Don't Run With Scissors: Today is Ben Dietz's Birthday!

We took a trip down to the Bucks County Neshaminy Mall AMC Theater to see Running With Scissors. After paying our fare and getting a small drink and a small popcorn, the total was at 26 big ones.

It's hard nowadays to see a movie in the theatre with netflix allowing us to save movies that are presently out in the theatres to our queue. A lot of competition. By the way, try spelling queue aloud.

As far as psychologically interesting characters and a storyline that at least keeps you guessing, this movie has adequate resources.

The thing that makes the movie worth watching (on DVD!) is the set and costume design.
Everything in Deirdre Burroughs's house was that decadent but ugly seventies retro hip, yet housewife motif. I now want to hang marigold everywhere, and glaze things in marigold, too. I want to wear gypsy scarves around my head and set up a faux microphone to prepare myself for the reading I make after I get accepted into the New York, and any other fantasies that apply to RWS.

Yesterday I dressed up like a pirate in tribute to Running with Scissors. That was one way the movie affected me.
It also affected me because it was that "I want to be a writer and I'm way cool and experimental, but unhealthily self-obsessed and weird in a way that makes people uncomfortable" narrative, told both through the son and the mother.

Pete's grandmother has the book and he will likely read it and say, "What?" All in all, this movie deserves three bananas.

For Your Consideration

In any case, the good news is that Christopher Guest is finally coming out with another movie, that I realized embodies not only the Postmodern conundrum: a movie that signifies other movies that signify nothing, etc., but also the solution: which is to participate in making fun of ourselves in a way that makes us think AND makes us laugh and tricks Hollywood into paying a shitload of money to make fun of themselves. It stars all of the usual suspects, and is written by Eugene Levy, a man who can play opposite Samuel Jackson as a Dentist is a terrible movie The Man, which I couldn't even bear watching ON DEMAND with Tara.

Anyway, the movie is due out November 17th, 2006. Come with me!

Etc. and Netflix Reviews

Let me tell you. I love the Netflix Friend Feature. You look at some movie, for example, the recommendation of the movie Primer, based on my liking to the Life Aquatic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (I almost typed The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Shirt), and then it says something like "Ben Dietz HATED it."

It's kind of like in Mortal Combat when Dan would come from the corner of the screen and yell Toasty! all of a sudden. If it were expected it would just be boring. But instead, it's a surprise "Hated IT!"

So apparently I am very slow to watch movies I receive. Here are my research findings thus far:

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

Okay, so this one was recommended to me by JR Randolph, a person I worked with for about one month at a coffee shop. He went to film school (something I wish I had done so as to come away with SOMEthing from my education), and wrote a list of movies on a guestcheck. I watched only one before losing it in my paperphiliac bedroom.

This movie would technically fall into the category of German New Wave. But Who Gives A ?

The point of this movie is to watch German people playing Spanish people searching for F'ing El Dorado and being dumb greedy idiots. The Scenery is beautiful, but maybe I had been watching too many action movies at the time, because I found the beautiful imagery to be slow as balls and sleep-inducing. Then, again, so are most things.

In any case, if you want to see the best ending of your life and perhaps turn it into a Play for Theatre, or somehow be Aguirre for Halloween, be my guest. This is also playing at the Film Forum on 10.30 and 10.31. Oh Werner Herzog, You Grizzly Man.

In the end, I rate this movie: 2 bananas.

Moving on....

Sherman's March

This movie was recommended to me a few years ago by Gallatin Adjunct Professor of a Class called "Self Fashioning in Film, Movies, and Literature" or something like that. His name was and still is Christopher Packard. I believe he writes books and is also at the New School University.

Well, this one is a serious must-watch. This is likely old news for many of you, but for those of you who would like to see why mockumentarys are so effective, watch this DOCumentary and see the lines of fiction and reality blur into one big crazy pot of human stew.

PLUS: you get to see people's refuge forts for the Apocalypse they are awaiting. You can copy off of them. OR be an Apocalyptic Nuclear War Shelter for Halloween based on the movie. Moving on...

In the end, I rate this movie: Four Bananas.

The Brothers Quay Collection

This movie was something I got into after reading one of my favorite novels published in recent years: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. It's in the front of St. Mark's Bookshop by the register if you want to pick it up. And you SHOULD, because the amount of money you spend on beer and food should at LEAST rival what you spend on movies, books, and any other thing that encourages people to continue to be useful geniuses. Subjectively speaking.

Anyway, I wanted to see The Street of Crocodiles, one of the short animated films done by this pair of Genius Brothers. But I had the same problem that I had with the WHerzog film. I was BORED to tears despite how beautiful and inventive this animation was. Also I was in the Poconos with a bunch of people who had been drinking way too much beer. Not the right time. So I read the book instead. My favorite part of the book was the introduction about the author, Bruno Shulz, who is an example of a buried genius who was killed and discovered by what could be called arbitrary luck or fate, words I find often to be interchangeable since I'm not God.

Overall, I rate this film: Five Bananas if you're not Drunk, No Bananas if you Are.
Overall, I says, (not a typo), read the book too!

Please be my netflix friend if you have Netflix. I think it's radical.


In the next blog:

Rear Window
Rashomon
Barton Fink
Teen Witch
Strangers on a Train
North by Northwest
The Gleaners and I
and... Delicatessen

Or at least two of them.. you know how I am.

By the way: I really really really like comments. Like... a lot.

American Culture$

New York has Baby Phat and Heatherette. Europe has Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga.

Why is it that we lose real fashion, a la Boudicca, to Europe? It's because to be in Parisian or London Fashion Week requires that you be invited by an elitist council before you are permitted to show something you will call "fashion."

It is exactly what the difference between American and French Snobbery is. In the US: If you have lots of money, you can bypass manners, etiquette, cultural knowledge, and to some extent: talent, style, and intelligence. In Europe it seems at least the rich are eating with the right forks when they are making snotty comments over dinner.

Personally, I prefer the historical snobbery of corsets and sixteen utensils. Because at least its culturally grounded in aristocracy over the ages. Here you can drive an H2 and spit out the window while smoking Newports, so long as you make sure everyone knows you are wealthy, your ass will get nice and kissed.

American culture in the 20's up until the 80's had some character. As technology increases and monopolies slowly and silently build up in the media and mass production arena, the person who can be the greediest is allowed to dictate the fashion of our day.

That's why at New York Fashion Week, it's either pure bore market friendly or Spectacle that transcends any perhaps misses any fashion market functionality, (which is neccessary for a designer to truly change anything.)

It's like we can be the local times or Star magazine with little that does not try to be some sort of conveniently digestible entertaining knowledge with spectacle in between, a la The Post's Article about both the weather and Mariah Carey's outfit, entitled "Mariah doesn't care if her knees freeze."

Come on America, we get it! You know how to make a lot of money by catering to traditional and boring people. We get it. You are capable of surprising people with your raucous, lewd, and spectacled, psuedo-punk cocaine and alcohol infested party people. But what are our cultural values aside from what is market-friendly, and what rises with its sole purpose to fight against captitalism? Who is creating their own space here and surviving in the mess? Wayne Coyne? Charlie Kauffman? The New Yorker?

You tell me.