Hallebluejah.

[wolfpangs]

• I was browsing the iTunes store last night (looking for female-sung alternapop; ended up having a nostalgia breakdown and stocking up on my old riot grrrl favorites) and I checked out the celebrity playlists. They've got the cast of Watchmen. Malin Akerman was first and one of her choices is "Dreamworld" by Rilo Kiley. Says Akerman, "Rilo is such a great artist. All of her songs are my favorite..."
  
  I, uh...yeah. Besides the obvious, I'm pretty sure that's Blake singing lead.
  
  [As far as I can tell, Zach Snyder is the only one who chooses a version of "Hallelujah." The version, by Allison Crowe, is okay.]



• Can I just add the site to my cart?



• Okay, I know Carol Burnett was the big draw for tonight's SVU episode but whooooa, Matthew Lillard looks crazy! You know who he looks like? Remember that episode of Full House where DJ goes on the date with the mustachioed dude who looks crazy old and thus, totally inappropriate for DJ? Yeah, he looks like that guy. That's your boyfriend, by the way.
  
  Roger! That was his name. That guy went on to play Hannah's dad on Veronica Mars.



• I saw Last House on the Left Saturday. 12 people walked out, which I gleefully twittered. As for my thoughts, I agree with this paragraph from the Pajiba review: It’s frustrating because one can see throughout the film moments of where it could have been so much better. There are two families here, one of love and one of violence, but families with loyalty nonetheless. There is the potential for a beautiful intertwining of two stories: a boy rejecting the monstrosity of his father, a father becoming a monster on behalf of his daughter. It seems at quiet moments to realize its potential as a meditation on violence, but jettisons that too often for the cheesy violence of bad horror. It does not seem to realize that its most horrific moments are not filled with blood, but with Garret Dillahunt’s smile.



• Speaking of movies, I just read that James Franco is playing Allen Ginsberg and this movie will also feature Mary-Louise Parker and Paul Rudd. I believe it will be called America, this movie is awesome.
  
  
• I used to listen this reading of "America" by the man himself (and Tom Waits, the most patient man in rock) all the time. [Video may be NSFW.] Hearing him read it illuminated the poem. This part always breaks my heart:
  
  

  Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
  I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
  I read it every week.
  Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
  I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
  It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
  producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
  It occurs to me that I am America.
  I am talking to myself again.




• But back to Paul Rudd for a sec, did you know that he and Jon Hamm were college friends? Oh, yeah. It's true. "He's adorable. There's no two ways about it," says Hamm.



• I've been making amazing strides with my screenplay. I didn't so much neglect it as I did have a momentary crisis of confidence. Now though, I've regained motivation and momentum and that's helped me regain my confidence in it and my ability to write it. Part of what has helped has been Twitter of all things. When I've got daily meditations on art via David Lynch and that man named Ludacris (woo!), among others, that helps keep me focused. In addition, I've been doing creative writing exercises with a friend of mine who is also working on his own artistic endeavor, and I've found that doing so keeps my brain in the right frame of mind to create. I think I've come up with a title. I was able to give the pitch clearly and concisely, as opposed to the novella-length uh-studded mess it has been. Finally, being on spring break and having time to rest and to reflect has also helped.


And now that I've made the post-Vicodin Herculean effort to write that, I must go nap and catch up on my Tivo (I set a recording for "Sex and the Civil War"? Really?) and exchange coded Tweets and birthday party cheesecake jellybean boom before I descend into total incoherence. You know...stuuuuuff.

Comments

[ladycakes.livejournal.com]

Jon Hamm and Paul Rudd in college together. Oh shit. It's enough to make me drop my ban on slash.

[rockgeisha.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[zooby.livejournal.com]

I want to tongue kiss Paul Rudd. Thoroughly. He makes me so happy.

[rockgeisha.livejournal.com]

I know, bb. I've heard it on cable.

[soalivesofree.livejournal.com]

- She likes "Rilo"'s songs? *snort*

- I kind of want to see Last House on the Left, because the ideas behind it are so intriguing, but based on the reviews I've read about it, I worry that it's just being used as an excuse to show lots of gore and a really graphic rape. The rape scene, especially, I don't think I could take.

- I love that Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm roomed together in college. That is too awesome. I bet they were all dorky back in the day - actually, Hamm still seems kind of dorky when he's not Drapered out - which makes it even more awesome.

- Finally, hooray for working on your screenplay! It's amazing how writing is feast or famine. You either produce nothing or you can't stop writing. I'm so happy that you've made progress on it.

[rockgeisha.livejournal.com]

I didn't really know how to explain to a friend why I went to see it the day after she walked out of it except to say that I've seen Cannibal Holocaust and Salo and tons of Takashi Miike and three previous versions of the story LHotL is based on, so not only did I know what to expect but I've seen worse. I'm not going to sugarcoat it--the rape scene is brutal and it's when those people started walking out. But on the other hand, it's also kind of strange to me that it was the catalyst to leave. To get to that scene, they had to sit through at least two murders and countless other physical assaults. Or like Peter Travers referring to it as a "fate worse than death." Really? It's worse to be a survivor than it is to be dead? I don't think that is true. I also don't think microwaves work like that, movie. (It is difficult for me to make my exact point without spoiling the movie/possibly squicking out more sensitive people, not to mention the fact that I feel many ways about it.)

And thank you so much for the encouragement. I've been trying to take the pressure off myself, the inner voice reminding me that I'm not writing and surprisingly, that has helped a lot.

[soalivesofree.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always think it's interesting that people can watch gory movies yet can't watch a graphic rape scene. I think it's because rape in movies is like, one of the last remaining taboos, up there with killing kids and such. But yeah, it's like, you just watched a guy get decapitated with a chainsaw, yet this makes you get up and walk out?

For what it's worth, I am so squeamish that I have a hard time with any kind of super graphic violence. Like, Salo - I will probably never watch that. I don't watch movies like Saw or Hostel or anything like that, and the one time I watched a Final Destination movie, I found it repulsive, because it was just an excuse to kill off a bunch of people in really fucked up ways.

That said, I will put up with it if the rest of the movie has redeeming qualities, like with Watchmen or Silence of the Lambs.

Yeah, I heard about the microwave scene, and I just wasn't sure how the mechanics of that would work. I guess they only wanted realism to go so far, huh?