sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2006-08-05 02:32 pm
sistermagpie) wrote2006-08-05 02:32 pm
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Factotum and others
Err...I don't suppose anyone knows why my lj has suddenly decided to begin the second entry on each page with a huge space, as if there's a picture missing? It's really annoying!
Last night I went to see Factotum, based on a novel by Charles Bukowski.
I've never read any Bukowski--doesn't really seem like my kind of author, but they gave out copies of the book so I might pick it up. The performances in the movie are all great--Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Fisher Stephens and Marisa Tomei play the main parts. Matt Dillon had this heavy weariness about him the whole time, like he was always barely getting up the energy to deal with whatever he was dealing with, which really worked in some of the stranger funny moments. Like for a while he's working in a pickle factory and he tells the owner he's a writer. The man asks him what his novel's about and he says it's about everything. "Like cancer?" the guy asks. Matt Dillon says, "... ... ...yes." The guy says, "What about my wife? Is it about her?" " ... ...She's in there too."
There was a Q&A after the movie and if I didn't already love Matt Dillon I would now. He wasn't always totally articulate but obviously had things to say, was excited about talking about the project. He had read tons of Bukowski when he was younger--it seems like something men in their 20s would be really into--but never imagined himself playing him. (Not that he was really playing Bukowski, which he didn't think he could do, but the main character is representing him.) He was sweetly amazed when someone in the audience didn't know who Lili Taylor was because he thought she was such a great actress. He's all, "She's been in so many things! You've probably seen her and you just don't even realize it because she was so great!" (He also talked about how much he loved Monster because he loves that kind of character study.)
Hee. I adore Lili Taylor so I love to hear MD gush about her. He looked great, btw. The question I remember the most was some guy asked him, since the movie's title means "a man who has held many jobs" if he ever had any of the types of jobs the guy has in the movie. Bukowski himself worked lots of blue collar jobs while trying to be a writer. The guy in the audience wanted to know if Matt Dillon ever similarly worked odd jobs before he became an actor or a successful actor. What a strange question to ask Matt Dillon since you'd think it was obvious the answer was no, since there was no time before he became a successful actor. As Matt Dillon said when he answered, "I had a paper route." Dude, guy's been a star since he was a teenager. Go rent The Outsiders!
Anyway, I then was in charge of beating people away from the gift table. We had books and DVDs--and people descended on the DVDs like worms on a corpse. They were gone in minutes. (Those people will be shocked when they get home and realize the movie they took home was not Factotum but just another random movie from the same distributor.) People have no shame at these things. This one guy's seriously trying to walk away with a STACK of books and DVDs, and trying to find more reasons to just glance at yet another so he can look at it and then put it on top of his stack instead of back on the table where it belongs. One each, buddy. Jeez! Sadly the hors d'oevres were harder to come by since the chef at the Walter Reade always thinks its better to wait until 10:45 to get stuff out there, so there was all the more for me.
Also, since I'm talking about movies, two others I saw recently are
Phenomena is a Dario Argento (very violent Italian slasher-film director). My favorite of his is Suspiria, about crazy witches who run a ballet school in the Black Forest (I also have a special love for Opera because of all the "you fuck with us, we'll fuck with you" ravens.) This movie was notable for the main character being played by Jennifer Connelly, and even by Argento standards the movie is bizarre: She's the daughter of a movie star who's going to a boarding school in Switzerland. She can communicate telepathically with bugs. Donald Pleasance (who else?) is an insect expert who lives near the school. He's in a wheelchair, cared for by his nurse. Who's a chimpanzee named Inga. There's a serial killer wiping people out. Who is usually surrounded by maggots. Who turns out to be a little deformed boy, the son of one of the teachers. Jennifer Connelly almost gets killed by him, but she's saved by a cloud of flies who eat him. You think she's going to be rescued when her father's lawyer finally arrives, but the kid's mother chops off his head. She's about to cut off Jennifer Connelly's head too--but then Inga chops her up with a razor blade. Yay!
One of my favorites moments is when JC is sleepwalking across the roof of the school (as one does) and falls, and wanders out into the street and gets hit by a car driven by two teenaged boys who manhandle her before throwing her into a ditch. One of the boys asks her (in the dubbed way everyone speaks in Argento movies) why she's "dressed like that?" He's referring to her being in her pajamas because she was sleepwalking, but I swear I expected her to answer, "I'm dressed like this because it's 1984! All girls sleep in sweatshirts with the collars cut out so they hang off one shoulder!"
The Man Who Laughed is actually really cool in its own weird way. It's from 1928a silent movie starring Conrad Veidt. He plays the son of a nobleman who was killed by the king (in the Iron Lady no less!). His little son is given to Compancharos, gypsy surgeons who mutilate his face so he's always smiling. It's based on a Viktor Hugo story (so everyone seems somehow French even though they're in English) so the boy, abandoned by the gypsies, wanders off in the snow and runs into a dead lady clutching a little blind baby. The two of them wind up raised by a traveling performer. Gwynplaine is known as "The Man Who Laughs" for obvious reasons. Dea, the girl, grows into Mary Philbin and she loves him, but he's all insecure because of his face so almost allows himself to be seduced by the sexy Duchess who now owns all his father's lands. (Typical bizarre male lover logic: You love me, but you're blind. Maybe if you weren't you'd think I was ugly. Only if the shallow Duchess loves me will I marry you. Otherwise I'll just doom us both to loneliness-isn't that better than thinking you're married to a funny-looking person even if you can't see?)
Anyway, it's a just a really fun movie to watch, and so what it is. Like, Dea is stupid the way people probably always assumed blind people were in the 19th century--she's somehow grown up with Gwynplaine without ever hearing about his facial disfigurement, despite all the publicity concentrating on that. The evil Duchess is fabulous, and played by Olga Baclanova, who was the evil femme fatale in Freaks who came to a very very bad end. ::shudder:: She lounges around in one scene in completely anachronistic underwear--a black lace slip, and even flashes some butt getting out of the bath. All this while looking so much like Madonna you'd think it was actually her.
The real star is the dog who is called--believe it or not--Homo. At the end of the movie Homo has this totally awesome heroic moment where he jumps off a boat, swims to shore, attacks a bad guy, tumbles with him into the water, sinks, and then pops up again alone, dog paddling like mad back onto the boat. I hope 1928 audiences were cheering like mad (even when Homo is briefly but clearly replaced with a stuffed dog with the bad guy just pretending to fight with him). The DVD also had a short documentary about Immigrants in Hollywood hanging out in the 20s which was pretty cool--Marlena Deitrich playing with Conrad Veidt's baby and things like that.
Last night I went to see Factotum, based on a novel by Charles Bukowski.
I've never read any Bukowski--doesn't really seem like my kind of author, but they gave out copies of the book so I might pick it up. The performances in the movie are all great--Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Fisher Stephens and Marisa Tomei play the main parts. Matt Dillon had this heavy weariness about him the whole time, like he was always barely getting up the energy to deal with whatever he was dealing with, which really worked in some of the stranger funny moments. Like for a while he's working in a pickle factory and he tells the owner he's a writer. The man asks him what his novel's about and he says it's about everything. "Like cancer?" the guy asks. Matt Dillon says, "... ... ...yes." The guy says, "What about my wife? Is it about her?" " ... ...She's in there too."
There was a Q&A after the movie and if I didn't already love Matt Dillon I would now. He wasn't always totally articulate but obviously had things to say, was excited about talking about the project. He had read tons of Bukowski when he was younger--it seems like something men in their 20s would be really into--but never imagined himself playing him. (Not that he was really playing Bukowski, which he didn't think he could do, but the main character is representing him.) He was sweetly amazed when someone in the audience didn't know who Lili Taylor was because he thought she was such a great actress. He's all, "She's been in so many things! You've probably seen her and you just don't even realize it because she was so great!" (He also talked about how much he loved Monster because he loves that kind of character study.)
Hee. I adore Lili Taylor so I love to hear MD gush about her. He looked great, btw. The question I remember the most was some guy asked him, since the movie's title means "a man who has held many jobs" if he ever had any of the types of jobs the guy has in the movie. Bukowski himself worked lots of blue collar jobs while trying to be a writer. The guy in the audience wanted to know if Matt Dillon ever similarly worked odd jobs before he became an actor or a successful actor. What a strange question to ask Matt Dillon since you'd think it was obvious the answer was no, since there was no time before he became a successful actor. As Matt Dillon said when he answered, "I had a paper route." Dude, guy's been a star since he was a teenager. Go rent The Outsiders!
Anyway, I then was in charge of beating people away from the gift table. We had books and DVDs--and people descended on the DVDs like worms on a corpse. They were gone in minutes. (Those people will be shocked when they get home and realize the movie they took home was not Factotum but just another random movie from the same distributor.) People have no shame at these things. This one guy's seriously trying to walk away with a STACK of books and DVDs, and trying to find more reasons to just glance at yet another so he can look at it and then put it on top of his stack instead of back on the table where it belongs. One each, buddy. Jeez! Sadly the hors d'oevres were harder to come by since the chef at the Walter Reade always thinks its better to wait until 10:45 to get stuff out there, so there was all the more for me.
Also, since I'm talking about movies, two others I saw recently are
Phenomena is a Dario Argento (very violent Italian slasher-film director). My favorite of his is Suspiria, about crazy witches who run a ballet school in the Black Forest (I also have a special love for Opera because of all the "you fuck with us, we'll fuck with you" ravens.) This movie was notable for the main character being played by Jennifer Connelly, and even by Argento standards the movie is bizarre: She's the daughter of a movie star who's going to a boarding school in Switzerland. She can communicate telepathically with bugs. Donald Pleasance (who else?) is an insect expert who lives near the school. He's in a wheelchair, cared for by his nurse. Who's a chimpanzee named Inga. There's a serial killer wiping people out. Who is usually surrounded by maggots. Who turns out to be a little deformed boy, the son of one of the teachers. Jennifer Connelly almost gets killed by him, but she's saved by a cloud of flies who eat him. You think she's going to be rescued when her father's lawyer finally arrives, but the kid's mother chops off his head. She's about to cut off Jennifer Connelly's head too--but then Inga chops her up with a razor blade. Yay!
One of my favorites moments is when JC is sleepwalking across the roof of the school (as one does) and falls, and wanders out into the street and gets hit by a car driven by two teenaged boys who manhandle her before throwing her into a ditch. One of the boys asks her (in the dubbed way everyone speaks in Argento movies) why she's "dressed like that?" He's referring to her being in her pajamas because she was sleepwalking, but I swear I expected her to answer, "I'm dressed like this because it's 1984! All girls sleep in sweatshirts with the collars cut out so they hang off one shoulder!"
The Man Who Laughed is actually really cool in its own weird way. It's from 1928a silent movie starring Conrad Veidt. He plays the son of a nobleman who was killed by the king (in the Iron Lady no less!). His little son is given to Compancharos, gypsy surgeons who mutilate his face so he's always smiling. It's based on a Viktor Hugo story (so everyone seems somehow French even though they're in English) so the boy, abandoned by the gypsies, wanders off in the snow and runs into a dead lady clutching a little blind baby. The two of them wind up raised by a traveling performer. Gwynplaine is known as "The Man Who Laughs" for obvious reasons. Dea, the girl, grows into Mary Philbin and she loves him, but he's all insecure because of his face so almost allows himself to be seduced by the sexy Duchess who now owns all his father's lands. (Typical bizarre male lover logic: You love me, but you're blind. Maybe if you weren't you'd think I was ugly. Only if the shallow Duchess loves me will I marry you. Otherwise I'll just doom us both to loneliness-isn't that better than thinking you're married to a funny-looking person even if you can't see?)
Anyway, it's a just a really fun movie to watch, and so what it is. Like, Dea is stupid the way people probably always assumed blind people were in the 19th century--she's somehow grown up with Gwynplaine without ever hearing about his facial disfigurement, despite all the publicity concentrating on that. The evil Duchess is fabulous, and played by Olga Baclanova, who was the evil femme fatale in Freaks who came to a very very bad end. ::shudder:: She lounges around in one scene in completely anachronistic underwear--a black lace slip, and even flashes some butt getting out of the bath. All this while looking so much like Madonna you'd think it was actually her.
The real star is the dog who is called--believe it or not--Homo. At the end of the movie Homo has this totally awesome heroic moment where he jumps off a boat, swims to shore, attacks a bad guy, tumbles with him into the water, sinks, and then pops up again alone, dog paddling like mad back onto the boat. I hope 1928 audiences were cheering like mad (even when Homo is briefly but clearly replaced with a stuffed dog with the bad guy just pretending to fight with him). The DVD also had a short documentary about Immigrants in Hollywood hanging out in the 20s which was pretty cool--Marlena Deitrich playing with Conrad Veidt's baby and things like that.
no subject
Heh, I didn't remember it until reading your referring the story, but I actually tried to read The man who laughed when I was a teenager and in the middle of my Les Misérables-fangirling phase. But I never managed to read more than the first chapters. Same with Travailleurs du Mer, only, I think I read half the first book, there, but it made even less of an impression. And yet I would list Hugo as my favourite author, because obviously, "he'd written the fantastic Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame." I'm kind of curious about giving those two a try now, though.
no subject