Last movie you watched......

Watched Horrible Bosses.
They got the first part right. It was horrible.
Unfunny and ridiculous.
Jennifer Anniston was the highlight of a piss-poor movie that had no nudity.

Also watched Everything Must Go.
Meh.
It killed and hour and a half.

 

"Mulholland Drive."

Somehow, I had managed to never see it until now.

I thought it was incredible, particularly after cheating afterward by going online to see what the hell I just watched. Very creative telling of an otherwise fairly conventional story. I wish more directors took risks with narrative structure like Lynch - so long, of course, as it serves the art instead of just doing it to do it.

I wonder how much of an influence Lynch is on Aronofsky. "Black Swan" is practically an homage to this film in many ways.

 

Heard Michael Medved on the morning drive time radio show Friday morning. He was raving about a movie called The Artist. Said it was his favorite movie of the year, and would likely earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress.

The story is told in a pretty unique way. So as not to give it away, you can read about it here if you like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist_%28film%29

I took my girlfriend to see it on Friday night, and didn't tell her anything about it, other than I had heard a glowing review. We both really liked it.

It was sweet and charming. Extremely well acted. And, very different.

Go check it out.

 

We're going to see it tomorrow actually.

Did you see it at Century Centre Cinema?

 

So a little more about "Mulholland Drive," now that I've had time to digest it. Can't get it out of my head. Previously, I had seen snippets - namely, the "Silencio" scene and some of the lesbian stuff ...

SPOILERS




I'm fairly convinced that this is something of a love letter from Lynch to what I bet are two of his favorite films: "The Wizard of Oz" and "Sunset Boulevard." Perhaps also some nods to Tarantino for "Pulp Fiction," as well, maybe from one narrative tinkerer to another.

Basically, it seems to be to be a twisted "Wizard of Oz" in many ways. Here, Hollywood is Oz. Like the source material, the film centers around a real-life person's dream. In "Mulholland Drive," the main character Diane has a dream - which is the first 2/3 of the movie - in which images and people from her life are re-incorporated into her dream plot/fantasy. So someone dressed as a cowboy at a dinner party, seen out of the corner of her eye, becomes a fully imagined character in the dream. The blue key, just a normal key in real life, becomes a cartoonishly odd key in the dream. A woman from the dinner party, Coco, ends up as her aunt's housekeeper in the dream. And on and on. Obviously, this is exactly what happens to Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz." But Lynch brilliantly flip-flops the order on us, resulting in the best representation I have ever seen in a film of the disorientation that dreams can cause.

I also have little doubt that "Sunset Boulevard" is a huge influence. I think that, though it's a classic, SB loses something today for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was probably weird as all get-out in 1950, but today seems almost campy compared to where film makers have taken weirdness since then. And that includes prominently Lynch, who I suspect still appreciates what SB made possible for he and others the same way Clapton would appreciate Robert Johnson. It's also thematically much like SB, as far as the corruption of Hollywood and how the industry chews people up and spits them out.

I would put this film in my top five movies of the 2000s. It's a staggering achievement.

 

The new Icon theater on Roosevelt.

http://www.fandango.com/showplaceiconatrooseveltcollectionreserve_aavnk/theaterpage

You can buy and reserve seats ahead of time. Theater was pretty small and pretty empty. Pick a seat in the last row. There was a ton of leg room.

There's free underground parking, and there's a bar/restaurant there as well.

Very nice experience.

 

Very live for Best Actor and Best Director, too . . . though a lot of critics with a love of the arcane left it off their "Best" lists.

Don't know where their heads were at.

 

Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day ..... god I love that show (but the movie is sub-par).

 

I've seen quite a few critics with love for 'The Artist'

 

I absolutely loved "The Artist." I saw "Hugo" today, not in 3D, and loved it, too. I bet it was really cool in 3D, but I get nauseous from it. Just a nice, sweet movie. My only criticism is that it was too long.

 

Whatever happened to Kate Beckinsale? How come she can't get a role in a movie that doesn't have the word "Underworld" in the title anymore?

 

Me, too. I was just astounded how many major players in the business gave it a wide pass.

The modern prejudice of too many folks under 50 treating black-and-white movies like a communicable disease is disturbing, and reflects a distinct lack of basic intelligence.