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An
Affair of Love On Wednesday, August 30, I rode over to Berkeley, CA. I met my friend Genevieve (who lives in Berkeley) for Roman Polanski's The Tenant at the UC Theatre. Many, many years ago I had seen The Tenant on video. I didn't think it was very good. I think I thought it was boring. Several years later, while living in Hollywood, I had a chance to see it again at the New Beverly Theatre. Then I thought it was awesome. Weird and creepy, in some ways the scariest film I thought I'd ever seen. So, anyway, I recommended the movie to Genevieve once, and she rented it and didn't think all that much of it. So, I figured that she might need to see it in the theatre for full impact, as I did. Then we noticed it would be playing at the UC Berkeley and so we made a date to see it. She liked it 4 to 5 times better this time. I had some very good popcorn and Coke. She had popcorn and Dots. She may have had a Coke too. Actually now that I think about it, it was Pepsi. Because I said "Coke" and the girl said "Pepsi?" Polanski has the starring role in this film that he directed and co-wrote. He plays this little mousy man who moves into an apartment, when the previous tenant threw herself out of the window. The movie moves very slowly, purposefully I think, like most of Polanski's films. (It builds the tension and stuff like that.) Polanksi has a party with his rather loud and tacky friends. He meets a girl, Isabelle Adjani, hangs out with her a little. Deals with some tenant hassles. Then weird things start to happen. It's an old building, and there is one bathroom down the hall for everyone to use. Polanski can see the bathroom window from his window, as the building arcs around that way. He notices people going into the bathroom and just standing there for very long periods of time. Then he gets paranoid that the tenants -- and everybody -- are trying to get him to commit suicide, like the previous tenant. A weird, funny, creepy and effective psychological thriller! But you may need to see it in a theatre! Polanski (who also made Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, and the recent and highly underrated The Ninth Gate) made the film in 1976, in France, and a lot of the dialog is dubbed, which ads to the off-kilter feeling of the whole goings-on. Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka, Hud, Being There) plays the owner/landlord and Shelley Winters is the concierge. With Jo Van Fleet, Bernard Fresson, Lila Kedrova, Claude Dauphin and Michel Blanc. DATELINE: Labor Day Weekend 2000 I saw two French movies at the Lumiere and Fight Club at the Clay this past weekend. The first was short and sweet and outstanding! Called An Affair of Love. Two people (Nathalie Baye, Sergei Lopez) meet anonymously for kinky sex (off screen). They are middle aged. But then they maybe fall in love. The story is told via flashbacks. An interviewer is talking to both participants, getting their side of the story. Outstanding adult film! And by adult film, I mean a film for adults. Not porn. And not for kids. Mainly because kids would never be able to sit through it. Directed by Frédéric Fonteyne. Then I saw a more controversial sex-rape-violence-youth-on-the-road-to-annihilation made by France's Francios Ozon. It's called Criminal Lovers and stars Natacha Régnier (The Dreamlife of Angels), Jérémie Rénier and Miki Manojlovic. The girl talks some guy into helping her murder this other guy (for no apparent reason). She tells the guy though that he raped her. Then they bury the body in the forest, but get lost and held captive by a Deliverance-like mountain man. Feelings and thoughts and relationships and sexual preferences are examined. Sort of like a Brothers Grimm presents Kids kind of thing. Ozon is France's bad-boy of cinema. Then I went to the first of The Clay's upcoming 6 (I think) midnight movies. Also slated to appear in upcoming weeks are The Professional/Leon with Natalie Portman, Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, Hard Boiled from Hong Kong, and most importantly and especially, John Boorman's 1967 Los Angeles neo-noir classic Point Blank with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn, John Vernon and Michael Strong (no relation). Note: Point Blank is not Point Break with Keanu Reeves and it is not Grosse Point Blank with John Cusack. And it sure as hell isn't the 1997 film Point Blank with Danny Trejo. Anyway, the theatre was packed, not quite sold out, but packed and a packed midnight showing is always fun. If it doesn't sound fun to you, then you really aren't the right type of person to go to midnight movies. It's kind of like midnight mass, but no movie, no popcorn, and no fun. Jesus has to subsitute for all that. I guess you could substitute a couple wafers for popcorn if you want. My Mom will read this and frown. She's frowning right now. Hi, Mom! Fight Club is one of the greatest films of the 90s. I gotta admit to loving Brad Pitt. I love Brad Pitt. I think he's great. Same goes for Ed Norton and Helena Bonham Carter. This film was directed by David Fincher. Fincher came from MTV, and I remember one year at the MTV video awards show four of the five videos up for Best Video were his. He did Madonna's Vogue and that Arrowsmith one where the girl kills her abusive father I think. Fincher came before Spike Jonze and that crowd. Fincher directed Alien3, which is interesting, if not great. Then he directed Se7en, which is just plain fantastic. Then The Game with Mike Douglas, and that one gets better over time. Fincher manages to make black and white films in color. Fight Club is violent, funny, romantic, invigorating, stylish and -- I keep seeing new things every time I see it. Like when Edward Norton puts Helena Bonham Carter on a bus, and the marquee at the theatre on the street says "Seven Years In Tibet" is playing. But more than that. If you haven't seen it you should. The midnight show was fun. The theatre staff was dressed in Fight Club gear and there was some silly on stage banter and performance before the show. Sunday night I saw the last show of Coyote Ugly at the AMC 1000 Van Ness. It is just what it claims to be. Unbelievably light and silly. But it's well photographed, and I feel like pointing that out now, because some new movies aren't and it's distressing. It's not easy, but it's not hard. The cast is engaging (except for Tyra "you go girl" Banks, who I cannot stand), especially Piper Perabo, the star. Enough discussion of Coyote Ugly. ">Plus I saw Bring It On sometime last week or so. It is fine. Kirsten Dunst... hmm, I feel like I wrote about this already. I like Kirsten and costar Eliza Dushku. Cheerleader romp. Yes I did. It was on fat person's page! Here it is: I just went down to the AMC Van Ness. Bring It On. Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku. PG-13. High school cheerleader comedy. Cute. Funny. I am a big fan of both Dunst and Dushku. Very special, very different types. Some fun cheers. Well paced. A couple of genuinely funny gags. Fat girl sat one seat away from me. Unveiled her hot dog, loaded with catsup, mustard and relish as the film started. Unveiled her second hot dog 4 minutes later. Hot dog relish stench disappeared approximately 8 minutes after that. My gosh but Eliza and Kirsten had really cute little bodies (they're both over 18). They must have been on special diets, hired trainers, et al. And then I would hear the girl next to me shift position. And then I'd get confused. Dateline: Thu/Sept/6/2000/7:30pm Event: Nurse Betty, film Place: Kabuki Theatre, Geary, San Francisco, CA, USA, Earth, Universe, The Unknown People: Me (tedstrong.com), my buddy Pete, Pete's buddy "Hilary". Notes: For Hilary, I will use a code name (I know her real name), but I don't know her that well and I would hate to say something I shouldn't and have her be upset. Not that she seemed to be the type of person to be upset by anything like that. I mean she's not like your rich, old, racist aunt living in Glen Cove and thinking she's a progressive white liberal, but the only thing she'd say to anyone of color would be "did you vacuum my walk in closet yet?". She's, you know, one of us. I mean she seemed like it. She's married and her husband has a racing motorcycle. She has two (I think) kids, and she couldn't watch all of Happiness either. I know two girls (one being my sister) who both stopped watching that movie at the same part. It was when Philip Seymour Hoffman ejaculates onto the wall in his lonely apartment and then sticks a postcard on there. I wanted to ask Hilary when she stopped watching, but didn't know her well enough to use the word "ejaculate" in front of her. The pedophilia aspects of the film really turned her off -- not that it would turn anyone (except pedophiles) on -- but you know. She said that Pete and I might feel that way if we had kids. Pete said he's been holding off on having children because it would interfere with his moviegoing. I didn't suggest any other reasons to him. Pete works in the media and got us all in with free passes. Thanks buddy! Synopsis: A waitress is married to a real asshole. Think Thelma and Louise. Then she witnesses his rather brutal murder. She flips out and thinks that the characters on her favorite soap are real. She drives out to Hollywood to meet up with the star. Meanwhile, her husbands killers are hot on her trail. Thoughts: Elements and styles established in Pulp Fiction pervade (two hitmen with witty dialog). I don't mean this negatively. That type of edgy, violent comic crime film has become a subgenre, like submarine movies, so if a submarine movie comes out, you can't just take off points because it's a submarine movie. This is Neil LaBute's third film. I liked his first two quite a bit: In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors. Those films are much colder than Nurse Betty. They are cold, but what makes them both great is that they are so founded in an, albeit cynical, reality. Rent them, I'm here discussing Nurse Betty! It was funny, and sweet even, it was different. The cast was good: Renee Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Chris Rock, Aaron Eckhart, Crispin Glover, Pruitt Taylor Vince. Aaron Eckhart rules, and has appeared in all three of Neil LaBute's films. I first noticed him in In the Company of Men (1997), then Thursday (1998) and Your Friends & Neighbors (1998). I just saw him in Any Given Sunday (1999), where he's great, and as Julia Roberts' boyfriend and the best guy in Erin Brockovich (2000). What's great about him is that he's always changing his appearance. You may not even know it was him. Voice, hair, weight, etc. Check out this interview with him at Urban Cinefile Dateline: September 10, 2000. This weekend I saw three films. They all receive a "thumbs up" from me. They would receive three to four stars (*** to ****). On a scale of 1-10, they would each get a 7 or 8. Although I have trouble with the 1-10 scale. I deal with it like grading in school. 10 is outstanding; 9 is really very good; 8 is good; but what is 7? The 70% range in school was average. Okay. 6? 60% was D range. Whereas four stars is outstanding; three is good; two is fair (but this is 50% -- which translates to an F); one is bad; zero is awful (many four star scales do not even include the zero star). So, I do not use the 1-10 range, because I don't know what is what; and more importantly everyone else probably has their own view of what a "6" is. On Friday I walked down to the Presidio theatre on Chestnut. I saw Christopher McQuarrie's Way of the Gun. This is McQuarrie's first film as director and writer. He previously wrote The Usual Suspects. At first I wasn't sure how much I liked it. It seemed like it was another graphic violence comedy, and I wasn't sure if it was really standing on its own as its own film. But I think it does. Our protagonists are not nice people. They are killers/criminals. Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro. They plan a kidnapping, and although people they are asking a ransom from are generally not nice either, it doesn't make Phillippe and Del Toro any nicer. So, they get a very pregnant Juliette Lewis away from her bodyguards (during a bloodbath shoot out). The bodyguards are played by the perˇenniˇalˇly evil Nicky Katt and the great Taye Diggs. The kidnappers didn't realize that they had taken the surrogate mother of the son of a very rich, powerful, nasty tycoon. Anyway, a series of great scenes, homages from many action films, follow. Anyways, see it. I don't want to give it all away. Juliette Lewis' dad Geoffrey Lewis (you'll recognize him from old Clint Eastwood movies) and James Caan co-star. On Saturday I walked all the way over to the Red Vic to see the 70s Blaxploitation classic, The Mack, starring Max Julien, Don Gordon (McQueen's partner in Bullitt), Roger E. Mosley (T.C. on Magnum P.I.) and Richard Pryor. It was wild and very funny. Classic about pimps and their "bitches". On Sunday I rode down to the Stanford Theatre to see the John Ford masterpiece The Searchers. The Searchers is often in lists of "The Ten Greatest Films Ever Made" and is often called "The Greatest Western Ever Made", so I won't say anything more. Except that it was a good print and the popcorn was unbelievably good. The Stanford's popcorn is usually fine, but this night it was amazing. The Searchers stars John Wayne, Patrick Wayne, Natalie Wood, Lana Wood, Olive Carey, Harry Carey Jr, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Hank Worden (the most decrepid waiter in the world from Twin Peaks), and the greatest character actor of them all, Ward Bond. Dateline: September 11, 2000, Monday. I boarded my Triumph -- which I love more and more each day (many people have stopped me to ask me about it and comment that it is beautiful -- and rode out to Berkeley, CA. The UC Theatre. A great bag of popcorn. A Pepsi (they didn't have Coke). A Sergio Leone spaghetti western from 1967, For a Few Dollars More; Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volante, Klaus Kinski (someone said "Klaus Kinski!?" in the theatre when his name appeared in the credits). It's a good movie with a great story idea. There are two bounty hunters out getting guys for money. Then they both go after this madman and his troupe, all worth a lot of money. The two bounty hunters form a reluctant partnership. Halfway through the film I had a painful amount of gas built up into my system. Enough gas to go to Pittsburgh, as Dean Martin has said. I had three choices. "Fart" inside the theatre -- never even considered, leave the theatre and go to the restroom or step outside, or nothing. Since I had already come out of the theatre once to get some Red Vines, I didn't want to leave again and have the staff think I was some kind of weirdo. The pain just built up... The movie ended and I left and ran into Chris Baker in the lobby. Chris Baker was in one of my multimedia classes over the summer. His website is at www.samiz.com. I hated to seem short but, well, hell, "ya gotta go, ya gotta go" -- Sterling Hayden, The Godfather. Right? Dateline: September 13, 2000, Wednesday. Something nice just happened. Not anything big, or even very real, but... I rode over to the Castro to see a movie called Water Drops on Burning Rocks. It's a French film about this 50 year old man who takes up with a 20 year old guy. At first everything is great, especially the sex. But then they start bickering like an old married couple, which is kind of funny. The 50 year old man is very negative and mean. Then the 20 year old's ex girlfriend comes over to get him back. And they have sex and she is naked a lot. Then the old guy's exgirlfriend (who was once a man) comes over and there is a very funny dance sequence and then they try for a foursome. Doesn't quite work out. Anyway, the girl who looks like Gwyneth Paltrow sold me the ticket. Before me she sold one to this small, small man in a wheelchair. He talked to her quite a while and then asked her name. Her name is Kelly. She has a nice smile. Then I was going to say something like "Hello Kelly" but by the time the guy manoevered his wheelchair out of the way, she was on the phone. I got a medium popcorn, which was great but I didn't finish it. I've been smoking lately and eating less, and I think my stomach has shrunken and is allowing less food in. Which is great. And a medium Coke. Then I rode over to a book store on Union (Solar Light or something Books), so I was looking pretty cool, I realized, I have my goatee and was carrying my motorcycle helmet and Diesel jeans. And this very attractive girl with piercing green eyes was walking toward me, and I looked at her and she looked at me and then we passed each other and then I started walking down the steps, and turned to look at her to see if she was going to look back at me and she did and she kind of smiled a little. The end. Oh, and then I saw the 9:30 showing of Polanski's Knife in the Water at the UC Theatre in Berkeley. I hadn't seen it before. It was really neat. Only three people in the cast. Sort of like Dead Calm but black and white and everybody's speaking Polish. Dateline: September 16, 2000, Saturday. Today I walked over to Cinema 21 for the $8.50 matinee showing of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. Very good, as I knew it would be, yet predictable. Even the best mainstream films tend to have their cliches. That is why we turn to foreign films and independent films. Problem is now independent films think they can get away with being stupid, yet independent, and call themselves great quirky classics. To quote Atari Teenage Riot: "Fuck All!" By the end of the highly autobiographical film, I realized that the band was based on Led Zeppelin. This means Jason Lee was Robert Plant and Billy Crudup was Jimmy Page. After this and Jesus' Son my feelings on Crudup are: he's great. He's gorgeous and he's movie star-like, and he's very much of a presence on screen. He has that thing that some people have: Cary Grant, John Wayne, Bogart, McQueen. And that some people don't have: Alec Baldwin, Billy Baldwin, Stephen Baldwin. Goldie Hawn's daughter Kate Hudson continues to get roles, and she's good in this as a groupie. Anna Paquin, Fairuza Balk and the wild sexpot Bijou Phillips play the other groupies. Bijou's part is much too small. Worst news of all, is that the film got me thinking about classic rock again. I thought it was out of my life, but then I had to go out and buy the four disc box set of Zeppelin. As you may have heard, I buy things to fill the void in my life where people should be. Dammit all! If I show up with any Neil Young, it's time for an intervention. It's long, but never quite feels long. Lee is a wonderful actor, but didn't get to do anything but whine in this film. Patrick Fugit plays William Miller (Cameron Crowe), the 15 year-old prodigy writer for Rolling Stone. Eion Bailey (the most significant member of Fight Club, other than the obvious) was great in a small part as Jann Wenner, Terry Chen was great as Ben Fong-Torres (my favorite name of the year). Zooey Deschanel wonderful as Fugit's sister. Person of the Week type stuff. Frances McDormand played the mother, a horribly over-protective and over-intruding mother. Mothers: stay out of your children's lives, get a life of your own. Hi mom! I love you! Philip Seymour Hoffman as the mentor had some good lines, most of them over the phone. Hoffman has set such a high water mark for himself with Happiness, Boogie Nights, Talented Mr Ripley, etc., that from now on a merely great performance won't be enough. What are you going to do about it, PSH? Yesterday I rode down to the Stanford to see Phantom Lady, a Cornell Woolrich psychopath film noir, with Franchot Tone and Ella Raines. Ella didn't do much (career-wise) but she had beautiful eyes. And This Gun For Hire. A Graham Greene story, introducing Alan Ladd, and his first pairing with Veronica Lake. But The Glass Key and The Blue Dahlia are better. The Stanford is great, but they've got a little too much celluloid rolled up and stuck up their ass. They are like prison wardens. No outside food means, no food, they'll do a strip search if they have to. I always have to remind myself not to put my feet on the chairs, as they patrol for it! But I really shouldn't complain. It's a great theatre, and even though they do spend too much time lingering for weeks on bloated classics like My Fair Lady and old Astaire-Rogers musicals, they do show great classics and donate money to film preservation, and I've seen Lemmon and Wilder and Fairbanks Jr in person there. And the popcorn was award worthy again. But before that, my marketing consultant and I took a break from mapping out the future of tedstrong.com to see a movie: Love & Sex. Famke Janssen and Jon Favreau in a relationship comedy. It was actually better than I expected because I heard it was really bad. It was okay. I did laugh. But I did not cry. Then I went on a search for Charles Willeford books. He was a crime writer. A lot of his books were in print only a few years ago, but now most of them are out of print and hard to find. I found a cool mystery book store in Noe Valley on 24th at Diamond. I bought two Willefords and cool Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley) book called The Story-teller. She's one of my favorite writers and the inside cover blurb was awesome: "It was an odd marriage, Sydney's and Alicia's; they weren't honestly sure they even liked each other. To their next door neighbor, however, they seemed a charming young couple -- a trifle bohemian, perhaps, but then Mrs. Lilybanks felt certain that time and children would cement a steady and loving relationship. Sometimes Alicia wondered why she had married this odd, moody man who lived most of his waking hours in his own private world, and wrote television scripts that never seemed to sell. And those vicious arguments... Perhaps, Alicia thought, if I went away for a few days -- to London or Brighton -- things might be easier when I got back. She counted, however, without the thoughts spinning in her husband's creative mind. Wouldn't it be fascinating, even marvellous, Sydney was thinking, if I murdered my wife and hid her body?" Then I realized that everything on Polk St below California is awful. There was an old bookstore that had tons of those little flies flying around and I went upstairs to the mystery section and it was just a bunch of ragged old paperbacks in no order whatsoever. It look liked my friend Tim's old apartment. Then I went into a bookstore called Fields Book Store. They only had books on witchcraft, psychology, cults, religion, that kind of thing. Well, now I know what to get Benita for her birthday. There's this sick old "cafe" place with old, frightening "people" sitting in chairs out in front shaking, babbling to no one, and rubbing the same spot on their body over and over.
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