Katie Jarvis was discovered on a train platform having a fight with her boyfriend. As Fassbender tells it on the podcast for the Museum of the Moving Image, when the casting director approached her she told her to ‘fuck off’.
Which is perfect.
She plays Mia, the 15 year old animal-girl spending her days pacing back in forth in an urban cage (drink every time she shares a frame with bars, gate, any kind of barrier) until her mean, slutty mother brings home a kind and hot boyfriend.
It’s just beautiful.
The rest of this is obnoxious and vaguely spoiler-y.
AND (pardon me) Andrea Arnold provides a great fucking new perspective to the sexist and gross fantasies that are so celebrated in literature, film and pornography. The lolita, step daughter, daughter’s friend, teenage next door neighbor etc. You know that classic story of the broken, older man who has maybe lost himself but is basically good maybe finding redemption in the arms (pussy) of a younger woman? For the male character to be sympathetic the girl needs to not have much of an internal life of her own and exists solely to tempt him/teach him something about himself. He just can’t help it! Isn’t that exhausting and boring? Why not just make everyone a human being? A complicated, sometimes awful, sometimes wonderful human being?
It made me want to hate watch American Beauty. Side thought: If she hadn’t been a virgin he would have boned her. Because you can’t taint something that’s already dirty. How is his restraint seen as heroic? God that movie is so condescending.
The main point of conversation is definitely the Mia/Connor plot line but I also adored the relationship she had with her younger sister. These are people with deep emotions for each other who do not have a language beyond rage and hate to express it.
Blah blah blah - I have feelings, just watch it! It’s good!
I had a tough day last week. One of those days of reckoning spent nervously pacing around town chewing your lips off wondering if you’re really cut out to be doing what you’re doing, fearing that all this creative-stuff you live for is a giant fuck around and you’re squandering your retirement years. No longer able to take it I caught myself saying maddening nonsense like “I really need to read some poems and go to yoga” and so help me I meant it. So. Hard.
So I popped a bottle of wine, made myself a nice english muffin pizza, snuggled up to myself and put on Ballets Russes because let’s face it, watching ballet is getting the best of the poems and the yoga without having to crack a book or move.
Dude. This thing is incredible.
Shot in 2000 and featuring interviews with the surviving dancers from the restructured company that took the world by storm in the 1930s, the doc covers their glory years of Massine, Balanchine, Matisse, Dali and its gradual petering out during the 50s due to mismanagement and some very sexy decision making. These dancers worked with and were the best of the best of the best. Hearing them reminisce and reflect on their work is reassuring and inspiring. It’s not all high brow, there’s also plenty of gossip and shit talking!
Want to hear a gang of women in their mid-80s wax lady boner? Wait till George Zoritch is brought up.
This woman:
Nathalie Krassovska, still works her coquetteish charms and just wait until she talks about why she had to turn down a contract with a Hollywood studio and leave LA.
Dame Alicia Markova is lovely and closes out the documentary with a line that both cheered me up and made me cry a little. You also get to hear this lady say “I was the original baby ballerina. But you don’t hear me talking about it.”
There’s tons of footage and the last thing I’ll tell you is to get ready for Mia Slavenska.
3 Women - Robert Altman
My husband walked through the room and asked, “how is it?”. My state of ecstasy was so deep all I could do was tear my hands away from my face to point at the screen where Sissy Spacek was tooling around in an abandoned wheelchair trying to make friends. THIS MOVIE IS PERFECT. For me.
I grew up watching Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre and have always liked her but man, was she incredible. It’s such a shame, I’ve always gotten the sense that she doesn’t have the long-term respect as an actress that she deserves. She wrote her diary entries, recipes and improvised a lot of her own dialogue. It’s amazing. She’s great. This movie rules.
Apparently this is very reminiscent of Persona, which I haven’t seen but I have seen Mullholland Drive and that is very reminiscent of 3 Women.
I used to like to pretend that the guys I dated were hot Edward Scissorhands and I was a fatter, less popular Winona Rider. In my fantasy I had to save them from their tortured lives as isolated, misunderstood artists or the townspeople would revolt against them (townspeople = my parents). Unfortunately, most of these guys turned out to be Beetlejuices who made me feel like a disembodied pair of legs.
Am I talking about two different Tim Burton movies right now? Yes. But really only one- I watched Edward Scissorhands over the break and dude- I was sobbing. It’s time for you to watch this movie again.
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Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Last night when we were bloated, sleepy and regretting paying for 3 months of a gym membership I’ve used twice (maybe that was just me) we snuggled up and watched The Trip.
If you’re COOL (aka dorky lamebrain) you know that this movie is a truncated version of a six episode series that was on BBC. Both are directed by Michael Winterbottom and stars Rob Brydon and one of the top 4 celebrities I’d sleep with*, Steve Coogan. You may remember this dream team from Tristram Shandy. Haven’t seen it? Well, if you’re into post-modern comedic adaptations of restoration era novels and/or Coogan holding and singing to a baby, that is the movie for you.
Anyhoo - The Trip. They edited the series down to about 2 hours. The premise is that Steve is writing an article about restaurants in the north of England and since his way younger girlfriend left him for a career in the US he has to settle for the company of Rob Brydon. They drive around the gorgeous countryside where there is much talk of the Bronte sisters, Coleridge and Kate Bush and eat amazing looking meals at a diverse group of restaurants. Don’t get it twisted, these dudes aren’t pals. Well - they sort of are but in that condescending, jealous, competitive way in which extraordinary people sometimes deal with each other.
It’s enjoyable and funny - good holiday weekend viewing.
*Michael Fassbender, Eric Bana, Michelle Rodriguez
I have a love/hate relationship with Catherine Briellat. She’s got my number in a lot of ways (women/girls navigating through a man’s world, precocious sexuality, violence) and no matter how many times I turned off my DVD player in disgust, she’s a filmmaker that I’m always curious about.
Bluebeard is one of my favorite fairy tales. It’s about a lord who keeps marrying women and then murdering them because they are too curious. A cogent lesson. According to things I read during my Charles Perrault phase, one of the inspirations for Bluebeard was Gilles de Rais. What, you don’t have a ‘killers of yore’ catalogue in your brain? Stop twisting my arm! I’d love to tell you about him. Gilles served faithfully as Joan of Arc’s right hand man but when she was murdered by France (Yeah I said it) he lost his faith and became a satanist eventually raping and killing anywhere between 80-600 kids of both genders. You’re welcome.
Earlier versions of fairy tales are all fucked up (see: Sleeping Beauty) but Bluebeard is one that has stayed pretty horrific and there’s no one better to film it than Catherine Briellat. It’s two stories, sisters in contemporary-ish day reading the fairytale cut with sisters in late medieval thymes living the story. She deals in broad strokes and the hyperbolic and I thought it all worked - she was made for fairy tales. There was no moment of me yelling “fuck you Briellat!” at the tv to find my remote and jesus christ just turn it off.
She’s fantastic at casting and filming children and the gals in Bluebeard turn out amazing performances. Bottom line: I liked it a lot. In fact, I’m getting that ugly sneaking feeling that I’m going to have to rewatch the movies of hers that I hated. I’m looking at you, Fat Girl.
Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam is the greatest film ever made. It’s about Heidi Fleiss, a feisty and slutty business woman who became a madam to the stars, and then got sold out by her evil boyfriend for stepping on his turf. It features this wild old woman named Madam Alex who lives in a bed. Alex’s archenemy is Heidi’s sociopath boyfriend Ivan Nagy. Ivan spends the entire movie pretending he knows what it feels like to love someone, but he sucks at it. The scariest person in the movie is a guy named Cookie. He is so tough that you never even see him and no one wants to talk about him, but it’s implied that he is a procurer of women and also the manager of a beeper store.
Being a prostitute is easy and fun. When asked what they had to do, most of Heidi’s former girls recall sitting on the couch while the guy did drugs and ignored them. This sounds a lot like my current relationship, but for some reason these women get $3000 at the end of the night and all I usually get is a piece of pizza.
Heidi Fleiss was a regular woman who seems like she would have been a fun friend before she lost her mind. Why can’t prostitution just be legal? Then Heidi Fleiss would just be a normal, rich asshole who thinks they’re better than everybody instead of an insane woman who lives in the desert surrounded by birds. Also, one year one of her boyfriends gave her a million dollars for Christmas. She is so lucky that happened to her.
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I will die watching this show.
This is the only show that’s ever made me want to have a baby. Having a baby looks easy and fun. You just eat pizza, yell at your mom and try to get your GED.
I want to name my favorite mom but I love them all equally. Maci is the most together and she named her son Bently. Amber’s boyfriend is morbidly obese and she hates him. Farrah is a psychopathic monster. Catelynn had her baby with her step-brother, and she’s actually probably the most together one.
Since discovering this show was streaming I’ve been staying up until 4 am to watch it. All the teen moms are more together than me.