Category: Movies

Be here to feed me, and possibly clean up my vomit

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After many aborted attempts, I finally managed to finish Be Here To Love Me (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a documentary about Townes Van Zandt. You’ve probably heard his songs, but didn’t realize it. I’ve noticed his name over the years, in liner notes and during concert chit-chat. I knew he was a great song writer, but I didn’t realize just how…messed up and tortured and drug-addled he was. It’s an interesting profile, whether or not you like his music.

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We have a vet appointment for the boys in a couple of hours. What with it being -612 degrees out there and the eventual dreaded thermometer ass attack, I don’t think they’re gonna much like us.

The place is dead anyway

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Since Nellie’s sick, we’ve been laying low this weekend, which means we’ve watched lots of movies & recorded TV. Actually, because of her faux-OCD, Nellie’s holed up on the couch right now with the kleenex, her laptop and some downloaded Veronica Mars. But we’ve also watched:

  • XX/XY (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was something we’d never heard of, but IFC has been advertising it like mad. We both like Mark Ruffalo, so I recorded it. It wasn’t bad; a little whiny and self-interested maybe, but I’ve seen worse. I had to laugh at the tagline though: “There’s no room for honesty in a healthy relationship.”
  • Power & Terror: Noam Chomsky In Our Times (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a Japanese documentary that just featured a couple of lectures and interviews with Chomsky shortly after the 9/11 attacks. It was interesting to hear his take on things when feelings were still so raw…he asked for perspective (“The best way to stop the practice of terrorism around the world is to stop participating in it…”) but also contradicted those proclaiming imminent doom by saying that, all in all, the world is a much better place than it was even 50 years ago, and *far* better than it was two centuries ago.
  • But I’m A Cheerleader (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off as a pretty smart and biting satire about sexual mores, religion and politics, but ended up degenerating into a plain old girl-meets-girl love story. Meh.

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I don’t get companies who treat their email address like a fax line. It’s not something you just check once a week, people. It’s a personal communication channel. You know, like a tel-e-phone? Catch up.

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CBGB called us tonight from the pub around the corner and asked us to join. Since we hadn’t gotten off our asses all day, and since Nellie was feeling better, we did. They’d just left a chocolate-making class we gave CB for her birthday, and had loads of their own handiwork with them. We had chocolate-covered strawberries and truffles over pints of beer and nachos. Somehow it came up that they’d never seen Swingers (money, baby!) so we came back here to watch it. Then CB spilled tea on herself and we made her watch Family Business, which scandalized her. So not a good night for her.

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And now: the NBA all-star skills competition. God bless the PVR.

Gender dysphoria, new-house euphoria and iambic pentameter

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Stupid Blogger…I tried to post this Saturday but it didn’t work, so it’s been sitting in a tmp file on my desktop for three days. Also: stupid me for forgetting about it.

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We finally got to see Transamerica (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night, which was a must-see before the Oscars given what we’d heard about Felicity Huffman’s performance. She lived up to the billing too; it must’ve taken an incredible effort to walk, move, act and react like a man who was trying desperately to become a woman. And for a woman to be confident enough in herself to take a role that requires you to play a man trying to look like a woman…that must be on the rare side in Hollywood. Good for her. If she doesn’t win the Oscar, something is seriously wrong with the academy.

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CBGB moved into their new house today; we went over and had dinner with them. Couple of drinks too, to wind down the day and help GB forget about painting. We got Vietnamese from a nearby place called Mi Mi, which was pretty damn good…pork, shrimp & chicken, beef and chicken, some with rice, some with vermicelli. There were some spring rolls and sugar cane wrapped with shrimp and some other big salad roll-y things. Anyway, it was all good, especially when mixed with a Hacker Pschorr weiss bier.

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Yay, Jen Heil. Boo, Atlanta Thrashers.

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It’s funny how, despite studying Shakespeare throughout high school, it’s only recently that I’ve caught on to what iambic pentameter is.

Dude, I would *never* use a red lightsaber.

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Apparently this is how my brother sees me. In South Park terms, anyway.

He’s done drawings of a few of his friends as well, but the funniest one is our other brother. I howled when I saw it. Killer.

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Inside Deep Throat (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was an interesting documentary. I’ve not seen the titular film, but apparently I’m the only one…it’s the most profitable film ever made. It never gets tiresome to watch a small segment of society throw a complete spaz about some Valhalla of decadence that’s sure to bring society crashing down around our ears, only to see it become completely mainstream a decade later. See suffrage, abolition, inter-racial dating, same-sex marriage, women showing their ankles in public, Elvis’s hips, etc., etc.

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I hate figure skating. It’s boring, the scoring system is incomprehensible and corrupt, it just looks fucking goofy. So when I came home from work today and flicked on CBC’s Olympic coverage, I was annoyed that I had to wait out the last few minutes of the “pairs long program” or some such. But I saw something that blew me away…a Chinese skater, who can’t weigh more than 90 pounds, fell so hard after being thrown that she landed in a splits position (hello, groin pull), smashed her knee into the ice and rammed into the boards. Everyone thought for sure they were done, but she actually managed to fight through it and complete the program. She managed to do some more jumps and throws and stuff, and lo and behold they win the silver medal. Pretty frickin’ tough for someone who weighs about as much as my leg and competes in a sequined skirt.

Il Wanko. Sorry, that's the best I've got right now.

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We just got back from the tail end of Nellie’s birthday celebrations. Short version: dinner at Luce, a stay at Le Germain, shopping at Williams-Sonoma, Ashley & Bay Bloor Radio. That last one was more for me. Anyway, I’ll give lots more detail later.

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I watched The Life Aquatic (imdb | rotten tomatoes) earlier this week. While I tend to enjoy Wes Anderson films more than most people I know, I was onside with pretty much all the other fans: this one had a few good moments, but wasn’t as good as Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, or even Bottle Rocket. Still, I think it deserves better than a 51% rating; a substandard Wes Anderson film still has twice the imagination and wit of most mainstream fare.

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Il Divo = better dressed Backstreet Boys.