finally, someone gets what they deserve

in the majority of gritty, uncomfortable, foreign thrillers ('13 tzameti' and 'the vanishing' come to mind), characters do not get what they deserve. bad guys escape with large sums of money, good guys are left to deal with the aftermath or get buried alive. well, just in 'the vanishing'.

i've meant to see 'alias betty' for several years now, but my difficulty in tracking it down was due to the fact that when i first heard of it playing at the irish film centre when i lived in dublin, it was using a much more accurate translation of it's french title -- "betty fisher and other stories" ("betty fisher et autres histoires"). i fail to see why american titles for foreign films have to be consistently dumbed down, often until the meaning is completely obscured (i.e. "nightcap" for "merci pour le chocolat"). "alias betty" puts one in mind of a 1950's women's prison shocker.

whatever you call it, this 2002 film is a nifty version of a ruth rendell novel, "the tree of hands". starring sandrine kiberlain, ever sad-eyed and long-necked as in "apres vous', and 'un héros très discret', has a best-selling debut novel, a quiet toddler, an absent ex-husband, and a mother out of your worst nightmare, played with cheerful selfishness by nicole garcia. the film's major drawback is the fact that you must perpetually suspend your disbelief -- would a woman whose mother stabbed her hand to a train doorway as a child really invite her to stay for a few months? would a woman whose mental illness had supposedly improved really see nothing out of the ordinary about nicking a young child to replace the grandson who'd died three weeks earlier? would that many men really be after mathilde seigner?

but as long as you can convince yourself that these events are feasible, the film is highly enjoyable. tense, but not too tense. in the middle of all the craziness, there are surprising moments of comedy, and the best part is that, bar the exception of one or two characters, everyone gets exactly what he or she deserves. it may not be nice to think that just desserts can involve such nasty things for some people, but you do feel a quiet sense of satisfaction when they happen.

one more thing -- i have to say that the artsy direction and half-hearted division of the film into the stories of different characters served only as a distraction to a story that was complex enough to begin with.

a thousand miles

i wish that this post was going to be step-by-step directions for how to eradicate a cloud of black hatred in your heart, but it's not.

i have an overabundance of hatred inside of me. for many things -- there's the justifiable hatred, for people and things that are easily defined as very very bad. the ones that make you feel good because you hate them. i have a probably less than (or more than?) healthy degree of self-loathing. i get that particulary new york blend of madness when it comes to the tourists who get in my way when i'm late for work, people who walk in front of you slowly, weaving back and forth like drunkards so you can't pass them. loud, obnoxious, pretentious hipsters, with their fedora hats and 80s vests.

most of my hatred these days, though, focuses on one person. i've tried everything to talk myself out of it, pretend that it's all her fault, that i'm blameless, that she drove me to it, but the fact remains -- as a friend once misspoke, "i hate her with the white hot intensity of a thousand miles." i know it's irrational, and i know it's too much, and i know i should just put her out of my mind. i always think it will make me feel better to tell people about WHY i hate her, the horrible, inane, ignorant things that she does and says, but it generally just makes me feel nauseous and ineloquent and crude.

why do i hate her? i think you must know that feeling -- someone you would rather have never even met. you think that the two of you can't be more different. you pride yourself on being their polar opposite. and then they say something -- 'oh, that's MY favorite movie too!' it's more than a cringe, it's like an emotional seizure. you don't want them to like what you like, you don't want them to have even HEARD of the things you like. those are YOUR things, not theirs. i hate hearing her talk about MY things in such possessive, pseudo-intellectual tones, thinking no one will notice that she's quoting straight from the new york times movie review. she passes herself off as the things that i'd like to be, and when i hear her say them out loud, i want to run up and pull away the curtain, expose her as lying and preening and flattering and most of all...less than me.

that's what makes me ashamed. i want it proven. i want to win. i want a certificate that says i'm better. i try to convince myself that i want good things for everyone in the world, but i don't. i want her to fail. i want her to fail. and i want to succeed in all that she failed in, and then succeed in things that she would never even try.

it's a horrible way to live. and it's a horrible way to be, to feel all kindness and generosity in you is corroding like a smoker's lungs. i'd like to think that someday she will not even cross my mind, or, if she does, that i will think kindly of her. but if my soul is a pair of smoker's lungs, then i am still smoking a pack a day.

was julia even IN venice?

cause I don’t think that she was. and that is just ONE of the many reasons that i wholeheartedly oppose the new production of ‘brideshead revisited’.
as a four year old, i was not allowed to watch an awful lot of television. But i WAS allowed to watch ‘masterpiece theatre’. i was probably one of the few kids who understood why it was so funny, on ‘sesame street’, that the host of ‘monsterpiece theatre’ was named alistair cookie. ‘brideshead’ was wonderful. And not only for the fact that it secured me a good ten hours of tv time (i don’t say the full thirteen because there were definitely a few episodes during which i did have to stay in the other room.) oh, how i loved Sebastian and his teddy bear, and weren’t he and charles such good friends? charming. sunbathing nude. SUCH good friends, really. i grew up lutheran, i had no idea what was going on.

everything about the entire miniseries is just as it should be. the soundtrack is sublime, the casting, the locations, everything staying true not just to the details but the spirit and style of waugh’s heavenly book. it doesn’t matter if i’m reading that first chapter or hearing jeremy irons when he realizes where he is, just give me ‘it was if someone had switched off the wireless…’ and i’m all a-shiver.
which brings us to the preview i saw the other night. it’s a good thing that ‘tell no one’ was as good as it was or i would have stewed in my seat all evening.
now, i love emma thompson. however. claire bloom she is not. And if the preview is any indication, she’s in the film far more than lady marchmain has any right to be. the one clip with lord marchmain, no lawrence olivier himself, gave the distinct impressions, along with a few other shots, that the filmmakers are trying to put forth the idea that there’s a bit of incest going on.

charles is portrayed as something of a deviant with little more than sex and social climbing on the mind. And poor sebastian is played by the actor who portrayed the murderer in the film ‘perfume’, which was also something of a miserable adaptation. it looks like charles and julia are going at it from the start, and sebastian seems like nothing so much as an afterthought, the kooky brother who’s upset when his sexy sister takes the boy that, honestly, he doesn’t appear all that interested in. i saw neither hide nor hair of aloysius, and he seems nothing so much as completely devoid of character. there’s a far too dramatic scene of sebastian yelling about charles wanting julia, when, in the book and the original production, by the time that charles and julia actually embark on a poorly executed affair, sebastian has for some time already been off in morocco with kurt the lisper, off his head on who knows what. i’ll wager they’re even taken out the delightful vomiting scene! and come to think of it, where have bridey and cordelia gone? moreover, if they’ve reduced anthony blanche’s part by so much as a stutter, they’ve done him a terrible disservice. my mother still shrieks when i do my anthony impression (‘she’s a b-bloodsucker, my dear, an absolute b-b-bloodsucker.’)

in the end though, it all just looks far too slick and exciting. there’s none of the subtlety which it actually requires. and anyway, if the original film has john gielgud in it, do you honestly think it can be improved? (we’re not counting ‘caligula’….)

don’t even get me started on the new ‘a room with a view’.

and just so you know...

...i gave up on 'moll flanders'. damn if she wasn't the most boring character i have encountered in a long long time. she was completely colorless! i stuck with her through to her, what, her FOURTH marriage? or was the last one just another affair? i lost track of the number of children she didn't seem to bother about, none of them had names. the incest, while admittedly a surprise, was a bit contrived.

so, i gave up.

another thing i give up on? the show 'house'. i mean, really, it's way too convoluted and far too pleased with it's own tiny bizarre details. as for hugh laurie, i prefer 'jeeves and wooster'.

i can't move my arms.

i can’t move my arms.
i moved yesterday. and now i fully understand why people used to stay in one house for their entire lives. it’s also probably why a lot of people stay together even though the relationship is plainly over, because a little tension is preferable to taking all of your worldly possessions out the door and somewhere else. in fact, i’d say a LOT of tension is preferable.
the moving van one has to drive is scary as well. it’s heinously noisy, and not really what you’d call a smooth ride, although one does get the feeling that, as the biggest thing on the road, everyone else is going to have to get out of your way. this may be an erroneous feeling, but, since my day with the truck is over and i didn’t hit a thing, i’m going to keep feeling it.

packing is brutal as well. i repeatedly hit these walls while packing where i think, ‘that’s it. i’m finished. i can’t do one more thing. i’ll just have to go like this, with only a fraction of my stuff.’ i would do that every year going back to college. when i went to school in dublin, flying over, british airways made me unpack my trunk in line, because it was too heavy. i dunno, i’m a pretty small girl and i’d managed to heft it around so far. they were nice enough to give me a free duffel bag, though.
by far the worst part of yesterday, and this includes driving the 12-foot truck on the bqe in a violent rainstorm, was ikea. i developed a theory yesterday while there. we had to wait in line for forty-five minutes, it was as good a time as any. ikea is like childbirth. soon after the event, the actual memory of it fades. if you could remember the whole thing clearly, there is no way you’d do it again.
they didn’t have the mattress i needed. or any mattresses the correct size, for that matter, that weren’t laughably out of my price range. i asked an employee if i could order an out-of-stock item for delivery when it came in. he smiled and said no, but i could always come back tomorrow and check. i then said a very bad word not-so-under my breath. delivery charges for purchases made on the internet carry a fee of at least 110 dollars. my only choice, apparently, is to come back, either with a rented conveyance or with 50 bucks or so for home delivery. BUT I’D HAVE TO GO BACK.

there was a lady in the line next to ours, a line that was actually moving, that had bought hot dogs for her family. she’d bought an extra and was asking to see if anyone on-line wanted it. apparently, i need to hone my skills of looking as hungry as i feel. She forced it on a little girl who very plainly stated that she did not want it.
i encountered one poor lady in bed linens who just couldn’t work out what was going on, and why didn’t the sheets say whether they were for deep pocket mattresses? she said she felt like her brain was going. i told her that that was completely normal for ikea.

it always seems like such a good idea before you go. even driving up, you feel this surge of affection for sweden that it usually only felt by actual swedes. and at the beginning, with naught but your empty yellow bag slung jauntily over your shoulder, it seems totally doable. you just need a few things, right? some sheets, curtains. and you can get a cart at the end in the warehouse. but then you realize how heavy 2 sets of sheets and 4 sets of curtains can get. and a duvet cover. and oops! you picked up a queen size that was in the full size rack so you have to trot back over there. and you have to carry it all back upstairs to the extremely unpleasant children’s department, where you need fourteen sets of heavy metal wall fixtures. and someone keeps intermittently yelling “olivia!” and would it really be all that hard for an engineer somewhere to come up with a cart that doesn’t list severely to one side? it’s hard to go straight when you’re constantly aiming to the right.
i would have felt sorry for the huge number of pregnant ladies who were walking around, but then, it seems to me that they had the perfect excuse to stay at home.

sitting at work, reading 'moll flanders', as one is wont to do.

that might be the actual opposite of the true definition of what you’re supposed to be doing at work. but. it was what i was doing.

here’s the thing. every day i dream of this life, this life wherein i don’t have to work in an office. most importantly, where I don’t have to answer the phone. that is my biggest and stupidest phobia. i can’t even explain how nervous i get when faced with a time slot when i know i have to call someone, or someone will call me. ior days, my stomach gets churny where i see it written down.

but i dream of this officeless life free of telephone commitments. i have all of the time (and money) that i need to write all over the stories and essays that i’ve ever wanted to write. i can go wherever i want with a trusty laptop, or a notebook and a pen, and write to my heart’s content, everything spilling out that has been building up while i sit in my cubicle, day after day.

but then. when i DO have free time, do i write? sometimes. but by no means always. and as i sit here in the slow season for academic texts, i could be writing in the down time. i could have filled pages upon pages every day. i haven’t. i’ve done a lot of crossword puzzles. i’ve read the bbc news site until my eyes crossed. i started at the bottom of the arts and letters daily website, and worked my way quickly to the top. today i happened upon classic literature in free e-book form. i’ve read two guy de maupessants, a really good robert louis stephenson, and realized that i really DON’T like chekov, it wasn’t just a hunch all these years. and now i’ve started ‘moll flanders’.

maybe it’s the workplace environment. the constant fear that your supervisor is standing just behind you, or that i.t. is compiling a report of the numerous websites that you shouldn’t be looking at. no music, no pajamas. no chance watching tv for half an hour.

i suppose i might just have to dream about this life until that inevitable day that someone gives me a massive cash advance to write my epic novel all….day….long…..

just by the way...

no matter how many times i watch this film, i can't take my eyes off of it.