Happy Birthday, Sister!
My sister Jessica is a beautiful, kind, and strong woman. I love her so much and I want to share her beauty with the world! Today is her birthday. I want to share some of my favorite photos of her and her family from my May 20th wedding. She did so much for me during this time, and I couldn’t possibly thank her enough. Jess, I hope you’re having a beautiful day! I love you forever.
❤
N
Wild and Waste Land
I experienced two fascinating and inspiring stories today. Running my errands, I was listening to the Diane Rehm show on NPR and her guest was Cheryl Strayed, whose work I was not familiar with. She was speaking about her new memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.
After getting to my location I found myself still sitting in the car with the engine stopped listening to the entire show. Her story is beautiful, tragic, and powerful. She reflects on her experiences with admirable wisdom and grace. I want all the women (and men, but I’m really feeling her female power) in my life to hear her story and feel strength to push towards a deeper understanding of themselves. To trust their own power and be truly resilient.
Then I watched Waste Land.
I cried so many times. It’s the kind of story I want to be a part of. I love the idea that this landfill is one of the only pictures that gets uglier the farther away you get. What makes it beautiful are the people who work there. I really needed to see this film. I don’t allow myself to be truly uplifted by human behavior as often as I’d like. So much of what I despise most about life on Earth is the horrible things that we as people have done to it. Not to mention what we’ve done to ourselves. The people in this film are realer than real and they are showing beautiful endurance amidst terrible struggles. I can’t recommend it enough. It will help you remember why you believe in art and why you should never lose hope in humanity.
❤
IN OTHER NEWS!
Yuck.
“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.
“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”
Forks Over Knives
What I want people to take from watching this film (in order of most important to least important):
1. Reducing your intake of animal products is extremely beneficial to your health and the environment.
2. Reducing your intake of processed and refined foods can reduce risk of disease and obesity (duh).
3. If enough people actually stopped buying these foods, they would no longer be the cheapest and easiest foods to consume.
4. America is owned by corporations (who are not people) and those corporations run the USDA, the medical system, and obviously our congress (that last part not really discussed in the film)
I said most to least important, but #3 really is a serious issue I have with the planet. Poor people buy cheap food. Cheap food is garbage in our bodies, and it’s garbage on our planet. The less we can support the manufacturers, the more affordable options we gain for healthy food choices.
I know there is criticism for the film. There’s criticism for everything. I’ve read comments of people bashing it because they don’t want to be vegan and they feel the movie is telling them what to do. That seems like a close-minded argument. If anything, the USDA is telling you what to eat by engraining the idea that meat and dairy are the cornerstones of the healthy American diet. They’re being paid to say that. Did this documentary filmmaker make billions of dollars from vegetable farmers for this film? No, neither he nor the scientists who did the research were likely paid off. Simply suggesting that a plant based diet can positively effect your health should not be taken as an attack. How can you be a wet blanket about that?
Happy Birthday, Justin!
I love you forever.
White Bird
There’s almost nothing more romantic than the story of Earendil and Elwing. Future hubby just finished reading it to me yesterday.
Polanski or Fellini
Just kidding. I’ll tell you what though, I loved watching 8 1/2. It was really fun to see his influence on modern directors in reverse.
We finally did it.
Two things happened in the last week.
1. My boyfriend of 6 years asked me to marry him, and I said yes. That was amazing and I’m incredibly happy.
2. We watched The Cove.
Justin is my true partner. When he asked me to marry him I said, “I’ll marry you every day forever.” He is a best friend to me, he is a source of inspiration, and more importantly right now, a source of motivation. He is my ultimate teammate. One thing about The Cove that really upset me was that Justin and I aren’t making films together. Films that can activate change. I really believe that we have the balls and the brains to pull it off, and I hope to God we can do it one day soon. If you can’t bring yourself to watch The Cove for whatever reason, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. I’m hardly what you would call an activist. Although I tend to eat a vegan diet, I don’t walk around with signage or preach to people at McDonalds. It was painful to watch this movie about the capture, slaughter, and masked consumption of dolphins (and the decline of the fishing industry and the rise of mercury poisoning) obviously because sentient animals are being murdered, but also because so many humans are actually deluded enough to believe Man is not an animal. Man’s actions are more intelligent than any other animal and therefore must be sanctioned and protected. We dominate because we are the best. And look what we’re doing with it. Awesome.
People don’t like feeling disturbed. I can pretty much guarantee nobody in my family wants to watch a movie about mass murder, but sometimes it does make you a better person. Being aware of evil makes you more prepared to conquer it. Seeing your food as an animal can help you respect the life it once had. It’s not about guilt. People shouldn’t feel guilty. Just being aware of what you’re doing can change the way you perceive every aspect of your life. I’m so glad I finally watched the movie. I was scared to be sad. I was scared that I was going to see things I didn’t want to see. In fact, the movie is incredibly well done and has thrilling, suspenseful, exciting, and beautiful moments as well as horrifying ones. My sister-in-law-to-be, Charlotte encouraged Justin and I to watch it and I’m forever grateful that she did. She was the first one of us to get the balls to watch the whole thing. Facing my fear of actually seeing it felt good, but the knowledge I gained from it and the motivation it gave me to get involved is truly inspirational. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to make movies. And simultaneously open an orphanage.
Justin and I have a lot of work to do before we can plan special ops dives into the ocean to plant hidden cameras and risk 28 days of torture in a Japanese prison, but I hope when the opportunity arises, we are up to the task. I do want to work the front-lines of documentary with someone as magnificent as Errol Morris, Louis Psihoyos, and Chris Smith and Sarah Price who did American Movie. I have been just as moved by docs that uncover the truth as I have been by cinema verite. The good news is that I have a partner in crime. Together we can be grossed out, humiliated, filled with awe, and fatigued beyond belief. I love making movies.
Some great swings and one big miss.
The boyfriend and best friend are out of town for 10 whole days! I’ve been keeping myself amused with long walks around Chicago on the nice days, spending all my money, cooking and hanging out with Zero, and watching LOTS of movies.
Here are the latest that are blowing my mind.
I saw this for the first time on Friday last week. I wasn’t quite sure how I would react to it since I had heard so many bad things about it. I feel like even though it seemed to be a successful film, it was critically blasted, but if you ask me, it must have been criticized based on the marketing campaign alone, and not the content of the film itself. It was definitely listed as an erotic thriller. I would call it Sophisticated Suspense, personally. When I started the film I thought I would just paint my nails and sit back with wine and watch a nice movie. From moment one it was clear I wasn’t going to be painting my nails. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen for the entire film. I didn’t even leave the couch to go to the bathroom. I was completely drawn in, and that’s obviously a great sign.
This film deals with REAL relationship issues and yet exists in a very SURREAL world. Now you know I’m hooked. There is symbolism everywhere. The walls drip with red and blue light, people have it reflected on their faces during vulnerable moments, there’s lots of bedding and pillows and people in their pajamas — all sorts of dreamy scenery. There’s masks in very specific locations. It’s a remarkable looking piece of cinema. And yes, there’s an orgy. But it’s cool, it’s super scary and you’re not sure what the hell is going on. It’s also very trite in some ways. I remember thinking that the orgy was kind of hilarious because you know it’s just a bunch of nasty, rich, white dudes employing hookers and adding some ceremony to it to make it more meaningful. Then again, is it some kind of secret dangerous cult? You don’t really know. One of my favorite things about this movie is the the couple doesn’t crumble under the pressure of their relationship struggle. Every movie these days is perpetuating the idea that people are permanently glued to their habits and the only way to fix a relationship is to leave it and find the actual perfect person who doesn’t truly exist. This move is mature enough to give you characters who are willing to go through dangerous and interesting hardships and come out the other side having experienced actual growth. Bravo!
One thing I’d like to say about the acting. I love Tom Cruise. I do not love Nicole Kidman. Having said that, I can respect good acting from anyone. I can call a spade a spade. Well I can say without bias that Tom Cruise is a much better actor than Nicole Kidman in this movie. He’s REALLY good. She is really having a difficult time dealing with the surreal aspects of her character’s world. She also has the burden of being the one dealing with the more surreal moments, and it doesn’t do much for her. She’d never make it in a David Lynch film, I’m afraid. Yet I believe Tom Cruise would. Why is that, do you think? FEARLESSNESS. He fears nothing, and she clearly fears a lot. Justin and I had the delight of meeting Tom Cruise in the flesh a few years back when I was working on a Broadway show with his wife Katie Holmes. The person I met was exactly the same person I saw in that film. So then I don’t really know if you can call it great acting. But it’s absolutely believable. And I don’t think I’ve ever loved him more than I do in that film. Except maybe Interview with the Vampire, but that’s for different reasons.
Anyway, Eyes Wide Shut – 5 stars. I Loved it. On to the next film.
Post Godfather Part 1, Coppola kills you with this amazing piece of cinema. It’s a great idea for a movie. Gene Hackman plays an audio surveillance technician who works for private contractors. He records a conversation between a couple and during the fine tuning process becomes obsessed with the idea that the couple is somehow in danger by the man who hired him to record them. It’s very suspenseful and there’s lots of delicious sound repetition. You basically hear their conversation about 25 times during the film. You can recite it with them while they’re speaking. It’s remarkable. His obsession becomes your obsession. The Cinematography in this feature is something at which to marvel. It’s beautiful, well-paced, revealing and yet mysterious. Gene Hackman is outstanding. I read that it’s his favorite performance, although who knows if that’s true.
The set design is really helping you out. I wanted everything, and it was all in perfect place. Each production department seemed to have communicated so precisely and collaborated to produce a fantastic piece of cinema. The last shot of the movie is by far my favorite. I can’t wait for my roomies to watch it!
Aside from those 2 big winners, I finally watched Chronos which I really liked but was overshadowed by Eyes Wide Shut which I had just watched. Not too fair, really. Zero and I also watched Microcosmos, which is a french nature film from the 90’s about insects (amazing!), and of course lots of other crap here and there. Last night, we accomplished the great task of watching 2 horrible movies one right after the other.
This movie SUCKS. It makes you dislike Anthony Hopkins, which is really hard to do, and it makes you hate that The Excorcist could have created so many regurgitated story plots for horror films. The child actor is abysmal and although she can be frightening it is only because her eyes are always crossed and very wide which doesn’t even make her very cute. The content of the film is kind of interesting but they pound it into you and by the end everyone is a stereotype of their surrealistic character. Also, it’s trying to be metaphysical at the same time with a tinge of religious and actually convince you that reincarnation is real. Which could have been cool, but they did it all wrong.
It sucks. 2 stars.
And finally:
I know it’s good in some ways. I actually enjoyed it much more than Audrey Rose, but it is really terrible (I’m sorry Mattie). However, it’s not actually trying to be a good movie, and it does have a killer dance scene in a Macdonald’s, so I can’t really go on judging it.
Thanks for getting on my movie train. I’ll leave you with something special:
Double Life 