I'm trying to make a dent in my New Yorker magazines, which have been piling up week by week lately. I just came across this in a recent issue: a highly recommended film about the Iraq war starring one of my faves, Tommy Lee Jones. It's called "In the Valley of Elah." Lots of "brilliants" and "wonderfuls" surrounding this. I think it'll be released in November. Also features Susan Sarandon. (Rickydoodle, I thought you in particular might be interested in this, given our "Jarhead" discussion.)
Also, I just got around to reading Marjane Satrapi's autobiography, written in comic-book style ("Persepolis"), about growing up female in Iran just before the Islamic Revolution (women wore miniskirts in Tehran) and after (strictly enforced veils and chadors). Satrapi's parents were progressive intellectuals, and, after the Iraq-Iran war began, managed to send their daughter to Austria, where she received a liberal European education (vs. the misogynist, nationalistic bullshit that was passing for schooling in Iran). As I was ordering another of her books, the lovely sounding "Chicken with Prunes," I noticed that "Persepolis" has been made into an animated movie that'll be released in the U.S. this winter. I can't wait!
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I saw a preview for the Tommy Lee Jones movie on some station -- NBC, I think. It looks good.
I thought we had something about Satrapi in the paper recently, but it was about Rajaa Alsanea, of Saudi Arabia. She didn't write anything politically controversial, but I guess writing about modern women and romance in Saudi Arabia is still a no-no.
Ooh, I hadn't heard of Rajaa Alsanea, but I looked her up and she sounds awesome. She penned "The Girls of Riyadh."
Sounds like her upbringing was similar to Satrapi's — raised by liberal parents in a fundamentalist society.
Cl, I peeked at your filmaffinity profile and saw you had seen "Friends With Money"? What did you think? I wrote a blog post about it a long time ago. I adore that movie.
Who gets the credit for the long list of films in the sidebar? Nice job.
Is that a list of every film that's ever been mentioned here? Interesting. Is there a way to distinguish the ones we've actually discussed at some length (the actuals picks) vs. ones that were merely mentioned?
I loved "Friends with Money." For some reason I think I sent or at least started an e-mail about it to you to say I'd seen it. Good plot carried by very strong acting -- I'd never pictured Joan Cusack to play a character who was ultimately unsympathetic. Nobody turned out as expected in that film. And Jennifer Aniston would have flopped in any role but the one where she borrows vibrators and steals face creams. Overall very enjoyable and on-target about adult friendships, especially those we try to maintain from the allegedly class-free relationships from college.
And what about Frances McDormand? Wasn't she a bad-ass?
I've generally liked Jennifer Aniston in everything I've seen her in. I thought she was especially good in this.
God, the whole cast was great. Catherine Keener. Fantastic.
I think Holofcener is one of those directors who can really get the last good inch out of everyone.
Only thing about the sidebar is it doesn't distinguish film picks from the rest. I think I mentioned "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" -- and who doesn't love Lily Tomlin fighting death in a kitchen garbage disposal? -- but I mentioned it in a not-complimentary reference to Joel Schumacher.
Frances McDormand was fantastic. I expected some resolution with her husband, but I was happy in the ambiguous ending.
I like Catherine Keener, but this is the third time she's played unhappy wife/girlfriend -- "Your Friends and Neighbors," "Being John Malkovich," "Friends with Money."
She's good and should do some more versatile roles.
She was Harper Lee in "Capote." I think you'd like that role, cl.
She's been in all of Holofcener's movies.
And what about "The 40-Year-Old-Virgin" (a movie I saw with BoyGeorge and blushed all the way through ... we weren't as well-acquainted then).
I put all the films that were mentioned in posts over there. I thought it would be nice to be able to find a post that mentioned a film, even if only in passing. Films that were mentioned in comments only are not over there -- only films mentioned in the main posts (and I did it all manually, so there may be a few I missed, too).
The films with dates are ones where there is more than one film with that title. Not all of them have that (e.g., Cyrano).
There's no way to distinguish between the picks and the others. I did it by the use of labels. I don't think there's any way to have two different layers of labels, nor is there any way to list posts except by date or labels.
Oh, by the way, you can't put commas nor ampersands in labels.
We could have two separate lists, though: films we've watched and films we've mentioned in posts. I'm not suggesting you undertake this. It's just an option. (I sort of enjoyed seeing the lists of films we've seen, especially now that we are coming up on a YEAR of doing this. It was sort of a progress report).
If this is going to be an ever-growing list, it might make sense to have it at the bottom so we don't have to scroll down so far for links.
That’s very good, Ben. I don’t really think it matters to distinguish the picks from the passing mentions. It’s nice to have such a quick easy way to pull all those old posts back up. And I like the range of films people have injected into the discussion.
Yeah, it's interesting. "Apple Dumpling Gang" we really should discuss more in depth. Hehe
You were skeptical that we'd make it a year, weren't you, Ricky Ricardo?
Based on your comment, kc, I moved the links up above the films list.
And I've thought of a way to have a separate list for our picks. But I'm not sure it will work, and I don't really have time right now to work on it. I'll try to get around to it sometime this week.
Well Kc, I remember telling you that I did a quick search for on-line movie clubs and only found one. They managed to survive for three movies. So I think I said that the empirical case was not promising, but the data set was rather smallish. If I remember right, I think they were trying to do a movie a month. Maybe that is too few to keep things going. Every two weeks seems to be a good pace.
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