laid out.

i've been sicker than a dog the last day or so.  i blame faulty chicken or some sort of airborne death cloud but my life has been relegated to couch and toilet.  thus, the lack of writing and such and such.  i'm mildly better today, drinking water is only vaguely stomach-unsettling, and the thought of food doesn't break me out in sweat.

that said, i haven't been doing a terrible amount of thinking either.  instead i spent the day tangled in blankets on a couch watching odd episodes of the Inspector Clouseau cartoon series from the late 1960s and revisiting the still brilliant Up.

really, i wish my brain was functioning properly so i could write more, but it ain't, so we'll call this a short one.

enjoy labor day weekend.  hopefully i'll be in full fighting fitness by tuesday.

watch this: CATFISH

friday was a bit poor in terms of my scheduling.  i'm in the midst of writing a story about exercise boot camps and have been putting off attending a particularly grueling 'boxing bootcamp' for weeks now.  friday was the big day, but after kiss the criterion conquistador goodbye and then lying in bed, dreading said bootcamp for four hours, i managed to sleep right through my 5:15 wake-up call.  

after waking up, i stumbled across town to one screening, which i arrived at punctually and with enough time to scan my book while i waited.  afterwards i had an hour to get down the street to see my second screening of the day. on bike i decided that i'd pop by a popular coffee shop and grab a cup before the film started to fight off the sleep that was nagging at my eyes.  sadly, the line for said popular coffee shop was so long and so slowly attended to, that even with a solid forty minutes between films, i was unable to get a cup of coffee.  now under-caffeinated and starving i had to settle for an apple and a bag of pretzels purchased from the 7-11 (that didn't have any change in any of the registers) as my screening snack.  perturbed but feeling better, i sauntered in to the screening of indie-documentary catfish, only to find that the film had started at 1:30 and i was already a half an hour late.

it's disconcerting to stumble in to a film late.  at home it doesn't make a difference, you just ask a bunch of questions to those watching and hope you didn't miss the juicy stuff.  in a theater though you have to push past a bunch of completely involved viewers and then quietly open your bag of pretzels and stare at the screen completely bewildered by what the fuck is going on.  to say the least my purchase of an apple and a bag of pretzels was predicated on the idea that i could eat one and open the other prior to the film, thus there wouldn't be bag crinkling and apple slurping.  poor choice.

with all of this falling around my shoulders though, the last hour or so of henry joost and ariel schulman's catfish totally floored me.  it's a documentary about a man who falls for a lady through facebook and, well, that's pretty much all i want to say.  the story that unravels within this picture says so much about the social media-soaked world we live in.  it's really a searing look at the idea of what it is to meet someone without ever having actually seeing them, and about the sort of pain we as human beings going through to combat loneliness and the abject dread of life failure.  

it's really all i can say without giving away too much.  but please, if you have the opportunity, you really need to get out there and see this film.

i, grouchy and hungry, loved the shit out of it, and i imagine if you're lucky enough to see the first half an hour it will only increase your love.

a little unfair

i saw a single man on tuesday night.  i thought it was a visually stunning film anchored by an impressive, unfolding performance by colin firth, an actor i often times overlook.  stylistically the film kills and you can see tom ford's obsessive need for all things beautiful blazed across it.  at times, especially near the end, the film falters with stiff performances and dialogue that can't ascend that, but in general it is a great film, original and challenging and one everyone should see.

and of course, everyone cannot.  the film, about gay man who months after the death of his life partner still fails to move past this love, is touching, beautiful, truly expressing in many scenes, what love is and what it must be like to no longer have that love in ones life.  there are hints, touches of sexuality, the glimpse of naked man (his genitalia artfully covered by shadow and pose) and of course the film, a scandalous occurrence in our modern times, is about a relationship between two men.

thus, the mpaa gives the film an r, limiting its release and applying a massive scarlet letter across it that reads 'this film is unfit for your children to see, possibly too disturbing even for you who might be weak of heart.'

i saw flipped this week as well.  rob reiner's new film about the budding romance between two eleven year olds set in the 1950s.  it's not a terrible film by any means, it adeptly shoots for a series of predictable plot points and with a few flourishes manages to hit them.  it is so predictable it borders on the provincial, barely attempting to push the status quo even for a moment.

and of course, everyone can see it. the film, again about a heterosexual relationship set in the 1950s was awarded a pg by the mpaa, opening its bland white-bread doors wide open for the entire world to feast their eyes upon.

i saw centurion this week as well (it's been a big week for films), the new film by genre-film master neill marshall.  the film follows a group of roman soldiers on the run behind enemy lines from a hunting party of dangerous pagans.  it is beyond gory.  there beheadings and impalings and throat-cuttings and spearings and all other forms of horrible blood-letting through out.  there is just as much skin of the man shown in this film as in a single man but all of this is buffered by some of the most entertaining bloodshed i've seen in a while.  it's a great gory picture, entirely unsuited for most children.

and of course, not everyone can see it.  the mpaa gave the film, quite accurately i believe, a hard-r for violence and thematics and child-murder.

a single man a touching, beautiful story about the grief of losing the love of your life gets an r.  flipped a low-key, period piece about meeting the love of your life gets a pg.  centurion a brutally violent tale of war and revenge gets an r.

seems a tad unfair if you ask me.  for the film and for those who won't have the opportunity to watch the film because it challenges conventional norms.

just saying.

happy 90th ray harryhausen!

who might you ask is ray harryhausen? just the most innovative stop-motion animator of all time.  the man who single-handedly helped to plant the love of the fantastical deep in to my mind.  the man behind jason and the argonauts' skeletal rampage, the man behind the one eyed-centaur battling a griffin to a punch-frenzy death, the man who made it possible to bring fantasy to life on the silver screen.

this god of the film world jumped the fence in to the pastures of nonagenerianism this past weekend and hopefully you, and your friends and family, got a chance to dive in to the smattering of retrospectives of his work that popped up across the country. i for one eschewed the societal trappings of friendship for five hours and, in the lovely castro theater, feasted on jason and the argonauts and the surprisingly entertaining golden voyage of sinbad.  i can't say that the directors the bookended the work of harryhausen's clay-genius always brought the most amazing films to bear, but i can certainly say that even fifteen, twenty years after seeing it, the arrival of titan talos in jason and the argonauts still had my glossy-eyed and slack-jawed.

harryhausen, may you live another 90.

what's in the theaters this weekend?

i used to write a column for another website that basically gave me the opportunity to predict which films i thought were going to smash at the box office and which films i thought were going to spew radioactive waste on time the lifeless forms of the viewers. i always thought it entertaining, but started to feel awkward because i wasn't actually seeing any of these films, i was just sort of guessing if they were going to be good or bad.  i wasn't offering the audience any sort true fact, just a series of educated guesses on what i thought might be the best film for them to actually spend their hard earned money on.

after being subjected to the wide world of reviewing, to seeing nearly every shitty film that exists on the planet that has plopped on to the silver screen, i've decided that, whether or not i've seen everything, i'm going to return to this educated guess system of critiquing.  hell, i'm seeing a lot of films that i usually wouldn't, and i'm buffering those with even more films, thus i think i can spend at least a small portion of time each week making sure you, my sensitive readers, don't mire yourself in some shit storm of a film because the advertising tricks you in to thinking it is an intelligent bit of comedy.  or on the other side of the spectrum, perhaps lead you towards a film that looks terrible, but is actually a glowing diamond in the rough.

the films

nanny mcphee returns, d. susanna white

cast: emma thompson, maggie gyllenhaal, ralph fiennes

what is it?: the sequel to the first film about nanny mcphee, a beloved though hideously warted english nanny whom takes a trio of children on a magical ride ... or something

prediction: you know, from the cast present, you'd think this film would be some sort of stuffy british period piece involving a comedy of manners and perhaps a few big, flowery hats.  ralph fiennes and maggie gyllenhaal joining a cast that already features emma thompson?  i mean on a certain count it just smells like a bunch of actors watching the ink dry on a couple of six or seven digit paychecks, but maybe, just maybe this is one of this under-the-radar children's flicks that actually has some merit, and when you're forced by your bawling four and five year olds to pay three hundred dollars to attend this flick, you won't actually have the unstoppable urge to end the lives of your entire family.

or it could just be another shit-show sequel aimed to cut holes in your money tree and change your whining blobs in to even more testaments the youtube generation.  

will i see it?:  was offered, and kindly rejected. 

--

piranha 3d, d. alexandre aja

cast: elisabeth shue, jerry o'connell, ving rhames, richard dreyfuss

what is it?: a film about mutant radioactive piranha's ... in 3d

prediction:  i worry about this film, not because of its premise, but more so because of the studios decision not to screen it for critics.  usually when a film has this dump of a concept, the studios throw it out to the critics hoping they'll either lambast it so badly it'll draw people's attention like a freeway accident or that it'll actually be entertaining enough that they'll give it a "gee shucks, pretty good" review.  with out a screening though, it might just be bland horror crap.  though alexandre aja's the hills have eyes and haute tension are both absolute gore-fests that worked on almost every level.  though the ending of haute tension is a total bust.  

will i see it?:  my weekend is pretty open, and i know one particular roomie who might just be game for a beach-centric gore-splosion rife with cheesy dialogue and the slim possibility of nudity.

i've been accused, for as long as i can remember as being someone who 'falls asleep during every movie.' 

this is quite true.  

david thomson, san francisco resident and hugely prolific film critic seemingly faces a similarly ironic dilemma.  his thoughts on the matter:

'it is the just reward for insomnia that i sleep most easily at the movies. why not? i always suspected they were dreams.'

from the brilliant compilation of tiny film reviews entitled have you seen ... a monster of a tome that i'm still working through.

watch: japanese department store ad from the 1970s

faye dunaway, hard-edged femme fatale of bonnie and clyde.

faye dunaway, lover of eggs and pitch black rooms.