Archive for Deborah Lipp

Monday Movie Review: The Whole Wide World

October 13, 2008 / / 4 comments

The Whole Wide World (1996) 8/10
Novalyne Price (Renée Zellweger) meets pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard (Vincent D’Onofrio). Although most of his neighbors in 1930s Texas think Bob Howard is crazy, Novalyne finds him fascinating and a romance gradually develops.

The Whole Wide World is based upon the memoirs of Novalyn Price, and it functions strictly through her point of view. We see Howard only when she sees him, and we know him only as she knows him. The tight focus of the movie is interesting and unusual; we normally see more of characters “real” life, but in this movie, most of the action is Bob and Novalyne talking; on drives, in parlors, on a picnic. Talking. Discovering they love each other and discovering, too, that they are not all that compatible. Great friends with real chemistry, they have very different ideas of what life should contain.

D’Onofrio inhabits Howard with his characteristic weirdness, but also with a burning enthusiasm that bursts forth in shouts and broad gestures, before calming back into something like civility. Zellweger is almost a cliché, a fussy schoolteacher with a Sunday School attitude, but she’s also fiery and fierce. A cliché would not have the strength to stand up to someone she so admires. By the time Novalyne meets Bob in 1933, he is already famous, widely-regarded as the greatest pulp writer alive. An unsuccessful writer of “true romance” stories, she wants to meet him to pick his brain probably more than she wants a romance.

Although a friend whose taste I admire adores this film, I liked it very much without being blown away. The stiff propriety of romance with a schoolmarm was distancing, and the emphasis on intellectual conversation, while admirable, went a bit overboard. I was also frustrated by Howard’s mother’s “Movie Illness,” in which she slows weakens with an unnamed sickness that makes her daily more beautiful. I was surprised, reading up on Howard afterwards, to find nothing all that specific about Mrs. Howard. She was “sick” and getting “sicker,” and that’s about it. She apparently lived Movie Illness before it was the in thing.

I recommend it nonetheless. It is a romance filled with the world of writing and reading, it is love based on a meeting of minds as well as deep feeling, and it is a touching story.

Life on Mars: Thoughts

October 10, 2008 / / 4 comments

This was better than I thought it would be. It looked so good and cool, on the other hand, it looked like pandering to the audience’s desire for cool. It’s a pastiche of things that are popular now; on-going mysteries, low-grade supernatural elements (as opposed to full-blown science fiction; a single oddity in an otherwise normal world), time travel, period pieces. So how much can you hope?

But Life on Mars was surprisingly good. It had a sense of being grounded, of not just playing by the numbers. And oh, sure, the numbers were played, but, maybe just because of the presence of Harvey Keitel, there was a certain gravity.

Life on Mars is the story of present-day police detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) who is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He is weirded out by the technology and fashion, but he also suspects he is hallucinating. We are left with the notion that in 2008 he is in a persistant vegetative state while living an alternate reality in 1973. So he’s stuck and the PVS lets him stay stuck a good long time, while potentially having a body to return to in the present. In the past, he’s finding clues to the serial killings he was working on when he had his accident, and he’s in conflict with his lieutenant (Keitel) while forming a bond with a policewoman (Gretchen Mol).

I like the period feel of this one in every way I didn’t like Swingtown. Here, the seventies are urban and gritty, the cool period objects have some wear and tear, whereas in Swingtown, the camera lingered on each can of Tab and fringed vest like they were naked boobs. The result is the 70s feel like life, not like a set.

Jason O’Mara isn’t going to win any Emmys; in one scene, he shows he’s upset by pouting. With his big ol’ pouty lower lip. But he’s passable.

Fans of the original BBC series (which I never saw) are unhappy with the show, but judged on its own merits, I think it’s pretty good, and I’ll be back next week.

I am Jack’s Executive Function

October 9, 2008 / / 2 comments

I’ve been thinking about the notion of executive function. It’s basically the part of the brain that handles organizational things. Because someone will tell you, “Oh, it’s easy, just make a phone call,” and your brain goes BLAH and you wonder why you’re going BLAH.

So here’s a thing that happened. I had to buy a gift. I went into the store and I picked it out. I got it home and I realized there was no way I could ship this sonuvabitch. It was a weird shape. So I went to the store’s website, figuring, I’d order online and then return the one I bought. Let them handle figuring out how to ship it.

So the website was down, but I managed to squeeze the item number out of the url before everything went crash kaboom blooey bam. I phoned and I had to go through all the hoops to place an order. Have you ordered before? Will you order again? Would you like to form a long-term relationship with us? Fuck you, your website doesn’t even fucking work, just give me my present.

So I give them the billing info and they read it back. The credit card number is wrong. I give it again. My name is spelled wrong. I give it again. My address. Again.

Now we’re up to the shipping address, and the same thing. Everything is wrong. Everything. I have a dyslexic order taker. I have a person who inverts digits who has decided on a career of copying down digits. Fucking fuck.

And all the questions. Apologies and questions and how many items do you want and are you sure I can’t offer you a discount card for purchase of fifty dollars or more and JUST SHUT UP.

So finally, he gets to my total, and it’s over thirty dollars. For a nineteen dollar gift. “What?!?” “Well, ma’am, there’s a fuel surcharge…” “You’re charging me fifty percent of the cost of the item.” “Well, the reason is that the fuel surcharge…” “I actually don’t care what your reason is. You’re charging me fifty percent of the cost of the item!” (My stern voice.) “Hold please.”

So, long hold. Long. And he comes back and my shipping charges have been reduced to $2. But he emphasizes six times, this is one time only, because I’m a first time customer. Six times. Nicely, politely telling me, “Don’t ever try to pull this again, bitch.” Don’t worry, I won’t.

Next day I go back to the store and return the original gift.

Gift doesn’t arrive.

I call the recipient after 2 days, after 4 days. Gift hasn’t arrived. I check the website. Gift, it says, was delivered after 2 days.

So now I call the post office where the item was supposed to be delivered. “Why yes, we do have a package we can’t deliver from that company.”

It was addressed to me. Not to the recipient. To me.

So, we got that all straightened out and the gift was delivered, and I looked at this supposedly simple thing I did. Nine steps. Nine. Some of which were highly stressful and took a lot of tenacity on my part.

1. Buy gift
2. Try website
3. Place phone order
4. “Renegotiate” delivery price
5. Return gift
6. Follow-up on delivery with receipient, find it didn’t arrive
7. Look up delivery on company website
8. Call post office, straighten things out
9. Let receipient know it’s on the way.

That was one errand. One. Of the dozens I may do in a week. It really made me hyper-aware of this whole area of brain function, I’ll tell you.

Oops

October 7, 2008 / / Comments Off on Oops

I took a sick day today, and I thought, well, I’m home, I’ll have plenty of time to do trivia.

Not so much. I slept most of the day and have been very unfocused.

To hell with you people, you can wait a week.

Love,

Deborah

Monday Movie Review: Margot at the Wedding

October 6, 2008 / / 5 comments

Margot at the Wedding (2007) 6/10
After a long period of estrangement, Margot (Nicole Kidman) arrives at the famiy home to attend her sister Pauline’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding to Malcolm (Jack Black).

A character study, particularly a study of an unpleasant character, is a tricky thing. A happy ending can betray whatever truth the character has revealed, an unhappy ending can be melodramatic and artificial, while a non-ending is (though trendy) potentially unsatsifying.

Margot at the Wedding reminds me of Half Nelson, an understated study of a drug addict that kind of goes for non-ending. The thing is, in Half Nelson, there’s a level of character movement, and also some conscious choices about non-movement, that make us feel we went somewhere.

There’s a lot that’s very powerful about Margot at the Wedding, but ultimately, it goes nowhere.

Margot is a woman of almost astonishing meanness. She is a bad mother to thirteenish Claude (Zane Paris), to whom she blurts every inappropriate thing you wished mothers would never say. She is comfortable calling her son a “jerk” and an “asshole,” telling him how bad he looks, whining to him about how he treats her, and then pushing him away when he seeks forgiveness.

Late in the movie, Pauline suggests that Margot has Borderline Personality Disorder, which actually makes sense, because Margot is really so incomprehensibly awful.

As the family spends time together, they relax into a conversational style that is unique and odd. This is right; families have that style. They sound like themselves and outsiders don’t understand. The sisters crack up hysterically over something that seems unfunny. They leave things unexplained. At one point they say “Poor Becky” in unison about their sister. We never learn why.

And that’s okay; a movie can have these unanswered questions, these gaps. Because it’s a family portrait, and families, even over-analytical ones like this one, don’t explain themselves to themselves. They don’t say who Becky is or why it’s sad about her.

But there’s supposed to be a payoff. A movement. When the film ends, we’re supposed to know that something shifted, or that there was meaning to it not shifting. And in the end of Margot at the Wedding, I basically felt like an unpleasant person was staying unpleasant, and any shift was just her lying to herself about her functionality like she always does.

The acting all-around is very good, very believable and gentle, although really, they simply must stop casting Kidman as an American; sooner or later her accent always slips. Was there no excellent American actress for the role? It’s stupid.

Deity of the Day: Nymphs

October 5, 2008 / / One comment

I’m still in Baltimore. I’m here on a visit with my son. And he hugs me and we hold each other and it’s extraordinary.

I was thinking that it’s not about how much I love him. I’m not full of a feeling of love as we might normally describe that. It’s not the heart-wells-up thing. I get that a lot; when I think of him, when I talk to him, when I look at pictures. But holding each other is physical and present and not a feeling of love. A feeling of absorption, rather.

I began to thing how that is like a Greek nymph. They’re always turning into things. To save their virginity or avoid rape, or to be fully absorbed in their love. Echo, loving Narcissus for eternity, or Narcissus loving himself.

But to embrace someone you love so much, to be absorbed in their nature, is nymph-like in the sense of identifying with a physical thing or expression. Nymphs are and become trees, streams, rivers, and other natural objects. Their being is not separate from the being of the object they are.

Absorption. A quality of love I can experience. The hug that is endless, not because you are full of feeling, not because your heart loves, but because you are that hug, your being is inseparable from that embrace.

I feel like I know how Daphne turned into a laurel tree. Just being the thing. Just being.

I’m in Baltimore

October 4, 2008 / / 2 comments

Arthur hugged me a lot. It was great. Then I spent all last evening trying to get connectivity in my hotel room. No luck. Then this morning it was like nothing had ever been wrong.

Why what I do matters

October 1, 2008 / / 5 comments

My day job is as a tech writer. I do end user documentation, but I also work on things like interface design and usability. This all sounds like gobbledygook until you’re standing in the middle of a situation in which no one cares about interface design or usability.

So I ordered something for Arthur from Office Depot. Their website was down so I called. After the order was placed I was given a Customer ID number and a Confirmation number. These are the exact words the doofus on the phone used. Customer ID number. Confirmation number.

So Arthur didn’t get his item and I went to the website to see what I could see. I find a page called “Order Tracking.”

Step 1: Enter your Order Number.
Step 2: Enter your Phone Number or Account Number.

You understand, I had neither an “Order Number” nor an “Account Number,” and this is where most people would have given up. But being me, and kinda into these things, I entered the Confirmation number as my Order Number, and I entered the Customer ID as the Account Number, and ba-da-bing, there was my order.

On a usability scale, this is a FAIL.

So, my quest is to save the world one web page at a time.

Tuesday Trivia: Have at it

September 30, 2008 / / 21 comments

I give up. I am too busy. It’s almost not Tuesday anymore and I just haven’t got time to put together a quiz.

You may play free-for-all. You know the rules. I’ll start.

This actress is a nerd’s dream: She’s been in a Bond movie, made love on the Enterprise, and co-starred in a major superhero movie. Name her.

Monday Movie Review: The Times of Harvey Milk

September 29, 2008 / / 3 comments

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) 8/10
This documentary tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city official elected in the United States. Opening with his assassination, the movie goes back to his life, focusing on his time in San Francisco politics, which ended with his assassination (along with Mayor George Moscone) by Dan White. The film examines the aftermath of Milk’s death, including White’s “Twinkie defense” trial and its results. Directed by Rob Epstein.

I think the most important thing to remember when watching The Times of Harvey Milk is that it was made in 1984, a mere six years after the events depicted. It was made before AIDS was known about by anyone other than epidemiologists. Before gay marriage existed as a political issue. The people interviewed in the movie have had only a short time to gain any perspective on their experiences and their loss. It also explains the hair.

It’s as if the film is two time capsules; the capsule of San Francisco in the 1970s, the beginning of a flamboyant Gay Rights movement, the birth of Castro Street as a gay cultural center, and the high cost of this kind of openness. As well, the capsule of speaking openly as a gay activist to a filmmaker in 1984; neither of these times exist anymore, both are worth looking at.

One interesting thing about watching a documentary is that it allows you to look at your own perceptions and memory. I was a teenager in the 70s. I remember that someone named Harvey Milk was killed. I remember there was a “Twinkie defense” murder trial; I did not remember they were the same murder. I remembered nothing about peaceful or violent demonstrations either. Yet these were important events, and you and I are living in a world very much touched by these events. Harvey would have been proud.

The use of news footage, interviews, photographs, and home movies is well-done. Watching the film is seamless. The film is honest about Milk’s flaws; his combativeness, restlessness, and temper. It is honest about the flaws of gay activists in general; it doesn’t try to portray riots as a good thing, although it is sympathetic to the frustrations that led there. The net effect is kind of adulatory, but the details are not.

Unfortunately, “missing’ footage is not addressed. Early on we learn that Milk’s partner was named Scott Smith. Thereafter, Smith disappeared. I assume he declined to be in the movie, but the film would have been improved by saying so. Is he alive or dead? Was he still Milk’s partner when Milk was killed? Was he at the candlelight vigil that night? The movie doesn’t say. And as you can see, it really stuck in my craw. It dangled, unspoken. People have partners; life is shaped by that. There was a partner for a split-second, and then whoosh, he was gone. In a movie about gay life and about the profound effect of coming out of the closet, that’s too big an omission. An explanation should have been offered.

Anyway, that’s minor. This is an amazing piece of history that too few people know. Rent the movie now, before Milk comes out.

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