2015-01-30 further beatings and cinterrogations

 

2015-01-30          further beatings and cinterrogations

                ‘Two can play at that game’, Steve Buscemi’s murderer-for-hire says it better in the Coen brother’s Fargo to the literally hatched-faced and near-mute Scandinavian man he refers to as ‘his associate’, his partner-in-crime, ‘smart guy.’

                You might think that your man Himself, your humble(d) reviewer might be after watching any film set in a sunshine place, given the weather outside and recent blizzard, but you’d / be wrong.  ©instead it’s Fargo that he’s after videeing, preceded last night as we do by Essential Killing, another grim ®o©kumenta®y, this one of Europudding / Canal + provenance, with Vincent Gallo in the main and essentially only role – a performance in which he does not (m) / (st) / utter wo®d / one over the course of the same, it’s a stellar performance and a riveting watch, almost matching the Oscar-winning  performance of your man(ibal) Hannibal the ©annibal,  played of course by the actor Anthony Hopkins to Best A©to® Os©a® glory, and who won despite being on-screen in Jonathan Demme’s immor(t)al The Silence of the Lambs for a scant nine minutes - your man Gallo playing an Al Qaeda or Taliban or wtf fighter who falls into and then out of the clutches of the U.S. marines up on out on up on up on out in the Middle East somewhere, and then on the way to a clandestine base in Europe for further beatings and interrogations dear reade®(s), he excapes !

                But that / was yesterday, Cin videed the film first to fall asleep of a Thirstday evening, and they never get any / more or any / less thi®sty be©ause ®egime ze®o, but not before during and after cooking himself like a glazed ham at the Goodlife gym sauna – he’s beginning to think that cooking himself like a glazed ham at the gym sauna may not be all it’s cracked up / to be, though it remains his one and only pleasure other than the fappening – and second after he woke up at some ungodly hour and then watched it / again.  Course Fargo he’s videed umpteem times – it came as ®etail the®apy in a boxed set for $9.99 from when Blockbuster went tits / up, a double-heade® with Ridley Scott’s immo®(t)al Thelma and Louise , to be videed after Fargo of (t)his TGIFFriday evening, innit G – and prolly reviewed just as many / times in the pixels and pages of (t)his Take This Thing Back to Balti-memoi®es and further beatings and interrogations.

                He binge-watches movies of course as we do and as the stresses mount as they do and baking himself like a glazed ham after a work-out – ‘the sweaty’ (y)our man ©in was called when he worked at the gym Definitions in New Ja©k ©ity back in the 20th, ‘ox’, innit Coop – just doesn’t do it / anymore, though the baking and sweating part of it he knows is ©integral to him not going entirely coo-coo / for coa-coa puffs, ‘it was like’ Axl Rose’s -ex said it better of their relationship, ‘putting a nuclear bomb in the living room and hitting it with / a hammer’, ‘when a tornado’ Eminem and Rhianna sing it better of the(ir) pas-de-deux in the(ir) duet Love the Way you Lie ‘meets / a volcano’, putting a nuclear bomb in the living room and hitting it with / a hammer is all / we gots.

 

©ingle though – ‘single’ the bumper on Cin’s Shi®etown ©ollege ®ugby ©lub mini-me’s fuck-truck right-rear panel read it better, innit Noonan, ‘and lovin’ it’ -  he avoids certain volcanic tornados, ‘you look a lot more’ one of Cin’s Noslou© cousins said it better as of late, ‘relaxed.’   He’s whittled down the permanent DVD collection in the cindominium to a number that fits into the left-hand side of a two-sided bookcase, the right-hand side of which is scheduled to be filled up with, well, books, when, like de Niro’s Neal McAuley in Michael Mann’s Heat,, Cin ‘gets around / to it.’  He moves slowly when it comes to these things now, after House Arrest the Horror and the (il)legal rest / of it, he trusts little even less any more, and he trusted less very little / to begin with, t®ust when he gets around / to it is all / we gots.

‘The bark beetle carries its’ food’ the National Geographic narrator says it better now in Fargo as the ®o©kumenta®y within the movie plays for heroine Marge Gunderson, played in an Oscar-winning (that’s enough –id.) performance by Frances McDermett, innit Dryer Boy, and her husband in bed, ‘back to / its’ nest’.  ‘Act of God’ Buscemi’s low-life murderer-for-hire shouts it better into the phone to William Macy’s flabbergasted husband character - the latter who’s paid to have his wife / whacked by  the former - by means of explanation of the various flies in the ointment of said /nefarious plan, innit God, ‘force / majeure.’

‘I’m doing really super there’, Marge Gunderson wipes the condescending big-©ity smiles off the fa©es of the front desk clerks at the Twin Cities hotel where she’s after staying at in the movie, after being aksed / the same, ‘thanks.’   It’s a great performance throughout, McDermett plays Marge’s blonde moments right up until the end of her various interviews, at the ends of which she delivers the final question she’s always come / to aks.  Ending questions with ‘do ya think?’ as she does throughout the movie is on the same cingrating scale as ending them with ‘or not / so much? – the 21^st century’s equivalent of ‘do ya think?’ – but all is forgiven with a performance like this, forgiven with a performance like this is all / we gots.

  What it is is that the business-men types in the movie – Macy’s hen-pecked husband and his father-in-law – delude themselves into thinking that they can play hard-ball with Buscemi’s murderer-for-hire character and his side-kick the melancholy Dane.  Disasters ensue - ‘acts of God’ and ‘force / majeure’ and all / that, innit God (that’s enough, -id.) – until a very-pregnant Marge, the town sherriff, and who knows maybe the town / bike (hooky please, -id.) comes if not to the rescue then at least to play the moral card, coming if not to the rescue then at least to play the moral card is all / we gots.

‘I’m going’ Macy’s out-matched and flabbergasted husband says it better to his son, to whom the father has had to sell some cock-and-bull story about his mother getting kidnapped, and as the walls come tumbling / down, ‘to bed now’, going to bed now as the walls come tumbling / down is all / we gots, or it was anyway when (y)our man ©in’s (s) / (m) / (b) / (gl) and just plain adventures used to come home to roost, and sweet sweet sleep seemed, and was, and is, the only temporary relief, ‘to sleep’ the original melancholy Dane Hamlet says it better in the William Shakespeare play of the same name from back in the 17th, while contemplating snuffing it as we do, ‘perchance / to dream’, ©intemplating sweet sweet sleep is all / we gots.

Course there’s more than one way to skin / a cat, innit Itchy, and (y)our (wo)man the heroine in the other movie that Cin videed earlier this evening had another novel way / of snuffing it, leaving a video selfie of herself on her laptop - to be videed by she herself when things got too hairy – with instructions on how to swallow the contents of a bottle of pills ‘with some water’ and as a result hopefully never wake / up on out on up on out on up on out on this Dog and Pony Show / again.  Heroine was played by (y)our (wo)man the actress Julianne Moore in an Oscar-bait (that’s enough, a slogan worse than ‘or not / so much’ and ‘do ya think?’ put / together –id.) performance playing early onset Alzheimer’s patient Alice.

Cin glued his eyes shut in the cinema as is his wont – a reverse little Alex having his eyelids forced open in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange to videe some ultra-violence as part of his cure - at the end of the film as the aforementioned death-by-laptop scene unfolded, and wasn’t sure whether like in the Washovski’s movie The Matrix Alice took the blue pills or the red pills or no pills / at all, but the final result for both was the same, ‘The End’, and up Cin popped from his seat, shaking off his slumber and rushing back to the cindominium hulk-smash away at this Take This Thing Back to Baltime-moi®es.

Film was ‘review-proof’ of course, as NYT film critic Magnola Dahlis wrote it better of a similar recent Jennifer Aniston vehicle with similar heart-tugging themes, who dares bad-mouth a movie about a family confronting Alzheimers?  Still, this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore (f) / (s) / (b) log , amongst its many / pleasures and me-moirs and mea-culpas, has the same theme, and no one prevents this critics from staging cinterventions ‘on the left’, the downhill skiing villain in the criminally-under®ated Johnny Dangerously says it better, ‘on the right – it’s pronounced ‘zee right’, and the ‘rs are rrrrrrrolllllled - and right / in zee middle’, alarmed at the occasional references within its pixels and pages / to snuffing it.  It’s called faction, people – and art, short for ‘artifice’ - ‘my name is William,’ Mickey Rooney’s character of the same name in the 1970s / 1980s movie of the same name, which we used to honour by mocking / constantly, innit GF when we / were kids, says it better, ‘Bill  / for short’, criminally-under®ated is all / we gots.

What it is is that Julianne Moore’s Alice begins to lose her marbles around her 50^th birthday as we do, takes the memory test – ‘what did the doctor tell the patient with Alzheimer’s ?  ‘go home  and forget / about it’ , and ‘did you hear about the Irishman with Alzheimer’s, he forgot everything except / the grudge’ haha it hurts because / it’s true, innit HW – and fails, forgetting the street address in Hoboken that she was ‘assupposed / to remember, not that we didn’t occasionally do the same when we lived on Madison Ave. in that same Frank Sinatra hometown, innit Jenke, where Ole Blue Eyes’ dirges were and probably still are broadcast over the town’s loudspeakers mo(u)rning noon and night be©ause mobbed-up, forgetting everything except / the g®udge is all / we gots.

Alice’s husband, played by a restrained Alec Baldwin, is sympathetic – ‘one’ he says it better when he hears / the news, ‘that sounds crazy, and two, I’ll be here for whatever / you need’ or the equivalent - it was a nice save in a movie that otherwise has precious / few (that’s enough, you monster –id.)  Her children and significant others do not fare as well in the movie , though Kristen Stewart’s actress daughter character at least tries, the others smiling inappropriately from frame one to frame ‘the end’ as Alice’s character goes through the usual scenes, forgetting not-so-incrementally the five elements of ‘wtf’, namely the who / where / when / and what and / why she is.

Course the decision to dare to make movie about Alzheimer’s is a brave one, but the decision to make the subject of such a subject the main subject of the film itself though is risky, problematic, we don’t need to hear Alice aksing ‘what day is it’ more than twice – once really – much less in every other scene where a new character other than Alice gets / the news.

See, it’s review-proof, and your man the reviewer sounds like / a di©k no matter what.  Cin may be projecting his own discomfort with the subject, his own Da a victim of the dreaded ‘forgetting  flu’ - whether giving a decidedly un-scientific malaise a scientific name helps, of which Cin is far from certain, ‘the old-timers’ the manager of the Overlook describe what happened in the same better to Jack Torrence in Kubrick’s The Shining, innit Mr. King, ‘called it cabin / fever’ – and even as he criticizes the telegraphed scene in the film in which Alice is set up to give a speech on ‘ the g®eat es©ape’ Alzheimer’s to a support group for the same, but when she gets up to the lectern no one on her family thinks to stand nearby until of course she spills her cue cards all over / the place, Cin thinks of the funeral where he did / the same with his Da, leaving him on the altar (stage ?) of the church to mumble his eulogy, instead of standing guard next to him, if only for moral support, standing guard if only for moral support is all / we gots.

Note to self : according to the movie this som’ of a bitch the forgetting flu is hereditary, better get after hulk-smashing away at this Take This Thing Back to Baltime-moi®es  and (s) / (f) / (b) / (c) log from sunrise to sundown and mou®ning (hooky please, -id.) noon and night.  Course the quizzes they give you aks about having your head whacked and all kind of other things – it’s like the alkie test, if you answer it at all honestly, everyone / fails – and between all the booze and the drugs and the cincussions and we weren’t that bright / to begin with, Innit DD, we might leave that particular test / untaken, leaving some particular tests untaken is all / we gots.

Thank you for reading (t)his Take This Thing Ba©k to Baltim-memoi®es and (s) / (f) / © / (b) log.