This was given to me as a Christmas gift and it spent some time at The Emerson School because I had too many spatulas. Eventually though, I ran low again at home and I brought this back home.
I liked the stainless steel handle combined with the silicone head. Just the right amount of hard and soft!
Sadly, eventually the silicone broke down and split, so to the great garbage can in the sky this goes.
?Directed by Kornél Mundruczó?
?Written by Kata Wéber?
“Young mother’s home birth ends in tragedy” is a phrase that will probably have most of the potential audience saying, “Nope!” but for those of you who like sad dramas that depend more on acting than dialog, this film is for you!* The film does a great job establishing a loving relationship between the two leads so we can then watch things crumble. Vanessa Kirby is new to me** and her Best Actress Oscar Nomination is well deserved.***
Cost: Netflix monthly fee $8.99
Where watched: at home
*That’s me! If it’s you, don’t miss this!
*I apparently saw her in Hobbs & Shaw?
***Though I honestly felt the filmmakers were trying to position Ellyn Burstyn for a best supporting nomination.****
****She was good in this, but there was a weird age gap. She’s 88 (Which: !) and Vanessa Kirby is 31, which means if they are playing their ages, Burstyn would have been 57 when she gave birth to Kirby. I think an actor in her 60s would have been a better fit age-wise.
The title doesn’t appear until 30 minutes into the movie.
(This was a thing I noticed.)
It’s the name of the beach house that MultCoLib employees can stay at. It’s also a greatly evocative word.
So evocative that some marketing company slapped it on their beverage. Harumph.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t become the next La Croix.
?Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer?
?Written by Martin Goldsmith?
There are three reasons to watch this film and the least of the reasons is that it’s 68 minutes, so it won’t take much of your time. The other two have to do with the road trip conundrum* and the incredible performance by Ann Savage.** I can’t say I know a ton about noir, but I can say that this film is a great place to start, if you are among the noir curious.***
Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library (I even got the Criterion Collection version.)
Where watched: at home
*Though “back in the day” is often portrayed as a time when hitchhiking was a thing that everyone did, Tom Neal’s character mentions how hard it’s been for him to get a ride.
**She doesn’t appear until the movie is nearly halfway over, but man, does she make this film work.
***And like I said, 68 minutes!
The budget PRC gave director Edgar G. Ulmer for this film was so small that the 1941 Lincoln Continental V-12 convertible driven by Charles Haskell was actually Ulmer’s personal car.
?Directed by John G. Avildsen?
?Written by Sylvester Stallone?
My delighted feelings about this film stem from the fact that I grew up in the 80s and what I knew of Rocky* was not what this film was. I was ready for thuggish posturing, best of the best, underdog win-it-all and what I found was a meditation on mediocrity, a mostly sweet love story,** and a main character who knew exactly how subpar he was.*** While the writing was good**** Stallone himself wasn’t great, and that kind of sunk the movie for me.*****
(Though honestly, it’s a piece of Americana, captures an interesting period in the US (Philadelphia looks run-down and trashy and all the cars are so very big) and was much better than I thought it would be, so you should probably see it at some point.)
Cost: Free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home
*I’ve never seen a single film in the franchise, but I loved Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky III and growing up I for-sure saw a lot of ads for the movies.
**With an underdeveloped female and a “charmingly persistent” male. Neither have aged well, but I loved the mousy Adrian we began with.
***Favorite scene: Rocky is invited to fight Apollo Creed and have the chance to become the heavyweight champion of the world. His response and reasoning were exactly right and exactly not what I was expecting.
****There are some really great speeches in this film, mostly coming from Apollo Creed, but also Burgess Meredith has his day too, as does Rocky.
*****I see how he channeled all his feelings about failing as an actor into this script. The problem is, that I think he did fail as an actor; his insistence on being Rocky made for a lesser movie.******
******But this was a huge hit, so clearly many people didn’t have a problems I did with this film.
Most of the scenes of Rocky jogging through Philadelphia were shot guerrilla-style, with no permits, no equipment, and no extras. The shot where he runs past the moored boat for example, the crew were simply driving by the docks, and John G. Avildsen saw the boat, and thought it would make a good visual, so he had Sylvester Stallone simply get out of the van and run along the quays, while Avildsen himself filmed from the side door. A similar story concerns the famous shot of Rocky jogging through the food market. As he runs, the stall keepers and the people on the sidewalks can clearly be seen looking at him in bemusement. While this works in the context of the film to suggest they’re looking at Rocky, in reality, they had no idea why this man was running up and down the road being filmed from a van.
(A lot of the lore around this film makes for an ever more compelling narrative.)
The owner of this truck just wants people to leave the damn thing alone.
Sign says: This truck does not run. Don’t waste your valuable trash time trying to steal it over and over.
The fence has gone up. Thankfully, it hasn’t cut off sidewalk access yet. All the little one-unit apartments are boarded up.
I’m going to miss this little apartment complex.
I headed down to the Portland Convention Center to get my first dose of the Coronavirus vaccine. It was a very fast and efficient process and provided more people watching opportunities than I had had in more than a year. Also, the woman who gave me my shot is the mother of two of the First U youth I met when I was doing YRUU. Portland, the biggest small town in the USA.
There were stern “no photos!” rules, but I couldn’t resist grabbing this photo of the discarded stickers saying what time people could leave after their 15- or 30-minute resting period. As you can see from all those 6 p.m. stickers, my appointment was at the end of the day. I got the Pfizer shot.
And here you can see that I was one of 13,000+ people to get the Pfizer vaccine that day.
?Directed by Will Gluck?
?Written by Keith Merryman, David A. Newman, and Will Gluck?
This film worked for me because I was in the mood, I like both Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake,* and I was amused by the recurring joke.** However, this is one of those romantic comedies written for women by men and I can’t help but wonder how much better it would have been if a member of the audience it is aimed at was part of the team that created it.*** Ultimately, it’s good at what it does,**** but I want more.
Cost: Netflix monthly fee $8.99/month
Where watched: at home
*Plus ancillary performances by Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman, and Patricia Clarkson, also always delightful.
**It has to do with Capitan Sully’s historic landing.
***Or, gosh, all of the people who created it?
****And memorializes the flash mob thing, which is fun.
Although Jason Segal and Rashida Jones are technically uncredited in the film, their real names can be seen on the cover of the DVD next to the TV when Dylan and Jamie are watching it.
Our second round at the drive-thru clinic did not include the endless wait times that the first trip did. And now both mom and Aunt Pat are fully vaccinated! (Though Aunt Pat needs to pull up her mask to cover her nose.)
