Watching Netflix Instant

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.

If you’re my true friend you think that Death Proof is one of the best movies that Quentin Tarantino has ever made. It fulfills and marries his b-movie obsession and feminist agenda so beautifully it made me cry the first time I saw it. Honest to god. It’s close to perfect. I wish Claire Denis had the sense of humor necessary to make it. Shit.

If you saw it, you love Zoe Bell, the stuntwoman star who spends most of the film tied to the hood of car. It’s amazing. She was Uma Thurman’s double in Kill Bill and Tarantino was so impressed by her he wrote her this movie. Again, crying.

Double Dare is about Zoe before she becomes ‘famous’. The climax is when she auditions for Kill Bill. I hope other actors out there find that segment as inspiring as I did because that bitch gets hired for blowing landings gracefully. A lesson to all of us. The other woman in the movie is Wonder Woman’s aging stunt double, Jeannie Epper. For her, this is the family business and for us they may be as close as we get to circus folk in the modern world. Zoe is so tough and awesome and she’s kicking ass in a misogynist business, where Jeannie is feeling the effects of age and the limitations of her gender. The juxtaposition is disturbing and sad. The filmmakers seem to manipulate the two women into spending time together and there are portions that feel rehearsed and weird. Overall though, great watch.

Sidebar: Zoe Bell is cool as hell. I want to get high and maybe make out with her. Seriously, who doesn’t.

If you’re like me, many is the time you’ve thought I enjoy his acting work, love his diamond vodka, but what I really want from Dan Aykroyd is to sit in a living room with him while he chain smokes and rambles on about UFOs for an hour and a half. Wanderer, you may wonder and wander no further

I hate someone. Wanna know who it is? It’s Nick Broomfield. He directed this piece of shit, along with a lot of other shitty documentaries I have watched on Netflix instant watch, and one that I am going to watch very soon (it’s about Heidi Fleiss, ok?). 

I hate him because he owns me. He makes movies that, no matter what, I can’t not watch. A documentary about Tupac and Biggie? I am going to watch it. Aileen Wuornos? I’m going to watch it. Kurt and Courtney? Obvi. This piece of garbage about an S&M club that caters to Wall Street millionaires and has footage of their insanely fucked up breath-play sessions? Are you kidding me? YES. Yes. Who wouldn’t watch that? 

But this is the thing about Nick Broomfield: he is a total asshole. He injects himself into all of his movies, trying to act like a noble, inquisitive artist, but he’s too self-conscious to go without winking to his viewers with leading questions, supporting the opinions he won’t admit he has. And his opinions are almost always stupid. Especially in this one, in which he tries his hardest to paint these professional doms as broken down whores incapable of sustaining relationships.

Watch this, because if you are not in the S&M-obsessed millionaire’s club this is going to be an outrageous revelation and you’re going to finally see what Dan Savage and his questioners have been going on about. But also get that just because a woman is a dominatrix does not mean she’s an emotional mess as Nick Broomfield will unsuccessfully try to have you believe. 

I never planned to get into this, but Jersey Shore season 2, which is set in Miami is on Netflix instant watch. I mean. Come on, I don’t have to say it right? Its gross! I know it’s gross I watched the entire thing in one day. Has there been an article written about these people yet? I’m talking about a scientific article in a psychology publication about their bizarre sexual behavior. For all of Joey D and Mike the Situation’s talk about loving women, these two guys have fetishized sexual politics to the point that I’m not convinced they need women or even physical contact- I think they just need to hang out and plan their sexual conquests together and occasionally watch each other perform sexual acts. It’s by far the kinkiest relationship I have ever seen portrayed on television. I don’t think it would fly in any context other than reality tv. 

Also- I’m not a person who believes that reality tv documents things that actually happen. But I also believe that the people on Jersey Shore are as bizarre and fucked up as they appear- while simultaneously being less charming and interesting. Somehow their boring, scary and erratic personalities are disassembled and then reconstructed into a Frankenstein of a weak but present narrative arc. To me, this is actually kind of genius. 

Basically, this is fun to watch when you are kind of sick and or hungover on a weekend day and may or may not be worth having an opinion about. Especially since everyone else saw this and got over it like two years ago.

An impressively massive failure on every possible level.

This is the kind of movie you watch the first 20 minutes of before deciding you’re going to try to give your hair a salon quality blow out.

National Geographic presents cannibalism, bubonic plague and skull drilling in such a calm, rational way. It’s that matter-of-factness of a grand-parental ‘life was hard’ attitude that made this show so warm and nostalgic for me.

This is an excellent and depressing documentary about a man’s personal belongings being stolen by the city of Philadelphia after his death.

After making a fortune in pharmaceuticals Dr. Barnes amassed a collection of art that according to wikipedia is worth 25 billion. It is all kept on the grounds of his foundation, a school and Arboretum in lower Marion Pennsylvania. After getting burned* by the city of Philadelphia and the art world he took great pains to ensure that his collection would not fall into the hands of the elite who didn’t GET IT and would try to profit from it but be it’s own thing. It’s own special American treasure, in a house made to display it, seen the way he intended it to be seen. This movie is about how in the end he didn’t get what he wanted.

Everyone in the documentary is either really corrupt and transparent or really mad. Some have a more calm, bottled mad than others but all are pissed. One guy yells “PHILISTINE!” at a city of Philly person during a protest which made my palm and forehead meet.

After watching I signed some online petitions and joined their facebook page but it feels like spitting in the ocean (or other metaphor about uselessness). It’s outrageous that there’s only 1,700 facebook members! Hey facebook, remember when we resurrected Betty White’s career? It was great and all and she’s awesome but every time I see a trailer for You Again I wonder if all those ‘likes’ could have served some higher purpose.

*figuratively

Halloween is just around the corner. This movie will get you in the mood for the spookiest time of year - it’s full of frights and scares!

I liked this more than I’ve liked any of the recent documentaries to come out in the ‘everything is fucked’ genre. There are hearty interviews with Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollen. What a treat!