A Rant

I am so sick of people trying to argue that the book is always better than the movie. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the book sucks, and the movie manages to extract the good parts, add interest, make the characters more believable, use a freaking awesome soundtrack, and just generally improve a hopelessly sub-par book.

And sometimes the movie does suck - it smacks the characters with terrible dialogue until they become 2-d, paper-thin with generically attractive faces; or it turns the story into an incoherent mess of garbled words and unclear motivations. But sometimes the book was garbled and vague to begin with - sometimes the movie is just being faithful to the story, the characters, the dialogue; sometimes the movie's suckitude is just mirroring the book's, and I don't understand why people are so surprised.

And can we please get over this bullshit notion that film is somehow an inferior medium? Because it isn't. Don't blame Micheal Bay on the art form he's chosen to eviscerate. Micheal Bay is a terrible director with a barely rudimentary understanding of dialogue, and that's all he is. He doesn't stand for anything but his own gaping plot holes, yeah?

Oh, and also? I don't get Hugh Grant. I thinks he's a competent actor, but far from exceptional, and I find him incredibly unattractive. While some people have posited that I only hate Hugh Grant because "he never called me in the morning," I call BS. Hugh Grant is icky, and his accent makes him sound so snobbish I've often wondered if it's fake - maybe he's just a pampered kid from Jersey who went to Syracuse and smokes clove cigarettes, who listens obsessively to the New Pornographers, not because their music is catchy but because it's oh-my-god-indie.

In fact, I was talking to someone the other day who claimed to do a fantastically fake British accent, and when I finally convinced him to prove it, I immediately said, wow, dude. You sound like Hugh Grant. Because he did. Hugh Grant is a walking satire, and his apparent ignorance of the fact is something I find highly amusing.

Plus he cheated on Elizabeth Hurley with a prostitute. I don't care one way or another about Elizabeth Hurley - I'm not even sure what she does, exactly, which probably means she's a model - but damn. That's low.

So, in sum: people should stop constantly whining about movie adaptations ruining the books they are based on, Micheal Bay is a talentless asshat, Hugh Grant is an oblivious walking satire whose appeal I will never understand, it must really suck to have your husband cheat on you with a prostitute, and I could use a good night's sleep.

Yeppers.

Quick Question

Is it normal to have 135 movies in your Netflix queue?

Pardon Me; I'm Just Having a Fangirl Moment

Last night I started watching Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and it was intense and well-acted and achingly sad, but because I was more in the mood for happy rainbow-striped unicorns eating cotton candy in a grassy meadow than piece-of-shit brothers robbing their parents' jewelry store (a literal "mom-and-pop" operation), I turned it off and watched Penelope instead. Which was so freaking cute I almost couldn't stand it.

Okay, so there weren't any unicorns, rainbow-striped or otherwise, but it did have Christina Ricci's face marred by a pig snout, Reese Witherspoon on a Vespa, a midget reporter, and best of all, James McAvoy.
Friends, I can tolerate you mocking my love for Stephen Colbert, but my adoration of James McAvoy will go unmocked. (According to spellcheck, "unmocked" is not a word; also, neither is "spellcheck." Well, screw that.)

The point I'm making here is that, like the movie he starred in, James McAvoy is so freaking cute I almost can't stand it. See?

Oops, wrong picture.

That's better.

If I had gone to high school I would probably have gotten my fangirl-like tendencies out of my system, but I didn't go to high school, so I am still capable of blind adoration of actors who are probably moody and irritatingly eccentric in real life. To my underdeveloped mind, James McAvoy is pretty much perfect, and he can act. Also, he's Scottish, and his shoes in that last picture are artfully battered, and he has good hair, and...

Well anyway, it was a fun movie.

So tonight I'll be finishing Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, to find out:

Is Phillip Seymour Hoffman capable of shooting up on his own, or will he continue to seek assistance from that weird guy in the silk bathrobe?
Is Ethan Hawke going to come completely unhinged?
Will his ex-wife stop being such a bitch?
Does Marisa Tomei own a shirt?

And then I'm going to watch Penelope one more time.

Random Opinions On Inconsequential Matters

So, as usual, I neither 1. watched the Oscars or 2. saw half of the movies that were nominated, since good movies never come out to our shitty little movie theater, and even if they did I turn down 99% of the guys who ask me out, so I never go there anyway.

That said, I do have opinions. I always have opinions.

Opinion 1:

Juno should not have won best screenplay. I don't know what should have won, but I'm positive at least three of the other nominees were better. It was a cute movie, for sure - I loved Ellen Page, and Michael Cera is truly the perfect First Boyfriend (far superior to mine, anyway), but the constant wiscracks and obscure hipster references got really old, really fast. Diablo Cody not only has the absolute dumbest pen name I've ever had the misfortune to hear spoken aloud, but she is so self-conscious and desperate to seem "in" that I actually started to feel sorry for her. "This is one doodle that can't be un-did, home skillet"? Ugh. Diablo, you bitch, don't ever call sweet little Ellen Page a home skillet again, or I will - I don't know - undo your doodle. Whatever that means.

And by the way, your dress was seriously ugly.


Opinion 2:

Sweeney Todd didn't even get a nomination for Achievement In Makeup?

Achievement In Makeup is one of those categories I usually forget about, because, really, who cares? But the makeup in Sweeney Todd was so incredibly perfect in every single scene that even as I watched it I thought, this better win that makeup award thing. Seriously. The makeup is part of what makes the movie.


Look at them. They're grotesque! There's a great scene in the film where Helena Bonham Carter's character is daydreaming about picnicking on the beach with Sweeney, and it shows them relaxing by the ocean with the sun shining down on them, and they look so sick and depraved and out of place - and it's perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I didn't see La Vie en Rose; maybe the makeup was better. Maybe it deserved the Oscar. But how could Sweeney not have been nominated?

Opinion 3:

What in God's name was SHE doing there?

For some reason, I just hate Jessica Alba. I really do. And I'm not exactly sure why, since she's really just your average vapid starlet who can't act her way out of a paper bag, but for some reason she represents, for me, everything that is wrong with Hollywood. She's utterly worthless in every film she's in, and only gets the roles she does because of her body. And I find it hard to like a person who constantly makes rude, tacky comments about her ethnicity. (My personal favorite? "Mexican men love to spread their seed. And the women just pop them out.") Plus she just looks like a bitch. Look at those cold eyes and pursed lips. Bitch bitch bitch. Honey, you should get down on your knees and thank God you were let through the door.

Come to think of it, being on your knees is probably what got you there in the first place. (Oh, snap!)

Opinion 4:

Katherine Heigl, I like you. Really I do. And it's out of concern, not nastiness, that I must inform you...


THAT HAIRSTYLE MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A QVC SALESLADY.

But otherwise you look lovely.

Eh, that's enough for now. I have no other Oscar-related bones to pick...at least not until I see the movies.