Netflix: I Am Love (2009)

The movie's description is:

Oscar winner Tilda Swinton shows off her multilingual skills in director Luca Guadagnino's atmospheric melodrama in which family dissension, unbidden desire and other tensions bubble to the surface during the patriarch's birthday party. When the seemingly picture-perfect Recchi clan gathers at the family villa to celebrate the great old man, the veneer of civility quickly falls away in this Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.

How I hate thee, let me count the ways . . .
I hate your preening self-importance.
I hate your extreme close-up food porn money shots.
I hate that there wasn’t a gang of murderous robots to destroy the Recchi family whilst giving everyone tetanus.
I hate your really dramatic music preceding someone . . . *gasp* . . . walking out of the room!
I hate that Tilda was a Russian, but “became [so] Italian” that she forgot her real name!
I hate that one person died, but you didn’t follow it up with more deaths.
But most of all, in every way, I hate Oscar winner Tilda Swinton’s multilingual skills.

Netflix: eat pray love (2010)

For when you need to muster the rage to murder someone.

Netflix: Grey Gardens (1975)

When I read the synopsis for Grey Gardens, I was pumped. I’m a fan of documentaries and this seemed right up my alley. 2 crazy old ladies (mother and daughter) live in a dilapidated mansion and spend their time tending to multitudes of cats and raccoons. Certainly, they MUST be interesting. Right?

Well, no. They are eccentric. I'll give them that, but they are not interesting and I found the movie barely watchable. As a matter of fact, you can just phone in the eccentric thing. There are actually some rules. Allow me to illuminate:

1. Be interesting.
2. Don’t fucking sing all the time.
3. Speak in turn. They were incessantly talking over each other and squealing at the camera.
4. Lose the creepy painter kid. (Eccentrics always have a creepy painter kid hanging around.)
5. Put some clothes on for god-sakes.

Ok, that list didn't apply so much to all eccentrics, just these two in particular. If you go to the Netflix page and read the reviews (or read professional reviews) they'll shovel a load of BS about "This is a fascinating study of family relationships, of interdependency and the effects of social isolation, even if that isolation is incomplete and voluntary." (Jill in Idaho). Blah blah. Basically, lovers of the film are telling you, "They didn’t used to be old! They were younger – and betterer looking! It's crazy! Look at them now! They are older and nostalgic."

I suspect you could go to your local watering hole and hear more of the same, except more interesting and you'd more likely be drunk. And trust me. After 15 minutes you'll want to be drunk - really, really drunk.

Netflix: Deliverance (1972)

So, if you're Bobby's (Ned Beatty) buddy, how long do you have to wait until you start telling squeal jokes? Like 6 months? Is that too soon? I know it's not funny, but it was written kind of funny what with all the "you look like a hog to me" and "purdy mouth" talking. Was it wrong for me to giggle? Yes, yes it was.

Anyway, banjo boy steals the show. Then a bunch of bad stuff happens, but the dueling banjos theme will stick with you for hours. Recommended!

jack palance just got hispanic on your ass

I was watching The Professionals which I remembered seeing had Jack Palance in it. Why hadn't I seen him? Oh, right, he is playing the Jesus Raza character -- my bad.

These movies always interest me where they will have, you know, real, actual Mexicans in most of the parts, but then they'll put Jack Palance out in the sun for 3 days straight so he can play a Mexican. Was Hollywood really so bereft of Mexican acting talent in 1966? Surely there was already a huge immigrant population. Couldn't they tapped into that market?

Strange choices, but it's the kind of thing you'll see all the time in "old" movies. Old movies, who am I kidding? It wasn't so long ago Fisher Stevens was rockin' the "brown face" for Short Circuit. I mean, you couldn't find another HUMAN that's as funny as Fisher Stevens, let alone an actual Indian guy.

At any rate, Jack gets the girl. She probably wasn't really Mexican herself and wasn't married to the old white dude at all! It's all lies with these Hollywood types!

Burt Lancaster was awesome - per usual.

Netflix: Bug (2006)

Aphids are everywhere and they're sting crazy!

Yah, this was a strange one. I don't disagree with much of Ebert's review other than the part about her going nutso "never seems hurried." Well, I don't know about you, but I would like to think it would take longer than 30 seconds to go from 0 to batshit insane.

I didn't really care for it, but it was interesting. So you shouldn't see it . . . or maybe you should. Wait. Can you take a look at this bug bite?

Netflix: Atonement (2007)

Stop. Spoiler time.

Oh, I'm a whiny little British girl that has an active imagination/makes shit up. Wouldn't it be cheeky of me to tell a lie about my sister's lover and send him to Turkish prison? Would it? I'm a cheeky monkey. Then one day I will take it all back and tell the authorities that my sister's lover is actually a stand-up guy and once saved my dumb, drowning @ss when I jumped in to see if he'd come after me. His hair looked ever so nice and I didn't think he'd do it. But he did! That was cheeky too. Keep in mind I was like 13-years old and the time, not 4. Aren't I cheeky? I am cheeky and lucky, because, in hindsight, he should have let me drown.

I can't emphasize my cheekiness enough. Do you know how cheeky I am? Do you? Well, I didn't actually do the part about exonerating my sister's lover. Instead, I wrote a book about how happy they would have been had I maybe said something and had they not died in the war. Best part, I even interrupted the one chance they had to do it. I'm a cheeky monkey.

Netflix: The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)

top 5 things I wanted to happen during this movie:

1. Terrorist attack at current location of book club meeting.
2. Jane Austen's rotting corspe to reanimate and beat them to death.
3. Each member to be stricken by previously unknown illness rendering them unable to read (but only Jane Austen's works).
4. Super-swine flu.
5. The end.

I don't even really hate Jane Austen. But this movie went from 0 to irritating in the first 8 seconds of the title sequence. It's true.

Netflix: Perfect Stranger (2007)

I liked the tv show better.

Netflix: Doctor Zhivago (1965)

I don't really have any thoughts on the movie. I mean, other than the heavy British, I mean, Russian accents were pretty hilarious. I thought it was well done and theMonica could have done without all the adultery, but, hey, I didn't want to gauge (hurts way worse than gouging) my eyes out. It had that going for it.

At any rate, I know a dispropororpoportionate percentage of this blog's readers are incredibly smart and have advanced degrees and whatnot. And the movie did pique my curiosity. I'm looking for a good book to read to learn all about Julie Christie. No, not her, that slut. I want to learn more about this time in Russian history. I'm leaving it vague ("this time") because I don't know how far I would need to go back tsar-wise, nor how far into the revolution. That's where all you history Phd's/Phd's to-be come in (I'm including you Alan).

And I'm looking for the straight dope. I don't want a romanticized view written by some '30s style American/British communist-sympathizer intellectual (if I just made up the existence of that class of people, please disregard) nor the late-Tsar's autobiography.

This is like homework. Nose to the grindstone people!

546 LARGE, melonfarmers!

So, I was at the Grog Shop to see Afternoon Naps, AC Newman and a couple of others that it's too late for me to find links for.

At any rate, Grog has a Galaga and it's my favoritest arcade game of all-time. I had previously achieved a high score of 468 medium-LARGE, which is pretty good for dudes that used to play Galaga as a kid and are too curmudgeonly to figure out the new video gaming systems. I'll take Galaga and NHL '94 on Sega Genesis as the 2 best games of all-time, thank you.

I have a sweet spot with being drunk and playing Galaga. I was probably one PBR past that spot as I lost a couple of ships being a dumbass, but otherwise I was in the zone. When all was said and done, I achieved the titular score - 546,000+.

Now, having recently watched The King of Kong (highly recommended) I knew that the all-time Galaga high-score had to be some astronomical and impossibly attainable number. You see, I don't get obsessed with things to the degree necessary to get even, oh, I don't know, 1/25th of the all-time high . . . 15,999,990. Yah, that's right. I can't even imagine the necessary time to get that good at that game.

Then I thought, "Hey, maybe this Krogman guy has a Galaga blog with tips and whatnot." I google and this is the first result. Needless to say I am not willing to go to those extremes to score 16 million. I should note that I couldn't find anything definitive saying this Krogman is the same as the Galaga Krogman, but here's a picture of the Galaga Krogman. Same guy? Looks like it might be . . .

Netflix: Charlotte Gray (2001)

Now with "spoilers"!

I'm usually not to much of a stickler in the "speaking English where it's not an English-speaking country" vein. I mean, it is kind of annoying and strange for every Roman to have a British accent, but I assume that's better than a bad faux-Italian accent. And maybe the producers don't know any good Italian actors and this isn't Fellini where we're dubbing audio on top of the actors random mouth-mushings (paraphrasing Day for Night here).

But, Charlotte Gray is supposed to be about a Scottish Londoner who becomes a member of British secret service and is assigned a mission with the French resistance. Wherein she continually compromises herself and others in an attempt to learn about her downed pilot boyfriend.

Generally, the non-native speaker spy is a good plot device. Will Vichy French peasants notice that she just dropped a "bullocks!" amidst discussion of baguettes? This possibility is entirely lost. I think they needed to do something to indicate to us when she was supposed to be in "French mode". Perhaps something like this:


Charlotte comes to find out there her boyfriend is dead. She's sad. Then, at the end, it turns out her boyfriend is alive. Apparently her disillusioning overlords had presented manipulated evidence to make her think he was dead so she was no longer pining whilst she was supposed to be spying. She like wasn't even happy when she saw him. Very, meh. She gives him a fist-bump, denies him the reunion hook-up and returns to France to be with her commie revolutionary. Hmm.

Netflix: My First Mister (2001)

There are some movies on netflix that you hate so much that you can't wait to log back into your account and drop the one-star bomb on their sucky-movie asses.

Albert Brooks was rockin' a ridiculous looking porn/pedophile mustache, which was strangle a propos.

A whiny, angsty high school melodrama with pedophilic undertones.

And so, thus endeth the notes for my thoughts on My First Mister which I typed many, many months ago. For me, Albert Brooks at his best is forever traipsing at the precipice of annoying. In this case, he plummeted off the edge about 8 seconds into the movie Wile E. Coyote style with anvil in tow.

Netflix's summary (I doubt Netflix actually wrote the text) starts with, "An underappreciated comedy . . . " Truer words were never spoken.

Netflix: The Lost Weekend (1945)

You know how you'll get drunk a couple of days in a row and on day 3, you're kind of hungover and you'll think, "Man. Why did I do that? Maybe I'm an alcoholic." Then you watch The Lost Weekend and you think, "No. That guy is an alcoholic." You don't? . . . Whatever.

I gave it 5 stars and that's like the most.

Netflix: No Reservations (2007)

producer: Isn't this kind of trite? You know, like formulaic, clashing personalities meet, fight and eventually fall in love? Pseudo-stalker/admirer takes job which he's overqualified for in order to be near woman he only knows through reputation . . . seems like it's been done before.

writer: But, they're CHEFS!

producer: Sure, we learn about foie gras, and really, nice touch.

writer: Rare!

producer: Right, got it. But, can't you add . . . I don't know . . . something to it.

thinking

writer: I got it! Orphaned niece comes to live with her. Tears, hilarity and poor child care ensue.

producer: SOLD!


Alternatively, it was only about the woman and the orphan, the love affair got shoe-horned in and ultimately became the entire movie.

Netflix: Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Was being such a bitch!

I like Noah Baumbach and I'm a huge fan of Kicking and Screaming, but he's developed this habit of writing characters the audience can only dislike. Likable characters reveal an odious flaw or are only minor characters.

It makes for a depressing experience.

Netflix: Willow (1988)

= Lord of the Rings - Ring + baby

Netflix: Into the Wild (2007)

Or . . . Grizzly Man II: Eulogy for the Needlessly Dead

Contra Grizzly Man, I do not think Chris McCandless had a death (by bear) wish. I think he thought he was on some crazy adventure that would turn up roses and leave him with countless tales of adventure to tell.

He was not completely reckless, in that he prepared somewhat for his adventure. I say somewhat because, wanting to learn about smoking meat, he asked someone. And then wrote what the guy said to do in a notebook. And then when he later shot a moose, he ran back to his base camp and grabbed his notebook. Ok, ready to smoke some meat! Now, granted he had prepared himself for the need to be able to smoke meat, but having an list of instructions probably isn't enough preparation. In fact, any instruction set that begins with "cut out heart" probably needs to be experienced/practiced a time or two before you're ready to "go live" (as it were).

Eventually, after a hundred-some days in the Alaskan wild, the guy (most likely) starves to death. Inspiring, no? Yah, I don't really get the fascination. Alaska is riddled with bodies of guys like him. The wild is not a kind place. That's why we invented civilization. Guy was also kind of a dick. He left without saying anything to anyone and he didn't communicate with his family in any way over an entire 2-year period. He didn't even have the courtesy to make a late-night phone call from some phone booth to say, "Hey, I'm not dead (yet)." Admittedly his relationship with his parents was strained, but he didn't even notify his sister (whom he was supposedly very close to) of his plans. That, much like Alaska, is harsh.

sweet, glorious capitulation

Netflix will now, and forever, be rockin' profiles. I like to think it's because of the fear I generated in them, knowing my scathing review of their decision would be read by in excess of 7 people. Kudos to Netflix for doing the right thing. And by the right thing, I mean, not alienating customers and encouraging them to keep handing over their money by doing what they prefer.

quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard

I love Netflix, but this is (earmuffs) fucking stupid (/earmuffs). In a nutshell, profiles allow theMonica and I to both enjoy Netflix. While I have 400+ movies in my queue, theMonica has her own queue under my account with which she can add and prioritize movies as she pleases. When she watches a movie from her queue and returns it, she receives another movie from HER queue. It allows her to get movies she wants to see in a timely fashion without us having to reorganize one, giant mega-queue everyday.

Then, they say the old profile queues will disappear on 9/1 so you have to "consolidate" (I assume manually) or print them out. (Print them out? Let me fire up the dot matrix.) I don't know. I guess they'll otherwise disappear. It was confusing. WAIT. It was confusing Netflix - better not do it!

I always thought of Netflix as a company that "got it," whatever that means. Now they're just a bunch of idiotic idiots that mindlessly get rid of a great feature because a few morons somehow created a profile and then saw something shiny and poked themselves in the eye.

At any rate, I left this comment on the blog linked above:

Next from Netflix . . .

Netflix to discontinue use of "adding machines" for movie rentals.

Citing mass customer confusion over how to use their "electricity boxes" for effective movie rentals, Netflix has announced they will no longer allow DVD rental by computer. Unhappy customers had complained of CONFUSION and DISORIENTATION caused by the bright shininess of their monitors and the WHIRRING, WHIRRING of computer internals. "Boxes make me dizzy," one befuddled Netflix users said.

Netflix suggested users pony express new additions to their queues or they could do that thing where you hitch a bag of mail to a passing-by train. Of course, if this also confuses, Netflix suggest shouting movie titles very loudly and hoping a Netflix representative hears you. One poor sould was heard roaming through the streets shouting, "CRASH!" into the night air.

When pressed for comment a Netflix representative said, "People began using their machines in unforeseen ways. Take profiles. Profiles are frightening and scary. How can one person be more than one person at the same time? That's witchcraft where I come from and we must discourage that type of behavior." He continued, "We at Netflix decided that it'd be better to discontinue the use of 'devil boxes' for movie rentals rather than being forced to boil a bunch of our customers."