Spotlight & The Gift

....on a related subject, there are two movies I am looking forward to this year. One is The Gift, starring Joel Edgerton - who is like the intellectual man's Sam Worthington - as a creep invading the perfect lives of a fancy couple played by Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall. That's a bit of a give-away casting, because when Jason Bateman is not in a comedy you just know he is going to be someone rotten and Rebecca Hall is very pretty, I love her, but she can play actresses who don't always have a clue what's going on. Edgerton, who is also the director of the film, plays someone bad, but that won't be the whole story. His 'Felony' was also cool. I imagine the jocks of high school or college, led by Bateman's character, did something shitty to the guy ... and now he'll collect. The only question is, was is something like just standard asshole bullying and 'Gordo the weirdo' was just overly sensitive, or did they do something really bad, like prank-raped him or made him take the fall for something like rape or murder, which totally arrested his social development... When I was little I saw this creepy movie, or something, about four guys who raped or covered up that one raped a girl and later she came after them in this psycho-thriller way... Golden Boys or something. I get the same vibe here. I dunno, I hope it's a good movie. Not just a generic stalker remake of some better classic like Cape Fear or suchlike. But I am looking forward to finding out and watching those three play. The house also looks nice. 

The second, Spotlight, is a journalism movie - journalism slowly becoming my new religion. 'Tis about how the Spotlight team of the Boston Globe took on the child molestation epidemic in the Catholic church, which nobody up to that point really had the guts or money to take on. So far what I am reading is just about how good the actors and set directors are at imitating the real life and the cast is splendid, but, like I said before, I really hope these movies are good and not just hyped up genre push-over, hoping to get some award or some money. I am fond of screen time that illustrated journalists' work, sometimes integrity, sometimes sleaziness, but sometimes even just offices and how the print machine rolls. Those things turn me on. I love watching The Young Turks YouTube channel take on Fox News morons, I like the Newsroom TV show, I liked some parts of 'State of Play', 'Girl with a Dragon Tattoo' and some older pieces. It's not easy, illustrating the journalist's life - how those people think and how they work and how the current works against them.

Once upon a time the big houses were willing to go down in flames for a single article and often they did, but the truth was sacred, whereas now, most journalists are freelancers, hired only for the immediate article and not protected - if the big bad wolves want the article silenced, it will get silences. The truth is less absolute lately. Mostly it is just opinions. There didn't used to be so much information and if you saw a bad guy stab someone and the cops arrested them, that was the story. Now it's usually 'blame the victim', 'who was which color', 'the cop was also a stripper in his young days' , 'the mayor SAID this will happen', and the global warming or the democrats had something to do with it... But anyone who says anything about it will get sued, so, - don't.

Kinky boots (2005)

Needed to watch a feel-good movie and these little gems don't come through in theaters. I mean, it's not really a great movie in any way, shape, or form, but Joel Edgerton is adorable and Chiwetel Ejiofor is actually really easy to watch. Usually he is too full of himself and kind of too cool form school, but this is ten years ago and he actually still had to work for a living, so his drag queen Lola was just the right amount of push-over-the-top and his male version was modest and lost, reminding me of how small and lost Jay Davidson looked in the Crying Game after his hair was cut off. The movie is fairly generic and no surprises there, but still adorable and very London-y. Just what I needed. With lots of buttery popcorn for dinner :))

LoL, I got the freakiest allergic reaction ever. I knew this will happen when I start going all organic and vegan and shit. I never had any allergies when I ate everything that wasn't fast enough to outrun me!... it's either a RitterSport caramel chocolate or a toffee spread I bought in the same store, but after I eat a bit, my eyes start going red, itching and I start seeing a little less perfectly. Haven't rendered myself blind by dessert yet. First time for everything, I guess.

... watching "Dark places"....

This movie reunites Charlize Theron and Nick Hoult and it's so weird to watch these people after Mad Max... Dark Places is not such a good movie done second after Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn dark book. I read somewhere that Flynn was working for Entertainment Weekly when writing Gone Girl and others and she didn't want the books to be like her work pieces, because she wanted dark, gruesome female characters - something that Fincher as director pulled very well from Rosamund Pike and Gilles Brenner not so much from Theron. She feels somehow not really invested in anything, not movie, not acting, not family, not people... Feels like a very post-Sean-Penn world, really. Like she did this film in between filming Mad Max and the Mad Max premiere. Gods I hope she doesn't start dating Hoult, that adorable little Vulcan zombie.

I followed an example of a research blogger and created an online dating account to see if being dumb as fuck and kind of mean and self-centered has any merit at all, if your profile pic is super hot. Naturally I stole (okay, borrowed) a completely fake photo of a hot blonde in her early twenties, and the answer is yes. 95% of the guys that started a conversation with me couldn't care less about what I say. Some were hot but too old (and hence careful and wanted instantly to switch to skype to make sure I am who I say I am), some were lonely and kind of sad, really, I couldn't help but veer to encouraging dialogue with those; most were dumb. Only one of them made me drop my act and start a normal conversation right from the get-go. I'll try to keep him via Facebook somehow. Obviously the General has made me delete the account at once (WHY do I have the need to tell that man everything?! WHY? It was research!!) and may kill me, but the point was proven. This world is full of really needy men who would bang a goat dressed in a skirt if she had boobs and fake eyelashes.

The Cosby Show

Love this New York magazine cover of the women who were "allegedly assaulted" - the article makes sure to repeat this word indefinitely until it sounds very sarcastic - by Bill Cosby, a man who is now standing in the middle of a very polarized field: you have some who ardently defend him and some who will not have anything to do with him anymore. I especially love the empty chair, which, although it could mean something like 'etcetera' or 'anyone could be next', feels more like encouragement: "If you're one, come forth. We're right here."

The General and I got into the (very short) discussion about a) why now and not before? and b) what's the truth of the he said she said situation? I get a little bit upset any time a man starts to hint he doubts an assault has taken place, which G knows, so as soon as I opened the subject, he fled, saying he is certainly not going to debate assault charges with a woman who's on her period. 

I haven't read all of the article yet, so I may return to this later - here are my thought. A lot of women get sexually assaulted. Obviously there's a difference between being raped to death by a gang or being pinched in the bum by dirty uncle Harry. A lot of times I really hate the women for being such freaking victims. Going on and on and oooon about how much they suffer afterwards. Get the fuck over it. Sexual assault is a bad thing, it's just not an excuse for you to keep attracting bad shit for decades afterwards. At the same time, though, I cannot abide men saying derogatory things on the subject. 'She probably wanted it', 'she was just ashamed afterwards, so she lied', 'why was she in his place to begin with', etc... I got sexually assaulted a couple of times in my first two decades ... maybe five or six times. Once a pedophile lured me into a street hallway and touched me and wanted me to touch him; I was about four or five. I remember EVERYTHING. Then there was the dirty neighbor, who liked us to go to a private little place and be 'nice to one another'. Suuuure, let's do that. When you hitchhike, men try. Stuff like that. These things were never really terrible, they were just kind of creepy and uncomfortable and because I was little, I had no idea what to think. I certainly didn't think 'oh, Gods, now I am traumatized for life!'... Adults did things that were a lot worse to other people. I never thought much about adults, so none of this was particularly shocking. I just learned how to avoid shit. Granted, you can never really be 100% sure. We live in a world where in some cultures it's okay to get raped for wearing a skirt, because this advertises you're asking for it. Or where a husband cannot rape a wife, because she's supposed to be always willing. Or where you get high-fived in prison for being a rapist. Heck, being polite to someone can mean you're flirty and hence a slut and hence asking for it.

The problem occurs in the case of Bill Cosby, where adult, normal women of slightly inferior social standing (by normal I mean otherwise rational, even street-wise or careful women, who just want to be nice to a guy they admire or want to work on Tv or suchlike) find themselves in a shitty situation they just cannot win in. I don't think much of Janice Dickinson, I think she's an idiot, but she was young and naive once, I imagine. I imagine myself, getting a hot job offer, something really great, say, a photographer for a New York magazine - I fly to their office, I meet with some people, I meet with the chief editor at the late hours, because that's when editors work, he offers me some white decaf and I black out. I wake up in a cab with by undies on backwards and my hoho full of semen. What the fuck do I do? Do I tell G? I can't. I am ashamed, I feel so incredibly stupid, I am so afraid he will go and kill the guy. Do I tell the police? The story will be I fucked the editor for the job. And who is he and who am I? And even if I do go to the police and stand tall on my story, I will probably be paid off to be quiet. These women, they are old now and many of them respected and STILL they are now facing a shitstorm of accusations and doubts for speaking up. I know what I would do NOW, but I am old and happily married , I am not desperate for money and I am not afraid of men. But once you get this game going, as Cosby must have had with his charm and his quaaludes, you play it on young women, on kids, on desperate, naive people. People far less articulate and famous than you are.

... At this point General carefully and slowly asked if I've ever had a sexual assault experience and didn't tell him since we've been together. Adorable thing. No. It doesn't really happen much to people who can handle themselves - it happens to people who can't. Sexual predators aren't stupid. The terrible part is that sometimes the people you tell about it, like doctors or cops, are.


By the way ... I came upon this while surfing for Life expectancy rates around the world and  found ... have you guys ever heard of Lesotho? It's a tiny African country. The beauty of the land notwithstanding, that must be what Hell is like.

Do not judge a greatness of a country by how many egomaniac men took up the forced armies and marched around to rob and pillage everything they could steamroll over (Fuck you, Alexander The GREAT, you killing, raping, power-crazed fascist moron) - judge a nation by how it treats it's women. It may take a little while before we get there, but we're getting there slowly.

I sometimes feel like I live in a really boring country. But it's not really, is it, it's just represented that way by comparison. I wish I cared enough about it to try and make it seem more... dunno. Awesome, full of conflict and turmoil and sexy beasts. Alas... We got one dictator-wanna be politician whose party borderlines a cult, but that's sooooo 2012, we have no real movie or TV stars to speak of, that would withstand a trial of two years, or an interview for that matter; we have writers and artists who are cool, but too busy trying to survive to have time being truly picturesque ... There's one philosopher who is in equal measure gruesome and awesome, but he's been done to death by everyone running out of topics and it gets old really quickly. The media only ever portray money problems in respect to other people's/countries' money problems to make other's seem more pressing; death toll from traffic and whatever and incidentally a shitty political or corruption blame-placement once in a while. The things that interest me aren't that very interesting. A new exhibition at the ethnology museum! Yes! Orgasm! ... A good new book! Or a good article! A good new sandwich!

I am trying for the life of me to start a YouTube talk show that would rant about this country and all that's facing and I

cannot

find

a

single

not-fucking-lame-issue.

Everything that bothers us bothers somebody else a lot more terribly. Oh, we have poor people? Give me a fucking break. I am not saying times are not hard but have you ever seen anyone starve to death around here? I saw some awfully poor people when I was delivering mail in the poor part of town and those still live a hundred times better than the middle-class of the lot I've seen on my travels.

We have racial injustice? Really? How many racially motivated killing or a cop killing for racial reasons have we ever had? The Americans have two per week.

We have religious Vs. liberal issues? Religious freaks talking shit about the gay, about the abortion, about single mothers and teens getting it on? Sorry, I never heard them. I am not saying there are not screaming at the top of their lungs in various fancy web sites, just nobody gives a flying fuck. 

What else? Media scandal? Artificially blown up to sound scandalous. Occasional tragic death or suicide? Those things are private and do not belong on the wave. 

I do not wish a better rate of scandal or morons on this land, as you should pity the nation that needs heroes, but it's a bitch when you try to comment on how much you like your country and what could improve. 

Well, we could whine less. 

... Oh, right.