decidedlyodd

In the past week or so, I’ve watched a variety of movies. A while back, I watched Kids. Now, I remember hearing years ago (maybe when I was still in high school even?) that this was a disturbing movie. Being into disturbing movies, I thought I’d give it a go. I was very disappointed and found the movie really boring and generally uninteresting. However, I do finally understand what the term “yo boy” means. New York accents just rub me the wrong way somehow. Oddly, southern accents used to the same thing, but after being exposed to those for a while, I’ve actually come to find them charming. At the same time though, the New York and Boston accents (and similar) grate on me more than ever. While the linguist in me wants to appreciate the diversity of speech pattern, the insensitive asshole wants me to punch them and say “learn how to fucking talk, you idiots!”.

I also watched Todd Solondz’s Storytelling. I thought it was ok, but I just didn’t get into it. I have to say I’ve enjoyed the other films of his that I’ve seen much more. Welcome to the Dollhouse is of course classic. I thought Palindromes was pretty ok, not amazing but better than Storytelling. Happiness was actually the first film of his I saw. Back during my sophmore year of college, this girl I knew through my physics class who was roommates with one of my friends from high school got a bunch of us to go. I was totally unprepared for that film and walked away fairly disturbed. I’ve since seen the film again and the shock value was considerably less I guess.

I watched two movies while in transit (if you recall, I had a lot of free time on my hands). The first was Before Stonewall, a documentary from 1984 and gay life before the watershed that was the Stonewall riots in 1969. It’s very well made and holds up well being over 20 years old now. Interestingly, I returned this film on Saturday to a mailbox in Chicago O’Hare airport that did not have scheduled pickups on the weekend. Still, the movie arrived back at Netflix on Tuesday morning, which means the post office must be smart enough to return them to the nearest distribution center.

On the way back, I watched Eating Out. I liked the movie a bit, but the end pissed me off. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything. In these kind of movies, the guy always gets his girl/guy. The problem is that the girl the straight boy gets with has no redeeming qualities. Not only is she manipulative,obnoxious and generally unattractive but she very harshly calls the straight boy’s roommate and good friend a loser to his face! Yet, they still get together. Ugh. Lots of male eye candy (some of it full front nude) perhaps partially redeems this movie in my eyes.

Last night, I watched John Waters’ Hairspray. I’d seen it before, but I still liked it quite a lot. It’s certainly his most accesible film–could even be called a “family film”. It’s Ricki Lake’s (we share a birthday with Bill Murray and the twins from Seventh Heaven) breakout role in fact. I mean, come on, any movie with Divine, Jerry Stiller, Sonny Bono, Debby Harry (of Blondie fame) and Ricki Lake is bound to be at least a little interesting.