Adaptation

Today I did something unusual. Exceedingly rare, at least for me, though perhaps not for you. I went to a movie. In the theater. Alone.

I went to a movie by myself once before. I was in college. I suppose lots of people do this all the time, but the out-to-the-theater experience for me is usually one that’s shared. My husband and I rarely see eye to eye on the films we want to see so those outings are few and far between, and I’m too far removed from friends for a short notice outing like today’s.

Of course there was a reason for my impulsivity, and the reason was An Education. I have been champing at the bit to see this movie since I heard about it, for the first time, at the Nick Hornby reading I went to last October. Hornby wrote the screenplay of the memoir by Lynn Barber.  Of course, this is a small, independent film and such films rarely make it the 40 miles south of Seattle to a theater near me. And as I generally prefer watching movies in the comfort and silence of my own home, I just wait the couple of months for the DVD.

The Oscar nominations were recently announced, this year expanding the best picture category to include ten films. An Education made it into the list and also received nominations for Carey Mulligan for best actress, and Hornby for adapted screenplay. Buoyed by its new high profile, I noticed today that it was indeed, finally, playing at a theater near me. “I’m going,” I thought, “as soon as I get home.” I noticed moments later that the DVD release date was finally set for March, and I paused. Perhaps I should just wait? Nah. 

Films are usually a gamble, but I knew I’d like this one. I am, after all, Nick Hornby’s biggest fan. (Hopefully not in a scary, Kathy Bates, Misery kind of way, but I wouldn’t put it past me.) And I did. Like this film. It is devastating and funny in the way that only Nick Hornby can make things devastating and funny. It’s a period piece, set in the 1960s, so it’s not like one of Hornby’s own novels, but he’s unmistakably present in the film. I don’t know anyone else who could make me root for a character I didn’t want to root for.

I won’t say anything else about the film except see it, and my boy is going to win an Oscar!

What was the last film you saw on your own in the theater?

Boredom

I can’t seem to find a balance between total, complete, sitting-in-a-chair-and-staring-at-a-wall boredom and pants on fire busy-ness.

This week has seen me working two jobs, 12-hours a day, and upsettingly unavailable to do some much needed party-prep for this weekend’s annual Groundhog’s day feast and festivities (more on that next time).

And now I’m sitting, waiting for my 4-hour weekly class to begin, knowing that after my rather dull 4-hour workday this afternoon, I will soon be rattling through whatever marginally entertaining ideas my brain can come up with to keep itself from falling asleep.

Here are some of those thoughts:

I just wolfed down a 6-inch sub and two cookies and was convinced I was still hungry. Perhaps it was the heavenly smell of Pagliacci’s pizza wafting through the air, or perhaps the influence of being served (mistakenly) a diet instead of a regular drink, but now in class, without indulging in that slice of pizza, I feel fine. I am occasionally stricken with a football-player sized appetite and it can take days until I feel full. Then I can survive for days on a low-calorie diet. The football-player appetite days are more fun.

After wofling down the sub, and looking through the “marketplace” for either a snack or a better drink, I ran into the professor I had last winter quarter. We started off on such an awful foot, yet I now consider him the best professor in the program, particularly in terms of academic interpretation and what I expected classes/lecture to be like in graduate school. He is also so sarcastic he makes Jon Stewart look like Pollyanna.

I have this lesion on my lip that is FINALLY starting to diminish thanks to the antibiotics I was taking to get over bronchitis, but has, as of this morning,  turned black. It’s hard to hide or cover up an ugly black zit on your lip. You just have to hope people think you drew it on there in a failed attempt to look more like Cindy Crawford.

One of my favorite shows, Ugly Betty, in the midst of what is its best season ever, has been cancelled. I’m annoyed, but happy I will have fond memories of the show rather than having to complain about how good it used to be.

I liked this NPR article on time as I’ve felt recently like time could just not fly by any faster. I think it’s why I like to travel and do home improvements, because they are sure fire ways for me to experience new things and feel more productive.

I have been told many times, amid tears, anger and/or frustration, that I will look back upon such and such with fondness. Some people were wrong about that, but some people were right.

I’ve been having a really hard time lately thinking of endings to papers and posts. But I also, in the words of the great Grouch Marx, can’t think of anything else.

Themes

I’ve been sick the past couple of weeks. First I caught a cold, then when it subsided, I was slammed with bronchitis. So I’ve taken in even more than my fair and usual share of entertainment, as a lot of my days have been filled by lying on the couch, slack-jawed and drooling, awash in the glow of a rectangular box. Perhaps it sensory overload, or perhaps it’s timely coincidence, but I definitely see patterns.

I liked the pattern I saw a few weeks ago of people revealing their true selves. That occurred on Ugly Betty, something else I can no longer remember, and then in the life of a friend of mine. The theme that I’ve seen over the past day or two, in The Hurt Locker (a good film that employed the rather maddening (to me) hand-held camera technique) and a season one episode of Mad Men, is that of “that’s all there is.” It’s a bit morbid, a bit unsettling, but as someone who thinks the same thing on occasion, interesting to see that others do too and what, if anything, they make of it.

 I also watched this film called In the Loop, a British political comedy about the beginnings of a fictitious war in the middle east. I read the reviews which called it a brilliant satire and gut-wrenchingly funny (I’m paraphrasing, see the reviews for yourself here), and I had an inkling that this was a film that I was NOT going to like. But I watched it anyway. You know, just to be sure.

Here’s the thing about humor – everyone has a different sense of it. I could tell without having seen a preview, just by reading the reviews, what this movie was going to be like. But hey, I like funny things, so just in case I was wrong, I didn’t want to miss out. This film isn’t necessarily unfunny in the way I think Superbad and Knocked Up were laugh-free pieces of offensive cinematic crap, but I personally didn’t find it that funny. I just – all right I confess – I didn’t get it. Maybe it’s because I’m not that invested in politics. Maybe it just didn’t seem ludicrous enough (a problem I sometimes have with The Office.)  Or maybe  it just wasn’t, as the British would say, my cup of tea. 

You know what else I think is unfunny (men, please skip ahead a sentence)? The Three Stooges. Never so much as even smiled at them. But I don’t think I’m missing anything there. I think it’s humor along gender lines. Same thing for the gross out juvenile comedies (though if you’re looking for a bit of raunch something that did make me laugh was Role Models.) But those things don’t make me doubt my funny bone in the way something like In the Loop does. In the Loop isn’t a gross out comedy, but it is a 2-hour four letter word fest. Which I’m not necessarily against, but here it seems the humor hangs on thinking the insults are funny, similar to but also very different from, an insult comic. There were no characters to care about in this movie, so who cares if they’re insulted? And the storyline about wanting to go to war but trying to convince the public otherwise – well yeah, that doesn’t seem very funny if you’re a member of the public and that’s exactly what happened, does it?

If someone can explain to me why this is funny, I’d be happy to listen, but I don’t think I’m ever going to think a film like this is funny.

Awkward…

A few years back, before I was married, I was preparing to move in with a coworker and his roommate. I was nervous though that it wouldn’t last (it didn’t) and that after I moved out, our work relationship might be forever damaged. I confided this to my work friend who told me not to worry about it, that he was too old to hold grudges.

You’ll all be happy to know that I am not too old for petty, childish grudges and making up awkward situations.

I’m currently getting a master’s degree at the same school where I got a bachelor’s degree. This is a HUGE school. Gigantic. Big, public state university. Why, you could walk around for months without bumping into a single soul you know. Well, you could, if Murphy’s law didn’t exist. Also, though I went to a huge school, my department was very tiny and consisted of three – count ‘em three – professors. I took most of my degree-related classes from one single professor, the lesser of the evils. I came to refer to this professor as my arch-nemesis, because like a cartoon superhero, I was forced to deal with him even though we didn’t really see eye to eye.

Well he turned up in a video we watched during my class last week, and he also turned up in the hall after accompanying one of the video’s featured performers to the class. I was very mad. My face flushed, my heart raced and I hoped he wouldn’t see me though I feel I spent an eternity looking at him to make sure it was him. There was no reason for any of this reaction. First of all, I’m sure I was but a tiny blip on his radar, since he is obviously still teaching the same thing at the same school ten years later. Secondly, if he’d stuck around and I’d felt the need to say hi or he did remember me, I was the only person that had the power to make that situation awkward. Although I don’t always let on, I’m kinda happy with the way things have turned out for me. Oh I’m still working on a few things for sure, but I’ve had an interesting post-college career and have nothing to hide about my personal or professional life. I suppose the only thing that would have made that situation awkward was when I proceeded to talk and he proceeded not to care. Which would have happened, because that’s the kind of guy he is.

Okay, I do have to say, when I was in college I used to like to throw a bit of humor into long research papers. David Letterman I’m not, but most professors appreciated my style. Not this guy. Instead of saying something like, I don’t think that tone is appropriate, he would take everything I said literally and make these obnoxious notes in the margins asking for more explanation or saying he did not understand what I meant. To this day I think twice before adding any levity to more scholarly writing, all because of him. Arch-nemesis.

I digress. I left school the first time with a small but growing amount of animosity towards the degree I earned. I liked what I was doing when I was doing it, but there’s a part of me that’s very structured and rule-bound that did not fit with the image of the program. I had to take both regular music classes and anthropological music classes and I found that for me personally there was much greater reward in studying music for music’s sake, rather than studying music for anthropology’s sake. (Incidentally I also liked studying anthropology for anthropology’s sake.)  I understand music as part of a participatory culture, but with everything I’d put myself through to become an educated musician, I wasn’t looking to engage with people who were participating. I wanted some of that ever-elusive dedication. I don’t know if this sounds like a horrible thing to you, but I know it would sound horrible to some of the people I knew. That’s probably why I conjure up awkward situations. Because if you were in my head, you’d find it awkward, too.

I don’t want to think of myself as a terrible person, it’s just that some things don’t fit together. I’m hoping and predicting a better (imaginary) relationship with the MCDM. So far, so good. No arch-nemeses. Still have a couple of quarters to go, though.

Away We Go

Away We Go ***

I had been contemplating sharing my thoughts on this small and somewhat forgotten film, starring Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live) and John Krasinski (The Office) but hadn’t gotten around to it. My thoughts were that I liked it, and I was surprised to like it as much as I did. It’s hard, at least for me, to not like Maya Rudolph. She’s a very talented comedian, and was very good in this film which showed off a more dramatic side. I liked her, but I also liked the story, in which the characters set out on a cross country trip to find the best place to raise their unborn child. This was a movie that I watched because I thought I might like it, even though it wasn’t particularly well received by critics (66% on Rotten Tomatoes).  The script was written by Dave Eggers, author of the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I also enjoyed, again, somewhat in spite of myself. There’s something very human about Eggers that I relate to, without relating in any way to the situations he writes about.

So why share my thoughts now? It’s because this film turned up last night on At the Movies in the Worst Films of the Year show. At the very least, it was chosen by New York Times critic A.O. Scott, and not my critic, Michael Phillips, who defended Rudolph’s performance (read his full review here). If it had been Phillips’ pick, well I might have had to find a new favorite critic. Still, I was taken aback. Even offended a little. You know what, not even a little. A lot. The rest of the films on the list were deserving of worst films. Films like The Ugly Truth, All About Steve, Old Dogs, and The Watchmen. Films that I never saw because even the trailers were painful to watch. How could this little charmer be expected to keep up (or down) with the rest of those stinkers?

I’ll admit that some of the people the main characters visit as part of the plot are caricatures. They’re not entirely realistic, but I thought the situations they found themselves in not that far removed from reality. Haven’t you ever visited a seldom-seen relative or long lost friend only to find out they weren’t who you thought, and then had to struggle through strained and uncomfortable dinner conversation?

I know, I know, it’s all a matter of personal taste. I personally hated last year’s Happy-Go-Lucky, couldn’t even sit through it, even though it was highly regarded by almost all critics. I was just surpirsed to see a film I liked make an appearance as a worst film. It’s usually the films Shaun likes that are on these shows. I would say if you’re a Maya Rudolph fan, you should definitely seek out this movie. I bet you’ll like it. Drop me a note, let me know.

New Year’s Eve Traditions

I took New Year’s Eve really seriously when I was a kid. I’d spend months collecting the chads from three-hole punches and ripping up scrap paper to make confetti. The night of, I’d buy lots of food and snacks from the grocery store, bring my bean bag chair down to the living room, plop it and myself in front of the tv and stay up until midnight. I always made it to midnight. Once a night owl, always a night owl.

I usually made a host of resolutions as well. Some people think resolutions are stupid but I always liked making them. The first day of the new year may be as arbitrary as any other for deciding to change things about your life, but I always put myself on a deadline to come up with the resolutions before midnight and the pressure was motivating. I’m not sure when I last made resolutions, but I thought I’d make some today (before midnight) and declare them out loud for safe keeping.

Well all except for one. I’ve been making one particular resolution every year for at least the past 15 years, maybe more. And I’ve never kept it. I’ll make it again this year and see what happens. Care to venture a guess?

As for the others, I want to…

Finish my novel.

Become physically stronger, particulary within my upper body. (I remember making this one last year, actually. Sort of kept it, but not really.)\

Finish school (throw that one in because it’s practically a given.)

Teach the cat to do the hokey pokey (How boring would it be to keep all your resolutions?)

Do/find what it takes to have more energy.

Cook more meals at home.

A sunnier attitude probably wouldn’t kill me.

Make decisions quicker. (This may be inextricably linked the the energy thing.)

And that’s probably good enough. Wouldn’t want to overwork myself. I don’t have the energy.

Not Another List

It hadn’t really occurred to me that it was the end of the decade until I started seeing all these end-of-decade lists. As you might guess, the end of decade lists that most interest me are the top movies. Particularly intriguing about this decade’s lists is that most of the films are crystal clear in my memory. The 2000s saw mostly my 20s, and it wasn’t until I was at least 20 that I was able to pinpoint just exactly what types of stories and storytelling I liked. This was also the first full decade when I could grasp all subject matters at hand and know, really and truly, if I personally liked a film, not just liked it because I was supposed to like it, encouraged by critics or friends. 

So lots of critics have these lists and no two are even remotely similar, except that a Romanian film about abortion (that I have not seen) called 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days is on just about every list. Most critics are also starting their lists with the disclaimer that their 10 films are not necessarily THE BEST films of the decade, because how could you  measure such a thing? No, they are just 10 good films that earned a spot in their blackened critic hearts.

I’ve mentioned before that I prefer modern films and most know that I prefer, as Shaun likes to call them “slice of life” movies. (Though it sounds much more derogatory when he says it.) This idea of creating a list of films from the decade that struck a chord within me was too good to pass up. Of course I haven’t seen nearly as many films as professional critics, but my taste isn’t nearly as wide either. I think the following films represent my tastes pretty well. And as always, please feel free to comment and add your own films to the list, or tell me if I encouraged you to seek out a particular film and what you thought of it. (Sorry, no refunds.)

So if you enjoy lists, then enjoy the list below. If you don’t enjoy lists, then I recommend avoiding the internet for the next few days.

Honorable mention to this year’s Star Trek film. If the second half of the movie had been as good as the first, it would have made my list for sure. It gave me a new respect for science fiction by creating characters I really, really liked. I know Star Trek has been around for generations but this was the first time it proved to me that it wasn’t just a bunch of geeky nonsense.

My favorite sequel was Before Sunset (2004), a film that was made ten years after its predecessor (Before Sunrise), with the story picking up ten years later too. Just a really neat conclusion to an open-ended film.

10) Garden State (2004)

   This one probably sounds cliché because it was meant to speak to people around my age, my generation. And it did. This film was not what I was expecting but I loved it all the same. Life is a roller coaster and the characters in this film are determined to experience the ups and downs as part of a full existence, instead of just riding off into the xanax-covered sunset.

9) There Will Be Blood (2007)

 I saw this film shortly after I saw No Country for Old Men and I couldn’t figure out why No Country won the best picture Oscar (except that Hollywood has no taste). The most off-putting thing about There Will Be Blood is the title, which makes it sound gorier than the unassumingly-monikered No Country. Blood is actually more a story about family. Not a happy story, mind you, but a very good one. A lot of people are calling this film a modern-day Citizen Kane. I wonder if it will hold up.

Juno (2007)

 Funny and poignant and you can’t say that about too many teen pregnancy movies.

7) The Station Agent (2003)

 Talk about a slice of life film. When his only friend dies, a man with dwarfism moves away to live his life in solitude in a small town, only to be befriended by a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own problems. Just an exquisite story that never hits a false note, and the performance by Peter Dinklage as the main character is outstanding.

6) Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

 The only film I’ve ever seen wherein I felt like I was reading a novel. A great novel. This is the most literate film on the list, including those that were adapted from novels.The characters and the plots and the beautiful language are things that are never seen on the big screen making this a truly innovative and fresh film.

5) Wonder Boys (2000)

 A movie about writing and redemption and figuring stuff out. Like the best Nick Hornby novels, the characters in this film start out desperate and downtrodden but end up on a note of glimmering hope. One of the only instances in which I can definitively say I liked the film better than the book.

4) The Lookout (2007)

 This film is an unstoppable force. First of all, it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt who is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. This movie has great characters and an intricate plot. It artfully walks this fine line between being a bank heist movie and a slice of life movie. I loved the bank heist part. I loved the slice of life part. Like The Station Agent, this was a smaller film so if you haven’t seen it, run out and watch it now.

3) Almost Famous (2000)

 This film is a love story about music. Like the main character, I too waa a young person enamored with rock ‘n roll but who was never really going to be a part of that scene. Every detail of this movie is pitch perfect. I actually prefer the 2 hour, 40 minute director’s cut of this movie to the two hour theatrical release. It’s got everything… Music, romance, travel, humor, peril, and an Oscar-worthy performance by Kate Hudson. Why, oh why, when she is this good an actress does she make crap film after crap film? Almost Famous was her first and best performance.

2) High Fidelity (2000)

 2000 was a great year for music movies. This is film about music, love, lists and life. I was champing at the bit to see High Fidelity when it came out, and I can’t remember if I saw the film or read the book first.  I think I actually read the book first. This is an instance where they monkeyed with the novel ever so slightly by changing the location from London to Chicago, but didn’t lose any of the book’s magic. In fact, they added some magic of their own and for my money, both the film and book are equally good. If you know how much I love Nick Hornby, you know that’s saying something. (Incidentally, I’ve yet to see this year’s Nick Hornby penned film An Education, but I fully expect it could bump one of the other films off this list.)

1) Lost in Translation (2003)

 Hands up, who saw that one coming? I love all the films on this list but Lost in Translation is an exquisite masterpiece. It’s the most controversial film on this list because you either loved it or hated it and if you hated it, you probably think I’m crazy. But this film just spoke to me. It was the first film since Bambi that made me cry. The characters in the film…I know who they are and I love them with all my heart. And this is a film that’s quiet and subdued and just lets you experience it rather than performing for you.

Christmas Traditions

A Christmas decoration I created.

Three years ago was the first Christmas Shaun and I spent in our house and we decided to host both of our families for dinner. Before the party, as a Christmas gift, Shaun’s parents helped us buy new floors for our two spare bedrooms, which were completely bare, having been stripped of the nasty carpet left by the previous owners but unable to be redone due to lack of funds. The floors were finished some time before Christmas, our offices were set up and the house, while not exactly complete, had no glaring omissions. I spent a good long time cleaning beforehand, and my mom brought buffet tables from her work so we’d have a place for everyone to sit. Shaun made prime rib and prawns and a good time was had by all.

The next year, we were housing my long-time friend/pen-pal and her husband who had just moved to Washington state. They found an apartment in Seattle just before Christmas, but they had no family or friends here and I wanted to host Christmas one more time at the house because I thought it would be most comfortable for them to have dinner at a familiar place. So I cleaned for a couple of days, and mom brought buffet tables, and Shaun made prime rib and prawns. A good time was had by all. Our Christmas gift was money to spend on our delayed honeymoon to Disneyworld, where we arrived one year ago today.

This year, I thought somebody else might want to host Christmas. But Shaun was the first to volunteer, happy to cook up a feast for all. I cleaned for two days straight, mom brough buffet tables, Shaun cooked. Good times. And this year our Christmas gift, from both parents, was money towards a new fridge which we needed because ours was on its last legs.

So we’ve inadvertently created a couple of Christmas traditions here. We have the families over, we cook roast, and we receive life  help as gifts. There’s another tradition, which is that of absolutely no pictures. Seems like it might be nice to capture some of those warm fuzzy holiday memories, but no one brings a camera. I fully intended to use mine this year but forgot amid the hustle.

I was super nervous the first Christmas we hosted because we’d not really had the families together in that capacity or close quarters before. And as much as Shaun and I are different people, so are our families. I was, as the pessimist in me likes to do, picturing the worst. A friend of mine (another only child) recently told me that she thought it was weird when I got married because she didn’t see either of us (her or myself) as the marrying type. I kind of understand what she meant. The idea of letting people in, of purposely allowing the chaos and unpredictability of  others to invade what was once an orderly and reliable existence… well let’s just say that type of thing can take up a lot of my resources.

But it’s worth it. And a great time was had by all.

Sid in his new favorite spot. Not Christmasy, just 'cause.

A Homely Dame

His Girl Friday  ***

I think it’s probably fair to say I’m not the most inquisitive person in the room. Certainly in my classes I don’t ask questions very often, if ever. I am of the firm belief that ’tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. However, when it comes to pop culture and entertainment I have a voracious appetite for, well let’s just call it  ”knowledge.”

This appetite has led me to watching a lot of old movies, because I simply must know where a particular quote came from or what previous film the film I am watching is referencing. Some examples: I watched Shane when I was about 14 because every few days the theme song to the cartoon Animaniacs would reference it. (We’re Ani-mainy, totally insane-y, Come Back, Shane-y, Animaniacs!) I watched Sunset Boulevard to find out why she was ready for her close up. I somewhat recently watched Midnight Cowboy to find out who that Ratso Rizzo character was. And I think it may have been forced upon me by my high school English class, but eventually I would have watched Apocalypse Now anyway, because honestly, who doesn’t reference that movie?

Watching old movies with a modern sensibility isn’t always easy. The pacing is slow, the editing is jumpy and sometimes the audio is so bad they’re hard to hear. And, though critics everywhere will probably shudder as I say this, I think a great deal of them don’t hold up all that well. Midnight Cowboy lost me somewhere amidst its drug-induced ’60s haze. And I’ve never quite understood the fuss over Casablanca or *gasp* Citizen Kane. But I keep watching because 1) I MUST know the origins of the references, and 2) some of them are real gems. On the Waterfront… Now THAT was a great movie.

Though I am a great fan of the Marx Brothers, in general I think comedies have a hard time holding up, because all the types of jokes in those movies have been so overly referenced in modern culture that they feel tired and predictable. Yet that didn’t stop me from watching His Girl Friday.

I had to watch it. They use two clips from it in a Pomplamoose video for a song called Expiration Date. They don’t just use them, they make music out of them. So you understand, I had to see the original. 

The clips the music video uses are in the first ten minutes of the movie, and I could have stopped watching there. But I was compelled to continue watching. I was already  interested in what was going on. This movie was made in 1940. That’s kind of amazing in and of itself. There are only about three sets and three characters, but there’s a lot of fast paced verbal comedy and that’s the kind of comedy I like best. Scenes went on for at least twenty minutes, no breaks, barely any cutting. It really was more like a play. But for all its old-fashionedness, the lead character is a woman journalist and that must have been rare in 1940. Not only was she a journalist, but she was the best journalist at the paper.  Oh and there was this actor in it, maybe you’ve heard of him, Cary Grant? He was a real Don Draper type, at least in the looks department.

I didn’t love this movie but believe me it was 90 minutes better spent than many, many of the 90 minutes I have spent on other movies. It made me wonder though how long these references will last. As these movies get older and absorbed into the mainstream, will people forget where they came from? Will they stop being referenced all together? Does anyone younger than me know why [insert random comedy actor] loves the smell of [insert random scent] in the morning?

Now can you resist the temptation to watch that movie? Or sing this song? I couldn’t.

COM 597.Final Paper

Behold.

Music to Live By