If you were wondering what is going on in my polyandrous wedding night photo of the Captain, Loki and I: I am wrapping my leg around the good sir, not unlike a sloth to a tree, while simultaneously caressing the most angular parts of Loki’s smirk.
omg. this is my best friend. be jealous.
Thumbs up for call time in Ohio.
HOLY SHIT WTF THAT IS MY FRIEND NATALIE IN THE BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER THERE. SHE LEFT MY APARTMENT THIS MORNING TO GO TO THIS MOMENT THAT WOULD LATER BE CAPTURED ON FILM AND THEN PUT ON TUMBLR BY OUR PRESIDENT. AND REMEMBER YOU MET HER THE OTHER NIGHT KASSIE!
Sorry that just really caught me off guard. Small world and super proud of my friend.
Hahaha that IS me in the corner looking super fresh tired as all get out after a 12-hour day of new hire training. This is my new job, yo!! Workin’ for POTUS as a field organizer for his grassroots campaign.
I shall also take this time to mention I will be going on Tumblr-hiatus until after Nov. 6! Sad, sad that I won’t make witty comments on my unhealthy obsession with Mad Men and hating James Cameron.
Will return at the end of the year because my inner film snob will be fighting her way to fruition again.
Ta-ta!
Take This Waltz (Dir. Sarah Polley)
When Margot (Michelle Williams), 28, meets Daniel (Luke Kirby), their chemistry is intense and immediate. But Margot suppresses her sudden attraction; she is happily married to Lou (Seth Rogen), a cookbook writer. When Margot learns that Daniel lives across the street from them, the certainty about her domestic life shatters. She and Daniel steal moments throughout the steaming Toronto summer, their eroticism heightened by their restraint. Swelteringly hot, bright and colorful like a bowl of fruit, TAKE THIS WALTZ leads us, laughing, through the familiar, but uncharted question of what long‐term relationships do to love, sex, and our images of ourselves.
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/04/09/titanic-and-the-rise-of-hater-culture/
Click the link above and you’ll read a heavily word-drenched article defending the glory of James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), which is now out in 3-D. Mr. Owen Gleiberman makes some accurate insights into the reasons why people hate Titanic so much. It’s overrated and cheesy as all get out. (That’s both my interpretation of the film and a paraphrasing of Gleiberman’s writing.)
He hits on exactly the issue I have with the movie: the dialogue. The fuck-ing dialogue. As a writer, I can’t stomach it. Cameron cannot and should not pen screenplays. Of course, I have no business using the word “should” considering the man sits pretty on top of record-shattering films like Avatar, Aliens and The Terminator.
I reserve the right, however, to denounce his screenplays that inevitably make my eyes roll and scrunch down into my seat in embarrassment for 1) the actors who have to speak these lines, and 2) the people in the theater around me who recognize well-worn cues to shake their head at the villain (“Ugh, Billy Zane threw that table. I can tell he’s horrible!”) and choke back tears at the hero (Jack: “Sooner or later that fire that I love about you, Rose…that fire’s gonna burn out…!”). Good. God.
This issue wouldn’t bother me so much if it weren’t such a hugely — hugely — successful movie and people were so quick to defend the crap out of it. I’m sorry, but you cannot have a film win best picture when the screenplay is two steps short of a soap opera. People love, for the most part, and appreciate stories and character relationships that we’re familiar with because those are the ones that keep getting repeated. When it carries the weight of something like Titanic, the relationship base is perfectly fine (rich girl, poor boy conflict) but the romance had better operate on a level that I’ve never been taken to as a viewer.
Gleiberman states that the film is a nod to classic, epic stories of the past, and should be applauded accordingly. I think he’s idealizing this a bit. There aren’t any huge leaps and bounds above the basics that Cameron took by way of cinematography and editing. I guess this could be construed as classic; or it could be viewed as back-to-basics directing.
What Cameron contributed so well to the film is the technical handling of such a massive undertaking: he does “big” really well, better than most modern filmmakers. He isolates his stories into singular worlds that he can create, manage, rip apart and then put back together (the Atlantic Ocean in Titanic, Pandora in Avatar, outer space in Aliens). This is where is innovation lies, and not in the heart of stories.
That being said…I think Gleiberman makes a valid point about romantic innocence in the age of Internet cynicism. He mentions that this greatly contributes to Titanic’s hater culture. I think he’s right. In so many ways. I, for one, have teased Titanic for its “romantic innocence” as well, only I refer to it as my own irritation for courtships and affairs I’ve seen so many times. Cameron ain’t showing us anything new here, and he sure as shit isn’t doing anything I couldn’t have written in high school.
Perhaps that’s the rub I have with Titanic. For such an overwhelmingly big story, it deserves an overwhelmingly good script.
Whew. This post ended up being about 10 times longer than anticipated.
Little Birds
I’ve seen this plot done so many times but I never get tired of it. I think it’s because coming-of-age stories such as this, when done well, rest on the weight of individual characters. Lord knows Juno Temple (Dirty Girl, Kaboom, and most notably, Atonement) can act her ass off. Not to mention, I love her full name: Juno Violet Temple. That name deserves to be in a ’70s-era rock band but I’ll take it.
I’m somewhat perplexed by the addition of Leslie Mann — not in a bad way. I’m used to seeing her in comedies. I’m not a fan of Kate Bosworth, though. She just always seems uncomfortable and kinda pissed off.
This is director Elgin James’ first major writing/directing project. I’m sensing a similar directing style as Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown, Twilight), who I enjoy also.
Little Birds has a U.S. release date for June.
Hey, thanks. It’s hard not to stifle a laugh when you hear someone cling to using “film” to describe movies haha but the irony is that I often catch myself using the word, and I suppose it’s because I’m so used to telling people that I studied film in college and it was sort of an umbrella word to describe the subject. Such is life, haha
