Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine (2011) deals with the deeply troubled marriage of Dean and Cindy (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams).
Have you ever seen the Swedish film, The Passion of Anna, by Ingmar Bergman? It, too, has a lot to do with relationships between men and women. I don’t consider it a success because, for one thing, it’s too talky, but it makes Blue Valentine look utterly lousy by comparison. At least Bergman (in Passion) cared about character development; Cinafrance doesn’t. We learn very little about Dean and even less about Cindy. (Why, really, is their marriage such a failure? The movie more than hints that it’s all Dean’s fault, but that explains nothing.)
At least Bergman fashioned quite a few powerful scenes; too many of Valentine‘s scenes get boring. Ross Douthat of National Review finds the couple’s courtship “very charming.” I don’t. Usually, when people in movies are shown falling in love, it’s sleep-inducing.
There is a certain degree of artistic strength in Cianfrance’s film, but mainly it’s a draggy work of pseudo-art.
American Girl has always been one of my favorite Tom Petty songs. It’s from his first album. I have been puzzled about this song on a couple of different fronts… Is it about suicide? And is it in the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”?
Cover via Amazon
Let’s talk a little about the Suicide theory first.. It goes something like this:
Hey Dave.. I went to the University of Florida… This chick..She jumped out of a 4 story dorm to her death… Ya know, Tom Petty wrote a song about it.. “American girl” I think she was tripping on acid and thought she could fly…
Well, how about all that? Hmmm?
Check the lyrics:
Well, she was an American girl Raised on promises She couldn’t help thinkin’ That there was a little more to life somewhere else After all it was a great big world With lots of places to run to And if she had to die tryin’ She had one little promise she was gonna keep
Tom petty is from Florida… It’s excellent songwriting material, isn’t it?
I’d write a song about it – uh…. maybe.
I Dunno…. If ya asked Tom he’d probably deny it… Just Google it.
My main question is about the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Prob the best high school movie ever made. My gang from high school used to go see it weekly at the “Midnight Movies” Even then (early 80s) it was a cult classic. We used to throw stuff and holla at the scream in our teenage angst.
What’s funny is our lives are reflected in the charterers on the screen… Can you guess which ones?
I distinctly remember the song “American Girl” being played near the beginning of the movie… The part where we’re just getting introduced to the school…… The kids are throwing toilet paper and stuff…
Teenagers…Geeze…..
………………………
HEY!! I just found it!!!
Now… Go rent the movie or watch it on TV….. I guarantee you it’s not in the film!
2009’s The Stoning of Soraya M., directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, dramatizes the true story of a woman who was victimized in an “honor killing” in an Iranian village. The charge of adultery against Soraya was false, but her vile husband wanted her dead so that no financial support would have to follow a desired divorce. A verdict was reached and Soraya was put to death by stoning.
Don’t act like the hypocrite,
Who thinks he can conceal his wiles
While loudly quoting the Koran.
These words by a 14th-century Iranian poet are written on the screen before the film begins. Hypocrisy both religious, represented by a phony mullah and the village mayor, and nonreligious, represented by the husband, is attacked in Soraya M. So, of course, is the backward, depersonalizing attitude toward women in the Islamic world. Soraya’s energetic aunt, played by Shoreh Aghdashloo, tries to save her niece from what is being plotted, but is constantly pushed to the side. As the stoning begins she is nearly hysterical: she understands the horror of this brutal treatment. The stoning sequence is one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a movie–infuriatingly bloody and ugly.
Nowrasteh’s film is worthy of comparison with the neorealist cinema of De Sica. It is a straightforward, grim, compassionate indictment of theocratic authorities in Iran. Mozhan Marno is first-rate, with her fortitude and anguish, as Soraya.
Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, the comedy-drama Please Give (2010) has to do with moral responsibility when it is unmet (except in the case of Rebecca [Rebecca Hall]) and with feeling guilty. Kate (Catherine Keener) hands out money to the homeless and contemplates doing volunteer work only in order to assuage her guilt over exploiting the deaths of elderly people who own valuable furniture. Only near the film’s conclusion does she conduct a form of giving which is not just a means of reducing guilt, as when she agrees to buy her teenaged daughter a pair of costly jeans. Her culpability is nothing, however, compared with that of some other characters, who are nevertheless guilt-free. Whence comes this reality?
Holofcener (Friends With Money) is a true artist–and an intelligent one. This despite the fact that Please Give provides an unearned happy or optimistic ending. It resolves itself with scenes of family affection, which is inadequate.
Even so, the film is absorbing and the acting is utterly winning.
In Jason Reitman‘s smart, racy and delightful film, penned by Diablo Cody, Juno (Ellen Page) is a scrappy but sensitive teen girl who initiates sex with her male chum Paulie (Michael Cera) and afterwards gets big with child. She can’t bring herself to have an abortion but is too young to parent, so adoption is the only alternative. (more…)
Is it a true story? Don’t make me laugh. It is as preposterous as it is convoluted. It DERIVES from something that went on in London in 1971: a bank robbery about which British journalists swiftly stopped reporting. Presumably the robbery was meant to benefit the royal family after the escapades of Princess Margaret: privacy-invading, erotic photographs and all that. (more…)
