50/50

Oct. 9th, 2011 09:31 pm
My wedding anniversary is this week. My parents took my older son to Charlotte with them to visit my sister, and today my friend watched the baby for a few hours so Dave I could go out. We got some lunch, did a little window shopping, then went to the movies. We saw 50/50. I'm surprised how much I laughed, but unsurprised how much I cried (a lot!) I am kind of surprised about which scene it was that set me off. *spoilers* when Adam drops a drunk Kyle off at his apartment the night before surgery and Adam finds a book in Kyle's bathroom about helping a friend through cancer. He thumbs through it and it's well-worn with passages underlined. I have no idea why that touched me so much. The bonds of friendship or whatever. *end spoliers*

So then we went to pick the baby up and it turns out he spent almost the entire four and a half hours crying for my friend. I guess separation anxiety is here. Luckily my friend is a home daycare provider, and is pretty well used to that type of thing.


Posted via m.livejournal.com.

I finally saw the movie Breakfast With Scot.  D and I have been waiting quite a while to see it.  Mostly because I'm completely charmed by Tom Cavanaugh and will watch him in ANYTHING.  It was surprisingly good for a movie that had no distribution other than a few gay film festivals.  And the kid who played Scot was a pretty good little actor.  I laughed in a few scenes and overall just found it to be a very pleasant movie to watch.  I mean, I didn't really know what to expect from a Canadian Indie. 

The production was pretty crappy.  I counted three boom mics.  Seeing boom mics is a huge pet peeve of mine - it totally takes away from the experience.  So they didn't have a lot of money for editing I guess.  Once again, Canadian Indie.  

Here's the thing about Breakfast with Scot.  It's really difficult for a movie to get rights to using a major sports league's label.  Which is why you often see fake teams in sports movies.  The NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs granted permission to use their names and labels for this movie.  Which is huge, because it's the first time that's happened for a gay-themed movie.  So good on the NHL and the Maple Leafs. 

Oh my God, if my kid doesn't stop jumping on the bed I will beat him.  Not really, but I'd better go pay him a bit of attention.
I can't believe that the snow we started getting on Friday allowed me to get a freebie day off work on Monday.  But twenty three inches will do that, I suppose.  Then of course, today is Tuesday, which is my day off anyway.  What did I do over those four days?  Glad you asked: 1-Watched two movies.  Paper Heart (Squee!) and Funny  People (Too long. Great first half, but the second half was...meh, at best. Though Adam Sandler was good, good good in it!) 2-Watched eight episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and started crushing on Giles. 3-Finished reading Beloved Benjamin is Waiting, and posted a blog about it.  4-Started reading The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. 5- Wiped G's snotty nose approximately 1,000,000 times, killing at least one tree with our over-use of kleenex. 6-Took care of a husband who had a fever of over 101 for three nights in a row. 7-Made cookies.  (OK, it was the kind in the tube - but still.) 8-Built a castle with G's blocks about a thousand different ways so that he could knock it over with his "drumsticks" 9-Watched people get stuck in the snow in the alley next to our building.  Also, when they finally paved, it's only wide enough for one car to pass.  So we got to watch two women come head to head in the alley, then get out and argue over who had to back up.  The argument included the following phrases: "You're a bitch!"  "Your mother's a bitch too!"  Awesome.   10-Wondered what is up with LJ and it's inability to recognize my mother fucking paragraph breaks.
My one-word review of Paper Heart.

Charming. 

I have this weird relationship with the book Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon. It was Chabon’s first novel, written at the extremely tender age of 23. It’s my favorite Chabon novel and I love it so much, I can barely put it into words. My younger sister, after having read it years after I started pestering her to, put it succinctly. "I love a book where you can take almost any line or sentence, read it as a stand-alone line and not know if it came from poetry or prose."

That’s how Michael Chabon writes. When I read his novels, I know that Kavalier and Clay, Wonder Boys, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union are all better works. He matured as a writer so clearly between Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys. But still. I love Mysteries of Pittsburgh. My chest actually aches while reading it sometimes. What is it? Probably part of it is imagining a carefree 23 year old writing with such abandon. So. In short...I love it, I love it, I love it.

A few years ago, D and I were in Pittsburgh visiting his Grandma. I saw in the paper that the movie Mysteries of Pittsburgh was filming there that month, and I was oh so happy. I couldn’t wait to see it! It was at Sundance last year and poorly reviewed and I was oh so sad about that. Because I felt that this novel really could have made an awesome movie. I read a little about it, and I found out that they completely removed the character of Arthur Lecomte from the story in the movie. Which is a great big pile of whatthefuckery.

Finally, the movie was released on DVD, after having spent no time in the theater. So, naturally, we rented it. This was several weeks ago, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the awfulness. Let me say, first off that I am NOT one of those people who gets pissed when details of books I love are left out of movies. I get it; Screen and Page are two very different forms of media and what works for one might not work for the other. It’s why I can love Harry Potter in book form and in movie form.

But to change a story so completely is just mind-boggling and a complete disservice to the fans of Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Instead of a lovely book about Art Bechstein’s coming of age and falling in love with his best friend (the aforementioned Arthur Lecomte, that beautiful soul) while also dating the lovely neurotic Phlox. Art became a whining rich kid who is fucking his boss (the neurotic Phlox), while also being in love with Jane (a minor character in the novel) and at one time fucking Jane’s boyfriend (Cleveland, who was evil incarnate in the book). What???? And why is Nick Nolte playing Art’s gangster father? Why does Nick Nolte have a career?

Oh, but Nick Nolte wasn’t even the worst part. Art was played by Jon Foster (who I’ve never seen in anything else) and what a monotone BORING performance. Peter Skarsgaard gave a valaint effort in playing Cleveland, but the problem with the character is that it was too confused. I think the screenwriter wanted to blend Arthur and Cleveland in to one character, but in doing so managed to screw both characters up. So this "movie Cleveland," was neither as vulnerable as Arthur nor as evil incarnate as "book Cleveland." Mena Suvari played a very good Phlox, but I don’t think you’d know that if you hadn’t read the book. And Sienna Miller is just shit as Jane.

The worst part? We watched the extras, and Michael Chabon was supportive of this pile of cow shit. Guh.

It’s extra disappointing, because to me, Wonder Boys is one of the most fantastic movies made from a novel ever. It kept the spirit of the book, while keeping all of the important details and shedding only the most trivial. Most importantly, it included some fantastic performances by Michael Douglas, Robert Downey, Jr., Tobey Maguire and Frances McDormand.

In short: if you haven’t read Wonder Boys. Do it, then see the movie. If you haven’t read Mysteries of Pittsburgh, do it, but skip the movie.

Rant over.


I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Finally.  I loved it so much!  LOVE LOVE LOVE!!  I have some thoughts on it.


 

Some potential minor spoilery things )




Also, I think the first installment of my Neville fic will be posted tomorrow.  I think.  I hope. 



 

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