Grand Theft Parsons

In other news, there's not really any other news. Last night The Boyfriend and I finally got around to watching our movie we rented from Blockbuster ages ago. It was actually pretty good. It's called Grand Theft Parsons and it's about Gram Parsons's (a singer from the 70s, famous for performing with the Flying Burrito Brothers and also for his album 'Return of the Grevious Angel' which has since been reinvented as a kick-ass tribute album) road manager, Phil Kaufman (played BRILLIANTLY by Johnny Knoxville--have I mentioned lately that I am crazy about Johnny Knoxville? In fact, I will probably go see Dukes of Hazzard when it comes out just because he's in it...) who, after Gram dies of a drug overdose, steals the body in order to keep a pact he made with Gram that the first one of them to die should be taken out in the Joshua Tree Desert and set on fire. It's a more-or-less true story. Of course, they didn't really do Gram's death up the way it should have been done (allegedly, Gram was with two hookers when he OD'd. They put him in a bathtub full of ice--which they apparently thought would help rouse him from his drug-induced stupor--and when that didn't work, applied the quaint folk remedy of shoving ice up his ass; Gram came around just long enough to look around him, take in his situation, say "Ladies, what HAS become of me?" and then die) but other than that, I had no real problems with it. The movie also featured Mike Shannon (the mother's redneck boyfriend in '8 Mile' or Pete the gay redneck busdriver in 'Cecil B. Demented) as a hilarious stoned-out hippy getaway driver, and Christina Applegate as Gram's money-grubbing ex-girlfriend. I was highly entertained and amused. I recommend you go try to find a copy. Also, the soundtrack rocked.

Shallow Grave and other musings

The Boyfriend and I watched 'Shallow Grave' (Thank you, Netflix!) the other night, and it was not bad. I wouldn't call it the best movie ever, but it was entertaining, at least. For those of you who like Ewan McGregor, he looked very good (though for those of you who watch Ewan McGregor movies purely to see him get naked--Agent Man, you know I am looking at you, here--you'll be disappointed, as the only guys to get naked in this one are Christopher Eccleston and a bloated dead guy.)It's a tight little thriller, though nothing exactly new or special (it's by the same guy who directed 'Trainspotting'). The only reason I even heard of it is that the preview was on the video rental of 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.'

Right now, we've got 'Clay Pigeons', 'The Ice Storm', and 'Ghost World' to watch. The Boyfriend is non-plussed, as he is not so much a fan of artsy indie pics, though he loved 'Garden State' as much as I did. His favorite things to watch seem to be televised poker, cooking shows, sport shows, and science shows with Alan Alda (I have to admit that I, too, dig the Alan Alda shows. The other day, he managed to work a M*A*S*H* reference into one of them, and I was SUPER PSYCHED because I am a tragic nerd.) I have been trying to watch more educational programming, but it's hard. The other day, we watched some show about a giant volcano in 1816 that affected the world's climate for, like, two years. And yesterday, I watched a show about how archaeologists think they may have found the remains of the cities biblical scholars consider to be Sodom and Gomorrah (sorry to say, My Lady Disdain, there seems to be no scientific evidence of crazy orgies or anything of that nature.)I think The Boyfriend watches too many science shows, and he thinks I watch too many crime shows. I explained to him that I feel like I'm getting just as much information out of my shows (not to mention more USEFUL information) as he is from his. I figure knowing what to do in the event of a crime is much more useful than knowing...well, ANYTHING about string theory. So there's a theory the universe is made out of strings or whatever. So fucking what? Who cares? Will knowing those theories raise my salary or give me any kind of satisfaction? No. Will they help me out in an emergency? No. I know it's probably very ignorant of me, but I can't seem to force myself to be interested in the nature of the universe or any of that junk. I don't care how the universe got here--it's here. I don't care how scientists think it maybe might possibly theoretically end--it's perfectly likely that it'll be blown up in a nuclear holocaust before any of that stuff has a chance to happen.

Kill Bill 1 & 2

Last weekend, we finally got around to watching Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2. And I really liked the first one, but...well...I thought the second one kind of sucked. It's like Tarantino was like "Um...I have to finish this up, tie everything together, and make my POINT. But I'm tired. So I'll just bang this out in two days and be done with it." The first movie was great--there was lots of development and humor. I loved the explanation of O-Ren and her posse. The second movie explained nothing. It was like "This is Elle Driver. And she's kinda evil. This is Budd. Oh yeah, he's Bill's brother." Not to mention the fact that after all that build-up, Bill turned out to have become this lame-ass soccer dad who loves to make PB&Js with the crusts cut off. Also, the second volume had way too much of what Professor Flamejob (my former playwrighting teacher) would have called "talking heads." As this is my fatal flaw, I recognize it in others. In some formats, it isn't so bad. In movies like Garden State, you can get away with it because that's what it is--it's about small interactions between people. However, Kill Bill is not about subtle interactions between people. It is about bad guys getting hacked to pieces with swords and flailing giant metal balls on chains at one another. There was only one good fight in the second movie, and no one even DIED at the end of it. Maybe my dissatisfaction is merely a result of my lack of cinemaphilia--My Lady Disdain or The Prancing Prince could probably explain to me either why I'm right or why I'm horribly wrong--but...I just thought it was a big let-down. I have yet to see Resevoir Dogs, but I'm not going to hope for too much. Aside from True Romance I have yet to really appreciate Tarantino. This is probably a personal flaw.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

So the other day, I tried to watch Welcome to the Dollhouse and found myself completely unable to do so. It was just too physically painful. I haven't seen a movie that relentlessly depressing in a long time, and I don't think I'll subject myself to another one any time soon. Part of the reason I disliked it was that I remember what a complete torture middle school was. I remember how mean kids can be and how adults really just don't get it at all. But the other side of the issue--and the one that disturbed me more--was how much I wanted to kick Dawn Weiner's ass myself. She was just so dorky and pathetic. It brought up a lot of old feelings I always had about a girl I was friends with at that age. I mean, I liked her--she was okay most of the time--but there were many times I wanted so badly to shake her until her teeth clacked together and yell "If you'd just be normal for five minutes, they'd leave you alone! Why do you have to be so fucking WEIRD?" I suppose this reveals me as not being the non-conformist free-spirit I've always tried to play myself off to be, but in middle school, it's less about ideals and more about surviving the day basically intact. I guess what I learned was that there were times that being "weird" was great, but that there were some times you had to suck it up and try to blend in. A part of me applauded that girl and her complete refusal to even try to fit in, but I have to admit that a larger part of me wanted rather badly to kick her ass. I suppose you could say that I lost some of my creative sparkle or childlike naivete or whatever, but looking back now, I go "God, no wonder everyone picked on us--we were complete fucking freakballs." And that's probably not a good thing, but I totally understand the urge that other kids had to pick on us. Because I definitely felt it watching Welcome to the Dollhouse. Even though half of me would be thinking "This poor girl," the other half would be thinking "Jesus, could she BE any dorkier?" The only character I even sort of liked was Brendan Sexton, and he was a complete jackass. So there you go.

Observations on "Monday Nite Raw"

1.. My team, "The Good-Looking Buff Young Guys" just beat the crap out of the other team, the "Older Ugly Bearded Guys." I'm stoked.

2. The Edge looks like Sabretooth from X-Men, sans fangs.

3. Chris Jericho did come back out, unfortunately not wearing mandex. However, Randy Orton came out too, and he WAS wearing skimpy mandex. SCORE!

4. I don't know how anyone could think wrestling is real. Most of the blows CLEARLY do not connect. Not to mention that if a person actually DID have his head repeatedly slammed into a steel step, he'd probably be dead, not just bleeding lightly from a scalp wound.

5. Happily, this episode did not include Nature Boy Ric Flair showing off his saggy, over fake-n-baked old man tits.

6. You know that weird humpy muscle over muscular guys get between the shoulder and the neck? That is so not cool.

7. Why would any wrestler grow his hair long? It just begs for an opponant to grab it and swing you around by the head.

8. There are actually people out there who can follow the plotlines to this. It amazes me. Perhaps I--with my love of cheesy drama and my complete lack of ability to achieve plot cohesion--should go write for the WWE.

9. Women who wrestle are scary.

10. Chris Benoit is probably a fairly decent sized guy, but compared to everyone else, he looks like a midget.

Lady Chatterly's Lover

So yesterday I went to the library. I got several books, one of which was Lady Chatterley's Lover. It's supposed to be this scandalous book and whatnot, so obviously I read it first. Well, let me tell you, like the works of the Marquis de Sade, it's not all it's whipped up to be. Basically, this chick marries this guy, who is then goes off to war and comes back paralyzed from the waist down. So she's trying to be nice but he's this super whiny wannabe author guy. So she sleeps with some Irish playwright who suffers from premature ejaculation. And then she gets all sad and ill because she's super-busy taking care of the wheeled wonder and not getting any. So her sister and her father go to Lord Wheels and are like "look, you need to get a nurse," and the hsuband reluctantly agrees. And she talks to the husband and they decide that she should have affairs so she can have a kid. So unbeknownst to the husband (who is busy tyrannizing his new nurse, who has the hots for him) the wife takes up with this scrubby guy who takes care of the Lord's chickens or something. And then there's this big contraversy because she falls in love with this emotionally crippled pseudo-zookeeper. And she tells her husband she's having an affair with this artist friend of hers (this artist friend, in exchange for agreeing to pose as her lover demands she pose naked for him so he can base a pipe sculpture on her) but he doesn't buy it, so she tells him the truth about the chicken guy, and the husband gets furious (even though he doesn't particularly want to be married to her, either) and won't grant her the divorce. The book ends with her waiting for her husband to agree to divorce her while the gamekeeper waits for his bitchy wife to divorce him. In between there are long philosophical dialogues about relationships. It's really quite dull.

Rental Troubles

Yesterday, a friend and I rented movies, which turned out to be a huge saga. We went to Blockbuster, and decided to be cheesy and get The Haunting and The Haunted Mansion. We got home only to discover that instead of The Haunting we had recieved the wrong movie by mistake (it was mis-filed, apparently.) So we went back to the video store. Of course, The Haunting wasn't in, so we got Cold Creek Manor instead, since it looked interesting and had Steven Dorff in it. Well, The Haunted Mansion wouldn't play, and Cold Creek Manor is the worst movie I've seen in ages (barring Van Helsing of course.) The pacing was horrible, the script was dull, it wasn't really that suspenseful, and worst of all: The first and obvious suspect was the one who did it. There were no twists. There was no explanation for why the villain did what he did, really. The best part of the whole thing was when Sharon Stone fell down a hole. We are considering going to Blockbuster, tearing up our card and throwing it at them, and then trying Hollywood Video. Perhaps they'd be less expensive, or at the least have a better selection of movies. What kind of video store doesn't have a single one of the Police Academy moviess? Really.