A League of Our Own
I’ve always liked my manicurist a lot even if we’ve had a hard time communicating beyond the basics; her English isn’t very good and my Korean is nonexistent. A few weeks ago, we had a breakthrough, though. An animal rescue commercial came on the salon TV, and, from our shared reaction, it became immediately apparent that we both spoke the International Language of Cat Lady. Now, once we establish my nail color of the week, that her children are doing well, and how terrible I am for eating my cuticles, we converse solely in meows and purrs. Naturally, everyone around us thinks we’re batty once they realize we’re the cats they are hearing and, naturally, this only makes us meow more. It’s the nature of the beast. (Pictured here: Another member of our secret feline and fancy nail appreciation society.)
February’s ‘Wild Tales’ & ‘Accidental Love’
February may be the weirdest time of the year for film. Sure, ’tis the season for the Hollywood romance; witness the box-office success of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and the terrific musical love story “The Last Five Years.” But this is also the season for movies that distributors have written off as unmarketable. And while “unmarketable” can be Hollywood speak for “innovative,” it also is a synonym for “unfathomably awful.”
Case in point: “Accidental Love.” Released this month on VOD, David O’Russell’s buried comedy about Alice (Jessica Biel), an uninsured waitress unhinged by a brain injury, is as bad as was rumored. O’Russell himself hated this film so much that he demanded his name be removed from the credits. (The pseudonym “Stephen Greene” was used.) Filmed in 2008 in the wake of the badly received “I Heart Huckabees,” the production was so riddled with financial problems that it was shut down at least eight times. Though he never finished it – he refused to shoot a key scene in order to block its release – post-production was eventually completed without O’Russell’s participation. (A pivotal moment is glaringly lacking.) Continue Reading →
Neil Gaiman & Daniel Handler: Of Magic and Racist Jokes
They promised swordfights in their conversation but what we got was almost as good. At Tuesday night’s “En Garde! Gaiman and Handler,” authors, screenwriters, and general bon vivants Neil Gaiman and Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) convened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House for a ninety-minute dialogue covering everything from the existence of magic to writing advice. Most notably, the friends and occasional collaborators also addressed Handler’s racist joke at last fall’s National Book Awards. It was a lively evening.
Perhaps to head off any unpleasant confrontations, the question-and-answer portion of the evening veered from BAM’s usual format: Audience members were encouraged to jot their questions on index cards upon their arrival rather than querying the authors from a microphone stand. Throughout the evening, the writers then answered the submissions of their choosing. Both men are terrific wits, and for a while it seemed Handler would circumvent the controversy entirely. Continue Reading →