Hannah and Her Sisters

Sometimes, I think about moving to New York City. Well, I don't think about moving there; I think about living there. Like, really living. Being in it. Having my family there. My friend(s). Wearing great vintage clothes. Shopping at hole-in-the-wall bookstores where gems are found. Auditioning for Broadway plays. Having holiday dinners with a piano in the corner and my drunk parents playing to the crowd. Basically, I want to live not only in NYC, but also inside the movie, Hannah and Her Sisters.

Hannah and Her Sisters is my favorite Woody Allen movie. The characters live in upscale Manhattan. They wear post-Annie Hall, pseudo-men's wear with heeled boots, and an unnecessary amount of layers. No one really has friends. Instead, they have their family. And, by family, I mean they have or are somehow connected to the sisters (Hannah, Holly, and Leigh). Hannah (Mia Farrow) is sort of the glue of the sisters because she's married with kids, has an impressive acting career, and she has money to hand out to help out her wavering sisters from time to time. Holly (Diane Weist) is the former coke-addict/actress/caterer/screenwriter. Leigh (Barbara Hershey) is the youngest sister, the pretty one that Hannah's husband is crushing on, the one who lives with a much older man, and who sporadically takes classes at Columbia.

It's fair to say that I'm drawn to the sisters because I have two sisters. Well, more specifically, I'm drawn to that relationship because it is an honest portrayal of the "sister" relationship. I know someone who only has brothers who is always saying something like, "oh, how I wish I had a sister." It's hard for me to totally understand her romantic notion of sisters. I mean, it's not always easy having sisters--especially if they're like Hannah's or mine--because they are always sort of in each other's business. You didn't choose them to be in your life, but they are there. And, they know you like no other because you are all born to the same crazy parents, and you've all been exposed to each other's insecurities and strengths, and, well, it can be a lot. Woody Allen is so good at writing because he never romanticizes these women and their reactions to each other. He's pretty honest. And, I like that there are these men in the movie who sort of weave their way into the sisters' lives. They're not the center, but a privileged few who get to hang out with these women. I like that. I like it because that seems the only thing men CAN do sometimes when it comes to people like Hannah, Holly, and Leigh. But, understand--it's so important that you do--it's not about the men. It's not. It's about the women. And, the men are, well, like door prizes. Like, it's a nice surprise if you receive a good gift, but they're not the reason you go to the dance. You go for the women--to see their style, to engage with them, to hear them laugh and talk. That's why dances are fun. That's why these women are GOOD.

Oh, and it's all so funny. Like, Holly is so great when she's trying to sound all intellectual when she flirts with an architect. And, Woody Allen, of course, puts himself into the mix. He couldn't resist, and he shouldn't. It's sort of a side story from the primary one of Hannah's, but when Woody thinks he has a brain tumor...it's the funniest sequence of scenes. It's like life, I guess, but better. Better because they are rich and they live in hip New York and they have these beautiful dinners and crazy parents and crowded, used bookstores and they make tea on rainy, cold evenings. Oh, I just want to be IN their world. Maybe, the appeal is that, if you've got a sister or two, you kind of are in Hannah and Her Sisters. Well, a poor woman's version.

I totally surrender to them

This blog was my idea. My creation. Some of my html handiwork. But Kathleen has made it her own. She is faithful to it in a way that I am not. Her honesty and humor, ugh. How is she so good? And Aileen--of course. She of the brilliant sentence fragments. She who writes so casually but so URGENTLY. I bow to both these women. So maybe it's not even my place to write about not movies/not books/not art. But I long to talk about other things. So that's what I'm gonna do. Readers (all two of you), I'm sorry. Movie reviews aren't moving me right now. But words and how these words cohere to make sentences...how these sentences move to tug at my soul...that is everything.

Found poetry is the best for beginners. Brilliance is so easy. So accidental. I remember one of my first encounters with found poetry--making a poem out of the Lord of the Flies text in English class. My poem had the refrain "Because the rules are all we've got!" To me, at tender 15, it was so true. So frustrating. So repressive.

But the best found poetry is in my email account. Because my friends are brilliant and exist on wavelengths...They are not even of this world.

"DON'T try to be [a] pretty girl. that is soooo regressive!! you just can't win. I mean, there are a lot of pretty girls. i totally surrender to them. but i feel like i have more, you know?"

And if I made this into a poem--well, obviously the refrain would be: "there are a lot of pretty girls/i totally surrender to them"

And this

"You're really really attached to your family. it's a fact. Just try and break away from them. Just try."

And, my favorite--when my personhood is compacted into a small explosive ball. When i feel like I will unwind, unravel, implode. I re-read this line. Re-commit it to memory.

"sometimes im just mad at the whole world...but always always its maddening because you're mad with yourself too. for being impatient, helpless, hypocritical, sensitive"

And sometimes the day is really warm and the water is really cool -- so this:

"the world was immediate
and ours"

And

"I think insanity is the correct nomenclature. I think, in many ways, work (all day every day all year every year just to pay RENT? Can anyone say SHAM) is a type of hell, it's like rolling a boulder up a hill, watching it roll down, rolling it back up, day in and out."

Oh god...I feel like some caged animal/human who finally has an ear to listen andIcan'tstop this typing. These words, these women, they move me. They make me.

I capture the castle

Have you seen this? This gem? This brilliant piece of teenage advocacy? You might be wondering--who is the boyishly handsome man on the right? It's ELLIOT FROM E.T.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, that is reason enough to watch this movie, no??

I'm not sure anymore. But I think I watched this seven years ago on my birthday. Flanked by my two best friends. And we lapped it up. Precocious Cassandra lives with her family in a dilapidated castle. Her father is a famous writer past his prime. Cassandra, her beautiful older sister, younger brother and stepmom humor the father--keeping his fragile ego intact.

Cassandra is seventeen. Her journal is her best friend. The similarities between her and me were startling. I was also seventeen. I also wrote obsessively in my journal. She lives in 1930's England in a dilapidated castle. I also lived.

Romola Garai plays doe eyed Cassandra so well. She's good. So good. She plays her with such a succinct vulnerability. Cassandra is content always to play second fiddle to her sister's beauty. I think what "I Capture the Castle" does so well is portray sisterhood in a way that is real, rounded. Cassandra and sister Rose fight. Their temperaments are so different. Rose is flighty and only concerned with her beauty and Cassandra is cerebral, an observer. But they are best friends. There is no jealousy. Just two girls who root for each other in their hearts.

And there is love. Cassandra and Rose meet two handsome American brothers. The brothers are their tickets out of the dilapidated castle, out of not-so-genteel poverty. Cassandra loves one of the brothers. But she is only the plain little sister, good for fun, not for marriage. Cassandra feels so intensely. She lives in her head. In her journal.

Bill Nighy is as good as ever as Cassandra's father. But the movie belongs to Romola. Romola, who can express anything with her eyes. Romola, whose voice breaks at exactly the right time when she's crying. Romola, who is neither ugly nor beautiful--just perfect.

Oh and the cinematography? Endless rolling hills and beautiful vistas if that's your thing. But if your thing is an insightful female protagonist who refuses mediocrity and wants more than anything TO LOVE and to BE LOVED--oh you will love it.

some days

Some days...when life feels especially indifferent, I watch this clip of My Left Foot. And then I watch it again. And again. Turning it up full volume to drown out the off key happy birthday singers in the apartment next door. Oh god...Family. FAMILY. And he opted for "Mother" and not "Mom". How can you ever escape your family? They are my magnetic north, my phantom limbs.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

I don't know how I am supposed to watch The Ballad of Jack and Rose. Is it entertaining in its simplicity OR is it so getting off on its wannabe-artsy aesthetic that it's actually giving itself a boner? I want to like it--mainly so that I can trick myself into feeling like an academic or an intellectual. Mostly, though, I loathe this movie. I loathe it for waxing poetic when the plot is too fluffy for it to hold any substance.

The characters are all pretty unlikeable, if not aesthetically (at least in the abstract) beautiful. Daniel Day Lewis is the emaciated father who smokes like a chimney. He and his daughter live on a now-defunct hippie commune somewhere off of New York's coast. The daughter is played by a Botticelli-like angel (who possesses little more charisma than her pure looks provide). Father and daughter are living their pseudo-incestuous life alone on the island when Day Lewis decides that his daughter, Rose, may need a mother to look after her sooner than later. Okay, so, the name "Rose" brings me to the first of the heavy-handed metaphors throughout this movie. See, the cinematography is kind of gorgeous. And, if you can stay alert for that, then you can make your life at least bearable for the 150 minutes of screen time by picking out all of the sexual metaphors. It's a game, if you will. Ah, Rose. Rose, who has a green thumb for flowers, turns out to be a little minx who cannot wait to **here it comes** be de-flowered. Not obvious enough? Not convinced yet? There's more.

Rose uses a shotgun and snakes to assert her own phallic powers in relation to her father. When her semi-incestuous home life is suddenly threatened by the arrival of Dad's new girlfriend (Catherine Keener) and her two sons, Rose's playhouse is suddenly blown over, dilapidated and destroyed. It goes on and on. Part of me wants to give the filmmakers credit for devising such a game of "spot the metaphors" in a maze of ugly characters. Mostly, though, I'm just annoyed about the whole farce. I'm annoyed because, deep down, I think the filmmakers ACTUALLY wanted to make a whip-smart film. They didn't. Oh, and don't EVEN get me started on the totally useless, throw-away character that is Jason Lee. He's too good for this movie. Now, that's saying a lot.

scoop of chocolate scoop of vanilla; don't waste my time...

It's just so good. Can't. stop.

it's been so long and it will be longer

Kathleen continues to write beautiful entries. And I continue to lurk. I know! I suck. I have been inundated with work, life, tears, breathing, sadness, happiness, french fries. But I promise to write a review of I capture the castle soon. I re-watched it recently. I remember seeing it for the first time on my seventeenth birthday. It spoke so deeply to me then. There is always the risk of rewatching really formative films from your youth. You risk thinking they are stupid or childish because you have grown and matured. Luckily, I have neither grown nor matured because the movie was still as good as I remembered. It perfectly displays the intensity of teenage emotion--when you are living so so fiercely in your head. In your journal.

And following Kathleen's lead, I've been listening to Ravel. Pavane for a Dead Princess is playing now. There is sadness in the air but I am happy here.

And, like always, I am obsessively watching youtube videos of limber breakdancers. These images really move me.

My best friend recently got an Iphone and yeah I know it's not a big deal cuz all the tweens have one but it's a big deal to me. Phones should be phones. Not cameras and music players! But she sent me this picture she took with her Iphone. It's her grandmother's living room. It is so so eerie. The witching hour inside. Bright bright outside. This image continues to move me.