From the ridiculous to the sublime. really

Yesterday Tits! and I decided to be decadent and see a movie in the afternoon. To make it really, really decadent and trashy, the movie we chose was Sex and the City. Let me first say I was never a fan of this show. I never thought Sarah Jessica Parker was funny and the women all just kind of left me flabbergasted. Anyway, I've only ever seen it about three times, so I didn't have any expectations.

The movie was atrocious. Beyond atrocious. It was shrill and desperate and strained. There was no there there. There was absolutely no solid ground, no substance. Nothing at all to enjoy. Tits! said she felt assaulted, and that is the perfect way to describe it.

Anyway, thankfully, I also had tickets to a Metropolitan Opera summer concert in Prospect Park. They aren't doing one in Central Park this year, so it was kind of a big deal. I had VIP tickets through my mother and my friend and I were able to sit very close. I had never seen opera before, and even though this was just a concert and not a full production, it was amazing. I was riveted. Although it's weird, even though we were so close, it was hard to see and I found myself spending more than half the time looking at the giant projections. The singers were Angela Gheorgiu (soprano) and Roberto Alagna (tenor). They did about four duets and two solos each, and there were two pieces performed by the chorus. I was most enthralled by the chorus, actually, and Gheorgiu's solos were a very, very close second.

My friend and I enjoyed it so much that we are going to buy tickets to see the real opera some time soon.

Vera Drake

What a strange movie this was! I liked it a lot. Vera Drake is rather monochromatic in every way. There is one steady, low, sweet, drab tone to it. Once the narrative peaks and Vera is caught, she cries basically through the rest of the movie. A seeping, hopeless kind of crying that is in key with the tenor of the first part of the movie, so that it doesn't feel like there are any highs and lows.

The acting and mood were so well done that the fact that the movie left me unsatisfied was obscured. No real motivation is provided for why Vera performs these abortions (for free) and why it was so important to her that kept it from her family. Actually, that was kind of the most powerful aspect emotionally: her having this huge, huge secret revealed. She really had a double life for twenty years with her family, going out and committing a felony on a weekly basis. In fact, because her actions didn't really make sense, in that the motivation was barely touched on, it seemed to me more like a shameful, compulsive perversity rather than a noble, mission-driven stance.

Juno

I hated this movie. Juno is ridiculous. It's about a teenager who becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby but is like, yeah well whatever about it the whole time. A real alienated 21st century smart ass. It tries to be like Wes Andersen, but fails. I didn't care about any of the characters or laugh out loud once. I thought it was depressing. The movie ends with her getting together with the guy who got her pregnant. That's the ending, the baby is practically irrelevant.

Eeeee Eee Eeee

I finished Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin yesterday. I started it a while ago, but picked it up this weekend and read most of it in two sittings. It's very interesting. A kind of prose I like a lot, and alienated urban characters, etc. Lots to relate to, lots of little insights and funny little things. But ultimately empty in this way that doesn't take me out of my own emptiness and I don't know how much I like that. Definitely a little, but not a lot. Although I liked the book a lot.

Murakami and Amer

Yesterday I went to the huge Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. I'm not a fan of pop art and didn't really expect to like it. And I didn't! Sometimes not liking something can be satisfying. It reinforces the idea that you have opinions and have some things that you respond to and some things that you don't. I just found it too kitschy. Too kiddie and cartoony. Some I liked more than others, of course. It was fun and dizzying. But empty and alienating.

A wonderful serendipitous discovery: Ghada Amer! I had never heard of her. (Actually after seeing this exhibition I realize I saw a beautiful piece of hers a couple of years ago at the Brooklyn Museum's big feminist show: boxes embroidered with gold thread). There was an exhibit of her work in the feminist wing of the museum. She embroiders large canvases with patterns of erotic images and lets the string hang down in clumps, so it looks like streaks of paint and the images are kind of concealed. It seems a little like pentimento for a minute. They are very striking. Some look Pollack-like. This image here wasn't my favorite, but I liked it a lot!

Daniel Deronda

I watched the entire, three episode BBC Masterpiece Theater version of Daniel Deronda with my mother the other night. This is one of my all time favorite novels. It is so complex, with such intense, deep character development, and such unique plot lines. I thought the BBC did a great job. Of course so much dimension got lost, but they tend to stick closely to the books they adapt and pay a good deal of attention to detail that they still capture the gist.

It is one of the few novels where the "heroine" doesn't end up with the guy. I put heroine in quotes because it is really Daniel Deronda's story. Gwendolyn is such a strong, sad, unique character, however, that it feels like her story. The tragedy of her marriage to a sadist manages to trump everything else, that you find yourself rooting for her escape and fulfillment more than for Deronda's...

The Letter and All About Eve

I'm just catching up here. Last week I watched both these movies with my mother. I had never seen The Letter before. It was so interesting and different than other old movies. It's about a woman who kills her lover and is being blackmailed by his wife. I just gave away the ending, but whatever.

I had seen All About Eve before, but liked it so much more this time. It struck me as more complex. Before I had been so alienated by Ann Baxter's phony performance. The other night I just looked past it and was drawn into the other relationships. The final turn, where the cold critic catches her and controls her felt particularly dark.