Paper Heart

Charlyne Yi, you guys! Why was I ever on the fence?

Let's talk Paper Heart. Going into My Paper Heart Experience, I didn't know what to expect. I'd read entirely negative reviews. I read that it was too cute. I read that the documentary/faux-documentary style was too gimmicky and confusing. And I read that the font was bad. Apparently that's a normal thing to complain about when you review a movie. Sure.
I don't know why I believed all those jerks. This was one of the best movies I've seen all year (to be fair, I haven't seen a lot of movies). Charlyne Yi is extraordinarily likeable, and so is the rest of the cast, including the "director" Jake Johnson and everyone's favorite, Mikey Cera. And you know what? All the reviews I read, for some reason, had SUCH a hard time comprehending how part of this movie was real and part of it was scripted. It drove all those old dudes crazy! I can't figure out why. The interviews were obviously coming not from a mean-spirited place (like in Borat), but from a place of genuine interest. But I thought the saving grace of the movie was that it never veered into saccharine, optimistic territory. It didn't present falling in love as the end-all, be-all of a person's life, nor did it assume that all love stories have guaranteed happy endings. It was, overall, exactly what I said I was looking for: a realistic love story about a young woman! One that doesn't focus on clothing, money, or end with a wedding. Maybe we should all see more movies like this, with a funny, intelligent woman in the lead, instead of whatever God-awful romcom is out now. I mean, I like a good romantic comedy, but The Ugly Truth? Come on.
In short: Why you should see this movie:
1. Charlyne Yi writes fun music!
2. Funny interviews with kids!
3. Puppets!
4. There is a scene in the zoo!
5. The real love stories are actually hilarious and heartbreaking, occasionally at the same time!

Class is in session.

Below these words, I've embedded the trailer for the new Michael Moore movie. Watch it. Don't worry. This isn't a post about Michael Moore who literally no one can even get angry about any more.



Why did they use that song? Obviously that song is old. Like, by a couple years. That's not a problem. They use old songs in trailers all the time. What bothers me is that they even considered using this song when it became so popular due to its use in the trailer for Pineapple Express. And that was last year. They even used the same editing pattern.

I've been meaning to make a blog post about this for some time, but this trailer finally Andy Rooney'd me over the edge. To me, this is just like when the KFC bowl swept the globe, and Popeyes quickly created the Big Easy Chicken Bowl. Aside from the name being misleading (there was nothing easy about that chicken bowl) it was just taking something that worked for someone else and doing that thing again. Paper Planes was great in Pineapple Express. Paper Planes in Capitalism: A Love Story is the Big Easy Chicken Bowl.

I just watched Days of Heaven last week, and I heard this song. They used this song in the trailer for Benji Button! I understand that it's not generally the filmmakers making these decisions (although for David Fincher it probably was), but they need to stop doing this. Everyone knows that Quentin Tarantino loves to put wacky music in his movies. That's his thing. Whoah, did you expect him to use that Ennio Morricone song in there? What we don't need is for every trailer to use the same recycled music for all eternity. It's not even used to reference anything other than another movie's success. This whole thing is going to cave in on itself while this song plays.

This Guy

I'm not at all excited about Inglorious Bas-turds. I have never been excited about it, and now that it is almost out, I don't care at all. I think it's cool that it has such a weird cast. BJ Novak, Paul Rust, Samm Levine, and Mike Myers? Unfortunately, that is not enough to get me to go see this movie (unless my dad wants to go). At this point, the only person I care less about than Quentin Tarantino is Eli Roth, and I keep seeing his dumb face everywhere. Check out this great interview with him on the A.V. Club. Keep it to yourself, Eli Roth.

I done did it again.

Love in This Club

This is just a song we love. I listened to this three times in a row this morning in the car.

Movie Night with H.

It's probably pretty obvious that Alex and I like movies a lot. It makes sense. We grew up watching a lot of them with Papa Winfrey, whose passion for movies (that have happy endings) knows no bounds. But H. didn't have the same type of movie-filled young adulthood. In fact, he hasn't seen most of the movies that I love. So, in a moment of weakness that he surely regrets, he told me I could show him some movies.
I will be the first to admit that I'm hardly a film expert. My film education is limited to two classes, one in high school (where we watched Psycho no fewer than three times, which is fine and all, but it wasn't really such a subtle movie to begin with) and one in college (where I enjoyed all the movies but got really bored writing papers and hearing other people's opinions, which is yet another reason I was such a bad student). I know next to nothing about a lot of classics, but a whole lot about certain weird genres. I've never seen Citizen Kane, but I have seen the climactic dance scene of Staying Alive about five times. Regardless! H. has asked for help, and help I will provide.
My first choice was influenced heavily by the events of the past week: Pretty in Pink. It fits into my favorite movie category, which is, "Movies you can sincerely enjoy, but also laugh at." I just love this movie, and I knew that H. would, too. It has drama, lip-syncing to Otis Redding, James Spader lookin' hot, a dress-making montage set to a soundtrack of New Order, and one perfectly placed F-bomb, which can be found below in one of my favorite scene. Here, Andie confronts Blane about ditching her while James Spader lurks in the stairwell:

H. called me a "filthy, fucking liar!" a lot after watching that. We also noted his many similarities to Duckie. All in all, I think our first movie night was a success. H's review was, "She should have ended up with Duckie." Agreed.

So...when's Lexie coming home?

As Joni Mitchell once famously sang (in a sentiment that's been echoed countless times since by such esteemed musicians as The Counting Crows' Adam Duritz), you don't know what you got 'til it's gone. Joni was right, as always. I'd gotten used to having Alex here to watch movies with me every weekend. But now he's gone (for a few days)! On Saturday I hardly knew what to do with myself. He's backwoods camping in Tennessee with no cell reception, and H. was dancing his ass off at a wedding reception. Since I usually text/call either one or the both of them about 15 times a day, I was at a loss. So I watched a movie by myself.

The cover of Don't Look Now describes it as "A Psychic Thriller." Because there's a psychic involved (spoiler alert! Not really). It's hard for me to talk about Don't Look Now without talking about one specific thing: the sex scene. It was, hands down, the most explicit sex scene I've ever seen in a regular, rated R movie. Apparently, 9 frames (roughly half a second) had to be trimmed out of the scene to prevent the movie from getting an NC-17 rating. Only God (and I guess the people who worked on the film) knows what was shown in the half a second, but it must have been actual penetration because holy moly. I am not going to link to the scene because, I don't know, maybe you have fragile eyes or something, or maybe you don't want to watch a toupee-d Donald Sutherland having sex, but if you are curious just search for "Don't Look Now love scene" and you'll find it. In my research, I've come across some conflicting theories: one that Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie were together at the time and that this was real, unsimulated sex, and another that they just met immediately before shooting the scene and that it is not real. No confirmation from either Julie Christie OR Papa Sutherland about this, which is frustrating. To me. Because obviously these are the sorts of things I care about in a movie.
So anyway. Don't Look Now is not a "scary" movie, strictly speaking. It is more of a psychological thriller, in the vein of Rosemary's Baby or Let's Scare Jessica to Death (that vein can hold both good and shitty movies, apparently). Quick plot summary: Papa Sutherland and Julie Christie's daughter drowned, and now they are convinced that she's appearing to them in some way in Venice, where they're restoring a church. The ending is actually shocking. I gasped! Do yourself a favor and don't find out what the ending is before seeing it (even though I know Alex already knows it), because it sounds so silly just reading it, but it's actually quite creepy and effective after seeing the whole movie!
This movie was listed on both Bravo's Scariest Movie Scenes of All Time AND Entertainment Weekly's Sexiest Movie Scenes of All Time. And if you're anything like me, that's enough to make you want to see it. It's much slower paced than the trailer makes it seem, but I still think you'll really like it. Winfreys approve.