(500) Days of Summer (On Goddesses and Weenies)

Some men romanticize love....and take their frustrations about its imperfections out on the women that have the misfortune of finding themselves in a  relationship with these these men.

America's recently divorced girlfriend, Zooey Deschanel, is the eponymous Summer of (500) Days of Summer, and she is too damn cute for words: hip, stylish, and appropriately pragmatic in the ways of love and life considering that she is in her 20's, a fan of The Smiths.

Joey G-L plays Tom Hansen, the awkward emo protagonist that is too self-absorbed to see that the reason his g/f doesn't like him is because he's too self-absorbed. 

The (500) Days of Summer are the epoch in which these two know each other: from the day that they meet to the day when Tom meets his next g/f.  

Through that time, Tom pours over every little detail about the nature of their relationship, and constantly worries about how she's treating him.  Theirs is a relationship doomed to die, not because of fate or because sabotage, but for reasons all together more chumpy:

Summer is a sophisticated, grounded, beautiful, old-soul, cute chick with savvy. 

Tom is a weenie.

Weenie

Weenies have no experience.  Etheral hipster goddesses do.  Weenies can't deal with that.  And the goddesses end up moving on.

Like, seriously, think about it Gordo -- did you ever think that she doesn't like you because you keep trying to force her to make a decision about liking you?  It's like when we tried to force our 3 year old son to use the can: the more we pressured him, the more he wanted to run the other way, until finally he just pissed on the floor and talked shit over us whilst we woolited it up!

Weenies need validation: Zooey Deschanel needs $2000/month for clothes.

People love (500) DOS.  I was less smitten.  I don't think Joey G-L is jives with me, every time I see him, I think of DJ Connor's friend George.  And so it weirds me out a bit to see him shtuping Zooey.

She's waaaay too good for him.

Peter Pan (1953): What makes the Red Man red? How about cultural insensitivity, you racist bastards!

So, my son is now 3 years old and a sucker for movies.  Especially swashbuckling type movies.  Or movies with talking animals.

I decide to show him Walt Disney's Peter Pan, because he likes whimsy, he likes sword play, and he finds pirates to be scary-but-impressive.

About 30 minutes in, I had to explain to him that the label "savage" is not appropriate when describing the Indigenous people of the Americas.  And then I have to tell him that these Indigenous people have several distinctly rich and diverse cultures over hundreds of nations, and were spread throughout the land with symbiotic success for hundreds or even thousands of years before the European settlers arrive in the late fifteenth century.

I had to explain that the word "How" was a Eurocentric term used as a catchall "Indian" word, and has very little basis in any Indigenous North American nation's vernacular.  But, in actuality, it is an instance of European society subjugating the culture of the native people.  Just like calling the Indigenous people "Indian" (they're not from India) or "Native American" (they were on the land before it was called America).  Let alone "savage", "barbarian", or "primitive" (all terms used by the young British children in Peter Pan).

I had to tell him that the term "Red Man" is insensitive and a misnomer: the Indigenous people's skin is not red. In fact, their skin tone is as varied as their cultures and an adaptation as a result of several hundred generations living in particular regions of the Americas (and their skin has certainly not been altered because once a boy kissed a girl, and became so flushed that his genetic code was altered, and he passed the over stimulation on to his progeny until all members of all nations were darker). Some of the Indigenous have lighter skin color, some have darker skin color.  Because, as Morgan Freeman sez in Robin Hood, "Because Allah loves wondrous varieties."

I'd also like to point out that my usage of the word "Allah" (twice now) has officially put my website on a government  watch list -- yaaaay!

Also, Tiger Lily is totally not an Indigenous name.  If anything, it's a Cantonese name.

I told him all of these things, he looked at me and said, "Pie-wits are sca-wee!"

"Yes, son," I said and patted him on the head.  "Pirates are scary, indeed."

I suppose I'll have to work extra hard to protect my children from the white-washed evil of the 50's.

Garden State (a digression into my complicated relationship with Natalie Hershlag)

Here's my theory on Garden State -- Zack "the" Braff hadn't done anything that showed him as moody and deep up to this point in his career, so he wrote a movie where he's a manic depressive returning to New Jersey for his mom's funeral after an unsuccessful run at acting in LA.  Can you get more moody and deep than that?  Oh yeah, and his dad's his psychiatrist.

O Holy Night

Merry Christmas

Making Christmas

Scrooged (or Scroogey Claus)

Bill Murray is at his best as arrogantly dead-pan, existentially acrimonious, and aloof.  In Richard Donner's 1988 Christmas Carol-inspired Scrooged, Bill Murray is acrimonious, he's aloof, he's arrogant, but he's not dead-pan, which takes away the warmth that he usually generates in his humor.

And, that lack of subtly and nuance seems to be Bill Murray's source of power.

Don't get me wrong, Scrooged is quite enjoyable.  Everyone in this film in a person that you know and love.  John Forsythe plays the Marley-character Lew Hayward, David "Buster Poindexter" Johansen is Christmas Past, Carol Kane is Christmas Present (whose number one talent seems to be that she is the spritely and cute fourth stooge) and Alfre Woodard as the Cratchit-parallel Grace Cooley.

The Hebrew Hammer (Shalom, Mother FUCKER!)

One spoof that Mel Brooks never did was a take on Shaft and the Blaxpoitation genre in general. 

The Hebrew Hammer sort of takes a Mel Brooks style, puts it into a blender with the Blaxpoitation genre (only, since it's about the Jewish people, might be called the Jewsploitation, maybe?), add a touch of menorah candle and holly and hit puree until you get something not as good as National Lampoon's but better than those weird (insert genre here) Movie movies.

SNL Christmas Past '90 (On Moische, On Herschel, On Schlomo)

My favorite SNL Christmas skitch is definitely Hanukkah Harry (Jon Lovitz).  Before 1990, there were some great SNL sketches. 

Tonto, Tarzan, and Frankenstein sings Christmas Carols. 

Out of sight.

Tell Jimmy Kimmel to suck my ballz

A Christmas Carol (2009) (Jim Carrey's Dead Eyes)

Robert Zemekis seems to have a hard on for the technology that made Andy Serkis an "actor" only instead of using "actors" he uses actors like Tom Hanks or Jim Carrey -- the latter of which is his choice for Ebenezer Scrooge in this version of A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol is hard to mess up.  Every year, another version of it comes out, and 95.3% of those version have used the same....exact.....script.

Which is like 200 years old.  

Zem-Dog, the Republican James Cameron, rightly figured that this motion-capture thingy would apply itself very well to the Dickensian story.  Unfortunately, the technology fails to give all the Jim Carreys (all of the Scrooges, and Christmas Past, Present, and Future) living eyes and heads that don't do that weird upper half rotates slightly on the lower half thing.

Scrooge is my favorite classic Christmas story.  I think its the ghosts.  Also, 9 Year-Old Ruben performed in a Sunnyvale Community Players' stage rendition of Scrooge, The Stingiest Man in Town, in which my chubby little ass did two dance routines and wore false sideburns applied with spirit gum.

Anyway, Bob Hoskins, Colin Firth and Sid Vicious played Fezziwig, Fred, and Cratchit respectively.  And Tiny Tim still dies, until he doesn't.

Oh Sid Vicious also played Marley, Spirit not Jah, easily the scariest and best scene.

The movie looks great -- sort of like a Victorian painting: grungy and weathered.  Also, Jim Carrey lends himself well to MoCap.  Getting everyone to play all the parts strikes me as kind of bush league.  Am I the only one that thinks it comes off about as polished as that production by the Sunnyvale Community Players.  All in all, tidy enough with a bit of a cartoony aspect (what would you expect from Disney?). But, however you approach this flick, whatever you think it is going to be -- whether you're skeptical or you're optimistically excited -- it will probably fulfill your expectations.