middle cyclones and other references
Credit: sirmerlin (sidebar art) ∙ Josh Cochran (Icon)
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Blood is thicker than water but maple syrup is thicker than blood so technically pancakes are more important than...
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That honestly could not have gone any better.
You’ve never heard someone be so enthusiastic about time management skills as I just was.
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“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess...”
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Writing your own farewell email from your boss to the rest of the floor feels like writing your own obituary.
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this is so heartbreaking . lovely.
vin diesel performs “stay” by rihanna
Procrastination Theatre: June 2, 2012
Pedro Almodóvar has to be, actually, one of my favorite writers/directors, and I realize that I have only seen a couple of his films. But what I am consistently amazed and entranced by in his films is the lushness of his character amidst the often near-surrealism of his movies. If anyone is walking that tightrope between the dream or nightmare world and the world of reality the way David Lynch sometimes seems to (and I realize that this is a clumsy summation of Lynch), then it’s Almodóvar. The Skin I Live In was breathtaking and terrifying without a single sudden loud noise or even gratuituous gore or violence. Instead, it inhabits the macabre from an ascetic, dry, clinical space. In fact, in trying to convince the Boyfriend to watch this again with me, I reassured him numerous times that nothing excessively gory happens at all with skin, etc. Black Swan had more physical horror/violence than this movie (it’s also, maybe not coincidentally, a billion times better).
The other thing I love about Almodóvar is his true gift, I think, for writing women. You’ll note that I’m not saying female characters here; that’s because I really see the women in his film as women, complicated, contradictory, singular women who are committed to survival with grace and power. Penelope Cruz in Volver is a force of nature that everyone should witness, but so is every other woman in her family. This observation about women becomes an ironic one to make in The Skin I Live In, but I think that’s further proof of how really brilliant Almodóvar is.
You really need to see this movie.
Procrastination Theatre: March 7, 2011
First things first: Penelope Cruz is a powerhouse. She is a force of nature. She takes every reason I wouldn’t have wanted to watch this movie (about family drama, family secrets, abuse, etc.) and just upends it, because she’s not a victim, and she doesn’t grovel, and she’s not a stone-cold bitch either. She’s this fascinating compelling resourceful strong emotional drop dead gorgeous woman and mother and daughter and sister and I really fell in love with her character in this movie.
And the movie itself upended the reasons I wouldn’t have wanted to watch this movie, too. Where English-language films take a very familiar approach to the themes I listed above, Pedro Almodovar’s films is about the peculiar love that exists between women in communities and families and in death - the small hurts that women can inflict upon each other, as well as the simple openhandedness and the deep family ties, and the women who are ghosts and who take care of us still. I missed my mother watching this, and wished a little for just one sister. The last line of the movie is, “ghosts don’t cry.”
