Indie for the masses.
I am going back and forth between whether I liked it or not. Some things were really cute. Like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Expectations/Reality. But I’m just not sure it was a good movie. I never know whether movies are good anymore.
**This post may have vague, unimportant spoilers about the movie “Revolutionary Road.”
As I get older, I like movies on a whole less, but I enjoy watching them more. Weird? Not really. Most movies are just not all that phenomenal, though there are plenty that I adore. Like, the writing is great, but the rest is so-so; or visually it’s cool but there’s no real story; or it’s awesomely realistic but also boring; or the acting is amazing but the story is just lame or too easy or not well-adapted from the book or just done too, too many times.
Yesterday I watched “Revolutionary Road,” which was a tad disappointing after all that Oscar buzz and all. Not having read the book even, I can guess that it’s probably a bit too dense and that the movie is too simplified, but still. Throughout watching, I could guess everything that was going to happen, and not in a good way. Just in a I’ve-seen-this-in-Closer-and-We-Don’t-Live-Here-Anymore-and-tons-of-other-relationship-movies sort of way. And I “got” the point too easily, I think. Nothing about the story really challenged my thinking in a new way.
The acting, though, was great, and so were the sets and costumes and all. I’m generally more of an actor person than an actress person (though that might just be because I fantasize too often about all the movie stars I’m going to meet someday and marry), but Kate Winslet has always been one of my favorite people in the entire world. I just love her and pretty much everything she does. Just as no one does teen angst like Winona Ryder, no one does sympathetic adulteress like Kate Winslet.
I really like to be able to watch movies now with a bit more of a critical and educated eye as I get older and learn how to read better. Close reading skills and a good English teacher can make you a good movie-watcher without being annoyingly too cerebral about everything. Not that I know all that much technical stuff about film, but I know enough for the average person, I suppose. I love to analyze the stories like you do a book and to be able to gauge good and bad acting better than I could when I was little.
But really, most movies are nothing new. And since movies are stories or statements or essays or lives, as a writer, that scares me. It’s supposed to be the way you tell a story, not the story itself, right? Is that why literature continues to exist and evolve? But what if you tell an old story in a fairly old way? What’s left?
I keep thinking about how I haven’t posted in here in awhile and that I really should, and then I don’t. It’s not like I have a plethora of fans waiting for updates or anything. That’s still to come. Give me time.
Every couple of years I freshly go gaga over the Tudor era. It started when I read one of those Dear America/Royal Diary books about Elizabeth I. We share a birthday. AND she was born in 1533, and I was born in 1988, and if you put a three next to its mirror image, it’s pretty much an eight, so we’re even more like twins. Am I right, am I right? Anyway. Then I read some Philippa Gregory and some Carolyn Meyer and all, and I was so over The Other Boleyn Girl by the time the terrible movie came out (I can’t believe someone found a way to make Natalie Portman not just uncool, but almost crappy. I would go gay for her, but her Anne Boleyn was not so much fun). Thank G-d for The Tudors. (Though I just learned that the BBC did a version of Gregory’s novel before Hollywood did, and generally the BBC owns at everything, so it’s on my Netflix). But The Tudors! I can’t get over it. Loved the first season, am loving the second one so far. Now that it’s out, I’m wondering why I don’t obsess over this era a whole lot more. Generally I’m a twenties and a sixties girl, but sixteenth-century England definitely has a piece of my heart.
Everything is so pretentious and preposterous. While I wait for my three episodes of the television show at a time (how far and how sexy Jonathan Rhys Meyers has come since Bend It Like Beckham), I’m also reading another Philippa Gregory novel, The Boleyn Inheritance. It picks up after boring Jane Seymour is dead and goes on about the fourth and fifth wives, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, plus George Boleyn’s insane widow, Jane Boleyn. I feel a bit silly reading it, since according to GoodReads, my to-read list is currently 186-volumes long. Surely I could be reading some classics, or I could be reading one of the fifty or so books I own and still have not been able to read (damn school and life getting in the way). But I had store credit at Fry’s and nothing to buy but toothpaste, so I ran over to grab a magazine and thought better of it, since a magazine and a trade paperback cost about the same price. I’m going to need to go grab a cheap copy of Angels and Demons before the movie comes out as well. So now I’m reading this historical chick lit epic, because Ray Bradbury’s new collection of short stories is not as interesting as I hoped. Though you should still check out my review of it when it’s published.
When I was younger I just liked seeming precocious and rattling off quick details about Henry VIII and his wives. Now I just like seeing how ridiculous it all was. Gives me a lot of inspiration for short stories, which is good, because I need at least one to roll with before the end of the month when my first story for 304 is due. When Henry VIII married Katherine Howard, she was 15, he had literally just annulled his marriage to Anne of Cleves a matter of weeks before, and he was old, decrepit, sick, and nasty. Poor thing. And just all the silliness about court and ladies in waiting (which when I was little I thought were the same as maids in waiting, but they were actually noble and often married, and in Katherine’s case, much older than the queen) and having to defer to your husband not just in a housewifely sense but a political way. Ridiculous. Really. Why does anyone want to be a princess?
This is the most relaxing evening I can remember in a good, long time. Winter break was many things, but truly relaxing was not one of them. I just finished a cup of chamomile tea, all I’m doing is writing and reading and disregarding any thought I have toward doing homework. All I’m missing is a bathtub. But taking long, luxurious baths isn’t the same when you move out and you don’t have your parents and sister referring to you as Blanche DuBois.
