Girl Detective

#48 in my movie challenge for the year was our first family movie, Cars. All four of us went! Drake sat on G. Grod’s lap, and I had baby Guppy in the sling, where he mostly slept. Drake was attentive for the first hour, and rather wiggly but OK for the second. Cars was a long movie to pick as his first theater experience, but he did great. He mentioned popcorn several times the next day, and his Lightning McQueen and Sally cereal-box cars have been favorites ever since. I really enjoyed the movie as well. The animation was well done and I liked how the characters looked like the actors who voiced them. I thought it was a sweet story that wasn’t saccharine, and I only wish Owen Wilson could find a live action movie role so good.

#47 in my movie challenge for the year was the darkly funny Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Robert Downey, Jr. is excellent as a thief who is mistakenly whisked to Hollywood, where he gets tangled up in noirish murder and mayhem. Joining him are his childhood sweetheart (played by Michelle Monaghan. Suggestion: cast an acress Downey’s age, rather than ELEVEN YEARS his junior. Just sayin’.) and his gay agent, played by Val Kilmer. The dialogue is superfast and hilarious. The movie is full of clever asides, and deprecating, self-referential voiceovers. It’s good, not-so-clean fun.

Our viewing group was unanimous: we were thrilled to see the delusional Vincent go. We cringed when he fawned over Catherine Malandrino. We flinched when he cursed at Jeffrey, who (for a change) wasn’t even doing anything obnoxious. We groaned when he said his design “made him hot,” and averted our eyes at the sight of him in a tank top. Laura had it right when she said he was obsessed with his pattern, and professed to want feedback, but really wanted compliments. None were forthcoming, though. Tim Gunn scolded him for his wanton use of glue. Malandrino’s response was merely “No” over and over. Michael Kors snorted that his model was effectively topless. Richard Tyler was horrified by the floral “thing” on the back of the dress. (Then again, wasn’t he the designer of one of those dreadful suits Diane Keaton wore to an awards show within the past few years?) Laura was called to task for her plain dress; it looked old and done. Kayne was taken to task for his over-the-top top. Michael was taken to task for his weird bodice details. And Uli didn’t win because while hers was good, Jeffrey’s was great. He did something bright, fun and daring. Uli’s was none of these things. Manolo the Shoe Blogger astutely notes that several of the designers design for themselves and fit it for the models.

I predict that Kayne will be next out, and Laura after him. Their designs are getting worse, while Jeffrey’s are getting sharper. I think Michael is a shoo-in to win, and that Uli and Jeffrey will join him for the final three.

For this week’s episode, the designers were challenged to make an outfit for an international jetsetter. The twist? The jetsetters were they! One would think that designing an outfit for her/him self wouldn’t be hard, but Crazy Vincent and Ditzy Angela had a lot of trouble. Kayne didn’t, but he should have. I agreed with the this week’s judges exactly (thumbnails of the outfits at the Bravo site): Jeffrey as winner; Michael as almost winner; Laura, Ulli, and Vincent allowed to stay; Kayne as almost loser; and Angela sent home. Yes, Jeffrey was being a confrontational jerk. But Angela let him get to her, and it sent her already wildly uneven talent into a tailspin.

Angela’s outfit made me think that it was Laura’s tailoring influence that not only helped win the Macy’s INC challenge from Episode 4, but that spilled over into Angela’s lovely Audrey Hepburn dress for the following episode. Her outfit looked like something from the junior department at Macy’s–way too many “fleurchons.”She said again and again that she wasn’t a jet setter; her outfit was certainly more Ohio than international.

Jeffrey’s meanness did not prevent him from making an outfit that fit the challenge and himself perfectly, and reminded us that his almost win (and perhaps undeserved loss) from “Waste Not, Want Not” was not a fluke, despite the ugliness of the dress he made for Angela’s mom last episode. Don’t get me wrong. I agree he’s being an ass, though I don’t despise him as much or as hilariously as Midwestgrrl, but I still thought this outfit and the recycled dress were spot on.

Michael Knight revealed he’d worked as a model. He is so talented and seems to be such a decent guy I feel bad noting that he has terrible teeth. Perhaps if he wins this thing, which he seems on track to do, he’ll take care of his mom, and then find a good dentist.

Laura now looks pregnant, and I have to wonder how a 42 year old woman in her first trimester (likely exhausted and nauseated) will shoulder the early mornings and long hours. If it were me, I’d certainly cave, but she’s clearly made of sterner stuff. Her biscuit-colored dress, while lovely, and more flow-y than what she has done before, made her look a little monochrome with all that pale skin. And, as she noted, 4 inch heels aren’t ideal for jet setting.

Vincent played it safe and got lucky. Kayne didn’t play it safe, but got lucky anyway. The judges sent him a clear message that his stuff is tacky, and he better shape up if he wants to stick around. As Manolo the Shoe Blogger notes, the problem wasn’t that he looked like Elvis, it’s that he looked like cheap Elvis.

The judges warned Ulli that they want to see if she can do something different from her usual flowing mix of patterns. I’d thought her a shoo-in for the final three, but now I have my doubts. Before this episode, I thought it would be Michael, Ulli, and Kayne. Now I’m wondering if it could be Michael, Laura, and Jeffrey. In any case, I don’t think Vincent is going to last much longer.

Once again I find myself at the end of August, with the new TV season about to begin, without the bible of the Entertainment Weekly fall TV issue in hand. I hope to correct this, soon. In the meantime, though, I’ll remind you that Bones starts this Wednesday. The mysteries are OK, but the chemistry and banter between David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel is great, as is the comic relief of the supporting cast.

Next week House, M.D. returns. If you can’t wait, check out Hugh Laurie with his native accent as a dim, goofy optimist, as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster, and as George in Blackadder.

The designers were challenged to make something for the everyday woman, and their mothers or sisters were brought in. The designers, though, had to pick someone else’s relative as their model, and did it in one of those horrid selection events where one person ends up picked last, like the worst grade-school gym class ever. With family came revelations: Laura is pregnant with #6; Jeffrey is a recovering alcoholic according to his mother, but was a street-living junkie by his own admission (kind of a chasm of James-Frey-ish ambiguity between the two, no?); and Kayne was really fat as a kid.

Manolo the Shoe Blogger loved Joan Kors as a guest judge, and reminds fans to visit the Blogging Project Runway site. The gals at Everybody Loves Saturday Night were universally hating Jeffrey.

Vincent won. While the judges lauded the fit, I thought the fit neither great nor flattering, though Vincent’s design was attractive and age-appropriate. Uli’s outfit was both beautiful and better suited to her model, Kayne’s mother.

Robert was eliminated, finally. Tattoo Neck Jeffrey came awfully close, and his interactions with poor Ohio Angela’s mom were hard to watch. I thought they kind of ganged up on him, though, by asking her what she felt without him there, and asking her the only open-ended question at the end. It also became clear that at least some of his attitude stems from insecurity and defensiveness, not innate mean-spiritedness. Some might argue convincingly that Jeffrey’s was as bad as Robert’s. Both were unfortunate, but Jeffrey at least tried to infuse some style. Angela was also called onto the loser’s carpet. Her all-over-the-place talent was on the down side for this show. She should have done a variation on her chic, structured Audrey Hepburn design of two weeks ago. Instead, she committed the same fringe faux pas as departed Bradley for a shapeless black outfit that did Laura’s mom no favors.

A question from our audience: why didn’t the designers with the lusher models show some cleavage?

Favorite moment: when Vincent says there’s something European about Uli’s mom’s style. Vincent, she’s FROM Europe. Vincent seems to exist in a separate reality from the rest of us, doesn’t he?

Reality television should come with a warning label. I’ve managed to avoid it almost entirely, then a friend who loves Project Runway started inviting people over. Now I’m hooked. Healthy? Probably not. Entertaining? Hell, yeah.

The group I watch with has nicknames for many of the designers: Blondie (Alison), Square Head (Robert), Meth Man (Bradley), Tattoo Neck (Steven), Ohio (Angela), Basket Hat (Vincent). In the short time I’ve been watching, I see a disturbing mini trend, and it’s not about fashion. In Season 3, episode 4, “Reap What You Sew”, the designers were divided into teams to create a look for Macy’s owned brand, INC. Bonnie’s and Robert’s designs were the two worst. Robert’s had an ugly jacket, a shapeless top, and a skirt with a back slit unwearably high. Bonnie’s also had a jacket, though not as bad as Robert’s, over a cowl neck, and pants that the judge Nina sneered looked cheap. Bonnie was criticized for not being fashion forward enough, and she was cut. I thought Robert’s outfit was much worse–ugly, mismatched, and poorly made. The implication is it’s better to wear a jumbled attempt at fashion than a more conservative ensemble.

On last night’s episode, “Waste Not, Want Not”, Alison and Vincent’s designs were voted the two worst. The judges noted that the model could not walk in Vincent’s dress, and wondered why he hadn’t made it a mini dress. But the vitriol heaped on Alison seemed far greater than she deserved. Her constructed paper dress wasn’t great, but its unforgiveable sin was that it didn’t flatter the model. “She looks like a plus model,” Heidi Klum spit out. Michael Kors said he couldn’t believe a woman designer would do such a thing. So while Vincent was merely chastised, Alison was sent home. The implication is it’s better to wear something ugly in which you can’t move than wear something not ugly that isn’t slimming.

In both episodes, the male designer made the uglier, less wearable outfit. Yet the female designer was voted out. While it would be foolish to criticize a fashion show for valuing style over substance, I didn’t see style in either Robert’s jacket outfit, or Vincent’s weird art dress. Maybe they’re favoring the men designers over the women. More likely, though, they’re favoring stronger personalities over weaker ones, as noted by Manolo the Shoeblogger.

Then again, that wouldn’t explain the choice of the winning design, though. For the second week in a row, supposedly nice guy Michael Knight’s design won. While it was good, and won the coveted comment of “I’d wear that” from the judges, our group thought bellicose Tattoo Neck Steven’s design had the most style and substance.

#46 in my movie challenge for the year was What’s Cooking. I recorded it for two Thanksgivings ago, and we finally felt like watching it nowhere near holiday season. It’s a decent holiday flick, switching between four LA families, one Jewish, Latino, African American, and Chinese. Each family has drama for both the parents and the children, and each family has different food and ways to celebrate. It’s overlong at about two hours, and some of the drama and performances are forced, but it’s got some sweet and funny moments that make it worthwhile, and nothing so over-the-top dreadful as what usually gets churned out by the studios each year.

#s 44 and 45 in my movie challenge for the year were, respectively, The Graduate and Rumor Has It. The Graduate is not long, but moves slow. My dad and mom saw this while she was pregnant with me, so apparently I experienced the film pretty young. Our movie book review says it’s uneven because the director, Mike Nichols, couldn’t decide whether it was social satire or farce. I think it works better as the former, because the elements of farce take away empathy for the characters. Bancroft was 36 when it was released, Hoffman was 30, so hardly young enough to be her son. I think it’s most memorable for his performance, which contains the humorous, nebbishy tics more familiar from his later roles. He turned down the Gene Wilder role in The Producers to do The Graduate, and the role made him a star.

Rumor Has It is a riff on The Graduate. Aniston plays a girl who discovers that her family was the basis for the Robinsons in The Graduate, so she seeks out Costner to find out if he’s her father. Maclaine, as the “real” Mrs. Robinson, steals every scene she’s in. Costner is believably charming, though his artfully mussed hair is an expensive variation on a combover. It’s billed as a comedy; while lightweight, it’s more bittersweet. It also had that rare character–a good father, played well by Richard Jenkins of Six Feet Under. I enjoyed it more for having watched The Graduate. It got poor reviews, but I enjoyed it.

I’m likely to hit my minimum yearly book and movie goals of fifty, perhaps for books even by the end of August. After we had our first son, Drake, I found I was reading less often, and seeing movies hardly at all. Both reading and movies felt too important to become casualties (even temporarily) of parenthood, so last year and this I set movie and book challenges, with a hope that, at minimum, I’d be reading one book and seeing one movie a week. These challenges are reminders to myself (and perhaps to readers) that there IS time to read and to see movies. I make time for these things by not doing other things, like housecleaning and yard work, or doing them less often. Mental Multivitamin re-posted this entry on how she makes time to read/write/live/learn. Her post is a good reminder: time is limited and distractions many. My challenges help me focus on my priorities. My summer reading challenge has helped me focus on the reading list I set, rather than haring off whenever something new catches my eye, or comes in at the library. I’ve still departed from the list, but much less frequently, and with more deliberation, than I would if I had not set a reading list.

#43 in my movie challenge for this year was last year’s Proof, directed by John Madden and starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal. (There’s another movie by the same name from a while back, which was on that “overlooked movie” list.) I almost skipped this movie, since I felt so busy this week. I told the librarian to put it back in the queue since I didn’t have time to watch it. He shook his head, and told me to rearrange things so I could watch it. After that recommendation, I had to watch it, even though I knew it had gotten mixed reviews. It took a while for me to enjoy it; its origins as a play are quite clear, and some scenes were very stage-y. Additional, Gyllenhaal and Paltrow often sounded stilted, as if they were reading lines. But the story grew on me. Paltrow is the daughter of a mathematician played by Anthony Hopkins. The story jumps back and forth in time as we see their relationship, his madness, and as we try to determine which of them wrote a math proof, and whether she is going crazy, as he had. Uneven, but it finishes strong.

#42 in my movie challenge for the year was last year’s Junebug. It is an interesting contrast to The Family Stone, which I found heavy handed. Junebug was not overdetermined; I found it often perplexing. Amy Adams gave a great performance, and it deftly avoided the usual cliches about family and the south. At the end, I had many questions, most about George, the son who brings his new bride to meet the family. George spoke hardly at all, and the few times he did, he often contradicted something he’d said before. A good movie, with much to recommend it, but one I found ultimately unsatisfying.

#41 in my movie challenge for the year was Syriana, which I had wanted to see in theaters, and never managed to pull off, since getting to a theater for a movie is much harder these days with two kids. I’m actually glad I didn’t. It’s a complex movie that I needed to do a few rewinds on for dialogue. It’s dark, challenging, and very well done. I’d been warned in advance that it’s hard to keep track of the plot, so I didn’t get too concerned about the details. It’s an impressionistic movie, and by the end, the story was clear in spite of so many details. Clooney’s performance is the anchor, yet the other actors–Chrisopher Plummer, Chris Cooper, Jeffrey Wright, Matt Damon, Alexander Siddig–are all excellent. There is a scene with a young boy, though, that so upset my husband G. Grod that he couldn’t finish the movie, and that still makes we uncomfortable, so if you’re the parent of a young child, you might want to save watching this for a day when you’re feeling emotionally resilient. This is a movie that would benefit from re-watching, yet it’s so bleak (nearly hopeless, I think) that I’m not sure I could bear to do so.

#40 in my movie challenge for the year was the original The Producers movie, directed by Mel Brooks, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. It is easy to envision this as a stage play, harder to imagine the recent film remake as an improvement, save perhaps for Will Farrell, who probably did wonderful things with the playwright role. Very funny, it has aged rather well. Wilder at times reminded me of my toddler, Drake: “I’m wet, I’m wet, I’m in pain!” Except that Drake doesn’t carry a blankie.

After a string of disappointing movies, #39 in my movie challenge, Last Holiday, was a sweet little gem. Queen Latifah is told she has three weeks to live, so cashes in her savings and departs for the European luxury resort of her dreams. It’s utterly predictable, with a few eye-rolling scenes, and overlong at almost 2 hours. Yet it is mostly directed with a light touch, and features such charming actors (Latifah foremost among them), that the end result is winning. This is what a holiday movie should be–life affirming–not ham-handedly dreadful like The Family Stone.

#38 in my movie challenge for the year was last year’s The Family Stone. Poorly written and directed, it was saved by the performance of Craig T. Nelson, in perhaps the film’s only likable role. The story and the characters were wildly uneven. At times it seemed to want to be a old-fashioned romantic comedy, but then it whipped into a scene invested with ham-handed attempts at drama. I didn’t hate this movie, but I came awfully close. It should have been a drama with gentle humor, or a comedy without maudlin attempts at realism. I found the mix of extremes often painful to watch.

#37 in my movie challenge for the year was Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. I was hoping that the condensing of Austen’s overlong narrative would be a good thing, but the movie disappointed me, as had the book. Perhaps the film hasn’t aged well, or perhaps I’m a curmudgeon, since I am at odds with ALL the critics. I didn’t think it as good as either the A & E or the more recent movie of Pride and Prejudice. The characters aren’t as likeable, and the production values aren’t as good. There was a shot in this movie where I became aware of the camera, and Marianne’s tearful repeated calls of Willoughby from the hill in the rain had me rolling my eyes. Hugh Grant could have chewed up the screen as Willoughby, but instead was a mumbling, shrinking presence as Edward. Rickman talked as if he had a mouthful of marbles. Hugh Laurie’s few lines had me wishing for so much more from his minor character. I know the male leads aren’t supposed to be dashing manly men, but both in the book and in the movie they are hardly compelling. It was a long 136 minutes.

#36 in my movie challenge for the year, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill was something of a “should” watch. I’d heard only good things about it, yet I doubted I would be wowed by it, and I wasn’t. It was a well-made, sweet documentary. But some of its charm may come from the anthropomorphisation of its parrot co-stars. Watching Grizzly Man made me acutely aware of the ease of, the desire for, and the danger inherent in, anthropomorphisation. Mark Bittner, the parrot guy, is either luckier or saner than poor, dead Timothy Treadwell in that he chose animals who don’t pose a physical danger to him if he treats them like people. I found WPoTH an interesting portrait of an interesting person. Bittner comes off as a lovable weirdo. He doesn’t have a conventional job, or a means of income, yet he has managed to procure a living space, as well as supplies to help him care for a local wild parrot flock. Also interesting is the distinction some people had between native and non-native species, the latter of which many people believe should be ignored, discouraged, or eliminated. But the parrots themselves were of only passing interest to me, so I think much of the documentary’s charm was lost on me. Then again, I was one of the few people who disliked that other popular animal documentary, so perhaps these cuddly, cutesy animal movies just aren’t for me.

I’ve slowed down the pace of the movie challenge. I wanted to spend more time reading. Also, there’s just not been as much, in theaters or on new release DVDs, that has interested me. My Tivo hard drive is still full, though, and we have a large library of unwatched DVDs we own. They can wait indefinitely for me to return to movie watching.

“Aah!” I screamed, and clobbered my husband who was holding the remote and scrolling through the schedule. “EZ Streets! EZ Streets!” I’ve written many times before that this is one of my favorite cancelled TV series of all time, right up there with My So Called Life. Great reviews and Emmys couldn’t save it. EZ Streets was written by Paul Haggis, the screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby and the director of Crash. It is being shown on the new Sleuth Channel–”Mystery. Crime. All the Time.” I’m both excited and trepidatious to revisit EZ Streets, which ran in 1996 and 1997 and had only 9 episodes. Will I still like it? And if so, will it make me angry all over again that it got cancelled? If so, perhaps I can console myself this fall with this.

#35 in my movie challenge for the year was The Quiet Man, which was a pick of my husband’s off our Tivo’d cache. He enjoyed it more than I did. I found the Irish characters too calculatedly charming/drunk/whatever, and the Taming-of-the-Shrew-ish-ness of the story was more than a little troubling. It’s beautiful to look at, as is John Wayne as a young, tall, handsome man. But seeing Wayne drag O’Hara over miles to confront her brother over Wayne’s supposed cowardice had me staring in horror, especially as it was played for laughs. Additionally, the resolution, in which Wayne fights the brother, and wins back his bride, is both predictable and disappointing. Not as overtly sexist as Alfie, it nonetheless left the same yucky taste in my brain.