news, views, and capsule reviews

News first? Andrea 1, Target Corp 0.

Actually, I have no idea why I think *I* won. They made me go all over the North Shore, visiting stores of theirs I rarely if ever go in, just for the privilege of giving them my money. However, I was successful in finding the correct match to my lonely sheer, so woo hoo. I suppose this will assuage my bitterness that certain friends of mine who are in new relationships and thus spending all their time smooching did not spontaneously offer, as they ordinarily would have, to go to the Target in Watertown, or perhaps Everett, for me. But who am *I* to suggest that smooching should take a backseat to my window covering needs, ahahaha? That'd be silly.

Now onto the capsule reviews! These are the movies I have recently rented. First of all, I'm Not There. I thought, and had had it suggested to me, that I probably wouldn't like this film because I'm not a Dylan fan. (I know, I know, gasp. Both Mr Indemnity and M2 have shaken their heads sadly at me over this on multiple occasions.) But anyway, my dislike for this movie had nothing to do with Dylan fandom or lack thereof. I didn't get it, and the way in which I didn't get it felt much the same to me as the way I don't get certain literary fiction. Namely that they (by which I mean the creators) would like me to feel like I don't get it because I am too stupid, too obtuse, or too lowbrow, when in fact I don't get it because there's nothing to get and it's pointlessly artsy for the sake of being artsy.

Secondly, Margot at the Wedding, or whatever that Nicole Kidman movie is called. This really was like much literary fiction, in that it had no real plot to speak of. Instead, it was the character study of a really unpleasant person. Despite that, and despite the fact it got mixed and lukewarm reviews, I kind of enjoyed it. Maybe my enjoyment stemmed from the fact that I spent the first fifteen minutes of the movie thinking Nicole Kidman's son was a girl or that there was a totally gratuitous scene of Nicole masturbating. Or maybe it was Jack Black's ironic moustache. I dunno. But I didn't find it a complete waste of 97 minutes of my life.

Thirdly! Soylent Green. As you know, if you've been paying attention and taking notes (as well you should be), sometimes when I run out of HBO series and new movies to Netflix, I rent classic movies that I haven't seen or am not sure whether I've seen or have only seen severely edited on network TV. I'm not sure which category Soylent Green falls into (for reasons that will become clear as I go on). I was kind of convinced that I'd seen every cheesy Charleton Heston movie ever made on TV when I was a kid, especially the science fiction ones, (but Omega Man put a lie to that), and I certainly, certainly knew what the famous tagline to this movie was and thus the crux of the plot. But I started watching it and now I really don't know. I will say, cheesiness aside, this is (so far, because I haven't finished it) really quite a good movie. It was made in 1972 and takes place in 2022, so it's interesting, as all near-future scifi is when the actual date arrives or comes closer, to see how very wrong, or right, the projected future turns out to be.

One thing I thought was fascinating is that the dystopia depicted is said to be caused by global warming and the greenhouse effect. I had no idea anyone knew about that circa 1972; I don't remember hearing anything about it until the early 80s, when all that hairspray I was using to get my hair to look like that was being blamed for the hole in the ozone layer. And of course, the two things no one ever predicted in these books or movies are the cell phone and the flat screen. We first meet Shirl, the female lead, playing an Asteroids-level video game on a contraption the size of an arcade game, which is just hilarious from our 2008 perspective, of course.

But more about Shirl. This is why I am both convinced I had to have seen this movie at some impressionable age and yet sure that it makes no sense that I saw it on TV. Shirl is, by profession, a concubine. She is, in the terminology of her world, "furniture." She comes with the luxury apartment, like the refrigerator or the carpeting. Charleton Heston, who is a cop, meets her while investigating the murder of her employer. His first act is to inspect her arms and then look down the back of her dress, checking for bruises, to see if she has any obvious reason to be holding grudges against the dead man. When he comes back to question her a second time, he finds her partying with her girlfriends, who are all in the same line of work. He takes her into the bedroom, supposedly for privacy, and orders her right into bed, where the "questioning" explicitly takes the form you might expect. Shirl is not upset by this. [In fact, when he tries to leave before dawn, she entices him to stay with promises of breakfast (real food! a luxury!) and a shower with actual hot water (also an unimaginable luxury!)]

Okay, you can probably guess why I think I had to have seen this at some point when it was able to worm its way into my impressionable little brain and libido. On the other hand? If this movie was on the television in 1974 or 76, I can't imagine it wouldn't have been edited such that a lot of what was going on would have gone over my pubertal head. Or maybe it wouldn't have. I guess barring regression hypnosis, I'll never know, will I?

Okay, I think that's that.

xoxo