Pop Culture

Make your own scene, dammit.

Have you ever had that feeling like you just stepped into a movie? The setting is just right, you have a slight sense of deja-vu, and a song playing over the radio (or your headphones in this wacky, modern era) completely sums up every feeling in your body at that moment.

I first got that feeling in Christmas 2007. My boyfriend at the time had just moved to Los Angeles and we hadn’t seen each other in a month. Even though I was supposed to move five months later, that span of time seemed like forever (it eventually turned into “never”). We had just visited some of his friends and didn’t talk much on the way home. It wasn’t silent because we didn’t have anything to say. In fact, I think we both had so much to say, neither one of us knew where to start. As we were driving, my favorite song ever (“Everlong” by the Foo Fighters) came on the radio. We both just kind of sat there for the first chorus and he slowly put his hand on mine. In that instant, I felt like I was in a movie; a cheesy, corny, indie RomCom.

I have that feeling on occasion. I’m never sure where, why, or how it’s going to happen. The newest Delta Spirit album, History From Below, makes me feel like that from start to finish. I’d heard a few of the songs when I saw them this July at 9:30 Club, but listening to them with noise-canceling headphones makes a big difference and is if I just stepped into a movie. With it’s grand, swelling sounds, harsh vocals, and unpolished sound, it feels so personal and lively and your emotions rise and fall with the tempo on each track.

Have you ever had that feeling; that overwhelming feeling like this moment in time could make a really self-indulgent scene in an independent movie? Sometimes, when I think about this, I get mad at myself for relating this moment in time with a cinematic one and think, “Make your own scene, and stop trying to live in someone else’s, dammit.”

Maybe I’m just crazy.

2009′s last hurrah.

Thankfully, tonight, the 82nd Academy Awards will conclude all the countdowns, year-end wrap-ups, and discussions of film in The Aughts. I actually agreed with the Academy’s choice to raise the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. Over the past few years, there’ve been some crazy years where one film really dominates the entire landscape of award shows leaving perfectly good great films out of the Best Picture category. Unfortunately for the Academy, 2009 happened to be a year of a bunch of good films that grossed a lot of money, and no actual standouts that achieved (near) perfection of the cinematic arts.

In 2009, I can really only compile a list of movies I enjoyed, but that didn’t necessarily move me. On the enjoyment scale, I’d say the best movies of 2009 were District 9, Zombieland and Where the Wild Things Are. Other than that, only one movie truly moved me, and I didn’t even watch it in 2009.

The night of the Golden Globes, I decided to watch The Hurt Locker. Normally, I’d watch the award show, but I was so disappointed with the films nominated that I couldn’t even watch. I’d seen a good portion of the films nominated except for Avatar and THL and I refuse to pay $13 for a movie, because it’s best viewed in 3-D.

I have to admit, THL is a subtle film about an explosive (literally and figuratively) issue affecting my generation right now. Honestly, whether bomb detonators in Iraq say the film is factually accurate or not doesn’t matter to me. The bombs and the war are secondary characters to Jeremy Renner and the emphasis is placed on the relationships he does and doesn’t build with the people around him. Film isn’t supposed to be reality; instead, they’re supposed to be thought-provoking interpretations of what’s going on in someone’s story. I truly believe THL is the best movie/story of the year.

If I was a voting member of the Academy, these would be my winners of the 2009 (I left a few categories out that I simply do not know enough about or didn’t have time to consider):

Best Picture :: The Hurt Locker
(I think Avatar will win)

Best Actor :: Jeremy Renner
(I think Jeff Bridges will win)

Best Supporting Actor :: Christopher Waltz

Best Actress :: Carey Mulligan
(I think Sandra Bullock will win)

Best Supporting Actress :: Maggie Gyllenhaal
(I think Mo’Nique will win)

Best Animated Film :: Up

Best Art Direction :: Avatar

Best Cinematography :: The Hurt Locker

Best Costumes :: The Young Victoria (period pieces always win this right?)

Best Director :: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
(I would not be upset if Jason Reitman won, I’m a big fan of his)

Best Documentary :: Food, Inc.

Best Writing (Adapted) :: Up in the Air

Best Writing (Original) :: Inglorious Basterds

We’ll see how I do a little later. For now, off to see another movie instead of watching the awards show.

Not Another Top Ten List

NOTE, 12/28: Since I wrote this post on 12/22, I’ve come across many, many more amazing Top lists. I’ve amended the post to add those

I once had a roommate who made a lot of lists. She’d make a homework to-do lists, shopping lists, cleaning lists, and, sometimes, even lists of lists. I used to mock her a little, but realized it was a really good way of keeping yourself organized when you have a lot of stuff going on in your life.

At the end of every year, magazines and blogs feel like it’s their job to do a year-end countdown lists of their favorite things. The Aughts are almost over and I’ve noticed an overwhelming number of Top Ten of the Decade lists to make it to the front page of my favorite websites lately. I’ve even seen some Top 17 and Top 40 lists.

It’s amazing to think about what’s happened in the past decade. Personally, I started and finished high school and college… lost my first and second loves… started and got fired from my first job. Instead of writing my own Top list of things that would undoubtedly become trite or boring, I’m going to share some of my favorite lists I’ve come across.

• Entertainment Weekly online’s 10 Biggest Comebacks and Career Collapses of the ’00s is a good list. It’s interesting to compare the comebacks next to the collapses because you can see where some of the career paths were kind of the same.
• CNNMoney.com‘s 8 Names You Know, RIP list compiles the top brands that died during 2009. Circuit City and Gourmet magazine were the biggest losses for me. I don’t own a PC or drive a car, so the Encarta, Saturn, and Pontiac closures don’t affect me that much.
• New York Magazine‘s 17 Extinct Things You Probably Don’t Miss list is a funny one. Because of my age and my industry, I’m expected to, and do, adapt to things rapidly. Some of these things I stopped using long before they “died” (many still exist, they just aren’t popular anymore) and I’ve long since moved on to other technologies to get what these things once provided. For instance, Floppy disks are still on this list… the successive technology is technically CDs, but those are pretty much long gone in my world too. My computer doesn’t even burn CDs, nor do I ever put CDs in to listen to music.
• The Top Ten Awkward Moments from Time Magazine is the list you always dream of, but never actually think about making, unless you’re that particular writer on Time.com. I’m a big fan of awkward moments, mostly because I’m basically a genius when it comes to creating awkward moments in unawkward situations, and 2009 really was a year of the awkward and political correctness. If something wasn’t necessarily awkward, the media or coverage around the event made it awkward by analyzing every single angle of every single story.

These lists are all great, but I the last list truly captures the massive shifts in culture and technology in the 00′s.

• BuzzFeed.com‘s 40 Things That Were Popular at the Beginning of the Decade that Aren’t Anymore basically sums up the past decade of my life (with the exception of JNCO jeans, trucker hats, or parachute pants… I never wore those). This is that list that makes you go “WHAT THE FUCK was I thinking?” The list that reminds you of seeing  your parent’s prom pictures for the first time and kind of giggling and their long hippie hair and silly tuxedos. Why, why, why did I like boy bands? Why did they think frosted tips and bandanas were cool? Why’d everyone freak out over Anthrax? All good questions.

Finally, my favorite: a video of the top political, cultural, and … just plain weird news of 2009 from JibJab.

I thought I’d be driving a Grand Cherokee by now.

A coworker and I were having a conversation yesterday about actors and directors. Which actor do you know you’re supposed to like, but just can’t? Which director has made the biggest impact on film making this decade?

Those are some tough answers to find. We instantly agreed that we couldn’t get behind Penelope Cruz even though she’s a critical darling. We bonded over our hatred of Volver (probably not Cruz’s fault, though). After a little discussion, we both agreed that Stephen Soderbergh would get the award for best director of the decade. Between all the Oceans movies, Traffic, Erin Brockovich, and so on… how could anyone else really get it?

Personally, I’d have to give most enjoyable director to Jason Reitman. Before today, two of his films were my favorite of the Aughts: Juno and Thank You For Smoking. Today, I can add Up in the Air to that list.

It’s not every day I get to take off early from work, gallivant around town, and take in a movie by myself. But, boy, are those days enjoyable. Ever since I started working in Bethesda, I’ve been promising myself to walk down to Bethesda Row for a movie after work and I finally did it … six months later.

Throughout the film, Reitman utilized his filmmaking trademarks that make his films so enjoyable:

• Putting characters in unsympathetic roles and making you love them anyway. First, it was Nick Naylor in Thank You, the cigarette industry lobbyist; then Juno, the smart-assed, pregnant sixteen year-old; and now Ryan Bingham, the man who makes a living by… ending people’s livelihoods. Each one of these characters has the odds stacked against them; place them in any other director’s hands and they could come off self-loathing, self-serving, self-involved… Instead, they become human and three-dimensional. They know exactly what got them into this situation and they spend the film struggling to get themselves out of it.
• Employing great, yet understated actors to play these complex roles. All three leads are incredible actors that really shine when put into these situations. Ryan Bingham is basically an invisible man. He travels 270 or more days out of the year and never stops to take a break. He thrives on the road and gets human interaction only from complete strangers – - attendants at the check-in counter at hotels or airports, employees he’s laying off, and women he takes back to his room after a night at the hotel bar. He’s not attached to any one of these people in his life, so it’s easy for him to care about them. Family? Love? There’s too much baggage there to check at the gate.
• Taking locations and destinations out of the story and letting it rest on the characters. Each of these movies could be set in New York or LA with a montage of catchy music edited into a music video splicing each scene, but Reitman doesn’t do that. He lets everything rest on the lead character, knowing they’ll drive the story home. Just as Juno isn’t about teen pregnancy, Up isn’t George Clooney traveling across the country to fire people in each location. The movie’s really about how he handles each situation – -  how a man who thrives on being alone without other people’s baggage is the one person who can help a stranger when they’re at their lowest point. Each character figures out how they got there, if they want to stay there, and how they’re going to get out of the situation they’re in.
• Character changes are pretty large, but make sense. Every screenwriting class discusses the character arc and how the character needs to go from point A to point B literally, figuratively, or both before the end of the script. Reitman’s films allow the lead characters to do this naturally. The movies aren’t about the good guy getting the girl or the hockey team winning despite the odds. They’re about real people making real decisions. Even though the characters wind up doing something completely out of character by the end of the movie, it never seems forced. Reitman guides the character on an incredible arc that not only leaves you understanding this person, but rooting for them.
• Taking risks in the subplots and minor characters that are featured. In Juno, Allison Janney nearly stole the film with her obsession of Weimaraners and the wacky activities she allows her not-so-capable five year-old Liberty Bell to partake in. I was a little worried about Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick, most notably Bella’s friend Jessica in the Twilight saga) being featured so prominently but she allowed the story to go a little deeper – - make you understand how and why Ryan had gotten to the point he did. His steadfast cynicism about connections to other humans and his work beat her down while her naivety and idealism build him up. Both make huge character changes toward the end and make a long-lasting impact on one another. It’s also nice to not see this role go to a guy and take the easy father/son role. They both learn from each other and encourage the other to grow. Plus, Kendrick delivers some pretty killer lines (see blog title above).

I’m not quite sure how he does it, but I’ve loved each one of these movies. They may not be top contenders every time around for Oscars, but they are certainly well-acted, well-written, and well-told stories that, together, make for an impressive resume.