T minus 7...
Almost ready to launch my business. Cox is supposed to be coming out here to install the phone line, and I bought a phone and a HUGE printer/fax/copier/etc etc. I have a website up, primitive but adequate, a PO Box, almost everything I need. THEN I get to start trying to figure out how to publicize this thing. Whee. I gotta make a go of this now. The property taxes on the house just went waaaay up and my monthly house payment jumped like $125. I have pretty much until the end of this year to start bringing in some money or we'll be hurtin'. I really believe I can make this work, I just don't know how fast.
Watched two oddball, quirky movies in the last week. First, finally got around to The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, which on the one hand is a Wes Anderson movie, and I hate Wes Anderson and his precious ohhh-look-how-arty-I-am-mama attitude, but I love Bill Murray. So we gave it a spin. I don't know, parts of it I really liked, and Owen Wilson was actually acting, which is something akin to a UFO sighting in rarity. Not only was he acting, but he was holding his own with Cate frigging Blanchett - not all the way mind you, but he was doing okay. Cate is one of those odd and brilliant actresses who looks handsome and elegant in photos, but on screen she has this megavolt sex appeal that just knocks my socks off. If I met her in person I think I might just die or kidnap her - one of those two. Bill Murray is just hilarious, and there is no way around that fact. He can just stand there with that deadpan/stoned look on his face, saying nothing, and the longer he does it the funnier it is. I spent about a third of the movie laughing, a third wondering what was going on, and another third wondering what the hell all these actors were doing in this bizarre movie. The tone wandered all over the place, from farce to camp, to screwball and then swerving into drama. It doesn't quite work, and the fragmented nature of the narrative made it often seem like Non-Sequitur Theater. A lot of funny and weird bits that don't quite gel into a real movie, but never boring.
The other one was The Brothers Bloom which I urge anyone to watch if you like A: Adrien Brody, or B: the incredible fabulousness of Rachel Weitz. Rachel gets mostly wasted in movies like Constantine or The Mummy (don't foam, I love the first two Mummy movies, but they didn't really demand acting). This is a part she just shines in - no, scratch that, she fucking explodes, playing this weird, eccentric heiress with epilepsy and a slew of weird hobbies. The sequence where she juggles, karate-kicks, plays piano/banjo/violin, raps, backflips and breakdances through a series of quick cuts is funny as hell, but mostly she just nails the social awkwardness of a genuine recluse without making it a caricature, all while being the most adorable thing on the entire fucking planet. There's this amazing scene where she gives this long monologue while performing a card trick as the camera pans slowly around her, alternately showing her face reflected in mirrors or hiding it and letting us just watch her hands...it is fucking kick-ass is what it is, since that is actually her doing this freaking cool card trick and it is all in one frigging take. A showstopper scene. The movie becomes a bit too dark on towards the end, and loses a bit of focus as it pulls away from the relationship between Adrien Brody's Bloom and Rachel's Penelope - which we care about - and zooms in on the relationship between the brothers, which we really don't. Mark Ruffalo's character is intensely uninteresting, and by the end of the movie I just wanted him to get out of the way and let us focus on the characters we want to see more of. It's a well-made, if rather mannered movie with some great performances and Rachel Weitz just tearing it right the fuck up. She would be worth watching it for even if the rest of it sucked, which it gladly does not.
Watched two oddball, quirky movies in the last week. First, finally got around to The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, which on the one hand is a Wes Anderson movie, and I hate Wes Anderson and his precious ohhh-look-how-arty-I-am-mama attitude, but I love Bill Murray. So we gave it a spin. I don't know, parts of it I really liked, and Owen Wilson was actually acting, which is something akin to a UFO sighting in rarity. Not only was he acting, but he was holding his own with Cate frigging Blanchett - not all the way mind you, but he was doing okay. Cate is one of those odd and brilliant actresses who looks handsome and elegant in photos, but on screen she has this megavolt sex appeal that just knocks my socks off. If I met her in person I think I might just die or kidnap her - one of those two. Bill Murray is just hilarious, and there is no way around that fact. He can just stand there with that deadpan/stoned look on his face, saying nothing, and the longer he does it the funnier it is. I spent about a third of the movie laughing, a third wondering what was going on, and another third wondering what the hell all these actors were doing in this bizarre movie. The tone wandered all over the place, from farce to camp, to screwball and then swerving into drama. It doesn't quite work, and the fragmented nature of the narrative made it often seem like Non-Sequitur Theater. A lot of funny and weird bits that don't quite gel into a real movie, but never boring.
The other one was The Brothers Bloom which I urge anyone to watch if you like A: Adrien Brody, or B: the incredible fabulousness of Rachel Weitz. Rachel gets mostly wasted in movies like Constantine or The Mummy (don't foam, I love the first two Mummy movies, but they didn't really demand acting). This is a part she just shines in - no, scratch that, she fucking explodes, playing this weird, eccentric heiress with epilepsy and a slew of weird hobbies. The sequence where she juggles, karate-kicks, plays piano/banjo/violin, raps, backflips and breakdances through a series of quick cuts is funny as hell, but mostly she just nails the social awkwardness of a genuine recluse without making it a caricature, all while being the most adorable thing on the entire fucking planet. There's this amazing scene where she gives this long monologue while performing a card trick as the camera pans slowly around her, alternately showing her face reflected in mirrors or hiding it and letting us just watch her hands...it is fucking kick-ass is what it is, since that is actually her doing this freaking cool card trick and it is all in one frigging take. A showstopper scene. The movie becomes a bit too dark on towards the end, and loses a bit of focus as it pulls away from the relationship between Adrien Brody's Bloom and Rachel's Penelope - which we care about - and zooms in on the relationship between the brothers, which we really don't. Mark Ruffalo's character is intensely uninteresting, and by the end of the movie I just wanted him to get out of the way and let us focus on the characters we want to see more of. It's a well-made, if rather mannered movie with some great performances and Rachel Weitz just tearing it right the fuck up. She would be worth watching it for even if the rest of it sucked, which it gladly does not.