My sister and I were in LA; we’re going to write all about it at Basket of Kisses. Thanks so much to arghous for minding the trivia store.
We caught a flight on 6 am on Sunday (leaving the house at 4 am to do so), and took a redeye home Tuesday night. So basically, we were sleepy and disoriented the whole trip. But it was glorious and I’ll surely have tales to tell.
O.K., your mission with each of these questions is to name the leading actor and name the film starring him consistent with the given clues, based on a theme, which you should name as well.
1) He gave us the archetypal suave assassin. He gave us the perfect embodiment of misogyny. And just after this film, by stepping down he gave us George Lazenby. So for all that, why not give him something in return? How about a wife with the face like a pig? Some unused oysters? I know — let’s give him the very best duck!
2) He famously almost died during the filming of the so-called “Elderly Gang Goes Off to War” flick, but before that got to play a character who was able to spend a few hours catching up with his lost, mandarin-eating, human-pyramid-forming(-and-collapsing) servant.
3) Some say his vehicle to stardom was sort of a want-monikered trolley. But in another role he battled against racism (he was also apparently cool with cross-dressing).
4) In between movies where he’s shooting hordes of Axis soldiers or hordes of American Indians, he found time for the shooting of this (ironically less savage) film (to help out Good & Plenty potential concessionaires?).
5) After breaking up with the lunar-pizza-pie-eyed guy but before his snagging the Legion d’honneur, he starred in this movie (with the former Brooklyn Dodgers and the woman who would later have to act in bed with Bob Newhart) where gets upstaged by a rabbit and gets his subtitles all mixed up before he gets the girl.
6) One of his characters didn’t cry over spilt milk (nor over the spilt blood of his once-future-father-in-law, for that matter). Soon after he plays a man trying to get a visa to America (a simpler time where America would let in even the Russo-Chinese?!).
7) We’ve seen this guy above (so don’t bother renaming him, sorry!), but this time he’s trying to play a local (and well enough, too, that many movie-goers felt gypped when they didn’t notice him). This film costarred an actor playing a wannabe-farmer years before his other wannabe-farmer TV role made him a household name.
Since you suck this week.
DIY trivia has only had one submission! Come on, guys, don’t you want to do my work for me?
1. 1930s: Did you ever stop to think what you’d look like with a lily in your hand?
Hint: Starring an actor so widely-imitated that imitating him is a cliché, and a swashbuckler.
Solved by Melville.
2. 1940s: You know, when I was riding that truck, I used to think I’d never get enough of staying home. I’ve got enough all right.
Hint: A major star before he became a star has the second male lead here.
Solved by Melville.
3. 1950s: If you can’t bear the thought of messing up your nice, tidy soul, you better give up the whole idea of life and become a saint, because you’ll never make it as a human being. It’s either this world, or the next.
Hint: The raw black and white photography and earthy style typified a British film genre.
Solved by Melville.
4. 1960s: Of course he’s upset. He’s a lawyer; he’s paid to be upset.
Hint: A famous pairing in a less-famous movie.
Solved by Melville.
5. 1970s: You’re going to look pretty silly with that knife sticking out of your ass.
Hint: An iconic star in a deeply symbolic movie that was not made in Italy, although that might be your first guess.
Solved by Melville.
6. 1980s: Dames are put on this earth to weaken us, drain our energy, laugh at us when they see us naked.
Hint: Bless the saints, it’s an ashtray! I’ve been thinking of taking up smoking. This clinches it!
Solved by Evn.
7. 1990s: They love me for the same reason they used to hate me, because I’m the guy who knows everything.
Solved by Evn.
Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) 10/10
Jessica Stein (Jennifer Westfeldt) is a neurotic, brainy single woman seeking a man. Helen Cooper (Heather Jurgensen) is a sexually voracious woman eager to try the one thing she hasn’t tried: sex with a woman. Despite Jessica’s misgivings, they tentatively enter into a relationship.
This is one of my favorite movies, and I’ve seen it several times. Looking back, I see I’ve included it in Tuesday Trivia no less than three times. Yet I’ve never reviewed it here! It’s come up in conversation lately, since I’m going to L.A. and might be meeting Jon Hamm, (!) and Jennifer Westfeldt is his long-time girlfriend (Hamm has a small role in the movie). So, having said how much I loved it during the day, we sat down and watched it this evening.
It has all the great things you could want in a romantic comedy. It is witty, it is character-driven; populated by real people with real lives; every supporting player has motivation and personality. Take Jessica’s friend Joan (Jackie Hoffman). She’s riotously funny, and moves the plot along in exactly the way a conveniently-placed friend must. She’s also a fleshed-out person with her own trajectory in life.
Speaking of characters, Tovah Feldshuh as Jessica’s mother really enriches this movie. She only ever gets to play the one role in movies, but she’s magical in it every time.
Kissing Jessica Stein is frankly, boldly sexual, and very funny about sex. I have to say that “I was surprised to learn that lesbians accessorized,” is one of my all-time favorite quotes, and there is a funny bit about blow-jobs that brings tears to my eyes.
What gets me most about it is that it’s one of those movies, like The Object of My Affection (but way better), that explores the strange gray region between friendship and romance; between love and “love,” and does it brilliantly.
I dreamt I was speeding. I have no idea what it means. I looked at my speedometer and saw it was at 170 mph. I had to work to get it down to 80, and when I looked it was up to 100. It was hard to slow down.
It’s weird seeing numbers in dreams at all. I’m sure this is deeply significant, but it eludes me.
DIY Trivia: Submit 7 trivia questions for an upcoming Tuesday Trivia. Your prize will be the glory of authorship. Email to me at deborah (at) deborahlipp (dot) com.
Today’s trivia round-robin:
ALL TRIVIA ANSWERS TODAY MUST START WITH B in honor of President Barack Obama’s Birthday.
I’ll start:
The chef refuses to serve risotto with a side of pasta.
Coraline (2009) 10/10
The Jones family has moved to a new home, a 150 year old Victorian. Coraline (voice by Dakota Fanning) feels neglected and bored. She finds a door behind the wallpaper that leads to a magical alternative house, where her mother (voice by Teri Hatcher) dotes lovingly, the food is delicious, and even the neighbors are delightful. But all is not what it seems.
Recently I saw someone characterize all of Neil Gaiman‘s stories as “hapless young person finds a passage into another world in which he/she has a larger destiny.” You got your Stardust, your Mirrormask, your Neverwhere all supporting that thesis. And truly, I laughed.
Coraline Jones finds a door into another world, but she is not hapless, and she doesn’t have a larger destiny. She is angry, and tough, and longing for more, and for a while, she thinks she’s found it. But, like Pinocchio‘s Pleasure Island, the joys of the Other Mother’s domain are merely enticements designed to ensnare Coraline, and before long she learns other children have been trapped here as well, their ghosts longing for freedom.
She’s a marvelous character, Coraline; annoyed, strong, innocent, and perfectly childlike. She is smart without all that “wise beyond her years” crap. Her life is rooted in reality, her animated stop-motion world is rich in texture. Coraline’s bedroom, her garden, her insane neighbors, are all incredibly detailed.
The terrors of Other Mother’s world sneak up on you. Everyone on the other side has button eyes, and Other Mother wants Coraline to sew buttons into her own eyes as a condition of staying there. Button eyes are creepy. They are just flat-out disturbing. There’s the blankness, the way the perfect roundness defies even the illusion of expression, and let’s not forget, they’re sewn on. With a needle. So there’s that.
I actually had a little trouble sleeping afterwards. These are some seriously disturbing images. Which the film producers apparently fail to understand, since the previews were all for cutesy kid movies. And 9, so apparently all animation is equally cute, no matter the subject.
Oh, yeah, the animation! The beauty of this film is beyond my ability to describe. I’ve simply never seen anything like it. We were sucked in by a DVD sale at Target: 4 free pairs of 3-D glasses! But after about ten minutes, we couldn’t get past the muddy colors, took off the glasses, and switched to 2-D.
So, pretty much a must-see. A rich animation experience, a complex main character, a fully-realized world, and buttons.
Every night I wash my face: I rinse with warm water, then I lather up, rubbing my face with the foamy stuff, then I splash with water until I’ve rinsed off all the lather. Then one night, a few weeks ago, it occurred to me to do it differently: I lathered and rubbed, then splashed and rubbed some more, and did that a few times before completely rinsing off.
My face was much cleaner.
This completely blew my mind. I’ve been washing my face, which is, I think we can agree, kind of a basic function of living, the wrong way?
Now, I know you’re all going to launch into a grooming discussion in comments, but what fascinates me is how we learn imperfectly. We think we know how to do something that we were never taught per se, or taught perfunctorily, or only taught once. I’m trying to remember why I changed it a few weeks ago, and I think I had a visual memory of someone washing their face with the additional rubbing on TV. Until I accidentally accessed that memory, I had simply not learned. I thought I had learned, but I had not.
As someone responsible for one-on-one training of Pagans, this strikes a deep chord in me. It is my responsibility to train my students in my tradition of Wicca. And I do find, years later, that they’re doing some odd thing they shouldn’t be doing, some odd thing they failed to learn or I failed to teach.
But I feel like I’ve stumbled upon something about being human. We all learn imperfectly, all the time. We think we know how to do things, or that our jury-rigged version of how to do things is simply the way it’s done. I’m staggered by the imperfection of what we know and what we think we know.
You needed a hint, but you rallied in the end.
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