Golden Globs

I ignored them because they make the awards season boring. I saw the dresses online. Boring. Also I don't have a TV. And you know what? I miss it. I never watched it (except for Jon Stewart) and now I miss it. I miss that I can't turn it on to spaz out for no reason whatsoever. I miss that its unrelenting noise doesn't keep me company anymore, even though it was never on. This not having a TV business makes me have to read a book, watch a netflix or play Scrabble. Or sit here in front of this screen trolling the web. After watching the harrowing and deeply recommended British film Fish Tank, I have decided that TV is solely to blame for the generalized state of retardedness in the world. It has made everybody an idiot, in ways that I don't think we even fathom.  Still, I miss TV.  However, I'm very happy for Jeff Bridges, Mo'nique, Christoph Waltz and The White Ribbon.

This is the kind of news...

...that makes my day. The restoration of the Loew's Kings Cinema Palace in Brooklyn. What saddens me is that it won't be used for movies, but for live performances.
Remember when movies used to be shown at palaces? Me neither.

Moronic Depression

You know what? After thinking about it a little more in depth, I now totally empathize with the people who come back from watching Avatar in 3D feeling depressed.
Mind you, they are not depressed by the fact that the movie they just saw is a rehash of every other bad movie they have ever seen, but with goggles and blue people; or that it cost an obscene amount of money and made even more, or that from now on every single fucking movie is going to try to be and do the same.
They are depressed because Earth (in which they supposedly live) is not like Pandora and they want to live in Pandora.
That happens to me all the time when I go to the movies. I get depressed that I will never have Clive Owen, or be Penelope Cruz (and have Javier Bardem), or win an Oscar or have someone's amazing legs or even their plastic surgeon/trainer/stylist/photoshop artist. It's very depressing.
Yet heroically I forge on and cope with the reality of my cellulite and the tragic absence of paparazzi in my life. And I would counsel these people to do the same. Be heroic. Forge on. Get a life.
Maybe volunteer for one of our two ongoing wars, to get a sense of purpose.

On DVD: Le Corbeau

See H.G. Clouzot's magnificent movie, Le Corbeau, (made, by the way, under the Nazi thumb in France)  and tell me that it is not a direct antecedent of and a striking influence on Haneke's movie. There's nothing new under the sun, indeed.
On second viewing, The White Ribbon still holds up. It is a brutal, thought provoking film. Go see it.