Ginkgo Biloba and the K vs. K vs. K

Someone I was in love with many moons ago recently reminded me to remember Kramer vs. Kramer…When I began remembering, I remembered it was a movie I took my first girl friend to see…I think…I think we were girlfriend and boyfriend and I think I bought her a Smurf key chain and I’m pretty sure I took her to the Mineola movie theater to see a second run of it for 99 cents…I'm pretty sure it was my idea...It was so full of good and yummy adult themes…I don’t even think we understood what divorce was and I’m pretty sure neither of us had any kind of relationship with our daddies…I could be wrong …I don’t think me and Karen dated again although we might have gone roller skating…Maybe I bought her a Smurf mug…Maybe she knew I was gay way back in the fifth grade…What happened to her?  Same goes for Dustin Hoffman’s idiot child in Kramer vs. Kramer…Why would he fight for that?  Why did he marry Meryl?  Does anyone now remember Jane Alexander?  Well, here we are all grown up and stupid and we’re all suffering from the sad and pathetic effects of divorce…My parents are still together…Fuck me…FUCK YOU!  Go eat some white ice cream while you taunt your daddy Dustin before sinking fast into acting oblivion…You deserve it…And an Oscar…or a nomination…Dude, I can’t believe you got an Oscar nomination for crying in front of Dustin Hoffman.  And to think I used to listen to that song Reminiscing by The Little River Band, imagining me and Karen married, so many years later, walking through the park and reminiscing…I wish Karen had kicked me in the nuts back then and done some real physical and psychological damage, ‘cause right now I just feel stupid and things seem awesomely hazy.  Facebook me, Karen…Sadly, Rock Hard.

Doo Diligence #3 (or how I stole your email message and made it my film review)

Or, we heart hookers. Or, we hearted N.Y.

So I watched Hustling last night. I was kinda surprised it kept my attention the whole time. Out of it I realized two things: 

1) We need hoards of hookers on street corners today. I can't believe that has been taken from us. Hookers being sassy, bad mouthing cops and dealing with cheap johns - I can't understand why this doesn't exist.

 
2) Even though I have never been to New York City, in my mind I still imagine and perhaps hope that it still looks like it did in seedy ‘70s and ‘80s movies. Gritty, dirty and filled with bell bottoms and tacky neon, old pay phone booths and metal trash cans. If I go there now and see modern cafes and starbucks coffee joints it will really, really ruin the idea I have in my mind.

For no good reason, I’m thinking of greasy Italian men in dirty wife beaters. My vision of New York just isn’t complete without them. I don’t want hipsters. I want authentic, dirty Italian men hanging outside of porno theatres. This is the New York of my dreams. 

And hooker funerals. That might have been the best part of the Hustling itself. How come more movies don’t include hooker funerals? With a sorry group of hooker co-workers in attendance? Huh?

(Thank you Belle Bottom for your accidental review; makes my job so much easier.  We here at Cinemüshka love hookers too…

Doo Diligence #2 (or how I stole your email message and made it my film review)

Or, no gummo in class...

"...I was like, bunny ears, dead cats, poverty, bunny ears, dead cats, poverty, bunny ears, dead cats, poverty, bunny ears, dead cats, poverty, ugly people..."

(Thank you, Schlockhausen, for your spot on review of Gummo...I think it's time for you to submit a proper review, like the one you did for us back in 2012, shithead.)

Papi

I went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel all by myself at the grand Vista Theatre in Hollywood, just up the street from where I live.  I love this theatre…It’s all old and vintage and there’s legroom galore and whenever I go to the movies here in LA I’m never stressed out the way I would get stressed out going to movies in New York Shitty.  Here in LA people work on movies, so it’s all quiet in the theatres, like the audience has respect for the piece of crap they worked so hard on.  I can’t see a good movie these days for shit…Not that The Grand Budapest Hotel was that bad…It was just kinda boring…Like Wes Anderson is still working out his daddy issues and we have to pay for it…But there’s some pretty shots and some fake looking dioramas or some such nonsense…And, as usual, the men outnumber the women and we’re again treated to some pseudo-father-son-wet-dream-cum-buddy-adventure-sans-cum.  How grand and Ralph Fiennes didn’t nail it at all…Like he knew something Wes Anderson didn’t and he didn’t have the balls to care…I don’t care.  I hate Tilda Swinton and don’t care if you do not.

So, to erase the $6.50 bargain matinee special memory, I rented Andy Warhol’s Bad.  A movie I swear I saw but turned out I hadn’t.  My loss…I think it might have changed my life – no, it’s changed my life but maybe it would have happened sooner…There are lots of retarded babies in it and some of them die horrible deaths.  How utterly new and different.  The babies reminded me of Mongo from Precious (see my first review ever here of Precious, please…if you can spare a minute…It’s a good review, I mean, it’s a bad review of a shitty movie but I think it’s very well written by me).

Bad's S. Tyrrell

Bad scared me in ways Precious did, but did it even better…Bad is so good, mainly because it takes place near where I was born, stars a brilliant Carroll Baker and a fucking brilliant, fucking amazing, fucking fucked up fucking Susan Tyrrell…I love this woman…Is that too easy?  A gay faggot saying he loves Susan Tyrrell?  Help.  Well, Bad is only about women and it pretty much takes Wes Anderson’s pussy adventure and fucks it a new ass, no lube…Would Wes Anderson have ever put Susan Tyrrell in a movie?  No...These balls he does not have…She’d have chewed him up and spit him out and we’d have eaten it up…Susan is dead now and Bad is a nightmare Wes Anderson only wishes he could conjure up.  In any case, even if he had made it, his daddy would probably have given him a timeout…Suck my sack, Wes Anderson…Rock Hard.

JACKED!!!

Eurostar, our in-house chick flick haiku poet, has graced us with his first review!  Thank you, Eurostar, keep 'em coming:




When I was in the third grade, the multiplex was my babysitter.  If a movie was G or PG, my little brother and I were invariably dropped off to watch the weekend matinée.   We saw literally everything – including Scavenger Hunt, a bad, bad, bad, bad knockoff of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Instead of the Stooges and Ethel Merman, we get Richard Benjamin and Starbuck from the original Battlestar Galactica, who is now an eccentric crank famous for hating the remake of Battlestar Galactica.  Seeing how that series “Lost!” its way by the end, who can blame him, even if female fighter pilots are still pretty cool?  Back in the seventies, though, Starbuck was trying to inherit the fortune of another eccentric crank by screwing Jack’s white, fiberglass clown head off the top of a Jack-in-the-Box drive-through intercom.  I’ve been thinking about this scene a lot lately, haunted by those incessant commercials featuring the new, improved cyborg Jack with his creepy Mad Men body.  Scavenger Hunt also provides the perfect set-up for a great reality TV show.  Whoever can deface the most public and corporate property (list provided) wins a million dollars – what fun!  After this show gets made, remember you heard it here first, so I can collect my royalties and residuals.  Au revoir, Eurostar.

Chick Flick Haiku #9

ahoy there sailor!

it’s time to carry me off

so wear your dress whites

Sisters Are Doin' It...

These days, trying to find a good lesbian movie is like trying to find…ummm…Name one, I dare you…Personal Best?  Nope…The Children’s Hour?  HA!  Making Love?  Maybe…Windows?  Almost!  Have you seen Windows?  Talia Shire plays a stuttering straight woman stalked by her lesbian neighbor, shittily played by Elizabeth Ashley, who hires a man to rape Adrian, err, I mean, Talia Shire and record her stuttering moans and screams…Really!  I heard stutterers protested this movie back in 1980.  I still can’t believe Talia Shire has 2 oscar nominations.  Makes my head spin, really…

So...Good lesbian movies…The Killing of Sister George, you say?  YYYYYES!!!  My most favorite dykodrama ever.  Now, I don’t pretend to know how lesbians live.  I don’t even have a lesbian friend, but this movie comes pretty darn close to what I think lesbians are about.  It’s a UK film, so it’s even more foreign to me…It stars Beryl Reid and Susannah York as a bickering, May/December couple - one of whom is a dreadfully aging actress, the other a hot, young piece of sapphic flesh…They argue, sing a little, dance a little, scream a lot, throw stuff, yell some more while Beryl Reid, aka June Buckridge aka Sister George, yells at everyone else and is one big cranky ass mother fucker.  I love her…She gets shit on left and right and just pops up again, fists in the air like Bea Arthur’s Maude (but a lesbian…).

I always thought The Killing of Sister George was some murder mystery involving nuns, but it ain’t…It’s pure lesbianness of the highest order. An unapologetic look into a dysfunctional duo and a sad commentary on what we scumbags here in Hollywoods would once refer to as “THE BIZ”.   Beryl Reid’s final word at the end is just about the most heartbreaking thing I ever did hear in a movie that I still don’t entirely understand and really, why should I?  Lesbians are weird…But they get shit done ‘cause they ain’t out dancing and sniffing poppers with the likes of Al Pacino.  AAAAAADRIAN!!!!!!  From, Rock Hard