the dirty dozen, continued: media notes
07 on friday night, as part of our ongoing campaign to ignore all of the sexy local attractions that make living in manhattan worth the hassle, joe and i tucked in at home with wine, stinky cheese, and the darjeeling limited. i go back and forth on wes anderson (like most people, i adored rushmore and am meh on both the royal tenenbaums and the life aquatic),* and this was an emphatic back (forth?).** i think i've stopped caring that his movies have heart-stopping sets and costumes instead of story arcs; those details zap more of my pleasure receptors than things like closure do. this time the weirdest zap came from - how to put this without feeling like i'm getting naked? - the use of my most unguessable password, an almost-forgotten, inherited secret that i'd never said aloud or even heard (before friday, that is). i actually yelped in surprise when i heard it. got that, internets? if you ever want to steal my identity, just watch the darjeeling limited.
08 we've started trying to watch dark shadows in its entirety, a project that is either the best or worst idea ever. on the plus side, we won't run out of material for years: there are 1,225 episodes, and netflix is sending us one nine-episode disc at a time (we're cheap like that). i loathe getting to the end of a good story, especially a good vampire story, so how good, right? then again, the vampire action doesn't get going until the second season, and we've got to wait at least six months for ghosts, even. that's like twenty more discs! and the first season is still being released (it was much less popular than the rest of the series, so it's languished in ancient-format obscurity for a long time), so we could conceivably get to the end of this extant pre-barnabas crap and then have to wait months or years for more of it. and-and joe already thinks we should skip ahead to season 2, so the likelihood of his losing the will to live sooner rather than later is quite strong. what do you think? if you were developing a '60s gothic soap opera ritual, how would you go about it?
09 much is being made - at the ladymag, at least, and in blogland - of "the genius of gossip girl," new york's april 21 cover story - specifically, the authors' contentions that the show is changing the way we watch television (because its popularity is so web-centric - i agree with that) and that it's "the greatest teen drama of all time." to borrow a marvelous phrase from tremble, gossip girl is a show i occasionally hate-watch and from which i gain nothing, apart from spiritual dead-leg; that said, i'm just a desiccated twenty-nine-year-old who maybe can't even recognize young and fun. am i a lone hater?
*and haven't seen bottle rocket, which is terribly lazy of me, i realize.
**the dirty subdozen: twelve things i loved about the darjeeling limited
01 "look at these assholes," delivered just as my uncle would say it in a message on my dad's answering machine.
02 natalie portman's fetching pixie cut in hotel chevalier. who knew her hair would grow out so prettily after v for vendetta? i would have no such luck if i shaved my head.
03 hearing joe dassin's "les champs-élysées" for the first time since AP french (i can be fond of it when i don't have to sing along).
04, 05, 06 marc jacobs (for louis vuitton) bespoke luggage! marc jacobs suits! natalie portman's impossibly bitchin' marc jacobs coat! i realize the hotel chevalier stuff shouldn't count, but internets, it was that lovely.
07 real cobra. proper.
08 the five hundred elephants hand-painted on the interior walls of the train. good on wes anderson for hiring local crafters.
09 the tragicomic nostrils of adrien brody.
10 anjelica huston's character's heavy black eyeliner. i'd be that kind of nun, too.
11 my sisters the brothers in the desert.
jack: wouldn't it be great if we heard a train go by in the distance?
peter: not really.
francis: it'd probably be annoying.
12 peter, after finishing jack's obviously autobiographical short story.
peter: i like how mean you are.
jack: the characters are all... thanks.
3 comments:
i also had mme. nick flashbacks because of the soundtrack. *sigh* french midterm tomorrow. au revoir!
dude, you get nine episodes on a disc? we're watching the five seasons of The Wire via Netflix and more often than not each disc has a whopping 2 episodes on it. we tremble with excitement when we pop in a disc to find it has 3, i kid you not.
and ditto on "les champs-elysees" - watching Hotel Chevalier i experienced a bit of a time warp. a fun time warp.
the episodes clock in at around 20 minutes apiece, so the doses don't seem so huge. well, okay, they seem huge once you've heard the opening credits five times in a single night. megahelpings of soap are a new and disorienting thing for me.
we had the same experience you did with the wire - stingy bastards! - but in retrospect i think i'm glad we were forcibly paced. we would have ripped through that series in a long weekend if given a chance. it's killing me to wait for the last season to come out on disc, but i do NOT need more cable.
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