Can you develope ADHD suddenly as an adult? I'm hating it but as with last weekend, I can't concentrate at all, starting multiple blog posts and never actually finishing any of them. Hours go by and I'm staring at the screen still and WHERE DID THE DAY GO. Nothing. I got nothing. Like, I'm watching The Grandmaster last night and as Tony Leung and Zhangi Ziyi stare at each other for minutes on end, immobile in some badass mixed martial arts yoga pose, all I could think was "such powers of concentration!"
I did NOT expect that movie to be all about Zhang Ziyi's vow to avenge her father and refuse Tony Leung's heretofore unrefusable sexual advances. i thought it was going to be a biopic of Ip Man (Leung) but he's kind of an afterthought once Zhang starts tearing up and reflecting from her opium haze. Once the movie goes back to Ip Man, it seems to give up suddenly. Like, "yeah, we know this isn't half as interesting, kthx bye. Closing credits - bam!" Zhang Ziyi won Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards (as previously discussed) and though I wouldn't go that far, she sure can hold a movie camera.
So herewith some random thoughts on everything from overheard drug store movie chatter to that awful silhouetted lone-man back-turned movie-poster plague we can't stop hating on. If you follow me on twitter, and you should, some of this will be familiar.
How have I never seen or pforgotten about this pfoto of Christina Ricci in Pfeiffer's catwoman mask? HOW? I wasn't doing a google search for "actress in catwoman mask" (that day) or anything embarrassing like that and somehow i chanced upon it. The photo was shot by Peggy Sirota who I think is really undersung as celebrity photographers go. Consider also this image she shot of Michelle Williams...
Damn fine photographer.
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A dear friend of mine just had a baby and if you have any friends who are parents you know that it can be difficult to find time. We were trying to arrange a lunch when she texted me this...
It's funny because I make that exact same face, eyebrows raised, stunned into maybe a little drooling whenever I tell myself that.
Pfeiffer has no Oscars.
I'm reporting my friend to Child Protective Services because baby Michael is way too young to hear such horrible truths about the world!
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Overheard at Duane Reade yesterday, a cashier talking to her friends at the counter.
Cashier: I can't wait to see "Grudge Match". And "Mandela". That'll be special after his passing. But not on Christmas day.
Oh, you know what I saw?
Friend: What?
Cashier: "12 Years a Slave". I cried.
Friend: Really?
Cashier: I cried. IN THE MOVIE THEATER.
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On twitter earlier today Gil Seltzer jogged my memory with a tweet referencing Spike Jonze' critically acclaimed 'man falls for his operating system' drama Her. He wrote:
Lenny Von Dohlen in 1984's Electric Dream
Some of you may be salivating about #Her but I already had a computer teach me about love back in 1984.
The tweet came with a link to this trailer of the computer comedy Electric Dreams (1984)... back when everyone was still afraid of computers so we had to have movies about them destroying our lives; the poster even had devil horns on the computer! I lol'ed because I remember this film well. My friend and I use to mock one of Virginia Madsen's line readings all the time when we were kids and it's the first movie I ever remember seeing where it consciously dawned on me that Hollywood's idea of a nerd was just a typically super attractive movie actor with glasses. Because Lenny Von Dohlen in that movie... yum.
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My most popular tweet this week was inexplicably on Paddington Bear
Even PADDINGTON BEAR a victim of borg-mind movie-poster epidemic: lone hero, back turned, in shadow! pic.twitter.com/0ltUVVii9B
— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) December 26, 2013