22 November 2006

Salton Sea Birders


Did you go to the Salton Sea last weekend to look for the Ross's Gull? No? Why not? Do you have any idea how otherworldly the Salton Sea looks? That's what I kept thinking -- it looks unworldly, or otherworldly, misty and mysterious. Keep looking long enough and you're bound to see hobbits bobbing along in wine barrels.

Of course it's completely of this world, it is, in fact, what this world is. It's our landscaped lawns and oversized dinosaur sculptures on mini golf courses that are truly otherworldly.

Don't tell anyone that I stared at duck decoys for half an hour, wondering why all the ducks were sleeping at the same time.

16 November 2006

"Secrets & Lies" (1996), dir by Mike Leigh

English movie stars are the least attractive movie stars in the world – you think I'm going to mention the teeth, but I'm not; I don't care about the teeth, I'm tired of perfect, blindingly-white, slightly too big veneers winking out at me from every mouth on TV. I like messed up teeth just fine.

(Notice that Cary Grant moved to America before becoming a movie star. He was too good-looking to be an English movie star.)

English movie stars are unattractive because they allow themselves to be and represent and inhabit real people. The best of them don't play characters; they play people. People aren't pretty. Brenda Blethyn plays a whiny, annoying woman with a high-pitched whine of a voice who drinks too much and allows her grown daughter to treat her like shit while she collapses in tears on the bed. She wears ugly stretched flower pants over her lumpy bottom, topped with hideous crotched tops. These are real clothes that a woman like this would really wear; these are not clothes that a costume designer or stylists picked out, stealth chic like most American movies, where the clothing is an extension of the expertise and sophistication of the wardrobe department and an acknowledgement that we audience members want to see beautiful people being beautiful and pretend we can be like them no matter where we work or how much money we have. We may be a waitress in a diner, but we're really Michelle Pfeiffer. We may be a smart but trashy secretary, but we're really Julia Roberts. Maybe it has to do with the American bootstrap mentality, and our insistence that class is an illusion and wealth is a lottery ticket away. I don't think English people think that way; in fact, they “take the piss out” of those who do. It doesn't make them or us better, but it sure does make for a different kind of actor.

Director Mike Leigh won't work from a script; he truly collaborates with his actors to create the characters and map out the scenes, and the narrative cohesion and depth of his approach is stunning, partly in its contrast to the surface that most movies present to us, the indication of feeling rather than the reality of it. In this movie, Leigh collaborated with astonishing actors who had the guts to be ugly, both in looks and in feeling. The characters are unlikable, pathetic, even hateable in how awful they are to one another or how weak they seem to be, and how stubbornly stuck they are in their unhappy lives and destructive patterns. They can't communicate. They'd be better off without each other.

Wrong. This movie is an emotionally mature work with great compassion for its characters. It proves that confronting your problems, exposing your secrets and lies, can release you in ways you never thought possible. It also shows how incredibly difficult it is to do that.

Structurally, the movie sneaks up on you, slowly, imperceptibly (“organically”) revealing bits of the characters' lives and pasts and how they are intermingled and who relied on whom at what point and who sacrificed when and how the power and inner strength shifted over time. It lets you put the pieces together as the movie progresses, making you an actor in the storytelling. You become complicit, responsible somehow, in the long line of decisions that led to this day and this breaking point. You want desperately for them to work it out and be happy, because you know that they deserve it at long last. Maybe everybody does (not Hitler), maybe we just need to know more to feel more, maybe not, I don't know. Aren't some people just shits who need to go far away? No?

The people who made this movie love people; they are humanists in the strongest, bravest sense. They believe in human beings and in the power of kindness and love. They helped me get a little closer to believing in them, too.

And of course, these actors (Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Blethyn, Claire Rushbrook, Marianne Jean-Baptiste) are beautiful. I just needed to look at them.

13 November 2006

Second Life, same as the first

I heard a thing on NPR recently about a web world called Second Life, and there are linden dollars that you can exchange for US dollars, and Suzanne Vega did a concert in this virtual world, somehow, and a reporter has an avatar in this world where he is also a reporter, but whereas in real life he is Adam Whatever, in Second Life he is Adam Reuters, and the whole fucking thing was surreal to listen to because they were talking about it like it was a normal thing when in fact it was insane.

Perhaps the world has advanced and I have not? I only have the first life so far myself.

05 November 2006

Greatest Story Description EVER

There was a movie on cable yesterday called "Mother Knows Best" (1997), starring Joanna Kerns, Christine Elise, Grant Show, and Jessica Walter.

First of all, that's a great TV movie cast, because it's made up entirely of TV people we all know and probably like. Even if the movie sounds unappealing, you may say "But I'd like to see Joanna Kerns again, so I'll tune in." TV actors get to be our TV friends, and there is real pleasure in catching up with them again, even in a goofy TV movie.

Secondly, this is what the movie is about, according to the TIVO description:
A woman finds a husband for her daughter, then decides he's not good enough and must be killed.

I'm not being snide when I say that that makes me want to see the movie. The wonderful thing about this description is that you could give it to five different writers and get five wildly different movies, any of which could be good: Thriller, Black Comedy (starring Bette Midler, in 1988), Murder Mystery, Psychological Drama, Horror (if the husband lived on as a zombie, preferably played by present day Patrick Swayze).

I couldn't watch the actual movie, unfortunately, so I can't tell you whether it's good or not.

02 November 2006

Gauguin Woman At the Comfort Inn


I don't know if it really is a Comfort Inn. I think that's where she'd stay, though, if she was visiting St. Louis or something.

But did you notice that her room also has the famous convex mirror from Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait? That's pretty neat. I'm going to have to ask for one of those at my next hotel stay.

Maybe she has a business meeting coming up at Half-Nude Industries.