Displaced

“You look like you work at a Hassidic meth lab.”

– Natalie Portman to Ben Stiller dressed as Joaquin Phoenix

I’m not kidding, she just said in reference to Sex and the City: The Movie, “Best movie of the year. No question.”

Is six feet too far to tackle someone from a sitting start?

I accidentally watched The Da Vinci Code again this weekend. It suuuuucked. Again. I was in a stress stupor around leaving my job or I never would have watched it. I couldn’t help myself. Dysfunction gravitates towards dysfunction, I guess. My “favorite” (read: totally ludicrous) line? “I have to get to a library fast!” Who’s heard that outside of a chipmunk saying it in last week’s Weekly Reader special?

Let Me Hold You (Little Man)

“I stand today for the midget at the size of a regular guy.

As the big parade passes by

Let me hold you little man:

We’ll make believe you can fly.

You shout me for me to put you down,

But I’m marching today for your cause.

I’m banging the drum:

Your big day will come

When they re-make The Wizard of Oz.

Let me hold you little man

Thank God I am tall

I won’t let you fall

We’re all midgets and some are just small.”

You need to rent Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story today. If you want more John C. Reilly, hit the Fresh Air interview here.

Stress on “hell” I am telling you what. This movie sucked. Here’s what:

1. The plot and mythology were a total ripoff of just about every fantasy movie in the last ten years, from Lord of the Rings to The Mummy. And not in a good way.
2. The character development was entirely referential, as in, “Hey, remember those movies where the hero has a drinking problem but turns out to be a good guy after all? Since you already know how that works, we don’t need to bother to go through it all again, right?”
3. Related, the “anti-hero” is actually an adolescent pain in the ass with no redeeming characteristics…and he doesn’t develop any either.
4. I do not understand the hoopla surrounding Guillermo del Toro. His visual vocabulary may be unique but if it’s used in service of garbage like this, it’s wasted. Keep to your directing and design, del Toro and keep your hands off the story and script.
5. The best thing I can say about this movie is that perhaps the editing ruined it. But I doubt it.

It’s the second day of summer and Midsummer’s Eve and hot as blazes in San Francisco. Even if you didn’t know how hot it is, you’d know something was off because the tourists have come out of their hovel hotels and are crawling all over the place. Go home silly people blocking my bike’s path! Go home! This city is not for visiting.

Our place is usually lovely and breezy but since we’re on the third floor, beneath the black tarpaper roof, we bake in the heat. I make spa water – charcoal filtered water with oranges or lemons – so we stay hydrated. Glasses of spa water are everywhere. Our studio has begun to resemble the house in Signs. Remember that movie? The last good one Shyamalan did?

The little girl is always asking for a glass of water and leaving half-full glasses all over the house. And it turns out that the aliens are burned by water. Remember? And the brother is a former baseball star. And just before the wife died years earlier, she tells Mel Gibson to tell him – the brother – , “Swing away, Merrilll. Swing away!” And Mel Gibson doesn’t know what she means, thinks she’s delirious from pain, until the aliens are there in the house and the water glasses are everywhere and Merrill’s bat is above him on the wall. And Mel Gibson says, “Swing away, Merrill! Swing away!” And he does, breaking the bat and the alien and shattering glasses and glasses of water onto the otherwise invincible alien. Remember?

That’s what our apartment looks like, minus the alien.

I hate to do this but I’ve got to give the new Sundance Cinema a thumbs down. I wanted to like you, Sundance Kabuki Cinema, I really, really did. But you disappointed me and now I am crestfallen and slightly angry and feel a little bit dirty for wanting to go out with you at all.

Maybe it’s because I had such high hopes for our first date. Maybe it’s because I dressed all hip in my black turtleneck and it turns out you cater to middle-aged annoying people. Maybe it’s because I thought you were going to be a taste of home, a little slice of Manhattan on the west coast, a hipster haunt with your over-priced tickets ($27 for two) and your cocktail lounge and your upscale snacks (Izzy sodas!) But no. It turns out your forty-foot bamboo plants are just a screen for you to hide your mediocrity.

Let me offer you some constructive criticism so you can do better.

• When new visitors ask where they should eat – the upstairs cafe or the restaurant you opened next door that replaced Pasta Pomodoro, you should not tell them to go next door. The place next door is trying very hard to look upscale in a downscale neighborhood. The food is trying to be upscale too but it fails. Green Goddess salad with tempura avocado? Nice try but it’s an avocado. Pecorino mac and cheese ($9)? It’s covered with breadcrumbs like something from Stouffers and has less flavor than the boxed version. I liked Pasta Pomodoro better. (Speaking of which, try their prosciutto tortellini in pink sauce as take-out comfort food sometime.)
• Three bathroom stalls in the women’s bathroom? I don’t think so.
• Reserved seating is so yesterday. Just stop it. Even the Ziegfeld in New York doesn’t do that anymore. I would rather have to show up half an hour early to get a prime location and sit next to other committed viewers than show up two minutes ahead of time and sit next to a couple of baby boomers who ordered their seats online four days ago because their lives just aren’t interesting enough to have anything better to do.
• Tickets for $13.50. Do I really need to say anything else on the subject? I know you’ve got to pay off the remodel, but find another way.
• The Sundance Catalog is displayed on the side tables in the hall. This is shameless but predictable cross-marketing. The Sundance Catalog, for anyone flirting with checking it out, is on a par with the cinema: some interesting things but wildly pricey and of inconsistent quality.

What was good about it? The movie. The seats. The fact that I can get a drink on-site to take the edge off my annoyance. Would I go again? Only if I were desperate to see a first-run indie film. But I’d try the Lumiere first. Or the Embarcadero. And no, you can’t have my phone number. And I’m not free Thursday.

Everyone remembers Brokeback Mountain. Everyone talks about The Joker. Some even mention 10 Things I Hate About You and The Patriot, but only one review of Heath Ledger’s career that I’ve read mentions A Knight’s Tale.

I love A Knight’s Tale. I own A Knight’s Tale. What’s not to like about a medieval jousting movie that features hard rock ballads, Rufus Sewell being villainous, Alan Tudyk being ridiculous and Paul Bettany in the buff? It is entirely what it set out to be: extremely entertaining garbage. There’s no reason to judge it by any other standards. If I’d made that movie, I’d be proud of it and I wish a few more critics and eulogizers would get on board.

You’ve got to love a guy willing to make all of those movies. One of the women I admire the most once said that the point of education and experience was to make your mind an interesting place to live. I think Heath Ledger’s mind must have been. I hope it was. I’ll miss him.

I re-watched the latest Bourne movie tonight. You know the scene where Jason takes out Desh, the counter-assassin? All I have to say about that is what did that dude think was going to happen? Bathrooms are the #1 location where accidents in the home happen. Never shoulda taken the fight in there, man. Never.

This movie is definitely not helping my completely unrealistic belief that you CAN prepare for every possible contingency if you just train long enough. Definitely not helping.

I am not a Harry Potter fan. I was but then the movies came out and I think the kids they cast, poor things, are terrible, terrible actors and have awful, awkward, irritating fake laughs. I can’t help myself though. When one comes out, I watch it, hoping that this new director (each movie’s had a different one since they canned that master of kiddie pandering, Chris Columbus after movie #2) will somehow pull a Tim Burton and make Batman cool again. That hasn’t happened. They just keep adding more and more illustrious actors in supporting roles – Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Fiona Shaw, Ralph Fiennes and so on. Unfortunately, it’s the emperor’s new clothes all over again, kids: acting like you’re acting doesn’t count as actual acting.

I want to be clear that I don’t blame the actors personally. Who wouldn’t turn up for that audition, for Pete’s sake? Not that, at ten years old you’re turning up for anything on your own (moms) or have anyone around you who will give you an objective opinion of your acting skills, current or future, you little cutie pie! Smile big! (Moms again.)

Am I the only one who saw Showbiz Moms & Dads? I think everyone who takes their child on an audition should be forced to watch it until they can pass some sort of self-awareness test and swear that they’re not living through their kid. When you’re revving up the minivan for that cross-country drive to LA, parents, just remember that for every talented little Dakota Fanning, there are twenty Emma Watsons who will try and try and try and still not make the grade even if they do get hired for millions. You should still love them, moms, they just shouldn’t be in movies.

Come to that, I’m in favor of people having to pass parenting tests before they can keep their kids, too, but no one agrees with me on that one either. Something about how some people are OK with “expressing emotion in public” or Chuck E. Cheese or high-pressure tactics on pre-schoolers or how not everyone finds the Teletubbies alarming. (It’s not the gay thing, it’s the retarded thing.) To my mind, the Harry Potter movies are just teaching kids to tolerate poor acting skills at an early age. That can’t be good. Then they’re going to move on to be Gary Busey fans or tolerate Demi Moore and then try telling them not to snort coke or just be mean, mean, breast-implanted, cradle-robbing meanies.

In the meantime, I can’t get Daniel Radcliffe’s utterly painful smile out of my head long enough to make it through the 8000 pages of book four, which is the last one I tried to read.

This doesn’t mean I don’t follow the Harry Potter news. I just follow it a.) late, b.) scornfully and c.) use a really bored voice when I report that spoilers and antics of the crazed fans. These methods have convinced no one that I am not a fan. I just like books. And money. And clever, scrappy writers who become billionaires after re-purposing every archetypal myth ever put on the page. Go you, J.K. Rowling. Although, you know what? I don’t even like her that much anymore now that she’s all manicured up and has nice hair. I prefer to think of her in a café (like me), with no money (almost like me), and a dream that someday a band called Draco and the Malfoys will belt out, “My Dad’s Rich, Your Dad’s Dead,” in Harvard Square at midnight in tribute to my books as I count my money in Scotland.