Tuesday Trivia: Quotes by Decade

August 11, 2009 / / 16 comments

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.

Monday Movie Review: Kissing Jessica Stein

August 10, 2009 / / One comment

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.

Dream of speeding

August 5, 2009 / / 6 comments

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.

Trivia round-robin and DIY Trivia announcement

August 4, 2009 / / 12 comments

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.

Monday Movie Review: Coraline

August 3, 2009 / / 4 comments

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.

Imperfect learning

July 30, 2009 / / 3 comments

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.

F Trivia: All solved

July 29, 2009 / / Comments Off on F Trivia: All solved

You needed a hint, but you rallied in the end.
» Read more..

I added a hint

July 29, 2009 / / Comments Off on I added a hint

Just one left…you can do it!

Tuesday Trivia: Starts with “F”

July 28, 2009 / / 11 comments

(A, An, The don’t count)

1. Archie and Otto vie for the affections of a character named in the title.
Solved by Melville.

2. “You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall!”
Solved by Christina.

3. Two of the witches are played by someone better known as a pop star, and by the daughter of a pop star.
Solved by Evn.

4. Banned for over 30 years in the U.K.
Solved by Hazel.

5. The 1969 World Series plays a crucial role as a plot device.
Solved by Christina.

6. The two stars of this film reprise their roles from the Broadway show, which won one of them a Tony.
Solved by Melville.

7. “You’re a blackguard, a liar, a hypocrite and a stench in the nostrils of honest men. If it were in my power I’d hang you from the nearest tree, leave your carcass for the buzzards. But, as you are a representative of the United States government, I pledge you the protection and cooperation of my command. Good day, sir.”
HINT: John Ford.
Solved by Melville.

Monday Movie Review: Withnail and I

July 27, 2009 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Withnail and I

Withnail & I (1987) 10/10
Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann) are unemployed actors in 1969, living in drunken squalor. Overwhelmed by London, Marwood persuades Withnail to convince his wealthy uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) to loan them the key to his summer cottage so they can take a holiday. Written and directed by Bruce Robinson.

This movie is absolutely deranged. Surreal, appalling, hilarious, extraordinary, and deranged.

For ten years now, I’ve spent time on the IMDb message boards. One of its joys is learning about movies from real experts on the subject. At some point in my participation, I noticed that Withnail & I, a movie I had never heard of, kept showing up on people’s lists of favorites. This is exactly the way to find great movies; I am rarely disappointed.

Almost everyone describes this movie in terms of the holiday that Withnail and Marwood take, but the funniest stuff may well be the long sequence before they leave London; their spin into insane despair that drives them to Monty. Withnail has to be pushed pretty hard to visit relatives, and he is; by no money for food, a filthy home that may well have alien creatures growing in the sink, and a relatively normal flatmate nonetheless driven to “the fear” by cold, drink, hunger, drugs, and city life. None of which sounds even remotely funny (and surely living it would not be), which is why Richard E. Grant’s performance is nothing short of brilliant. The movie is held together by his posed, abrasive mania; at the point where he’s rubbing his body head to toe in Deep Heat because they’re cold and haven’t paid the heating bill, half-naked, green-skinned, shouting for BOOZE!, you know you’re on a wild ride and it’s time to just let go and let it take you away.

The actors are funny, the dialogue is hilarious, but the vision is relentlessly dark. And really, I enjoy this; these are young fools carrying a strange combination of cynicism and idealism that in no way equips them for real life. At the country home, everything appears to be falling apart; they still have no food, the rain is ceaseless, the neighbors are rude. When Monty arrives, suddenly the countryside is green and beautiful; it’s as though these guys have brought their own clouds with them. They’re very funny clouds, but I so admire Robinson’s commitment to his vision; he’s not sweetening these men or this situation to make it more palatable. In fact, what makes this movie so great is how entirely unpalatable it all is.

Quite simply, any movie with the line “Don’t threaten me with a dead fish” is a movie worth watching.

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