We interrupt this silence...
Shit, when the Jane Magazine blog is calling you out for being lazy, you gotta hop to. (Hollatcha, Spence.)
Proper post in the works. In the mean time, links:
- Did Michelle Malkin really formulate this equation: "F-16s + Beastie Boys = Crazy Delicious"? Yes. Yes she did.
- Party like it's 2004: Douglas Wolk's excellent essay on The Irresistible Rise of the Numa Numa Dance.
- Stop the press, I just felt a little pride for my alma mater: Pixies live from Emerson College's WERS.
- Don't miss the ongoing conversation re: Vanity 6's "Nasty Girl" over at Moistworks. It's a nice reminder of the good ol' days when Prince was... well, hilariously nasty. As Alex points out:
"Prince wanted to name the group 'The Hookers,' and suggested that Matthews - the 'Vanity' in Vanity 6 - go by the stage name 'Vagina.' According to Wikipedia, 'the 6 represented the group's breast count.' Nice one, Prince!"
Ever the charmer, huh? - Speaking of the Purple One, ickmusic has a set of mp3s showing off Prince's sick guitar skillz.
- Armond, the answer is (1) No and (2) unfortunately, I don't think they're concerned:
"Have Vaughn and Aniston never seen Mike Leigh's minor masterwork, Career Girls? Their best hope is that you haven't." - The video for The Red Hot Chili Peppers's "Can't Stop" (originally directed by Mark Romanek)-- Lego style.
- In case you're wondering (and I know you are) Mr. Skin's Number One Film of All Time is... Artie Lange's Beer League.
- Fun for film nerds: Which film critic are you? (For the record I'm Jonathan Rosenbaum.) (Link via girish.)
- Moral of the story: don't fuck with Akiane.
posted by Ben @ 3:30 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
I've seen Career Girls and I assure you it is not a "minor masterwork." I love Mike Leigh more than I love abortion, but that movie was too back-alley even for my tastes.
I think it's possible that I have the worst taste in movies ever. After a few minutes on that site, it said I was most like Ebert. A few minute later I checked again and I was the TV guide critic.
I've been in hives all week after reading that Armond review. His stuff is so full of logical fallacies it's difficult to even keep track of them. Some of them even seem to be freshly invented fallacies.
"To get at exactly what’s wrong with this Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston dating comedy, you have to forget Gore’s unconscious separation of politics from morality and be willing to recognize how storytelling in movies represents a political position on moral activity."
Okay. As he hasn't even discussed the Gore movie at this point in the review, this statement assumes that the reader a) has just seen the Gore documentary, and b) is on their way to go see The Break-Up, and c) is weird enough to think that making a (incoherent, anyway) comparison between those two movies isn't the most batshit crazy idea a professional, working film critic ever conceived. His writing inadvertantly assumes that the reader is a professional film critic him or herself, because a film critic is about the only type of person likely to see "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Break-Up" in close succession.
All this in addition to the lunacy you so much more succinctly pointed out. (On what fucking planet would obvious and appropriate character research for a synthetic big budget HW romcom include watching "Career Girls"?)
HE IS SO CRAZY!
I'm chompin' at the bit for the damn Veronica Mars, season 2 DVD.
Josh-- Twee? Is it too twee? (And we all know that you're much closer to Roeper than Ebert.)
Bob-- Such is the joy of reading Armond.
g.-- Dude! You still don't know who knocked on VMars's door at the end of Season One. Well, not too much longer.
Dash-- Done.
"g.-- Dude! You still don't know who knocked on VMars's door at the end of Season One."
No, I don't! And I must say I've gone out of my way to protect myself from any and all spoilers..for a year! (e.g. I didn't read past the first paragraph of the link I posted.) Won't be long now.
Career Girls isn't so much bad as it is worthless. It's one of those neat little British pictures that seem designed for boring, middle-aged American audiences filled with women who wear wrap-around shawls and faux-tortoise-shell hair clasps. And it's a waste of Katrin Cartlidge's immense savage skills on screen (like in Naked.) It's just not worth anyone's time. Mike Leigh's really good, but when he's bad, he's painful.
Josh,
Harsh much? (I know, I know: ALWAYS). But "Career Girls" isn't that bad. It's just kinda tedious.
Have you seen "All or Nothing"? It's one of his kitchen-sink realist films, but the struggling-w.c.-Brit" sentimentality is amped up more so than in any other Leigh work, even "Secrets and Lies." But for some reason...wait, who am I kidding? I LOVE that sentimental quivering-upper lip side to his movies. "All or Nothing" is really sweet and really good, and you very well might hate it.
All Or Nothing is one of the worst British films ever made. Peeping Tom is worse, and Nil By Mouth is probably worse. Okay, I get the realism. I get the struggling poor people thing. I get it. What I don't get is a) the volume of the film is so low I can't hear it, even with the TV on full blast and b) the accents are so realistic they might as well be speaking Swahili. Career Girls is better because at least it's intelligible. Leigh can handle the hard stuff -- he can make great, gripping family sagas -- Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake, he can handle the gritty, edgy, sinister side of contemporary Englan -- Naked. He can even turn the costume drama into something sublime -- Topsy Turvy. But that doesn't excuse Career Girls, which isn't even entertaining by the blandest English standards, or All or Nothing which is wretchedly manipulative, incoherent and grotesquely sentimental. GAH! I don't like being mean to Mike Leigh. But, he is better than that. And so are YOU Bob. Cancel your BBC-America subscription please.
Joshua,
May I refer you to your previous comment on this thread?
"I think it's possible that I have the worst taste in movies ever."
Hmm. There may be something there...
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