And I have a new record for most movies seen in a month. Since I’ve been keeping track, that is. But no more, for school, television, and Xbox360 have stolen my movie-watching time, and October’s recap is going to be fairly thin. Which is good, because then I can get caught up on writing and posting them. After the jump, reactions to Death at a Funeral, Celine and Julie Go Boating, 3:10 to Yuma, Butterfield 8, Breakfast on Pluto, The Double Life of Veronique, Starter for 10, Alphaville, The Color Purple (book and film), The Brave One, Knocked Up, Talladega Nights, Eastern Promises, Two for the Road, A Mighty Wind, The Optimist’s Daughter, Atonement, and more.
Month: October 2007 Page 1 of 2
The Silent Movie Theatre in LA has become a full-fledged revival house, a cinematheque almost, if you will. It’s not just showing silent films, either.
Here’s the full program for November and December (pdf). Starting with François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series, on to a couple of film noir specials, some world cinema and some silent cinema…plus lots of other stuff I don’t care about quite as much. But the best thing? $25 a month gets you UNLIMITED ADMISSIONS for yourself. Dude, I would be there ALL the time. For serious. One of my friends in Wales has a cinema that does this flat-fee-for-unlimited-admissions things, and I’ve always been so jealous. Now I can be jealous of LA people, too. Does anyone know if Film Forum does something like this in New York? Because that’s my other major cinema lust candidate.
Anyway. Yeah. Further solidifying my intent to some day live in a big city that has an equivalent of these rep houses.
Hat tip Karina on Spoutblog.
In unrelated news, my WordPress admin interface is frelled up. Not showing any graphics or anything. It’s like all the css is stripped off it. But the blog itself looks fine to me; does it look fine to y’all? And the admin dashboard looks fine on all the other WP sites I have hosted on the same server, so I have no clue what is causing this or how to fix it, but it’s mucho annoying.
Okay, guys, now that I’ve seen the second episode of Pushing Daisies, it’s moved up to the “LOVE/ADDICTED/OBSESSED” category on my TV breakdown. Easily the best of the new shows. In fact, it’s been ages since I’ve been this delighted by a show.
Let me just tell you a few of the things that made me giddy this week:
- The color scheme. Again. No, I will not get over this anytime soon, what with all the bright green and red and pink in large quantities.
- Nor will I get over the narration anytime soon, which is so perfect that I’m pretty much entranced as soon as it starts.
- Emerson knitting. And knitting not just anything…knitting gun holsters.
- Chuck being petulant about not getting shotgun (I just think she’s cute when she’s petulant).
- Ned being adorable all the time.
- Musical interlude!! They couldn’t put Kristin Chenoweth on the show and not have random musical numbers, though, now could they?
- The dandelion-car guy DROVE A HUMMER. Yeah, I laughed out loud.
- Chuck and Ned kissing through bodybags. Aw.
And I’ve heard it’s done well in the ratings so far, which is AWESOME. This is so totally the type of show that I usually fall in love with, only to have it canceled after four episodes (I’m looking at you, Wonderfalls…*sniff*). Hopefully that doesn’t happen here. Thank goodness it’s on ABC instead of Fox, that’s all I’m saying.
(screencaps courtesy of Jennifer on LJ)
Two things I’m really grateful for at the moment.
1 – That I chose to do my short paper/panel assignment on Ellen Douglas’ Can’t Quit You Baby, because of all the books we’ve read so far in Southern Lit, it’s my favorite. Each one we read I like better than the previous one, which either means that I like the newest books the best (which is not usually true), that I’m very fickle (which is true), or that I’m getting better acclimated to the class and materials each week (which is probably true to some extent). Anyway, Can’t Quit You Baby has an awesome intrusive narratorial voice which makes me happy. I hope I can work it into my paper somehow. Or maybe write my long paper on this novel, too, and incorporate it (I haven’t even thought about the long paper yet).
2 – That I had the Harlem Renaissance class last semester, because the article we have to read and respond to in the paper/panel discussion is about the relationship between the white employer and the black employee who are the main characters in the book, and whether Douglas is co-opting African-American culture in the form of the black woman order to “save” the white woman from her detached and superficial life. That idea came up a lot in the Harlem Renaissance class, especially relating to music and the ways that white music producers took over jazz and blues and smoothed them out to sell them to white audiences (often with white performers). I haven’t finished reading the article yet, but I already feel like I have a grounding in the point of view the author is coming from, which is encouraging.
I don’t know what I’m going to write yet, or what tack I want to take in the short paper, but at least I won’t be completely lost, like I would’ve been if I’d had to write about some of the earlier books.
I’m also grateful for having acquired the other two Rilo Kiley albums I was missing (three if you include their first self-produced EP), but I think I’ve already done a fine job convincing everyone that I’m obsessed with Rilo Kiley at the moment. I wonder if that will happen every time I got to a concert, or if as I get more used to going to concerts the desire to listen to the band 24/7 for the next several days will go away. Meanwhile, I did find out that Inara George, the singer in The Bird and the Bee, also has a solo album called Rise Up (actually recorded before the band was formed), and based on the 30-second previews at the Amazon.com store, it’s just as good as The Bird and the Bee’s stuff. I wish there were a wishlist for the Amazon.com MP3 store. This is a problem with iTunes as well…I mean, just because the music is digital and I could have it right now doesn’t mean I have the money right now, and I might like to have a list of MP3s to remember to buy in the future when I have money. Just a thought.
EDIT: Third thing I’m thankful for in relation to the paper–there’s a whole Ingmar Bergman connection I think I can make, which will be AWESOME, because nobody else will do that for sure. The main character actually goes to see Persona at one point, there are some similarities between the Persona characters and the Can’t Quit You Baby characters, and none of the critics so far have even mentioned it or tried to examine what a Bergman-Douglas connection might mean! Plus I may even be able to bring in the Spiritual trilogy and its spider-god. It would help if I knew what the spider-god meant, but maybe I can read up on Bergman some, too, which would be good for me anyway.