May 2010 posts
Wasted Weekend: Searching for Chris Eigeman Edition
Sarah and Kimberly (at left; the Rest of the World, at right) are nothing if not “gals on the go.” They barely have time to honor each other via Luna bar and pick up a new pair of jeggings, let alone finish watching Center Stage for the tenth time. They are dancing as fast as they can! Wasted Weekend is a weekly discussion of the films they watched, half-watched, or turned off in disgust during the previous few days. We hope you still respect them after reading this.
Kimberly: So I finally got a chance to watch Turn the River, written and directed by my Teen Beat crush Chris Eigeman. We’ve followed him from Metropolitan to Kicking and Screaming to Gilmore Girls and suspected he was melancholy and twisty inside, and I’d say this confirms it. Famke Janssen stars as a mother who gave up parental rights to her now-adolescent son not long after his birth, though they’ve secretly communicated through letters and sweet rendezvous in a local park in recent years (the only scenes in this film that aren’t heartbreakingly bleak). We slowly realize that his father (played by Matt Ross of Big Love, unsettlingly intense here, as usual) is becoming increasingly abusive, and Janssen is working on a plan to hustle enough cash to take her son to Canada and start over. Rip Torn (oh, that poor man) is a bar owner who tries to help, but he (and the audience) have a sinking feeling that the plan is doomed from the start. Eigeman does a wonderful job creating a mood of panic and aching sadness for these characters, and I’m not just saying that because I hope he finds this on a late-night self-Google search and comments, thus making my life. Did any of your crushes do good this weekend?
Chris works so hard, but is often distracted by fond thoughts of Kimberly.
Sarah: Oh, good for Digger Stiles! I always knew he was a smart one. I’m sorry to say that no crushes of mine did nearly that well for me this weekend. To whit, I watched way more than I meant to of A Life Less Ordinary and now have to ask you: What the hell is this movie? Ewan McGregor would be the crush in question here, and really, what the hell is this movie? Have you seen this? Ewan and Cameron Diaz are a kidnapper and his victim, respectively, who are coerced into falling in love by angels played by Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo (who I knew as “that guy from Get Shorty” until two minutes ago)? And they know they really love each other because Diaz shoots him in the heart but he doesn’t die? And then they get married and Ewan wears a kilt. In an attempt to be fair, I tried imagining what my 1997 self would have thought about this movie, and, even though she would have probably been much less grossed out by the hammy “is true love fate or choice?” theme, I like to think that she still would have appreciated some semblance of plot organization. Danny Boyle directed this right on the heels of Trainspotting, so maybe he was tired of editing or something. Probably the most disturbing detail is the fugification of dreamy McGregor, whose haircut here is so similar to my current haircut that it’s upsetting. I’m hoping you watched something a tad less chilling? Read more »
We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (2009/DVD) Based on Dave Eggers’ novelization of the original classic picture book by Maurice Sendak, directed by Spike Jonze, and with music by Carter Burwell and Karen Orzolek of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, this movie is hipster paradise and I was worried that it would annoy me. But instead it totally surprised me. It’s got a very unusual feel to it, in that it’s almost plotless. And I mean that in a good way. Amazingly, this 90-minute movie that introduces new characters and extrapolations ends up being an impressively accurate adaptation of the original minimally-worded children’s book. Basically, Max misbehaves, sails away to be King of the Wild Things, has a wild rumpus, and returns home. That the complexities and emotions acted out on screen feel like natural extensions of the short book we all read as kids says as much about Sendak’s mastery as it does about the screenplay written by Jonze and Eggers. (Sendak gets a producer credit for the movie, by the way, and has been very supportive of it.)
First, we’re given some context for Max’s misbehavior. We see that he’s smart, with a wildly active imagination and a talent for fort building. He’s lonely and restless. He loves his mom but wants more attention than she has time to give and doesn’t like that she’s dating. (Blink and you’ll miss Mark Ruffalo as The Boyfriend.) His dad isn’t around. He has a wolf suit. All of this is established subtly and authentically, making it easy to understand and identify with the characters and their actions. These people could live down the street from me. (Max’s older sister was particularly familiar to me, and her treatment of him rang painfully true. One of the screenwriters has to be a fellow guilt-ridden first born child. My money’s on Eggers.) Read more »
Ebertfest PS: The Virginia Theater
The Virginia Theater
12th ANNUAL ROGER EBERT’S FILM FESTIVAL, CHAMPAIGN, IL One of the coolest parts of Ebertfest is that, even though there is no shortage of manic, territorial weirdoes in line hours before each day’s first screening, it is entirely possible, with a Festival Pass, anyway, to walk up to the Virginia Theater only a few minutes before the scheduled show time and still secure yourself a wonderful seat with a great view. (Without a laminated Festival Pass, which covers all 13 screenings @ $12 a pop, individual ticket buyers are left lined up until a few minutes after the announced show time, when volunteers are able to count how many empty seats are still available. Ebertfest usually runs a full 30 minutes or more behind that scheduled time, btw.)
I’m normally one of those nerds who cannot properly enjoy a film unless I’m in a very specific location within the theater—not too close, never all the way in back, and definitely somewhere in the center—but the Virginia Theater (capable of seating something like 1500 mopes) has maybe 5 bad seats in the whole joint. Our first experience in the Virginia—Day 1’s sold out Pink Floyd: The Wall screening—led us to seats that normally would have been unbearable to this finicky film fancier: the very last row of an extensive balcony. We discovered quickly enough that, with the Virginia’s ENORMOUS, stage-filling screen and crystal clear sound system—not to mention the room’s stellar natural acoustics—sometimes the very last row in of an extensive balcony can be the best seat in the house. After bouncing around to a few different locations in subsequent screenings we discovered one advantage to the floor seating, however: leg room. The floor actually has some, which becomes increasingly more important with each successive screening. While the floor seats generally go first to those previously mentioned manic, territorial weirdoes, they tend to leave several options open for we lazy latecomers on the room’s far right, non-Ebert section (our King sits on a raised black leather throne/recliner in the very last row on the center/left and decidedly more crowded section), a vantage point that, in smaller theaters with smaller screens, would have bothered me. But in the Virginia? Perfect.
