You know how I wasted MY weekend…

Gone Baby Gone

This was pretty freaking awesome, especially considering the fact that A.) It’s Ben Affleck’s directorial debut; and B.) I’d only ever seen Casey Affleck in the Ocean’s 11 movies, so watching him actually act is pretty neat.  Cool plot (missing toddler, coke-addict liar of a mother complicating things), lots of neat twists, and reliably good performances from everyone.  Oh, and CUTEST.  MISSING CHILD.  EVER.

My only complaints were that Morgan Freeman played Morgan Freeman again (although really, that’s not such a bad thing), that Boston accents are inherently silly and should not be used in voiceovers (I’m a Southerner, so I can mock here), and that voiceovers are, in and of themselves, pretty damned annoying.  They happen to be exceptionally well-written and delivered in this film, but Veronica Mars this is not.  And in conclusion–this is a very good movie, and it raises a moral dilemma nicely, but it is not as deep and hard-hitting as it wants to be.  Still, it’s worth your time and your money and your attention.

Recommended for:  Crime movie fans, mystery fans, anyone who likes an Affleck.

Hot Fuzz

A cop-movie spoof from the people who brought you Shaun of the Dead.  For the record, I HATED Shaun, but this was pretty funny.  Waaaaay too long and a little too British to fully translate, but still pretty funny.  I got a little impatient during the last two thirds of the movie, but I admit it:  I literally howled with laughter over a visual gag involving a potted plant on a moving train. 

Recommended for:  People who liked Shaun of the Dead, people who love (and love to make fun of) cop movies.

Disturbia

Shia LaBeouf punches out his Spanish teacher for making an insensitive remark about his dead dad, gets three months of house arrest, spends all of his time staring out the windows at his neighbors, and then becomes convinced that one of them is killing club sluts as a way to pass the time.  Psssst:  he totes is!1!!! 

Betcha ya didn’t see that one coming!  Wait…you did?  You are a jeeeeeeenyus!

Anyway, there is a lot wrong with this movie.  There is SO MUCH wrong with this movie, actually, that first I will tell you what is right with it:  Shia’s pretty eyes, and Aaron Yoo’s existence.  That’s it.  That’s all.  I mean, I could watch Shia bat his 12-foot eyelashes at me all day, and I could watch Aaron be hot pretty much 24-7, but that does not a movie make.  Tragically.

Okay…so.  Problems with this movie…problems with this movie…well, to begin with, life sucks.  It does.  Horrible things happen to good people for absolutely no reason.  But so many bad things happen to poor Shia for no reason that it’s like, come the fuck on.  He’s playing an upper middle class white kid in a nice suburb (murderer aside)–it just strains credulity to have EVERYTHING BAD, EVER, HAPPEN to him.  Also:  spying on girls isn’t sexy.  It’s perfectly understandable in a guy that young, and particularly from a guy raised in an era of easy-access amateur porn, but guess what?  Girls might think that being spied on because they are so teh hotness is flattering in the abstract, but in reality?  If I caught Shia staring through my window every day, I’d dismiss him as a panty-sniffing creep, and so would you.  And while we’re on the subject of shit that’s just not that believable:  you cannot tell me that that girl’s mother never came into her daughter’s room, saw her open windows, and squawked at her until she closed her curtains, because that happened EVERY DAY OF MY TEENAGE LIFE.

In real life, Shia never would have seen those boobies no matter how long he stared through his binoculars, because his little girlfriend would have had steel shutters installed on all her windows the SECOND her parents realized they lived next door to a juvenile delinquent.  TRY FOR A LITTLE REALISM, FOLKS!

Also:  people need to quit letting Shia go on rants.  He goes on these weird, uncomfortable rants in front of girls in like, every movie he’s in now.  Is that supposed to be funny or endearing?  Because it’s mostly just boring.

And in conclusion:  I hate to state the obvious, but Aaron Yoo is fiiiiiiiiine.  Seriously, that is a really hot man right there.   Oh, and he can act, too.  So why is he playing the whacky, whiny, cowardly side-kick again?  Wait, wait–I forgot.  BECAUSE HE’S ASIAN. 

Lame, guys.  Seriously fucking lame.

Recommended for:  People who thought that the Hitchcock version was just too damn “intellectual.”

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Let’s Get Political

My boyfriend is looking to buy a townhouse, so we’ve been going out with his realtor almost every weekend.  He’s looking mostly at foreclosures, simply because they’re cheaper:  they’re usually going for about 50,000 dollars less than they would have if they were being sold by their original owners.  I don’t have too much experience with real estate-my parents bought their house when I was nine, so I don’t remember much about that process, but I did help some former roommates pick out a house in Asheville two years ago.  The process then was…a little different.  We saw houses with plenty of wear and tear on them-I’ll never forget how hideously one place reeked of mildew-but there were no scattered toys, no forgotten notebooks, no belongings abandoned in the rush to get out.  The houses in Asheville may have been battered, but they were neat and clean and obviously straightened up for sale.  That’s not the case now.

  I could try to play on your heartstrings a little over that-over the thought of people forced out of their homes into an uncertain future.  But I won’t, because I know the typical American response:  “Serves them right for getting into something they couldn’t handle!  It’s not our problem!”  Or, more succinctly, as John McCain said, “any [government] assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.”  

Reward, punishment; fair and unfair.  Let me tell you a story about what’s “fair.”  My boyfriend and I went to look at one particular house.  We both really liked it when we examined the first floor and the basement-we both really liked it, until I climbed the stairs to the top floor and saw pieces of insulation littering the floor in front of the bathroom.  “What the fuck?” I asked, forgetting to watch my language in front of the realtor because I’d never seen anything like this.

 There was a hole in the bathroom ceiling.  There was a hole in the roof that went all the way through the attic and into the bathroom ceiling.

 The realtor told us not to panic, that roofs were surprisingly easy to fix, that this damage would probably not significantly impact the future value of the house.  But, she said, she was going to have to call the realtor who was representing the bank that owned the house, because they needed to get someone to patch the roof right away.  So my boyfriend didn’t cross the house off his list, although he obviously decided to keep looking at other properties.

 The next weekend we were out in the same area, so my boyfriend and the realtor decided to take another peak at this house.  When we got there, there was still a hole in the roof, clearly visible from the outside; when the realtor tried to open the door, the doorknob fell off. 

 My boyfriend crossed that house off his list and moved on.

 The thing is, though, that this house is a townhouse-it’s sandwiched between two other homes.  It shares a roof with two other houses.  Two other houses that, for the record, do not have “for sale” signs up in front of them.  Two other houses where people live, two other houses that probably represent those people’s life savings, two other houses that are attached to a house that is being allowed to crumble.  Pardon my language, but what the fuck are those people supposed to do while the bank hems and haws and stalls on fixing the damn place?

 You can argue about who should take the blame here:  the bank, for dragging its feet, the original homeowners for not having enough money to keep the house, global warming for providing the weather that probably led to the roof’s early demise.  You could argue about blame all damn day, but it won’t change the fact that because that house was foreclosed on, because it is in limbo, it may well become so damaged that it damages the properties around it.  This may have begun as one family’s problem, one family’s tragedy, but it’s since become the problem of several families.

 McCain says that “any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.”  But the fact is that the people who were responsible are being punished right alongside those who weren’t.  That damaged roof may damage the houses around it; on a larger scale, the economy is stagnating in part because of the number of foreclosures.  We are so quick to demand that people understand that their actions have consequences, but we are so slow to understand that often, their actions have consequences for us as well.  Like it or not (and mostly, I choose “not”), we are all connected to our neighbors, and we cannot escape being at least partially affected by their problems.    

This is why I will not be okay with a McCain presidency, even if he is “Republican lite.”  Because for all his talk about America, and what America means, he seems to have no understanding that part of being a country means being a community, and part of being a community means taking care of your own.  He honestly expects Big Business-the businesses who created this situation in the first place-to bail us out now.  The New York Times quotes him as saying, “[Mortgage lenders] have been asking the government to help them out.  I’m now calling upon them to help their customers and their nation out.”

 Think of that house with the hole in its roof; think of it, empty and damaged and waiting to be repaired while the bank drags its feet on getting a contractor because it can afford to absorb a 200,000 dollar loss.  That is the entity that McCain expects to fix this problem.  That is the solution he is proposing for this crisis.

I know a lot of people hate the idea of government interference, and for good reason.  But we have to be adults here, and as adults, we have to realize that this is not something that individual homeowners can fix, and it is not something that businesses will fix-at least not without a big, government boot up their asses first.  But more importantly, we need to recognize that we are a community, and that this is a community-wide problem.  That this is not something we can put solely on our neighbors, or solely on Big Business.  I am not happy that my tax-dollars are going to “bail out” people who made poor decisions, but I accept it-not because I am so giving and so caring and so selfless (ha!), but because I know that ultimately, I am only saving my own ass here.  I am only saving my family and my neighbors, and they are only saving me.  Because like it or not, this is a problem that we all share, and it will not go away simply because it’s “not our fault.”  The economy will not improve simply because we are not to blame; economic woes will not pass over our houses simply because we have made all the right choices.  McCain doesn’t seem to understand this-and I’m sorry, but that is the sort of incredible short-sightedness and obtuseness that got us into situations like this in the first place.  That is the kind of thinking that will only prolong the problem, not solve it.  That is the kind of thinking that we can no longer afford.  And this is why McCain is not an acceptable choice for president.

 

 

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Two for the Price of One

Megan McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings

I really liked both of these:  I actually got Sloppy Firsts through booksfree and was so enamoured of it that I bought Second Helpings as soon as I’d finished it; if not for the fact that I’m incredibly poor right now, I would have sprung for Charmed Thirds and Fourth Comings.  They’re the (fictional) diaries of Jessica Darling, a New Jersey teen whose best–really only–friend has just moved to Tennessee, leaving her with absolutely no one to confide in.  I love these books because Jessica is no Mary Sue:  as witty and clever as she can be, she’s also judgmental, close-minded, and willfully blind.  She’s a smart teenager, but she’s still a teenager,  and McCafferty manages to make her seem intelligent without falling into that “wise beyond her years” bullshit that typically plagues Teens with Issues novels. 

That said, these books aren’t perfect:  they occasionally suffer from plot twists that would seem more at home in a soap opera or a bad teen movie.  And their racial, ethnic, and gender politics are as icky as what goes on in any American high school–that is, pretty damned icky.  Jessica says some pretty close-minded and stupid things and never gets called on them specifically, which sucks; the good news is, though, that in Second Comings, one of her teachers flat-out tells her that she’s very smart but that she’ll never amount to anything if she doesn’t get the fuck out of the suburbs and start expanding her worldview a little.  So maybe things change in the latter two novels–I don’t know.  I do know that McCafferty makes it very clear that Jessica is a deeply untrustworthy narrator.  It’s not that Jessica doesn’t want to tell the truth or that she deliberately misleads the audience; she just has a very set idea of what’s going on around her, and even when things don’t match up to that idea, she behaves as if they do. 

In other words:  TEENAGER.

Recommended for:  Anyone who can stand to relive their teen years, actual teenage girls.

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Agnes and the Hitman

Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, Agnes and the Hitman

Okay, first off?  Great title, fabulous cover design–all around an excellent way to pull readers in.  The paperback cover looks like the font’s been fucked with a little, though, which is a shame.  But anyway.

A brief plot summary:  Agnes is a food-columnist who’s promised to host her best friend’s daughter’s wedding; in exchange, the grandmother of the bride will waive three month’s worth of mortgage payments on Agnes’ house.  But–shockingly–things keep going wrong with the house/property, perhaps necessitating a location change.   Plot sound needlessly complicated enough?  Oh, it gets worse.  Shane is a hitman (!) who’s in the middle of a job when his uncle calls, asking him to protect Agnes:  someone’s broken into her house and tried to kidnap her dog.  Oh, and she hit the intruder with a frying pan, indirectly causing him to fall to his death.  Yes, that’s right.  The heroine actually killed someone, albeit accidentally.

Shenanigans ensue.

This all takes place in a small Southern town, so there are plenty of Southern stereotypes (think multiple hillbillies), and the bride’s family is Italian, so of course the mob is involved (the word “goombah” comes up a lot).  I happen to be an Italian-American who was raised primarily in the South, so I found this all kind of wearying.  Not offensive, just…boring.  I think we’ve all seen The Godfather and Deliverance–can we please move on already?  The overuse of these stereotypes gave away pretty much every single “plot twist” in Agnes, so…yeah.  As funny as Crusie and Mayer may find mob warfare and Southern inbreeding, they just sacrificed any suspense within the narrative for the sake of a few tired jokes.  It wasn’t worth it.

Final verdict?  This is infinitely better than Mayer and Crusie’s first collaboration (Don’t Look Down), which is the only thing Crusie’s ever been involved in that I’ve actively disliked.  Agnes and the Hitman is a marked improvement over that pile of schlock, but I’m still not convinced that another Mayer/Crusie collaboration is worth the pain.  I’ve never read Mayer’s solo stuff, but Crusie’s is excellent.  She doesn’t need the help–if “help” is what you want to call this.  She’s always had a problem with slightly dull heroes and overly histrionic romance-novel language; in her own works, both of these issues are muted and manageable.  In her collaborations with Mayer, though–well, the heroes tend to be run-of-the-mill, dead inside spies/covert military personnel.  Boooooooooring.  And Crusie and Mayer have ramped up the romance speak to compensate for all the gunfire–I swear, if I had to read one more mention of Agnes’ round ass, I was going to march to Ohio or wherever it is that Crusie lives and beat the crap out of her.  He wants to fuck her.  WE GET IT, OKAY?!  Let’s move on.

Recommended for:  Die-hard Crusie and/or suspense fans, romance readers, anyone who’s really bored (it’s highly readable, albeit highly flawed).

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Glutton for Punishment

Megan Crane, Frenemies and Everyone Else’s Girl

I can sum up both of these books thusly:  Woman makes a lot of really stupid fucking decisions because she lacks any sense of perspective and has little self-knowledge.  Usually, these decisions involve sex with someone she views intensely inappropriate, but who really isn’t and who ends up being her central love interest.

In other words, Crane writes coming-of-age novels.  You know what?  I hate coming-of-age novels.  They are, frankly, completely tedious.  I don’t much care to watch people make unbelievably stupid choices because they’re either too young to know better, or too willfully blind to realize that they’re too old for this shit.  I love character evolution as much as the next person, but I really hate it when the whole novel is about the protagonist’s efforts to Grow Up.

In short:  Megan Crane, through almost no fault of her own, is simply not my thing.  I say “almost” because she’s a HUGE misuser of block exposition/characterization, and really.  That’s just sloppy.  You want me to know that your characters have been bestest friends forever?  There are plenty of ways you can SHOW me that; pages and pages of backstory are simply unnecessary under most circumstances.  It takes me out of the narrative, and honestly?  It makes me get sick of your narrator very, very quickly.

Recommended for:  Die-hard chick-lit fans, people who are constantly fighting with their friends and family, people who are still acting like they’re teenagers when they’re actually thirty.

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Two Clooneys

Ocean’s Thirteen

Wow, this was wretched.  I mean, Ocean’s Twelve wasn’t any good, but this?  This was actively bad.  The gimmick’s worn completely thin, the interactions between the characters (which were so charming and seemingly effortless in the first movie) are awkward and predictable, the motivation never really gels, and–most unforgivably–the con isn’t even all that interesting.

Whatever.  Watch the first one, and pretend the sequels don’t exist.

Michael Clayton

This one is pretty damn good, even if I haven’t quite sorted out how I feel about the use of children, women, and crazy people as unwitting catalysts for change (it’s the “unwitting” part that I’m a little touchy on).  It is a beautiful exploration of how one person can change how you view the world without even trying, though.  Also:  Tilda Swinton got the Oscar for this, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.  It’s a good performance and all, but it kind of got on my nerves because A.) Her accent kept creeping out on certain words, and that’s a pet peeve of mine; and B.) Because her delivery made it sound like she was Lady Fucking Macbeth.  Which was in many ways quite appropriate, but I disliked the staginess of it.  That’s just me, though.

In conclusion, watching this, I sort of felt bad for Clooney–because he is just never going to be a tour de force, acting-wise.  Not that he’s bad or anything–far from it–but he’s just so…innately understated.  This is the kind of guy who just always seems chill, even when he’s yelling at you.  Something about his facial expressions and his voice…anyway, he’s always going to be really understated, and he’s never going to get super-showy roles because of it.  Boo hoo?

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