"Dear Steve, ... "

"Dear Steve, my name is Sara.  I am fifteen years old and I live in a very small place.  Right now, there is a very big drama going on because Alma said Artur put his dick on her hip at the party.  Everyone calls her Dick-Alma.  And she has become an outcast.  Alma is my best friend.  But my sister is in love with Artur.  I don't know what to do.  I know this must sound very trivial when you are on death row.  But, maybe it means life is never easy.  Anyway, I would like to be your pen pal.  Please write.  Best wishes, Sara."

2012, The Summer of Young Love continues.

Went and saw Turn Me On, Dammit one more time before it leaves the Bay Area.  Today is the last day here for it.  The film (print I watched?) goes to Los Angeles now.  Farewell.

The film was even more moving, lovely, wry, and wonderful than it was the first time.  And, this time I noticed the original score a good deal more, and how witty and perfect it is for the story and the little Norwegian town it comments on.

I felt so elated and fresh and special walking past City Hall on the way to BART.  I did not even listen to my iPod on the way home, read my excellent Ava Gardner book on the train, as I watched children play and talk.  One of the children was named Ava.  Was she named after Ms Gardner? They all got off at my same stop.

************

Watched The Newsroom finally upon getting home.  It was a let-down.  I will keep watching it, but it is not likely to become a huge cult, obsessive thing with me.  Too treacly.  Too sweet.  Not cynical or mean enough, Charlie Pierce nailed it in his review of it.  The best thing about it is seeing Sam Waterston's character permanently swacked on Scotch in every scene.  The walk and talks are all over the place, and still pretty frickin annoying.

I love FDR just about as much as anybody else does, but the sermonizing on the Old Great America, plus overlaid with a fruity annoying string score, is going to get old really quick.  Actually already has.

Still, nice to see Allison Pill.

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But then it was back to a magical dreamy Summer of Young Love clutch of time.  Sweetie asleep on my lap, running my hands through her hair as I watched Submarine.

Submarine was written and directed by "Moss" from The IT Crowd (and his co-star there, Chris O'Dowd, gets a special thanks in the credits), Richard Ayoade.  The film is based on a Welsh coming of age novel that I will be purchasing soon.

Richard Ayoade.  Looking forward to his new career as writer/director.

The film for all its bittersweet perfectness is insanely derivative.  Notably Harold and Maude (just released on bluray by Criterion!) and Wes Anderson's films.  And, of course, Anderson practically owes a good portion of his career to Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude.

(Hey, Wes! I love love love love Moonrise Kingdom, but maybe you should try to make a film like Ashby's Shampoo? That could be dynamite.)

Anyhoo, Submarine is a cult film supreme, full of amazing dialogue, and young love run riot; beautiful scenes of our heroes setting fires, blasting off fireworks, and kissing while taking polaroids.  There is a great deal of pain, as well, though; bullying, death, cheating, lying, spying, desperate adult melancholy that paralyzes, and the arresting youthful fear of surrendering to love.

Alex Turner contributed six of the most gorgeous songs to Submarine.  And I have been absolutely consumed, colonized, and conquered by one of them, Piledriver Waltz.

Plus, Sally Hawkins plays Oliver's Mum.

Crazily highly recommended.  Submarine is streaming on Netflix.










Inventory Thursday.

Was going to write something about SCOTUS here but I am thinking better of it, I would rather think on Jordana and Oliver and those nervous scary moments of seduction and surrender, those polaroids, the flash, the fireworks, the fire.

Pride Kills, brothers and sisters.  It is scary, I know, but my advice to you is, get in touch with it, get out on that limb, and fear not love.  There are worlds and worlds out there, a million doors, open them all.

Yasmin Paige, born in London, England, UK.

Michael

Thanks to Steve A at Alexia Moore and

Kristy B at Frog's Leap (I love Ms B's North Carolina accent) for helping make the Wife and I's little getaway so much fun.  We caught all kinds of special treatment, attention, and love from everyone up in the Valley.  It was a massive good time for the both of us.  Woo-hoo!

"I know you're a shrink, but Doctor, could you feel right here? That is where it hurts."

Now, it is back to work work work; inventory, crappy politics all week -- the SCOTUS ruling on ACA, jobs reports, the GOP's War on American Women™ (Shhhh, do not say, Vagina), the GOPs War on AG Eric Holder™ -- and whatever else this week of June decides to offer me.

But our getaway should help buffer for this week.  And, I am going back to the City to see Turn Me On, Dammit one more time before it leaves us for good.  So, I got that, right?

And, I think the next film I want to loan my friend, J, is Nic Roeg's Bad Timing.  I think that could just about hit the spot and is crazy esoteric and weird enough to intrigue him.

All my Tuesday love, kids! I am gonna channel some serious Poppy and we're going to make this week one of the best evah!








AH

Turn Me On, Dammit is so sweet.

It is like molasses.  (Do they eat molasses in Norway?) Or, it is the answer, "Yes," to Renee's question for me this morning, re the film, "Is it a doorbell?"

Pikk-Alma gets ready for the party at the Youth Center.  Artur will be there!

There is so much to love about this adorable Norwegian coming of age comedy; how completely unsentimental it is; all the wonderful girl characters, the three sisters, including the pink lip-gloss addicted Ingrid, the hip college student redhead, Maria, with the cool flat and housemates in the big city, Oslo, and my fave Sara, the cynical chain smoking brunette who wants to move to Texas to abolish the death penalty and is pen pals with death row inmates; the absolute vision of loveliness that is our protagonist, Alma, desperately horny and hopelessly in love with Artur; the sweetest, nicest phone sex guy ever, Stig, who always wants to know how it is going between Alma and Artur; Alma's gentle flustered Mother, who works at the turnip factory; Kjartan (I totally want to change my name to Kjartan -- that is pronounced:  zhar-tan), the smelly, hash smoking, crap moustache loner kid who writes poems to his love, Sara, and calls her his Saralou; Alma's wonderful opening introductory litany that introduces us to her small, boring, lovely, awful little Norwegian town; the fantasy sequences; flipping off the town sign every time; the trip to the big city, Oslo, hanging with the super cool college kids, drinking red wine; the trampoline girls; Pikk-Alma; the ending; the indie rock music, especially Franz Is Dead; the whole "Smash the Social Democratic State!" fruit abuse scene; the bus shelter; and on and on and on, ...

Ever so highly recommended.  A delightful must-see.






And I bet you Turbonegro love the film, too.  They get it.






Back to work, but this week ends with a trip to St Helena, something to look forward to! Love you all, ...













AH

Pride Week starts today, of course.

Pride Week is when San Francisco nearly turns in to Disneyland, The Happiest Place on Earth.

I remember way back in the late nineties going to a dyke bar with Nadja K and a bunch of her friends and kissing and hugging every single girl or guy on our way to the bar to order drinks. When Nadja and I finally got our drink orders in, Nadja looked at me and said, "I love Pride Week, everyone loves everyone."

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Cool day set up for me today:  Going to lunch with a friend at Sidebar in Oaktown; and then heading to the City to go see Turn Me On, Dammit.  So, part of my day is a Me Party, which I have been having a lot more of recently, which is great.

************

Trying to stop rereading the same books over and over, and work on reading new books.  I am kicking off this new campaign (I always want to spell campaign with an e at the end, like Champagne, and always have to lop off the e right after I type, ...) with a book I have had my eye for years but finally bought, Ava Gardner "Love Is Nothing" by Lee Server.  It is a great biography. She had a tumultuous, crazy life.  And I have always loved difficult artists.  And Ms Gardner also did not give a fuck what other people thought of her, and said whatever she wanted to say, an attribute I also always admire in others.

************

Euro 2012 is going okay.  The Russians got knocked out and the Czechs broke.  Germany is doing well, my pick to win it all.  France is looking in good form.  Spain looks great.  I still can not stand Italy, England, or (especially) Portugal, and they all look to make the Quarters, but there has been some lovely football on display at times and I am getting excited for the knock out stages.  

But I am still even more excited about next month's Women's Football Tournament at the London Olympics.  

************

The Summer is heating up and the knives are seriously out for Obama on Fox News.  Yeh, big surprise, right? I love how Juan Williams has now become the official surrogate for Obama on FNC, and gets yelled at three or four times a day, as if Williams is Barack Obama.  Of course, Williams gets paid quite a bit of money to absorb such abuse, so, you can not feel too sorry for him.  Anyhoo, ...

That is all I got! Everyone have a splendid wonderful Monday and try and do at least one little something special for yourself even if it is naughty or decadent.  

xxxoooxxx,

Ardent

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?

************

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.

************

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.

************

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, ... 

Before Girly Night, Pt 2 last night

I had a Me Party (h/t to the divine Miss Piggy and enchanting Amy Adams) in the City.  I took BART, listening to my Twee playlist (Talulah Gosh/Pastels/Vaselines/Aztec Camera) and reading Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? whilst on my way to the cinema.

Outside the theater the banner proclaims, "The most intimate movie experience in San Francisco" and they are not kidding.  The theater was tiny, just thirty-four seats.  I know.  I counted them. And I was not the only person there! Hoo-ray! There was a gay couple, dudes, at the very back; a straight couple right behind me; and the odd folks, a lady and a man, not together, across the "aisle", as it were, from me.

I had some popcorn and some clear hody and settled in for the film.  There were a ton of previews.  Here are some of them:

(By the by, I was at an NC-17 film -- shoulda been an R, more on this later -- so, I got to see some pretty racy, heavy trailers, including one, God Bless America, which sported the infamous Red Band Trailer Title Card.  God Bless America, written and directed by Bob -- he's dropped the "cat", apparently -- Goldthwait, looks like a complete waste of an intriguing subject matter.  Anyroad, ... )

This Willem Dafoe thing looks awful, too.

And I have no words to describe this extremely creepy weird looking film.  Is it made by Scientologists, or what?

But, I did get to see the trailer for this.  This looks fantastic, and, uh, yeah, that is Orson Welles "singing" I Know What It is to Be Young.

************

Shame is very very good.  It is not a masterpiece, which is what director Steve McQueen seems to try just a bit too hard to make, but it is very very good.  And it is much better than his first film, Hunger, which also stars Michael Fassbender.

One of the best things about the film is its objectivity, which I almost always seem to admire in films these days.  McQueen and his co-writer, Abi Morgan, never pass judgement on Fassbender's Brandon character, they just tell his story.  Yet, there is no real plot per se.  The film hangs on the collision of two very damaged people, a brother and sister.  And Shame only barely suggests what might have scarred these two for life, which is fine by me.  I have my notions on what happened to them, to make them the way they are.

There are great acting performances all over Shame:  Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Nicole Beharie (who Renee and I saw in the little jewel of a courtroom drama, American Violet), and Elizabeth Masucci all do an outstanding job.  But my favorite acting performance from Shame was the one by Lucy Walters.  Ms Walters' part in the movie is listed as Woman on the Subway, and she does not have a single line.  She appears in two scenes that bookend the film and it is the first scene she plays that I will be thinking about for a very long time to come.  This scene tells the story of Fassbender and Walters' silent, therefore secret, commuter relationship.  It starts with Walters recognition of Fassbender's intense amorous stare.  She pays him the compliment of his respectful attention with a shy smile and then looks away.  Fassbender never takes his eyes off her, though.  When she comes back to his gaze, she sighs, gathers her strength and returns his stare, flirting with him without speaking.  But she cannot match Fassbender's intensity and finally looks down for a moment.  The smile is gone now and the look on her face tells me that she has already played through their entire potential relationship in her mind:  The sex they would have, the horrible guilt they would earn for their illicit gamble, the fact that any intimate relationship would destroy any chance of friendship between them, the possibility he could be a stalker or a dangerous person, the horrible silence before they part ways, the awful furtiveness, the liberating awesome fantasy fulfilled, the thrill of being bad, and so much more.  Fassbender never takes his eyes off her, though.  The last time she looks back at him she looks scared.  His harmless flirting seems to have turned in to something more threatening and sinister.  Walters gets up from her seat and walks to the door as the train pulls in to the station.  We see her wedding ring as she grabs the rail to maintain her balance.  Fassbender stands just behind her, not quite touching, but as close as you could be without touching.  The subway doors open.

But that is just one scene in a film full of great scenes.  The scene where Ms Mulligan sings at a nightclub is one of the most moving and special things I have seen in years.  Even Fassbender's midnight run through Manhattan is memorable.  (Of course it does not hurt to have Glenn Gould playing Bach's Prelude and Fugue No. 10 in E Minor in the background as hottie Fassbender gallops through the City.  And all the music in the film is superb with a haunting original score and a blend of 70s disco and Gould playing Bach.)  All of Fassbender's scenes with Ms Beharie are rich and wonderful, as well.

There are only two hiccups in the film as far as I am concerned and one of those is so ticky-tack as to be completely unnoticeable to a vast majority of film-goers.  (Fassbender and Beharie are served a bottle of Pinot Noir at a fancy restaurant.  The Pinot is in a Bordeaux bottle and there is no where on earth that Pinot would be packaged in that type of bottle.  Even the Kiwis and Alsatians use Burgundy bottles for their Pinot Noir.)  The other misstep is considerably more serious and I was, for a minute in the theater, slightly worried the film might unravel, but it did not. This would be a part of Fassbender's Sex Bender Sequence near the end of the film that I am loathe to reveal, so as not to spoil anything for anyone.  But this part of the sequence seemed unnecessary and fell flat, to boot, for this reviewer.

But on the whole, Shame is an absolutely smashing, heavy, serious, moving, adult motion picture that I will add to my collection as soon as it becomes available.  It is a toughy, though.  And there is a lot of passionless sex and nudity in it.  No one is making love in Shame.

To finish, How is it that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo earned an R rating while Shame got an NC-17? Heaven forbid a male actor free his willy for the camera! Or a woman has a loud orgasm. Or there be explicit gay sex.

Anyhoo, if it seems your type of thing, most definitely see Shame.

Carey's all growns now and soon to wed.  She had her hen party two weeks ago.  

-- Ardent