Recent Conversations with Nick C, #4

We do not get it. 

Just what is the big deal about current Vanity Fair cover girl, Kristen Stewart? She is certainly not much of an actress, and I guess I can understand how folks would consider her pretty, but Nick C and I are definitely not fans.

From an acting standpoint, Nick C and I believe she is hired for the one "look" she can provide, that of the Perils of Pauline victim, the look that says, "Why are you wounding me?" or, "I am ready to be kissed now."

Not our thing.  It is probably just us, right?

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Meanwhile,

Turn Me On Dammit has finally made it to the Bay Area.  Let us watch that fabulous trailer again, shall we, with that brilliant creepy Orson Welles song:

I read in the Chronicle review (they sort of liked it) that the film clocks in at only seventy-three minutes.  How cool is that? That is as long as Hitchcock's The 39 Steps and his first UK version of The Man Who Knows Too Much.  Maybe this will start a whole new trend of shorter movies? That would be great, but I doubt it will happen.

Anyhoo, Turn Me On Dammit has to be great because Jezebel loooooves it, and those ladies over there hate everything.

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Plus, the sullen sultry Aubrey Plaza, an actress possessing a wealth of considerable comedic talent, gets her first starring role in a motion picture, Safety Not Guaranteed.  About time, say I.  I hope it is a solid indie hit for her and its' debut director, and I will be seeing it very soon.

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And, just for kicks, here is another Chelsea Handler interview I am fond of, with Evan Rachel Wood, mostly for her description of how Kate Winslet helped her get through her "first full frontal" in Todd Haynes' superb Mildred Pierce for HBO.  

All my Saturday love for all, 

Mwah, ... 

As happy as I am to see Todd Haynes'

Fantastic Mildred Pierce get a bushelful of nominations for this year's Emmys, it is hard to take the Emmys seriously, considering that Treme did not get a single nomination and The Wire never won one, either.

Y'know, I get just as much red lipstick and nylons watching Miss Marple (and a much better story, to boot.)

But, hey, Katrina, NOLA, that's so mid-aughts.  Who gives a care about those folks anymore, really?

Meanwhile, there are a passel of new programs coming your way this season, set in the early sixties, when it was okay to say, Negro; fire women when they got pregnant; and smoke in your office.  Sweet!

Hey, I like bright red lipstick and nylons as much as any red-blooded, straight (or gay) American Dude around, but, for crying out loud, that show is soooo overrated.

And now we are going to get a dozen more or so just like it (but none as good.)

(Yeah, yeah, I know, I am no fun.  I did not Sex and the City, either.)

"Is it too late/To do it again/

The Feelies feel it in Jersey

Or should we wait/Another ten?"

That is the opening couplet from The Feelies' fifth long-player, Here Before, officially released yesterday.  More on that later.

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I would love to play poker against Dems.  Time and again immemorial Dems refuse to call the evil GOP's bluff.  Time and again immemorial Dems concede half the pot before the betting begins.

The GOP know the debt ceiling has to be raised.  Their Wall Street/Koch Bros. Overlords have way too much to lose.  Still, here comes the White House, speaking of concessions, suddenly listening to the Cat Food Commission's heinous suggestions, and just overall saying all the wrong things about the deficit and programs that must be cut.

I'd be a millionaire playing poker against these fools.

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A couple more political quick-hitters before I get on to funner things.  (And yes, I know, funner is not a word.)

First, lately, I have been distressed to see some of my blogosphere/facebook friendies politely applauding David Brooks.  Perhaps it is because he has a new book out or perhaps it is because he writes for the venerable, majestic NYT.

My friends, David Brooks, is not a force for good, much less even a moderate.  Read driftglass.  Remember that Brooks wrote a whole fucking awful series of articles in the Atlantic and other magazines just after Bush 43 was elected, calling all those that live in Blue States a bunch of intellectual, snobby show-offs who instead should be reverent, respectful, god-fearing WalMart shoppers.  Us in the Blue States just do not understand the real (Red State) Americans who love to eat at the Applebee's salad bar.  Also, do not forget that Mr Brooks was one of the biggest Iraq War cheerleaders, writing then for the fucking Weekly Standard.  Then you should read more driftglass.  David Brooks is an evil GOP hack asshat.  Do not pay attention to a frickin' word he says.

Next:  some more of my friendies on the interwebs are lamenting the recent budget deal, upset enough to stamp their tootsies that the government is not shutting down and all government programs must be abolished herewith!

What a load of crap.  Uh, these Randian, deficit/tax/regulation hating folks had nary a word to say when Bush 43 got us in to two fucking wars (occupations, really) and lowered taxes, thus, along with banks acting like casino majordomos, wrecking the economy.  Why is it with these Randites that when a serious discussion of the deficit crops up they always want to discuss term-limits; abolishing Planned Parenthood, ACORN, the NEA, NPR, PBS, the EPA, OSHA, the Dept of Education, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security; lowering US Reps and Senators salaries but yet, never once do they mention that large corporations like GE and Exxon/Mobil should pay fucking income taxes, or that we should fucking reduce military spending, which is by far the largest piece of the discretionary spending pie.

Bush 43 inherited a surplus, folks.  He promptly read My Pet Goat as the Trade Center collapsed and burned, went on vacation a lot, let the banks do whatever they fucking pleased, fiddled as the economy crashed, fired US attorneys that did not pursue nonexistent Democratic Vote Fraudsters, installed the PATRIOT act, and made a few Barney Xmas videos.

Enough.  It is okay to run a deficit in times like these.  In fact, the economy would be in much better shape today and the deficit would be larger if we had done a bigger, better stimulus package.  But Dems are cowards.  What else is new?

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The new Feelies album is splendid.  It is not radical or different in any way.  I would not expect that from them, besides.  The song titles are like haikus or koans, seemingly wise despite their vacant plainness, to wit:  Again Today, When You Know, Morning Comes, Here Before, Change Your Mind, Time Is Right, etc, ... There are guitar solos on every track, drum cymbals are almost never used and when they are it is strictly for punctuation.  My favorite track right now is When You Know.  It is a motorik monster with one of the most stunning guitar solos I have ever heard.  Million somehow makes his guitar sound like a backmasked recorder before unleashing a brief Neu-worthy panning airplane takeoff topper.

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Well, the masterful Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce has wrapped up.  I do not want to spoil anything for those who might watch it in replay or on dvd but the series really began to take off for me in episode three.  By the beginning of episode four, however, each scene in sequence became better and better, more gripping, more addictive and intoxicating.  The slow pace of the series really does build up to a stunning, sweaty palms climax.  Phenomenal.  Ms Winslett has done it again.  Is she the finest movie actress alive right now? I think so.  Kudos also go out to Evan Rachel Wood, as well.

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Bouchon and Market were wonderful.  (Yes, I suppose I am one of those wussy, snobby, Blue State toffs that love to eat at fancy restaurants, much to Mr Brooks' chagrin.)

Here are numerous pictures:

Daddy at Bouchon

Daddy's salad

Pnut's pork belly "salad"

Daddy's roasted lamb

Daddy at Bouchon (Part Deux)

Pnut's beet salad at Market

While we were at Bouchon I noticed there was a small wait table where servers would let bottles "breathe."  One of the bottles was a 1993 Lafite Rothschild.  Well, actually, I just knew it was a Lafite.  I actually stood up and peered at the label to discover the vintage.  We tried to "follow" the bottle and see which table it ended up at but it vanished before we could discover that.  Then, just as suddenly, as we left, we saw it back in a server's hands being poured in to a small decanter.  I asked him where it was going.  He said, the customer left the rest of the bottle for the kitchen staff.  I said, was not it too young? He said the kitchen staff would appreciate it plenty, no matter.  

Good for them!

Love you all so much, Mwah, ... 

I love that the Tiffany (UPDATED! 4/3/11)

Catalogue we receive in the mail four times a year is always addressed to me.  It is not for me.  It is for Renee.

At our fave cinema these daies, where we just saw Jane Eyre (more on that later), they play a sort-of indie rock xm radio dealie where the "dj" always tells you the artist right after the track.  A few weeks ago when we saw Of Gods and Men I coulda sworn I heard a new April March track but I was wrong.  It was some other artist.  I cannot remember now.  I was bummed.  But on Sunday last before we saw Jane Eyre (like I sed, more on this later) I guessed I was hearing a new Other Lives track.  This time I was right.  The album does not, uh, ... "drop" until May 10.  The album is called Tamer Animals.  (Fantastic title.  I like to think it is a pun on some old curmudgeon slurring, "Tame yer animals!" but I am prob wrong.  Who cares?) The video above is, gosh, like, nearly two yrs old.  But it is an amazing song and is a performance at the mighty Waterloo Records in boo-ti-ful Austim, Texas.

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I am not going to say much aboot Todd Haynes' HBO Mildred Pierce.  Yet.   Someone taught me years ago (Michael Barnes.  Thanks, bruvver.) that you should not offer a criticism until you see the work in full.  I will say this, though:  The masterful Ed Lachman is the DP on this project and his palette and the way he gets those metal filings in the air like Double Indemnity (but in color this time) takes my breath away.  Man, Haynes has the best DP in the biz at his beck and call.  Sweet.

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Uh, Something Wild comes oot on blu-ray Criterion dvd on May 10, as well.  I am psyched.

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Jane Eyre is fantastic, so frickin' good.  Renee liked it even more than me.  I am at a loss for words to describe the camera style.  The best I can put forward is that the director, Cary Fukunaga, (born in Oakland!) lets the camera tell the story.  He uses sound/dialogue to fabulous effect, as well.  In just the teensiest, most subtle way it reminds me of Altman, the way that dialogue is truly related to the character's blocking/spacing in the camera frame.  Folks' voices further away from the camera are softer than those closer.  Fukunaga also uses v few, what I call, "bells and whistles", show-offy tricks.  There are two obv things he does like that.  One of them would be a spoiler, so I will not touch that.  But the other relates to sound in film again, so I will speak to it.  Fukunaga arranges the "spooky/ghosty" dialogue in a, for a lack of a better word, a "doublequadrophonic" way, like an action film does.  There are, I would guess, eight dialogue tracks running simultaneously, dispersed four each to a left/right "track", natch.

And Michael Fassbinder, born in Deutschland, of Irish and German heritage, is an absolute revelation here.  I dint see that Tarantino Nazi movie.  I gave up on Tarantino after Jackie Brown, his last, to me, great film.  I have heard great things about Fish Tank, tho (back to my boy, Fassbinder again) and it is second in my latest Netflix queue.  Second to Fukunaga's first film, Sin Nombre.

I understand.  I really do.  As much as I love this latest version of Jane Eyre I can understand why someone might not like it.  Perhaps they are attached to a past BBC version or the old Orson Welles as Rochester take.  That is okay.

It is like my Dad and Sherlock Holmes.  As much as I love the new BBC, updated, major bells and whistles version of Sherlock Holmes there is no way I would seriously recommend it to my Da.  He (and Renee's Da) love the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series.  My Da has told me in the past that he thinks the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series is the best television he has ever seen.

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I read in David Thomson's video bible, Have You Seen? ... about Longford recently.  No big deal, right? I am just eating a sandwich and chips, passing the time exquisitely, learning about old movies until I notice the director of Longford.  It is Oscar-winning King's Speech director, Tom Hooper.  And, uh, the immortal post-Suez Canal English history screenwriter, Peter Morgan providing the script.

Longford is juicy and tough and rich.  It is an amazing topic to behold.  Do you believe in redemption? Do you believe Myra Hindley can be redeemed.  I know sooooo many of my readers have no idea who Myra Hindley is.  That is really really alright.  My readers would best know aboot the Moors Murders through the Smiths' moving track, Suffer Little Children.

This is a cable movie that is hung on the topical nature of its' subject, the absolute scary award-winning performance of Jim Broadbent, one of my all-time fave film actors ("A great big bushy beard"  Hot Fuzz, Topsy-Turvy, Life Is Sweet, etc, ... ) And Samantha Morton's amazing, yet thankless task of portraying Hindley.

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SO, I am going to the dentist tomorrow.  I have not seen a dentist in years.  I have had a problem w/ an abcessed tooth for years I have learned just now.  My jaw has been popping oot, causing me uncomfort for ages.  My teeth suck.  I have known that.  That is why I hate the dentist, right? 


It is funny.  When I went to work on Monday my jaw popped oot, as it is wont to do.  Big deal, I thought.  It has done that before.  It will return to normal later in the day before I leave work.  No.  It will be better in the morning.  And it was.  Then I had dinner last night and it flared up again.  Renee is familiar w/ this dance.  She got on the horn and scheduled a session.  


It is amazing what an ice pack and a phone call w/ a dentist will do to yor dental health.  Of course, it was much better this morning.  Still, it is something that must be done.  Perhaps, I will be like Martin Amis, w/ all brand-new amazing not-English choppers.  


Wish me well, bruvvers and sisters, ... 

One more for the kids:  (The greatest song ever aboot the young male sexual awakening, a topic ne'er discussed in any sensitive, constructive, illuminating manner before [or, really, since])


Love you all.  Got my ice pack.  Mwah, ... 


UPDATE (4/3/11):  


My evaluation at the endodontist revealed that I do not have an abcessed tooth as we feared and I do not need a root canal.  Hooray!


But my teeth and jaw are still a mess and I will be arranging an appointment with dentist Park, that's my buddy Nick C.'s dentist, on Monday.

xxxxxxxxx

mds

Fivetwentytwothousandeleven

I am doing the Graydon Carter (co-editor of the mighty, yet now defunct Spy Magazine and current editor-in-chief of the Marilyn, Kennedy loving not defunct Vanity Fair) hangover cure.  It is working a treat.

Us in front of City Hall with the marriage license.  Tank lives!

The cure is thus:  Take a scalding hot shower, a super super close shave, and dress very very smartly.  

Big day planned today and I am v excited.  Going to Macy's to get a shirt, belt, and tie.  Going to have lunch w/ my Sweetie.  Going to see Jane Eyre in The City.  Going to curl up on the couch and watch parts one and two of Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce, starring Kate Winslett.  Woo-hoo!

Mildred Pierce

About a year or so ago, there was an interview in a stuffy, but still good, film magazine with Todd Haynes, one of my favorite directors.  After discussing Superstar, Poison, Dottie Gets Spanked, Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There, Haynes' let on to what his next project might be.  He sed he had just seen (or re-seen) Berlin Alexanderplatz and was v taken with it.  Haynes expressed a desire to work in television, busting the 120 minute barrier.

Fast forward aboot six months later:  I am fooling around on imdb.com and, lo and behold, there listed is Haynes' new project, a cable TV mini-series for HBO, starring one of my all-time favorite actresses, Kate Winslett.  It is a remake of Mildred Pierce, the old camp chestnut, starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott (gosh, he is good in this), Jack Carson (he is great, too), and, Heck! We gotta have a wisecracking second fiddle to Joan, right? So, the (early career) Ginger Rogers/Joan Blondell/Aline MacMahon part went to the fabulous Eve Arden.  Kate Winslett will play the Crawford role.  Evan Rachel Wood will be doing Ann Blyth's part and Guy Pierce will be Zachary Scott.  I was v excited to learn this.  If anyone can do a remake of Mildred Pierce it is Haynes.  And it really is the type of story that deserves five hours.

Anyhoo, HBO, promoting their new series, Boardwalk Empire, (a show I could care less aboot, notwithstanding Aleksa Palladino being in it) finally showed the trailer.  Here is the trailer.  So, excited as I was, I decided I had to watch the original on Monday, two days ago.  Renee has ne'er seen it, & I had not seen it start to finish in years.  My strongest memory of Mildred Pierce was seeing it with my Mum at a cool rep movie house in Dallas when I was a kid.

So, for $2.99, I purchased it OnDemand.

Michael Curtiz, the Hungarian Hollywood Auteur, who actors (stars) sed could never be understood on the set, who is always criticized for his non-flashy/storytelling camera style, and the director of these films:  The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Sea Wolf, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Passage to Marseilles, Night and Day, The Will Rogers Story, White Christmas, We're No Angels, King Creole, and of course, arguably the greatest American film-entertainment of all-time, Casablanca, delivered Mildred Pierce to Warner Brothers in 1945.  (And I bet you dollars to doughnuts it was on-time and under budget.)

Before we watched it Renee asked me what type of film it was.  I told her it was a combination of genres.  Mildred Pierce is a melodrama, a murder mystery, a "woman's picture", a film noir, a weepie, and a Camp Classic that plays v well at the Castro.  Then we talked about gays, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, etc, ...

Mildred Pierce is much much better than I remembered it.  It is based on a James M. Cain novel and his seediness and cynicism seep through the screen, coating the audience in ick.  Only two of the main characters are even remotely likeable (though Bert does redeem himself by the end):  Crawford's Mildred and her daughter Kay.  (Kay dies in the third reel, natch.)  Mildred does a have a fatal flaw, though.  Despite her toughness, smarts, and olympian-sized work-ethic she cannot seem to pick the right man.  Of course you could argue, she could do v well without a man at all.  Mildred's life is dedicated to her oldest daughter, and she marries for a second time just to bring her estranged daughter back in to her life.

There are three available marriage candidates for Mildred in the film.  She marries two of them.  The first ends in divorce, he is broke & cheating on her and the second marriage ends v badly, indeed.  I will leave it at that.  But before you think that the third candidate, Jack Carson, a real-estate agent, club impresario (though his clubs are dives that serve cheap liquor as a matter of course), and business partner in Mildred's restaurant chain, is the one 'who got away', amplifying her tragedy, consider this: He's disgusting, too.  To wit, On what should be one of the happiest days of her life, the opening night of her restaurant, Zachary Scott has brought Mildred some orchids.  Carson is instructed to deliver them to a v busy Mildred.  Carson throws them in the trash.  Carson and Blyth (daughter Veda) then work a scheme to blackmail Veda's rich rich boyfriend for ten grand.  Veda makes up a pregnancy that does not exist.  When Mildred finally gets all the facts, she tears up Veda's check and chucks Veda out of the house.  Mildred goes to Mexico for a long vacation but finds out upon her return (thanks to Bert) that Carson has hired Veda to be a 'singer' at one of his dives.  Finally, Carson sells his hefty portion of the business at a point when Mildred is over-extended financially, trying to keep Veda happy and close at hand, meaning she will lose the business and have to start all over.

That is the amazing thing that stung me about this film.  Basically it is a Jerry Springer episode on film.  But it was made in Hollywood! So all these reptilian slimeballs are lit to look like movie stars.  They do look like movie stars.  They are movie stars, with gowns by Irene and fantastic forties suits with the wide ties.  DP, Ernest Haller does some phenomenal work, pretty much laying the patent for how Crawford would be shot the rest of her career and achieving a high art type of seediness that you just never saw in noir films.  (Except maybe parts of Double Indemnity.)  The Curtiz version is set in Southern California and I do not know where Haynes' (looks to be a period setting) is set but this subject just screams Oklahoma or Texas to me.  Come on, a name like Veda! That is the most perfect white-trash daughter name, evah! Can you not just picture Homecoming Queen Veda of Midland, Texas or Ada, Oklahoma? 


In terms of just gut-level engagement, or film entertainment, this film is in the top one percentile.  Renee was like an old drag queen, yelling at the TV, to "Throw her down the stairs!" or "Get a job, bitch!"  I love the (prob unintended) irony of glamour laid atop a  white trash melodrama.  I love how everyone is just so awful.  And mean.  And small.


Good stuff.