Like last December, my buddy was housesitting for someone else who had places to go for the holidays, and it was the same place, a nice place and because this guy has access to screeners, it was like, fuck yeah, let's watch some fucking screeners again. How can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?
It was only a one-night triple feature this time, so I had to tell Sofia Coppola, Julie Taymor and that dead dude who directed Casino Jack to go fuck themselves, but in actuality I was telling myself to go fuck myself because I'll probably end up seeing their films anyway, only I'd end up paying for the privilege.
First film was Black Swan, directed by that asshole who bangs Rachel Weisz, that's why he's an asshole. If you're banging a famous chick I want to bang, you're an asshole and that's why I like Ryan Reynolds again. But the guy who knocked up Natalie Portman? Fuck that guy. No, not you Natalie, you've done enough damage to yourself taking that advice.
Anyway, Black Swan is not about some racist asshole falling in love with some rich black chick, instead it's about this bundle of nerves who wants to be the best ballet dancer ever or something like that. She wants to be perfect, and if that means starving herself and vomiting up what little she eats, then so be it. Poor girl, there's a part where she's going to eat a grapefruit for breakfast and she's looking it over and doing the whole Happy Girl Yummy thing and I felt bad for the little swan. Her mother is played by Barbara Hershey who is now one of the most awesome people in the world because she signed my DVD of The Stunt Man at the New Beverly Cinema. Richard Rush and Steve Railsback signed that DVD too, but they aren't in Black Swan, Barbara Hershey is. It was strange trying to figure that character out, because on the one hand you think she's one of these stage mothers who force their kids to live out their own fantasies and maybe she is, but if that's the case, it's gotten to a point where she realizes she has created a Frankenstein. That's right, she's created a mad doctor intent on bringing the dead back to life.
Fuckin' Aronofsky would be my bro if he wasn't already betraying our brotherhood by turning Rachel Weisz into a baby machine. What I mean is that he casts some cute fuckin' ladies in this flick; Natalie Portman is super-skinny but she wears her bones well, making her and Angelina Jolie the only skeletons I find hot. Then you have Mila Kunis who not only looks like she enjoys the occasional cheeseburger but even eats one in the film; if you want to amuse yourself, go look up any YouTube video where they go behind-the-scenes of Family Guy and read the comments, because it's like every other comment is "OMIGOD MEG IS ACTUALLY HOT IN REAL LIFE" and then they skeet all over the keyboard and that's a bitch to clean up, even with a Q-tip. It's too bad those losers aren't badass sex machines like me. Excuse me while I take a break from writing so I can go have sex with a sexy girl. I'm so fuckin' awesome, I never call them back.
I think Mr. Requiem For A Wrestler's Fountain knew I'd be pissed at him and he tried to triple-combo his good graces into my heart by casting Winona Ryder as the 3rd part of the Why Aren't You Girls Making Love To Me Like Right Now trifecta. She's, like, 40 now but I'm not hating, she's still got it, plus 40 is the new 20. Didn't you know that? I know that because a 40-year-old told me. I Heart Winona and if I had the bank account, I'd open a chain of stores where she can shoplift to her pretty little heart's content. One of my cousins, on my dad's side, used to always say "Winona Ryder? I'd ride her" and that's just one of the two reasons I haven't spoken to him since 1998. The second reason is because he and most of my dad's side of the family are all cunts and I don't speak to any of them either. Thanksgiving is awesome now, thank you very much.
So Portman's got the lead role in Swan Lake and she's trying to be all perfect and shit and she's getting all fucked-up in the head over it. She's finding these weird bloody scratches on her back and since she wasn't having sex with me, she figures there's got to be another way she attained these minor scrapes. She's also got a bad case of They're All Coming To Get Me; seeing weird shit, having weird dreams, wondering if Mila Kunis' rival ballet-girl is out to help her or out to fuck her over. Meanwhile, Winona is all pissed about her upcoming retirement, because it's one of those retirements where the retiree is the last one to know. Then there's muthafuckin' Vincent Cassel, goddamn Mesrine himself showing up as the director of the ballet company and this guy, he's surprisingly not a Gay but then again, who knows? I mean, you figure this guy is trying to bang Portman and he's tired of banging Ryder but that shit's never confirmed, he puts the moves on a motherfucker but then it seems more like he's just doing some head-game shit to get the best out of his ballerinas. Ballerini?
I liked the movie, but like Aronofsky's wrestler movie (I think they could actually play very well together, they've got similarities, says I), I think the performance makes the film. Wait, that doesn't sound right -- the performance and the film go very well together. It's some perfect one-in-a-million kismet shit; if Natalie Portman didn't exist, they'd have to invent her for this movie, otherwise you could never make it. Mr. Weisz does a very good job making you feel almost as fucked up as Portman's character, putting you into her increasingly fragile mindset, but I was more impressed with Portman. I don't know who the fuck else is possibly up for an Oscar, but they better be fuckin' phenomenal because I think Natalie did a pretty good job throwing down the fuckin' gauntlet like a fuckin' boss. Mila Kunis is very good too, especially in one scene between her and Portman that has little to do with acting dialogue-wise, but a lot to do with, uh, physical acting. If that's a spoiler, then fucking Life is a goddamn spoiler and I'm getting fucking sick of it and want to punch every sensitive motherfucker in his mother's cunt. I'm being serious, people. Your Mother's Cunt. Pow.
Quentin Tarantino probably loves this flick because there are a lot of shots of feet in it, and since they're ballet dancers, their feet are pretty jacked, but anyone who's seen Kill Bill knows that QT doesn't discriminate. If you are in possession of a vagina and have feet, he'll probably be all over them. If I was a chick and I offered my bare feet for QT to do with whatever he pleases and he turned me down, I'd throw myself off of a tall building and with my luck end up splattering all over some passing automobile with a podiatrist inside.
My friend and I then ate shitty delivery pizza which I still gobbled up 4 slices of because I'm a smelly disgusting piece-of-shit with no self-respect, then we popped in True Grit, starring Jeff Bridges, or as we all like to refer to him as, the President of the United States in The Contender. Every dispensary I go to is always playing The Contender, either that or Pineapple Express. Bridges must get tired of people coming up to him all "President, yeeeeeeaaaahhh!".
So Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn, this badass U.S. Marshal who gets the job done, but he plays by his own rules, so I guess he's the original cliche. Only he's not some psycho Riggs or ornery Harry Callahan; when you give him shit about the people he's killed/wounded, he seems almost like a forgetful grandfather who didn't know his glasses were on his head the whole time, like Oh Yeah I Forgot About That. We all have grandfathers like that, I'm sure.
When I was 14, I thought chickens gargled in the morning based on a cartoon I saw, but the 14-year-old girl in this movie, she probably rips the heads of off chickens everyday to prepare that evening's supper. I guess hard times create hard people, and she's kind of a badass herself. After her father is killed, she goes to town and looks to get some justice against that bad Josh Brolin, and this chick is fuckin' haggling prices and not backing down like a goddamn angry pro. If this chick existed in the 21st century, she'd be giving seminars on not being a fuckin' pussy when it comes to dealing with asshole car salesman (redundancy). She talks to adults like she was older than any of them, and she has no problem sleeping in a room full of corpses, she can handle that shit. I wonder if she was always this way, or if the murder of her father (at the hands of the aforementioned Brolin) increased that shit. She mentions that her mother is pretty much inconsolable and her sister (or brother, I forgot) is too young, so whatever the case, it's safe to say it didn't take long for her to declare herself as the man of the house.
This 14-year-old, she gets Rooster to go on the hunt for this father-killing mofo and even though he doesn't want this girl to cramp his style, he lets that slide, he abides, just like The President in The Contender. They go from place to place, meet people, get in adventures, like Caine in The Man Who Would Be King. Joining them on their journey is my man, the fuckin' Bourne Identity himself, Matt Muthafuckin' Damon. Fuckin' A. I'd like to add that guy on my shortlist of people I'd like to play me in a movie, alongside the late great Brother Theodore and the drunk rich lady from Will & Grace. If I ever meet that guy, I'm gonna give him a high-five that he will not return, he's gonna leave me hanging but I'm gonna be OK with it because he's Matt Fuckin' Damon.
I don't like the taste of John Wayne's cock, and that's probably why I haven't seen as many of his movies as I guess I should, so I've never seen the original True Grit. But from my understanding, that version wasn't as faithful to the book as this version is. Talented assholes Joel and Ethan Coen helmed this shit, and they must be related to God because like Him, they like to put their creations through fucked-up shit and probably get off on it. Anyway, with the exception of some annoying guy who makes animal noises, it didn't feel that Coen-esque in terms of quirky shit, but it's definitely a Coen Brothers film in that it's Good Times.
These guys, I don't know how they do it, I think while everyone else is drinking Hater Juice or Haterade, these guys are drinking straight-up 100-proof Champion, because that's what they are. They did cut down on the consumption when they made Intolerable Cruelty, but they're probably mainlining that shit now. Is it a masterpiece or a reinvention of the Western or whatever else these jackass critics always say about these things? No, I don't think it is, it's just a damn solid 2 hours of entertainment. There's not that much action, but that's OK because the interactions between the characters was more than enough to keep me happy.
Wait, I take it back a bit -- it is more of a Coen Brothers film than I thought. You see, these guys, they like being assholes and have to find a way to amuse themselves at our expense; the reason you and me haven't beat the shit out of them by now is because they make cool movies. Well, here I think they have their fun by having every character who isn't a 14-year-old girl speak like they have shit in their mouth. Bridges is so awesome an actor that he can make Cogburn's dialogue sing (sample dialogue: "Gwarhss woit popadonsh umfff batahgh dogsh rawrff") and then I bet my man Damon thought he dodged a bullet with that shit, but then the Coens probably did a rewrite and halfway through the movie he ends up biting his tongue and for a while starts cotton-balling his lines as well. Fuckin' Brolin? Same shit, only it sounds like he reached a compromise with the Coens by only doing it at 50% power and making up for his increased grasp of diction/enunciation by doing a Ted Levine impression.
The 3rd and final film of the day was The Fighter, starring the precious Amy Adams and two other guys. Now I thought the title of the film was referring to the Clooney-fighting/Tomlin-angering/Nolan headlocking director of the film, but it's not. The Adorable Amy Adams plays Charlene, a bartender in the city of Racism who probably drinks as much as she sells and one day Mark Wahlberg shows up, being all nice to her the way he was nice to Reese Witherspoon in Fear. During their chat, some douche shows up trying to be stupid with Wahlberg and smart with Adams, so Wahlberg grabs this punk and makes him feel the vibrations. Turns out this Wahlberg, he's this potentially awesome boxer who's being held down by his once-potentially-awesome older brother, played by a crackhead who looks like a balding Christian Bale.
In between these brief moments with The Adorable Amy Adams, we have these long periods focusing on Wahlberg and his brother who might as well be the white Flavor Flav. There's one scene where she and Wahlberg are about to do their impression of me on any given night by sleeping with each other. Ms. Adams is wearing only a bra and panties and she's crawling on the bed toward Wahlberg and just then, my friend is all like "I bet you like this, don't ya" and I actually had to put my foot down (I had it on the table) and tell him he was kinda wrong.
I mean, even with the harsh "real" setting and the real "harsh" unflattering cinematography, Ms. Adams looks nice and even though Mr. Huckabees told her not to get in shape for the role, she still looks like a real girl who I'd hit up and get turned down by. I told my friend that I don't really think of her in that way, it's more of a sharing-a-milkshake-with-2-straws kind of deal I have with her. I know I've said that before, but I'm pretty sure you guys never read the previous references anyway, so it's all new to you, right? I guess another way I can put it is that I'm gay for Amy Adams, even though I'm technically straight. I say "technically" because I'm really just a compliment away from going either way, know what I'm saying?
I've never had a fuck-up brother, probably because I am the fuck-up brother, but it didn't stop me from feeling about this movie the way I felt about it. There's a scene where Bale's character is being a fuck-up once again and his mom picks him up, and she's ready to go off on him and he manages to win her back over by singing to her. You get the sense that this is a song he's sung to her since he was a kid, and she probably loves it every time he does so. It's genuine, but at the same time, I bet you he knows that the song to him is like a smoke bomb is to Batman -- distracting shit that works every time.
It did get me thinking though, that as much of a fuck-up that I am, my parents are cursed with this unconditional love for their child. Most parents have this curse, I think. They can read the writing on the wall all they want, but they might as well be wearing Nostalgia Goggles when they look at you; because you're always their little boy or little girl, albeit one who needs money because he/she went into debt for the umpteenth time and/or need to be picked up from jail. Anyway, I think that's what's going on between the mom in this film and the balding crackhead who looks like Christian Bale.
It's that kind of love that is keeping Wahlberg's character true to his bro even though the motherfucker is keeping him from achieving something other than getting his ass kicked by a boxer he's 20 pounds too light to fight. The Adorable Amy Adams, she's trying to help him see the error of his brother-loving ways, but I also like that she's not perfect either, and that in some cases she can be as demanding and overpowering as his family. Still, though, it's Amy Adams and I don't know about you, but I'd do whatever she says. Leave my family? Bye family. Learn Mandarin Chinese? 当你的愿望。Put a gun into my mouth and pull the trigger? It'll certainly be the most adorable suicide ever.
It's a good movie with great performances, particularly from Adams and the crackhead, the latter is even more impressive when you watch his real-life counterpart show up during the end credits and realize that he got that motherfucker down cold. Wahlberg's pretty good too, I like sincere Wahlberg and prefer sincere Wahlberg to badass Wahlberg. I saw Melissa Leo's name in the credits, then forgot she was in the fuckin' thing until I saw her name again in the credits -- that's how good she was, I thought they got some Boston broad off the street for that part. For real, I'm not bullshitting or speaking in critic-speak. I think they did cast some real Bostonians in this, though, because those badly-bleached locks of hair, greasy faces and jelly rolls can't be created even with the best Hollywood has to offer. Also, one of Wahlberg's sisters is played by Conan O'Brien's sister; she's the one who looks like Conan O'Brien.
I like how all the screeners had opening disclaimers from studios that assume you're going to destroy the DVD's by a certain date. Would I? Maybe to upgrade to Blu-ray, and even then, I'd probably just give that shit to family members. That's probably how piracy keeps going, I don't know. The studios were pretty good about not interrupting the movie too much with the on-screen For Consideration/Don't Bootleg This Shit disclaimers; True Grit came up every 10 minutes at the bottom, wasn't too distracting. Black Swan only came up at the beginning. I don't even remember The Fighter having one.
Order of preference:
1) True Grit
2) Black Swan
3) The Fighter
That was that, the movies were watched and my friend had to take off to go see family -- it was Christmas Day. Me, I drove around for a bit and eventually went to a discount house, where I ended up seeing Skyline. I didn't want to see Skyline, but the other movies already started and I didn't want to wait 90 minutes for the next showing, so there I was, watching Skyline. It was decent, which I guess is to be expected when your expectations are below zero and you only paid $2 to see it. There was raza in the cast and not only did he represent, he was probably the best character in the fuckin' thing, so that was nice.
After, I drove over to the burg of Chino to look at the Christmas lights because that's what they do over there in Chino, overdo it with the Christmas spirit -- but I love Christmas, so overdo that shit all you want. Great displays, and even one house had a group of carolers in front. I got too close and one of them snatched me like a frog's tongue to a passing fly and he gave me a card from the Church of Latter Day Saints. My favorite display was the one done with a Nightmare Before Christmas theme, complete with Jack, Sally and a giant Oogie Boogie.
The last time I went to see the lights in Chino, was about 20 years ago. I went with my aunt and my cousins, right after catching a special Christmas show at a local college's planetarium. That was awesome and so were the lights. We then stopped at a neighborhood pizza joint and stuffed on pepperoni pie while watching a Beauty and the Beast rerun on the establishment's big-screen television; to think that there was once a television show starring Hellboy and Sarah Connor and not enough people watched it. Anyway, 20 years later I was feeling nostalgic and looked for the same pizza joint, and there it was, and sure enough, they were open. The only difference was that they replaced the old projection big-screen with a plasma HDTV. I ordered a pie and while waiting, I told the owner my story which I guess amused him. He said that the pizza is just as good as it was then and wished me a Merry Christmas. I returned the sentiment and then played Galaga. He was right, the pizza was just as good. Only the company was lacking, in that I was lacking it.
I'm pretty sure this is my last post of the year, so I'll just say Happy New Year and all that. 2008 was terrible, 2009 was horrible, but 2010 was interesting. I lost a close family member in her late 50's while watching another family member who will never enter the neighborhood of Close or Loving get closer to the age of 100. Even then, the year left me with a slight minute modicum of a tiny glimmer of hope. Better than the previous two years, that's for sure. Anyway, that's all for now. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and go fuck yourself. Say hello to Satan for me.
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