I decided to do a small, special line for the Village Scandal. The woman had said she was interested in a necklace like the one I was wearing, but in a choker length. I made one, I'll make two more. Then I came up with an earring where I put about a dozen beads on headpins, put them on a jumpring, then chain and an earring hook. Kind of a play on a 1960s cocktail earring. Since this store does a lot of vintage-look stuff, it should be perfect. Made four pair of the earrings, and I think I'll make one more, and maybe one for myself. I've done that style some, only without the chain.
Apart from making four pair of earrings this weekend, I watched The Dirty Picture and Senna and a few episodes of Downton Abbey.
Downtown Abbey: had to see what all the fuss was about. Dear Lord, it's Upstairs Downstairs again, and with Maggie Smith in it! You had me at "Ring for tea"!
The Dirty Picture was probably one of the better mainstream Hindi films of 2011. Vidya Balin was excellent, and I always like Naseeruddin Shah; I actually know him from western movies too. It's awards season over there, too, of course, so you get a pretty good idea of what was mainstream in the past year. (Also, I watched those Indian showbiz programs on Saturday morning, and that's all they're ever pushing.) So, there'll be a lot of prizes for films and people in films like Don 2, Ra.One, Bodyguard, Desi Boyz, and so on. Vidya Balin should win some prizes and there were a couple of first-rate songs in The Dirty Picture. But it's gonna be all Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan.
Where was I? Dirty Picture. Some of the plot was just really bizarre, and I find that in a lot of Indian movies. Sometimes I must be missing something...other times, it's probably just bizarre. In this movie, I couldn't quite figure out why the Abraham character (Emraan Hashmi) became the enemy of Silk. I got that he didn't like the idea of using sex to sell movies, but I didn't get why this made him feel he had to destroy her. It just seemed like an insane overreaction. And then there was this business about how he both liked and and hated her, and since I couldn't figure out why he hated her, it wasn't working for me at all. But the overall rise-and-fall plot was just fine.
Senna was a very talked-about documentary last year, about a Brazilian Formula One race car driver who was very successful and well-known in the mid-80s until his death (crash) in 1994. Not being much of one for car racing, I had no idea that they put cameras right on the cars, so there were big chunks of the movie where you are actually watching a race from Senna's seat, which is pretty amazing. But I was also acutely aware of the construction of the film, that what was shown was very carefully chosen to create only one opinion about the man and the events. No distractions, no uncertainties.
This is going to be a murderous week at work -- classes starting tomorrow, and I've somehow found myself with three interns. Learned just this past week that I would have to take a high school intern along with the two college interns I already have. I feel like I'm going to spend all my time finding things for them to do. And I'm going to have someone in there with me almost every working hour, which feels a little stifling. But I'll just take it as it comes.
Do I distract myself with never-can-happen imaginings? Well, yeah. Having a small life day-to-day doesn't mean I can't have a big life in my head and my heart. I don't suppose there's anything wrong with doing the daily things right, as much as possible, and dreaming big dreams.
I guess movie criticism has become a big part of this blog. Some years ago, I had a lot of back trouble and had to spend a lot of time in bed on my back, which was when I bought my first VCR. I watched so many movies that I felt I had to justify all of that time spent, and starting writing reviews for the NYU Law newspaper (I was working there at time, not studying).
I'm not sure why I felt guilty about spending so much time watching movies, but I suspect it was AA. I'd been sober for about six months before I hurt my back, and the way I spent my time had become very careful and deliberate. Taking life as it came had caused me to be drunk and high, as I understood it, and I had to relearn what to do with myself. I walked on eggshells for those first few years sober, and I guess it was a good way to get into better habits. Make no mistake -- AA was the best and the only thing I could do back then. Later on, I found it stifling and way too closed. (This is a little on my mind since an old sponsor just got back in touch.)
Yesterday's films were The Ides of March and Moneyball. The former was directed by George Clooney, starring Clooney but mostly a showcase for Ryan Gosling, who has grown into a marvelous actor. A lot of good character actors in it, too: Paul Giamatti, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It involved secret dealings within a Presidential primary. Well done and interesting for American viewers, probably a little difficult for others.
Same with Moneyball. Mr. Bachchan tweeted yesterday, "Life is too short to explain cricket to Americans." Explaining baseball to Indians is probably just as tough. (And no one, as yet, has been able to explain football to me.) Moneyball is a true story about the general manager of the Oakland A's in 2004, who adopted the mathematical statistical analysis of Bill James to rebuild a team which was staggering from the loss of three key players. He didn't win the playoffs, but did break an MLB record when the team won 20 consecutive games. It was a really nice performance by Brad Pitt, who's starting to remind me a bit of Robert Redford. Also nice work by Jonah Hill. And what do you know -- Phillip Seymour Hoffman again.
Hoffman and John C. Reilly are two actors I can watch in almost anything, and I tend to think of them together because I saw both for the first time in Boogie Nights. (Which was one of my favorite movies, and I recommend it wholesale if you can handle even more sex than in the usual American movies.)
As much as it's not a good thing when we have computer trouble at work, it does mean I'll get a visit from Tamsir, who is one of the nicest, coolest, and most interesting people I've met in a long time. He actually showed up with flowers for me yesterday, since we hadn't seen each other since before the holidays; totally unexpected, and it made a big impression on me. I know he does read this blog occasionally, so if you're reading this -- thanks again. I'm so glad to know you.
I cannot believe I am at work today. It is simply dead as a doornail. I don't even know if there are any therapists in the treatment rooms. The subway was dead quiet and the streets were dead quiet and even my coffee cart guy (who is Muslim) wasn't out this morning. I keep thinking maybe I'm here by mistake, that I was really meant not to come in today and misunderstood Lucie. I had asked to use comp time to take the 23 and 26th, and the 30th and 2nd, and she questioned whether I felt behind in my work. I had been out sick twice over two weeks, not very usual and very much stress-related, and had felt a little behind at one point. Now the coming week seems yawningly empty, though there will probably be therapists around for the rest of the week. Judy should be back in tomorrow, and Lucie will likely be working from home (she only comes in here Mondays and Fridays).
I'm pleased to report that I managed to pull myself out of that dreadful self-consciousness about the perceived snub/competitiveness of that woman in the online community; the community involves Bollywood, and my "problem" with this woman was tainting the whole thing for me. A piece of this was also that I had recently seen part of a film dealing with caste and "reservations" (basically the Indian version of affirmative action for persons from lower castes, who had been disadvantaged as far as education and employment). I had then read a piece in the New York Times about the caste issue, and had asked something about it in this online community. I had included my email address, in case someone felt they wanted to reply private, but I had absolutely no response, privately or online. I started to think that perhaps it had been a rude or offensive, a topic One Didn't Discuss, and somehow this got tied in with the difficult woman. Maybe I expected that as a fellow American, she might have been kind enough to respond to this very American question (even if only to tell me that it was bad taste to bring it up). So I ended up posting an apology for having asked the question, in case it had offended anyone. I had no response to that either, which was kind of a relief.
I should explain that this community is basically a cast of around 300 characters who read an comment on the blog of a particular Bollywood personality (connect those dots, if you would). The blogger clearly reads some of the comments and occasionally replies, but the commenters seem to also communicate with each other and even build bonds and friendships. I guess I was expecting to feel more welcomed, but maybe I'm just too new. I suppose this was also some of the issue with this woman: we had discovered some things in common and it seemed as if she reached out to me, and then when I responded, she was silent. This is probably a snub, or her feeling somehow threatened; one of the things that I found annoying was that she seemed to be trumpeting a very close personal relationship with the blogger. I somehow read this, in addition to her maybe-snub, as a message that she was the "American girl/best friend," and that there was no room for me. She did a lot of sharing (the rather uninteresting) details of her life as if he would hang on her every word, both on the blog and on Twitter. (I did notice that he does follow her on Twitter, but this may owe to her being an old-guard fan, who knows? Not my business.)
However, no one else posts things like that. Some people have been lucky enough to meet him, and there have been some posts saying things like, "It was nice to meet you, thank you for spending a little time with me," and some very gushy I-love-you posts; but no one else is acting like she is having an actual love affair with him. I realize that she is probably bugging the shit out of a lot of people, not just me. Additionally, if indeed they were having such a close relationship, it wouldn't be playing out so publicly; they would simply email privately.
I had a situation in the past where I belonged to a fan community which was not a blog, but simply a fan group/listserv, and it happened that I was a close personal friend of the person of whom we were fans. But apart from passing along some news (prior to the time when he became computer-literate enough to participate himself), I didn't go on and on about how we spoke on the phone every day or what I got him for his birthday or a joke he told me or a trip we went on together. He was a musician, so mostly I reported on things connected to that. I made no secret of the fact that we were personal friends, and it was understood that I had special access; I did mention when I had attended a rehearsal, or a private party he played, or when he played a new song for me in his living room. But it was never, "I'm the only one he invited!" or "No one else has heard that song yet except his wife!" or "I sat in the front row at the gig and he smiled at me the whole time!" I mean, yuk. My posts were more along the lines of, "Victor played a song for me that will be on his next album, a bouncy Cajun thing with anti-Bush lyrics, very funny. The producer has been stalling, but the album should be released in June."
Anyway, I just decided that this woman was a big asshole and everyone knows it, if they bother to think about her at all. And since I had no response at all from anyone about my caste questions, I stopped letting any of it get in the way of my participation as a commenter or my enjoyment of all things Bollywood.
I did want to say something more about Twitter. I had joined some time back, but found the word limit very frustrating, and couldn't figure out how to get followed anyway. I followed a handful of people, mostly comedians, who did know what to go with 140 characters. But I probably hadn't logged on for a year until recently, again following my Bollywood curiosity. So I'm following about 4-6 people/media outlets connected to Bollywood, and have added on more comedians and writers. I'm still only followed by about 10 people, but have started participating in some hashtagged jokes, where I have to say I'm holding my own decently well. There were two particularly good ones over the weekend; one was tagged something like "Scorsese Xmas," which was basically lines from Goodfellas with Christmas things stuck in (e.g., "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an elf. For me, being an elf was better than being president."). The other was something like "If the movie was Jewish," which was film titles with Jewish things incorporated/substituted (e.g., "The Jewish American Princess Bride"). I contributed about the to the latter; I am most proud of "A Gefilte Fish Called Wanda," which got retweeted!
Which brings us to a third topic: movies. My Bollywood fervor does not seem unusual to me because I am a lifelong film buff; I didn't simply become mesmerized by the pretty colors or by Amitabh Bachchan. I come from a family of people crazy about film and theater (and in my brother's case, opera too). I have a reasonably encyclopedic knowledge of American film, which includes actors and directors, and to some extent, screenwriters, cinematographers, producers, studios, composers, and so on. It occurred to me over the weekend that maybe this was not a universal interest; it was during the Jewish-film thread on Twitter. I was about to post "Our Daily Matzoh," and stopped to wonder if the other posters would be familiar with King Vidor's 1934 "Our Daily Bread." (I didn't post it; still not sure.)
So the Bollywood thing is just another hunk of film stuff, although it is my first deep interest in the cinema of one particular foreign country. As a teenager, I watched my share of classic "foreign films" from a host of different countries: Japan (Kurosawa, Mifune), France (Jean Renoir and the New Wave), Spain (Bunuel), and of course all kinds of movies from England. I'll never know about Indian film what I know about American film; there's an awful lot to take in. Plus in Indian film, in addition to knowing actors and directors, there are also composers and singers and choreographers.
In American films, I know actors and directors best; see Andrew Sarris on "director-as-auteur": he posits that the director is the person who is most responsible for creating each film. It's a very American point of view, and for me, one I subscribe to as far as American film. Different story for me with Indian film. Except for someone like Satyajit Ray (who is more in the category of art-film director than Bollywood director), I haven't seen anything too distinctive in Indian directing -- with the notable exception of Ram Gopal Varma. I have a feeling I like Varma a lot because he's clearly very much influenced by American film, and a lot of his movies are in American-type genres like gangster films (he directed the wonderful Godfather-inspired Sarkar and Sarkar Raj).
I'm getting familiar with a fair number of Indian actors, of course, and already know the names of 20 or 30 lead actors and a handful of character actors. I'm less familiar with the singers, although you can't go wrong with Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar, who are of an older generation. I can't name a single songwriter except for two contemporary ones, Vishal and Shenar, and can't name any composers. Of course, I struggle with Hindi names and Hindi song titles and Hindi movie titles, because they are all entirely foreign. I've studied French and Spanish, and can make some sense of Italian, Portuguese, and even German; but in Hindi, I can't figure anything out and have to memorize words and names exactly, and watch all kinds of videos, interviews and clips to learn how to pronounce any of it properly. (I swear it took me two weeks to learn how to say "Amitabh Bachchan" correctly, after having spent a few days memorizing the spelling.)
Understanding Hindi words is even more difficult, since song and movie titles are rarely translated into English. I only seem to learn any meanings from a combination of hearing certain words repeatedly and reading subtitles; not knowing Hindi syntax or sentence structure, it's often hard to detect the meaning of a single word from hearing a sentence and reading its translation. I can say with some authority that "dil" means "heart," since it turns up as much in Hindi songs as "corazon" does in Spanish ones. There are also some cute doubled words in Hindi, like "kuch kuch," which (I'm fairly sure) means "something." I've also figured out which words mean "father," "mother," "brother" and so on, plus certain pronouns. I might know 20 or so words.
The idioms are beyond me, and sometimes one has to watch or listen very carefully to understand what's going on. For instance, I watched Maya Memsahib over the weekend, and there was one playful scene between a man and a woman where the translated dialogue made no sense at all; but from listening, I realized that each person was saying something that rhymed with what had been said before, so they were kind of improvising silly verse. Between trying to really understand the social and cultural context, struggling with the language, and simply the length of time required to consume so many very long movies, it's a pretty exhausting pursuit.
Maya Memsahib, by the way, was of some interest to me because I had read that it was a little sexier than most Indian movies, plus it was based on Madame Bovary. I enjoyed it, although I found the ending kind of weird and confusing. I do find I can understand the Indian point of view a little better when I see films that are based on/inspired by/remakes of American films, or a familiar piece of literature like Madame Bovary. The familiar material helps me see what is different and unfamiliar. (I recently bought a DVD on eBay that I can't wait to see: Ram Gopal Varma's take on the deliciously trashy American film Poison Ivy, with Amitabh in the role originally played by Tom Skerrit.)
I also started watching Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham (which I think means something like "In Joy and in Grief"), which is the same kind of masala (mix) film as Kabhi Alveda Naa Kehna. It's full of family drama and comedy and romance and dancing, with a host of very familiar faces: our old friend Amitabh; his wife, Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan; Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukarjee, Kajol, and Hrithik Roshan. It's from 2001, and everyone looks fantastic, although it's not the best hair I've seen on AB.
I'm fairly certain that he's worn a hairpiece since the mid or late 80s -- that is, that it's a hairpiece and not a weave or transplant -- and it's sometimes very close to natural and sometimes very close to awful. He also had his jawline tightened up at some point, subtle but very good work. I mostly hate fake hair and hate the idea that men have to display a full head of hair to be considered attractive, but I cut AB some slack here. For one thing, he was known from the old days for having an absolutely splendid head of hair; and even at nearly 70, he's still more of a leading man (albeit an older one) than he is a character actor.
On the topic of hair...Shah Rukh Khan is also known for having a simply gorgeous head of hair, and I found this really funny video on YouTube, nearly three minutes of clips showing nothing but Shah Rukh touching his own hair. It's silly and yet kind of fascinating, because he really is stunning in it. Let's see if I can dig it up...
It's a little weird getting YouTube videos onto Blogger, since for some reason, there isn't a mechanism to simply go to "My Favorites" on YouTube and select something for posting there. The Blogger link to post videos requires you to search YouTube, so you have to look up or remember the exact title of the video. However, a sear for "Shah Rukh hair" found this one right away. Enjoy.
Okay, it's 11:31 PM and it's 94 degrees. It was 102 for most of the day. Sure, it's July, but we're in Brooklyn, NY, not the fucking equator, not even Arizona or Texas. Yesterday, there was a tornado warning for all of the boroughs of New York except Staten Island, and a guy in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, got hit by lightning. This is not New York City weather. We do not have tornadoes here. We generally do not have violent thunderstorms. We might get a bunch of days in the 90s in July, but it doesn't go over 100 around here. And we've now had something like 15 days over 90 for the month of July. Just sayin'...I don't care how many sex massages Al Gore may or may not have had -- he's on the money about global warming.
Today I watched some of The Buddy Holly Story (I've seen it a million trillion times), and Walk Hard-The Dewey Cox Story with the commentary track. (Had to watch it while Barry was napping, because he doesn't like commentary tracks. I *adore* them!) Of course, these movies are somewhat related, since Walk Hard parodies the musical biopic genre, and the WH early-career-bad-recording-session comes right out of the Buddy Holly movie -- though like much of the BH movie, it's a fictional event.
There's a lot of made-up shit in the Buddy Holly movie, including fake Crickets (they couldn't get the rights from the real Crickets, so the movie has two fake "Crickets" named "Jesse" and "Ray Bob." It has unsupportive Holley (original spelling) parents, which is untrue. And it has the rejection from the country recording session bit, which is also not true -- Holly did record some bluegrass material early on.
The redeeming quality of this film, and it's a big one, is that Gary Busey not only does his own singing and playing, but it's recorded *live*. (Don Stroud as Jesse and Charles Martin Smith as Ray Bob also do their own playing and singing, also live.) What I love is that Busey definitely has the Holly posture and vocal mannerisms down, but he's not performing "off the record." He's performing live *as* Holly, and it's pretty mesmerizing, since there's very little actual film of Holly playing. It's also the best thing Gary Busey ever did, far and away.
In Walk Hard, John C. Reilly as the fictitious music legend Dewey Cox, does his own singing, though it's prerecorded. Since it parodies so many biopics and portrays a long career, Dewey passes through many musical styles and Reilly sings them all. There's an R&B song, an early-Elvisy song, some Bob Dylan-type songs (really, really funny), a Brian-Wilson-Good-Vibrations number (also funny for the visuals of the recording session), and of course a Johnny Cash number. But the one that blew me away was the faux-Roy Orbison number, because Reilly was maybe 95% of the way to singing exactly like Orbison. And Roy Orbison had one of the most astonishingly beautiful and unique voices in pop music. *No one* sings like Roy Orbison! David Hildalgo (Los Lobos) is in the neighborhood of Orbison, as is the guy from The Mavericks, but no one sings like him, and I've never heard anyone imitate his singing so successfully.
So the actors in question are John C. Reilly and Charles Martin Smith.
I *adore* Charles Martin Smith. Like pretty much everyone else, I first saw him in American Grafitti as the consummate nerd (and one of the first depictions of that then-newish stereotype). But what really got my attention was Never Cry Wolf. See it if you haven't. He plays a scientist studying wolves, who lives out in some snowy cold place (was it Canada?) for months and months to study them. He's all by himself, and goes a little native to better understand the animals. He not only stars in this movie, which is all too rare for character actors, but he basically carries the whole thing, start to finish. It's mostly just him, period. There were probably one or two people in the first few minutes (and maybe at the end, don't remember), but it's basically just him. How many actors do directors trust to do that, basically act a solo film, and how many actors carry it off? After that, I looked at CMS extra hard whenever he popped up in a movie. Never had a part that big again, but apart from The Buddy Holly Story, he had some decent parts in The Untouchables and Starman.
John C. Reilly is something like the next-generation Gene Hackman, but I actually think he's even better than Hackman. Hackman is a great character actor and can be funny, but Reilly is a great character actor, a great improvisor, a great singer and he's truly, truly funny. First noticed him in Boogie Nights, which is probably in my top five movies. I love the period (late 70s), love the acting, and it's unbelievably funny. Best thing Mark Wahlberg ever did, for sure. In addition to Reilly, it was the first time I ever saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman, another amazing character actor, but we'll get to him some other time.
I remember in the commentary to Boogie Nights, director Paul Thomas Anderson said something along the lines of, "You just point a camera at Reilly, and something amazing is going to happen. I never know what it's going to be, but it's always incredible." After Boogie Nights, Reilly did some non-comedy parts, including Chicago (where he sang, and was my favorite thing in the movie), but then someone rediscovered that he was funny -- someone from Planet Apatow, I believe -- and put him in Talladega Nights with Will Ferrell. That's probably where a lot of people first saw him. He was *really* funny -- you have to be, in a movie with Will Ferrell (not to mention Sascha Baron Cohen, who is one of the funniest people on the planet). So he's now well-known as a comic actor, and got to star in Walk Hard. I don't know how well that movie did, but I find it wildly funny. Planet Apatow again, with Jake Kasdan directing. (Jake is the son of Lawrence Kasdan, best known for directing Silvarado and The Big Chill.) Oh, by the way, Reilly can also dance, and though he doesn't exactly dance in Walk Hard, he has really incredible stage chops when he's performing the songs.
He also speaks Yiddish in one scene in the movie. Gotta love it.
The other thing that makes Walk Hard so much fun is all of the uber-cool cameos and bit parts. Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly, for some bizarre reason. Jack Black as Elvis. The Beatles: Jack Black (Paul), Paul Rudd (John), Justin Bartha (George), and Jason Schwartzman (Ringo). Harold Ramis as one of the Jews controlling show-biz, who in this movie are all Hassidic. Jonah Hill. And I've recently become a fan of Margo Martindale, who plays Dewey's mother (and is done up to look a good deal like Elvis' mother). The cast is all stellar, really.
Some of my top movies, in no given order -- and I'm not sure how many I can pin down just now -- are: The Right Stuff. Boogie Nights. Apollo 13. Godfather II. A League of Their Own. Auto Focus. Hairspray (the original, non-musical one). My all-time favorite unintentionally funny movie is easy to come up with: Showgirls. Favorite midnight movie: The Harder They Come. (Used to see it in an actual movie theater, The Elgin, actually at midnight. "Midnight movies" is more of a genre name now than it signifies movies you actually see at midnight in a theater. Same as B-movies, which used to be the second, less-good movie on a double bill, since no one shows double-features any more. I used to see double-features. I also saw double-header baseball games. I believe I'm dating myself.)
I also watched a bad movie today (Big Bad Mama) with an awesome soundtrack (David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, Richard Greene).
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