ma vie en vert

Monday, March 27, 2006

bad blogger

equals me. I haven't really been keeping up on the goings-on in the blogosphere, and I haven't felt like posting because most of my time and energy has been wrapped up in my seminar papers and presentations coming up very soon, which means I've been very boring and antisocial (and while the sniffling-coughing-stuffy-headed monkey does entertain me, I don't really think that counts). So, not that it's interesting to anyone but me, but here's what I'm working on, briefly:

For my German cinema seminar, I'm working on the reconstruction/deconstruction of Marlene Dietrich's star image through the documentary. A really interesting one is Maximilian Schell's Marlene (84), which is extremely self-reflexive and at times surreal, only uses Dietrich's voice because she refused to be filmed, and features a very hostile subject -- it's a very atypical documentary (no "talking heads" and typical documentary stuff like that). For the other paper I'm working on right now, I'm looking at representations of bisexuality in relatively recent films (including the Evil Bisexual Teen! -- see Pretty Persuasion for a surprisingly not-as-bad-as-I-thought-it-would-be example of this, and Ron Livingston, whom I love, is in it). This one is morphing into more of a focus on a "subcategory," The Threesome(!), because it keeps popping up in films that attempt to portray bisexuality, so I'm intrigued by this phenomenon and feel that it needs to be addressed. (I'll spare everyone my theories on what the threesome in these films represents.) But these things tend to change once I start writing, so who knows where the hell I'll end up.

To sum up: I haven't been blogging or socializing, and I've been watching a lot of movies (most of them bad, but in a good way).

posted by stephie @ Monday, March 27, 2006  

8 Comments:

  • At 3/28/2006 1:01 PM, Blogger Moon said…

    speaking of filmic threesomes (albeit, not german ones), have you paid any attention to toback's recent ouevre? the past few movies of his i've seen have all prominently featured threesomes. in no particular order:

    --black and white (rap star in central park with two or three white women, opening sequence in fact)

    --when will i be loved (white would-be rap star promoter, mostly full of shit, in central park with three girls who are a band on his supposed roster)

    -- harvard man (a couple of feds (erik stoltz and whashername gayheart) who can only get off with the participation of a third person (here, joey lauren adams) and whose odd sexual proclivities significantly drive the plot

    honorable mention:

    -- two girls and a guy (r.downey jr. and heather graham, et al., where RDJ is confronted simultaneously by two girls he's been calling the only one for months -- hon. mention because i can't remember if they get it on, though i'll bet they do)

    i've been strangely intrigued by his movies, mostly for the way he presents race (usually just by sticking people together and letting ad lib and loosely designed scenes tell the tale -- like the polar opposite of hectoring ridiculous juvenile "crash"). in When Will I Be Loved, he cameos as a professor, informally interviewing Neve Campbell for a job as his assistant, and in the interview scene, walking around on the southern edge of Harlem, he riffs at some length about how he (qua professor) likes to foment a sort of racial conflict in the classroom and see what happens . . . and then they bump into mike tyson, playing himself denying that he's himself (killer line: "My name is Buck and I don't give a fuck," which apparently was a Tyson ad-lib. (Iron Mike also cameos as himself in Black and White, and the scene in which RDJ sort of comes on to him is just terrifying, Mike at his most menacing.)

     

  • At 3/28/2006 2:51 PM, Blogger stephie said…

    Very interesting! Actually, the bisexuality/threesome paper is for a different film seminar -- Sexuality & Representation -- so I'm not actually looking for German stuff. I have read about a couple of the Toback films you mention and have them in my netflix queue, When Will I Be Loved (sounds awful from the reviews I've read, and now you've confirmed that) and Two Girls and a Guy (also sounds awful). I was hoping they'd be useful, though, and it sounds like they will. Harvard Man sounds like it'd be good to check out (esp. in terms of Joey Lauren Adams's own bisexuality). And the race aspect might be interesting to bring in...

     

  • At 3/28/2006 4:20 PM, Blogger Moon said…

    i had a different idea about film when i wsaw two girls and a guy, so i won't speak to that from a critical point of view, but nothing i said about WWIBL should suggest i didn't like it. it has it's flaws, but actually i rather enjoyed it. campbell's performance is riveting even if the material falters sometimes, and one just sort of has to love the supporting role played by dominic chianese (uncle junior from the sopranos) as a gentile and filthy rich italian media magnate. i don't like the male lead, which is a big problem, but in general the style worked for me, as it did in black and white, which i also think very highly of.

    interestingly, i think it's the way toback deals with race that i most enjoy, which would explain why harvard man, which was made in 2001 but i only just saw a couple of weeks ago, was unsatisfying. it didn't have any of that race stuff in it. it did, however, have al franken and his daughter playing themselves, which was pretty funny.

    i forgot that JLA is bi (i think i knew that once). all i know about harvard man is that with JLA and an especially sultry sarah michelle gellar (toback seems to enjoy getting smutty performances out of actors who don't generally do smutty) it held my attention.

    (btw, the harvard man lead is the star from entourage. having never seen entourage until last week, i had no idea, so i had the weird experience of seeing an actor whom i thought was awfully mediocre (and unknown) for a hollywood leading role, and then seeing him again, 22 hours later, starring in a two-season-plus old runaway hit show. strange.

     

  • At 3/28/2006 6:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    is it coincidence that I just read that Librans are intrigued by threesomes?!??!

     

  • At 3/28/2006 9:09 PM, Blogger stephie said…

    I love Jason! Always bringing the astrology angle! It does seem to fit with the whole Libra scales/balance/mediator thing, though.

     

  • At 3/28/2006 9:26 PM, Blogger stephie said…

    Moon -- I don't know why I thought you were saying that you didn't like WWIBL. I've read some bad reviews of it, but I'm sort of intrigued by it anyway. TG&G sounds like more of a conventional romantic comedy, but anything w/ Robert Downey Jr. is worth checking out, and even if it's bad, it sounds like it would still be relevant. Also, in terms of Sarah Michelle Gellar, I'm taking another look at Cruel Intentions as the film basically centers on a threesome of sorts, and it does portray the EVIL Kathryn as bi.

     

  • At 3/29/2006 10:37 AM, Blogger Moon said…

    i don't know that 3gg actually qualifies as a romantic comedy. actually, it comes off very like a play, since most of the action occurs in one apartment and is basically all talk.

    as for librans and threesomes, i once had a long relationship with a libran who was perhaps more curious (and that's definitely the word) about threesomes than the average bear.

    i'd rather not pursue this thought too far, though, because i've dated like 6 librans and can add to that roster my mother and brother. i was content to contemplate threesomes in the context of that one relationship, but in the many many other librans i know, i'd just as soon pass on the thought.

     

  • At 4/02/2006 11:58 AM, Blogger stephie said…

    The "Topics in German Cinema" seminar is taught by a visiting professor from the University of Minnesota -- they have a permanent German film position to fill right now.

     

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