Movie Men Part 5

THE LAID BACK LOSER aka THE REAL GUY- Knocked Up

The bearded, bear-like 26-year-old is probably the world's unlikeliest pin-up. True we fell for a few of Rogen incarnations Knocked Up, Freaks and Geeks and Pineapple Express. In fact they are all fairly similar characters with a few different quirks.

Theres something about his inept honesty about himself and inept earnestness and inept...well you get the idea. Also there's something about his realisation that Heigl is soooo out of his league - the opposite of guys who think they're doing you a favour by glancing in your direction.

Or it might just be that even the idea that even when you have a drunken one-night stand with someone, that they'd actually try and make it work long term is kinda sweet.

Also he's funny. Like really funny.

2008 in books

I read a lot this year -more than last year and the year before - and I tried to read a lot more. It was a year of the library fight for me. Requested a lot of books - tried to find the time and inclination and concentration/focus to read a lot of books. Half finished a lot of books, sped-read a lot of overdue books and stayed up all night finishing books etc etc I can't remember all the books I read. I'm a compulsive list maker. Last year I made a list of all the films a saw each month - I saw a lot (RMIT Lib access plus interning at MIFF). This year I think I saw a lot, I think a read a lot, I definitely saw more theatre and dance. Probably listened to a lot less new music than I did in the 2005 and 2006. Anyway here for my own peace of OCD mind is an incomplete list of the books I read in 2008. I'll prob compile some other best of/all the best lists in the coming months - just to avoid that stack of overdue literary better myself tomes on my dresser - and hey its better than sitting on facebook pressing refresh every 5 seconds right? Right!

2008 in reading - an appendix

Yes its like the Infinite Jest all over again! You even get - if you care - my one word capsule reviews - occasionally abbreviated due to laziness to one letter. DF is didn't finish btw and RR is re-read it was probably overdue.

And no my hope/aim/only New Years resolution to read Hemingway, all the Russian authors, mountains of feminist and philosophical texts etc all came to very little. It is hard even in these times of terrible television to tear myself away from drinking, facebooking/blogging, movie watching and laundry to read something as momentous and self-improving as Dead Souls. It seems the best I could do was a few easy to read feminist tomes and some slight volume semi-classics - and a whole lot of other enjoyable trash.

Pat it and Love it and Call it...

I want a cat! Correction Kitten! If it was a boy I think I called him Frank or maybe Sedaris.

A friend of mine named her cat Matilda after the Dahl character - I love the idea of naming pets after characters or authors. So Cute!

Another thought is Annie Hall or a similar iconic and beloved film character. Can you imagine my fat squash faced cat called Annie Hall?!

(From fat squash faced cats blog)

Master of My Domain

My friend Emily was the first person to compliment Elaine Bennis on her sense of style. I remain unconvinced to be honest.

The strange quiff helmet hair. Thats what breaks it for me. True it didn't last past Season 5 or 6 but its still the style I equate most with Elaine - did anyone else have hair with a weird fring/quiff/helmet like that in the 90s? Was it "the Rachel" of its generation?

Also hate the long skirts I really hate long skirts - theres something incredible Island holiday -slash - mumsy about them.

The blazers, shoulder pads and ankle riding boots and skirts is all coming back though it seems - Elaine is coming back in to vogue as Emily maintains. Plus I do love all the Laura Ashely floral.

AND this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life truly!

95% of the Population is Undateable

This cracks me up - plus I also brutally relate!

I don't do well with competition. If someone (anyone - anyone) also fancies my boy of choice I automatically give in. I'm not one to fight for what I want in the love game - so if everyone else loves you this an instant drawback for me.

Thought I was the only one!

(Pic via Cup of Jo)

PS Seinfeld anyone? I could never date a close talker . Seinfeld really makes you realise all the tiny annoying things that are wrong with most people - and why its impossible to date 95% of the population - especially if you're sober. Thanks Larry and Jerry.

Movie Men - Part 4

NICE GUY/THE FRIEND - Pretty in Pink - Duckie

Kind of nerdy, smart, sweet, kind, approachable and bitter as hell. Always the 'best friend' and a 'girls guy' - a guy that understands the female temperament and mindset more than the typical male one. The one we were always meant to be with - or thats what our other female friends thought after an extended single patch.

Its also Duckies refusal to play the 'nice guy' and his opportunistic and relentless ways of wooing Andie that makes him flawed-ly lovable - 'Yours or mine? Ours?'. Its hard not to love him when he sings 'Try A Little Tenderness' as a mating song.




Either way - just like Andie ended up with Blane (what kind of name is that really?!) - we all know Duckie ended up with the cool record chick Iona in the end.

Movie Men - Part 3

CRAZY GUY aka ANARCHIST REBEL - Heathers - Jason J.D. Dean

Similar but slightly different from the bad boy the crazy guy is actually unhinged and in this case sociopathic - BUT (and this is a big but deserving of caps) always smoking - literally and figuratively. He's also intelligent, witty and wickedly funny. J.D. quips his way through bloodbath killings. Yes 'the extreme always seems to make an impression.'



He does the things we only fantasise in our angsty teen moments about - killing off rich Cactus Jam shopping bitches and blonde tipped Hawthorn residing assholes who in the crazy injustices of high school always seem to rule - and he does it with style and panache. The mysterious and misanthropic drifter with his over gelled hair doesn't suffer fools - this is one cool guy we always wanted to tell 'get out of my life' and into our croquet courts.

Movie Men - Part 2

THE IDEALIST - Masculine Feminine - Paul

Masculin/Feminin remains my favourite Godard film. Mainly because of Jean Piere Leaud's portrayal of Paul one of the good looking and charismatic children of Marx and Coca-Cola. Paul's interests move between his on-again-off again girlfriend, his political beliefs and a social survey he is conducting into the opinions of Parisians. His Marxist-Leninisst stance collide . When he talks about politics it sounds like he's talking about love. There's nothing like a man who confuses his political with his personal even if its subconscious. He longs for a perfect society - culturally and politically in the same way he longs for a perfect love (a movie story romance) and a perfect film - his perfect vision of life as it should be.



Paul plays out the cliches of a leading man tossing cigarettes offhand and getting into lovelorn fight, wandering the streets of Paris - a heartthrob to an unseen audience. His political ideals, romantic ideals and his own ideals about his own life.

Movie Men - Part 1

Movies have taught me a great deal - mainly about men. I often fall for types of men or cliches/stereotypes of men from movies before I meet them in real life.

1. THE BAD BOY - A Streetcar Names Desire - Stanley Kowalski

"Some people rarely touch it but it touches them often". Brando may have been talking about booze but he may as well have been talking about about the ultimate bad boy character he himself was playing. Sweaty, dirty and eventually shirtless and gum chewing and cocky - Stanley oozes power, strength and just a whisper of possible danger and violence. When Stanleys looks at Blanche in those first scenes its almost like a hungry lion stalking a stupid animal.



Stanley was more than the first bad boy I ever encountered but the first I ever swooned for. Just like Blanche I was weak for men that I was unsure of, unable to read or predict their reactions. Also the Stanley is all man - hunky, husky, and somewhat incoherent.

Stella explains any women's interest in a guy like Stan "But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark — that sort of make everything else seem — unimportant."

Yes sex - sex is Stanley's saviour.

A man like Stanley or a man with a bit of Stanley in them - he's like so many men that do us wrong - we should turn our backs on them completely and may do so in part but there always be that heady spell of lust that they can cast with a look that still slays us dead.

Goddamn! You are one radical son of a bitch!

It seems that everything is about the beach these days - including one man San Diego band WAVVES. Even though I'm best described as an indoor child (and adult) and the closest I've gotten to surfing is re-watching Point Break - I love listening to something calling itself "beach-punk". Then I considered starting a band called Johnny Utah.

Nathan Williams - the man-boy behind WAVVES - is pretty much like the younger brother I never had. It sounds like he's stolen all my Pixies and MBV CDs and got bombarded with my Dad's 60s/doo-wop records - and turned out sounding pretty damn fine.

Plus they have a song called 'Weed Demon' (could you get more summer vibes?) - which just came out on 7-inch and if you live inside The Internets is available for high-quality AIF's on the WAVVES blog. The self-titled WAVVES debut is also out now on cassette through Fuckittapes. If you need immediacy, you can stream both Beach Demon/Weed Demon the awesome tracks from the 7inch over at WAVVES myspace. Soft copy for life.

NY Fairytale

- from the Selby.

CUTE!

Having A Coke With You

by Frank O'Hara

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1971 by Mauren Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O'Hara. Used by the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc, www.randomhouse.com/category/poetry/.

Source: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1995).

Most Played

1. He Keeps Me Alive
2. Blind
3. Gray Or Blue
4. Stupid Thing
5. Little Waltz
6. Clumsy
7. I Felt Your Shape
8. Headsprung
9. I'm A Flirt
10. Shoop
11. One
12. Radio Nowhere
13. Where Friend Rhymes With End
14. Until the End of Time
15. Good Life
16. I'm Going Down
17. Heard Em Say
18. Shorty Swing My Way
19. The First Night
20. Tears Dry On Their Own
21. Relief
22. When I See U
23. Hate It Or Love It
24. That Kind of Girl
25. You Can't Hold The Hand of a Rock and Roll Man