![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Forward progress
Jan. 4th, 2007 10:14 pmThe movers are arriving on the 10th, and unless they show up obscenely late in the day, we will probably be packing the car and leaving then. It's good to have a fixed date for leaving. Now if we just had a fixed date for when our stuff will arrive in Philadelphia, life would be perfect.
Packing is proceeding apace. It's hard not to get complacent since so much of our stuff just stayed packed from the last time we moved. And most of what we unpacked is so necessary that we can't pack it up until the last minute because we need things like dishes and clothes pretty much every day. So we're right now we're repacking things that just got thrown into boxes without regard for minor things like padding because we were only moving 4 blocks. I also packed up a bunch of K's stuff today while she was at the babysitter's, and disappeared a few toys that will reappear in the car and hopefully become more interesting because of their absence. I've been trying to weed her toys a little and put together a box of toys she wasn't playing with any more, but didn't have time to put it anywhere out of reach. So of course, the presence of a box full of toys in the middle of the floor sparked K's interest, and she's been playing with them ever since.
***
We went to our last anime night tonight, and wound up watching Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (a musical, no less!). It was just about as good as the title implies ("The power of Christ impales you!"). Well, maybe a little better, because I think the filmmaker was intentionally trying to make a bad cheesy action movie. He certainly succeeded.
And now we're watching Waiting for Guffman, which is always good. I keep thinking about For Your Consideration, which feels different than the other movies, and left me a bit unsettled and unhappy. Part of it is that it was absolutely vicious. I can't say the targets didn't deserve it, but Roger Ebert's complaint about A Mighty Wind being too nice certainly doesn't apply here. But I finally came up with my main dissatisfaction: the humor in Christopher Guest's movies always comes from people acting like unimportant things (small town theatre, dog shows) are the most important thing in the world. And to a certain extent, For Your Consideration is right on target in that Oscar buzz is absolutely meaningless when it comes to the actual quality of a movie, and Oscars really don't mean that much in the current Hollywood system. However, the people who get caught up in this are actors who suddenly see the possibility of having their careers take off in a big way, and are devastated when six months later, they're nobodies again. That's a great deal different than being devastated because your dog didn't win an award; this is their livelihoods, after all. It's a little difficult for me not to take career failure a bit personally right now.
I think Guest probably meant for the movie to be that stark in the end, with the pathetic figures of the small-time actors broken by the Hollywood system. It just makes it a more bitter movie, and less funny to watch.
Packing is proceeding apace. It's hard not to get complacent since so much of our stuff just stayed packed from the last time we moved. And most of what we unpacked is so necessary that we can't pack it up until the last minute because we need things like dishes and clothes pretty much every day. So we're right now we're repacking things that just got thrown into boxes without regard for minor things like padding because we were only moving 4 blocks. I also packed up a bunch of K's stuff today while she was at the babysitter's, and disappeared a few toys that will reappear in the car and hopefully become more interesting because of their absence. I've been trying to weed her toys a little and put together a box of toys she wasn't playing with any more, but didn't have time to put it anywhere out of reach. So of course, the presence of a box full of toys in the middle of the floor sparked K's interest, and she's been playing with them ever since.
***
We went to our last anime night tonight, and wound up watching Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (a musical, no less!). It was just about as good as the title implies ("The power of Christ impales you!"). Well, maybe a little better, because I think the filmmaker was intentionally trying to make a bad cheesy action movie. He certainly succeeded.
And now we're watching Waiting for Guffman, which is always good. I keep thinking about For Your Consideration, which feels different than the other movies, and left me a bit unsettled and unhappy. Part of it is that it was absolutely vicious. I can't say the targets didn't deserve it, but Roger Ebert's complaint about A Mighty Wind being too nice certainly doesn't apply here. But I finally came up with my main dissatisfaction: the humor in Christopher Guest's movies always comes from people acting like unimportant things (small town theatre, dog shows) are the most important thing in the world. And to a certain extent, For Your Consideration is right on target in that Oscar buzz is absolutely meaningless when it comes to the actual quality of a movie, and Oscars really don't mean that much in the current Hollywood system. However, the people who get caught up in this are actors who suddenly see the possibility of having their careers take off in a big way, and are devastated when six months later, they're nobodies again. That's a great deal different than being devastated because your dog didn't win an award; this is their livelihoods, after all. It's a little difficult for me not to take career failure a bit personally right now.
I think Guest probably meant for the movie to be that stark in the end, with the pathetic figures of the small-time actors broken by the Hollywood system. It just makes it a more bitter movie, and less funny to watch.
