Times to Report Tomorrow that Water is Wet

A story self-evident to anyone personally experiencing (or who knows someone experiencing) the effects of the Great Recession. However, it is a revelation to the editors at the Gray Lady:

Career Switch by the Jobless Can Lower Living Standards

41 Comments

God, do they ever leave the Upper East Side?

More proof the NYT is a bunch of disconnected upperclass dipshits.

BTW, Happy New Year all.

This is the kind of hard-hitting journalism you just can’t get anywhere else. My eyes are opened and my understanding is enlarged. (Other things are getting enlarged too. Helloooooo, Capt.)

@Mistress Cynica: Only when sending heirs to Kansas for training.

So now we’re watching the dazzling North by Northwest. Eva Marie Saint blows all of Hitchcock’s leading ladies out of the water apart from Ingrid Bergman. And Cary Grant was the most glamorous man in the world. He would come in to a party, find the best looking person male or female and take them home with him. This from a man I know who was the one once. N Coward said he was the second most stupid man he knew – the first being the Prince of Wales – hard to believe, but Coward knew plenty of stupid men.

i’m so FBed out, i’m here looking for the “like button”

@Mistress Cynica:
no, no they don’t. seriously. gay daddy and the beard aren’t even leaving their building for a party.

@Benedick is chillax to the max:
you must go to my FB wall and see the new year card from the folks. it’s the cowardly lion, the scarecrow and dad as the tin man and beard as dorothy! i actually wrote under the pic: “S.T. how hard are you laughing?” but i deleted that.

@Benedick is chillax to the max: My wife is watching a lawyer movie starring Hilary Swank. I can’t stand movies or TV shows about lawyers, except for old episodes of Perry Mason.

@Benedick is chillax to the max: I love that and Rear Window. I recently saw F for Fake, and I’m kinda not sure what I think about it.

Inside Job — uh. Yeah. I’ve lost all hope in everything. And the roads are full of loonies. And fireworks went off during the movie (we were near the Delaware), and in true Philly style, someone hollers, “What’s that sound?!” To which I holler, “Fireworks!”

@JNOV: My faves are NxN (a masterpiece of the very highest art in my opinion, eg, sets the same color as EM Saint’s hair, a screenplay that means nothing and is an extraordinarily poetic representation of sexual obsession) and the very closely related and totally fab Notorious, which has the best title ever. Teresa Wright told of getting together a group of friends to call Hitchcock on his birthday in the years after he couldn’t get a film made and of him weeping to know they hadn’t forgotten him. Free markets at work.

I’ve been working and doing well and getting to the end of a piece which has taken the better part of two years. Woo hoo. Now I can look forward to recent graduates from Brown telling me what’s wrong with it and how I don’t understand women. It should be finished by Sunday and that will be the end of the old year for me.

Carry on.

@JNOV: Love F for Fake. Love anything by Welles. The Magnificent Ambersons is glorious till they stick in the crap fake ending shot by some hack.

@JNOV: Ahh, Rear Window. Never get tired of that one. @Benedick is chillax to the max: North by Northwest is also terrific.

I love Vertigo, because of all of the Ess Eff spotting I can do in the movie. Every time I drive on to the Presidio from Pac Heights I think of that scene where she’s going to throw herself in the water. There’s another panoramic scene where you can see my cottage in it. (I know this because Mr. SFL paused the DVD and then played it frame by frame. Sure enough, there was our little house in the scene.)

Speaking of my obsessive significant other, Mr. SFL has been working for seven and a half hours on the braised short ribs with polenta and carmelized mushrooms that is in the cookbook from the incredible Napa restaurant of Bottega. (My Festivus present to him). On our first bottle of red while he cooks.

@Benedick is chillax to the max:

Your baby’s almost born! Huzzah! Labor is a bitch, huh?

I think the thing I liked and kinda didn’t was how he spliced film to make it look like de Hory and Irving were having a conversation when it was clear they weren’t. But sometimes it wasn’t clear. It was interesting, but I was a little jostled by the choppy style. I don’t mind a non-linear film; I actually enjoy them, but there was so much stuff going on. I might need to rewatch it.

The main reason I wanted to see The Big Heads IRL was because of North by Northwest. And I loved that house on a cliff, and the crop duster. Loved it all. There’s a goof in the lodge right before the pistol goes off — a little boy reacts before the shot. Love it.

Love Notorious and Vertigo. Vertigo was creepy. I think the first Hitchcock film I saw was Dial M for Murder. Oh, and ROPE! One continuous shot, right?

@SanFranLefty: I owe you a Coke!

ADD: Polenta done right is no joke!

Oh, and I loved his TV show when I was a kid.

@baked: i’m so FBed out, i’m here looking for the “like button”

You laugh, but I just littered another site with them today. Next time I’m bored, I’m planting them here.

@JNOV: Oh, and ROPE! One continuous shot, right?

As conceived and presented, but not as filmed. You only get ten minutes per roll, so there are plenty of cuts in the film. The ol’ cut behind the chair trick.

@nojo: Will I be able to self-like? And, yeah. I was wondering how they shoved that much film in the camera. Another Hollywood miracle dashed, but at least it’s not as bad as when I learned that the Von Trapps (sp? fuck it) didn’t cross the Alps and took a train to Italy instead. I was CRUSHED.

I’m watching Welles in The Stranger. I had no idea there was such a thing as a paper chase outside of HLS and that it didn’t involve suicide or earrrrnnning it.

Not a fan of Rope. Craptastic script and truly dreadful perfs. Apart from that, carry on.

Off to climb the wooden stairs to bedfordshire (Limey nursery joke used ironically). Happy 20011. I can’t think it’s going to be anything but horrendous but hey! At least we got iPads. Some of us. And the rest of us are not bitter. No. Not bitter in the least.

Note to self: post less comments.

@Benedick is chillax to the max: Unremarkable drawing-room melodrama that would be completely forgotten if not for The Gimmick — even Jimmy Stewart has an awful line at the end. (“You’re both going to DIE for this!!!”) You end up watching for the splices.

@Benedick is chillax to the max:

Keep talking. Success is near.

from a Chinese fortune cookie a long time ago.

Didn’t work for me, maybe it will for you.

P.S. Happy New Year!

Oh my FSM, I think our collective mind is humming again regarding the Classics–I watched N x NW a few weeks ago, and just this week I saw The Third Man and Philadelphia Story.

If anyone’s looking for a utterly hilarious new movie with a literary pedigree, I strongly recommend Easy A, a modern version of The Scarlett Letter set in a Kuhleefornya high school. It rocked me for real, and I feel in luuuv with Emma Stone. Plus, Patricia Clarkson & Stanley Tucci!! Now on the DVDs.

In other news: Dick Clark. For fuck’s sake — watching him is just painful.

Well, considering that I’m the only one here that understood liked Inception, the rest of y’all can suck an egg.

@¡Andrew!: Ah. The Philadelphia Story! Back before Mainline estates were all carved up and stuff. I saw it at the Barrymore Walnut Theater.

Fading fast — not gonna make it to midnight.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, y’all!

@JNOV: Silent Creative Partner and I lurved Inception. We even knew the exact moment they dropped the Clue.

@¡Andrew!: I’ve never quite cared for the NxNW ending, but I’ll grant it’s a very efficient way to get the hell out of the movie. One jump cut and yer done.

While we’re in that neighborhood, watching a 70mm print of Rear Window in the early ’80s was a joyous experience. But whatever Hitch movie I say I like, Vertigo’s the one I always return to. It’s just weird.

Excuse me, but I gotta say: hey, 2010? Yeah, you. FUCK YOU.

@JNOV: I also enjoyed Inception immensely. Talk about a ton of superb architecture pron. And the story.

@nojo: Have you seen Frenzy (about the London necktie murders)? It showcases Hitchcock’s perverse sense of humor.

@¡Andrew!: Fairly recently, but it didn’t stick.

I’m afraid to see Family Plot, since that one I saw when it came out. Dad had to explain the Hitch cameo to me — I didn’t get the silhouette gag.

Oh hay, Happy New Year, East Coast Stinqueroonies!!

@¡Andrew!: Well, I picked up some Hemmingway at the library on Thursday. Same vibe, poor reception out here.

My favorite is still Notorious though NxN might be the wittiest and most technically refined. From the moment the credits start with the diagonal lines streaking the screen he dispenses with all naturalistic details and enters a world of pure storytelling magic. Nothing makes sense and everything feels right. For instance: that Frank Lloyd Wrightish house built so close to the top of the heads? Really? And you can get a taxi there from the ‘hospital’ in Rapid City? Really? And doesn’t one’s shirt hold up well through all that fighting and sleeping on the floor? All the sets are done in tones of gunmetal grey with tan and cream accents. Only EMS’s clothes pop with color. And the stunning shot of all the redcaps in the Chicago station. Nothing is real. There is no plot to speak of. Only the movement as the story unfolds from one set piece to the next. And extraordinary suspense built from nothing. It’s great artistry. After the stunningly witty and nonsensical fight on the faces of the presidents during which he trumps every expectation by making an audience believe it could actually be happening there is nothing to add. So he flings down a completely formal moment of movie cliche, the impossible rescue and the ridiculous ‘happy ever after’ ending climaxed by the train entering the tunnel as our hero claims the woman who has deranged and obsessed him. The script, almost a remake of Notorious, is packed with amusing scenes and as in the earlier movie he has a cast capable of acting them. Bliss.

@¡Andrew!: I’ll check it out fer sher. And I’m totally co-opting “day-ed” from yoooo.

@Benedick is chillax to the max: I think the creepiest thing about Vertigo is how he just remakes this woman, she’s totally not cool with it — it’s very disturbing and odd and quite not Stewart’s type of character. And can I say that It’s a Wonderful Life makes me wanna puke?

Best headline ever: Boomers Hit New Self-Absorption Milestone: Age 65

Oh. Wow. FB account has been disabled.

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