CHAPTER 130: BLOOD

A stunned Joseph stares at the empty spot where Lorenza should have been standing, and is no more.
Could she have stumbled away to her room, even in her state? Perhaps reacting to a strange, acrid smell that seems to permeate the hall?
He finds the door to her chamber closed: that she could have worked its lock in her sleep seems unthinkable.
Joseph is not a man to let fear visit his heart often, but he's chilled now: could these recent days of loving, of matrimonial joy, have been Lorenza's best trick? Can she have escaped again? Have his magnetic powers diminished? Are his secrets once again about to be exposed?

Women! Can't even trust them under hypnosis!

He descends the staircase, hollers out for Fritz. His man takes more than a second to show up, so Joseph is about to hypnotize him and throw him out a window:
"Where is the signora, Fritz? Did you let her walk out?"
Fritz bows with spine-breaking respect and says: "No, master, I have not seen her. And I've just locked the gate behind the Countess."
Joseph examines Fritz' face, looking for a possible betrayal, some bribery plot, but seeing nothing but confusion.
Where can Lorenza have gone?
Balsamo rushes up the stairs again. He allows himself a pleasant fantasy: that Lorenza, overcoming her hypnosis, has decided to play a flirtatious hide-and-seek. Perhaps she's giggling now in some cabinet, or behind curtains, or in any of the myriad places in which characters in the SUPER ABRIDGED MARIE ANTOINETTE SAGA are always hiding. "Lorenza? Come out, please, this is childish," he mutters, but he can't convince himself.
All the possibilities in his head are greeted with silence outside. His movements become frantic, he pushes curtains aside, kicks chairs, throws open all the possible doors in the house of the Rue St. Claude, even knowing- already sensing- that Lorenza is not there.
"Gone," he says outloud. "Fritz is lying to me. He's helped Lorenza escape. But she can't hide. Don't I still have Andree de Taverney? YES! I must find Andree, use her as a medium again, find out where Lorenza is. And this time, I won't be the idiot who believed, even for a moment, in a woman's love."
He backtracks, and seeing Fritz doing an admirable job of looking perturbed, decides to sneak out of the house without revealing plans to send him back to Germany.
"Fritz, er, it's probably nothing to worry about. Stop looking. I... shall go out... for ice cream."
And with a sub-zero smile, he leaves his butler alone. Then he snaps his fingers: "One more thing before I go looking for Lorenza: I have to put water in Althotas' bowl. Just because I have been betrayed by the one I've protected, doesn't mean I should betray the one who's protected me."
With the same frantic, drunken, doomed movements with which he's ransacked his house, he heads back to the old hallway, to the trapdoor in the ceiling that leads to the old wizard's attic. He brings the door down, climbs upon it, and rests while the mechanism lifts him up.
"ACHARAT!" He hears the greeting voice as the floor closes under him with a clang. Instinctively he lowers his head:
"Yes, I know, I have neglected you, ungrateful unicorn stab wounds, whatever, I'm sorry. I've been busy, but I'm checking on you now, aren't I?"
"Ha, nonsense, child," says Althotas, his face lit up joyful madness. His long-nailed fingers wave Balsamo in.
Joseph is surprised at the change in mood, just as he is taken aback by the vitiated air in the room. "We really should install a shower in here," he thinks, and faintly realizes this acrid smell is familiar. "Master," he dares to say outloud. "You really should open a window or something."
Althotas giggles: "You think so? I quite like the air here. It makes me feel lively. ALIVE."
Balsamo draws close to the old wizard: "It smells badly, it smells like blood, like a dead body or something."
Althotas snaps his fingers: "That's what that is, you are so very right! It smells like a dead body!"
Balsamo stares at those fingers. They're glistening with blood. The same blood that's on the desk. And on the floor. "Master. There's blood everywhere."
There's even blood in the old man's eyes, shining with triumph, as he rolls forward in his wheelchair: "So what if there's blood? You've seen me do plenty of experiments!"
"It's HUMAN BLOOD!"
A cackle answers him: "If you can tell the difference between human and animal blood just like that, maybe I'm underestimating you, child."
Puddles of blood lead from under Althotas' wheelchair to a corner of the room, where a large basin shines darkly with blood, like a lake of the damned. Joseph points at it with mounting dread, a terror that has not dared to reach the obvious conclusion.
"Master! What have you done?"
Althotas smacks his own cheek, leaving a red trail there: "Are you so dense? It's what we have talked about, it's the innocent blood we needed for our elixir of life! I've certainly mentioned it plenty: We needed the last three drops of life!"
"You said you needed a baby!"
"We talked about this, Acharat! Innocent blood! The blood of a virgin would do just fine," and Althotas points at a small brandy cup on the desk before it. There's a small red layer at the bottom. "I have to say, child, yours was a stroke of genius! Leaving that young woman right beneath my trap door, stunned, within reach of my poor, frail arms. You should feel no guilt, after all. You didn't give her to me: I took her. Cheers to you- and to eternal life!" The old wizard knocks back the glass of brandy and closes his eyes with the satisfaction of an insane saint.
"You... You," a scream is trapped in Balsamo's throat, and he runs to the basin. His hands reach into the bloodied water, and he pulls up the body in that infernal bathtub. His hair stands on end at the sight of Lorenza's purple face, at the gaping wound underneath her collar-bone from which her blood was drained.
From behind him, Althotas shrieks: "I have escaped death! Thanks to you, child! Thanks for the virgin blood!"
For a moment, Balsamo's face is contorted into that of a murderer's.
Then he composes himself and says:
"Joke's on you, Althotas. She wasn't a virgin. We made love for the first time less than three hours ago."
And Joseph Balsamo kneels and lovingly kisses the lips of his dead wife.

Showtime, But For Freaks

"To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected pleasure?"



Three people in the wide, unexplored universe enjoyed Comedy Central's 2006 "Freak Show"- David Cross, H. Jon Benjamin, and me. Was it cheap-looking? Oh, yeah, Newsgrounds cheap. Was it sick and silly? Take a gander at the second (or fifth tier) members of Freak Squad:

The World's Tallest Nebraskan! Power: Can Shrink Up to 6 Inches
The Bearded Clam! Power: Blinding Bitch Juice
Primi, the Premature Baby! Power: Pinpoint Vomiting
Log Cabin Republican! Power: Transformation Into Burly Bear
Tuck and Benny, the Siamese Twins! Power: Separation

Among their exploits: Checking out a New York condo built expressively for overly entitled cats, dummifying "American History For Dummies" for the President's benefit, and romancing country star Toby Tritt Greenwood. All this, while fending off Freak Mart- Wal Mart for the frighteningly enabled. Familiar voices include Will Arnett, Janeane Garofalo, and Kristen Schaal.

Each episode concludes with the Freak Squad celebrating their mild successes with outings to fine dining destinations like Outback, Olive Garden, and Red Lobster.

This is acquired tastelessness in the "Archer"/ "Venture Bros." vein, and it's not great, but I was down like a dissipated Charlie Brown.

CRITERION: James Ivory's "Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures"

I don't know enough about India. I wish I did, and I'll work on it.

The Ismail Merchant and James Ivory team would wind up making the stuffy, classy movies you took your girl out to, so you could prove you weren't a meathead. Together you could appreciate the fineries of British colonialism. Colonialism is a form of dating. All this would involve picnics and discussions of dowries and whether it was Henry James or E. M. Forster who did more to further the novel. And there would be tea. Oh, be a dear, and pour some tea for me, won't you? But Merchant/Ivory's early "Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures," (about a Yankee art collector and a British lady limply competing to get some valuable miniatures out of Westernized Maharajas) is only for completists. Really, don't bother. Pass me that crumpet, darling, before the ants get all over it.

Iggy Iggy

Just watched Iggy and the Stooges in a 2003 performance in Detroit. There he is, this incongruous mix of dissipation and athleticism, almost as if a junkie homeless man had snuck into an abandoned gym. The veins in his body practically pop out, like flowers through sidewalks reaching for a sunny shot of something or other. This is raw power, and when Iggy invites the audience of aging proto-punks to worship and create a mosh-pit over him, they happily comply, with their Detroit Cock City shirts threatening to expose the flesh of forty-year old auto mechanics.

CRITERION: Nobuhiko Obayashi's "House"

I'm not saying that Nobuhiko Obayashi's "House" is the most awesomest movie ever made: all I'm saying is I can't think of any competition right now. Right now I'm no good for thinking at all, and I shouldn't operate heavy machinery for at least two hours, while I flush out this tale of a haunted Japanese house, demonic white cats, hungry hungry pianos, and seven giddy Japanese schoolgirls (named, like dwarves, Gorgeous, Fantasy, Mac, Prof, Kung-Fu, Sweet, and Melody).



I could say that "House" is like if "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and "The Evil Dead" got together and dropped acid. That might give you a vague idea of what you're in for, but it also unfortunately makes it sound like a "movie." "House" isn't a movie: movies are made by people, but "House" has to have been made by playful, psychotic Japanese elves in a wondrous WTF worskhop. Please GO WATCH NOW, if only so that you can come back and convince me I didn't just HALLUCINAte the whole thing and it actually was released by the otherwise decorous Criterion collection. I'm just going to sit right here, shaking and giggling, until it all passes.



See also: Takashi Miike's "The Happiness of the Katakuris."

CRITERION: Leonard Kastle's "The Honeymoon Killers"

"You could have read it in the papers. Maybe you did.
He was a cool cat...but cool.
She was a fat chick...but fat.
They were lovers who loved honeymoons.
Other people's.
From which the other people never returned.



It's eerie, but the favorite murder tool of the Vampire of Dusseldorf, (whose crime spree inspired Fritz Lang's "M") was a hammer. A hammer is also the tool used in the crime spree of "The Honeymoon Killers," Leonard Kastle's 1969 oddity.

Based on the "Lonely Hearts" killings which, as these things tend to do, fascinated the press in 1948 and 1949, "The Honeymoon Killers" follows Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) and Raymond Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco). If there's such a thing as con artists, these were the worst kind of con hacks: Ray would try an sleazy smoldering Latin act on desperate women through the personals, promise to marry them, and steal their savings. Martha, his lover, pretended to be his sister as they insinuated themselves into the lives of their victims. As the movie presents it, in seemingly casual, black-and-white newsreel cinematography, their murders were just the result of their scams being incompetent. Just shit going wrong: victims that got too antsy, or pissed off the jealous Martha, or threatened to sue.

These are the anti-anti-heroes: they're not to be pitied, as the killer in "M"; or secretly admired, like Hannibal Lecter; or romanticized, like "Bonnie and Clyde". They're not there for cheap shocks, like in "Natural Born Killers," and their murders are not shot as horror pieces (although two are close to it). The words that really come to mind are APPALLING and REPELLENT, because these people don't even get off on murder. Bashing someone's brains in with a hammer, inhaling chocolates off a candy box, taking out the trash, knocking back some sleeping pills before bedtime: it's all just good old daily drudgery.



Aside from the obvious riposte to "Bonnie and Clyde"'s glamour, "The Honeymoon Killers" is in line, visually and emotionally, with the early movies of John Waters, John Cassavetes, and George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." It's clearly shedding the "old" Hollywood, not yet entering the new one of the '70s. Originally it was intended to be Martin Scorcese's second full length feature, (the first being "Who's That Knocking at My Door"?), but young Marty was fired after shooting some sections. Producer Leonard Kastle, who had achieved some renown as an opera composer, stepped in. He does a fantastic job: "The Honeymoon Killers" looks like cheapo exploitation should you cross by a screen as it plays, but close attention reveals it is solidly built, intelligently scripted, inventive in its low-budget. Even the amateurish, limited acting works for it: Stoler and Bianco look like they ARE exactly what they're supposed to be.

With plain-looking characters that are too oblivious to even be called amoral, not everyone will enjoy this. Those expecting sex and violence will be the most disappointed of all: this film suggests tawdriness so well you barely realize it's all in your own sick head. Fans of the weird indies of the period- and particularly of "Grey Gardens"- should seek it out.

BONUS: It took me a moment to recognize her, but Doris Roberts, (Marie in "Everybody Loves Raymond") plays the woman who hooks Martha and Ray up.

MouseRat Rocks On

If Season 1 of "Parks and Recreation" was a fun-but-creaky merry-go-round begging for grease, Season 2 is a 20-horse electric carousel blasting "Funiculi Funicula" from speakers cranked up to 11.



The ensemble cast (Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Aziz Ansari, Paul Schneider, Rashida Jones, Chris Pratt, and Aubrey Plaza) is uniformly lovable, as the department of Parks and Recreation of Pawnee continues to tangle itself in the red tape of its incompetence. Although almost* everyone gets a shining moment, passing one-liners around the room like hot potatoes of funniness, what cements the season is the flirting between sweet idiotic Andy (Pratt) and April (Plaza), who laconically crushes on him. Of COURSE, this is catnip for Ann (Jones) who digs up nostalgia for how wonderful it was to wait on Andy's frequent broken bones to heal, to the detriment of her too-polite relation with Mark (Schneider). I know it sounds like I'm mistakenly recapping "One Tree Hill," but this is one comedy who benefits from a little soap opera, and knows the difference between sweetness and sugariness.



*The weak link has always been Schneider.** He's a fantastic actor, but here his incongruous straightness damns him: he's older and wiser, and one can't imagine doing him anything but signing off at 5 o'clock and running far, far away from Pawnee and this show into a regular life. Rashida Jones also plays the straight girl, sneaking confused/bemused glances at the documenting camera when necessary, but, as her willingness to get huffy and jealous over Andy demonstrates, she's not wise. Thankfully.

**And he's off the show in Season 3, with Adam Scott and Rob Lowe more or less splitting his "straight*** man" role.

***You get that by "straight," I mean in comedic terms, as in "someone to bounce jokes off," right? 'Cause Rob Lowe is a homo,**** clearly. Look at that pretty, pretty face.



****I don't mean "homo" as in "homosexual," I mean "homo" as in "guy who's had cool sex scandals and therefore earns my unexamined slurs."

"Parks and Recreation" under-performs tragically in the ratings, but thanks to it, "Modern Family," "Glee," "30 Rock," "How I Met Your Mother," "Community," and even the somewhat stale "Office," network comedy is the best it's been since the mid '90s.

CRITERION: Fritz Lang's "M"

Just like Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low," Fritz Lang's "M" details the chase for a deranged criminal that targets children, and just like "High and Low," the investigation expands to give us a damning look at the hellish gulf between rich and poor.



Somewhere between expressionism and noir, "M" is the deeply disturbing, barely fictional story of Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), a serial child-killer whose string of murders in Berlin mobilize the police, the common citizens, the criminal element and even the beggars into a watchful hysteria. After the initial murder (and, clearly, rape) of a girl called Elsie Beckmann, a scene almost lyrical in its horror, the movie turns into the prototype of the police procedural. The camera, freed from theatrical frames, goes everywhere, taking on the POV of arguing characters, zooming up people's crotches, going down the stairs of questionable dives, peering through trellises. In the film's lengthiest experiment, Lang cuts without warning between different segments of society as they discuss how best to stop the horror: one extended conversation conducted across police stations, fancy dinners, and gambling tables.

We're treated to a variety of unsettling images: the killer's ominous shadow, cast against a wanted poster; a child's balloon, caught between telephone lines; the reflection of an endangered little girl in a window shop; the killer turning to see the chalk "M" that identifies him as a Murderer; a lynching court as grotesque and maybe even more cruel than the accused. But no image is more powerful than Peter Lorre, his face a mixture of a baby-fat innocence and demonic possession, with those eyes that seemed to want to escape right out of his face in terror. "M" is a powerful, unexpected argument against the death penalty: we can't really LIKE this monster, and we're not asked to forgive him, but the way he's hunted by the city, the way he's overcome by passions he can't control, the way he pleads with us to understand that we DON'T understand who HE is, at the very least make us pity him. We're now used to quasi-sympathetic serial killers, from Hannibal Lecter to Dexter, with their glib, anti-heroic coolness- but Peter Lorre did the rarest thing here: to make us as sad for a killer as we are for his victims.



"M" is a powerfully eerie movie, but not an undated one. The coda, in which a mother exhorts us to watch closely over our children, is PSA awful, one of the most brutally lame anticlimaxes in the history of cinema. Lang's decision not to include a score, a technical luxury in 1931, leaves many scenes without support and falling from tension into boredom, (sorry to say). The silence does pay off in a few moments of startling quiet (one extended scene of absolute stillness might make you wonder if the Criterion Collection dropped the ball on the soundtrack) and startling noise (you will never again hear someone whistle Edvard Grieg's "In The Hall of the Mountain King" without feeling a chill, which of course has been the connotation for generations of film-lovers.) There is no question that "M" is a touchstone in the development of psychological horror, so if you haven't seen it and "Psycho," "Silence of the Lambs" or "Seven" ever intrigued you, GO WATCH NOW.





Although Lang, (who co-wrote the script with his then-wife, a future Nazi sympathizer) denied it, it's understood that "M" was partially inspired by the case of Peter Kurten, Germany's answer to Jack the Ripper. Kurten, known as the "Vampire of Dusseldorf," was one of the first serial killers to acquire a horrified/devoted fan-base. Raping women and girls, but not above smashing a fella's head in with a hammer, Peter Kurten differed from Lang's killer in one significant, shocking way: as far as the medical authorities of the time could ascertain, Kurten wasn't crazy.

Just evil.

Shop Gifters of the World, Unite

A brilliant, invigorating piece of whadamilookinat- "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is a celebration of street art, particularly as represented by the enigmatic Banksy. I first learned about Banksy's exploits from a Dear Imaginary Reader over at neighboring blog "Culture Sandwich," (which you should read frequently.) Since then, Banksy has even imprinted himself on "The Simpsons" and honestly "Exit Through the Gift Shop" makes an excellent case for him as today's Andy Warhol. It's been a long time since a personality made us feel as acutely about art. Art as surprise attack, art as a joyful prank, art as an act of transgression, art as a daily necessity and not something to be visited on the sterility of weekends. Don't worry too much about what's "real" about "Exit Through the Gift Shop" and Banksy (whether or not he might actually be Thierry Guetta's alter ego is something that's fun to speculate about but probably fruitless.)
A brilliant middle finger poked into the eye of the art world, a puzzle of a documentary, a laugh at the Pavlovian bidders over at Sotheby's ... If you care at all about the future of artistic expression, GO WATCH NOW.

Sight unSCENE: Week of February 21

"Unknown"- "They've taken my wife! They've taken my daughter! They've taken everything! TAKEN TAKEN TAKEN!" VERDICT: Actually, "Taken 2" is coming out in, like, a month, but who can wait that long?



"I Am Number Four"- It's a mathematical melodrama, as the cute girl from "Glee" takes us through a day in the life of a blandly handsome guy named "Number 4" as he deals with additions to his family, subtractions from his paycheck, multiplications of his financial difficulties, and division of his assets among credit card companies. It ain't easy being number 4. VERDICT: Four-gotten right after watching it.



"Gnomeo and Juliet"- As its title subtly hints, it's basically a retelling of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" with lawn gnomes and a considerably smaller amount of murders. VERDICT: At first, children might be confused by the iambic pentameter, but they will slowly adapt to the Elizabethan intricacies and simply enjoy the nuances and inflections of our country's finest Shakespearean actor: Jason Statham.



"Big Momma's House: Like Father, Like Son"- MARTIN LAWRENCE: "'This ain't nunya! Nunya damned bidnez! Don't you make a black woman take off her ear rings!'... Wait. Wait. Stop. I can't. I can't do it anymore. This is embarrassing. It's not funny. I'm sorry. God, I am so so sorry. I don't know why I am doing this. I am perpetuating ridiculous stereotypes, I am embarrassing myself, I have brought shame to my race and I can't believe I'm forcing this upon another generation of African Americans. I have thought about it day and night, prayed very hard, and frankly, there is no way I can continue doing this and still respect myself and my comedic legacy." VERDICT: Why does this exist?

CRITERION: David Lean's "Hobson's Choice"

Charles Laughton is one of the most formidable British actors, and he rules David Lean's period comedy "Hobson's Choice" as Henry Hobson, an alcoholic boot-seller who pratfalls all the way to cirrhosis. Also starring John Mills (later to be "Sir") as a simple bootmaker under Hobson's employ, Brenda De Banzie as the ancient (30!) woman who decides to get married out of sheer pluck, and Prunella Scales (who would "grow up" to be in "Fawlty Towers.")

This is a small film about a dysfunctional family, where hilarious alcoholism is a plot contrivance, (the scene where Laughton drunkenly tries to stomp on the moon's reflection in puddles has a certain balletic grace), but it does have a mind-bending moment where Charles Laughton gets the DTs and HALLUCINAtes a proto-Donnie Darko bunny at the foot of his bed.

Also, those of us afflicted with Sherlock Holmes nostalgia will love to be transported to Lean's version of 1880's London, which is simultaneously cozy and frightful. These streets are fully inhabitable: children play jump-rope in the background of a scene, and you believe they're real and you can join in their merry-making but then they pick your pocket and run away to be molested by Fagin or whatever. I particularly enjoyed Brenda De Banzie as the ballsy character who announces to the stunned man of her choice that she intends to marry him and shape him up into a decent mate, because I do believe (it's dumb and sexist, I know) that the best way to learn how to be a man is to be taught by a woman.



BONUS: Hobson's Choice is a term for a fake choice. It comes from 16th Century England, where Thomas Hobson owned a stable full of wonderful horses- and if you wanted a horse from him you could choose the first horse in line, or no horse all. Pretty much "you can do anything you want- as long as it's what I want you to do."

CRITERION: Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low"

On certain days of the week, Akira Kurosawa is my favorite all-time film director, and Toshiro Mifune the greatest actor who ever lived. "High and Low" is Ransom, Japanese Style, and it's one of Kurosawa's best. But of course, pretty much everything Kurosawa did between 1948 and 1965 is "one of his best."



"High and Low" is a better than decent translation of the original title ("Tengoku to Jigoku"/ "Heaven and Hell"). "High and Low" has the urgency of the implied verb, as in "Searching High and Low." A team of cops track down a kidnapper from the lofty hills of corporate success to the junkie-riddled alleys at the bottom of 1960s Japan. Toshiro Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, the shoe company big-shot who becomes the target of a ransom scheme.
Except the kidnapper took the wrong kid.
Would you pay the ransom for someone else's child, if it meant your ruin?
This is a kick-ass thriller that will feel MODERN to you, and very Western. It's based on an Ed McBain novel, it contains the only rock party in Kurosawa's oeuvre (as far as I know) and "O Sole Mio" plays over a critical scene. This is a work of art, and a demonstration of how a crime movie can be suspenseful, intelligent, exciting, thoughtful, full of moral quandaries, beautiful to look at, a social expose, timeless and of its time. GO WATCH NOW. Frankly I should feel ashamed that I allowed myself to watch "High and Low" within hours of a slick, amoral, weightless crime movie like "Takers." Comparing those two might well explain why I can barely remember what "Takers" was about- and I just watched it- but I may never forget "High and Low."

Afterlifeless

Everyone knows I have a soft spot for zombie movies, (and realistically, I have a soft spot for pretty much every genre except Westerns, which have to win me over through hard work) but someone needs to stop it with the "Resident Evil" movies, Paul W. S. Anderson needs to be forced into a film workshop, Milla Jovovich should learn facial expressions and caloric intake, and the whole franchise has to go back to the consoles where it gives me pleasurable thrills, not 3-D headaches at the cinema. The final scene of "Afterlife" promises a fifth installment, which is psychological terror at its cruelest.

Vampire Dinosaur Pirate?

I am very much on Patton Oswalt's camp, but "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland" is only intermittently funny, a grab-bag of essays with no tangible unity other than their provenance. That said, this is a smart, hilarious man, so about half of his essays will rip through your proverbial belly and send you back to Obamacare or whatever it is you use when laughter ruins your stitches. Still, I was left cold by the rambling, self-indulgent side, ("Stand by Me" recollections that build toward "and things would never be the same" sentiments) and the thesis in the central essay (that there are 3 kinds of people, and they're either into zombies, spaceships, or wastelands) is deeply uninclusive. Not that I was supposed to take it seriously.

T. I., Chris Brown: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

John Luessenhop's "Takers" is very much like "Ocean's Eleven" without the witty charms, a heist movie stuck in the GQ poses of a who's who of who-cares (Hayden Christensen, Chris Brown, T.I., Idris Elba, Michael Ealy, Paul Walker.) Matt Dillon and Jay Hernandez play the cops who get too close to a bank robbery, Zoe Saldana is the barely-there love interest, and the results are reasonably entertaining but wholly forgettable.

Rock and Roll Dreams Come True... In Japan

The concepts of dreams and ambitions seem entirely alien to the Ryan Gosling character in "Blue Valentine." His wife helpfully nudges him towards the future with questions about what he wants out of life, which he can only meet with blank stares. The future? There's a six pack waiting home. What does she mean? Isn't he pulling decent dough with the moving company?

Just as he's paralyzed by lack of ambition, there's a different kind of paralysis that comes with a dream too clear, too well defined. I have known that I wanted to be a writer since I was 6 and, (with some parental aid) typed out a wildly misspelled one page story about a legless mutant scrambling for sustenance in a post-nuclear moon ruled by cockroaches. My previous dream jobs (astronaut detective and dinosaur hunter, if you must know) were replaced by something that was FOR REALS, something grown-ups did for fame and fortune, laboriously bent over typewriters.

To quote a similarly tormented Jonathan Larson in "Tick Tick...Boom"- I've been a "promising writer" for so long I feel I broke that promise. Was I seeing something that wasn't there in my future? When is it clear one has failed? Perhaps there's still time to abandon who I thought I was and hit an exciting career in the rapidly expanding catering industry? The billions of people who failed are smirkingly told to chase their dreams by the five who succeed, but we are NOT all superstars, we are NOT all fireworks; most of us will live and die as fizzling nobodies, far from fuckin' perfect, heroes only of our own delusions. When does a dreamer become an idiot?

The gentleman in the Canadian metal band Anvil are idiots, and heroes of their delusion, and they've stuck to their dreams for 25 years. And I salute them.



Does one laugh at them for being another Spinal Tap? A little. Their misadventures are many, their songs ridiculously themed (aren't ALL heavy metal songs?), they visit Stonehenge, and one of its founding members is called Robb Reiner. That's one letter away from the "Spinal Tap" director, and enough to make one wonder if "Anvil: The Story of Anvil" isn't a put on, the most convincing of all mockumentaries. But no, Anvil is real enough, a hard-working band fronted by Steve 'Lips' Kudlow that, in its heyday, influenced Metallica and Anthrax and Guns N' Roses, that used to open for Whitesnake and Bon Jovi. Anvil's second album, "Metal on Metal," is considered a milestone by connoiseurs of the genre, but they got lost between 70's hard rock and the new generation they spawned, and no one knows about their 13 records of average (but not terrible enough to mock) 80's metal.

Yes, the 80s have been over for two decades now. Nobody gives a shit.

The guys in Anvil don't realize that. Whatever little fame and fortune they once sniffed at, from a distance, is long gone. Steve and Robb still sweat their asses off, the crags in their face signaling they're in their '50s, family men, barely paying bills with their menial daytime jobs. Their wives look on with tolerance and pity and wondering what they want out of life, even though the answer is obvious: They want to be rock stars. It's the thing that they've worked towards their entire lives, but what no one ever dares to tell you is that some dreams actually become LESS likely to happen the LONGER you chase them. No one wants to see 50 year old men playing metal, outside of jokey competitions- and Anvil, let me stress, does NOT want to be a joke band, although this documentary lovingly makes them one.



In their heads, Steve and Robb KNOW the mob is waiting to worship them, if they can only get past some bad luck. Maybe the reason they haven't become superstars is bad production? They pin their hopes on meeting Black Sabbath producer Chris Tsangarides, who listens politely but demurs with one of those "it's not what we're looking for at the time." It's a heartbreaking scene, but it's exactly right. NO ONE is looking for Anvil at this time.

"Anvil: The Story of Anvil" might have lend itself to cruelty ("look at these deluded never weres!") but director Sacha Gervasi turns it into an affectionate look at two hard-working friends who deserve, if not fame, at least something other than oblivion. The movie does provide a happy ending of sorts. Dream on, Anvil, dream on for me.

Incidentally, Ryan Gosling is a huge fan, as you can see from the picture below. Notice how everything comes together in HALLUCINA?

Anybody Feel Like Crying?

Awww, man. Love, actually.

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Inshalom

Josh Appignanesi's "The Infidel" is a small and yet broad, sometimes painfully silly fish-out-of-water comedy, but if you're somehow stuck overseeing a pack of ignorant, rabidly hormonal, racist warmongers (i.e.: a class of teen Neo-Nazi recruits, or a convention of Fox newscasters) do consider showing them this. Chubby Omid Djaliti plays Mahmoud, a not-particularly-observant London Muslim, whose family life is about to become a فوضى when his son falls for the pretty stepdaughter of a visiting radical Islam cleric. Just when Mahmoud has to pretend to dig all the anti-Zionist rhetoric to please his son, (in Muslim "Birdcage" fashion), he stumbles upon his birth certificate, which reveals, horror of horrors, that he's actually an adopted Jew and his real name is Solly Shimshillewitz.
Oy... wait patiently for it... vey!



"Solly" tentatively tries to embrace his Jewish heritage with the help of the same Jewish neighbor he had recently been calling a Yid (Richard Schiff, from "The West Wing"). Their chemistry is natural and very funny, but the film insists in putting us through predictable paces, (will Mahmoud learn to pronounce "meshuggeneh" with relish? Will "Fiddler on the Roof" get a reference? Will the Muslim extremist be proved to be a manipulating hypocrite?)

The hoary Jew/Muslim digs are Jackie Mason material. ("Heard about the Jew who converted to Buddhism? He renounced all material possessions- but is keeping the receipts.") But mostly, I dug "The Infidel" because of the unusual angle: when was the last time you watched a movie starring a jovial, everyday Muslim dude? Although it has some cussing and (harmless) ethnic jokes aimed at all factions, high-schoolers should be exposed to its light-hearted message of mutual respect and tolerance. I know it seems pat and obvious, but who cares when that barely dents the rampant ignorance of the real world?

CHAPTER 129: ANYTHING FOR ETERNAL YOUTH

Joseph Balsamo, a.k.a. the Count de Fenix, (Johnny Depp) has abandoned his future-telling wife to welcome Madame Dubarry (Anne Hathaway), who in turn has been ushered by Fritz the Nordic butler into a little waiting room, where the Countess idles herself before a tea table pleasantly decorated with past issues of "Better French Homes and Gardens" and "The Illustrated Book of Death Rituals."
"Excuse me, madame, for the delay," says Joseph, entering and bowing. "I anticipated you would be here in about three minutes."
DUBARRY: "You knew I was on my way?"
BALSAMO: "I myself saw you in your boudoir, giving your sister Chon orders to prepare your horses, and naming the Rue St. Claude as your honored destination."
D: "I'm half impressed, half freaked out that people are peeping at me."
B: "Oh, don't worry, my ability to look into your bedroom was entirely PG-13."
D: "Make it PG, sorcerer."
B: "You got it. Any other command?"
D: "I could use an invisible cloak, because I'm sure I was followed here by a rider on a gray horse, much like the ones Marshal Richelieu favors. I suspect he's trying out some new trick. No need to tell you that it's very compromising of me to be visiting a handsome magician. Kings are known for petty jealousy."
B: "Richelieu is harmless."
D: "He's nearly ruined me just now. And with YOUR help, no less! That aphrodisiac you gave him! Don't act confused, you know full well what I mean."
For once, Balsamo does not know full well what she means, but when in doubt, nod.
He nods.
The Countess wags a finger at him: "You admit it, too! You helped in his dastardly plot. You gave him a love philter, and he consulted with the King, and last thing I was informed of, the King was visiting the Petit Trianon!"
B: "Back off the carriage there! I merely gave Richelieu a narcotic; he said he was having problems sleeping. Any love philters he makes is amateur alchemy, and likely to blow up on his face."
D: "Yes, thankfully you're right there. That's why I won't bother being upset with you, because your elephant tranquilizer saved the moment. If SHE hadn't been completely asleep, then..."
B: "She..?"
Madame Dubarry knows all, and Balsamo is being unusually dense. He knows nothing about Andree de Taverney's plight, and to be fair, even us non-magicians still don't know exactly how THAT turned out. Soon, mes petites.



D: "I've been terribly distraught with this whole mess. I've aged twenty years. Oh, why do dark and stormy nights always ruin things?"
The sorcerer nods and nods trying to slowly piece things together, until it's obvious even to the Countess that she's going to be doing some kindergarten spelling out:
D: "The other night, his Majesty looked altogether uninterested in accompanying me to Luciennes, even though I just bought this adjustable mattress that's like sleeping on top of swans who know massage. He said his crown was giving him a headache, and so stayed behind at Trianon, but I was informed by many a reliable source that he had supper with Richelieu and the Baron de Taverney. Perfect time for a transaction of aphrodisiacs? Richelieu must have given it to him then, and next thing my spies know, the King is seen jumping happily in the direction of the Petit Trianon, where a certain Andree de Taverney lives."
Balsamo widens his eyes, recalls the trance he'd abandoned Andree in to run after Lorenza. Trance, narcotics, love philters, tight corsets, GHB: it would be a wonder if Andree woke up before the French Revolution. "What... what happened then, if it's not too fresh a question?"
D: "That's hard to tell. The King goes in, then a short while later, the King comes out, never minding the rain all about, looking mighty freaked out, mumbling: 'Dead! Dead! Dead!'"
Forgetting his decorum, Balsamo grabs the Countess' arm and squeezes the blue blood out of it: "Dead?!? Dead, you say?!?"
The Countess frees himself: "Relax, no one's dead! It was the narcotic, you see. The King must have found her deeply asleep, and if there's one thing Louis XV is afraid of is dead people. If there's two things he's afraid of, it's dead people and poor people, but he sees more dead people than poor people."
B: "And no one knows about Andree?"
D: "Watch me care! No, the King came back to me at Luciennes, has apologized profusely for his recent neglect, and praises my lively, non-dead appearance constantly. This is why you have helped me out, in a roundabout manner. But I've helped you too, haven't I? Saving you from Sartines? Rescuing your mysterious coffer? You owe me the truth about it. Earlier today, the Minister of Police presented translations of the ciphers in it to the King, in my presence. I insisted in staying, and Louis is refusing me nothing."
B: "Bah! The King was bothered with a trifle."
D: "Well, it didn't seem so trifling. Sartines would not speak openly against you, on my account, but he suggested the King of Prussia was behind these coded papers. According to him, they prove that a powerful, ruthless sect is conspiring to undermine the monarchy by spreading rumors."
B: "What rumors?"
D: "That the King is deliberately starving the people, by withholding grain to make the prices rise. The King just laughed. 'They say I'm starving people? I'll prove them wrong. I will personally feed everyone who says that. I have a wonderful kitchen in the Bastille.'"
"Ha, ha," Balsamo says, but he doesn't find Bastille jokes funny by now.
D: "Yes, I suppose it's not too amusing, considering Sartines then produced a lot of arrest warrants for many people, and your name was among them. But before you squeeze my arm again, let me reassure you, I put my dainty foot down. 'Sartines,' I said, 'you may arrest the entire continent, but if you so much as touch a friend of mine, you might as well prepare another warrant for me.' Then I turned to Louis and sobbed: 'You won't let him, will you? Please, send away that horrid man who smells like an ill-kept dungeon!' Then Louis said: 'It's true, Sartines, do you roll around in a cell before coming to see me? Go away!"
Balsamo, who wisely considers this a temporary victory, seems to meditate for a second. Then, as if departing from a treasure, he draws a small phial from his pocket and hands it, and its crimson contents, to the Countess.
B: "You say this whole mess has made you age twenty years? Not a thing lost. This philter procures you twenty years of youth. I owe no less to you."
The Countess gives an excited yelp and plunges the vial in her cleavage: "You know me so well, sorcerer." And Madame Dubarry takes her leave, anticipating twenty extra years of her pretty tyranny, while Balsamo senses his relief transform to guilt when he realizes Lorenza has been waiting for him in a trance, a secret staircase away.
Oh, how he'll share his narrow escape with his beloved wife, who waits on that hallway in her patient, Penelopian sleep!
Except, of course, she's not there.

More Like "Unfunny Valentine's Day"

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Seeing "Blue Valentine" on Valentine's Day sounded like cute programming, but as it ended I was gathered in a ball of shocked fetal pain, hoping the Universe might find me too small a target for all the heartbreak it hurls around.

I knew I needed a palate cleanser.



I couldn't find a copy of the underrated cheese classic "Love Actually," but luckily the local RedBox was all but farting out copies of the Hollywood blockbuster "Valentine's Day," as if it had a presentiment I would need it. Almost every actor in Hollywood is in Garry Marshall's "romantic" "comedy," but in the same way ghosts must wander around Hollywood Cemetery, bumping against each other, rotting arms outstretched, reaching out for a script that just doesn't exist. Inhale while I trot out the cast list:

Ashton Kutcher
Jennifer Garner
Anne Hathaway
Topher Grace
Hector Elizondo
Shirley MacLaine
Julia Roberts
Bradley Cooper
Jessica Alba
George Lopez
Bryce Robinson
Patrick Dempsey
Emma Roberts
Carter Jenkins
Alex Williams
Taylor Lautner
Taylor Swift
Eric Dane
Jessica Biel
Jamie Foxx
Queen Latifah
Katherine LaNasa
Kathy Bates
Chuch Rule
Kristen Schaal
Joe Mantegna

Exhale, if you're still alive.

That's what 25? 26? The movie lasts 120 minutes, so you break out the calculator and tell me what possible character development there could exist to these walking Hallmark cards. If love makes the world go around, there is so damned MUCH of it here that we're bound to spin right out of gravity into a planetary collision. "Blue Valentine" was sad, but this was infuriating. Freaking Jessica Biel shrieks at one point: "Why am I only person alone on the planet on 'Valentine's Day'?" It's meant to be a concession to the unlikely lonely straggler who wandered into this, but it comes across as the worst kind of insult. Bitch, you're HOT! Walk out on the street and point at the first dude you see and ask him for a date. Just don't point at me 'cause I'll slice your skinny neck with this DVD I have to return to RedBox in a long, lonely walk.



Nah, I'm just kidding, Jessie. :-) Happy Valentine's Day!

Here, to show I'm not one of those bitter single people, I wrote a Valentine's Day Poem, to show what a sweetheart I am. I'm still working on sharpening some of the sentiments, but I think you can already see the masterpiece beneath as it shines through.

Be my Valentine, for I love you.
Each day is special when you love me too.
My whole life and heart
Are made exist for you
You vanquish away my loneliness
With your smile, so blue shiny and new.
Let me be your Valentine,
Because you're fine as a wine
But not old as wine is supposed to be to be good
You're young in a good way, like you should.
But not so young it's creepy, just young enough to not have wrinkles.
I feel like an ice cream, and your love is the sprinkles.
In friendship, love and harmony
I love you like a melody.
You're like a rose and like the sun
Making each day a Valentine's Day of fun.
I love you, Real Doll Model No. 12!

More Like "Deep Colorless Void of Pain" Valentine

Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" got a lot of pervy eyes from the press after it was tagged with an unfair, later rescinded NC-17 rating for an intimate moment between Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. But since my idea of porn involves Japanese weather-girls with metallic claws milking cows, all this love story can be faulted for is honesty and a certain sense of deja-vu. It's just a touching, familiar romp through a thorny path of romantic dissolution between people who grow apart, (more precisely, the man refuses to grow at all.)

Cinafrance's second full length feature covers some six or seven years in the lives of nurse Cindy (angelic Williams) and Dean (Gosling), who works for a moving company but is MOVING nowhere (ha!). "Blue Valentine" shoots back and forth in time in a predictable concession to hipness, but cutting between different scenes in a marriage- where HAVEN'T we seen that before? It's just there to confuse people who spent the much more porny "Black Swan" wondering if Natalie Portman was an alien seeing dead people, to add to that "indie" feel (hello, Grizzly Bear score!), and to distract from the inevitable linearity of these things.

I suspect the appeal of the jumbled-time approach is that we best mull on relationships as moments of happiness and sadness, and not as straight-ahead marches. There is little surprising in "Blue Valentine," but it IS heart-wrenching, including one fight scene that had me peeking through my fingers in discomfort. If I may belatedly advice- do not take anyone there on Valetine's Day, unless you have divorce papers waiting back home and want to ease your partner into it.

I do welcome any chance to see Michelle Williams in dishabille, but this is in line with pretty much all her recent "indie" performances ("Mammoth," "Wendy and Lucy"): she has become very good at playing a woman who becomes lost and unhappy through no particular crime of her own.

Sight Unscene: The 53 1/2 Grammy Awards

Dear Imaginary Reader:
The sights! The sounds! The ups! The downs! The 53 1/2 Grammy Awards, (which happened entirely in a luxurious stage in the upper right corner of my parietal lobe) had at least five different performers tumble down flights of stairs, but as a CBS reporter so concisely put it, it was a very heavy bertation.



I can't stop watching that and wondering if the poor thing had a stroke. Or if she was sharing needles with Marcus Anthonius, Selena's emaciated pimp, before the show. That dude was so baked!



The evening began gloriously when a giant egg was hatched on-stage by a gigantic animatronic hen, (some said it was a Blue Hen of Delaware, others said it was a California Grey), but the question was made moot when a scary lady with a protruding bone on her shoulder emerged from the egg and proceeded to sing a song called "New Gay Anthem With Stilted Lyrics You Should Buy on iTunes Unless You're a Homophobe, and If You're a Homophobe that Means You're Secretly a Fag. You Don't Want People to Think you're a Fag, Do You? Buy the Record."

Other notable performances involved every charting female singer from the last decade gathering onstage to pay homage to Maria Callas by singing one syllable each from "L'Amour Est Un Oiseau Rebelle" while the above mentioned animatronic hen pecked at the audience. Then Bob Dylan came out warbling like a hobo from under a train and some really nice young men called the Corny Nostalgists tried to prop him up in his clothes but he sort of crumpled and croaked in there, which was fine with America's sweetheart, Kitty Cherry, because she was there to debut her song "New Gay Anthem With Stilted Lyrics # 2 But It Also Applies to Anything Else Ever." Things got really complicated through, when post-punk-pre-pop prima donna Magenta showed up with her own song "New Gay Anthem With Stilted Lyrics #3 (Otherwise Known as "We Are All Superstars, so F*r*g*t You!")

Then there was a country song about a house and how pretty the house was and how nice the house was.

This was followed by a rather awkward moment in which a rapper tried to present an award but couldn't talk, since his mouth was weighed down with what are pretty much expensive, disturbing braces.



But it all exploded in a bubbling burst of innocence when a fat man with the curious monicker of Cash-Loving Opportunist (or C. L. O. to his fans and bodyguards) joyfully created a vibrant wonderland of singing puppets, merry abandon, and childhood memories with his hit "I Can't Believe We're All Pretending Not To Know the Name of this Song."



Why did it seem so familiar?



In the end, everyone was surprised when the Immune Commune won, because they're an underdog indie band no one has ever heard of and hasn't been around for ages and hasn't gone on world tours or had videos directed by Spike Jonze. Who ARE these kids?

Why can't you stay 29? Hell, you still feel like you're 22

This is my jam.

Breakin' 2 Electric Fuckaloo

Season 2 of "Breaking Bad" was absolutely crazy, leading to some traumatic deaths (Krysten Rytter, sorry if I spoiled some wet dreams) but this is what meth dealing ends up in. A great show, darkly facing the consequences of its character's actions.

Red Die

In a way, Robert Schwentke's "Red" is more of what "The Expendables" and "The Mechanic" and "The A-Team" and "The Losers" have been promising all this time: goofy comic bookish action (and I mean comic bookish action in the way few comic books actually condescend to these days); a gathered cast of the best of Hollywood; and nothing particularly original to upset the digestion of your popcorn. I love Warren Ellis, as you all know, but this is based on one of his lesser graphic novels. In an odd reversal, the movie is better, and I grinned through about 60% of this tongue-in-cheek blow-a-thon designed to make you think: "Helen Mirren is in this? John Malkovich? Richard Dreyfuss? Mary Louise Parker? And Morgan Freeman? WHY?"



But this is only a surprisingly skilled, enjoyable entertainment, meant to be forgotten as soon as the smile in your face fades. That usually happens three steps out of the theater, when you notice some punk dented your car and didn't leave a note or anything. BASTARDS! Is this what society has come to? I'll send Bruce Willis after your amoral ass!

Sciencetolography

A brilliant expose on Scientology and director/screenwriter Paul Haggis.

Killer final line: “I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.”

I do. Because it gave you a sense of purpose. Because it was hard to quit once you were tangled in it. It's just like any other addiction. We're all trapped in cults, religious, corporate, societal. People make friendships, friendships become clubs, clubs become organizations, organizations become religions. It's just some are more overtly abusive than others.

The Man who Wo-wo...would be King

Unlike most people apparently, I'm not sure what's so inspirational about watching a privileged guy overcome his stuttering to be even MORE assertive in his privilege. Not being British and not caring about a caste system that is as intricately cruel as the Indian one the Brits once "surveyed," I don't need my monarchy "humanized." They already seem plenty human to me, and kind of average humans at that.

BUT

"The King's Speech" is very good and won me over because it took me back to a late '90s-early-2000s Merchant and Ivory kind of film-making. I didn't know it, but I'd been fiending for this classy shit for a while. Impressionistic scene compositions, witty dialogue, a sense of imperial importance and masterful acting. Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Timothy Spall, and Guy Pearce are excellent, but Geoffrey Rush (whom I hadn't heard from since "$9.99") is so awesome you wish you had a stammering problem so that he could coach you through it. GO WATCH NOW.

?

AMBER

The only thing I remember
About being with Amber
Is that I'll never forget her again
And I find it regrettable
That someone so forgettable
Just took like a hook to my brain

Were her eyes brown or green
Or something in between?
Was she wearing a pirate patch?
Was she clever or dumb
Sensitive or numb
Was she burn out like yesterday's match?

The only thing I remember
About being with Amber
Is her name could have been Marylou
Did she come from downtown Dallas
-Actually her name was Alice-
Was she born and raised in Timbuktu?

Did she smoke cigarrettes
Or did she have Tourette's?
Was she keen, or mean or astute?
Well she made me this bet
That she was hard to forget
And I felt like that was awfully cute.

The only thing I remember
About being with Amber
Is thinking that I knew her so well
And I find it so pitiful
I fell for someone beautiful
-or ugly, there is no way to tell.

Black is the Color of my True Love's Feathers

Dear Imaginary Reader:
I first heard pareidolia discussed at any length in Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics." (Pareidolia is the tendency to see or hear things that aren't really there or are barely suggested- a.k.a. "There's a Virgin Mary On My Toast" syndrome. We see animals in the clouds to our endless amusement, and if we're really insane and Greek, colorful mythical characters in the stars.) It's a sign of McCloud's un-scholarly enthusiasm that I don't think he refers to the phenomenon by its technical name, and concentrates on it as the mysterious force behind cartooning that makes the abstract more relatable than the specific, and that makes us see a face in a circle with two dots in it. Smiley is OUR face, really.



McCloud winkingly tells us that we can relate a lot more to his abstract avatar in "Understanding Comics" than we would to a photograph of himself, which is so correct, I actually used the picture in an old blog because it was a fair cartoon representation of myself in college- and also of a few of my friends. McCloud's conclusion: We're selfish! We like to see ourselves everywhere!

Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan" is pure pareidolia.



That's where its success comes from, of course. Do you want it to be a showcase for ballet as a vital art form? It's that. Do you want it to be a psycho-sexual drama? Ok. Do you want it to be an admittedly artsy horror flick? It's that too. Is it a fantasy of female insecurities? Yup. Just an update of Tchaikovsky's ballet? Yes, definitely. It's about creating art, it's about growing up, it's about facing inner demons, it's about madness, it's about sexual repression, and it's so much about everything that I was left underwhelmed, looking at a smiley face of a movie, missing the specifics of Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," which "Black Swan" resembles more than anyone has pointed out, down to a final tragic "I did for my Art" jump.

This is certainly one of my favorite movies of the year, and I would be miffed if Natalie Portman doesn't pas-de-deux away with that Oscar, but I was still a little let down after hearing everyone talk about how "weird" it was and how it requires repeated viewings to "figure it out." (It's hardly "Mulholland Drive"!) Portman plays Nina the Ballerina (SERIOUSLY! At least she's not called Bella Swann) On her way to stardom as the lead in "Swan Lake," Nina deals with a lecherous instructor (Vincent Cassel, perpetuating the stereotype of ballet guys as relentless pussy-hounds), and an alternate (Mila Kunis, energetic where Portman is frail) who may be out to take her place... or is simply a friendly cheerleader! You decide!

(SPOILER: If you're confused as to what's real and what's on Nina's head--- why are you? If it looks like reality, it's real. If it doesn't look like reality, it's in her head.)

Nina begins to suffer David-Cronenberg-like changes as she labors to bring the black swan out of her. I loves me some body horror, and could have gone a little grosser happily. So, body horror; an abstract story built so you can discuss for hours what it means, (and it means whatever you want it to mean); Tchaikovsky's amazing music; a chance to look at aging Winona Ryder; a salute to America's anorexic athletes... How to resist all this?

GO WATCH NOW! And if you think ballet is gay, there's nothing gay about this movie. Actually, there IS a scene with gay sex, but considering it's Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, I think that's the kind of gay sex everyone can agree on.