Movies Watched -- Clouds of Sils Maria

Added on by C. Maoxian.

124 minutes but it felt like much longer, even at 16x fast forward. It's about an ageing movie star, Juliette Binoche, and her still excellent cleavage, and Kristen Stewart, her personal assistant / chief phone answerer, once again biting her lip, sucking her teeth, or doing something else weird with her mouth in every scene. I went to fast forward after 20 minutes and had to speed it all the way up to 16x, where it still looked like an awful movie. Talk, talk, talk. Endless talk.

Stewart looked good in those nerd glasses (see below). They go for a swim in a lake in the Alps and we get to see the Ancient Binoche Bush but Stewart even keeps her bra on! Binoche gets a really bad, dyke-y haircut towards the end of the movie, washed-up star bad about getting old, ya know. God, this looked terrible. Red rating, avoid. 

Kristen Potter and the Cursed Ageing Actress

Kristen Potter and the Cursed Ageing Actress

Movies Watched -- When Marnie Was There

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In Japanese. 103 minutes, so a decent length, but I still fast forwarded from 20 minutes in. Another weird one from some Japanese animation studio. The main girl, Anna, is a foster child with asthma who goes to spend the summer in the countryside with some relatives of her foster mother / guardian. It's unclear to me if Anna is a mixed-race child. This is the thing that interested me, but I couldn't figure it out, it wasn't explored. There are foreigners within, and the fantasy girl, Marnie, is a blonde Cinderella type, but who are these foreigners and why are they in Japan? Is Anna ostracized because she's of mixed race? Is this why she was abandoned? Is this why she feels like an outsider? I couldn't understand it.  Red rating, avoid.

Princess and Tom Boy

Princess and Tom Boy

Movies Watched -- Trainwreck

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129 minutes long so at least 30 to 40 minutes too long. I fast forwarded from 20 minutes in. Amy Schumer looks like Miss Piggy, fat and unattractive, and she plays a "slut," but the guys she sleeps with would never sleep with her in real life. It's true that men will have sex with just about anyone, but they'd draw the line at someone who looks like Amy Schumer. It's a Judd Apatow movie so the raunch humor is aimed at teenage boys, once again. It's a weird one though, totally conventional despite the "subversive" humor, in the end it's an old fashioned Jewish girl fantasy in the sense that she ends up with a doctor. Red rating (avoid).

Wes Morris hated the movie; here's his beautiful review.

Fffffffff.....at.

Fffffffff.....at.

Watching Arty French Flicks With My Shades On

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The great Blossom Dearie singing "I'm Hip," lyrics by Dave Frishberg (born March 23, 1933 ... Susannah McCorkle does a good version of his "My Attorney Bernie"). Dearie's not appreciated enough for her piano playing, what a touch. Some updated lyrics rhyming macrobiotics with narcotics. :)

This is a remembrance of Blossom Dearie who died recently, and I find the song 'I'm Hip' most appropriate as a description of her.

I'm hip, I'm no square
I'm alert, I'm awake, I'm aware
I am always on the scene
Makin' the rounds, diggin' the sounds
I read Playboy magazine 'cause I'm hip
I dig, I'm in step
When it was hip to be hep, I was hep
I don't blow but I'm a fan
Look at me swing, ring a ding ding
I even call my girlfriend 'Man,' I'm so hip
Every Saturday night
With my suit buttoned tight and my suedes on
I'm gettin' my kicks
Watchin' arty French flicks with my shades on
I'm too much, I'm a gas
I am anything but middle class
When I hang around the band
Poppin' my thumbs, diggin' the drums
Squares don't seem to understand
Why I flip, they're not hip like I'm hip
I'm hip, I'm alive
I enjoy any joint where there's jive
I'm on top of every trend
Look at me go vo dee o do
Bobby Darin knows my friend
I'm so hip
I'm hip but not weird
Like you notice, I don't wear a beard
Beards were in but now they're out
They had their day now they're passe
Just ask me if you're in doubt, 'cause I'm hip
Now whatever the fads
And whatever the ads say
It's needs fill
I'll be keeping abreast
Out in front of the rest with elites ville
'Cause I'm cool as a cuke
I'm a cat, I'm a card, I'm a kook, 
I get so much out of life
Really, I do skoo ba doo boo
One more time play 'Mack the knife'
Let 'er rip, I may flip, but I'm hip
Ooh, I'm hip, ooh, I'm hip
Skoo ba doo boo, doo boo, doo boo
Boo doo boo doo doo doo

Movies Watched -- Still Alice

Added on by C. Maoxian.

99 minutes long, so not a bad length, but I still fast forwarded from 20 minutes in, not because it was terrible, but because movies about progressive illnesses are hard to take. Julianne Moore is 50 years old, and a full professor at Columbia, when she gets diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. She played a similar sick lady role in Todd Haynes' disturbing movie, Safe, which I saw 20 years ago.

Alec Baldwin plays her husband, and he's pretty "supportive," at least at first, before a job at the Mayo Clinic calls. One of her children is Kristen Stewart, who continues to chew her lip in every scene of every movie I've ever seen her in. No idea why she gets as much work as she does. Must appeal to messy-haired Millennials?

Moore is probably good, I like her, she's beautiful and I think she's talented. The emotions were strictly white middle class here (Ben Sachs says "middlebrow"), she balled a little bit, but husband and kids seemed pretty calm about the collapse of their wife / mother, kind of cold. I'd give it a yellow (consider) rating if you're not disturbed by movies in which the main character is descending into dementia. 

(Andrew O'Hehir makes the good point that "this person would be supremely annoying were she a real person and not Julianne Moore," and "You have to have a beach house in the first place, let us note, before you can get lost in it." And I agree completely with Wesley Morris who writes, "these disease movies [make you worry] that medical misfortune befalls only bourgeoisie. It’s far too fond of Moore to be less than flattering to her. So, instead, it cheats life, death, and us.")

Clearly demented

Clearly demented

Tweets for September 20, 2016

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Tweets for September 19, 2016

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