Black Moon

Finally came out on DVD for MY REGION yesterday - and it's Criterion! AND the cover is beautiful!

When I had cable TV in a time before antennas were useless, Cinemax showed this one night and I watched it having no idea what it was. ALLEGEDLY I have a problem with TV where I will lay there for hours watching whatever is on and flip around the channels during commercials searching for something better until I fall asleep ignoring everything else in real life, all pre-Tivo style. But this movie stuck with me for days afterwards. It's one of those movies where you think, "I'm watching a movie of a dream I had - or will have" and I am Ok with that. I love it. IT'S MINE. I still rarely meet anyone who has seen it or gives a rat's ass about seeing it / talking about it / listening to me prattle on about it. Here's the thing, I think it's one of those movies where if you stumble upon it by mistake knowing nothing about it, no hype, no expectations, it's the raddest thing ever. BUT if someone is all, YOUHAVETOSEETHIS, then afterwards you're like, "eh, it was Ok...I guess." I remember that happening to me with The Forbidden Zone.

A few Halloweens after I saw Black Moon I debated dressing up as Rex Harrison's daughter's character in the movie. Then, I was like, it's a rust-colored orangey-brown skirt, a white button-up cotton blouse, and a light pink sweater - I'm pretty sure I can wear this all the time and it's no big deal. After all these years, I still cannot find a non-itchy, non-Acrylic pink sweater or that elusive rust-colored skirt that isn't too A-line or suede or wide wale corduroy. It's great how movies can still inspire fashion. I read a few books years ago about fashion designers for Hollywood movies and how influential they were. Edith Head wrote a great one that was also gossipy. My number one takeaway from the book was that Bette Davis never liked wearing bras and had long, big boobz so dresses and neck lines had to be cut special as to not make her bewbs look weird. Now about books, the sad thing is, when you check-out art books from the library, they are usually trashed and the pages that have images on them are suddenly not present. I'm like, where is that photo of the ostrich feather gold inlay gown with the 10 foot train from that obscure, lost 1920s silent film no one will ever see again? Ohhh, right, someone ripped that page out cos they're shitheads and don't believe in Xerox or are from the future just to steer my anger into yet another cauldron of hate.

Anyway, more about Black Moon, it's by Louis Malle, made in the 70s, filmed at some French estate - maybe his?, no plot - make your own kind of thing but not a complete Marienbad, talking animals milling about, donkey with unicorn horn glued to head, men vs women war going on, British accents, annoying old lady, young guy that sorta looks like the young guy from Suspiria, big glasses of milk, a weird sister/bro thing happening, naked kids running around, not much dialogue, kids in make-up at the end, piano playing, bugs, moss, etc... then it just ends and you're like, Ok, fine, whatever. But then you think about it for days afterward. That dream world gets stuck in your head. You want your own French estate in which to traipse around and chase unicorned donkeys...

And I live in a wonderful city where I could've roderidden my bike (pretending it's a unicorned donkey) to see this movie for free (christsakes) at this newish arthouse/food situation in DUMBO called ReRun (yet another new arthouse movie FILM theater THEATRE). This city wears people down in new and exciting ways in exchange for such awesome opportunities as this, yet I did not take advantage. Still, knowing it happened, and that future rad stuff will be happening, makes it seem in my head that I am less of a lazy bundle of my cat's freshly trimmed hair.

Oh yeah! And I can finally get rid of my less than awesome AVI file of Black Moon that I downloaded from magic town internet system land that has a German man voice dubbing all the voices with simultaneous Spanish subtitles at the bottom. Yaaaaaay!

Summer

Saw the movie, La Rayon vert, this weekend at BAM.



Not sure how I feel about relating to a character so much, or hating that I relate to a character so much. It's was like watching Bridesmaids, and relating to Kristen Wiig's character all over again. When you see your own weaknesses, your own character flaws displayed on the big screen, it's like someone read your diary out loud and you're like, "Arrrgh! Now everyone knows I keep a diary!"

Anyway, Eric Rohmer had the colors red and green playing off each other in this movie, and it was perfect. I love LOVE movies where close attention is paid to details like that and meaning is given to things no one is consciously noticing, but also has dialogue that seems loose and real without coming off as obvious improv. It gives the whole thing a genuine spontaneous feel so that you're not overly aware that you're watching a movie. When I see this, I think – masterpiece.

Things I didn't care for that I had no control over: the audience reaction of smug chortling at the high-waisted tight pants on the French men of the mid-eighties and also laughing at the female character finding lone playing cards on the ground in a "I've seen this plot point before in some other movie" way.

Unit Shredders

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From fakebands.com
Unit Shredders, The - From the TV show Roseanne (11/25/95). A riot grrl band mentioned in the "The Getaway, Almost" episode. Midway through a roadtrip to an outlet mall, Roseanne and Jackie pick up a hitchhiker (Jenna Elfman) who is in the band. The Unit Shredders' riotous grrlishness may be a matter for debate, though. First off, they are several years late to the riot grrl party (mainstays Heavens to Betsy, Bratmobile, and Huggy Bear were already broken up). Plus, Elfman (who is comically credited as "teenager" in the episode) would have been 25 when the show aired. Perhaps The Unit Shredders could have claimed to have been riot wmmmen. Though it was kind of cool that they played a clip of Bikini Kill on a prime-time show.
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You know how you want to like something, but then the medium gets it wrong. Fine example. To make that female character come off like this clueless, gum-chopping, unaware, man-hating idiot is insulting. It's almost like Roseanne and her writers were secretly jealous that they weren't a part of a "revolution". While association seems cool or whatever by talking about it on mainstream TV, they showed it in this bad light and the overall take-away is not ideal. It feels like a women vs girls thing initially with Roseanne and her sister feeling above what the younger generation are doing. Then they start to feel left out. And it's that feeling of being left out that makes them act out. I don't like that message. Then the argument is, "you should be grateful that Bikini Kill was even mentioned in a mainstream show". No, I shouldn't. And that is what needs to change. Overall there is this weird focus on man hate and it's not about that either. It's about strength and doing what you want.
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Genius use of tumblr.

I think you're grand

Had to stop the May Shoe Experiment. First off, May is over, but it's not like not finishing something or changing the rules ever stopped me before. Thought about changing it to Shoe Vs Foot since every other pair of shoes ripped up my feet. I found a solution: socks. As long as the shoe is not a heeled slingback, I'm good with wearing socks and walking a lot.

Right now my feet are hell meat of scabs and blisters from this one pair of demon spawns, and I feel like an idiot for liking neato-looking shoes. But whatever, SOCKS TO THE RESCUE.

So, I'm on Sock Dreams, and I see this...

And it makes me hate socks. There is no need for socks to be this complicated. I do, however, like the Wizard of Oz socks.

But I am against Frances Ethel Gumm being 16 and on speed and benzos for the making of that movie back in the late 30s.

Don't want to end on a down note of a drugged-up Dorothy... so, I love this song and the chorus gets stuck in my head every time I get a little boy crazy.

bf/gf

If they mated:

What is Britney doing right now?

Just rewatched this old footage of Britney Spears. That guy she was with was such a scrot. He reminds me of my first bf. The part where she says she feels she's missing out – she was missing out. And she thought having kids and a husband would make everything Ok in her life. I still wish I could spend one week with Britney Spears, like have her secretly hang out with me in a disguise and stay at my apt and then spontaneously run around BK and fuck shit up. I'd be like, "read these blogs daily, listen to these bands, check out this art, keep a daily journal, etc... NOW go and make your next album on YOUR terms and write the lyrics and music and do your own thing and express how you REALLY feel as a woman who has been there and done that in our society. You have this power to change things for the better. YOU. DON'T. NEED. A. GUY."



Anyway, why did she want to see Spun? That movie is/was so bad. It had a million people in it and I couldn't wait until it was over. Why do actors love playing drug addicts? It's so boring; and you could tell everyone involved was thinking, "We're so shocking and edgy, we're going to blow minds." All I remember while watching it, is that I cried out of embarrassment for everyone involved.



Also, when did Youtube start showing vaginas without people freaking out?

Hi chief, are you a 10?

If I had a bf... I would snatch this t-shirt up and force him to wear it so that everytime someone saw him they'd hear Steve Martin's voice in their head...



...ugh, hopefully they would not hear the cringe-worthy humor of "swinging" water balloon boobs on a man in drag, or Death saying, "this sketch is done to Me!"

Sunday Movie Time

Seeing this tomorrow. I love you, Moss.

Portrait of a Woman

Last month's theme for Fake Criterions was "a movie within a movie"

There weren't any lady ones really, so I thought about the "film for television" that was being made throughout another film – interspliced* perfectly with the controversial scenes of Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris.

The name of of the boring, trite, unromantic TV movie is Portrait of a Girl, and it was filmed by the fiancé/filmmaker of Maria's character. Cos of this I added a lot of fluffy, dated ornamental stuff around the Bookman "every 70s TV show" Swash typeface which was the same used for the Last Tango cover.

The image I used is a movie still I took of the DVD that was magically created with the free image capture programz, Jing. The still is one where the camera crew and the fiancé were shooting her and she's literally holding up a "portrait of a girl". The layout is broken up horizontally: 1/4 - 1/2 - 1/3. Her eyes are amazing.

Maria Schneider died this year and the media makes it out like she died a sad and lonely foreign lesbian who was forever scarred by her Last Tango scenes and, as a result, was never able to shake her perception as a slutactress or had any fun.

I doubt this highly.

  {Eva Ionesco, Edwige Belmore, Maria Schneider}

*you can be a word if you want to

AWESOME!

Just ordered something of Etsy and I noticed that I had two neutral feedbacks – still stuck on this "I hate dealing with giving and receiving feedback on Etsy" thing and completely unaware of there being a second blah feedback left, I went to check it out. Seriously, this woman was a Big C – I remember her. There was a lot of emailing back and forth and I was about to say, NO YOU CAN'T HAVE THESE SHOES I CAN TELL YOU ARE TROUBLESOME!

Cos who leaves a book of feedback like this? Doesn't Etsy have some sort of character limit? Anyway, beholden...

I measure every item every which way. These shoes had the measurements listed and this woman wanted me to measure again, so I did (cos it must suck to have weirdly-shaped feet) and it came out the same width. "This source" says narrow shoes, dude.

I love selling stuff to strangers, taking the time to package everything up nicely, tying bows, writing a lil' note, putting on the stamp logo stickers, writing on the packages to places overseas like Russia and China... but please, I don't ever want to publicly hear from you except for a Thank You. If something goes wrong, you send a private note to work it out like a normal person, and I've taken returns in the past if something didn't fit.

Cos it comes down to this: no one gives a pizza fart about feedback unless every other one is negative – and often the person giving the negative feedback looks like a nutbag. Still, it's annoying. I would never give neutral or negative feedback to someone. They would have to have shit a Greek salad into the box instead of mailing me my BoHo LaCe ViNtAgE Onesie LeoPaRd UniTaRd InDiE Dress XXS.