Completely Unnecessary

Against all odds - and really most of recorded history - Australia got a film before anyone else. Namely Cloverfield, which I was excited to see a) because it’s JJ Abrams and LOST is still kind of awesome and b) it’s fodder for my post-9/11 disaster movies PhD, which is totally impractical but is still a fervent dream. The Statue of Liberty gets blown up and NYC gets a pummeling. Great stuff.

And, unfortunately, I’m going to give it what I imagine must be the worst kind of review in Abrams’ mind: meh.

It had some interesting elements, but was dragged down by incredibly stilted dialogue (shame on you, Drew Goddard, you’ve done some great stuff) and just a general inability to build interest in the characters. Luckily, they don’t seem that interested in each other either, so that works out. The direction is uninspired - the filmwork is jarring but good - Matt Reeves is a TV director and it shows.

Cloverfield’s major redeeming factor is the line I’ve quoted in the title. I think I laughed for nearly a minute on that one. That’s the Drew we know and love. But! One line does not a disaster movie make. I will give Abrams credit for not pulling his punches, though; he deals out the death not just the destruction.

So, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t particularly interesting either. And at only 75 minutes long, my $15 ticket is all the more upsetting. And I’m now convinced that Abrams has no idea how he’s going to wrap up LOST. I think he just likes weird and inexplicable.

So then we snuck into Juno. People who approximate my taste in films all gave glowing reviews of this film, but again I was unwowed. If I had to come up with a one sentence review, it’d be: ‘Wow, teens sure have a whole lot of funny words’ or ‘Motherhood is rewarding even in the most trying of circumstances, sometimes pretty contrived ones.’

But getting back to Cloverfield, perhaps ’some thing has found us.’ Walking home tonight, something scurried along the path, and I literally cannot tell you what phylum this beastie belonged to. A bug? A rodent? Who he hells knows?

Which brings me to a point I’ll leave for tomorrow - provided I don’t die from the Off I just sprayed all over my bed to keep the mosquitoes away.

Update: Inexplicably, the Age thought Cloverfield was amazing; um, the NYT did not.

Update II: The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips pretty much wrote the exact review I would have - if, you know, I was writing for something other than my own personal amusement (and didn’t have some strange LOST loyalty to Abrams about not wanting to give the monster secrets away. Sad!)

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And by ‘breach’, I mean ‘flying United’. Ew.

America has been teh fun. I think I ate everywhere I needed to (though confidential to Irazu, I hope you step up the burritos back up when you get done renovating) and saw nearly everyone I needed to see.

A note to Australians: no brunches for a while. I’ve been to so many freaking brunches since I’ve been home; it’s muesli and yoghurt for the next month or so.

What craziness did I get up to for my last night in town? Um, I saw There Will Be Blood because I’m sure it won’t open until June (or later) in Oz.

Daniel Day-Lewis was amazing, but he was overshadowed by the guy playing Eli Sunday, the preacher. I couldn’t place him during the film, but he turns out to be Paul Dano, the silent brother in my totes favorite film evah, Little Miss Sunshine. I thought he was good in that wretched little movie, but he was incredible in this. TWBB dragged a bit about 3/4 through and I couldn’t figure out why until Eli turned up again. He’s like a younger, brown-eyed, American Cillian Murphy. I expect great things (which Murphy can also get on to doing any time now).

Hey, so every minute I spend blogging is one less minute I have to do all the insane amounts of crap I haven’t gotten around to doing over the past six weeks. If it can’t be left to the last minute, it isn’t worth doing. Or so my philosophy appears to go.

Lygon Street gelato in T-30 hours!

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I swore at my mother yesterday.

We went to see House’s great new production of The Nutcracker. As young Clara peeked her head around the corner, I was so surprised that I turned to my mother and said, “That’s fucking Laura Gray!”

And indeed it was. Laura and I grew up together and I’m ever so happy to see her make good (though she’s been doing successful work with her comedy group Triplette as well) at my favorite Chicago theatre.

The show was completely re-envisioned as is House’s wont (and strength). It’s the same team that did The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz, and they delivered again with similarly creative and imaginative touches. (I am staring to think, however, that Jake Minton is a tad obsessed with snapping the necks of his characters).

The show is great and really good fun (might be a bit scary for any super little kids). Heaps of imaginative characters (especially the lithe and limber Monkey) make the show seem far too short.

House is running the show at Steppenwolf Upstairs. I’m pretty bummed that House seems to have left Viaduct for good. I’ve always really liked the huge rambling space and their ability to completely alter it for each new show. That being said, they do good things with the proscenium at Steppenwolf, too.

Tickets are a bit pricer as well ($29, $20 for students and industry) in the new space, but they’re available at HotTix, too. They’ve opened another block of tickets for the week after Christmas- which means the cast is going to be doing, I think, nine shows the final week.

If you need family-bondy Christmas ideas, I highly recommend it.

Tickets at Steppenwolf or 312.335.1650, or at Hot Tix.

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But my vote for creepiest piece of music ever is still the third movement of Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. I think they might have used it in The Shining, and if they didn’t, they should have.

I’ve heard it maybe 200 times, but - let me tell you - at 1:20 in the morning, the bit starting around the 2:00 mark is enough to make a girl look around her lounge room and wish her roommates were still up.

Well, back to writing about 9/11! It’s all fun and games here at the Blue House.

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I’m not supposed to double post from my the Melbourne Metblog, but I’m too excited - loosely-based internet rules be damned!

John Cage is one of my favorite 20th century composers. His most famous piece is ‘4:33′, in which no actual notes are played. That’s interesting and all, but I’m in love with his prepared piano stuff. His technique included shoving (very carefully) a bunch of stuff (frequently everyday, junk objects) into pianos and composing around that. Some of it’s really amazing.

Well, I’ve just spent 15 minutes failing to make the audio player work, so that’s thrilling. I’m sure I’ll think about this time when I’m whining over my 12,000 words due in about three weeks. Here’s a youtube clip instead (there’s a bunch of lead up, so I’d start watching from 5:00, the piece starts just before 6:00):

Here’s another. This is actually from the Prepared Piano set I wanted to play, though not the one I wanted. It’s pretty neat:

Anyway, this Friday the Melbourne Arts Festival is running John Cage’s Musicircus. It goes from dusk (5:48pm) to dawn the next morning. There’s all sorts of music, art, dance, theatre, etc. The lineup looks amazing, though there are literally so many acts I didn’t even get to look at them all properly.

So excited for this. It’s going to be 25 degrees as well, but, being Melbourne, the low is going to be 9. Sigh.

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I got free tickets, so I went to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical tonight.

Now, I’m a bit of a hag, so I’ve seen me some gay, but, without equivocation, I can say that was the gayest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life. They could have brought Cher up on that stage and made her perform Scissor Sisters songs while wearing Judy Garland as a hat, and it still would not have made the show one ounce more homosexual.

The final number was also a bizarre display of Australiana, with the entire cast dressed as bottlebrushes (a native flower), emus, koalas, Bob and Benji as kangaroos, cockatoos, Jesus lizards and the Sydney Opera House. This is a callback to the original film, but still, I felt really bad for the three women in the furry koala suits; they did not bring the sexy, despite their skimpy bustiers.

I can only imagine the American equivalent, which would have had far more eagles and flags… and possibly a Kodiak bear costume.

The show was fun, but I’m getting a little sick of musicals that just rehash dated pop songs. I technically haven’t seen any others, but this one was enough. I will say that a seven year old boy singing I Will Survive is pretty cute. Also, Guy Pearce is still a better drag queen than many drag queens.

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It has been widely observed that I can’t enjoy movies because I insist on analyzing them. This is not true. For instance, my favorite part of Transformers was about a four frame cut of two elderly Qatarian men. They looked on blithely as seven marines were chased, guns blazing, by an enormous, scorpion robot. They both had a look that said, “Eh, I’ve seen worse.”

As usual, I laughed alone. But I did enjoy myself.

Over at The Stranger, Transformers was described as “retarded Republican-scented fascism porn”. Maybe not, but were some definite smacks of gung-ho Americanism.

Most notably - Bumblebee. All the Autobots were good ol’ fashioned GM American cars, but they beat it a bit over the head with Bumblebee. In the cartoon he was a VW Bug, but that kind of national socialist bullcrap doesn’t sit so well with America, so he’s a Camero instead. Not only that, but he actually attacks a yellow bug sitting next to him that… whatisname is maybe going to buy. American automotive engineering is aggressively superior to that of other nations.

It’s not.

But it is in this movie - there are alien robots, anything could happen.

Second - aliens attack Earth and AGAIN they’re fighting in the southwestern desert. It’s almost as if that’s where most of our ‘undesirables’ turn up. What with immigration reform being a hot topic the last few years, I can’t imagine why they’d make a movie about Americans fighting aliens in the southwest.

That being said - this movie is a bit different because the battles take place in podunk towns. I can’t remember where they said it was occurring (somewhere in Nevada?), but it sure wasn’t LA or New York, the two usual suspects for disaster fiction. Message = terrorism/immigration can happen anywhere.

A brief aside: Can John Turturro please be in every movie? Thanks.

I’m less excited about this project than I was as it was running through my head in the shower this morning. Work, class and a glass or two of wine will do that to you. Also, I’ve been reading Wonkette’s live blogging of the CNN/YouTube/Morons debate and I feel like writing in bullets instead of complete thoughts.

Which brings us to my last point, which is: I don’t consider myself hugely affected by September 11th. I wasn’t in NYC, I don’t know anyone who was directly affected - I’d feel kind of cheap to say that it ‘touched my life’. That being said (and minor spoilers, I guess), during the big fight Starscream takes Optimus Prime through a skyscraper. He’s in complete plane mode, so it’s basically a jet driving straight through a skyscraper. I was pretty upset by that image, actually. I thought it was tacky, at best. Worse, if they were using it intentionally, which they probably were. I don’t think too many Americans would have missed that one.

So Republican fasioporn? A bit. There were some complexities - for instance the bad guys were almost uniformly instruments of war. Then again, (spoilers if you’re dumb!) they were defeated by the American Army and not by the other aliens. Rah America.

It was still overly long and kind of crappy (sorry Paul - I don’t think he reads this). Seriously, cut some stuff, Mr. Editor! I do not need to watch people hunt for an object in a bedroom for half an hour! Yes, yes, it yielded numerous masturbation jokes. He he. Hilarious. Cut to the action.

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Okay, so my undergrad thesis was on this terrible 1987 movie called The Believers, and how the film both reflected and created images about Cuban immigrants, Santeria, and the various ritual/satanic abuse nonsense that was going on at the time.

That is the single most concise manner in which I’ve ever described my thesis. You’re welcome.

Anyhoo, I’m becoming increasingly obsessed with a new genre of films called ‘torture porn’ - basically, Saw, Hostel and the like. Here’s a perfect description from an LA Times’ review of Hostel II:

…the plot finds three nubile coeds trapped in an Eastern European sadism club where fiends on vacation pay to slowly carve up strangers.

They’re part of a specifically post-9/11 genre, and seem to have a lot to tell us about fear of the unknown, the the emasculation created by such fear, and its relations to femininity. These films (as well as things like Law and Order: SVU - my least favorite television program this side of According to Jim) differ from slasher films of the 1980s, though they are in some ways closely related. I could write all sorts of a thesis on this.

But I can’t watch them.

I’m the girl who made jw sleep in my bed with me after The Ring. Andrew and I had to walk out of Severance at the Chicago International Film Festival (a selection I’m sure I’d be hearing about for years if only he could remember going). I even pretended I wanted to read my book at Danielle’s second-grade birthday sleepover where we watched A Nightmare on Elm Street. (In my defense, it was a highly inappropriate choice for seven-year-olds.)

fourfour is my inspiration for this post, though I ultimately disagree with many of his points. Here’s the quote from Hostel and Hostel II’s director that set me off:

I had been looking for stuff you could do to girls that would be awful but not so horrifying that you felt like you couldn’t watch it or you felt like you had been kicked in the stomach.

I’ve highlighted the operative word there. Granted, the two originators of the genre (Saw and Hostel) were both male-based. Ultimately, however, I think you could argue that all of the films are about emasculation and its regeneration through violence (with a healthy dose of xenophobia thrown in through Hostel, Severance, and Turistas).

But who really knows? I can’t bring myself to even watch these films without a guardian. I need Brandon Simmons, who successfully shepherded me through Silence of the Lambs without my ever seeing anything ugly/rotten/overly-scary.

Roth says that his films are political commentary. On a Fox talk show he created a stir by blaming President Bush for the recent torture horror. He called it all art responding to a world of ugly violence and a country disdainful of other cultures.

I don’t buy it. If Roth is honest and his films are commentary, he’s still not addressing the increasing sexualization of violence we’ve been seeing in many films and, disturbingly, many more television shows. I may have to suck it up and watch these films. Who wants to take care of me before/during/after?

A Queasy-Does-It Guy [LA Times/calendarlive.com] via fourfour

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It’s obvious. Why else would he run two TAL’s back to back that are designed to make me homesick and/or weepy? Last week’s episode featured Lula Cafe, mere steps from my Logan Square apartment. This week’s show revolves entirely around the Golden Apple at Lincoln and Wellington, just four blocks from where I grew up.

Ira, I implore you, do some shows on the South side. Perhaps a show about Elgin or beautiful Naperville? I assume it’s beautiful; I’ve never been there. I have almost no attachment to Hyde Park - go nuts. Stay out of my haunts and homes, Glass. Hands off.

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At the NYT.

Following A.O. Scott’s review of Black Snake Moan is the usual movie rating and reasons.

“Black Snake Moan” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Half-naked nymphomaniac chained to radiator.

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