Fellini It Isn't

For someone who has, in her life, taken great pains to appear smarter and more cultured than you, the evolution of taste takes its toll. The truth is, on any given evening, I would prefer to watch Dune than The Seventh Seal. In fact, on any given evening, I would prefer to watch Dune over most other things. I have a Dune problem. I'm going to attempt to not cast my lower-brow tastes in any kind of hipsterish rejection of the highbrow and merely say that after an adolescence of total modernist immersion with some Renaissance epic poetry thrown in for good measure, I'm ok with the fact that I can't stand the New Yorker and generally won't even read it on the toilet.

We saw the movie Red over the weekend and I loved it. Now my love of ensemble action-esque movies is nothing new. I have been a Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Murder on the Orient Express, etc. fan for many years. Little pleased me more than the original Ocean's Eleven simply because I hoped it was the start of more 70's-era ensembles of silliness. Red, which is decidedly lowbrow was a delightful romp with all the attendant irony I look for in such things. Also, Helen Mirren has a sick body. Sick.

But it dawned on me that maybe I have ever so little less to prove by my choice of media consumption. After all, as devoted partner notes, my humor tends towards the eight-year-olds never so apparently as when I'm watching Family Guy and laughing at doodie jokes. When I reach for a book to reread, it's true that it's frequently Foucault's Pendulum, but the others that get reread often are American Psycho and Tim Cahill's Road Fever. So it's not all semiotics and fancy words. I have tried, and disliked, many of the new guard of intellectuals, leading me to believe that what I'm looking for has changed, not merely that the new guard of intellectuals is a bloviating morass of mediocrity (see how I used really snooty words there?).

And, as is a case I have heard from other recovering, or semi-recovering, self-satisfied asshats, I'd rather read good non-fiction these days than mediocre fiction. Philip Roth, a shining example of self-satisfied asshattery, has become more of a punchline than a good read. After all, I know of no one other than Philip Roth as interested in Philip Roth's erectile dysfunction. Now, I'm not yet at the point where I salivate over the newest biography of a nineteenth century politician, but I don't discount the possibility that that time may come.

As for film, or shall I say movies, I never much went in for the idea of film as art and I'd much rather laugh at a movie than feel consternation at one. Again, a good documentary would serve me better than a mediocre thought experiment.

Now, I'm not over the hump yet. I will still disdain the bottom of the barrel with full voice. You need not worry about seeing me thumbing through Danielle Steele or any of the author's who have ads on the subways, nor will you catch me waiting in line for Jackass 3 or a Rob Schneider movie (were another to ever be made), but I'm just no longer interested in subjecting myself to what is cast as High Art for the sake of having experienced High Art. I've experienced a buttload of High Art and it's taught me that not all of it is actually good (I'm looking at you, D.H. Lawrence, you pitiable hack).

Devoted partner, on the other hand, is not off the hook for his choice of reading material, and frankly neither are you if I catch you reading a book about Vampires that wasn't written by Bram Stoker.

Don't Worry, I Can Still Be Unpleasant

There was some concern after yesterday's post that I was going to go all Buddhist on you all and think everything was sunshine and rainbow puppies. Calm yourselves. I can be a bitch without being angry. Never more so then when watching, what this year felt interminably long, the Academy Awards.

Now there are many sites better than this one where you can go to dish about the (yawn) outfits people wore (they were really really boring this year, I felt I was at the Fire and Ice ball, just a sea of red, white, and black), but I would like to tackle a far less kind issue: age. I have a number of theories as to why Hollywood seems to do to its talent what the poor choice of grails did to the blonde nazi in Last Crusade, but it is never more apparent than during closeups on a night when the stars have, presumably gone all out. And lest you think I'm just being mean because I myself am not a Hollywood star...eh, I got nothing. Maybe I am being mean for no good reason. But still, maybe I can spin this as a warning to others about the dangers of not taking care of your skin (while you obsessively take care of your biceps - maybe they could make vials of moisturizer that weighed 15 pounds).

Example #1 - Kathy Ireland. Real age: almost 47. Neck age: crypt keeper. Remember super cute Kathy Ireland? With her gorgeous eyes and BROWN hair? Remember how she was in shape but not in a scary way (like the difference in shape between Brenda and Kelly in original 90210 and the Steve Madden heads-to-big-for-bodies girls in new 90210?). Remember this? Diagnosis: too much bronzer, too much frosted hair, too much working out, not enough sensible menu choices, abject failure in the moisturizing of neck.

Example #2 - Kate Winslet. Real age: 34. Age I thought she was: >40. Now Kate Winslet gets a lot of crap for, I don't know, being too fat but photographing thinner, being too thin but claiming to be fatter...I don't care. I do care that it looks as though she has a centimeter worth of pancake makeup on. Could her skin really be that bad? And if so, is she not wealthy enough to fix that? Also, and this is a common complaint of mine: platinum hair + pale skin + pale makeup = ugh. Bright red lipstick would have changed this a little, though my primary complaint is when actresses match their hair to their skin. See examples A (also only 34), B (age 43 terrifyingly tight unemotional years), and C (age 25, but already coloring herself like a woman twice her age). Now, I'm not a huge fan of Cameron Diaz's style, but all blondes should look to her for advice on how to be blond.

Example #3 - Miley Cyrus. Real age: 17. Osteoporosis age: older than this. Now, unlike many others, I don't have a visceral reaction to the young Miss Cyrus. I don't even really know who she is because I don't have children. I do know, however, that she has linebacker shoulders and an underfed upper ribcage which hunching just accentuates. Additionally, I am guessing she has really really nice young 17-year old skin. Which I cannot see. Because she is orange. Her face and body do not match. Also, as slender as she is on top, her dress STILL doesn't fit, making her look like those much older women who try to squeeze themselves into the dresses they wore at 17.

So while I occasionally snipe at your crow's feet, collective Hollywood ladies, I really have concern in my heart. You are all, I presume, way better looking than this, and I do not understand why you go to so much trouble and effort to look older than you are.

But lest I appear sexist, though it is a sad truth that age on men is deemed more flattering than age on women, let me draw your attention to this neck. I'll admit, it was far more terrifying on last week's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, but Sean Penn is sporting Clint Eastwood's neck, and he should be concerned about that, what with the 30 YEAR AGE DIFFERENCE.

And it is also important, though frequently mentioned, to acknowledge the women who are clearly not 25, but also clearly wearing age very very well: Meryl Streep (age 60), Sigourney Weaver (age 60), Helen Mirren (age 64). And two of those women are blondes, a group not generally on the receiving end of kind aging.

The Brows: High and Low

High

Upon discovering that Cablevision had royally plucked me yet again by going haywire during prime DVR time, I ended up watching something unusual: a movie based on a book I loved that I liked. I'm always suspicious when a good book gets turned into a movie because the movie is almost always mediocre and strips away all that was good or charming or challenging about a book (I have the adaptation of Jose Saramago's Blindness in my queue but I'm frankly scared to watch it). But I should have been less wary from the start. You see, Americans did not make this film. Given the population of functional illiterates in my homeland (a homeland I would fight and die for so that my fellow countrymen could continue not reading), it is difficult to take a great work of fiction and render it appropriately on the screen, unless the great work of fiction in question has somehow managed to incorporate flying robots, bared bosoms, and end of days type explosions. I think Hemingway has a book like that.

So the book, I Served the King of England which I suggest you read, and prior to watching the movie, is by Czech author Bohumil Hrabal (say it five times fast). It tells the story of a man in the hospitality industry before and during the German occupation. The man is a bit of a Czech character archetype, a good soldier Svejk kind of guy, simple, earnest, and always getting things wrong, but in a way that endears him to you (and this is coming from someone who generally has no patience for the stupid). Hrabal's work in this and his other books (all of which are totally worth reading) has such charm and whimsy that when I saw there was a movie being made, I was certain these qualities would be lost, but through a surprisingly well-executed series of voice-overs, both shone through so that a person unfamiliar with the book could come away with a feel for its style and not merely its content.

Another interesting, yet depressing, clue that the movie was not made by Americans (yes, the subtitles give it away too) was the casting. There were a fair number of naked women in the movie and all of them looked like actual human beings. There were body flaws you would only ever see in an American documentary on body flaws and I had forgotten how interesting naked women could be when they are demonstrably different from one another. There were also naked men, but I really can't recommend them on aesthetics. The people, naked or dressed, looked like people, whereas even in American movies where the cast is full of "unknowns" the unknowns seem to have gotten their noses fixed and their teeth capped at the same clinic and the only variations are in hair color and height. I am going to endeavor to watch more foreign films (especially if Cablevision continues to mightily suck).

Low

I made fun of Ed when he told me I would want a cellphone with a camera, but he was right: I'm having a lot of trouble unobtrusively taking people's pictures in the train and therefore, sadly, you will have to imagine the guy I sat across from yesterday afternoon who slept with his mouth so wide open...

Ok, I'm not going to be that lowbrow.