Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Let me decorate your bachelor pad. Please?

I just sent an e-mail to a friend of mine about how he's furnishing his place (he's lived there for a year and still needs one of everything, apparently). Me being the whimsical type, I sent him some suggestions, and then suddenly realized that HEY: I AM A GENIUS. Here is what I wrote:

I'd expect nothing less than a red velvet couch shaped like a set of women's lips, and a throne or two, and maybe a transparent telephone with glowing neon inside it, and a skateboard ramp. And a calliope. And a few hundred weathervanes. And a ginormous disco ball which reaches practically from floor to ceiling, which -- and I'm just spitballing here -- could have a door on its side, which opens onto a conversation pit INSIDE. And at least one velvet painting of Elvis, because that would be classy.

. . . .

NB: candelabras with bead fringe and bronze naked ladies are always advisable.


Sometimes, I just amaze myself. I totally need my own design show on TLC.

random pop culture stuff

[from Facebook]
Who Were You In a Past Life?
Your Quiz Result:

You were Teddy Roosevelt in your past life!

Of all of your past lives, old Teddy was your most prominent. If your dreams are ever filled with faint visions of conquests, horesback [sic] riding, spelunking, hunting, cigars, governing, masses of people, and quiet studying, these are glimpses into a world once occupied by your 'vessel'. Cherish your past life and invigorate your current one knowing that you embody greatness in all that you do.

---

I'd never seen the words "spelunking," "cigars," and "masses of people" all in the same sentence with each other before. That, coupled with the fact that I saw Sissy Spacek and Adrian Grenier recently WITHOUT requiring someone to point them out for me, makes my life complete. I mean, I NEVER recognize famous people. Huh. Neato.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

and lo, a bus rained down from the heavens

Disabled Spy Satellite Threatens Earth

Great, just what I need -- in addition to all my other concerns, I now have to worry about getting hit by something the size of a small bus without it being, in fact, an actual bus, small or no.

On the plus side: rain! In L.A.! Only imagine.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

I've still seen more movies than you

Inspired by defective yeti: my adventures through the revised AFI Top 100 Films list.

green = stuff I've seen (47 films on this list)
yellow = stuff I've seen but don't remember well (6 films on this list)
red = stuff I've never seen, or have seen in chunks, or out of order (47 films on this list)

Just for the record, I don't understand what some of these are doing here -- Pulp Fiction? West Side Story? Huh. Also, many of my favorite films are not on here, which I sort of understand (The Princess Bride, for example, isn't exactly historical or paradigm-shifting, and neither is Sneakers), but what about Gattaca? Or The Muppet Movie? Gattaca addresses hot button issues like genetic determinism in an increasingly Big Brother-like society, and didn't the Muppets pioneer the extensive use of puppetry in a feature film?

Or am I on crack? (Which wouldn't surprise some people, I guess.)

1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Casablanca (1942)
4. Raging Bull (1980) [I did take a class in screenwriting taught by Mardik Martin, though]
5. Singin' In The Rain (1952)
6. Gone With The Wind (1939) [I've seen chunks of this on TV]
7. Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
8. Schindler's List (1993)
9. Vertigo (1958)
10. The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
11. City Lights (1931)
12. The Searchers (1956)
13. Star Wars (1977)
14. Psycho (1960) [this one is hugely embarrassing for me] Seen it! BRILLIANCE.
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
16. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
17. The Graduate (1967)
18. The General (1927)
19. On The Waterfront (1954)
20. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
21. Chinatown (1974)
22. Some like It Hot (1959)
23. The Grapes Of Wrath (1940) [tried reading the book, couldn't do it]
24. E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982)
25. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
26. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. All About Eve (1950)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979)
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941) [rented it and fell asleep]
32. The Godfather Part II (1974)
33. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) [read the book and the MAD Magazine parody]
34. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937) [read the original fairy tale, as well as the written version published by Disney with animation stills]
35. Annie Hall (1977)
36. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
37. The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)
38. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948)
39. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
40. The Sound Of Music (1965)
41. King Kong (1933) [I still know the whole story -- impossible to avoid in our society]
42. Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45. Shane (1953)
46. It Happened One Night (1934)
47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
48. Rear Window (1954)
49. Intolerance (1916)
50. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)
51. West Side Story (1961) [tried watching this twice, hated it and turned it off in disgust]
52. Taxi Driver (1976)
53. The Deer Hunter (1978)
54. M*A*S*H (1970) [saw episodes of the TV show]
55. North By Northwest (1959)
56. Jaws (1975)
57. Rocky (1976) [read the parody in MAD Magazine] Seen it! Made me cry with happiness.
58. The Gold Rush (1925)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Duck Soup (1933) [tried watching, decided I'm not into the Marx Brothers and turned it off]
61. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
62. American Graffiti (1973) [read the parody in Mad Magazine]
63. Cabaret (1972)
64. Network (1976)
65. The African Queen (1951)
66. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
67. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966) [read the play]
68. Unforgiven (1992)
69. Tootsie (1982)
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
73. Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
74. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
75. In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
76. Forrest Gump (1994) [I've seen this entire film out of order]
77. All The President's Men (1976) [read the MAD magazine parody]
78. Modern Times (1936)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969)
80. The Apartment (1960)
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic (1997)
84. Easy Rider (1969) [did meet the cinematographer, though, plus I read the MAD Magazine parody]
85. A Night At The Opera (1935)
86. Platoon (1986)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie's Choice (1982) [I don't think I could handle this]
92. Goodfellas (1990) [many guys have yelled at me for this]
93. The French Connection (1971)
94. Pulp Fiction (1994)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do The Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982) [in my personal top three]
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99. Toy Story (1995)
100. Ben-hur (1959)

I've put many of the red-titled films on my must-see list for this year. And, hey, since I'm baring my soul and subjecting myself to public mortification as an 'uncultured' filmmaker (never mind that I've seen, like, a bajillion foreign films, as well as another bajillion American films released before 1950), here's what else is on my list, since people keep mentioning these at me all the freaking time:

The Karate Kid (1984) Seen it. I don't understand the big deal, but it's a decent yarn I guess.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
City of God (Cidade de Deus, 2002)
Chocolat (2000)
Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960)
The Untouchables (1987)
Unfaithful (2002)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Chungking Express (Chung Hing sam lam, 1994)
Decline of the American Empire (Le Déclin de l'Empire Américain, 1986)
Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap, 1973)

Okay, I'm off to do productive things. Let the bloodshed of Astrid's Filmmaking Credibility begin.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Astridica, Bluffing as an Authority since 1977

Happyjoy 2008!

This past weekend has been a Weekend o' Victory on The Astrid Frontier, for reasons I'll get into in a subsequent post, since I'm kind of in a rush right now. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'll be a guest speaker tonight at the January UMEC meeting, UMEC standing for University of Michigan Entertainment Coalition. If you are a UM alumnus/alumna, and you're in 'the biz' or a biz groupie (or, hey, even an Astrid groupie), come on over! Here are the details, or 'deets' as the 'kidz' apparently like to say:

8pm
James Stewart Building, rm. 302
Sony Lot

rsvp by noon today to UMEC president Ted Houser via lapresident at um-ec dot org

Mainly, Ted needed a gimmick to get higher attendance at this month's meeting, and since I'm an 'authority' who, like, shoots movies and crap, he e-mailed me yesterday in desperation a fit of inspiration and asked if I could speak. Should be groovy; there will be llamas on fire, as well as dancing girls with tambourines. This is entirely true, except for everything that came after the word "groovy".