"We eat, we fuck, we shit, we kill, we die."

I have been in the biggest movie-mood. For the past two weeks I swear I must have watched around 10 movies. Breaking Dawn was amongst them and I am ashamed of myself. I think I read Twilight in eighth grade once and I liked it but that was also around the time where the hype was becoming absolutely ridiculous about the movie, so I got over it quickly. Although I'm not a fan at all of the series or of the movies, I've somehow managed to get dragged along to the midnight premiering of the first two films and I saw this past one the day after in came out (older sister wanted to "bond" with me...). I'm not going to write about it because I couldn't' care less about the movie and I'm not into that kind of fantasy fiction genre.

Two movies that I will write about, however, are Welcome to the Dollhouse and Quills - pretty much polar opposites in all senses.

Before dinner on Thanksgiving last weekend, I sat in my room with a glass of wine and watched Welcome to the Dollhouse on my laptop. I don't even know what to say about this movie, I just thought it was great. Heather Matarazzo (who I recognized as Mia's best friend in The Princess Diaries) plays Dawn, this geeky, 7th grade girl who everyone hates for whatever reason, and is neglected by her parents who dote on her younger sister. She falls in love with this beefy high school senior and kind of dates this kid in her grade who threatened to rape her after calling him "retarted." The thing is that this movie is filmed in such a way that makes everything I have written above absolutely hilarious. It's such an awkward 90's film, I love it.




The second film that I want to write about is Quills. Made in 2000, the movie takes place in the French "Reign of Terror" era in the late 1700's. It is about the Marquis de Sade's erotic fantasy writings during his stay in an insane asylum at Charenton. His stories were depicted as blasphemous against the Catholic church. Geoffrey Rush plays the Marquis (magnificently, might I add), Joaquin Phoenix is the conservative and prude Abbé, and Kate Winslet is Madelyn (Maddie) the laundress of the asylum who was one to enjoy the Marquis' writings and to enable him to continue with his stories in such dyer conditions. Of course, I find the Marquis liberal view during such a constrictive time to be incredibly intriguing and inspiring. But what I find so outstanding about this movie was the Marquis's commitment he had to his stories. What is about to be written could be considered a spoiler: When Abbé took his quills, paper and ink away, he wrote with a chicken wishbone and red wine on his bed sheets to give to Maddie (which earned her a brutal whipping), when they took his bed, sheets and almost every bit of furniture away from his room - he smashed a mirror, pricked all of his fingers and with the glass filled all of his garments with stories, when his clothes were taken away - he whispered his stories through the holes of the walls of his inmates (similar to a game of Telephone) to have it written by Maddie at the end, and when he was chained and isolated in an underground cell - he wrote with his own filth on the walls. Disgusting, yes. But somehow still magnificent. And by magnificent, I mean the absolute necessity he felt to have his stories (no matter how sexually explicit and violent) written and read.








On Wednesday I went into the city to see the Broadway revival of Godspell. Let me just profess my abundant love of this play right now. We did a production of it as my school's Spring musical last year, I played Gilmer. When we first found out that we would be doing Godspell as the Spring musical, a solid majority of everyone involved in the theatre program at my school's reaction was "What the fuck?". No one really knew about the play, or didn't like the religious aspect of it. But when we got into the middle/end of rehearsals and finally the performances, everyone fell in love with it. The messages that we were trying to get across through the stories we told, as well as the musical itself, are still extremely relevant and meaningful. Not to mention that all of the music is incredible. To add onto this fantastic show we were putting on, the cast bonded so profoundly. I miss it all. Anywho, onto the real Godspell on Wednesday. Everyone in the entire cast was so tremendously talented that it made me hate myself...not really, but still. Now, Uzo Aduba was hilarious (everyone was, but she just stood out to me) and Lindsay Mendez is my favorite. I don't mean to, but I feel like if there is ever a show/movie/musical...etc that I'm watching, I normally subconsciously pick a favorite character for whatever reason. Lindsey Mendez just so happens to be that person in this case (qurlfran kicked azz in "Bless the Lord!!~). At the end of the show I was a bawling mess, so much so that I could't stop crying even as the cast was doing their bows. I also got teary in the way beginning for "Save the People" - which is actually a very upbeat song. I couldn't help it though, I was so moved. Their rendition of "Beautiful City" absolutely blew me away (that song is optional in this show, and the directors decided to not include in my school's production). I also found there to be this huge difference between the emotion this show evoked from me while I was watching it as opposed to when I was performing it six months ago. You all should go and see it. Right now. Go. No, finish reading my blog and then go.





 Photos: Godspell.com



Just watch the first three minutes of this video of Lindsey Mendez and the cast rehearsing "Bless the Lord" Ugh. So good.

I've also stumbled upon (not actually stumbled... I found on Tumblr to be technical) "This Is Hanging Rock Comics" and this girl is insane. Absolutely insane with her illustrations that are such accurate depictions of teenage lyf ~.







I've also made the decision to say "Yes" to more things. Saying "No" only holds you back, I've decided. Totally having a Jim Carrey Yes Man moment right now.



Since I've been on this Kate Winslet-movie-watching-spree lately, I've been feeling a lot better about my body. She is just such a real woman. American society has this completely distorted standard of what is considered beautiful. What has also inspired this epiphany was the fact that when I went to the Met about two weeks ago I realized my love for the ancient Greek and European statues. They're gorgeous, and the female bodies were gorgeous as well. I'd like to try my best to ignore what society tries to shove down our throats and to follow my own definition of what I find beautiful.


2011 Emmys



Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney
St. John ad
Marilyn on vacation (1956)

Still from The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)

I want to say around 1954(?)

I want to say '56...I should really know this one, this set is so famous...


John Willie's Diary of a French Maid (1948-1950)

A portion of Luis Ricardo Faléro's Departure of the Witches (1878)
Statue of Aphrodite (1st/2nd Century A.D.)

Statue of Aphrodite (2nd Century B.C.)

"you don't matter enough to upset me."


This might just be me, but I feel like the weeks have been going by especially slow lately. I feel like I don't have a lot of time for things when I obviously do because I manage to get everything that needs to be done, done. Being that said, this is the first time in months that I haven't had work to do after school. Needless to say, I felt this would be an appropriate time to attempt to write about the past week and a half.


Last Monday was Halloween, which evidently wasn't even nearly as awesome as it has been in years past. There was this whole issue with having a foreign friend come to school with me, which ended up in us just going back to my house and screwing around with makeup. I decided to play around with the theme of Twiggy.





le result:

Lately, I feel like I've been suppressing a lot of emotions for the sake of moving on, in a sense, and mainly just to get everything done efficiently without feelings getting in the way. However, I'm not entirely sure if that's a very good strategy because I found all of these emotions hitting me incredibly hard on Sunday. I need to figure out whether or not I would prefer to have emotional fits every few days or just one big breakdown at the end of the week. Right now, I'm leaning towards the latter, just for the sake of it not getting in the way of getting work done. Anywho, I was in the weirdest emotional mood on Sunday, I really didn't want to do anything and I just felt like crying. But there was nothing there to make me cry. It was as if the feelings were there, but something had to happen to make me cry. So I go onto iTunes to try and download Titanic... Come to find out that iTunes doesn't even HAVE it. However, I found a Titanic slideshow on YouTube to the Mika song "Happy Ending" which was more than enough to get me sobbing within the first three seconds. Seriously though.



I then got to thinking about how much I actually adore Kate Winslet and how I really should be familiar with more of her films than just Titanic and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So over the week, I rented and bought Revolutionary Road - hooray for a Kate and Leo rekindling




 - and The Reader.  









Here's the thing about Revolutionary Road - every single morning on my way to school I watch these boring suburban parents drop off their asshole teenage kids at school at 7am. I see them sit alone at the stoplight in their cars tired as all hell and I can't help but think that I never want to end up like that. To be a stay-at-home mom or even a working mom living in a well-off suburban town with the same routine every day for the rest of my life. I couldn't do it. I don't want to be trapped. Also, The Reader has changed the way I view things. The movie alone made me nearly cry about five times. I just feel like Hanna and Michael's love seemed so genuine in the movie that their age played absolutely no role in their relationship whatsoever and was, if anything, completely irrelevant (ps. the scene when they make love for the last time on his birthday makes me want to bawl because you can just see the inner turmoil that Hanna is going through).  And let me just say that both movies are incredible and highly recommended. I'm also planning on watching Heavenly Creatures today and Little Children, The Holiday, and Quills later on this weekend. Also, Carnage opens in theaters on December 16th for me. So, yeah, it's been a Kate Winslet week for me.

I also can't get over her face. Other than the fact that she is absolutely stunning in all sense of the word and has the sassiest right eyebrow ever, she embodies her characters so incredibly well that every subtle movement is entirely that of her character. I can't even properly describe it, but if you've seen a Kate Winslet film, you'll know what I mean. I'm going to keep going on the subject of Kate Winslet and say that I love how she's a real woman. I think she's the only actress to make me happy with my body and very, very proud to be a woman.