Photographer Lauren Greenfield's debut documentary THIN is the most riveting film the cinetrix has seen all year. It premieres tonight on HBO.
Why should you watch it? Well, one in seven women under 25 have had an eating disorder. And I'd bet every one of you knows more than seven women.
Let me know what you think.
A tiny item in today's Variety email made the cinetrix's cynical heart sing:
MAGNOLIA GETS 'OUT'
Plans to share debt docu with Netflix Unusual release for 'Maxed'
Magnolia is close to acquiring rights to "Maxed Out," the critically acclaimed docu about Americans and the debt industry, directed by James Scurlock.
The cinetrix was fortunate enough to see Maxed Out at Full Frame this past April, and she'll feel a lot more hopeful once every man, woman, and child gets a gander at its harrowing tales of Americans' love affair with consumer debt. It made me cry, people. Sling it on your queues, watch and learn, and cut those fucking cards.
Last week, for reasons too banal to explain, the cinetrix was unable to have a screening for her film class. Left facing a midweek discussion without a film to anchor it, I decided to expose the kiddies to a little star theory. Those of you already familiar with Richard Dyer's groundbreaking work on the subject probably also don't need to be told that it's less than a gripping read for students who have little to no firsthand knowledge of the classic Hollywood stars Dyer makes his subjects.
So I added a little more recent reading: Murray Pomerance on Johnny Depp and Sarah Vowell, from those halcyon days of 2000, on the ineluctable aloneness of Tom Cruise. But basically the discussion devolved into a focus on not just movie stars but the familiar faces gracing celebrity tabloids at the local supermarket. Are stars "just like us" and should they be? Why does it matter?
I'll be honest: I had a blast. Imagine standing in front of a classroom and writing Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise on the board, then throwing scare quotes around each of their names. After all, I asked, what do we know about "Johnny Depp" or Johnny Depp? Everything was fair game, so Tim Burton's name soon nestled next to "Wino Forever tattoo," "lives in France," and so on. Is Depp a character actor? Why do we know the names of Tom Cruise's children?
It used to be that after one's tween years, when august publications like Bop or 16 delivered breathless precis about how you and whatever unthreating tv heartthrob du jour were clearly meant for each other because you both love pepperoni pizza, this sort of trivia mostly melted away. OK, there'd be the occasional high-profile, headline-grabbing affair, and the gents might feel a certain thrill because Miss September likes Adam Sandler movies, too, but that was pretty much it.
Now, though, for a certain tier of celebrities, that information is available everywhere. For example, we are all so sad about Reese and Ryan. They seemed different; what about those poor kids, etc. That said, it's tough to totally quash that little buzz of connection when you find out, say, Jonathan Lethem is screening Scarecrow at the IFC Center [which he did last Thursday]. Even though I'm not enough of a fan, personally, to have gone given the chance, I'm fascinated because the entire event is predicated on the idea that if you like his books, and he likes this movie, then maybe you'll like this movie. Or you love the movie and have been meaning to pick up his books for years. He'll be there. You'll be there. We're talking BFF by the end of the evening! Eeee!
Where am I going with this? Good question. Shared favorite movies can be almost a secret language. I guess I was just wondering whether you'd ever had the experience of learning that a "star" you admired--in whatever medium--loved a movie that you loved. Or, better still, that you hated. Is the bloom off the rose forever more, in the latter case, and did you feel that little frisson of "we would totally be best friends" in the former?
The cinetrix is still having a hard time grappling with the senseless nature of Adrienne Shelly's death. As mouthy Maria in Trust, Shelly seemed invincible, the first in a long line of tough, radiant Hartley beauties.
In 1997, the cinetrix was living in New York and was fortunate enough to see two of Shelly's directorial efforts. The first, her debut feature Sudden Manhattan, I saw at that theater on 11th . I found it a little meh at the time, perhaps because the already not-cute Woody Allen neurotic shtick becomes even less cute when it's a young woman floundering about. [What can I say? I was myself a floundering young woman. I suspect it may have hit too close to home. I'd love to see it again. I remember how beautiful and hidden she made certain streets in the Village feel.]
The other was a short Shelly shot for Lifetime, which screened as part of a slate of women-directed flicks at Lincoln Center. The channel had commissioned them for an on-air "film festival" for viewers who lived too far away from any real fests. [Imagine! The cinetrix snickered knowingly along with the rest of the urbane audience and now, well, I live in the hinterlands.] The only two things I remember about the program was that the head of Lifetime was a man, and that Shelly's short, Lois Lives a Little, was hilarious.
Lois [Alix Elias--Coach Steroid from Rock 'n' Roll High School] is a frowsy hausfrau on Longuyland, fed up with her marriage and prone to increasingly elaborate romantic fantasies about the boy who does yard work. In her Walter Mitty-meets-Harlequin-romance imaginary life, she swoons around in bodice-ripper togs, while in her drab real life, she packs and repacks her bags, dreaming of a tropical escape. Does she eventually rekindle the spark with her nebbishy husband? Does she confuse dream with reality and frighten the unsuspecting yard boy? The cinetrix can no longer remember, but she'd sure love to see it again.
I hope Shelly's family will someday find some peace. As for me, this exchange from Trust has been rabbiting around my brain ever since I first learned she was gone.
Matthew: I respect and admire you.
Maria: Is that love?
Matthew: No, that's respect and admiration.
I had all that and love for her work, in front of and behind the camera.
For those who wondered what would happen if Mike Judge's Office Space was a lot more like Cindy Sherman's Office Killer.... [Thanks, slobra.]
Mmmm, yeah.
You people know what to do. Don't make the cinetrix go all Jimmy Cagney Yankee Doodle Dandy on your asses.
Kisses.
Thwarted.
That's how the cinetrix feels. On the last day of her sojourn to the big city and having dispensed with her for-pay obligations, she'd planned on making this an afternoon of cinematic whimsy: Marie Antoinette at 1:30, followed by The Science of Sleep at 4:30. Please note the time stamp below.
I wafted into the lobby of the theatre, primed and ready for a little New Order-infused monarchy, only to be informed by the underpaid peons at concessions that the Austrian fashion plate would escape with her pretty neck intact today. The projector was broken.
The projector was broken? Homies, puh-leeze. This is what comes of relying on unskilled workers and the platter system. In fact, I'm pretty sure historians would cite this as evidence of an empire in decline.
So what should I do to pass the time between now and my date with Charlotte Gainsbourg? Short of learning how to fix a projector, that is?
Looking at my WWSD [What would Sofia do?] bracelet, I realize there's only one answer: shop for something bon chic, bon genre. Back soon.
Rockstar film theorist Slavoj Zizek sits on a toilet to discuss how a sequence in Coppola's The Conversation invokes the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. And then he talks about The Birds. Also, shit. It's like someone read the cinetrix's mind and made a television show just for her. Seriously, watch it just for Zizek's masturbatory hand gestures. Comedy genius.
[Thanks to J.M. for the tip.]
Lock up the flamethrowers.
The cinetrix just got word that a mere 15 years after she first headed off to study film in Chicago [and left somewhat ignominiously soon thereafter], she'll be rolling back into town to present a paper at the 2007 Society of Cinema and Media Studies conference this March.
Truth be told, I'm pretty geeked to lose my conference presenter virginity at the schmanciest confab in the field. Here's why: I first thought of the paper while enrolled in a program from which I did not earn a Ph.D. And Chicago is where I first failed to matriculate into a doctoral program. Now I know how Jackie Earle Haley must feel.
To observe el dia de los muertos, the 'Fesser and the cinetrix have this little ritual we like to call "thinking of the perfect Halloween costume one day late."
The cinetrix spent her Halloween afternoon watching Lawrence Kasdan's satisfying little neo noir Body Heat for the first time. So this year my candidates are Matty Walker [tight white dress, lots of hair, smoker's voice] and Ned Racine [sleazy early '80s moustache, dangling cigarette, epic pit and back sweat stains]. Incendiary devices and convertibles are optional, but encouraged.
Rosemary: still the cinetrix's most successful and cinematic Halloween costume.
Appropriately enough, perhaps, the cinetrix is so tired today she's inclined to pass on the holiday altogether. If pressed, I could swing a last-minute Little Edie, but my fear is that no one will be able to tell the difference between that and my usual mufti.
So, what's your best movie-inspired get-up? One of my students apparently kicked it old school as the original Veruca Salt. Top that--in the comments.
Nikita, hands down my favorite misanthrope in five-inch heels, is even more of a cinematic scaredy-cat than the cinetrix, if that's possible. So it is with great delight that I share with you a blurry reproduction of her genius flow chart, which explains how she decides which movies are safe for her to watch. [You can--and should--admire the diagramming diva's evil genius in its original splendor here.]
New Yorkers, ditch your other plans for tonight and hie thee to Lincoln Center for the Young Friends of Film screening of Werner Herzog's Nosferatu at 7:30 p.m.* It is one of the cinetrix's abiding regrets that she's never seen this lush, romantic film projected. The sequence when the plague sweeps through the city is simply breathtaking, and Klaus Kinski as the titular bloodsucker is beyond riveting. I mean, would you look at the guy? Makes fuckin' Oldman look like a piker.
Seriously, once you've seen this film, you understand why it was the Germans who named concepts like weltschmerz.
Plus, you could do worse than crib from Klaus Kinski if you still need a Halloween costume....
*A special prize for anyone who dares make it an ornate double-bill evening by taking in Miss Marie Antoinette, too. Look, there's a 10:55 show at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square.
"You don't mean communists, do you, Sam?"
Sadly, no. The cinetrix has the mean reds, but bad. She just learned that the dad of her childhood best friend succumbed to cancer this Saturday.
Don was the regional manager of Radio Shack when he landed in our New England burb decades ago, but despite all the corporate relocations, he was a Southerner at heart. It was at his house that the cinetrix first had deviled eggs [thank you, Phyllis] and so many other firsts. Theirs was truly my second home, and Cari's parents--only children parents of an only child--were my own second parents throughout most of my childhood. They took me along on weekend trips to New Hampshire and waited patiently as my carsick self yacked up Taang in some diner parking lot along the way. And we would always go to Pop's Donuts once in Wolfboro. You begin to see what I mean.
And as a Shack guy, Don was an early adopter home electronics gearhead. I experienced my first VCR and later my first CD player at his house, and it was there that Cari and I watched Time Bandits again and again on cable precursor Starz. [OK, and also reruns of The Brady Bunch, but don't tell my mom. She wouldn't let me watch "because the girls don't get to do anything."] Much later, when we were callow adolescents., Phyllis escorted Cari and me to the Queen Ann to see Fletch. It felt so glamorous then.
They were and are good, generous people, Cari's parents, and Don's passing has me crying for both his and my father-in-law's deaths in a way that the past few weeks somehow hadn't allowed.
Don was special. We all knew those grown-ups when we were kids. They maintained the generational hierarchy, yes, but they took our slights and wounds seriously. Hell, Don took the cinetrix and her brother on their first motorcycle rides and escorted us around the neighborhood with Cari for trick-or-treating the year our little bro arrived back in 1980. He was a man full of joy and mischief even as an adult, and the kids could always sense that. Only now do I appreciate what a gift that was, to be so present.
We all had those important, nonparental adults in our lives when we were young [I hope].And oftentimes, one thing they did was take us to the movies. In honor of this dear man, feel free to shout out some of the most memorable cinematic excursions you went on with your own version of Don. And please set aside a moment of silence for him and all those like him in your own lives this Wednesday, October 25, which would have been his 60th birthday.
Resquiat in pace, Don. You set the grown-up cinetrix on her way long ago. Thank you.
One of the nicer things about sitting in on the noir class that meets just before I teach is getting a student's-eye view of things. Oftentimes, this involves watching kids IM or shop on their laptops under the guise of "taking notes," thus confirming I was right to institute a blanket ban on laptops in my class.
But the other day I came in late and got stuck sitting behind some sort of structurally necessary projection. It'd been decorated by countless bored students with the usual stuff about So-and-So smoking pole and the like. Pretty standard. Then I noticed the faint "Charles Kane Kane" graffitto captured above. Film tags, woo-hoo! Was it from my class last spring? Some other teacher's? Whatever its origin, I was glad to see it.
Later the same day, a student of mine who's also in the noir class showed off his Night of the Hunter-stizz knuckle art, also drawn out of boredom. Sadly, I'd used up my cameraphone memory, but just imagine F-I-L-M on one hand and N-O-I-R on the other. Good stuff.
Enjoy the weekend.
