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September 24th, 2007
 | 12:17 pm - Weekend Report: Rhymes with oo
Makes a good double bill with Equus
This weekend I actually reacquainted myself with my kitchen and cooked a dinner. Hello, funnel! Hello, Chinese skimmer/strainer! (Both were used to fry some garlic in olive oil.) On the menu was New York strip steak, classic baked potato (rubbed first in butter and flaked sea salt), steamed baby spinach, and chocolate cake and a glass of ice-cold milk for dessert. I wanted to get some additional veggies, but I was dismayed while shopping at how expensive everything is in our urban not-so-supermarkets: asparagus - $5, corn on the cob - $4 for three ears, mushrooms - don’t ask. Even the $5 tray of baby spinach cooked down to less than two 1/3-cup servings. At least I felt a little less guilty about, like so many New Yorkers, relying as much as I do on prepared and take-out food. Watching all those episodes of Alton Brown’s Good Eats seems to have paid off -- although I felt a bit rusty in the kitchen and I’ve never cooked a lot of steaks at home, I actually managed to time everything so they were ready at the same time, and the steaks weren’t overcooked, properly medium rare for roommate, and medium for me.
Then I did something that I’ve never done before: watched an episode of Dr. Who. I didn’t follow everything that happened (they have a lot of story arcs and characters that reference past seasons/incarnations), but I was impressed with the production values, performances, humor, and directing: although only 45 minutes long, it was better than many science fiction films I see. An added bonus was this episode had Derek Jacobi as a guest star, and he’s such a fine actor he’s always a pleasure to watch.
Sunday it was off to a birthday celebration for  danbearnyc and Katherine/deafdyke at Dan’s Ikea showroom lovely Queens apartment. Dan sure throws a good party. Lots of great food, so many guests they spilled into multiple rooms of Dan’s railroad flat, great music, and plenty of wine, champagne, and booze flowing. Had a great time chatting with Christopher/theoctothorpe, Moose/liftinmoose and his hubby, Matt/badfaggot, Cliff/jazzbearny, among others, as well as the birthday boy and girl.
I had the temerity to try and gift Dan with a DVD I thought he might not already have in his 1,500+ collection with the obscure but delightful The Saddest Music in the World by Guy Maddin, but it turns out he’s an Isabella Rossellini fan. But maybe at least he now has the cool extras on the DVD (including the delerious Sissy-Boy Slap Party short), a lot of times when duping a commercial DVD you have to leave off all the extras to get the movie to fit on a single disc. I was much more successful with bikerchick Katherine’s gift, a copy of Riding with Rilke, to my knowledge the only book about both motorcycling and English literature (she’s also a professorchick).
Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Dan of duping me some of the more outre videos he finds, I left with more DVDs than I arrived with, Slavoj Žižek's delightful The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, the zoophilic Zoo, and the faboo Who Are You, Polly Magoo?
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Qui Est Vous, Polly Maggoo? is delish. And it's coming on Sundance Channel in November if you want to have your own copy. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/43068752/1302955) | | From: | thornyc |
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| Date: | September 24th, 2007 04:37 pm (UTC) |
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Thanks for the endorsement, it now moves to the top of the DVDs to watch pile.
(BTW, did you ever watch Something for Everyone, or did the dub not play in your DVD?)
It is in a giant stack of DVDs on my TV, unfortunately being pushed down by work-related stuff. But I will get to it one of these days, I swear. | | From: | thornyc |
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| Date: | September 24th, 2007 04:50 pm (UTC) |
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It'll be good whenever you need an Angela Lansbury or Michael York fix.
Well, now I know why you recommended I use Google to list my movies. It was fun having you out, and I hope you haven't eaten all your chocies yet. Space 'em out! Go slow, Blanche, go slow! How was Zoo? I guess I'll get it from Netflix, but given how much anxious posturing and incoherent moral indignation the subject inspires, I dread to even ask about it.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/58879019/1302955) | | From: | thornyc |
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| Date: | September 24th, 2007 07:15 pm (UTC) |
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Just got it last night, haven't viewed it yet. It polarized the critics, with a 56% positive rating aggregated at rottentomatoes. They either respected it or viscerally hated it: It's not a cheery film to watch, but there's an unexpected beauty and distance to Zoo that makes it easier to comprehend, if not understand, how this culture considers itself.
This experimental-style documentary invokes the waking dreams of David Lynch, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris.
I can't believe I'm thinking about this stuff, but weirdly grateful to Zoo for going there.
Punch lines and outrage come easy, but beware: If you walk into this film with a secure moral judgment, prepare to have it shaken by the time you leave.
It seems almost perverse to willfully take a subject so bizarre and disturbing and esthetize it into something beautiful, but, love it or hate it, there's no denying the film's seductive power.
The film's artistry makes it possible to consider the subject without sniggering or recoiling reflexively. (apparently not): Director Robinson Devor makes an only mildly disgusting film about a wholly revolting subject.
Zoo would be laughable if it weren't in such bad taste.
This nightmare-inducing film is as dark and lurid in tone as the mind of its maker.
Zoo is a documentary doomed to remain forever biased and incomplete until somebody figures out how to interview a horse.The two-paragraph synopsis at rotten is actually very good description of the film: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zoo/about.phplisavnyc, who curates films for Cinekink, saw it and found it a little too genteel: too much art and not enough enlightenment. Of the other four 2007 Sundance documentaries available at Amazon, it has pretty good sales statistics (behind Iraq and Hiroshima, ahead of Abu Ghraib and rape), meaning that it's a subject people clearly think about and are curious about. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/15744997/969269) | | From: | deafdyke |
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| Date: | September 24th, 2007 11:03 pm (UTC) |
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Yes, but the downside of having a 1,500+ collection is that if you ask Dan for something, he'll say he does have it...somewhere....
It was great to see you!! Thanks so much for coming. ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/35566199/1302955) | | From: | thornyc |
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| Date: | September 25th, 2007 04:53 am (UTC) |
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His latest Feasting on Asphalt rocked. If I win the lottery, that's what I want to do -- travel around the country on a prostate-massaging motorcycle, eat at places called Mom's, and play poker with men named Doc....
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