Rachel Getting Married (2008)

So the director of Silence of the Lambs comes out with a movie about a messed up, troubled, and still in rehab Anne Hathaway returning home for her sister's weekend wedding. Hathaway's Kym snipes at everyone, is desperate for attention, and basically kind of ruins everything. But it's not like she hasn't done this before. The two sisters show how you don't necessarily need to be a sociopath to rip people apart -- just family will do. They eviscerate each other with words and memories and then sorta make up and then do it all over again.

I saw the movie in a theater of older folk and I'm wondering what kind of reaction they had, or if they were expecting an entirely different movie altogether. While I can't say every minute of the film was amazing, in sum, I really enjoyed it. Jonathan Demme's use of hand-held cameras brings you closer to the characters and was an excellent stylistic choice. Hathaway is being touted for an Oscar and I think she deserves a nomination.

Overall, a film like this brings forth emotion from an audience. Some of it is yanked out of you but many of the moments are genuine. Heck, half the time you want to slap Kym and tell her to grow up, just as if you were her family. While I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to everyone, I think the film did a nice job illuminating dysfunction in people and families and I left the theater pleasantly surprised and with a lot to think about. Can't ask for too much more I guess.

There is one slightly jarring thing about the film. It's almost aggressively multi-ethnic. I'm not sure if I'm just being overly sensitive here but it looks like they really went out of their way to present the couple -- and the family -- as the most Benetton friendly thing on Earth. The sister is white, the guy she's marrying is black (although the movie poster doesn't represent that at all, on purpose?), and they're having an Indian wedding (but strangely, no Indians in attendance). The guests are a cross-section of a whole bunch of not too stereotypical stereotypes. As if to say "We're super eclectic, we have friends from all over!" When they trotted out the middle aged white mom DJ working the decks, I kind of couldn't stand it anymore. The film takes BEP's line to heart a little too much maybe. "Got black to Asian, and Caucasian saying, that's that's the joint, that's the jam."

That sounds like it would be a good thing, and it's kind of cool how the movie doesn't address it at all, but then again, it felt a little bit forced.

Another reason I was excited to see the movie was because I'm a big fan of slam poet extraordinaire Beau Sia and he had a decent sized role. I'm not sure who cast him but I love that he's getting out there. I hope his acting career takes off because that guy totally deserves it.

"If there is anyone in the entertainment industry watching me perform, I want you to keep in mind, that regardless of how you feel about the content or performance of my work, that if you're casting any films, and you need a Korean grocery store owner, a computer expert, or the random thug of a Yakuza gang... then I'm your man!"
-Beau Sia, Def Poetry Slam-

Bo-po-mo-fo

More iPhone fun. Seriously, I can't understand why people don't just get an iPhone. It's not even that expensive anymore. It's the greatest device ever and totally life changing. People who hate on it just because it's Apple or for some other absurd reason should try one for a week and see if they change their tune.

Here's something totally amazing. You can write in Chinese (and other languages)! Our dear fake-FOB friend showed us what an amazing tool this could be. It's even funnier when you totally suck at Chinese like we do. Twelve straight years of Saturday morning classes and I can't get far beyond "Hello" and "Dog/Cat." What's super cool is that you can either spell it out pinyin style or just write it out. I can't wait to dig out my old Chinese school books and learn some useful phrases like "Your mom takes out the trash!" or "How much for that bun?"

Tragically, I think, you can only communicate in Mandarin with other people who have iPhones.

And if you wanna make your iPhone the hit of the town, color coordinate your apps. Ameer [High Entropy] introduced us all to this one and now we all do it. The first thing other people ask when they see it is, "Whoa, is that a setting?" Hell no, you gotta do it all yourself! Just arrange your apps by color and it will look oh so beautiful. Otherwise it's just one big jumbled mess. Sure it takes a bit of time but once you have it set up, everything will be easily kept in order. Did I mention it's amazing looking?

Ameer chose to go ROYGBIV with his but that didn't quite work out for me. I preferred to start with a blue page, and then a red/green, yellow, purple/silver, and finish up with a white and black page. Here's an idea of what that looks like. Tell me that's not amazing. I spent some time looking for the right colored apps regardless of their actual function. Just because I'm stupid like that. I mean, why wouldn't I need to know how much fuel my jet has? Or have a map of the Japanese subway system?

I download apps just for cool logos and if they fit the hues I need. It's an ongoing search but with dedication, anyone can do it. Hint: You can move your already docked items to one page and then use the now empty dock to transport other apps back and forth in fours, instead of dragging them across so many pages one by one. Thank me later.

I just love looking at people's iPhone setups. I'd like to believe it gives you insight into them as a person. What is more important to them? The text icon? The phone? Do they know how to take a screenshot? Are they a likely moblog candidate? What sorts of games do they have? Are they on Loopt? Should we be friends?

It's totally that deep.

In other iPhone news, I just bought a Bluetooth head thingy (Jawbone 2), mainly because I recently got a damn ticket for driving and talking with no headset. No warning, nothing. The ticket cost as much as the Bluetooth. And I was just checking voicemail. Or, um, something.

And because I double bag my phone (plastic case and also a pouch), I just got this Golla Camo thing. I'm very particular about my gadgets, or more importantly, how they're protected so I'm hoping this works out. I lost my previous pouch and my iPhone has been in danger ever since. When in doubt, double bag everything.

Mux It Up

Doing a mix tape just isn't the same anymore. The barrier to entry has gone down too much, the ease of transferring songs between two people has ruined it forever. That's how I feel about the current state of mix tapes anyway. Then again, maybe that's just me and creating a mix tape is still magical if you do it with passion. I can't recall the last mix tape I made or received, although it's something I used to do all the time. Mix-CDs actually. When tapes were still in vogue, I was way too uncool to present (new) music to anybody. "So, here's a tape looped with 'Kokomo' and 'Don't Worry, Be Happy.' Hope you love it, because I love you..."

I'm still in possession of a mix tape that I've been hoping to pass to someone for over five years now. I haven't seen her in all that time but it's supposed to sum up a summer's worth of memories. "Cool Like That: Two People's Instinctive Travels in the Paths of Labor" Maybe I'll just be holding onto this thing forever. That's kinda sad no?

Another reason why making mix tapes just isn't the same is because creating the covers aren't as much fun anymore. Why spend time designing the CD cover when it'll most likely be ripped to a computer and then set aside? A mix tape loses something in the translation when it doesn't take two hours to burn and three versions of the CD sized paper to have everything lined up perfectly.

Then again, the sentiment of a mix tape can never be changed. It's something you make to make the other person think of you. It's taking ownership of certain songs so that when they hear it, even years later, they'll always think of you. Mix tapes are super devious if you think about it. I may have to bring it back...

Anyway, here's a mix tape from 1999 that I made for somebody. It had the best cover ever. A (traced) version of the Bad Boy logo, changed to a female with pigtails. I titled it "Ready to Cry." Little did I know how appropriate that would be.

Here's the mix tape in individual form, .rar form, and also the track list. Oh, and on favtape too, although it sucks because you can't upload your own tracks like with muxtape, meaning you can't get some songs on your mix if they don't already have a copy. I miss muxtape.

I miss a lot of things.

W. (2008)

I recently watched Thirteen Days, a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Thirteen Days also features actors playing well known politicians. The difference here, of course, is that there's hardly a laugh to be found in Thirteen Days. This movie is played strictly for laughs. I found myself entertained throughout, and even if the whole thing is a bit over the top as a caricature, it does capture something about how we feel about Dubya.

I actually left the theater impressed by Bushy Junior's career trajectory. I mean, if this was your friend, a total drifter and fuck up who then pulled his act together enough to (a) own a baseball team (b) become the governor and then (c) win the presidency, you'd be patting him on the back regardless of his politics. It's true, George W. might be a real American hero!

A Heartbreaking Work

I just wrapped up the last few pages of Rob Sheffield's "Love is a Mix Tape" and I gotta say, it's got me feeling sad and blue. I don't know why I never read the thing -- what a great title -- or ever spent more than twenty seconds flipping pages but the book is amazing. I guess I avoided it because I thought it was all about music and when I looked at the mix tape songs that introduced each chapter, it was all music I'd never heard of or didn't really like.

What I didn't realize was that the title was absolutely literal. Rob's mix tapes are all about love and more specifically, love for his wife, who died tragically a few years after they got married. Sheffield's writing is very intimate and poignant and his thoughts on falling hopelessly and madly in love, and then losing that love would hit close to home for anyone. Plus the way he talks about music is outstanding (he's a music journalist), even though I didn't know 90% of the songs he was referencing.

Seriously, this book was sad sad sad but in a breathtaking wonderful way and I'm delighted to have read it. It's like unbearably heavy and light at the same time. Here's an excerpt where he describes his wife, Renee.

"Girls take up a lot of room. I had a lot of room for this one. She had more energy than anybody I'd ever met. She was in love with the world. She was warm and loud and impulsive. One day, she announced she had found the guitar of her dreams at a local junk shop. I said, 'You don't even play the guitar.'

She said, 'This is the guitar that's gonna teach me.'

Unlike me, Renee was not shy; she was a real people-pleaser. She worried way too much about what people thought of her, wore her heart on her sleeve, expected too much from people, and got hurt too easily. She kept other people's secrets like a champ, but told her own too fast. She expected the world not to cheat her and was always surprised when it did. She was finishing her MFA in fiction, and was always working on stories and novels. She had more ideas than she had time to finish. She loved to get up early in the morning. She loved to talk about wild things she wanted to do in the future.

She'd never gone two weeks without a boyfriend since she was fifteen. (Two weeks? I could do a year standing on my head.) Before she met me, her wish list for the next boyfriend had contained three items: older than her (I failed that one), rural (that one, too), and no facial hair (I would have needed six months' notice to slap an acceptable sideburn together)."
-Love is a Mix Tape-

Infinite Jest

"He [David Foster Wallace] talked about a kind of shyness that turned social life impossibly complicated. 'I think being shy basically means self-absorbed to the point that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if I'm hanging out with you, I can't even tell whether I like you or not because I'm too worried about whether you like me.'"
-Rolling Stone, link from kottke.org-