My So-Called Recommendation

For all of you who have not had the pleasure of seeing Claire Danes in her definitive role, start tuning in to Sundance Channel Monday nights at 11 for re-runs of My So-Called Life. I must admit, this show taught me everything I needed to know to become a teenage girl, and now when I rewatch it every other month, it fills me with such nostalgic pleasure and shame, but I can finally appreciate what a well-acted, perfectly-written show it really is.

Winnie Holzman created and wrote this 19 episode series about Angela Chase (Claire Danes), a 15-year-old girl who wants something new in her life. She starts hanging out with a wild girl and her in-the-closet gay bff and the three of them attempt to figure out who they really are, while dealing with the identities imposed on them by their parents, their classmates, and their pasts. And did I mention that a then-gorgeous Jared Leto plays Angela's figure of unrequited love? This show is like a time capsule from the 90s that is begging to be released.

This short-lived series is consistently the most honest depiction of teenage life ever put to screen, and although I am a secret Gossip Girl addict, it was comforting to see a young girl go through the same real life problems I faced when I was that age. And am still going through now. Few of us have ever been to a different gala every week with a new scheme to unravel, but I'm guessing more than one has liked a boy who was going to fast, or suffered with zits.

And it's never too late for a good thing. I know a teen dramedy sounds pretty played, but it is worth setting your DVR. You will not regret it.

Film Podcasts You Should Be Following

Here are the top 3 film podcasts you should be listening to.

Sure it's fun to read fantastic blogs like this, but what are you supposed to do on the drive to work? Or during your jog? Or if you're an unemployed lazy bum like me, between reruns of the O.C.? I'm here to give you another option!

1. Battleship Pretension

If you like listening to cinephiles talk about movies you love, those you should watch, and why they're more than just entertainment, then tune in to Battleship Pretension. With the cleverest name in all of podcasting, David Bax and Tyler Smith share their insights into topics such as feminism in film, music documentaries, and the Career of John Candy. And best of all, their guests are some of the best LA comedians. It's like going to the UCB Theatre without having to hang out with a bunch of hipsters.

2. Slash Filmcast

Maybe the biggest film podcast out there, David Chen, Devindra Hardawar and Adam Quigley give real insight into new releases, talk about what they've been watching, and go over movie news. Their guests are oftentime notable filmmakers and critics, and they handle movie spoilers better than anyone. They reserve the end of every episode for spoilers, and clearly demarcate it for their listeners.

3. Comedy Film Nerds

Maybe you can tell that I'm really into stand-up, but Graham Elwood and Chris Mancini are two comedians who bring a hilarious perspective to new releases. Their guests are usually fellow comedians, writers, and filmmakers like Brian Posehn and Greg Behrendt (yeah, the guy who wrote He's Just Not That Into You. Turns out he's actually not a douchebag! Who knew?). They interview their guests and talk about new releases on DVD while drinking coconut water and licking their kittenhands. Listen to the show and stop looking at me like I'm crazy.

If you have any more suggestions, post them in the comments section!

Screening New Herzog Movie: Museums Just Got Less Boring

LA party people, head over to the Natural History Museum on April 23 to see the new Werner Herzog movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. For those of you unfamiliar with the works of Herzog, he recently worked with the demented Nicholas Cage in Bad Lieutenant, and before that pieced together and narrated the documentary Grizzly Man about a bear enthusiast who got mauled while studying the apparently ferocious creatures.

Herzog has made some of the most ambitious and enthralling works of the last 40 years. This might be on the tamer side of his films, as he is making a documentary of cave paintings in France, but his style and cinematography are not to be denied. And you can tell people you went to a museum!

The film starts at 5:30, but even if the tickets sell out, there is an all-access party, with bands, at 8. For free. And as we know, everything free is good.

http://www.cinespia.org/calendar/1/

Puppy Love

There's something about my professor sitting on his desk, cross-legged, with one hang in the air making some point about Shaft as a revolutionary act that gets me all hot and bothered. I've always had a thing for intellectuals, with their dark-rimmed glasses and fitted jeans. I guess if they like me, that somehow proves I'm interesting too. But that's just my shrink talking. As if people say 'shrink' anymore! I should talk to my therapist about this.

But there he is, his Dead Poets enthusiasm flailing about in front of a room of adoring students. Be still, my beating heart!

I don't know what it is about this curriculum that draws me in. Movies about oppressed black people? Sign me up! It's like I've adopted a portion of white guilt for my very own. So here I sit, dissecting the racial implications of West Side Story, swooning over this effete professor who barely acknowledges my existence. The room is full of cute girls with cute outfits and cute demeanors, and I'm sitting in the back with my unkempt hair, wrinkled clothes, and last night's makeup. I must be delusional.

Yet everytime he writes an approving note on my paper, I know I'll be taking another class with him next semester. Because that's what we do. We sit in the back, and we swoon.

Videodrome: "Long live the new flesh"

Maybe I'm just really behind, but I just saw Videodrome for the first time and I did not get it. It felt like the first time I read Kerouac: am I just not cool enough? Is there something I'm missing? Roger Ebert described it as the most unpleasant movie he had ever seen, so should I take solace in the fact that I'm not alone? There's just something about a rotting vagina in the middle of someones stomach and a fleshy handgun that looks like the ugliest penis I've ever seen that makes this film a real turnoff.

There are things I find really fascinating, like the fact that some kind of sexual connection develops between people and their televisions, and it's a really prescient concept considering how addicted we as a culture are to reality television and over-stimulation. Now rather than just being, pardon me, fucked by our televisions, we're fucked by our cell phones and Internet access. But the film was just so bizarre, that I know I would need another ten viewings just to begin to grasp its messages. Maybe I just don't like to be made to feel like an idiot. Like Shirley said a couple of weeks ago on Community, "Some of us have to go to work in the morning. damn."

But I don't have to go to work. I have to go to my film theory class and sit there silently while everyone else brings up Marshall McLuhan and the effects of video on the culture. And I'll be the only one still hung up on the chest-vagina, wondering if I missed something in the reading, trying to figure out why they get it and I don't. So thanks a lot, Mr. Cronenberg. You've made a nice girl from the suburbs feel lousy over your "medium is the message" nonsense. Ebert and I'll just keep hissing from the back of the theatre.

The Immaculate 'Inception'

I must admit, I went into Christopher Nolan's (The Dark Knight, Memento) new movie, Inception, assuming I was going to love it. And even after the theatre lost the sound, turned the house lights on, and took 30 minutes to re-start the movie, I still found it breathtaking. Nolan has been working on the script for Inception for the last decade, and trust me, it shows. He takes something as complicated and ephemeral as a dream and makes it concrete, almost understandable, and a shared experience. Something like the feeling of falling during sleep becomes a base everyone can touch on that helps bring us further into a world where hijacking thoughts is altogether possible.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays a mind thief, working in the field of corporate espionage, and he is hired for the obligatory 'one last job.' However, Nolan takes familiar premises and turns them into new and spectacular feat of filmmaking within the heist framework. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the very capable sidekick, but Ellen Page wows as the newcomer who is taking a crash-course in dream burglary. Page is the audience stand-in, trying to work out in her mind what mind thieves do and how it all works, while figuring out what is behind DiCaprio's wounded backstory. The actors are as believable as the brilliant backdrops Nolan creates in this mindbending caper.

In a season that is full of 3D trainwrecks, this 2D film feels more real than any Titans in Persian Wonderland. The layered worlds come to life and pop out of the screen and into our realities with seemless CG effects and actors that move smoothly in and out of countless locales. Gordon-Levitt is somehow believable in the scene peddled in the trailers where he fights his way through a rotating hallway, and Page deconstructs her reality with booming curiosity.

Without giving too much away, Cotillard should get an Oscar nod for her role as DiCaprio's love interest, and although some reviewers (I'm talking to you, EW!) think that his traditional values ring false, he makes the love of a husband and father sincere - which in this day and age of movies, is hard to do. Anyway, go see Inception! The first screening possible! Show Hollywood that we still know what good movies are, and that movies with fight sequences don't have to cast Gerard Butler.