movie schmorgasborg

I am fully sated. I got to see four, yes FOUR new movies on the 17 hour flight back from NYC. On the little screen in front of me. All of them starring young beautiful blondes -- well okay except for Pride and Prejudice, which starred Kiera Knightley as Elizabeth Bonelady -- er, I mean Bennett. Lovely eyes, disturbing body.

Anyway, aside from the fragile bird bones poking through the tightly stretched skin of Hollywood's latest film version of a Jane Austen heroine, I thought the movie pretty much rocked and was tempted to just replay it once it ended. There's been a lot of crappy-poo coming from Austen lovers (of which I rank myself in the frontlines) quibbling over inconsistencies with the novel and the time period, but a two hour movie is not a BBC miniseries (sigh, heaven heaven) and I thought they slashed and burned quite well. Plus I enjoyed the way the filmmakers made the need for the daughters to marry, and to marry well, as bleak, obvious and unromantic as possible. It isn't just amusing that Elizabeth's scheming mother constantly plots and manuevers with the sole aim of marrying off her daughters -- it becomes both pathetic and urgent at the same time. In this version, Mr. Bennett's snide, sarcastic quips at his wife are tempered by a real anxiety on his part that when and if he does die his daughters are going to be cast off into the street, and he when he does finally thwart one of his wife's plans (to marry Elizabeth off to her boring cousin who is slated to inherit Mr. Bennett's estate) it is portrayed as a serious instead of a comic moment, which is the way it is portrayed in both the novel's deadpan rendering and the BBC's faithful version. In the film version, Mrs. Bennett is less absurd than she is realistic. And that's a scary thought.

Okay so I'm obsessed. I heart Jane Austen, even though the older I get the more depressed I am by what she wrote. It seems so much less romantic when you read it as an adult, especially since it wasn't really meant to be romantic in the first place. Oh yeah, and Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennett was really, really good. And I like the way that what's-his-name played Mr. Darcy as befuddled instead of haughty. It made more sense.

So however did I follow up such cinematic gold? With a blonde triple header: "Just Like Heaven" starring Reese Witherspoon and three versions of said Cure song in case we didn't get that it was named after a Cure song; some movie starring Heather Graham as a freelance journalist who lives abroad, still sleeps on her futon from college and won't commit to reality (a really stupid idea for a movie, hmf); and "The Island," with Scarlett Johanssen as a puffy-lipped, wide-eyed clone (a true departure for her). "Just Like Heaven" started off corny, had the chance to be tragic and true and but opted to end on corny as well. The Heather Graham one ended in chaos. "The Island" was satisfying from beginning to end considering what it was.

Alright, Dora, Jon and Cousin David got into town tonight so I should go to bed. Tomorrow it's the Weekend Market and then a quick stop off at the biggest anti-government rally ever staged in the history of Thailand. Just want to see if the tanks will be rolling in or not.

An important postscript to my previous musings on Brokeback, thanks to a helpful email sent to me by my brother:

"You forgot, in your list of Ang Lee movies, to include "The Hulk". I'm sure there's some sort of stupid Brokeback/Hulk joke to be made there ("Don't make me gay. You wouldn't like me when I'm gay". Or perhaps "Why can't I squash you?")."

Thanks JP!

Woo hoo! Finally went and saw Brokeback Mountain, THE gay pseudo-cowboy movie of the year. And what better place and time to see it than a Monday afternoon in the Crystal River Mall with my mother and 20 old people. Uh yeah, for some reason I always imagined snuggling down in the Chelsea Clearview surrounded by hip gayfer boys but no ... luckily I had this charming old lady behind me to narrate the entire way through in case I missed key plot points. Examples:
"Those are sheep."
"That's a sheepdog."
"He's a sheepherder."
"It snowed."
"He's cold."
I note that I am in no way exaggerating. I wondered if she would narrate EVERYTHING for us and waited with baited breath wondering if she would mutter "He's boning him." But I suppose she was finally struck dumb. Or maybe she was still contemplating the miraculous sheep, I don't know. When that two-timin' Jake Gyllenhaal went off with his Mexican money boy she did at last say something somewhat interpretive:
"He's going to get AIDS."
Which, of course, he wouldn't since it was the 1970s.
The movie itself was pretty depressing and I spent the last few maudlin minutes contemplating the strange and wide range of films put out by this Taiwanese director. I mean, "The Ice Storm" to "Sense and Sensibility" to this?! Wow. The soundtrack rocks and I will be buying it -- or I should say I will be asking for it for Christmas next year because I'm too cheap, even for wailing cowboy tunes, which would make a nice addition to my life in Thailand. A fitting additoin I would add since they are definitely into wailing cowboy tunes themselves, both American and homegrown (see Isaan music).