Apparently I’ve seen movies no one else has seen.
Tuesday Trivia: Stop stalling and write the damn quiz
1. “After the therapy, and the psychiatry, and the meetings, you know what it all comes down to? You’re all fucked up.”
Hint: Based on a true story, the star (who speaks this line) is an Oscar winner who was nominated an additional seven times. Solved by George (comment #14).
2. The character played by a two-time Oscar winner hides a gun in a cup of coffee.
Hint: The writer/director is most famous as a playwright.
Solved by George (comment #11).
3. This 1930s musical has the same name as a 2004 remake–but not a remake of this movie.
Solved by Melville (comment #2).
4. “I like the stink of the streets. It cleans out my lungs. And it gives me a hard-on.”
Solved by George (comment #10).
5. The actual San Quentin gas chamber was measured so it could be perfectly replicated in the studio for this movie.
Solved by Melville (comment #1).
6. “Hey! Didn’t I see you on Cops?”
Hint: 2008.
Solved by George (comment #11).
7. Based on a true story about an unsolved crime, a cartoonist is the investigator.
Solved by Bill (comment #3).
Monday Movie Review: Duplicity
Duplicity (2009) 9/10
Ray (Clive Owen) is former MI6 agent. Claire (Julia Roberts) is a former CIA agent. In 2002 they met, slept together, and she stole some papers from him. Now they’re corporate spies on the same team. Or are they? Written and directed by Tony Gilroy.
There is something delightfully retro about Duplicity. It feels like a charming caper from the sixties, like the original Thomas Crown Affair. It’s in the bounciness of the filming, especially when scenes are entered via split screen. There’s a smartness and a sense of ease, as if nothing that happens is all that serious, even though the stakes are high.
I saw a review that likened Duplicity to a screwball, and I can definitely see that; it’s especially similar to His Girl Friday. Owen and Roberts are certainly a better physical and personal match for Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell than for Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway! But it’s mostly the rapid-fire romance, and romantic humor, juxtaposed with a gritty, even dark, story.
This may sounds as if Duplicity is kitsch. It is not. The core story, of corporate espionage, is told in an almost naturalistic style. None of the cast, other than the two leads, have dazzling movie star good looks. The CEO rivals are played by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti, and the other security agents and tech geeks are equally unbeautiful. The blend of the sparkling stars with the rest of the cast isn’t quite seamless, and is the only place I’d fault the film.
We open in Dubai. Ray and Claire meet, flirt, make love, and he wakes up alone. Then it’s the present day, and we don’t know quite what’s going on. Throughout the film, we learn more and more. From 2002, the flashbacks move steadily forward, until, in the end, we see exactly how the present events fit with Ray and Claire’s past history. It’s not confusing, except inasmuch as you don’t know the whole plot—but why should you? The reveal is part of the pleasure, and each time information is revealed, you know more. It’s not The Usual Suspects, with a final twist that reverses the previous movie, or Swordfish, with a final twist that pretends to explain everything but is just more gobbledygook. It’s a steady, bit-by-bit accumulation of knowledge throughout a dizzying sequence of events. Delightful.
And the thing is, there’s a real story being told here. Tony Gilroy is interested in the workings of trust and distrust, of love and eroticism, and of how they all interact as understood by two spies in a relationship that may or may not be real. It’s a good story, well-told, and a lot of fun as well.
Tuesday trivia: Bunch of questions, bunch of answers
Honestly, I never saw a bunch of people stress so much over Madonna.
Tuesday Trivia: Bunch of questions
1. “Queer how the folks on the bottom looks down on the folks on the top. It was always that way.”
Solved by George (comment #12).
2. Trash can lids as dancing shoes.
Solved by Melville (comment #1).
3. “You’re dead and you’re still into party politics?”
Solved by Evn (comment #25).
4. This is the first sequel of a multi-sequel franchise. The star of the first movie would only consent to return for this movie if he was killed off.
Solved by Bill (comment #10).
5. One of the stars of this film wrote an autobiographical account of the filming process. In addition, one of the screenwriters wrote a (barely) fictionalized version of the experience. The fictionalized version was itself turned into a film.
Solved by Melville (comment #1).
6. “It’s the truth that you should never trust anybody who wears a bow tie. Cravat’s supposed to point down to accentuate the genitals. Why’d you wanna trust somebody whose tie points out to accentuate his ears?”
Solved by Melissa (comment #27).
7. This movie features a pop star who also co-wrote its theme song. Her stand-in for the film was a woman who worked impersonating her in Vegas.
Solved by George (comment #22).
Andy Hallett: Dead at age 33
I am so sad and shocked about this. Andy Hallett, who played Lorne on Angel: The Series, has died at the age of 33 after a long battle with heart disease.
He took a character who was basically a joke and imbued him with enormous soul. He was the guy you rooted for; despite being green-skinned and horned, he was the “regular guy” in the crew when everyone else was all dark and twisty. And clearly, this was Hallett’s tremendous presence.
He will be missed. May he be born again to those who loved him.
Monday Movie Review: The Hunger
The Hunger (1983) 7/10
Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie) are ancient vampires living in modern (1983) Manhattan. Although Miriam is immortal, John begins to age after hundreds of years of youth. Then they discover Sarah (Susan Sarandon), a doctor researching the cause of aging. Directed by Tony Scott.
I know I saw this movie in the theater. I remember being in a theater in 1983 or 1984 (might have been second run) and seeing this, and yet I remembered nothing about it except finding it confusing.
It is confusing, no doubt about that. The stylized use of inter-cutting is dizzying, and the mechanics of the plot are left largely to the imagination. And yet, and yet, and yet…The Hunger is something like an encapsulation of everything that fascinates about vampirism. It is sexy, artsy, and dark. It lavishly favors style over substance, and makes that a virtue. In fact, where The Hunger is weakest is in trying so hard to have a plot at all. It works best as a visual and sensory trip outside the confines of what-the-hell-is-this-anyway.
It’s kind of ahead of its time, really. It was before Michelle Belanger. It was not before Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976), but certainly before she was her own cottage industry. Yet here is The Hunger, showing a connection between vampires and a dark nightclub scene that would later morph into Goth. Miriam and John go out, listen to Bauhaus, dance with New Wavers dressed all in black, go home with two of them, have sex with them, and eat them. That there is nudity is absolutely right; this is absorption is the sensual experience.
…and depending on your tastes, you may hate this movie. Because there is all this artsy inter-cutting, and there is this stupidly obtuse plot, and a lot of veils, a lot of gauze, and crumbly corpses. This is definitely a matter of taste.
The movie mostly stumbles in showing Sarah’s side of things; her age laboratory is thinly drawn—a bunch of white coats and monkeys—and I could have done with less lab and more Miriam and John. But one scene, in which John visits Sarah’s facility, is perhaps the best and most haunting the film has to offer.
Plus there’s the sex. Because it’s definitely true that any movie in which Catherine Deneuve has naked encounters with both David Bowie and Susan Sarandon is worth seeing.
Wic-Can Fest Canada! Woohoo!
I am so excited about this event. I was just added to the schedule last night, and it gives me a way to travel in my pathetic unemployed state. Plus teach, sign books, and hang out with dear friends.
I will be teaching the full three-part Structure of Spellcasting course, which is one of my favorite things to teach. I am so excited I just feel like packing right now.
Hope to see you there!
Another corporate statistic
As of yesterday, I join the ranks of the downsized.
It hasn’t quite hit me yet. I am making plans, sending resumés, networking, thinking things through. I grieve, oddly, the products I worked on quite a lot. My products were “sunsetted” and hence, the writer who documented them had no more work. That was me.
I have to say I think it’s a poor business decision. Big corporations are responding to market changes like they have the hiccups, killing off jobs in the hopes of making stockholders happy. But there’s more to strategy than being in-the-moment. Three years from now, the crisis will be over, and the products and brainpower will have moved on. Then they’ll be hiccuping again, wondering why it’s so hard to hire the right people.
I’ll be okay. I have a wee bit of savings which will, with my severance, tide me over. I don’t anticipate a life of soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Neither do I plan on living beyond my means. Vacation cancelled, priorities reorganized. And amazingly calm throughout the entire thing.
If you know of anyone interested in hiring a brilliant, personable, focused writer/designer/business analyst, do please get in touch.
Tuesday Wednesday Trivia: All done!
It was Denzel Washington.
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