— I saw Kinsey. I’ll write more about it later. You know who I liked the most, surprisingly? Laura Linney. Not really wacky about her acting in general, but she was terrific in this movie. HOWEVER, no one can hold a candle to the one-scene-cameo at the very end of the movie by Lynn Redgrave. Oh. My. God. It’s underplayed, it’s completely real, it feels like you’re watching a documentary. And not only that … but it moved me to tears. The rest of the movie kind of left me cold, I didn’t really care about any of those people, even though the topic itself is of great interest to me. It felt like a survey course, like Psych 103, or something. Too general. But Lynn Redgrave’s monologue at the end? Tears ran down my face. Bravo. I’ll probably babble on about the movie later when I have a bit more time. You know, my typical obsessive thing that I do.
— Horrible dreams lately. Horrible. HORRIBLE. I wake up feeling like I’ve been beaten about the psyche. Yuck. Something’s going on.
— The weather has been unseasonably warm here, and also very wet. Every day I walk outside to a light drizzle, the steps damp in the morning air. The wind is soft and moist, and I can hear birds chirping in the dawn. It’s January. I literally do not know what the heck is going on with this weather. This morning, I walked out of my apartment. Again, greeted by the mild wet air. Looked to my right (morning ritual) and saw a thick white mist filling the space between Manhattan and my cliff-dwelling. It was like my cliff was floating on the edge of nothingness. Manhattan disappeared behind the white. Odd.
— This post about Derek Lowe is so perfect. It reflects my own feelings about that guy. So strangely unreliable, and emotional, like a head case, with the pink spots on the cheeks, and the stressed-out exhales … but then suddenly … genius erupts. This quote from the post says it best: “Yeah, there was something infuriating about the way he’d unravel like a sweater before our eyes, and the way he looked as if he was receiving messages from a distant space station when he should have been focusing on his catcher. But, remarkably, he could always slip into the big pants when we needed him most.” Exactly.
— Of course, I started “the correspondence” last night. I get this weird lump of pride in my throat when I read the prose, the ideas, the concerns of “those guys”. It’s terrific stuff, and when I get further into it, I’ll be posting some stuff from it.
— I miss my friends. I miss my family. I’ve been too much of a hermit lately. Too many cobwebs in the brain. Need to get out into the world more.
You know who I liked the most, surprisingly? Laura Linney.
I’m assuming she didn’t suddenly, inexplicably, turn into Lady MacBeth at the end?
Steve – exactly right. She didn’t randomly become a gun moll for no apparent reason.
Don’t worry about the specifics of the dreams. Dreams are just neurons firing off in the brain. But they do represent in a general way your own internal state. I have the Im-under-stress dream, the fear-of-public-embarrassment dream, the Im-angry-at-everyone dream… like that.
We had a murder in the city a while ago that is still unsolved (a big deal for Ottawa). A young woman riding a bicycle on the public bike path was found dead in the creek beside the path. The killer was presumed to be a man who had been flashing and harassing other cyclists in the area some time before that and a composite drawing of him was circulated. About a month after the killing, we had the major power outage that affected the whole east side of North America. That afternoon, I was commuting home on my bike on the bike path (the streets were totally clogged with cars, otherwise I would have been on the street) and I swear I biked right by the bike-path-killer (yes I called the cops after I was out of sight but nothing came of it – they were all stuck in traffic!). After that, for many months, I had the same dream where I catch up to the killer and have a fight with him and stomp him when hes down. Unfortunately, my husband often is awakened by my foot lashing out and catching him in the leg (or worse). Poor bastard. My point of course is that past events trigger theme dreams but dreams are not harbingers of something to come.
Julia – they never caught the guy?
I never thought of dreams as harbingers (well – until the tidal wave dream) – and I still, in general, don’t. They’re just a message that something is going on, deep down … they’re gentle (or not so gentle) reminders from the subconscious. DEAL WITH THIS. or whatever.
My dreams have to do with submersion in water, with dangling over great heights, with being in an out-of-control elevator, and also with peeling back a layer of my own skin and seeing something horrific beneath. Also a terrible terrible dream about one of my siblings. That was the worst one.
You know, general anxiety, and also a general: Hmmm, something is going on with you … maybe you need to pay a little bit more attention.
I like thinking of my dreams as messages, and in a way they probably are, but there are reasons why dreams tend to be scary that have nothing to do with your subconscious. The latest dream theories (see J. Allan Hobson &c.) suggest that sleep is about renewing and repairing the most primitive or basic brain functions – including the fight or flight response. Dreams are kind of a way of testing/shaping your motor skills, especially ones most useful in an emergency Because, in some part of our brains, we’re still scared little mammals living in the wild.
Sort of like having an inner child, only different.
The victim’s name was Ardeth Wood (http://www.ottawapolice.ca/en/serving_ottawa/media_room/wood.cfm) and she was killed a couple of weeks before the 2003 power outage. Not only have they not caught the guy, I don’t think they have a clue who he is, composite drawing notwithstanding (those things aren’t very good anyway). I usually commuted on the streets anyway, but then I really avoided the bike paths until the power outage. As I biked home that day, I saw this man walking backwards, so he was walking in the same direction I was biking but he was facing me. Odd behaviour gets your attention so I watched him as I got closer and as I could start to make out his features, he turned around and began walking normally. By then I could see that he matched the composite and that, coupled with the odd walking behaviour, made me stand on the pedals and crank my speed up to about 30kph so I raced by him as fast as I could. That’s it. Big excitement in the little city. Anyway, since then I’ve been trying to think of an effective weapon (that’s legal up here – practically nothing is) that I could carry on me while biking and deploy when necessary. Nothing fits the bill. So I imagine disabling someone by stomping on their knee (assuming they are on the ground – not sure how they get there!) and this has translated into actual kicking while dreaming. Wakes me right up when that happens! And my long-suffering husband.
I know the reason for your bad dreams.
Emily, why. Why do you insist on reminding me of my emotional agony?
Is this revenge for the Hasselhoff thing?
Yes.
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.
This same goes double when you ask a simple person.
It’s good to know that I have the Hasselhoff archive at my disposal, if I ever get annoyed. But then the retaliations … the retaliations would be intense.
I’ll miss Derek too. I looked forward to with confidence, that they’d sign him & Tek, but they never even seemed to consider signing Lowe. It leaves me puzzled.
As a girl, I’ll miss his lips…he gives a great pucker face just before he throws a pitch, ever notice that?
I can thoroughly recommend a sweeping out of the cobwebs, Sheila.. and it’s likely to have a beneficial impact on those dreams too.
Linney was wonderful; Liam Neeson reminds me more and more of Jeff Bridges in the scope of his characters and his unswerving openness on screen. I thought Peter Sarsgaard was amazing in an extremely difficult role that required, ahem, a lot of balls.
And you’re right, the closing monologue was extraordinary. I cried as well. It looked to me like that’s where they meant to end the film, but felt pressured into that final walk-in-the-woods coda. Which is probably for the best, commercially, but after the power of the Redgrave piece, it was hard to let anything else penetrate. “No … you saved my life.” Wonderful. I could feel my heart break. Fine writing and an exceptional performance.
Also, the prosthetic nose on the young Kinsey was embarrassing, pure and simple. I mean I know it was a low-budget film, but fercryingoutloud.
Another person I thought did lovely work (and if she had more than 5 lines I would be surprised) was Veronica Cartwright – you may all remember her as the crazed chick who vomited berries all over the church altar in The Witches of Eastwick – and, I believe, got a Best Supporting Actress nomination.
I haven’t seen her work in a while … but her tiny role as Kinsey’s mother was heartbreaking. When she was trying to show interest in her son’s work (not because she really had any interest in wasps, but because he was her son – and she loved him) – and was shut down by her husband … as though she wasn’t even a person –
the LOOK on her face.
It was ONE LOOK. THAT is why that woman was once nominated for an Oscar. To be able to do something like that in a teeny tiny role.
Peter Sarsgaard’s scene at the end, when he got upset with Kinsey, and had that monologue about how you cannot divorce sex from emotion was very very good. But maybe cause of his role in Boys Don’t Cry – I just think he exudes evilness and potential violence. He’s a good actor … but that part in Boys don’t cry was so fucking scary I’ll never forget it.
What the HELL was Tim Hutton doing in that movie? He didn’t even create an interesting character. His entire character was his mustache. Sloppy lazy work from a fantastic actor. I’m wondering if he had a bunch of his scenes cut.
As it stands, he looked completely lost. I mean – Chris O’Donnell acted him off the screen. I can’t believe I just said those words. But I did. Because it is true.
I love how … off the mound … D-Lowe seems to literally not know where he is.
He never forgets his place when he’s on the mound – but he looks lost in space anywhere else. I find it endearing.
He gave me some pretty nerve-wracking moments (any time I’d see that exhale … I’d think: Oh shite. Trainwreck). But I loved him just the same.
Oh and Linus, I thought the “you saved my life” line was a bit over-the-top (although she played it GREAT). I felt bashed over the head in that moment. Like: okay, okay, I GET IT.
However … beautiful work.
I loved her performance in Condon’s Gods and Monsters (uhm: LOVE THAT MOVIE.) Hilarious. Her accent, her braids, her weirdness … she was terrific.
But there was something naked and raw about her cameo in Kinsey … She was completely naked, emotionally. It was fantastic.
Comment readers take note: THIS COMMENT CONTAINS SPOILERS. It will ruin a couple of plot points. If you haven’t seen Kinsey yet, be warned…
Red, or is it Green: I’m willing to bet they had a hellishly short shooting schedule with a lot of schedule conflicts, which is why some lazy work was left in.
Veronica Cartwright, for me, will always be a star from the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake. I had not even noticed she was in this movie, to be honest, so thanks for pointing that out. Now that you mention it I remember I saw her name zip by and meant to look it up on IMDb. And, of course, forgot by the time I made it home.
I thought Sarsgaard was terrific in that speech, but he really flew for me — SPOILER ALERT, stop reading if you don’t want beans spilled — in the seduction scene. He was artless, casual and at ease, which is rare in men who are doing unfluffed frontal nudity. Simon Callow and Harvey Keitel have done it with grace as well; most actors just will not go to weenie. Mix in overt homosexual encountering, and it’s a chancy role many actors would never touch.
I liked what David Denby said about him in the New Yorker: “Peter Sarsgaard, in his quiet way, is an intimidating actor; his eyes command people to do what he wants.” He’s had a scattered, interesting career. I associate him as much with Shattered Glass and K-19 and Empire as I do with Boys Don’t Cry, in part because the latter is so completely Hilary Swank’s movie for me that I can hardly see past her. In fact, every time I see her elsewhere I’m always startled by how pretty she is.
Sarsgaard also did this random 2-person movie with Canadian actress Molly Parker, which was really typical in terms of its plot: nice boy hangs out with hooker, gets emotionally involved … but the script was actually quite good and unexpected. And only had the 2 of them in it – they both were great. The name of the movie escapes me.
And dude, just call me Red. Knock it off with the Green thing.
The Center of the World by any chance? Not familiar with this one.
Uhm – yup. It’s a very very explicit film – although the two of them don’t actually have actual sex, if I recall correctly. It’s more about the talking, the dirty talk.
He’s great. But she’s even better.
Member her stint as the knowing female Rabbi on 6 Feet Under?
It was when I saw THAT that I knew this chick was a good actress. Because I had seen her play a very very convincing whore in Center of the World. I thought she really WAS that cut-off whore-girl.
But turns out it was just a damn good acting job.