When You Cannot Possibly Do Anything Else

Do you know those weeks when you cannot possibly do anything else but the thing that you are doing?

This is one of those for me. I am moving to a familiar city for a new job--here's a nice announcement, if you are interested--which has entailed, in the past few days, all the things that moving usually entails, as well as all the goodbyes that starting a new venture usually entails.

So for this week there can be no new post.

No new post, but one coming soon. And the next, and the next. I'll leave you with this clip from 13 Going on 30 (2004). It's a fun one.

Coming up next week? Something--Hanksy.

Love, Music

I hate musicals. They are trite, saccharine, and annoyingly loud, and by writing this I've virtually guaranteed that I will cover a musical sometime in the coming year.

Not today, though. Today I want to feature two movies that aren't musical so much as they are about music, starting with Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008).

The film chronicles the beginning of a relationship between Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings), two high schoolers who meet on a night out in New York City. Together with their merry band of followers they search for Where's Fluffy?, an indie rock legend whose concert is set to go off at the end of the night.

I see you.

Where's Fluffy? is, of course, a MacGuffin. (A MacGuffin being the Hitchcockian device of a goal that is ultimately unimportant to the overall plot.) 

Instead it is the music, their private soundtrack, that pulls the plot forward. As Nick and Norah stumble together through the events of the night, the result is a non-quiet meditation on a young person's how to be, separately and as a part of a couple. 

What makes it memorable is itself the act of turning, and turning, and turning, until eventually ... 

... they face the same direction.

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Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) is a film that begins somewhat differently. Here the lovers are not new, not unknown, but the opposite. Indeed, they are familiars of hundreds of years. 

Tilda Swinton, Vampire.

Though they live separately, they are known best between themselves and no one else.

Tom Hiddleston, also Vampire.

Adam and Eve are thus the theoretical endgame of the Nick and Norah meet-cute.

But where Nick and Norah merely takes place in the darkness, Only Lovers Left Alive dwells in it. Coming together again, the couple discovers that what their unit suffers from most is not the dangers of the outside world, but those cultivated by their isolation.

Oh, and did I mention that Adam has a rock band?

It has some teeth.

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Be back next week. 

October 21st, 1975

Given the news that broke yesterday of Robin Williams' passing, it seems only appropriate to discuss the movie that I almost, but not quite, discussed last week: Good Will Hunting (1997).

You see, Good Will Hunting is like The Devil Wears Prada in that both deal with a young fish out of water, a secret prodigy who gets taken underwing. They are also similar in that both are comforting movies, where deep themes are discussed in clever ways and all's well that ends well.

There's nothing comforting about Robin Williams' death. He didn't die of a heart attack in his 80's or after a long debilitating illness. He killed himself.

A part of my last job was to listen to old audio interviews to be made into CD compilations. It was a great job [internship, technically]. One of these CDs was going to be about comedians--the Greatest Hits, so to speak. And so I listened to many hours of comedians being interviewed and doing their funniest bits, comedians from every era.

I was looking for clips that were about 7 minutes long, max 15. In the process I came across an interview given by Robin Williams in the mid 80's. It was after his oldest son had been born and he had split with his first wife and given up cocaine, and it was an hour long.

I knew from the start that we couldn't use this interview. It was too crowded, too personal. But Williams spoke so passionately, so beautifully, about subjects so dear to my heart, that I listened to the whole thing. And then I listened to it again.

It was, I have no doubt, the best interview I've ever heard a comedian give.

I can't give you that clip, and I can't do anything else, really, but what I can do is give you a scene from Good Will Hunting. A picture of what it was like, once upon a time.

To Robin.

Grilled Cheese

Recently I've been having a craving for comfort food. And by comfort food I don't mean food, per se, but culture. Comfort literature, comfort music, comfort ... films?

Yes. Oh, yes. All of which leads me back to The Devil Wears Prada (2006).

Originally a book written by Lauren Weisberger, the film chronicles the life of Andy Sachs, a recent college graduate who goes to work for Runway magazine--a stand-in for Vogue--as the assistant of the Editor-in-Chief. Anne Hathaway is Andy, and the Editor-in-Chief is played by Meryl Streep. Who, if you extrapolate, is a stand-in for the real Editor-in-Chief of Vogue. Are you kind of getting the picture?

I think I am.

As a movie it's very nice, very chic, and so incredibly over the top. Andy, confused journalism fuzzball, has a sweet, cute boyfriend and all the ambition in the world. She would never take advantage of anyone! Ever! That Anne Hathaway has extraordinarily large eyes makes everything she says seem more earnest and believable, if slightly cloying.

Fortunately it's also very, very funny. What elements aren't generalities--the GBF, the anonymous NYC streets--are, rich, precise and cutting.

The subject matter is almost beside the point; as a non-fashionista I still find the references hilarious. Meryl as Miranda is as wonderful as you would expect, redheaded Emily Blunt isn't bad, and did I mention the cute boyfriend, Adrian Grenier? What the movie lacks in character it more than makes up for in substance.

Like gourmet macaroni and cheese, you know it's not very good for you, but it's simply too delicious to pass up. I mean, there's a supermodel cameo, ferchrissakes.

"Serena"

Not everything about The Devil Wears Prada is good. Some parts positively creep me out (Christian Thompson, I'm looking at you), and I will never appreciate the message that the number '4' is better than the number '6.' On the whole, though, it's worth spending some time on--one hour and 46 minutes' worth, to be exact.

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One more thing for today: I've been thinking about the best way to send out notifications for when the blog is updated--right now I send out updates via my Twitter but for those not so twitterpated, what do you think of a Facebook fan page? Or an email listserv? If you have an opinion on the matter drop it in the comments below.

Thanks.

That's all.