following trial and eventual execution. The film gets some of its authenticity by using the real locations of the events, including the house where the murders took place, the courtroom (and six of the actual jurors!), and the real gallows at the Kansas State Penitentiary. Once the murders have been "revealed" and Smith and Hickock's trial is over, the movie seems to go into a different mode for the last twenty minutes or so as it deals with the Death Row years, and seems to present a polemic argument against Capital Punishment. Still, Brook is a very effective director. My companion watching the film noted a particular shot where Smith is standing in the light coming through a window while it rains outside; the effect is that the rain's shadow looks like tears on his face. When I mentioned the movie to my roommate, she said she'd never seen it, but had heard of this moment before. I guess it's kind of a famous filmmaking moment.

If no one comes over to watch the second half of the Broadway series tonight, I'm going to have a Wyler-Hellman double header. No, I'm not going to watch The Little Foxes and The Children's Hour. Little Foxes was part of a movie-day two weeks ago. Now, I'm going to watch The Children's Hour (brand new DVD...which I didn't buy ;-) and These Three (an old used VHS I found on-line--not on DVD yet).

What I did this weeknd.

2004-10-12T13:09:00.000-04:00

Here's a list of movies I've seen recently. And by recently, I mean last weekend.

Mrs. Brown

The War Room

Show Boat (1936), only the first 45 minutes or so

That's Entertainment!

The Little Foxes

The Young in Heart

The Pajama Game

Damn Yankees

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Plus 3 episodes of Sex and the City, from Season 2.

You could say I watch a lot of TV.

I did actually manage to work out this weekend too though, making me feel a little less like a couch potato.

But really, when you have a job where you sit around doing brainless tasks all day, all you can do is look for SOMETHING to think about. So, I watch a lot of movies on the weekend (most of which are courtesy of my close friend who has the most astounding movie collection and home entertainment center EVER) and nights, so that I have something to think about between brainless tasks the rest of the week.

I never really thought I'd be one of those people who lived for the weekends, and couldn't wait for 5 o'clock all day. But here I am.

One of these days I'll think about getting a real job. But not now.