(It’s a Nick Cave reference, if you’re confused.)

(And, I suppose, a Bible reference.)

I had this lovely New Year’s resolution — “Suck less: blog more” — that was going to solve all my problems.  And then (get that tiny violin ready) Christmas took up more time and energy than expected, and then I had to suspend things temporarily to run off to Cambodia (like you do).  And then a deeply disturbing amount of work awaited me upon my return from Cambodia (Cliff’s Notes rundown of the trip: a horse rolled over on me).  By the time I realized how far I had sunk in ze qvicksand, there were no vines within reach.

Although I am in no way Chinese, who is to say that my blog is not?  It may have known just what it was doing, waiting until February to launch its New Year’s initiative.  So, fine.  Happy Chinese New Year!

Resolution:  “Suck less: blog more.”

For now, time to play catch-up.  Here is a quick ‘n’ dirty list of the ground I’ve covered since my last post (because everybody likes lists — especially you):

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Biutiful

It’s Oscar season, so expect a lot of these types in this list.

I had very little knowledge of what this one was about before I got there.  Now, I would be remiss if I did not point out that some of the camera work was sufficiently “raw” as to obscure the subject a bit.  A note to indie directors: we can still grasp the gritty immediacy of your protagonist’s life and struggles if you give us a clear shot of him walking down the street.  I promise.  We’re open-minded like that.

But that aside, this was a lovely and profoundly depressing movie, and Javier (oh, Javier!) did a magnificent job in it.  The wretchedness of the story kind of crept up on us — first some seediness, then some awkwardness, then unfortunateness, and finally some full-on misery, lest you think you’ll be making a smooth escape.  A fine and multilayered piece of work.

*          *          *

Black Swan

Ever since seeing this movie, I have begun to see the people around me as divided into two camps: (1) people who were seriously freaked out by Black Swan, and (2) people who weren’t.  As you may surmise, I fall into Camp #2.

Maybe I’m just well versed in my Aronofsky.  Requiem for a Dream is in my top five films of all time.  I’ve been mildly obsessed with the man since 1999, when I went to see Pi alone in Sydney, Australia, and found myself in a theater mostly populated by people who had tried to see other movies that were sold out.  Movies like October Sky. These were people who clearly had no idea what sort of culture was about to be served up to them, and the sounds they made while trying to process what they were seeing were as entertaining to me as the movie itself.

But that’s what I can’t figure out.  Pi had no advertising budget, clearly, whereas Black Swan had an almost militarized publicity campaign.  How does one go see Black Swan without thoroughly expecting it to be just the sort of movie it is?  And if one expects it, how can it rattle one so?  These are questions with which I struggle.

Anyway.  I liked it.  A lot.  But given how well prepared I’d been by the trailer, I found myself wishing it had gone further, surprised me more.

Oh, and really?  Mila was “snubbed” by the Academy?  She was just what the role called for, but come on.  How much of a stretch was this?

*          *          *

Burlesque

Obvi.  I mean, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association clearly believed in this hidden gem of the alternative community, this unassuming little vignette of love and yearning, so who was I to imagine otherwise?  Unquestionably, the most moving scene was the one in which Christina Aguilera admitted to Cher, her voice catching on emotion, that her mother had died before she had a chance to teach little Christina how to slather on makeup like a common strumpet.  And Cher, who had been around life’s block a time or two and was no stranger to heartache herself, sagely took a seat next to the budding starlet and thoroughly bestrumpeted her:

For all those who may have read that this film was Showgirls-bad, I am woeful to say that it is not.  There is no moment as painfully magnificent as when goddamn Elizabeth Berkley whips out that goddamn switchblade in the truck.  Had there been, I would have gotten oodles more out of Burlesque.

Stanley Tucci (or as Shazbot calls him, “TUCCI!”) — don’t ever change.  And don’t ever do a movie like this one again.

*          *          *

Despicable Me

Shall forever be to me the Fluffy Unicorn Movie.

Watched on the plane back from Asia.

*          *          *

Eclipse (Twilight)

Oh, for crying out loud.

*          *          *

The Fighter

Pretty good for a movie in which it was almost impossible to like anyone.  As with Mila, I find myself relieved that Marky Mark was not nominated.  Yes, yes, there’s no glory in the quiet roles, etc.  What Christian said.  But while Wahlberg did everything demanded of him by the role, he barely changed his facial expression through the whole thing, let alone his intonation.  If we’re going to throw around golden statuettes, I do think it’s okay to look around for a bit more nuance.

Melissa Leo, though, was definitely a rock star of obnoxiousness in this one.  She made me miss watching Treme.

Boston movies are so hot these days.  I try to remember which one really kicked off the trend — was it The Departed?

*          *          *

Gentlemen Broncos

I’ll admit, my hopes were a bit high on this one, based on the ingredients — the director of Napoleon Dynamite and Jemaine Clement, with Jennifer Coolidge and Sam Rockwell thrown in.  I likely asked too much, with my mind.  But do let me say that Jemaine’s scenes absolutely did not disappoint.  His character was genius.  Just not in it enough, sadly.  Many of the other parts tried too hard, flying in the face of Napoleon‘s effortless brilliance.  Which should not be confused with the (also enjoyable) film, My Effortless Brilliance. I’m still willing to recommend Broncos for Jemaine — he’s just a delight.  But with all sorts of caveats piled on top.

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Get Low

Caught and enjoyed this one on the plane.  The little boy from Sling Blade has grown up to be hot.  That is all.

*          *          *

The Illusionist

Sweetly charming, and I loved the dreamy, animated landscapes of Edinburgh, one of my all-time favorite cities.  But it’s no Triplets of Belleville — God bless it — if you ask me.  Speaking of things I need to rewatch.

*         *          *

The King’s Speech

‘Twould be no small feat to knock this one off Oscar’s pedestal, and really, it has everything one typically wants from a Best Picture.  Personal challenges, global challenges, nifty camera angles, Nazis . . .  the standard smorgasbord of Matters of Weight.

Go forth, Firth.

*          *          *

Mega Python vs. Gatoroid

SyFy’s inevitable culminating moment in genetic-disaster/’80s-pop-star fusion films.  Why have a mutation movie starring Debbie — sorry, Deborah — Gibson and a mutation movie starring Tiffany when you can just have a mutation movie starring both of them? AND Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration?  And then you can have them get into a violent cat fight and roll around in skimpy cocktail dresses and claw at each other?  And then you can have them make adorable little references to their own hit singles?  And then you can have them get eaten by giant, toothy carnivores?  Their CGI-ed blood spurting decisively across the screens of attentive home audiences everywhere?

Have I said too much?  Was anyone out there really worried about preserving the tension of the narrative?  All right, fine, I apologize; better late than never:

SPOILER ALERT

They both DIE!

SyFy decided to air this film’s debut with both ’80s — cough — legends hosting and drawing our attention ever more aggressively to the ludicrousness of the entire affair. As any connoisseur of bad cinema knows, if you highlight the awfulness in real time, it loses its awesome power.  So, misstep there, SyFy.  But whatevs.  My favorite part was not the shrieking hissy fit, nor the fact that even static objects like gator eggs were painfully CGI-ed within an inch of their lives.  No, instead it was THIS utterly stupendous musical montage of Deb’s and Tiff’s problem spiraling mightily out of control:

I don’t know whether to run and hide or just dance, dance, dance!

*          *           *

127 Hours

Dare I admit: this movie called my bluff a bit.  I have long prided myself on my bring-it-on attitude with respect to visual ickiness in film.  Save for some involuntary facial twitching, I will watch whatever the good people of cinema want to serve up.  And that includes

SPOILER ALERT

James Franco hacking off his own arm with a tiny, blunted Swiss army knife.  And I did — I watched this scene, with my characteristically stoic resolution.  And just as it was wrapping up (so to speak), I noticed that, hey, I was having a vagal episode.  (Thanks to an unfortunate hand-mangling incident a couple years ago, I know that I — like many members of my often irritatingly hapless gender — have an overactive vagus nerve.)  My heart rate slowed way down and I broke out into a cold sweat.  The only thing I could think in this moment was, Mother of God, I’m going to be one of those people who passed out in 127 Hours. I couldn’t let it happen, doggone it.  Through deep breaths, sheer force of will, and a quick round of leg exercises, I was able to right the ship and hang tough amongst the conscious.  But I was thoroughly grumpy to have proven thusly manipulatable.  My movie-going counterpart cheered me up by telling me of the time he passed out in the audience of the Lollapalooza side show; this helped immensely.

That all aside, good movie, great story.  Leave it to Danny Boyle to produce an incredibly kinetic rendering of an incredibly static event.  And leave it to A.R. Rahman to beat your head in with the score.

*          *          *

The Science of Sleep

I’ll happily watch Gael García Bernal twiddle his thumbs for two hours, but this reminded me a bit too uncomfortably much of some unstable guys I’d fallen for in the past. Whimsical claymation sequences notwithstanding.

Actually, no, maybe they are withstanding.

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The Social Network

Also caught this one on the plane.  (We make use of the tools available to us.)  I liked it more than I thought I would.  I was tickled by the fact that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did the music for a story about this most mainstream and preppyish of subjects — music that I liked, there’s no denying it.  Still, a far cry from the skin-peeling, vein-splitting, god-taunting, face-shooting fare they have oft favored.

The thing that bugged me, though, is a thing that generally bugs me whenever Hollywood plays in the Harvard (or similar) sandbox.  Movie makers always seem either convinced or desperate to convince us that Harvard types wander around bars and parties having rapid-fire, boardroom-style exchanges like they are barking “buy” and “sell” orders at each other in even the most casual, social settings.  I never met Mr. Zuckerberg and I attended one of The Other Ivy League Schools, so of course I am barely in a position to comment, but I’d still like to say that no one was holding court in a bar like a little Wall Street CEO-to-be when I was in college.   At the risk of dampening the Ivy mystique, I promise you that they were shotgunning PBR and singing the wrong words along with Van Morrison and yelling angrily about which Real World cast members they would nail and vomiting into shrubbery.  Those were some high times.

*          *          *

Toy Story 3

News flash of the century: Toy Story 3 was light-hearted and cute!

I’ve loved these dudes for ages, so it’s always nice to check in and see how they’re doing.

*          *           *

True Grit

Awesome.

*          *          *

Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Had to get this one read quickly, because the latter portion of the first paragraph of this is absolutely true.

Another of those “Why this book, of all books?” questions.  I enjoyed it well enough.  I like elephants and reading about the neat stuff they do.  I’ll enjoy watching one do neat stuff in the movie.  And the setting — a Depression-era circus coupled with life on the rails — is a great, meaty one for literature.  All of the little factoids and contextual details were good stuff.

It was the story that did little for me.  The side details were nice, but the main trajectory seemed so pedestrian and underdeveloped.  And here, let me ask the millions upon millions of other people who’ve read it: am I the only person who thought that the whole old-man-looking-back angle added a lot of big, fat nothing?  Okay, he made a couple of passing comments about how circuses had changed over the years.  But the rest was just banal contemplation of getting old and becoming defunct and forgotten — and did that really have anything to do with the rest of the book?  Like, at all?

I didn’t think the book was bad.  But as is so often the case, its rampant popularity made me cranky.

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When Broken Glass Floats, by Chanrithy Him

I rewatched The Killing Fields ahead of my Cambodia trip, wanting to freshen up my grasp of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.  Largely as grim as I had recalled.  This book contained more on the atrocity front.   I read it throughout my trip, but completed the lion’s share on my final day, the relaxation day that I spent by the pool.  The sickly contrast of reading about communist, genocidal despair while lying on a chaise longue under a palm tree and and having cocktails brought to me was not lost on me, for what it’s worth.  The book did what I hoped it would, though, which was to make me appreciate the happy-seeming locals around me more, and to make me marvel at how much of the country was ultimately salvaged.

*          *          *

Winter’s Bone (book), by Daniel Woodrell

A much better book than Water for Elephants.  Measured.  Deliberate.  Brutal.  An equally meaty setting for literature: the meth-cooking Ozark underbelly.  The storytelling had a deep, muddy rhythm to it, the loping gait of low-key desperation. Yeah.  Take that, son.  And I’d take Ree Dolly over Lisbeth Salander any day, FYI.

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Winter’s Bone (movie)

On the whole, a faithfully measured, deliberate, and brutal companion to the book. Except that it never looked as cold as the book made me assume it should be.  And for reasons unclear, they excised my favorite part of the book.  (For those who have read it, it involves a very awkward hug.)

*          *          *

Oscars this weekend.  Wish me luck in the betting pool.

———————————————————————

* For purposes of this statement, “mankind” shall be understood to mean “me.”

If there were ever a man who could turn a receding hairline into a steamy sex symbol, it might be Nick Cave.

I should clarify:  I am not really attracted to Nick Cave.  I don’t think.  

<thinks> 

Probably not.  But I am attracted to the grit of him, the idea of him, rotating smugly on the needle of his own manly brand of beautiful ugly (referring to his artistry, not his face). I am attracted to his magnificently media-spanning talent. The Proposition* was half grimy bloodbath — heavy on the grime — and half visual poem.  (Join me in pretending that I didn’t just say that.)  Its soundtrack (co-composed by Warren Ellis, to be discussed later) was murderously sweet, delicately sick.  And The Death of Bunny Munro achieved the heretofore mercifully unattempted: it made me feel a sense of attachment to a child.  The queasy seesawing between the detached, nympho- and egomaniacal Bunny, Sr., and the bright, earnest, and heartbreakingly genuine Bunny, Jr., was torturously effective, and it caused me retroactively to fear growing up.  (This introduced some conflicts to my day-to-day routine.)

So, of course I’m onboard with Grinderman, which I enjoyed live this past weekend, along with a cool and refreshing $10 gin & tonic.  (I felt I was still owed about three more dollars’ worth of refreshment afterward.) 

Opening for the group was lone thereminist Armin Ra, who warmed up — well, cooled down, I mean, let’s be honest — the audience with such hard-raging crunk classics as “Ave Maria” and “Nature Boy.”  Don’t misunderstand; I liked him.  I’m just saying the relationship between the two acts may not have been . . . immediately apparent.

But back to the Cave.  This tall drink of whiskey remains quite spry, twisting about on the stage, zigging from keyboard to guitar, testifying about demons and wolfmen and executioners — none of which one can help but imagine as Cave himself.  (Same with Bunny Munro.  Is anyone really likely to have some other mental image of the character?)  Meanwhile, off to his side is the transfixing, cyclonic insanity of Warren Ellis, who is doing everything in his power to resemble a quasi-savage cave person** — no small feat when one is playing a violin!  He spent most of “Evil!” writhing around on the floor.  At one point he began smashing a hi-hat cymbal between a set of maracas, applying all the gusto of . . . well, of a quasi-savage cave person.

I’ve not heard any of Ellis’s group, Dirty Three, so I suppose I’ll make that the something-billionth entry on my to-do list. . . .

No wacky background images or stage gimmicks, just a rich rock cacophony with a hot testosterone injection.  (Yeah, that’s right.)  At one point, the highly mobile Cave knocked over his own mic stand as he was making his way over to interact with/intimidate some front-row fans, and the hapless roadie who rushed out to right it somehow failed and had to remove it from the stage completely; I suppose it had to be quarantined.  All well and good until Cave crossed to the keyboard and found himself with a mic in his hand.  For the first electronic interlude, he just plopped the thing down on the keys he wasn’t playing.  (The indigenous musicians use every part of the instrument.)  For the second, he chucked it over his shoulder.   This gave me joy.

The low point of the show came when Cave lashed out at an audience member; he corrected him about something the gentleman had apparently yelled, then followed it with, “. . . you dumb fuck.  I thought this was supposed to be a university town.”  I should perhaps explain: it was only a low point because I didn’t catch the correction.  What if it was something hilarious?  And I missed it?  Pooh.  Moments later, Cave snidely dedicated “When My Love Comes Down” to the aforementioned dumb fuck, and there was much rejoicing.

Although they did not play my favorite Grinderman song (“Go Tell the Women,” for no readily apparent reason), I am quite in favor of the new album and found the performance delightful.  Cave is fond of letting go of his guitar from time to time and crooning a choice lyrical line while holding his arms above his head, limp-wristed, in a sort of Jesus-meets-Dorothy’s-scarecrow stance.

It suits him perfectly.

—————————————–

* Danny Huston was present when I saw The Proposition, and I asked him a question at the end, and he made a joke to the audience at my expense, and it did nothing to dampen my love of the film.  Nothing!

** No pun intended.

Hi!  Remember me?

Me neither. 

So.  I’ve been reading Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room for eight years.  Really.

I used to have this job that didn’t really require me to — how you say — do stuff, and so filling 40 hours per week in a small and painfully visible cubicle could be an exciting mental challenge.  Did I say exciting?  I meant excruciating.  No matter.  But once I had read every single item in The Onion‘s archives and sent chatty emails to people I hated the thought of ever hearing from again, I would find myself at loose ends once more, and I would go back to mewing piteously in hopes that five o’clock might, while ambling by the window, overhear me and intervene.

Somewhere in the midst of my two years in this job, I discovered Project Gutenberg (“Where books look vaguely like work!” - this should be its tagline) and decided it would be an awesome idea to use my spare office time to become phenomenally well read.  This initiative didn’t quite get off the ground as I had hoped.  I began, for some luke warm reason, with Black Beauty.  I had never read it; it seemed like one of those benign classics that everyone knocks out in a day or two when they’re eight.  Being twenty-four, I figured, hey.

Maybe if I’d been eight, this book would have just set my heart aflame.  As it was, I was relieved to be getting paid for reading it.

I finished it, though . . . far greater luck than I had with the next one.  Enter Jacob’s Room.

I’d read/seen The damned Hours and contemplated the futility of life in the appropriate corresponding manner.  God knows I loved Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  (Someday I will play Martha, and you can’t stop me.)  For these reasons and a general propensity for fancying myself an intellectual, I went after da Woolf.  By the end of that year, on the brink of changing jobs, I had barely staggered through 25% of the thing.

Here I am, two jobs later, and I have periodically found myself with downtime (whether actual or of my own declaration is not important).  I have periodically returned to Gutenberg, and each time, I have been curdled (curdled!) with guilt because I have left this task undone.  Each time, I have gritted my teeth and opened the Jacob’s Room file once more, skimming the first bit over again to try and remember what the eff was going on, assuming anything was to begin with; muttering profanities as I tried to sledgehammer my way through all the extra words clogging the arteries of what may not, in fact, actually BE a story.  It may just be a clump of untidy verbal underbrush that needs to be burned away before literary crop season.  With extreme prejudice.  How the hell should I know?  I’m only at 53%.

There, under the green shade, with his head bent over white paper, Mr. Sibley transferred figures to folios, and upon each desk you observe, like provender, a bunch of papers, the day’s nutriment, slowly consumed by the industrious pen. Innumerable overcoats of the quality prescribed hung empty all day in the corridors, but as the clock struck six each was exactly filled, and the little figures, split apart into trousers or moulded into a single thickness, jerked rapidly with angular forward motion along the pavement; then dropped into darkness. Beneath the pavement, sunk in the earth, hollow drains lined with yellow light for ever conveyed them this way and that, and large letters upon enamel plates represented in the underworld the parks, squares, and circuses of the upper. “Marble Arch – Shepherd’s Bush” — to the majority the Arch and the Bush are eternally white letters upon a blue ground. Only at one point — it may be Acton, Holloway, Kensal Rise, Caledonian Road — does the name mean shops where you buy things, and houses, in one of which, down to the right, where the pollard trees grow out of the paving stones, there is a square curtained window, and a bedroom.

You know it, girlfriend!

Anyway, I only bring all of this up to highlight the many channels I have explored in my noble pursuit of keeping myself sufficiently diverted during the work day.  And to own up to the fact that I have still not finished this book, which undoubtedly becomes shockingly racy and subversive within the final 30% of the text, shattering all of my childlike illusions of safety and familial love, perverting my understanding of “civilized” justice,  and revealing brutal truths about the appallingly senseless acts of which a human is capable when he has just seen the intestinal tract torn from the woman he loves.

This book likely has the power to save my life, if only I can claw my way to the end. 

CAUTION: May contain mild spoilers.*

So, I read Dracula, because (a) I hadn’t yet, and (b) I was hoping to get around eventually to reading some Dracula derivatives.

photo credit: Kristymp

To be honest, my expectations were low, even after I reminded myself that Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder were not actually in the book and couldn’t hurt me.  To some extent, I was pleasantly surprised — mainly by the Van Helsing character, whose absurdity was on parade, so to speak.  Perhaps I shall go back and watch the Coppola film again, to better appreciate Anthony Hopkins’ shtick in this role.  I could go back and watch Van Helsing again through this new lens, as well, but . . . no. 

No.

Still, there is no denying that mammoth chunks of this book could have been edited out with ease.  For example, several sections are devoted to (a pet peeve of mine) phonetically writing out the “folksy” accents of the blue-collar types who are occasionally, marginally involved in the story. 

E.g., “That ‘ere wolf is a’idin’ of, somewheres.  The gard’ner wot didn’t remember said he was a-gallopin’ northward faster than a horse could go. . . . I dessay when they gets in packs and does be chivyin’ somethin’ that’s more afeared than they is they can make a devil of a noise. . . . ”

This always irritates me; it strikes me as a writer getting too smug in his/her own Sense of Place and Attention to Detail, not to mention the fact that only certain accents are ever treated in this way.  I grumbled particularly loudly at it here because (a) these were, as aforementioned, only marginally involved individuals, and if I’m going to have to devote the extra effort to picking through that many wanton apostrophes, then that person’s socioeconomic heritage had better be a lot more relevant than it was to Stoker’s point; and (b) the whole book is written in the format of journal entries and newspaper clippings.  So, not only were we to believe that every single English person who keeps a diary writes out the lower classes’ dialogue phonetically, but also that journalists on the clock do likewise.  I was already grumpy about the massive sections devoted to “verbatim” dialogue in these diary entries, particularly in Dr. Seward’s, as he was keeping his verbally via phonograph.  I wonder if he did all the voices, too.  I am not opposed to the diary-entry gimmick in storytelling, but only if you plan to write things like a normal human would in a diary.

Further, an awful lot of time is spent trumpeting Mina’s ability to write in shorthand, including the hi-LAR-ious scene in which she gives Van Helsing the shorthand copy of her notes to read — knowing he can’t read shorthand, the little minx — and then chuckles in her Soft, Feminine Way before swapping it out for the typewritten version.  Oh, you.

But then, given how much is made of Mina and her Soft, Feminine Way, I suppose Stoker felt desperate to remind us that there WAS a point to keeping her around at all!  Really!  She knows shorthand, see!  And she can type!  And there’s this one part when they have a bunch of documents that need to be spruced up a bit and put in order, and she does it really quickly!  Even though she’s a woman!  Hence, they allow her to play their reindeer games for just long enough to have her nearby when it counts (pun intended).

Now, believe me, I am no stranger to the sexism of old, nor its tendency to rear its pesky, condescending head in classic literature and film.  I would even categorize myself as much more difficult to offend on this front than some.  But, Jesus, when it comes time to shield poor Mina from the heebie-jeebies of the world around her, Stoker lays it on with a frigging dumptruck.  If we gathered up all the moments of hyperbolic chivalry in this book, we’d end up with a couple of good solid chapters right there.

VAN HELSING on MINA:  Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman’s heart. . . . Friend John, up to now fortune has made that woman of help to us, after tonight she must not have to do with this so terrible affair.  It is not good that she run a risk so great.  We men are determined, nay, are we not pledged, to destroy this monster?  But it is no part for a woman.  Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors and hereafter she may suffer, both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.  And, besides, she is young woman and not so long married, there may be other things to think of some time, if not now.  You tell me she has wrote all, then she must consult with us, but tomorrow she say goodbye to this work, and we go alone.

* * *

MINA on THE MEN:  Manlike, they had told me to go to bed and sleep, as if a woman can sleep when those she loves are in danger!

* * *

HARKER on MINA:  She looks paler than usual.  I hope the meeting tonight has not upset her.  I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. It is too great a strain for a woman to bear.  I did not think so at first, but I know better now.  Therefore I am glad that it is settled.  There may be things which would frighten her to hear, and yet to conceal them from her might be worse than to tell her if once she suspected that there was any concealment.  Henceforth our work is to be a sealed book to her, till at least such time as we can tell her that all is finished, and the earth free from a monster of the nether world.  I daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep silence after such confidence as ours, but I must be resolute, and tomorrow I shall keep dark over tonight’s doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that has happened.

* * *

VAN HELSING to DR. SEWARD:  I shall go, if I may, and cheer myself with a few happy words with that sweet soul Madam Mina.  Friend John, it does rejoice me unspeakable that she is no more to be pained, no more to be worried with our terrible things.  Though we shall much miss her help, it is better so.
DR. SEWARD to VAN HELSING:  I agree with you with all my heart. . . . Mrs. Harker is better out of it.  Things are quite bad enough for us, all men of the world, and who have been in many tight places in our time, but it is no place for a woman, and if she had remained in touch with the affair, it would in time infallibly have wrecked her.

* * *

VAN HELSING to THE MEN:  Here comes Madam Mina.  Not a word to her of her trance!  She knows it not, and it would overwhelm her and make despair just when we want all her hope, all her courage, when most we want all her great brain which is trained like man’s brain, but is of sweet woman. . . .

* * *

HARKER on MINA:  Mina is fast asleep, and looks a little too pale.  Her eyes look as though she had been crying.  Poor dear, I’ve no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others.  But it is best as it is.  It is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken.  The doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business.  I must be firm, for on me this particular burden of silence must rest.  I shall not ever enter on the subject with her under any circumstances.

* * *

MINA to THE MEN:  In the morning we go out upon our task, and God alone knows what may be in store for any of us.  You are going to be so good to me to take me with you.  I know that all that brave earnest men can do for a poor weak woman, whose soul perhaps is lost, no, no, not yet, but is at any rate at stake, you will do.

* * *

VAN HELSING to QUINCEY:   A brave man’s blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble.  You’re a man and no mistake.  Well, the devil may work against us for all he’s worth, but God sends us men when we want them.

* * *

VAN HELSING to MINA:  And now for you, Madam Mina, this night is the end until all be well.  You are too precious to us to have such risk.  When we part tonight, you no more must question.  We shall tell you all in good time.  We are men and are able to bear, but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we are.
MINA on THE MEN:  All the men, even Jonathan, seemed relieved, but it did not seem to me good that they should brave danger and, perhaps lessen their safety, strength being the best safety, through care of me, but their minds were made up, and though it was a bitter pill for me to swallow, I could say nothing, save to accept their chivalrous care of me.

* * *

MINA on THE MEN:  They all agreed that it was best that I should not be drawn further into this awful work, and I acquiesced.  But to think that he keeps anything from me!  And now I am crying like a silly fool, when I know it comes from my husband’s great love and from the good, good wishes of those other strong men. . . . Last night I went to bed when the men had gone, simply because they told me to.  I didn’t feel sleepy, and I did feel full of devouring anxiety. . . . There now, crying again!  I wonder what has come over me today. I must hide it from Jonathan, for if he knew that I had been crying twice in one morning . . . I, who never cried on my own account, and whom he has never caused to shed a tear, the dear fellow would fret his heart out.  I shall put a bold face on, and if I do feel weepy, he shall never see it.  I suppose it is just one of the lessons that we poor women have to learn. . . .

* * *

DR. SEWARD on VAN HELSING:  He laughed till he cried, and I had to draw down the blinds lest any one should see us and misjudge.  And then he cried, till he laughed again, and laughed and cried together, just as a woman does.  I tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the circumstances, but it had no effect.  Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness!

Okay, sport.  Thanks.  We get it.

Only now do I understand why Winona was so gaspy, tremulous, squeaky, wilting, pathetic, swoony, and altogether insufferable in this film.  What choice did she have, woman that she is?

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* E.g., he’s a VAMPIRE!

I did not watch the VMAs.  However, I did “happen on by” at one point, in time to see: (1) Florence Welch sing flat for half of “Dog Days Are Over“; (2) Lady GaGa galumph onto the stage with the help of 14 men (all right, two); and (3) Taylor Swift lay her Benevolent Fingertips of Justice upon the diminished Kanye.  Okay, she sang a song.  A vague, clichéed, and barely applicable song . . . something about monsters and fireflies and lunchboxes.  The bottom line was that St. Swift can still, somehow, see the good in the shattered Kanye that we wolverines have savagely ignored as we gnaw away at his limbs.  And lest we doubt her tidings of Purity, Truth, and Light, she sang it barefoot.* 

photo credit: torieewearsprada

(If she really wanted to send a message, she should have sung it in a hoodie.)

Oddly, the performance did not end with Taylor and Kanye tenderly making out on stage, so I abandoned the broadcast in favor of finishing season one of The Tudors.  Damn that ridiculous, intoxicating show!  I began it for no other reason than Jonathan Rhys Meyers (damn that ridiculous, intoxicating man, while we’re at it).  Never did I imagine that the cast would contain another who made me forget all about JRM; Henry Cavill, my hat is off to you.  As are whatever other articles of clothing you choose.

Season two arrives soon.

Then it was time to break the seal on the Stieg Larsson movies, as I have done with the books.  I ordered up the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on demand and settled in.

Huh.

First off, no disrespect to cinematographers Jens Fischer and Eric Kress, but the lighting in this film seemed . . . off, somehow.  It made everyone’s skin look worse than it was (and oftentimes, it wasn’t so hot to begin with).

Second, one thought I had while reading the book was that, given how research-heavy the plot’s ”action” is, it was difficult to imagine a very lively visual adaptation.  Unfortunately, it still is.  Director Niels Arden Oplev did strip out most of the phlegmatic corporate and banking details that spent far too much time stagnating in the novel (God bless him).  But even so.

Also stripped (pun intended): two of the three sexual liaisons that protagonist Mikael Blomqvist indulged in throughout the book.  A good thing, too; actor Michael Nyqvist’s problematic, semi-bowl-cut  hairstyle would have been particularly difficult to square with a steady stream of concubines.  The only babe to survive the cut (pun also intended) is the titular Lisbeth Salander, who was probably able to overlook his hair because she’s so damaged and contrary. 

I only recently learned that the book’s Swedish title is Men Who Hate Women (which, frankly, makes a lot more sense than seizing upon an only dimly relevant piece of ink).  Mikael Blomqvist is clearly intended to be the respectful antidote to this toxic and abusive portion of the population. Still, it’s worth pointing out that feminist warrior Lisbeth is only initially drawn to want to nail Mikael because he does not demonstrate an eagerness to nail her.  I am woman, hear me indulge my psychological reactance.

A friend and Facebook fan directed me to this take on the delicate interplay between Mikael Blomqvist and one Mr. Stieg Larsson.  Amusing and full of good points.  I am less irritated by the literature than the post’s author seems to be; I’ve read far worse books, but as I’ve indicated before, it’s the phenomenon that bugs the heck out of me.  I’m not angry at Stieg, I’m angry at them.  The world.  The public.  The global denizens so wholly starstruck by such a run-of-the-mill piece of fiction. 

Inked-up antisocials aren’t so exotic, hand to God.

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* Favorite (though completely un-PC) blog comment, from Gawker-reader anchower:  “Revenge is a dish best served retarded.”

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes.

1) The Kids Are All Right – I caught this film when some friends and I went out drinking and then decided we were in danger of going home too early to be decent.  Amusing and diverting.  I was watching it from a somewhat singular perspective; I am not a kid person, you see,* and as Mark Ruffalo’s character is confronted with teenage biological offspring (via sperm bank) that he had not known existed, I was too busy scrutinizing his surprisingly relaxed interactions with them to think so much about the homo-/heterosexual interplay that the filmmakers may have expected would steal the proverbial show.  Like Mark, I might be more inclined to consider breeding if the kids (who are all right, incidentally) were 18 when they showed up.  Ah, well.  The story proffers a cornucopia of awkward scenarios, so it’s nice that we can each pick our own focal bit of awkwardness, based on personal resonance.

In other news, I’ve decided that I like Mia Wasikowska.  That is all.

2)  A Single Man – One of my movie-going compatriots brought this film up at the aforementioned screening; I suppose she was reminded by its similar motifs of homosexuality and Julianne Moore.  In turn, I was reminded that I never got to the older flick during my pre-Oscars cinema spree.  I did get to A Serious Man, which I was forever confusing with A Single Man, in spite of the fact that the former featured entrely dissimilar motifs of Judaism and Michael Stuhlbarg.

To make up for my neglect, I watched A Single Man on demand.  Far less amusing, although equally diverting.  My favorite thing about it was the music, the earnest strings that accompanied virtually every minute of footage like a dreamy ether in which the narrative was suspended.  I liked the film, but for the first time ever, I’m not entirely sure I liked Julianne Moore.  She felt a little over the top to me.  Yes, yes, I know her character was meant to be boisterous, hiding her pain, etc.  Lay off.  Okay, I found her portrayal of over-the-topness to be a bit over the top.  Still, it’s not like she hasn’t made up for it elsewhere.

3) MGMT – There was grave information to be gleaned from this concert experience.  It took the form of what the young’uns around me were wearing — the ones who had clearly been planning their outfits for days, if not weeks.  Rompers, dear readers.  They were in rompers.  Not one and all, but how many must there be to instill alarm? Headbands were also everywhere — not this kind, but this kind.  People who are less averse to offspring (their own and others’) than I am likely know all about such trends, but I never look directly at minors unless I have exhausted all other options.

What?  Oh, the music?  Yeah, that was good.

I’m not quite as big a fan of MGMT’s new album as I was of their last, owing in part to the fact that the title track, “Congratulations,” really bores me.  (Never mind the fact that the video belongs in the dictionary under “self-important, condescending artist” — what? They removed that entry?)  Parts of the album feel a little too clever to me, for what that’s worth.  I consider the moderately epic semi-ballad “Siberian Breaks” to be a standout; it’s wayward, but lush.  Unfortunately, it did not translate so well to a live, stadium-style performance.  By that point in the show, all the little romper stompers were drunk on bouncier selections like “Kids” and “Time to Pretend,” and they showed insufficient interest in meditations on surfing in Russia.  Fair enough.  A bold move to play the song anyway, I say.  But then they finished their encore on “Congratulations,” which provided me with a fine opportunity to scram and beat the rush.

Details aside, Andrew VanWyngarden’s voice comes through like a needle in a live show. Good on ‘im.

4) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Huh.  Who knew the book would involve so much sexual torture?  (Answer: People who read it.)

Now.  I enjoyed it, I was entertained, I found the resolution reasonably satisfying, etc. The dénouement went on for too long, à la The Return of the King. The writing wasn’t bad, or didn’t seem to be, under the circumstances of translation.  But . . . why this book?  No knocks to Stieg, but well-constructed suspense novels are not so rare that this semi-random selection should set the world aflame.  Is it the “exotic” Swedish setting? Is it society’s fascination with sullen, inked-up antiheroes?  Is it the pretty cover?  Is it the sexual torture?

Whatevs.  I’ll read the other two, but not right now.  Right now, I’m delighted to be able to read something far less recognizable on the subway.  I’m shifting from Swedish sexual torture to Icelandic sexual torture for a while.  You know, to cleanse the palate.

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* To put it mildly.

Blast, I’ve not posted in a bit, and now it shall have to be a bit more;  I’ll be traveling until mid- next week.

So, this is a Post-It post, a note to self:  Upon return, discuss The Kids Are All Right, A Single Man, and the MGMT concert/album . . . not to mention that damned Girl and her infernal Dragon Tattoo.

Then all will be back on track, I’m just sure of it.

Be well!