Oh movies...no seriously, you, movies.

So this past week has been one wonderful jaunt through the marvels of modern socio-economically created super viruses. I've been dehydrated, delirious, congested, barely in control, and bored as shit. I know. I've been pretty vocal about it. What the hell else am I supposed to talk about? All these deep uninterrupted thoughts I've been having? I think the deepest my thought processes went this week was planning out where I would move to when my neighbors convinced the local authorities I was a noise nuisance, because of my awesome Typhoid Mary impression.

But, so, you know, I had time. I played with the cats a lot. They liked that. I read some old 60s pulp novels I had lying around. One is about the secret shame a rich wife wreaks on her developer husband, when he discovers she's been sleeping with the same woman he's been cheating on her with! And conspiring with his evil land manager against him! But it's okay, cause after he saves his misguided and possessed wife from the fire, and she gets carted away as criminally insane, he goes home with the Joan Holloway character, a nice "uncomplicated" girl with heaving bosoms and red hair and a good heart despite her taste for Scotch. The two women illustrated on the cover, I discovered through a good hour of staring at it on the bathroom tile while in the bathtub, have the exact same face. Very symmetrical and doll-like. They actually kind of have the same hair style too, only he changed the colors. Which is the weird part, because why wouldn't you draw the brunette as pert and cute, and the blond as dramatic and sculptural? Isn't that how it's normally done? The artist who created this book cover, which was printed, not drawn by fucking hand like a album poster in Xanadu, couldn't be bothered to take the time to draw individual faces on these Sapphic witches. It makes me feel bad for him, since he probably wanted to be a real artist. But it also makes me kinda hate him.

I actually think that book is Nate's, I should give that back to him. I wonder if he even remembers that he had that.

So I read some stuff. But as I started to get better, I got antsy. The first few days, when you're really feverish and out of it, its awesome to lay in bed, read, pass out, read some more. You don't even notice time, just judge its passage by the liters of juice and gingerale you force down your throat and how tall the mountain of tissues by your bed grows. But then you wake up some, and the coughing and congestion and sinuses really hit you, and you need something way more in your face, to distract you from the nastiness that is your entire aura and physical being on this world. You watch some cable, but the same problem you had in middle school still exists, mid day television sucks. They don't even always show Bonanza anymore. Which is when it's movie time.

First surprisingly good movie I watched was The Brothers Bloom. This was actually before I got sick, but it was really good, and it had a trailer that totally did not do it justice, so I have to mention it. The trailer made me think it was going to be like In Bruges, which was also a good film. Very slick and con. And Brothers was slick as well, but it was also very very sweet and charming and well drawn. It's the story of two brothers who run grand epic cons, written like Russian novels by the older brother Stephen(Mark Ruffalo!), and all starring his young brother Bloom (Adrian Brody!)as the dark, melancholy hero. Stephen says a good con is one in which everyone gets what they want, and loves to have his criminal endings tie up perfectly, with flare and finesse. When Bloom starts to get heartsick, Stephen tries to write the perfect con for him, involving a weird adorable highly intelligent orphan heiress (Rachel Weisz!) and a Belgian, and a heist, and Russian mobsters. It was seriously wonderful. It was like, Pushing Daisies wonderful. There was this great running idea of how to tell stories through the movie, and all these quirks that sometimes you think maybe Wes Anderson has ruined for everybody else, but are awfully redeemed here. It made you feel stoned when you weren't, or drunk on good wine. It reminded me of the first time I watched Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.



Second, I finally watched Hannah Takes the Stairs. I remember when this first came out at SXSW and everyone was like "oh you stupid hipsters with your stupid mumblecore crap, what is that crap, make real movies." Well, at least that was the general vibe from the NYTimes. I mean, the mere description was enough to drive me away. Low budget film made with a video camera, with no scripts, and people just make stuff up and nothing really happens. Sounds fucking perfect, sign me up. But since I was already half-conked, and there weren't any Amy Adams films on On Demand that I hadn't watched, I decided it couldn't be so bad as to not deserve a mere hour and twenty minutes of my time.

I liked it. At first I wasn't sure, because it starts off with a naked Hannah (there's a lot of Hannah skin in the movie), and I was like, shit, some guy just made this so he could get this girl naked. But by the middle of it, you realize that this is kind of like hanging out with some people you know, and then you kinda think maybe this reminds you of your younger sister now, or yourself that one time, and that chair is pretty fucking cute but you could totally afford it, and maybe those hipster snobs who made fun of this crap outta be nicer to the hipster snobs that made this crap cause actually its pretty cute. So there you go. That last sentence is my review of this movie.



Finally, today, I watched Away We Go, which was that baby film that came out with Jim from the Office and Maya Rudolph. I remember I did want to see this when it was in theaters, but there's not a lot of reason to go watch a baby film at the actual theater is there? I mean, you don't go there with a date. You don't say "Hey, random friend, lets go watch a sentimental movie about parenthood, that's a good way to spend Saturday afternoon." I didn't know about this film's pedigree until the credits, which is good cause I went in expecting something trite and cute, but not super indie trite and cute. So when Good Ol' Mr. Eggers was weaving his magically disarming dialogue, I was caught without my McSweeneys armour on. Plus who doesn't like Sam Mendes? Doesn't he always get a free pass, like always? I never liked Maya Rudolph on SNL, in fact I hated her on SNL, but she's a good straight foil to Krasinki's goofiness. And by the way, she could still be on SNL, I have no idea, that show sucks so bad now. John's basically playing Jim from the Office, which is totally fine, that's Cusack worthy crack to me. Melanie Lynskey and Maggie Gyllenhaal are both great, and I usually won't say that about somebody who spells their name unnecessarily tricky like. The story is less about having the baby, and more about a couple building themselves an identity separate from the rest of the world. You're watching them achieve solidarity with every new dysfunctional situation they meet. It makes you happy they fell in love, which is something that happened way before the movie started, and is never in question the whole film. So the fact that it makes you a cheerleader for them is impressive, because there's no dramatic arc to root for.




Having said all this nice stuff though, I would like to now point out that it is the STUPIDEST MARKETING MOVE EVER to disable your movie's trailer from embedding on YouTube. Here, watch this trailer, but don't you dare go SHARING IT or SHOWING OTHER PEOPLE ON YOUR BLOG. What the hell? Look at all the nice things I'm writing about you, why would you make me search for a fucking viable link?

Other movies I watched this week: Dirty Dancing, I Love You Beth Cooper, Fargo, Anna Karenina, The Girl Next Door, Another Cinderella Story, a bunch of old westerns. I really need to go back to work.