Coffee & Cigarettes & Donnie Darko & Night on Earth.
After Ghost Dog we figured Time for a Jim Jarmusch Festival. Woo Hoo!
Donnie Darko SCARED ME. Worse than a zombie flick. Every time that ****ing rabbit showed up, I’d be cowering on one end of the sofa looking through my fingers. What the heck is wrong with me that a really bad rabbit costume and cheesy f/x could freak me out? Am I channeling Anya? What’s happening to me?? Afterwards, Jeff said, “Well, did Jacob’s Ladder scare you?” and I said HELL YA. “Oh.”
Has anybody noticed that Drew Barrymore doesn’t look like she belongs to this century, or the previous one? She’s beautiful, and she can act, but she doesn’t really belong in these parts.
Coffee and Cigarettes was interesting and uneven, just like the reviewers said. I enjoyed the ongoing Ghost Dog references. There were particular segments I enjoyed, including Iggy Pop trying to be ingratiating with Tom Waits. Parts of it were a very aesthetically arranged and choreographed kick in the goolies to the whole contemporary notion of celebrity. To slide between “I am your fan” “You are my fan” “I think you are trying to sponge off me” “No, you’re trying to sponge off me!” “Do you like me as a person?” “Do you like me as an artist?” “Why isn’t your stuff on the jukebox if this is your favorite hangout?” “Well your stuff isn’t on the playlist either!” “Look, somebody recognized me and didn’t recognize you!” “Look, I’m talking to somebody you want to talk to!”… without losing the humanity of folks involved – that was artistic, and troubling too. I watched as friendships would blossom and die in the production and interpretation of a single word.
I think ego to art is like the sun to the earth. The right amount makes a flowering; too little makes ice; or rotten mould; too much a desert.
Night on Earth, while having the same sort of episodic structure as Coffee and Cigarettes, was a lot more satisfying movie. The drunken Finns at the end are classic. Roberto Benigni talking a prelate to death is pretty funny too; his character’s description of a sheep he was once in love made me gasp with laughter.
This morning mOm came over and she and Jeff pulled weeds; I wandered around Jeff’s garden taking pictures, including what looks to be an entertaining one of Eddie sticking his head out through a hole in the side screen. Getting pictures of Gizmo is harder; he never bloody well sits still long enough.
So to breakfast, and then to lunch at the parents’, then a flying visit to Esquimalt, then home.
The rabbit totally scared me too. I don’t know what it is that makes it so profoundly creepy.
Night on Earth is so delightful. The winona ryder segment is a bit weak, but the rest is completely delicious. y-voit-rien! tom waits! weeping norwegian drunks! It has everything, by which I mean enough different things to cover all four sides of the scrabble board.
The weeping drunks are FINNS Goddamnit. Finns are very important, and quite different than Norwegians. I mean, if the Norwegians had been invaded by the Russ as many times as the Finns they’d all be strumming balalaikas now. After the end of the Second World War the Finns took in a third again of their population of Finn speakers who’d ended up on the wrong side of the border and integrated them without comment, although certainly not without work. This is a feat that has never been equalled. That’s why Finns and Canuckistanis usually get on so well. They are both proud of their cultures but they aren’t dicks about it.
The rabbit was partly the face (which kept changing, I could have dealt with it if it had stayed stable) and partly the voice. Creepsie!
I stand humbly corrected! I will reread my moomintroll books in penance.
How come your penanceseses always sound like such a good time? (she enquired suspiciously…)
It’s against my religion to take on optional sorrow. Or if it isn’t, I’m returning this religion for a refund.
Get your hand out of the collection plate, the money’s for coffee.