Despite my nutty schedule, I’
ve been able to get in some quality movie watching. I’
ve seen some great stuff, some crappy stuff and some unclassifiable stuff.
First up,
The Beastmaster. So bad I fell asleep on purpose and then contemplated divorcing my husband who foisted this tripe on me.
Next night was
Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. Excellent movie, top notch. Compared to
The Beastmaster, it’s the greatest movie ever made. It’s not, but it felt like it that night. It’s got an almost prepubescent Diane Lane as a rebellious punk who inadvertently starts a music movement. Ray
Winstone is so young that I completely did not recognize him at all. This cool movie also features members of the Sex Pistols, Laura
Dern, Brent
Spiner (Data from Star Trek) and Elizabeth Daily (Dottie from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure).
Saturday night was not so great. We ordered up the new Madonna movie,
Filth and Wisdom, from the
OnDemand network.
Like Atlanta indicated, it was pretty much useless nonsense. Poor
Eugene Hutz needs to stick to touring with
Gogol Bordello. There’s not much use in playing yourself in a movie unless it’s a documentary (this is NOT).
Hutz is reduced to silly dialogue in which he spouts endless Ukrainian folk sayings (“we have a saying in my country…”) that come off like goofy Dave
Barryisms. The movie is about three roommates, two of whom use sex to make money. There’s a
stripper who never even strips in the movie.
Hutz is a joke as a male dominatrix who spanks guys and makes them lick his boots. Makes me long for
Wristcutters: A Love Story in which actor Shea
Whigham does
Hutz better than
Hutz does
Hutz (does that make sense?). It’s comical, not sexy or even a tad bit threatening. There’s no filth to be found, and certainly no wisdom. There’s some good music thanks to Gogol Bordello, but really it’s a waste of 84 minutes. Still, it’s better than
The Beastmaster.
Finally, after nearly 8 years of waiting,
the Flaming Lips have released their cinematic opus,
Christmas on Mars. After 8 years of waiting, it delivers pretty much just what you were expecting if you saw the original trailer released in 2003. The Lips created an interesting (albeit a bit pretentious, of course, and a tad too long) exercise in music and
filmmaking. The movie is about a
space station set up on Mars. All of the astronauts are starting to lose their minds due to isolation and a lack of oxygen. They see all sorts of crazy, sometimes upsetting hallucinations that often feature large
vaginas. There’s a new baby on board and the baby is struggling to survive. Also, Wayne
Coyne is an alien (in the movie and probably in reality, too).
Coyne the green alien comes to bring peace and love and joy and oxygen to the deteriorating crew. It’s silly and fun and the music is delicious. It’s a bit overlong but it’s a must-see for any Lips fan.
I wrote a novel, sorry about the long post.
HAPPY BELATED TO EMILY! Much love to my wonderful dear friend!
Oh, and the new
Ricky Gervais HBO comedy special made me laugh so hard I had tears rolling off my face. It was the funniest thing I’
ve seen in ages. Reminded me of how funny
Eddie Izzard once was.
