Watched: 1492: Conquest of Paradise

I watched this a couple days ago and I've pretty much forgotten most of it. It's a two-and-a-half hour movie and Columbus doesn't even embark on his journey until an hour in. Sigourney is great as always but she's in it for about 3 minutes. There were some nice visual moments but otherwise... Snore.

Classic "Wingers", Ab Mentions, Notches

Some people have been trying to say that this season of Community is somehow inferior to last season. That the show has not reached the same great heights. And to those people I say, have you seen "Intro to Political Service"? Sure there have been a few weak episodes in the bunch, like the sort of flat anti-drug variety show and the space mission, but that's no different than season one, which had the weird Jack Black episode. But there have also been zombies, claymation, a conspiracy-off, a mockumentary sendup and the best thing so far as I am concerned, a Dungeon & Dragons game. This season has BROUGHT IT. "Intro to Political Service" is especially great, because of the introduction of GCTV. And Dean Pelton's "sister's" Uncle Sam outfit.

See, what I initially fell in love with this show for was the pop culture references, the rapid-fire, all-systems-go styling of joke delivery, and Joel McHale's face/biceps. But what I've stuck around for is the sweet and sincere way the characters care about each other, and the attention to detail that rewards avid fans (such as myself) who rewatch these episodes continually.

And so, behold: GCTV.

I love... so many things. I love that no one knows anything about Vicki. I love that Pierce idolizes Caligula, and that they label Starburns as Cambodian, even though I'm pretty sure he's said he's Greek. I love that Troy describes Garrett as, "It's kind of like God spilled a person," and that Leonard remembers all wars and is a whig. I love that Magnitude, formerly just the guy Chang invited over to Jeff's apartment, quotes Keats. I love that Annie's scorecard confirms that yes, she has boobs.

And I love the streaming captions that run underneath Troy and Abed's talking heads. So many callbacks! I wrote down the ones I caught; I think I got them all:

• Starburns: "My name is Alex".
• Human Being mascot: Offensive to animals? More at 8
• Chess club moves meeting unexpectedly, refuses to reveal why.
• Basketball team loses ball.
• Chicken finger shortage continues.
• Professor slater still missing.
• "No paintball this spring" claims dean.
• School dance rate down 200%.
• Reports continue of mysterious "air vent monster". (Annie's Boobs!!)
• Dean suggests end of year picnic, implies "Western Theme".
• Dr. Ian Duncan quits drinking again. (Oliver!)
• Tickers: Do we watch them? Story at 12

Bonus:

No words. There are no words.

Watched: Falling Down

So, Joel Schumacher is a hack. Right? Can we all agree on that? And when he goes for silly or fun, the results can sometimes be palatable (D.C. Cab, The Lost Boys, Batman Forever, Phone Booth), but then he tries to make serious drama and it just comes off as ridiculous (this movie, 8mm, Flatliners, ST. ELMO'S FIRE, The Phantom of the Opera). And make no mistake, this movie definitely considers itself as having a point to make, although what it is somehow gets muddled in its laborious 2-hour runtime. That the white man must take back... something? That unemployed defense weapons experts are dangerous? That if your husband hasn't beaten you but is just kind of an asshole you should not get any respect from a police officer nor do you deserve a restraining order? That fast-food joints should serve breakfast whenever the customer wants it, and Korean store-owners should price things how Americans see fit? Yeah, this movie had something to say alright, and it says it through caricatures and stereotypes.

While the first hour is filled with race baiting to the max (The Mexicans are gangsters! They can't let the nice white man be on his way! The skinhead biker store owner is a Nazi fetishist! The Asian shopkeep is a cheap jerk!) the second hours allows for at least a BIT of grace, courtesy entirely of the fine performances from Duvall and Douglass. Duvall's speech towards his fellow officer, explaining finally why he's willing to quit the force for his wife and the resulting revelation that perhaps their infant daughter's death was a little shady, that her mental condition is not exactly stable; Douglas's equally harsh revelation that after a long day of seemingly rebellious fighting back that he may have in fact just been another kind of bully, a bad guy... these are probably the only two worthwhile scenes in the whole movie. Everything else is just Schumachery, over-the-top histrionics in-between deeply lulling periods of extremely boring exposition.

But what does it say about me that I've, without intention, seen so many of this man's movies? If he's a hack, I'm definitely a sucker.

Watched: I Am Love

Eh. This was really beautifully filmed, and Tilda was amazing as always, but frankly I was kind of bored.

I will take one in every color, please.

Oh, wow!

Screenshot from this this video. I've never understood the distinction between British Isles/UK but this pretty much lays it all out. Helpful!

Watched: Inside Daisy Clover

What a strange movie, even for 1965. Seeing as Natalie Wood was famous first for being an adorable child and then for her romantically girlish roles in Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass, and West Side Story (all movies I love), it's interesting that this movie came out four years after WSS, right between Sex and the Single Girl and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (More on that later). It's definitely a movie with a purpose and something to say, and for the way that it plays with both the done-to-death meteoric rise and fall of the Hollywood star story and the romantic melodrama, I think I kind of loved it. Also, the male leads are young Christopher Plummer and Robert Redford. Swoon? Swoon.

So Wood plays Daisy Clover, this kind of bratty-tough tomboy who lives in a shack that is literally on the boardwalk with her crazy (Dementia? Alzheimer's? There's definitely something going on although it's never really pinned down. She's just kind of nuts.) mom, MAUDE! Okay, just kidding, it's Ruth Gordon playing what Maude would have been like if she hadn't met Harold and had instead had a couple daughters and gotten progressively weirder and crazier.

So Daisy actually is a pretty good singer, and sends a record to Swan Studios. They round her up for a screen test, and then decide to make her into a star. The first step of which includes institutionalizing Maude, making her formerly disinterested older sister her guardian, and giving Daisy the ol' Hollywood makeover. So then she's in a bunch of fairly stupid-looking musicals, becomes a huge star, falls in love with and marries fellow Swan Studios star Wade Lewis (Redford), finds out he's a total adulterer, a flake, and kinda gay, sleeps with Swan (Plummer), rescues her mom from the nuthouse, her mom dies, Swan tries to bully her into working again, she has a complete mental collapse, tries to kill herself, realizes she's way too awesome for suicide, and decides instead to fuck 'em all.

Some other stuff happens with Swan's super sad sack of a wife Melora (played with a lot of subtlety by Katharine Bard, who it would seem I have not seen in anything else, but who was great in this- her character is so overwhelmingly soft-spoken and sweetly maternal that when she inevitably bears her true colors it's kind of gut-wrenching) and Daisy's bitchy older sister, but that's the gist of it.

As you can probably tell from the photos there's also some "footage" from the so-called "Blockbuster musicals" Daisy's starring in. Like I said, they all look kind of stupid. But while the meta nature of the rise and fall of a star is not really a new story for Hollywood to tell, I think that aside from that one complaint, this one really tells it well. By pulling Daisy so abruptly from such a disadvantaged (but happy?) position, it makes her reluctance to be a star and growing horror at the compromises she has to make believable; as soon as her sister and the Swans are running the show you realize she never had a chance.

And her bouncing from half-hearted teen romance to terrible marriage with the secretly bisexual, adulterous Lewis to the openly adulterous, malevolent Swan is handled well too, as is the ensuing mental collapse when the Ol' Pal dies.

I am definitely one of those people who thinks that Natalie Wood was one of a kind, incredibly beautiful but still a really talented actress; especially when it comes to heartbreak. She did heartbreak so well. I watched Splendor in the Grass once, in tenth grade, and like Requiem for a Dream and The Stepford Wives (original), I thought it was an incredibly well-made, well-acted movie and I am glad I watched in once and that was enough for me. I was depressed for days. But getting back to Wood; she also had a good eye for movies. She made a pretty graceful transition into adult fare between Rebel and B&C&T&A, one that younger actresses could probably learn something from. This role definitely shows that awkward transition; Wood clearly isn't a young girl but she's still such a small woman that she plays the bravado and the vulnerability with equal skill. The movie is attacking Hollywood but also glorifying it, showing the subjugation of the studio system but also how it can protect people. It directly addresses the very issues Wood was probably dealing with, the move beyond adorable America's sweetheart. But beyond all this, and really I cannot stress this enough because after a somewhat morbid and subdued final half hour it is the fantastically anarchic untraditional ending, which has Daisy triumph on nobody's terms but her own, that sells this whole movie.

What.

I like that she takes her coffee cup with her. Because she's not going to give up a perfectly decent cup of coffee just because she's got a fiery, structure-damaging, consequences-be-damned point to make.

This a lot of beautiful for one screen, even with the ridiculously terrible Prince Valiant haircut.

Please stop.
When the studio head's wife is personally called in to lifelessly implore you to institutionalize your own mother and then tell people she died... run. Run away.

Maude is also a fortune teller, except she uses a regular pack of cards? And I'm pretty sure she says "Get ouuuuuuuuutta heeeeeere!" in her Ruth Gordoniest Ruth Gordon voice at least thrice.

Cleverbot: Not That Clever

Watched: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Well, I'm at least glad I got to see this exceedingly condensed and weirdly open-ended conclusion to the saga. There were some parts of this I was totally appreciative of, like how the director skipped over the pages upon pages of exposition setting up the section and the police force working on Lisbeth's case and the PM's task force working against both of those grozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... That's how I felt reading parts of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. There a couple hundred pages in the middle that were exceedingly boring. All skipped over in the movie, for which I am grateful. I'm glad the court room scene got to play out more or less faithfully to the book, since it's more or less the most awesome part of the story, but I'm sad that they kill Zalachenko right away and don't keep any of the book's suspense of Salander and Zalachenko being alive in the same hospital. They also didn't include any of Salander's internet friends who play a pretty important role in her redemption, which, boo. There's the weird ending between Salander and Blomkvist which is, well, weird, but the showdown between Salander and her brother kind of makes up for it. She's such a badass.

Watched: The Decline of Western Civilization, Parts I and II

Well I found both of these on Youtube, although only half of Part I had been uploaded so I guess I'll never find out what the beleaguered manager of the Germs went on to do or what was up with that alarmingly Tommy Wiseau-esque French guy. The picture below is from that part, and deals with the punk scene in LA in 1979 and 1980 (the picture is from a montage depicting guys giving each other home made tatoos). I particularly enjoyed the section on the Germs and Darby Crash, who like most punk rock stars is an awesome mix of repugnant and mesmerizing. It's good, but not as good as...

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. This was just... amazing. I didn't take many screencaps but like I said, the whole thing is on Youtube, even if not in great condition, but it should definitely be watched by everyone. It just paints such a ridiculous picture of excess and tragedy and bathos and it's crazy to think that this was people's LIVES. They lived this warped, commercialized image of metal where the music was somehow everything and not even a consideration.

I don't even know. It seems like everything about that lifestyle was contradictory; women supported these self-purported rock stars and yet were subjugated to ridiculous amounts of misogyny or disregard even while being one of the main motivations for being a rock star, the musicians wanted only to be famous and yet the famous ones were filled with regrets and misgivings... the list goes on and on.

Some of this doc's scenes have become pretty notorious, like the dude getting wasted in his pool while his mom watches stoically or the Kiss guy being interviewed in a bed full of girls, but I picked this picture because I think the "Metal Beauty Pageant" is both the low point and the highlight of this documentary. Seeing girls completely subjugate themselves to the so-called rock star panel of judges, wriggling around on the floor and humping the mic in their thong leotards and bleached/permed hair, is embarassing. Juxtaposing that footage with external interviews, like that of a female musician who looks down on these women because they're kind of idiots, or the super old Hugh Hefnerish clubowner who has a vacant, giggling blond on each arm and who laughs skeezily and his skeezy contest in his skeezy club, or the judges who ridicule the same girls who completely humiliate themselves for their approval, makes this alternately tragic and cringe-hilarious.

This is probably all old news as this doc has been around since the mid-80's, but I was completely fascinated by this film. These people honestly believed that they could all be as famous as Aerosmith or Kiss despite the obvious glut of bands who looked/sounded/behaved exactly the same as they did. To them, there was no alternative to this scene they had completely entrenched themselves in. There's a naivety and innocence to that which is almost refreshing, but not really? It's amazing to see that they have absolutely no backup plan because I think most people I know these days are a little more savvy, a little more willing to hedge their bets. But these kids never considered that metal might fade and that their chance wouldn't come. They figured, hey, I'll either get famous or I'll continue being a ridiculous LA douchebag for the rest of time! Some of them joke about how they'll end up on skid row if they don't make it, but judging by the way they behave, I think it's safe to assume all of them never thought they'd actually get any older or any wiser than they were at the moment Spheeris interviewed them. The results are kind of amazing.

Things I Thought About While Swimming this Morning.

Memories, misty water-colored memories. I never thought of myself as a movie freak growing up, but I guess I did watch a fair amount of them.

Five Favorite Disney Cartoons:

1. Lady and the Tramp

2. 101 Dalmatians

3. The Great Mouse Detective

4. Fantastia

5. Dumbo

Five Favorite Disney Movies:

1.The Parent Trap (either one, really, I loved them both. But I did see the original first.)

2. The Three Lives of Thomasina

3. Hocus Pocus

4. 101 Dalmatians

5. Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey

Ten favorite non-Disney, pre-Pixar cartoons:

1. The Last Unicorn

2. The Snow Queen

3. Gulliver's Travels

4. An American Tale: Fievel Goes West

5. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

6. The Land Before Time

7. The Wind in the Willows

8. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

9. Rock-a-Doodle

10. All Dogs Go to Heaven

Twelve non-Disney Live Actions I was obsessed with as a kid:

1. The Neverending Story

2. The Neverending Story 2

3. Star Wars Trilogy (I'm counting this as one since I don't think I've ever not watched all three in a row)

4. Anne of Green Gables

5. The Polar Bear King

6. The Princess Bride

7. Ordinary Magic

8. The Sound of Music

9. The Peanut Butter Solution

10. The Witches

11. A Little Princess

12. Pippi Longstockings

(I know what you're thinking, no muppets? I'm not really sure why. Not enough princesses/dogs?)

Twelve Movies I'm pretty sure I would have been obsessed with if they'd come out when I was still a little kid:

1. Big Fish

2. Where the Wild Things Are

3. The Chronicles of Narnia movies

4. Avatar

5. The Golden Compass

6. Bolt

7. The Secret of Kells

8. Hellboy

9. Ratatouille

10. The Fantastic Mr. Fox

11. The Fall

12. Up

And in a completely unrelated note, but still a list I thought of while swimming...

Five Most Romantic Movies I've Ever Seen:

1. The Fountain (That's right. I said it. I meant it.)

2. La Belle et la Bete

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

4. Pride and Prejudice (I'll take the Firth or the Knightley version)

5. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

So, yep. That's all. It's been a pretty random day but whatever, I amuse myself.