Captain America 2, The Winter Soldier: Short, Controlled Bursts

It's a fucking snakeskin turban, people. And no, Mom,
 she doesn't "just look that way" and those aren't her real
cheekbones. Gah, we argued so much about this dumb movie.

It's always a kick in the pants when the Oscars come around. My degree is in cinema studies and working at a grocery store comics. This left me rather depressed, having read my living-the-dream, scriptwriting amigo's annual top ten list to discover I'd only heard of any of the films via a fashion blog I read and not seen a single one. I haven't seen any of the nominees this year, except (cough) Maleficent which is up for costume design. Arg.
through high school and college, I was ever so tapped in to Hollywood (and beyond). The steep drop in my consumption of film--at least current film--coincides quite noticeably with the absence of any disposable income to speak of. Ah, how culture eludes the impoverished! I graduated six years ago in the spring and I've reduced myself to what I can steal from the internet, my streaming-only Netflix subscription, and movies related to my chosen field,

Giving Me a Number, Taking Away My Name

More than the snobbish angst of having not enjoyed any high art at the multiplex this year--and that's being generous in assuming some was made, I'm a cynical snob--is that I have no brevity in my nature. My articles on Watchmen and The Hunger Games are more akin to essays, and between tracking down images, writing and editing, they took days of time to produce. This is a hurdle, more than a flaw, I'd say: It's the way I tend to rant articulately about my opinions to a few people, promise myself and others that I'll write down my thinking and then never do that is the real, real problem. But, since I'm a deli-slicer extraordinaire these days (we don't give out numbers, actually), I might as well do as Devo commands and get up off my ass.

I've Got One Hell of a Job

This is a challenge all writers face: Not writing and feeling bad about it. Let's remember to work with what we've got, draw inspiration from whatever truly does inspire us, and just keep trying to write it down. I did see some movies that were in release this year. I do have opinions about them, discerning critiques as a writer, a filmgoer and a scholar of the silver screen. Let's get nitty and gritty, let's think critically about mass-audience entertainment, let's commit to following through on our promise to ourselves and each other and elevate even the lowest common experiences to the level of intelligence befitting discourse! Or, at least let's delve into a very long exploration of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier, like I fucking said I would when I saw it in April. Yeehaw!

After this point, there are mega-spoilers, not that I probably need to warn anyone about a movie this old and some triggering things like descriptions of violence. Oh, and hereafter, there will be no more references to "Secret Agent Man" by Devo, in part because Steve Rogers makes the worst secret agent ever.

Are You Listening?

I've just finished an epically long chapter in a novel of epically long chapters, 18k+ words from one of my three main perspectives. And to celebrate, I've been watching the British drama Broadchurch. Why is a gritty stone-who-done-it a celebration? Why, because of David Tennant, of course.

Oh rilleh?

How Does That Even Work?

My acting experience is negligible, but it does exist (Cough, cough, high school, cough). I also know a few actual actors who have, y'know, talent and skill and careers. It is from conversations with them about their processes, as much as from my own limited knowledge, that I now ask this question of myself:

If I had a career and all the stuff that you need to get one, namely lots of training and practice (this is a hypothetical me, so let's ignore the luck/endurance/connections that getting a career in anything actually takes) and I needed to cry for a role, and I being a totally rad actor could cry for said role, how the hell would I force just one tear out of just one eye?

Is it skill? Luck? Faked by make up? I don't know. When I get weepy, my nose runs in a very undignified way. Can you... control that with acting? I heard a lot of hand-waving about Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and it was well-deserved. But Mark Strong cries a single, perfect tear of ultimate heartbreak and nuance, and the intensity of his performance has me almost embarrassed. (More on this next time)

It bears mentioning that describing the scene I'm referring to in prose sounds maudlin and trite. I mean, c'mon, "a single tear"? Snort. But on film it works. It's breathtaking. And if I see my man Mark getting type-cast with any more BS occult villain roles (Sherlock Holmes is a silly-ish movie with a serious-ish role, but, jeez, Stardust? He spends half the movie making the wtf-I-can't-believe-I'm-from-the-same-magical-realm-as-these-dopes face, and what else could he do?) I'ma make some casting directors cry.