I'm not getting any better, am I?

See Thirteen. It's amazing. Susan and I saw it last night and I can't stop thinking about it. So many elements of it took me back to being right there. They obviously felt like I felt. Truly, it was unbelievable. Evie was Moriah in some ways, and I could empathize with so much of the pain I saw in Tracey. I felt like I was in middle school/early high school again throughout most of the movie. Even if a lot of the exact experiences didn't parallel mine (and some of them did) the feeling was so right on.

I'm aware that's a very poor review. Sorry. My reaction to it is still very viseral at this point.

Chance barfed up a sock this morning. A whole freaking sock. Not even one of those little quarter sized socks. Nasty nasty nasty. How can something with a digestive system no bigger than mine swallow an entire goddamn sock??

Susan and I went to see The Magdalene Sisters last night. Heavy, depressing stuff, but one of the best made films I've seen in awhile. It struck that balance, being heavy enough to be realistic and to keep you interested and concerned about what was going on, but having a few moments of levity so that you didn't turn off completely because it was 2 hours of nonstop depressing. I really liked it. I want to read a book about that situation now.

I had the worst dreams last night. All of these related vignettes about Simon and how bad living with him and dating him and attempting to trust and/or love him was. Mostly stuff very inspired by real life. But real life years ago! What's going on with it popping back into my head now? Strange stuff. I am glad to be awake now.

I have some errands to get done (I get to buy stuff with joint account money, yay!) before the game starts at 2. It's 11 and I haven't even showered yet. Have I mentioned how irrationally much I love weekends?

Tomorrow I have to go to some lab picnic thing with Mark in some state park. I'm less than thrilled. For some reason I really don't want to go. Mostly I don't mind that kind of stuff, but I'm in such a big "I want to be alone" phase, I would so much rather he just go and I have several hours at home by myself. Not going to happen, though, as it would cause some pretty chilly weather in this household if I told him I won't go.

Last night we went to see Lost in Translation with Susan and Tony. I think I liked it more than anyone else in the group did. There were certain things about it that irritated the fuck out of me (like the girl always being in her underwear and the preponderance of karioke), but the general tone of it really impressed me. I related to it, to the loneliness and the confusion, and that always sells me on a film.

Hanging out with Susan and Tony so much is so great. I got all worried on the drive back home last night that we are availing ourselves of their company too much and they are getting sick of us and are just too polite to say anything. I really hope that's not the case. I honestly think my wanting to hang out with them so much has very little to do with not having any other friends here--I didn't really have any friends left in Portland by the time we left, and I was pretty content to just hang out by myself and with Mark. I just really LIKE doing things with Susan and Tony. I really hope they feel the same way about us as we do about them, since they aren't in our situation and presumably could be choosing to do other things with their other friends.

Inferiority complex much? Sheesh.

One thing Mark and I were talking about last night that is really peripheral to why we like Susan and Tony so much but is a good side benefit is the age difference. They are 10 years older than we are, but it feels totally normal to hang out with them. Weird as it sounds, they make me feel SO much better about aging. Looking at them I feel like it's totally possible to get older and more mature and consider stuff like buying a house, getting married, having a baby, etc. and still not lose yourself the way you always have been. That is such a great thing.

I'm rambling on and on and I've got to go take a shower and get my shit done if I want to be back in time for kickoff. Plus Chance is making a very strange noise...

Sleepy-deepy. Tony and Susan came over tonight, we all ate pizza and watched Baz's Romeo and Juliet. Susan hadn't seen it before. It was a good time. Susan and Tony left us some other movies to watch. They did that last time they came over as well. Plus we have three more from Netflix. We are awash in movies. I really really wish I could find some time to watch some of them.

I need to consult my list, but I feel like I accomplished a good amount today. Tomorrow's agenda includes the football game, reading, doing laundry, reading, reading and reading. Trying to get something out for an essay for this scholarship app. and some writing for my PRP would be good, too.

And maybe some preliminary research on internships. I met with the internship coordinator today, though, and it sounds like I am in good shape. I need to rework my resume, though, so I will have it on hand if something comes up. Should probably try to get to that this weekend as well. We'll see.

I have an econ midterm in less than two weeks. I definitely need to learn some damn econ.

For now, though, I am quite tired. I think it's time for bed.

So I am sitting here looking out the window at Chance's attempts to chase squirrels. He is very dismayed that he can't climb trees and they can. It's hilarious.

We went to quite a good movie last night, Pieces of April. Teenditzactress Katie Holmes makes a surprising turn as the bad daugther in a falling apart family. That sounded very review-esque, didn't it? Well, I don't want to bother explaining the plot, but it was good, you should see it.

Susan cried. It was so cute.

It strangely made me miss my fam, though. Wonder if I will ever get old enough to stop missing my mom? I wish my mom were better at talking on the phone.

I have a big list of stuff to do today. Put chunks in my hair, lots of cleaning, the enivitable school work. Only four weeks left...

I can't think of a damn thing that is even slightly interesting to say.

Put simply, The Station Agent is the most moving film I have seen in quite some time. It's a beautiful story about friendship, told beautifully, without any trace of sappiness. It has both a subtle humor and a subtle darkness that leave you feeling both bittersweet and renewed. The filmmaking is simple but flawless and the score (by genius Steven Trask) underplays every seen beautifully.

The story is about Fin (Peter Dinklage), who moves to a rural New Jersey train station after his friend and boss suddenly dies and wills it to him. Fin is quiet and it is clear that he moves to the station in search of solitude. Fin is also a dwarf, which is both what the story is about and not what the story is about. Fin's dwarfism is not ignored in the film, but it's not put on display, either--it comes up, but sometimes it doesn't come up. I have no idea what it's like to be a dwarf, but I think this way of treating differences (or even what some people consider "handicaps") in general is completely effective. There were times I forgot all about Fin's being small, but most of the time it was in my mind, it simply wasn't relevant, or was one of many relevant factors.

Fin's quest for solitude is in vain, as he is befriended in spite of himself by Joe, a hot dog vendor with a dying father (Bobby Cannavale), and Olivia, an artist suffering a great loss of her own (Patricia Clarkson, who should be on everyone's "one to watch" list after her performances here and in Pieces of April. The story runs along in peaks and wanes of their friendship, with no real climax, but an ending feeling of comfort and of finally being comfortable not being alone.

Honestly, I think this movie is a must-see for anyone suffering a recent loss, and really for the rest of us as well. It left my feeling uplifted, but in a realistic way, not a saccharine-high way. The characters are all good people who live, who makes mistakes, and who fall apart and then come back together again.

I'd really like to see Peter Dinklage get an Oscar nod for this performance, and I think Patricia Clarkson deserves one as well. Doubt that will happen, because this just doesn't seem an Oscar kind of film, but one can hope. In the meantime, I am going to be looking for both of them, as well as Bobby Cannavale, in other roles. The acting in this film is outshone only by the amazing writing, a real boon for the first-time writer/director. I'm generally disappointed in movies these days, particularly ones that focus on teh story rather than the sound effects, and it's nice to finally seen an exception.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

I've been reading exisiting review's of Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" all morning, and I'm shocked to say that it seems almost everyone got it at least partially right. From Roger Ebert to Indiewire, I agree with at least part of all of the reviews. The truly amazing thing about the movie is highlighed by Ebert--Van Sant doesn't offer an answer. He doesn't offer an explanation. As the Indiewire review pointed out, the film depicts all of the every day battles and humiliations of high school in such a way that you aren't really left wondering why Columbine happened, you are left wondering why it doesn't happen more often.

Which is exactly what I've been saying about this school shootings for years. Why is everyone so fucking surprised? Don't you REMEMBER high school? Had the conflation of circumstances been a little bit different, I might have shot up my school as well, and I think, if you can be honest with yourself, you'll admit that you would have to.

Which is not to say that it has nothing to do with violent media, nothing to do with bad parenting, nothing to do with guns--those are all mechanisms, I think, that make these massacres possible. But whenever I think about it I come down to the problem really being high school. A prefabricated two-dimension wasteland in which it is so difficult to conceptualize anything or anyone as mattering enough to not deserve a good killing, especially in a culture where we don't understand what killing means.

My pontifications aside, "Elephant" is a stunning film. I can't compare it to other films, because it's nothing like other films. The only ones I'd compare it to would be "Kids" (it's way way better) or maybe "Welcome To The Dollhouse" and "Happiness" (it's way different, but accomplishes some of the same things, I think). The decision to use mostly untrained teen actors was a good one--they weren't ackward enough to be real teens, but they were a hell of a lot more ackward than the latest culled-from-Dawson's Creek bunch would have been. And they were more real than even the accepted teeny-bopper indie actors would have been. I felt like I knew some of them, like I'd gone to school with them myself, even if they did have slightly better grooming and wardrobe than the kids I remember. Strangely, I was especially pulled not towards the cool artistic kids, but towards the popular couple. Watching them, I was taken back to my own high school days almost immediately. And I didn't hate them enough to kill them, but I did hate them.

Another really striking thing about the film is the monotony, the flat, washed-out, bored way it's filmed. Every time someone pushes open the door to go outside the school (which seems to happen several times), I got the same feeling of what it's like to do that, how the entire color scheme of outside seems to be more vibrant than the one inside the school. And the sound editing was also amazing--the choice not to use contemporary music was a wise one, I think, and the way the whole film sounded sort of hollow was both haunting and subtle.

All in all, I was captured by it. It was the best thing to date I've seen about these killings. I'm sure Van Sant is drawing criticism for not taking a stand, not having a theory as to why this shit happens, but I think that's the true brilliance of the film. The whole situation is why it happens. Not just the kid having spitballs thrown at him in chemistry, but the hollow sound of the hall, the regimented look of the cafeteria food. This shit happens (in part) because high school steals your soul and without it you have no reason not to kill people. And that's a pretty dangerous statement.

This movie was surprisingly better than I expected it to be. It's a big-budget Hollywood epic, there is no doubt about that, but the acting and dialogue aren't as bad as they could be (note that I am *not* saying they are good, just that they aren't as bad as they could be) and the special effects are great. When they sail through bad weather, you get sick to your stomach. Plus there is just something inherently cool about big old boats.

It also manages to meet most of my criteria for a decent period film. The cast never really looks clean, and they wear the same clothes over and over. They also keep fake accents to a minimum and don't try to overdo the "period speak" (althought they do a fairly irritating job of calling each other "Mr. Lastname" instead of by first name, which I don't quite buy). The medicine is grisly (if fairly unbelievable). The ships quarters seem larger than I would expect, but I guess you have to sacrifice some accuracy in the name of cinema.

I have never pretended to like Russell Crowe. I make no bones about it, I think he's a pompous ass and I don't think he has any acting chops whatsoever. That being said, he didn't irritate me half as much in this film as he did in Gladiator (and yes, I think Gladiator is one of the worst movies every made). And Joaquin Phoenix isn't in this either, so that helps. Billy Boyd, the guy who plays Merry in LOTR, has a smallish part, though, and he's awesome. I also liked Paul Bettany as Crowe's doctor friend, which isn't surprising since I got such a kick out of him in The Knight's Tale (which is, nonetheless, a truly terrible film).

This film has no women in it. It's hard to tell the minor characters apart because everyone is grubby and dressed the same and talks the same and nobody has a first name. It's l-o-n-g. All in all, though, it's one of those things that is worth $8 to see on the big screen, if you get the chance. If you don't, don't bother renting it.

It is with reservations that I give In America a four-star rating. As many things as there were to love about the film, there were almost as many annoyances. So maybe it's best to start with things I loved?
1. The acting was great, both from the kids and the adults. I especially liked Emma Bolger as younger daughter Ariel, and was stunned by Samantha Morton as mom Sarah. Morton is best remembered, by me anyway, as the only redeemable part of Minority Report. Also, she's got remarkable hair.
2. The story itself was nice--it was a tear-jerker, to be sure (I cried more than once), but it wasn't so damn unrelentless in it's depression-induction that I left wanting to kill myself.
3. The cinematography was very very good.

Now, things I didn't like:
1. No attention to realism in details--for example, if the radio station when they are driving into New York says they play the "best of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s," then why do they go to the movies to watch E.T.? More irritatingly, how are they easily driving a gigantic station wagon through Time Square? And perhaps worst of all, how in the hell am I supposed to believe that Mateo has late-stage AIDS? Look at his arms for Christ's sake! I'm supposed to believe he dies a few months after that?
2. At the very beginning of the film, the family "sneaks" into America from Ireland, with no green cards, etc. It's never really explained WHY they do this. I mean, you can draw conclusions, based on the rest of the film, but that's a pretty drastic thing to do for no explicit reason.
3. Was the white rapper in the cab really necessary?

But there was one thing that put the film over the line from me and turned an OK movie into a really good movie. There's a scene pretty early on where the family is at a carnival and Johnny, the dad, risks all of their savings/rent money/whatever to try to win his little girl a stuffed E.T. The tension, the crowd, the sinking feeling in your stomach--the whole scene was just freaking amazing. I felt like I was there.

So, all in all, it's definitely worth watching, even if your suspension of disbelief will have to be set very very high for minor details that easily could have been corrected. And I think it's great that Samantha Morton got an Oscar nod for if--the kind of performance she has here doesn't get recognized often enough, and she has a smile that makes you glad to be alive.

Note: these aren't the folks I think are *going* to win, these are the folks who would win if I were in charge.

Best Actor: Bill Murray
Best Actress: Samantha Morton

Best Supporting Actor: Djimon Hounsou
Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Clarkson
Animated Feature: Finding Nemo
Art Direction: Girl with a Pearl Earring
Cinematography: Master and Commander
Costume Design: Girl with a Pearl Earring

Direction: Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation
Makeup: Pirates of the Caribbean
Score: Big Fish
Best Picture: Lost in Translation
Original Screenplay: Lost in Translation

Disclaimer #1: If I didn't include a category here, I haven't seen enough of the films in it to have an opinion

Disclaimer #2: Oscar-nominated films I haven't seen include: House of Sand and Fog, Cold Mountain, Mystic River, The Cooler, The Last Samuri, Something's Gotta Give, Monster, Brother Bear, The Triplets of Belleville, Finding Nemo, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Seabiscuit, City of God, A Mighty Wind, and American Splendor, as well as most of the foreign, short film, and documentary nominees.

I just saw a rare thing: a mediocre book turned into a damn good film. The last time I remember feeling this much better about a movie than a book it was Sofia Coppola's brilliant take on The Virgin Suicides. Obviously, that was a while ago.

I read Cold Mountain probably four or five years ago, and it pretty much left my mind as soon as I put it down. I didn't think it was good or bad--I just didn't think about it at all. Something in the previews made me want to see the film, though, and I am really glad I went with that instinct.

First off, the film is well acted. The major characters (Nicole Kidman as Ada and Jude Law as Inman) are pretty damn good, avoiding the overacting that would be so easy to slip into in their rather melodramatically written parts. The real gems, though, are the supporting cast. Small roles by the truly amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman and Giovanni Ribisi, as well as a surprisingly mature turn by Natalie Portman are fun to watch, but Renee Zellweger is the real star of the show as Ruby Thewes. Partially it is that Ruby is the best written part in both the book and the screenplay, but part of it something Zellweger manages to bring to the role herself. She delivers my favorite line, condeming war for what it is--men's bullshit-- "They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit its raining,'" and she does it fucking perfectly. Just spot-on. She's funny, she's tough, and the juxtaposition of Kidman's spoiled Ada and her self-sufficient Ruby says all I needed to know about the small-town Southern women left behind during the Civil War.

Scenes of the war itself are, as is typically the case, too long and too bloody. We've seen that all before, from Braveheart to Courage Under Fire and in every movie about every war in between. There's blood, there's mud, there's smoke, there's death. If you've seen it once, you've seen it for every war movie, and I for one have no need to see it again. That being said, the cinematography is better than average, and other than a long battle scene at the beginning, the movie doesn't waste too much time on these things.

What it does focus on, and what I found really remarkable about it that I didn't feel in quite the same way from the book, is women struggling to survive while their country is being demolished. Left without resources, without money, and under attack from all sides (the Union Army, Confederate deserters, the Home Guard), we are faced over and over again with women fighting. Not fighting to kill, and not fighting for the almightly Confederacy, but fighting to survive, fighting to keep something for themselves and their children. It's a part of war that they don't like to make movies about, at least not in anything other than the most trite ways.

Another thing I found really admirable about the film was that the romantic relationship between Kidman and Law was not at the end allowed to overshadow the enduring relationship between Kidman and Zelleweger. To me, they were the interested and sustaining part of the film, and at the end they were what remained. You don't see that very often, and I appreciate it.

Finally, I was a big fan of the film's score. The theme song, "You Will Be My Ain True Love" (written by Sting and performed by the amazing Alison Krauss) is good stuff, but what really impressed me was the bluegrass-influenced music that sifted in and out of the scenes. The White Stripes' Jack White plays a Georgia musician in the film, and the songs he sang and arranged went a long way to help the viewer feel connected to what was going on in the South Carolina hills.

All in all, it was a damn good movie and I'd highly recommend it, particularly if you don't want to bother with the book. I definitely think the movie is a better investment of both time and money.

Two words: don't. bother. OK, so technically a word and a contraction, but you get my drift.

Now don't get me wrong--I didn't expect it to be good. However, Susan Sarandon has surprised me before by turning what I thought would be stupid roles into something worth watching (Stepmom comes to mind). And this film has Geoffrey Rush (Shine, Quills, Frida) in it, so I figured how bad could it be?

Boy was I wrong. Both Sarandon and Rush should be ashamed. The movie is a beginning-to-end formulaic piece of crap. The script is bad. The acting is bad. The premise is stupid. Even the costumes are ridiculous. And the film's warped sense of time is probably the most irritating part. It's set in the early 2000s. Goldie Hawn and Sarandon are supposed to be former best-friend rock groupies who haven't seen each other for 20 years. Early 2000s minus 20 years lands you in the early 1980s. So WHY are they talking about groupy-ing for bands in the late 60s and early 70s? Do the fucking math!

There is really no point in my going on and on about why this film sucked. Consider the premise. Consider Goldie Hawn. I got what I deserved for attempting to watch it in the first place.

Do y'all remember the part in The Goonies where Chunk gets captured by the Fratellis and recounts everything bad he's ever done in his whole life?

In third grade, I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade, I stole my uncle Max's toupee and I glued it on my face when I was Moses in my Hebrew School play. In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog... When my mom sent me to the summer camp for fat kids and then they served lunch I got nuts and I pigged out and they kicked me out... But the worst thing I ever done - I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, t-t-then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa - and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.

Remember?

Well that was me last night. When I was trying to sleep. From about 2am until morning. Going over and over every wretched thing I've ever done. And there have been some pretty amazingly awful ones. It was an experience I'd prefer never to repeat.

Where the fuck did it come from, though?

Last night I had a migraine. This isn't exactly unusual, but this was the worst one I've had in some time, and it didn't go away and let me sleep until about 5 or 6am (I went to bed with it at about 12:30). It was fucking nasty. Anyway, I was thinking this morning about the dynamic of having a migraine. There is something so lonely about it--it's just you and your pain, and nobody can help you. In fact, interaction from the outside, no matter how well-meaning, inevitably makes things worse. It's very strange to think that I laid there, awake, for more than 5 hours. It seems like it was both less and more time than that. The pain is so all-consuming that you don't get bored and in some ways time goes fast, but every minute is so torturous that times goes very slowly at the same time.

In better news, this morning is T's birthday brunch. I'm feeling pretty wrung out from my night, but I'm excited anyway, and my excitement was compounded when I put on a pair of pants that haven't fit for about a year and they look great. The numbers on the scale aren't going down anymore (and are in fact going up in the past few days), but my clothes are telling a different story, which is nice.

Mark and I had a strange discussion last night about what would happen if I got pregnant. Given the length of time I've been on the pill and the clocklike accuracy with which I take it, I don't think either one of us is particularly worried this will happen, but it's always a good discussion to revisit every now and again, just in case. When we've had it before, we've always agreed that, tough as it would be, aborting would be the only answer. Now, however, we're not so sure. We know that unideal as it would be, we could have a baby now. Financially it would be tough, it would mean a lot of sacrifice, etc., but it would be possible. What a very strange transition that is. I still don't want to have a baby now, or any time in the near future, but it's odd to think that I could, and it wouldn't even be all that strange. I wouldn't really be a young mom anymore. It wouldn't really be all that "irresponsible" of us to decide to have a kid. Very fucking strange.

We finally saw Finding Nemo last night. To be honest, I was underimpressed. It was cute, and the animation was very cool, but I was expecting something transendental with all of the good stuff I'd heard about it, so I ended up a bit disappointed. Susan and Tony and I also saw The Fog of War on Friday night, and I should probably review that here, since I definitely think it was worth watching, but do have some problems with it. I just don't seem to have the energy to write an actual review, though.

(From Limpet.)

1. John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig
2. John Turturro as Barton Fink
3. Alison Janney as C.J. in The West Wing
4. Lucy Liu's character in Kill Bill, Vol. 1
5. Any of the characters Tony Bordain bases on himself (that gets me around the "is Tony Bordain a fictional character?" problem)
6. Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands (very, very carefully!)
7. Angelina Jolie as Laura Croft.
8. Angelina Jolie as Gigi.
9. Angelina Jolie as Lisa in Girl, Interrupted.
10. Mercutio.

So first I have to cop to my biases. I really like Jim Carrey. I liked him a thousand years ago in the oh-so-silly Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (though Courtney Cox tried desperately to ruin it), I loved him later in The Truman Show, and I really loved him as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. I have wisely avoided some of his probably less-impressive features (The Majestic?), and so I've been able to keep a pretty good ideal of him in mind.

Well, he fucking blew my mind in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Seriously. He's GREAT. He's understated, he's believable, he's likeable, and he's so...regular. Five minutes into the film I felt like his character, Joel, was someone I knew from college or something. It was wonderful. I suspected he had depth not only as a funny-ass comedian but as a real actor, and I was so so right.

Which brings me to the co-lead,Kate Winslet: My feelings about her have been mixed. She was in Titanic. That's hard to forgive. However, I liked her in Quills (and yes, I very much liked Quills--I've seen it three times--do I have to turn in my credentials now?), and I thought she made a great Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. She was also good in Iris, but she was frankly outclassed by Judi Dench (which is not saying much--I can think of few people who would not be outclasses by Judi Dench).

But in this film, Kate Winslet shines. She's wonderful. She's so alive, so radiant, and so fucked-up. She felt like someone I knew, too, only she was someone who I wasn't sure if I absolutely loved or couldn't stand. Her "impulsiveness", her multi-colored hair, her trying so hard...it was great.

So you take these two really wonderful characters, played by actors who really know their stuff, and you put them in this completely unlikely and bizarre plot about memory erasure. Sounds like the making of something horrible, right? But it works SO well. The film is dark in places--really dark, asking questions not only about love and relationships and all that jazz, but about the relationship we have with our own minds and how much agency we really have in making the same mistakes over and over again--and in places it's hysterical. And for something that makes you think so hard about your own life, your own relationships, your own memories, you come out of it feeling amazingly good about life. And I put that on the actors and the direction--the plot isn't necessarily hopeful.

Another really stunning thing about this film was the visual effects. The low-tech spotlighting and the slow erasure of details in memory scenes was not only really cool to watch, but also really gave you a sense of being in a memory. The camera work was a little bit dizzying, though--I wouldn't suggest going on an upset stomach.

Downsides? Supporting performances, definitely. Kirsten Dunst is just bad. Her character is annoying and seems out of place, and her acting goes from mediocre to really bad. I wasn't terribly impressed with Elijah Wood, either, but honestly that could just be because I am so goddamn sick of seeing him everywhere. Tom Wilkinson, however, is great as the doctor in charge of the memory erasing procedures. He's just mad scientist enough, without going over the top. I really enjoyed his part in the film.

One other thing I have to complain about is the small role played by Jane Adams. I can't stand Jane Adams. And to be completely honest with you, it's because she bothered me so much in The Anniversary Party and I just can't get over it. That and she's way way too thin and I always get distracted from scenes she's in by marvelling at how thin she is.

All in all, it's a five-star movie and I'd highly recommend it. I know I'll be thinking about it for awhile.

It has come to my attention that my blogging lately sucks. It sucks a lot. I only post memes or short, stupid rambles about my personal mental state. I can't remember the last time I wrote something interesting.

Truth be told, I am suffering from blog impotence, triggered by my inadequacy complex. Over there on the left you will see a list of blogs that are nearly all better than mine. Some of them are miles and miles better than mine. The more I read them, the more I wonder why anyone would bother to read this, the less interesting stuff I can think of to write.

So yeah. That's the big reason for my prolonged (well, prolonged for me, anyway) silence.

In an effort to update--I read Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its Discontents this weekend. It's worth reading. Yesterday, when I was home feverish and throwing up, I watched The Life of David Gale. It is worth watching, and it gave me an inexplicable crush on Kevin Spacey. One of my senior year prospies at Reed had a producer daddy and was a family friend of Spacey's, or so she claimed (and I vaguely remember checking out her story and having it stack up--her dad worked on Swimming with Sharks, I think). Anyway, she told me Kevin Spacey is definitely gay. Makes me sad that he's not out. But he was hot in David Gale anyway, in a philosophy professor kind of way.

What else...? Saw Kill Bill Vol. 2 over the weekend. Actually, S. and T. and I went with some of their friends, to a double-feature of the first and second volumes. It was a good time. I love the Alamo Drafthouse.

Do you ever think that maybe I put in lots of links in a effort to hide my lack of content? I do.

Or perfect punk rock resumes
Or anorexic magazines
It smells like girl, it smells like girl

Anybody recognize the title and following lines?

Believe it or not, this post is going to be related, albeit loosely, to the title.

Specifically, I am irritated because Cameron Diaz is not a geek.

And she's always supposed to be one! Her Charlie's Angels character, Natalie, is so geeko-charming I could just puke. The show younger pictures of her with headgear, show her wearing Superman underwear and knocking over a row of bathroom stalls, and have her do that ridiculous "I'm-so-in-love-with-my-own-ass" dance at least ten times.

But she's just not a fucking geek! She's blonde, beautiful, thin, rich, famous, and KNOWS IT. They can put fake spooge in her hair to make it stand up all they want, and she's still fucking Cameron Diaz.

And she's an insult to real geeks everywhere. As if we don't have it hard enough without being supposed to live up to Cameron Fucking Diaz's standard of geekiness.

See, she's not making geekdom cool. She's making fun of geekdom and making that cool. And I resent it. If you are Barbie, just be Barbie. You can't be geek-chic without actually being a fucking geek.

Now that I have that strange rant out of my system...

I am often critical of present day films, music, and especially literature. It is not often that I will experience two pieces of art in one weekend that take my breathe away. This weekend, I did. The first was The Time Traveler's Wife, which is quite simply the best book I've read in at least a couple of years, the second was Hero, a Chinese film I went to last night to placate Mark and ended up enraptured with. I feel blessed by both of these experiences.

Hero

I mostly watch movies for storyline, acting, dialogue. I rarely pay attention to scores, I'm not much for cinematography, etc. I guess I'm just more a verbal than a visual person. But this movies strengths are visual, and they are strong enough that even an imbecile like me can't miss them.

The story is simple--a warrior, played by Jet Li of all people, stands before the king explaining how he has come to defeat the king's three most deadly assassins. A series of flashbacks ensue, from different perspectives. The same story is told three times, or at least parts of it are told three times, and each section has a different color (the first is red, the second green, the third white). The color is easily the most remarkable part of the film. It saturates the scenes, encases the viewer. Watching it is an almost hypnotic experience, in which you don't just register the color on the screen is red, but you feel red, taste red, smell red.

I am not a fan of martial arts movies. Even the much-ballyhooed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon didn't do all that much for me. Sure, it was cool when they flew around and stuff, but one scene started looking an awful lot like the next, I thought. That being said, the use of color, light, sound, film speed tricks, etc. in Hero's fight scenes turned them from martial arts cinema to art. I felt less that I was watching a movie and more than I was watching paintings move across a screen. Visually, the only movie I can even think to compare it to is Frida, and it made Frida look like it was shot in pastels.

So go see this movie. It doesn't matter if you don't like martial arts movies (I don't), it doesn't matter if you don't like subtitles. Just sit in your seat, listen to the awe-inspiring score, and drink it in. If you are anything like me, you will come out of the theater noticing the variation of the green grass and the green trees, the amazing blueness of the sky's blue, and the crispness of image all around you. Not only is it a beautiful film, it's a film that makes you realize the beauty in everything else. What more could you possibly ask for?

I am a bit of a Peter Pan afictionado. I have spent my whole life listening to stories about how, at age 2, I could recite the entire Disney Peter Pan 45 (yes, I had 45's, and a little blue and white striped record player on which to play them). When I was 4 and my dad and stepmom took me to Disneyland, my dad spent a very warm afternoon trying to chase down the little boy in tights they had playing Peter so I could get my picture taken with him.

As I've gotten older, I've kept my love of Peter Pan. In fact, the older I get, the more I understand the pull of Neverland and the magic inherent in the notion of never growing up. The sad truth is that I don't believe in fairies, and I could clap my hands to keep Tink alive, but it would be hollow. I miss the me that could clap in earnest.

Anyway, being a Peter Pan lover, I've seen most of the versions that have come up--the old Disney version, a couple of different versions on TV...I've even seen it on stage once. And, of course, Hook, which I've seen four or five times. I have not horribly disliked any of these versions, but I've not felt they really captured the essence of what I felt listening to that 45 as a kid, either.

Well I felt it tonight. We went to see Finding Neverland, and for a few minutes, in a dark theater full of people who were probably not nearly as moved as I was, I was a kid again, reciting that record. It was a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

Given my emotional attachment to the story, I probably can't review the film or any of its stars with anything approaching objectivity or accuracy. However, given the Oscar nominations, at least a few people seem to have agreed with me that Johnny Depp was magical in the film. I've been a Johnny Depp fan for years, and have never doubted his capacity for magic, even in roles that wouldn't have at all special otherwise. He was a fairy tale prince in Chocolat, and even his silly Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean had a bit of magic. The Johnny Depp I saw tonight, though, is pure old school. I haven't seen him this good since Edward Scissorhands (and that's been...gulp...15 years), and the little bit of his Benny & Joon role that was reprised here would have made the film well-worth seeing even if everything else about it had sucked.

Besides Depp's wonderful performance, Finding Neverland also benefits from Kate Winslet, who is fast becoming my favorite actress. She's not as remarkable here as she was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and honestly I'll be floored if she can ever pull off anything that good again), but she's damn good. It reminds me a little bit of some of her other performances as well, actually (no, NOT Titanic!). More than any of her other roles, I think it hearkened back to Iris, which was a great movie, and you should see it if you haven't.

The supporting case is top-notch as well. Dustin Hoffman is tolerable and doesn't get much screen time, and Julie Christie is awesome. I also really enjoyed Radha Mitchell as Barrie's wife, who I've only seen before in Pitch Black. She is also in Woody Allen's upcoming film, called Melinda and Melinda, if you are interested in checking her out (it would honestly take more than one good performance from an actress to get me to sit through a Woody Allen movie, especially one that also has Will Ferrell in it, but to each her own). The most impressive part of the supporting cast, though, is the kids. I like all of four of the actors who play the boys, but my personal favorite was Nick Roud, who plays George, the eldest.

Aside from great acting and a top-notch (though I suspect historically embellished--I am going to have to find something to read about Barrie's life to find out) story, the movie also benefits from great visuals. The semi-animated sequences are among the best parts, I think, and the fluid movement between "reality" (Barrie dancing with his dog in the park) and "fantasy" (Barrie dressed as a ringmaster, dancing with a bear in a circus ring surrounded by clowns) is really beautiful and gives a great visual for how Barrie's mind must have worked. Another thing I loved was the way the showed the stage Barrie's play was performed on, complete with low-tech special effects, but you were still able to see why the play would be convincing. I've seen other movies try to do this less successfully (Shakespeare in Love comes to mind), and it can be disastrous, but it seems to work here.

All in all, I'd highly recommend the movie. It's one of the best I've seen in quite some time. It begins to make up for director Marc Forster's previous work (Monster's Ball...), and I'm almost ready to forgive Johnny Depp for Secret Window. But not quite. We'll see how I feel after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...

I am a fan of the films about profound loneliness and existential angst. I think Lost in Translation crossed the line from good to brilliant, and I don't think that about all that many movies. If you aren't a fan of angst cinema, however, then probably you should just skip this whole review, 'cuz it's going to come off as a bit bullshitty.

That being disclaimed, Broken Flowers is a grade-A fabulous film. It deals with some of the same concepts (regret, longing, loneliness) as a lot of Bill Murray's more recent work (Lost in Translation, Rushmore), and the character he plays is uncomfortably similar to his characters in those films, but it's still worth watching. I think one reason that it is worth watching Murray play essentially the same character is the (some might say overdone) focus on travel in Broken Flowers the film. While Rushmore dealt with a hometown hero, and Lost in Translation dealt with an anonimity and discomfort of a completely foreign culture, Broken Flowers deals with the loneliness of travel, which is a different monster and enough of a change to keep you interested, even if you have seen Rushmore and Lost in Translation several times each.

Another thing that kicks this movie up several notches are the stellar performances by the women in it. First off, how great is it to see any film with several (hawt!) actresses over 40 in it? Sad that I have to be so excited about the novelty of that, but there it is. Secondly, these women are GREAT. My favorite is Tilda Swenson's (remember her for being the only palatable part of Constantine?) character, Penny. What I particularly liked about Penny was that she was the only character who acknowledged the invasiveness and amazing sense of entitlement in showing up at someone's house when you haven't seen her in 20 years, and she acknowledged it by getting good and pissed off. She's only in one short scene, but it's a great scene. (Sidenote: If her lughead husband hadn't gone on to beat Bill Murray up, it would have been a better scene, but it was good to see a cameo by Chris Bauer, who I really miss from The Wire.)

The other female performances are nearly as good as Swenson's. Sharon Stone is lovely (and surprisingly funny) as single-mom-and-closet-organizer Laura, and Jessica Lange is fabulous, as always, as animal communicator Carmen. The other real gem, though, is frustrated Stepford wife/real estate agent Dora, played by Frances Conroy. Her performance was almost enough to make me wish I'd watched Six Feet Under (but not quite).

The smaller female roles are filled by younger women, and they are not as perfectly cast, but are still mostly good. While I wasn't particularly impressed with Chloe Sevigny's turn as Carmen's assistant, or with Julie Delphy's portrayal of Sherry, the girlfriend who leaves Don at the beginning of the film, I quite liked Alexis Dziena as Laura's oversexed teenage daughter, Lolita (yeah), and will watch for her in other things.

Another thing that sets this film apart is the fact that it is really funny. In retrospect, I can't tell you what, specifically, about it is funny, but the theater I saw it in cracked up several times, and I cracked right up with them. I think it's one of those films that is funny without smashing you over the head with it, which is appreciated, especially in the summer.

Giving a plot synopsis would bore me, and probably you as well, but if you want to read one, Roger Ebert's (jerk) is here.

Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

Today is the opening day of Walk the Line, a movie (and, apparently, the rest of the country) am very much looking forward to seeing. I doubt I'll make it to the theater tonight (I had a very hard night last night and I'm exhausted), but I'm hoping to go tomorrow or Sunday. On this auspicious occasion, I thought I'd share with you some of my feelings about Johnny Cash.

I love Johnny Cash. I admire Johnny Cash. I mourned when Johnny Cash died. Johnny Cash has long been among the only music my boyfriend and I can agree on (and that's been true for several boyfriends in a row now). Johnny Cash is the epitome of cool. Johnny Cash's "Hurt" video made me less afraid to age. But it actually goes well beyond that, well beyond Cash's second incarnation as a post-country alt-hipster. It goes back home.

It goes back to my mom, and my stepdad, and the music I grew up with. The core of this music, as I remember it, consisted of what I now know is the very best of classic country music: my mom's personal favorite, and mine as well, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and, of course, Johnny Cash (with a healthy bit of Steve Goodman, John Prine, and Guy Clark thrown in, because when it really comes down to it, mom is more folk than she is country). We played these men on 8-tracks in the big, dusty, black late-70s Chevrolet my mom drove before she moved into the minivan class. I knew the words to songs like "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and "Folsom Prison Blues" well before I could have possibly grasped their subject matter, and I vividly remember bouncing into town on worn out shocks, singing "Mama Tried" along with the scratchy car radio. Neither I nor my mother has the best voice, but what we lack in tune we make up for in volume. And in love.

I remember flipping through my mom's albums, and the ones I wanted to play again and again as a kid. The Outlaws. Waylon & Willie. Live at Folsom Prison. Best of Kristofferson. I loved Cash's booming voice and Willie's smooth one, and it took me many more years to realize that Kris Kristofferson really doesn't have much of a voice at all. I really believed Waylon was a cowboy, and I was more impressed than scandalized when somebody told me The Hag had spent time in the penitentiary. Looking back on it now, I doubt my parents intended me to see these men as heroes, but I certainly did.

And then I grew up a little bit, and figured out how massively uncool country music was, and switched allegiances. And as I developed my own tastes, I found new heroes. The first bunch were more or less throw-aways (there isn't much good you can say for Axl Rose), but I still stand by my love for Kurt Cobain and Ani DiFranco, and still listen to both of their albums. In secret, though, in the car by myself, I never stopped tuning the radio to stations playing country music. Country had mostly turned to pop by then, so mostly it was the same crap as on the other stations, just with a cowboy hat, but occasionally one of those old songs would come on, and I'd sing along just like I had with my mom. But never in front of anybody.

In college I first heard Johnny Cash in the pool hall, and it slowly dawned on me that he'd been dubbed cool. But this was none of the cowboy I'd learned to love as a child, this was the sneering, coked up Cash I'd somehow not seen. No wonder he was cool--he looked like country Iggy Pop. Still, the songs were the same, and it was good to be able to listen to them in public again.

Finally, about the time Cash started putting out records with Rick Rubin, I'd come to my own enough that it no longer mattered what the verdict on Johnny Cash's coolness was--I was getting back into the music I'd loved all along, once again hearing the steel guitar and singing along to songs I'd now known the lyrics to for nearly 20 years. So of course I bought the records, and I was blown away by what I'd been missing. Now an old man, there was a beauty and grace and vulnerability in Cash's voice that he'd never had before. The songs he chose came from all over the map, and everything sounded so beautiful, so brilliant, and so brittle, so fragile.

Which, by that point, he was. While I'd been preoccupied with being a teenager and then a young adult, Johnny Cash had gotten old. Waylon Jennings had died. Kris Kristofferson had turned from the blue-eyed sex symbol of some of my earliest illicit thoughts to a gray-haired B actor. The first time I saw the "Hurt" video, I bawled my eyes out, a little bit for my own early-20s newfound fear of aging, but mostly for the old man in the video, a man who sounded a little bit like the outlaw I remembered, but mostly just looked like an old man.

One day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty
He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin
Well to me he was a hero of this country
So why's he all dressed up like them old men?

Really, though, I realized upon further viewings, and upon listening to the song over and over again, there was nothing to cry about. This man had lived an amazing life, had been a part of an amazing love, and had carried on, almost til his dying day, with making his music. And making it well. Unlike so many musicians who wash up, who forget, after years of fame, why they do what they do, Johnny Cash continued until his last recording to make real music, the kind real people listen to, and to make it as well as anybody ever has or likely ever will.

Having done a good bit of studying American history, there aren't that many American legends left for me to believe in. I know JFK was a womanizer and a liar, and that no matter how sympathetic his portrayal by Kevin Costner, Wyatt Earp mostly just liked to kill people. I have a hard time sympathizing with Custer's last stand or thinking Lewis & Clark were heroes. Marilyn Monroe and James Dean weren't very smart; Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were alcoholics, and the more of those I know, the less like legends they look. Johnny Cash, however, stands out in my mind as an American icon. This isn't because I'm not aware of the dark periods in Cash's life--I am--but because he never, to my knowledge, pretended to be anything but a man. A flawed, American man. And there aren't enough of those left.

It may just be chance that Johnny Cash--and the whole passle of American poet-cowboy-outlaw-singers he represents--speaks to me like he does. It may have something to do with growing up in the West, where such things are glorified, or with my own somewhat rebellious spirit. But it's good for us all, I think, to have something or someone speak to us once in a while. It's good to be able to believe in something or someone, no matter how silly. And it's good to have these things or people as links to the parts of our own lives that we are removed from. I still listen to old country songs, and I hear my mother's voice on them more often than not. When I look at pictures of Johnny Cash, I see our shared Native American ancestry in the set, square jaw that looks slightly like my grandmother's. And I don't just miss him, I miss her. I miss six year-old me, singing along to songs I couldn't have understood. And, maybe just for a minute, I'm her again. A piece of American history.

Let me start by saying this is a story to which I have no attachment. I've never read Pride & Prejudice, never read anything else by Jane Austen, and never seen another version of the film. I watched this without the benefit (or handicap, depending on how you see it) of comparison to the novel or to the much-loved A&E version. I didn't compare Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFayden to Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. So you'll get none of that here. There's lots of it elsewhere, so if that's what you are looking for, it won't be hard to find.

I didn't love this film, but I didn't hate it. This whole genre bugs the shit out of me, which is why I've never bothered with Austen's books (confession: I've never read most of the Bronte sisters' work, either, with the exception of the incredible Jane Eyre). And the things that always bug me bugged me in this film. Characters are less people and more caricatures, the commentary on social class lacks sublety, and the language makes me itch. However, there was some unexpected redemption here. Chiefly, that redemption came in the form of Keira Knightley (Bend it Like Beckham, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl). The wit and spirit and fantastic smile Knightley shows in Pride & Prejudice far outstripped what I had expected, and turned her Lizzie Bennett into a character about whom I actually gave a damn. Without that, I'm not sure I could have stood the film.

The supporting acting was well done as well. Donald Sutherland was endearing as Lizzie's constantly bemused father, and Judi Dench was nothing short of fantastic as the horrific Lady Catherine. I was less impressed with Blenda Blethyn as Mrs. Bennett, thinking she was overacting, but I have been told that was far less the actress and far more the role. I also really liked the mostly-unknown Simon Woods as Mr. Bingley, and enjoyed Kelly Reilly (The Libertine, Mrs. Henderson Presents) as the nasty Caroline Bingley.

I am still unsure as to how I feel about Matthew MacFayden's Darcy. While MacFayden certainly has the seriousness and brooding down, he didn't totally convince me in the scenes where he finally admits his feelings for Lizzie. Without Colin Firth as a comparison, I am not as critical of MacFayden as some other viewers have been, but I can definitely see how the role could have been played to a fuller extent.

The non-acting elements of the film (cinematography, costume design, etc.) were all satisfactory, although the music got to be a little much at points. Most of my major complaints have to do with story line, and there's nobody but Jane Austen to blame for that.

I had really mixed thoughts going into this movie. On one hand, the previews made it look fantastic, and it's based on an amazing short story. Also, the screenplay was done by the short story's author, the brilliant E. Annie Proulx, and western author extraordinaire Larry McMurtry. On the other hand, no matter how many good films he has lucked into and how brilliant everyone else says he is, I've never been a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, The Good Girl). And Heath Ledger has never been, to my mind, anything more than a putz (A Knight's Tale, The Brothers Grimm). And then there was Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) - great director, sure, but for an American western love story? I was really, really trepidatious about both the direction and the acting.

I was so, so wrong.

Ang Lee's direction is spot-on. Nothing is wasted, nothing is overdone. Jake Gyllenhaal is great. But the real gem, the thing that takes this from an incredible movie to a best ever movie, is Heath Ledger. Who knew he was hiding all this talent?

From my study of movies, it is damn difficult to play a decent cowboy. Almost inevitably you end up some dumbass Clint Eastwood movie cowboy bullshit, with barely any resemblance to the real thing. Even people who are actually from the American west can't do it. So how is it that an Australian pretty boy and an L.A. pretty boy played the best cowboys I've seen on screen in forever? They just got it right, especially Ledger. The quietness, the speech patterns, the posture. I watched this movie and it felt like home.

Another high point was the scenery. Though it was filmed largely in Canada, the film looked like the west to me, and it was beautifully shot, with no scenery overkill. Ang Lee and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Frida, 21 Grams) let the scenery play it's own role, another quiet character in the film, and it worked beautifully.

So far we've got excellent script, excellent acting, excellent direction, and excellent cinematography. What are we missing? Oh, music? Well, the soundtrack is to die for, including original music by Gustavo Santaolalla (21 Grams, The Motorcycle Diaries) and a fantastic country cross-section (the use of Willie Nelson's "He Was a Friend of Mine" during the closing credits just about did me in). I'll likely buy the soundtrack.

Even the costumes (done by Marit Allen, who also worked on Dead Man and Eyes Wide Shut) are perfect. Like the actors faces and pickup trucks, the trace the path from early 1960s cowboys to early 1980s cowboys without you realizing they're doing it. It's a beautiful thing.

Brokeback Mountain is, quite honestly, the best movie I've seen in several years. In the past few months I've seen a number of films that were quite good (Walk the Line, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck.), but Brokeback Mountain blows them all away. I hope it sweeps the awards ceremonies and I hope it's the beginning of more real roles for Heath Ledger. Even if he never makes another film, though, he should be proud of what he did in this one.

Remember how I said I don't much like short stories? Well, I don't generally much like vignette-style films, either. In general, a short piece of a story isn't enough to get me involved in the characters and caring about what happens to them. But this film is the exception that proves the rule.

Written and directed by a man, Rodrigo Garcia (most notable for TV direction and cinematography, including Gia and several episodes of Six Feet Under and Carnivale), Nine Lives is nine short (10-15 minute) films, each done in a continuous shot. Each one centers around some element in the life of one women. There are some intersecting characters between the films, but their intersections are more incidental than important, and each piece stands on its own.

1. The first of the stories is about an inmate, Sandra, played by Elpidia Carrillo (Bread and Roses, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her). She seems calm and collected until she is unable to talk to her visiting daughter due to a faulty phone; then she loses it. Later, in another vignette, we see her get arrested, but we never know what crime she has committed.

2. The second story is the one that seems to be getting the most press. In it, Robin Wright Penn's (White Oleander, Forrest Gump) Diana runs into an ex-lover, Damian (played by Jason Isaacs , who plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies but looks very different here), in a supermarket. Both of them are married, Diana is pregnant, and yet the tension between them is palpable and it is easy to see how they could fall back into their old relationship. The scene is incredibly well-played and Wright Penn shows off her acting chops with an understated performance that is hard to watch and easy to identify with.

3. The third tale is the most heart-wrenching. It is a scene between a woman, Holly (brilliantly portrayed by Lisa Gay Hamilton from The Practice) and her sister (a nice supporting turn by the very lovely Sydney Tamiaa Poitier--yep, daughter of that Sydney Poitier). Holly has returned to the house where she grew up, ostensibly to "make amends" with her abusive father, but rather than showing their conversation, the focus is on the discussion between Holly and her sister before her father's arrival. It's sparsely and painfully done, leaving detail to the viewer's imagination, and is carried perfectly by both good dialogue and the strength of Hamilton's acting.

4. The fourth vignette indirectly refers the viewer back to Diana's story, as it co-stars Damian, from the grocery store, and his wife, Lisa, played by Molly Parker (Iron Jawed Angels, Waking the Dead). They are in a new apartment, and are visited by Sonia, played by Holly Hunter (Thirteen, The Incredibles, O Brother Where Art Thou?) and her boyfriend, Martin (Stephen Dillane, seen before in The Hours and The Gathering). The focus of the story is the fucked-up relationship between Sonia and Martin. This was probably the least compelling of the vignettes for me, even though Holly Hunter was as fantastic as always.

5. Next, in the story that was the most moving of the film for me, we meet Samantha, played by Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls, Veronica Mars). The power of this scene doesn't come from Seyfried, however, but from the brilliant Ian McShane (Deadwood, Sexy Beast), who plays her disabled father. The scene follows Samantha as she is pulled back and forth between her father, with whom she seems to have a good relationship, though he is obviously quite ill with what seems to be a degenerative disease of some sort, and her mother (played by Sissy Spacek), who comes off as cold and tired. We see how dedicated young Samantha is to her father, and how resentful the situation makes her mother, and how terrible the whole situation is. The best part, though, is the dark comedy in the banter between Samantha and her dad, and I attribute that both to good writing and to McShane's immense talent.

6. We next see Lorna, played by Amy Brennemann (Judging Amy, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her), on her way to a funeral with her parents. As it turns out, the funeral is for the wife of Lorna's ex-husband, Andrew (William Fichtner, best known for his war movies, and recently seen in The Longest Yard). When Lorna and Andrew have sex at the funeral home, during the viewing of the body, it is unclear whether their affair has been ongoing or whether it has been sparked by the events underway, but the viewer is once again asked to think about relationships and whether or not they are ever really over.

7. The seventh vignette takes the viewer back to Samantha's story, but this time it centers around Sissy Spacek's (If These Walls Could Talk, In the Bedroom) character, Samantha's mother, Ruth. The scene takes place in a hotel, where Ruth seems to be about to embark on an affair with her daughter's school counselor, played by the unusually goofy Aidan Quinn (Legends of the Fall, Practical Magic). Though Ruth's behavior in this scene is less traditionally sympathetic than it was in her prior scene, where she was at home taking care of her family, I still felt more towards her character here, where you could see how very tired and starved for fun she is. The scene twists when Ruth witnesses another woman being arrested (Sandra from the first vignette), and it ends with her leaving the hotel without having consummated the affair.

8. The second-to-last scene is also quite moving. It is fairly straightforward, showing a conversation between Camille (played by Kathy Baker from Boston Public) and her husband, Richard (portrayed by a very well-cast Joe Mantegna from Joan of Arcadia). Camille is lying in a hospital bed, waiting to go into a masectomy. Scared, angry, and belligerent, Kathy Baker knocks the role of Camille out of the park, and the story leaves you both hopeful for how things will turn out for Camille and furious at hospital system that is treating her like a piece of meat when she's in this frightening position. Characters from other scenes show up here as well, with Holly as Camille's nurse and Lorna's mother as her anesthesiologist.

9. There has been some criticism of the film's final scene, but it was one of my favorites. It shows a visit to the cemetery by Maggie (the always incredible Glenn Close, whom I most recently enjoyed in last season's The Shield) and her daughter, Maria, played by Dakota Fanning (Man on Fire, War of the Worlds). While you watch the scene, it is unclear who the two are visiting, and the film's surprising final shot shows this vignette, too, to be about a woman-specific type of grief.

Each one of the nine scenes is beautifully shot, nearly perfectly acted, and tightly written and directed. Even the stories I cared less about (specifically Lorna) are extremely well-done, and those I cared more about are heart-wrenchingly beautiful. The actresses are all top tier, and the movie is blessedly free of oversexualization (with the single exception of an obnoxious focus on Amanda Seyfried's breasts in Samantha's story). Instead, it focuses on telling simple stories of women's lives, with humor, sadness, wistfulness, longing, and a subtle intelligence that is very difficult to find in contemporary movies. This is a film I will think about and remember for a long time to come, and I highly recommend it. I will certainly be on the lookout for Garcia's next offering.