Big movie post

No poems today, but three movies to comment on. Have been depressed lately and rather than keeping up with my impressive gym schedule, have been bingeing, purging, and watching movies. It's healthy.



Rachel Getting Married

After watching this I found The Silence of the Lambs on YouTube and watched the first half. Think I'll finish it tonight after reading the Bernie Madoff story in Vanity Fair. Finished my classes for this week. Well, I found Silence of the Lambs because it, like Rachel, is directed by Jonathan Demme.

1. Rosemarie DeWitt is gorgeous and note to self, FIND AND LOOK UPON that purple dress she's wearing when she tells them she's pregnant. She looks like a combination of Mary-Louise Parker and Elisabeth Shue (hey! both mentioned on this tiny blog already!)
2. Anne's rehab shag was hot. Wait, the man, not her hair, which some might call a shag.
3. Anne, who lost to Kate Winslet for Best Actress for this role, is a bratty self-obsessed rehabbed hellion who gets out of a clinic to come to her sister's wedding. The wedding is all kinds of gorgeous, but will hipsters start imitating it? Have they already? We learn that while 16 and stoned, she drove her baby brother into a lake and couldn't stop him from drowning. She can't forgive herself, so can't do anything else but get fucked up and make the family hate her more.
4. Bill Irwin, as the dad, was gorgeous. So heartbreaking.
5. Their mum was played by Debra Winger (terrifying! she and Anne have a bitchfight with real punches - it's horrible) and their stepmum by Nancy McNally from The West Wing - awesome!
6. It's shot in hand-held but not vertiginous, nauseating Robby Mueller hand-held, and scenes are 'captured' rather than set up for the shot.
7. warmth, family, love, pain, family, noise, love
8. The wedding cake! A masterpiece.

Synecdoche, NY

The DVD had a critics' round table with various bloggers: now two of them are on my Favourites: Filmfreak, with Walter Chaw, and Some Came Running, by ex-Premiere Glen Kenny. It was naff but also worth it for those two.

1. Did not know there was a place in New York state called Schenecdaty, but now I do.
2. Agreed with external reviewers that first half great, second half dr-a-a-a-ag-g-g-g-ed a bit.
3. Caden Cotard, Adele Lack. As she has for a while now, Catherine Keener scared the shit out of me. God, she's a bitch.
4. Basically, life's what happens when you're making other plans. Or something. Spend too much time trying to make authentic art and your life is over.
5. Why do we have to find men who don't know how to live romantic and charming and tragic? Aren't they just losers?

Slumdog Millionaire

Tired now so will return to this later.