What did I watch last night? I watched The Help. Then I watched Cocaine Cowboys 2, which was fun. I also started reading Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi, which is fucking awesome so far. I also bought this book which I've heard good things about. Also my car got fucked up yesterday and that was terrible. Should I continue spending money to maintain it, or should I go into debt to buy a new car with a 5 year warranty?
So, I went to San Diego with my dad for Thanksgiving, which was pretty great, and we had dinner with some composer friends of his, Roger and Chinary, and their families. He was on his way back from a trip to Mexico. I was taking a break from writing a bunch of treatments and the last bit of an episode of Teen Wolf. I've been watching a tremendous number of movies and TV shows lately. The best new show on TV is probably Boss, on Starz, which nobody sees because nobody has Starz. Because it's a terrific show. Possibly the best thing on TV right now. Also watching: Homeland, Boardwalk Empire, American Horror Story, Beavis and Butthand, Always Sunny, and reruns of Mad Men. And that American Masters documentary on Woody Allen that ran last week.
Today I finished reading The Last of the Live Nude Girlsby Sheila McClear, which I loved. She used to work at one of the last peep shows in Times Square. I used to work in Times Square, from 2005 to 2009, and had no idea those places existed. The book is well-written, poignant, illuminating, and sad, and it does a perfect job of capturing a mood of fearful and nervous dread. It also doesn't read like some shitty half-brag, as I had sort of expected, since McClear used to write for the loathsome Gawker blog. I read it on Ned Vizzini's recommendation after he read it for a review. He was right, it's terrific.
Robert Weide's Woody Allen documentary on American Masters on PBS was great. The footage of him directing on You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (a way underrated movie) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona is great. It reminded me to look up this diary he wrote from the shooting of VCB a few years ago.
So I'll be sleeping late again...my gig on Teen Wolf ends this week. It was fucking awesome and season two is going to be amazing. Back to writing other stuff! More announcements coming up soon...a novella and a collection of stories. Working on scripts and treatments for the moment.
Over the last few days I watched four "body snatchers" movies. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, dir. Don Siegel)... Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, dir. Philip Kaufman)... Body Snatchers (1993, dir. Abel Ferrara)... and The Faculty (1998, dir. Robert Rodriguez).
The Facultyis entertaining silliness with only a few innovations (the aliens are parasitic sea creatures who need to constantly drink bottled water to survive, and diuretic powder kills them), and a number of lines stolen directly from the earlier movies.
The '78 Kaufman Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, and Veronica Cartwright is very strong, but aesthetically very dated, especially in the first act--the decision to keep the camera away from people's faces inhibits investment with the characters. The one moment of greatness is a total non sequitur involving a dog with a human face.
The original 1956 Don SiegelInvasion of the Body Snatchers is terrific, by far the best of them. Fast-paced, lean, smart, and fucking chilling. Kevin McCarthy is great--should've been a movie star. And the embryonic pod people are more disgusting in this version than in any of the others, surprisingly. I saw this movie when I was a little kid, loved it, and it really holds up.
The biggest surprise, though, was the 1993 Abel Ferrara Body Snatchers version. It's uneven (and has a bizarre denouement, in which the seemingly low-budget movie suddenly, briefly becomes an action extravaganza, with missiles firing and huge explosions), but overall it's a forgotten horror classic. There are three or four great scenes, but one true standout... a genuine classic scene... when the "replaced" version of the Meg Tilly character calmly explains to her husband that it's no use running. "Go where? Steve, this is important. Go... where? That's right. Go where? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna run? Where you gonna hide? Nowhere."
Some nice person has cut together a few clips of the best moments from the Ferrara version (although the sync is slightly off in the best part)... NSFW...
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So not only are the Occupy Wall Street protests happening in my old neighborhood (Zucotti Park is maybe four blocks away from the apartment building I lived in) but The Dark Knight Rises is shooting literally outside my old front door. This video is clearly shot from one of the lower floors of 45 Wall Street, my former address. The camera looks directly down on the awning over the entrance.
by Helen Oyeyemi, which is fucking awesome so far. I also bought this book
which I've heard good things about. Also my car got fucked up yesterday and that was terrible. Should I continue spending money to maintain it, or should I go into debt to buy a new car with a 5 year warranty?
