A Real Man Makes His Own Luck

I just treated myself to a postgraduate Thursday afternoon viewing of Titanic in 3D and hoo boy, I tell you! It felt like I was inside the deep ocean of secrets that is a woman’s heart. I wish I could say that I did not cry five times during this film, or at least that the fifth time wasn’t at the key change in “My Heart Will Go On” over the credits, but I’m a Master of the Fine Arts now, and I don’t need to impress you. Here are some things that I don’t think we talk about enough when we talk about Titanic:

• Bill Paxton’s earring
• The amount of times Fabrizio calls someone “Bastardo!”
• The scene where Billy Zane says, “Picasso? He’ll never make it!”
• The scene where Billy Zane says, “I make my own luck” and his manservant says, “So do I,” and gestures to his gun and Billy Zane smirks and it’s like, what? You guys are literally on a sinking ship.
• Rose Dewitt Bukater, Feminist Icon. She’s sort of a proto-Sybill Crawley. She spits in her abusive fiance’s face. At some point she learned how to fly a plane. If nothing else, there’s that scene where she’s running down a flooded hallway with an axe, looking fabulous. My AOL password back in the day was dewittbukater, is what I’m saying. I think I just realized that Rose from Titanic and the Spice Girls made me who I am today.

OSCARS

• The other day I saw that E!’s red carpet countdown starts at 1:30 p.m. rather than the traditional noon, and I said, “This is bullshit!” out loud and I think in the future when they write epic poems about our relationship, that will be the moment they record as the one in which Kevin lost all respect for me.
• Just now in class I couldn’t concentrate for the last hour because I was thinking about the champagne I will drink and the buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese I will eat and the inane things Kelly Osbourne will say and the feelings I will feel about those things.
• This quote from Judy Blume makes no sense: “I don’t like pretension, and I found [‘Tree of Life’] very pretentious. [But] you know what I liked about that movie? I loved the little family drama that was inside it, the scene of Jessica Chastain jumping on the bed with the little boys when the husband was out of town. I thought, this is the movie I wish I was here seeing.” Because that’s what The Tree of Life is about, right? What exactly is pretentious about The Tree of Life, is what I’m asking. The dinosaurs? The whispering? When people are like, “Ugh, The Tree of Life is pretentious,” I’m like, “Ugh, your face.” PUT THAT ON THE POSTER, MALICK.
• Here are some movies I really loved from this year which are not nominated for Best Picture: Bridesmaids, Attack the Block, Contagion, Martha Marcy May Marlene, 50/50, Young Adult, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Jane Eyre, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two. Yeah, I said it.
• As has been the case every year since I started caring about this thing (which—let’s be clear here—was in 1998 when Titanic won because it was ZOMG my favorite movie of all time), I am going to be beside myself with excitement until Sunday morning, and absolutely sick of everything about the Academy Awards by, oh, let’s say, forty-five minutes into the telecast. Billy Crystal’s face! Endless montages! Rooney Mara’s severe haircut! Everyone’s opinions but my own! The worst. The best!

I know I’m, like, almost twenty years late on this one, but oh boy, is this movie excellent, or what?

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Do yourselves a favor.

Ever Just the Same, Ever a Surprise

Today at the 4:30 p.m. showing of Beauty and the Beast in 3D that I attended as a 25-year-old, the little girl beside us, who was wearing a winter hat made to resemble a polar bear’s head, whispered—cryptically, triumphantly, as Belle descended the staircase in her golden ball gown—”I’M HER,” and I totally knew how she felt. 

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We watched Fish Tank last night and I have been thinking about it a lot. Like, a lot. It really moved me and I’d like to just put that out there to the world and know if you’ve seen it and if it moved you too. Katie Jarvis, the lead, is absolutely incredible. There’s a horse in it. There’s a really sexy cover of “California Dreamin’” by Bobby Womack featured prominently in ways that strip it of its sexiness. It’s just a really rich, vibrant, true depiction of adolescent girlhood. And if you’re into that kind of thing, there’s Michael Fassbender, and when I say “that kind of thing,” I do in fact mean “talented people who I can’t really appreciate fully because of that time they (allegedly) beat the shit out their ex-girlfriend.”

"My old boss used to compare me to Lisbeth Salander. My old boss never understood why I did not take this as a compliment. After all, Lisbeth Salander is hot. ‘Not that you’re a sociopath!’ she would say. ‘Just, you know, you’re thin, and you have so many tattoos. And your clothes.’ If I remember correctly—it’s been a long time, since I read the Lisbeth Salander book—Lisbeth Salander only has one tattoo, a dragon, placed in a becoming manner upon her bony shoulder. Lisbeth Salander definitely does not have a stick-and-poke banner (empty) from the night she drank a fifth of Wild Turkey with her friend Matt and decided to commemorate the occasion, or a procession of wobbly broken hearts up the inside of her calf from the time she let her friend’s ex-junkie lover practice on her with his new tattoo gun. Lisbeth Salander does not have her dead cat’s name inside a heart over her hip, or a flight of shorebirds winging their way from her knees to her hipbones—the first tattoo I paid real money for, and the best tattoo I have ever seen, if I do say so myself. Stick and poke banners: not sexy. At all. Believe me. It’s tiny, at least. My old boss used to compare me to Lisbeth Salander, and then she would make me go get her coffee. Small latte, not too hot, two sugars. Look at me: I still remember."

“Eleven Thoughts About Lisbeth Salander,” by The Rejectionist

I Did This on Purpose: “Undercover Christmas”

Last night my friend Amy and I watched a 2003 Lifetime Original Christmas Movie called Undercover Christmas, starring Jami Gertz (and featuring Tyne Daly!) and it was so good, you guys. Jami Gertz plays a cocktail waitress who is going to testify against her Bernie Madoff son-esque boyfriend (although I just realized that this movie actually precedes Bernie Madoff as a news story, so way to be prescient, Undercover Christmas) and so an FBI agent takes her home for protection over Christmas and for some reason they don’t tell his parents the truth and just pretend that they’re dating. And Tyne Daly is at first all “I won’t stand for this; I’m rich!” but she quickly falls for Jami Gertz’s straight-talking charms. There are a lot of things I want to mention, like a breakfast scene in which seven people are sharing a giant platter of pancakes, a giant platter of French toast, a giant platter of fried eggs, and an entire ham (I guess because they’re rich?), AND the fact that the movie’s emotional subplot is that the FBI agent’s father is not proud of his son because he’s working such a shitty job (?), but most importantly, you should know that there’s a shopping montage because Jami Gertz can’t wear her usual shit to this family’s annual Christmas party, and she rejects Tyne Daly’s initial choices but then they come to a compromise, and the compromise is revealed as she walks down some steps into a wind machine, apparently, and it’s this: 

And the FBI agent has obviously never found her more beautiful. So if you like movies in which the subtle emotional shifts in human relationships are the result of seeing someone wear an ill-fitting one-sleeved dress in a strong breeze, Undercover Christmas is for you. Eight stars.