Not only did I not realize that Eames was actually two people-a vivacious husband and wife design team- I also didn’t realize it was spelled E-A-M-E-S. I always figured Eames was some weird French expatriate who’s name was spelled, like, Hemerez or something. I thought this because I am not the type of person for whom the phrase “very important chair“ rolls off the tongue freely, without irony. Also because I have no understanding of how the French language works. I have been vaguely familiar with Eames for a while because I am the only person in my life who feels this way. Literally. Even my seventeen-year-old brother gets giddy at the mention of an estate sale and has spent his high school career trying to amass a rug collection. It’s not that I don’t care, or that I dream of being surrounded in trash. I don’t want to live in a boring white walled apartment with no art sitting in chairs from Wal-mart. It’s just that when I move past the phase of casually admiring a piece decorative art to analyzing it, I get the urge to jump off a low hipped roof. The fact is that these are luxury items, designed for and by a certain class of people, like it or not, and I just can’t get myself to worship furniture. Even if it’s extraordinary. Even if I want it.  And absolutely no one agrees with me, and that’s okay. 

But anyway, Charles and Ray Eames were basically the coolest people who ever lived. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to have relationship these two had at the beginning of their marriage. They started working together and falling in love at the same time, equal partners in love and work.

But of course the world kind of treated Ray like shit, because the bad ‘50’s people couldn’t comprehend a creative partnership like theirs. There is a clip in this movie that will make your skin crawl, in which Charles and Ray are being interviewed about their business, and she has to stand BEHIND her husband as the interviewer tries to grapple with the idea of a man and a woman sharing work. You can see the wheels turning in the (female) interviewers head before she comes to the conclusion that Ray is Charles’ helper, she doesn’t do any designing but she’s still very important. Here is one of the most important designers of the 20th century being tarted up and presented as one of Santa’s elves.  It’s so fucking gross.

I don’t know if I’m going to flag this one as a favorite, that title is reserved for the true masterpieces: Scream 2, Scream 3, etc., but I do recommend it. It’s good, it’s pretty to look at, and it’s inspiring. It’s the Oprah.com of documentaries. Watch it!   

Hey everybody!

So we are trying something a little different with Vicki, our new contributor. We both watched this documentary and gchatted about it. Here’s the transcript.

Vicki: The Woodmans.

Irene: OK Let’s talk

Vicki: …this documentary made me consider yet again how at times the job of a documentary filmmaker is very morally ambiguous. In this case, having parents relive the pain and guilt associated with the suicide of their young daughter Francesca. But, also, oddly the (hinted at) jealousy of Francesa for being the most successful artist in the family.

Irene: right! Also it makes you wonder where you draw the line between being an artist and being a parent.

Vicki: Oh my god, Irene. It made me uneasy.

Irene: me too

Vicki: They seemed to question the way they raised the children—emphasizing that there was nothing more important in life than art!

Irene: She was their creation. I went back and forth with how I felt about her parents

Vicki: SPOILERS: But, then! After her suicide her father begins taking photographs in the same vein as hers. That was very eerie to me.

Irene: to me as well. I tried to find something cathartic in it for him but it seemed like he was in suspended animation trying to understand her or see things the way she did.

Vicki: Yes. My opinion of them changed and changed. And I wondered if that was because of the filmmakers manipulation of their interviews or just them.

She was their creation!

Irene: Well I don’t know how much I thought the filmmakers were manipulating my response to them more than anyone who makes something is showing you what they want you to see. It seemed like a fair and multifaceted portrait of them - who knows really.

Vicki: Yeah. I read that they did not attend the movie premier, which I can understand not wanting to watch themselves explain their daughter’s art and suicide in front of an audience.

Irene: I was glad they talked about her suicide and I was glad the father said things like “I made it to 72, that’s something I did that Francesca didn’t” (paraphrasing obviously) - it was bitter and sad and confident all at the same time.

No, I wouldn’t want to go to that premiere either.

Vicki: yes, you’re right. And in terms of Francesca’s photographs, I really enjoyed them

Irene: me too! they are incredible!! But if she were your daughter wouldn’t you be like “hey, are you ok?”

Vicki: Yeah I don’t know, they are beautiful and fascinating but here’s a 15 year old girl taking nude photos of herself, distorting her face or hiding in the wallpaper. I think her parents chose not to see them as autobiographical. And, I think her friends and family thought she was fine as long as she was photographing. I think it was when she didn’t make it as a fashion photographer in NYC, she was like, “Well what the fuck do I do now?”

Irene: well, remember those pictures she took when she was a young teen of the clothes pins on herself?

Vicki: yes. crazy

Irene: and how her friend said she was scared for her when she saw them? I mean, that’s an intense thing to do.

Vicki: yes! you’re right!

Irene: and this isn’t a facebook/youtube culture where people are constantly discovering themselves by broadcasting. The mom said she worried her daughter had narcissistic tendencies, remember?

Vicki: yes

Irene: It’s just strange and it’s so beautiful but it also seems neglectful on the part of her parents. Is that wrong that I think that?

Vicki: No, I think parents who didn’t look for the art in everything would question her motives. in that way, they are very optimistic. and at times I found myself jealous of her freedom to express herself as a teenager. I think most teenagers have a really hard time, and she didn’t hold anything back

Her parents are optimistic or in denial.

Irene: maybe a little of both.

But didn’t you love those people as parents? and her?

Vicki: Oh totally. I think they did the best they knew how and i think if things had gone differently, it would be without a doubt, “what a cool way to raise your child, to teach them there is no shame in expressing yourself through art.”

Irene: If Francesca didn’t cast such a shadow you could say that about Christopher. It could still be a great documentary about this family of successful artists. Nice people.

 Vicki: yes, real nice people

 Irene: but Francesca adds this whole other element and exposes all this ugliness

Vicki: yeah. the parents never fought, everyone was happy, she got along with her brother. but there was this whole thing about her never finishing a school year, always moving around and about. maybe always feeling like a stranger, which perhaps allowed her to be so comfortable showing herself as an artist with pride, literally naked

someone in the documentary said she had a rockstar quality and i was all like, “yup”

Irene: totally. Vicki! I have to go. I’m sorry

Vicki: bye shyreese

Irene: byebyeybye

Ladies and gentlemen, we here are very excited to announce the acquisition of a new contributor!

This is Vicki. She’s funny smarty pants with lots to say. An exhaustive email she wrote to us started like this:

Dear Irene and Aggie,

I am writing to you because I have watched SO MUCH NETFLIX INSTANT since my retirement (unemployment) began at the beginning of March. Since I feel like I am in the entertainment industry (I researched for a historical reality show and my cat is famous) I feel that the endless hours I have spent with Netflix is justified. I also figure that I am further justified in my slothiness if I write to you guys about it (because of your blog, Watching Netflix Instant, or Watching Instant Netflix, or W.I.N.)

Love,

Vicki

The rest of her letter had about 30 different reviews for movies so look forward to those. 

Vicki Marquette grew up in Albuquerque and Las Vegas before attending Vassar College where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Film.  She was the researcher on five episodes of NBC’s historical documentary series “Who Do You Think You Are?”, which has since been cancelled. Now semi-retired (unemployed), she spends her time hanging out with funny people, tweeting, watching instant netflix, painting, and looking for jobs. Vicki lives in L.A.

I just did a staged reading of this like two hours ago, which means I had to watch it anyway so I thought I’d jab two aortas with one pen and write about it here. I am pissed that I had to watch it, not because I hate Girl, Interrupted, but because the only thing I’ve used Netflix for in the last month is to watch Breaking Bad over and over again, to the point that I’m too embarrassed to really talk about it and just kind of want to fold it into my post about Girl, Interrupted in the hopes that no one actually reads this stuff. I am literally watching Breaking Bad right now, as I write this. I hate anything that takes me away from it. 

I am kind of a lesbian for Angelina Jolie in this movie. 

Thief dir: Michael Mann 1981

OK!!! OK. Alright. Oh god this movie has my number so hard. It’s summertime you guys and if you’re in the US you know that we are in the middle of a heat wave that keeps threatening to turn into massive thunderstorms. Shit is hot and humid and the only reasonable thing to do is grab some popsicles, open the windows, point a fan at yourself and watch a movie.

James Caan is a thief (hence the title) who wants to complete one final job that will allow him to retire to the suburbs like a “normal” person. All he needs is a girl to agree (Tuesday Weld) a house in the burbs, a child and to get his father figure (Willie Nelson) out of prison.

WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT?! James Belushi? check. Dennis Farina playing a henchman? check. Crazy synth soundtrack by Tangerine Dream? check. Wet streets, nighttime, James Caan strutting around in tight jeans, cowboy boots and a leather jacket paired with a gold chain and no shirt? CHECK! A cameo by the Green Mill cocktail lounge in Chicago? Oh yes, check.

I really love Michael Mann. After spending years working on television this was his first feature and he came out swinging. The style and attitude of this movie is strong as hell.

It’s got bad ass and cool down pat and I was consistently surprised by the dialogue,  which is incredible. There’s a beautiful scene in a coffee shop between James Caan and Tuesday Weld where he’s trying to convince her to be his suburban wifey. “often cited as the film’s high point, Caan has long considered the scene his favorite of his career” (wikipedia).

Every search I’ve made for this movie also brings up Drive (2011) and people have referenced it as though it’s a remake or homage and although there are some tonal similarities and referential shots they are not terribly similar. You will not go wrong having a double feature night with these two movies.

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. 

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. 

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. 

10% great/90% steaming pile.

It’s a sprawling, sci-fi, social satire with references a plenty and a cast of actors not known for their acting plus Wallace Shawn, Miranda Richardson (playing Gary Oldman in 5th Element) and the women of SNL.

I’m going out on a limb here and saying that Richard Kelly has no idea what he’s doing and people should stop giving him money. The Box was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life (I like Richard Matheson and have spent many painful hours watching adaptations of his writing). Where The Box insisted on referencing No Exit every 15 minutes, Southland Tales uses The Wasteland. There it is on the poster. To quote Mad Men: We get it, you’re educated. 

With the exception of Donnie Darko, which is super fun, Richard Kelly’s movies are more interesting to read about than they are to watch. Film Comment and fancy people like J. Hoberman and Amy Taubin have written many thoughtful thoughts about his work and I can understand why but they could probably say just as much about Megan Amram’s audition tape for Glee. Here, I’ll try to write something that could work for either: A commentary on the vapidity of mass consumption entertainment expressed in the irreverent way we’ve come to think and communicate also gender … stuff?

Hoberman is quoted on wikipedia as saying that Southland Tales is a visionary film about the end of times comparable in recent American film only to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. What? The only similarity I can find between the two is that Rebekah Del Rio appears on stage singing in the time and dimension shifting climaxes of both films.

I watched the entire 2.5 hours.