Saw Maria Full of Grace a few days ago. A) There's a lot of sort of strange religious imagery (the old people walking out said, "It was a
dark movie." - they're fucking heroin mules, do you expect it to be more like the Little Mermaid?), B) this movie has won 3 or 4 film festivals and it's going to win a lot more awards. If there were futures contracts on movies winning awards, I would buy them for this movie. I have not seen a movie that feels so vital and urgent - ever. Think of movies that seem to float - Lost in Translation is a good movie, but it's not urgent, or crucial like this. The Terminal is probably the best example of a movie that doesn't have any reason for its existence. This movie does, but it's not self-important like some similar movies, and when you walk out it's like you get thrown in the bathroom by a huge guy who starts smashing your head against the toilet and screaming at you: this story is going to affect people. But not in the whiny political movie way that has a constant, nagging, hemorrhoidal agenda, either. Seriously.
There's a Low song, "Just Like Christmas." "On our way from Stockholm/ It started to snow/ And you said it was like Christmas/ But you were wrong/ It wasn't like Christmas at all" Which was just like a bus ride the other day. On our from downtown. It was nighttime and girls wearing party shirts and party pants and hairsprayed hair and hoop earrings/ And you said it was just like college/ Yes. Yes it was." It's not bad - I don't want them to stop dressing like clowns. It adds to the cacophonous urban landscape when I'm leaving the office at 9 or 10 at night. Leather briefcases, navy blue suits, street alcoholics, young female clowns.
Lyndon Johnson orders some Haggar pants. Possibly the most wonderful mixture of the mundane and strange in a telephone conversation ever.
