From 'Girls' to Frances Ha, NY Girls Just Can't Seem to Grow Up.

Smoking and drinking on the fire escape. Definitely a part of my EARLY 20's, not my LATE 20's. Go on the damn balcony. You know what Virginia Woolf book this reminds ME of? None of them!

Finally watched Baumbach's minimalist mumblecore women-constantly-on-their-period flick Frances Ha (2013) and I have no idea how it's appealing at all. Greta Gerwig, although a great actress is reduced to playing a woman whom if I was in college with I would make fun of every day just for not having her shit together. Which might have been cute at like 22 but she's like what 28 in this film?

They still use words like 'd-bags' 'omg I love you', and smoke on the fire escape without the fear of it buckling underneath them and falling to their deaths. It's like seriously enough. Move in with your ugly hipster boyfriend who doesn't shave, make a five year plan, and get a mother-effing job. We're in a recession and don't have time for your menstrual bullshit.

Baumbach can write great characters, no one is questioning that. But can he write relevant ones. The only time that, in my not-so-humble opinion, in which he has done that was in The Squid and the Whale (2005) because he wrote about his own family and the struggles didn't seem pretentious and pointless, they seemed existential and sincere.

Even with a desk job, Hannah can't help from pouting.

Back in the 90's we had middle-aged white man anger and frustration, I guess today's trend is 'twenty-something New York hipster chick in limbo'. That's the giant cash cow. Lena Dunham's pile of Golden Globes is getting larger and larger and likely to continue growing after this Sunday. And perhaps I'm biased but ever since I moved to Los Angeles, I get seriously tired of people in New York who do nothing but to complain about living in New York...here's an idea, fucking move! 'I can't afford Tribeca/NoHo/Morningside Heights' then maybe find some job that pays more than 10$ an hour.
Oh and your ugly, good-for-nothing slacker, jobless boyfriend is giving you a hard time? Break up with him and join eHarmony like the rest of us, or go hang out at a bar near Wallstreet. It's time to stop dreaming and start doing. My life is hard too and don't get me wrong, I'm unhappy. But when I try to complain to my mother she tells me to do two things; 'shut up, and grow up'. (But that could be just her Soviet upbringing talking). Also, the most fascinating thing about a man should not be whether or not he smokes indoors kay?? 

After a while of Frances Ha (2013) I felt like one of those poor souls at that dinner party that she goes to that have to politely nod and smile as she talks nonsense endlessly and ends it with 'blah..I sound stoned, but I'm not stoned'. It's like thank god she's leaving. 

Dear Frances and Hannah, try living my life for one minute. Yeah, I might complain about it with a box of Chardonnay on a Friday night,  I mean who knows what I say then? But I'm not going to film it and pitch it to HBO...or to Baumbach for that matter (always had my heart set on Gus Van Sant myself). :P Anyway, seriously, enough. My ears are bleeding. Is this really what Gloria Steinem and the rest fought for and burned their bras for? For privileged white girls to whine about nothing for hours? Just remember what Tina Fey says to Noelle Welles portraying Hannah Horvath in the 'SNL' parody of 'Girls'...'You're 24? What the fuck is wrong with you?'.

I Left My Heart In Dresden

I even dyed my hair bright red to match Amanda Palmer's which I only learned later, takes forever to get out.

Let's take it down a notch. I've decided to steer my blog into some more personal stuff of late, limericks, funny stories, yada yada. But not to worry it won't get boring people. I've been very nostalgic for New York of late, well not even the bustling hub of Manhattan but for two beautiful and wonderful friends that I still keep in touch with even though one is in the jazzy illumination of New Orleans, and the other one literally on the other side of this sad little planet, China. We made quick girlfriends in our little dingy dorms known to its residents as the G-Dubs at the School of the Arts for the one year I was there before transferring to NYU. 

We all had similar tastes and were wildly creative and loved to hang out at watering holes discussing art like we were the new generation of beats or something. As long as the drinks were at a fair price we could stay all night, because we always had shit to talk about, and all the time in the world. Our school loved to throw hedonistic Halloween parties (hey it was a liberal arts college, what did you expect?) I mean one year they threw it at a club in Chelsea called, and I'm not making this up; 'Duvet' so basically it was a darkened room in some cellar and the only thing to sit on were beds. Combine that with about 200 drunk college students and you've got yourself a full fledged clusterfuck...literally. I believe at this point I was already at NYU and invited one of the girls and another friend to get ready with me and also, of course pre-game on cheap wine. Me and my friend decided to go as The Dresden Dolls; a band we both greatly admired and hey made for a great Halloween costume that was easy to put together yourself. I wanted to be Amanda Palmer solely for purpose of being able to shave my eye brows and fill them in with a Gothic pattern in a sharpie ( I was 22, stop judging), and she had no problem with being her lover and counterpoint, Brian Viglione because she had always wanted to dress up in drag. I had the most interesting friends I really did. None of this slutty nurse or butterfly bullcrap. Let's go balls to the wall with this mother. Little did we know that The Dresden Dolls was a very popular costume especially on the New York scene, but luckily that year we were the only ones that pulled it off. And very well I might say. 

We did pretty good no? And yes of course I had the striped panty-hose and baby doll shoes.

I also had an urge to be Palmer because I wanted to know what it was like to be such a beautiful bad-ass just for a few drunken hours, and we got a lot of praise at the party. So today I'm putting on a soundtrack of my favorite Dresden Dolls songs and thinking about my two good friends that made my first year in New York nothing short of magical.

Post Script: A year later, I went to see a play that my friend produced (also in Chelsea) based on the creative catalog of The Dresden Dolls and it was actually very interesting. Apparently their music is not only artistic weirdo's like me. 

I'll leave you with some fun videos. My favorite is the one where they battle Panic! At the Disco set to their song; 'Backstabber'. 

The song that started it all...

The King is Dead...Long Live, Ahhh Fuck It

Schamus wearing his professor's bow tie, sits outside Dodge Hall

So as you may or may not have heard there was what we like to call a clusterfuck of a coup d'état over at Focus Features, and visionary producer and distributor; James Schamus was basically let go with Universal forcing Focus to relocate to Los Angeles under the guise of some other guy whom no one has ever heard of, and now Focus is going to suck more than the government shutdown. This hits no one harder than someone like me, and I'm not showing off here, but got to not know him personally but at least pick his brain for a semester during grad school when he taught my Narrative in Film class in a tiny dingy classroom at Dodge Hall at Columbia University in the Fall of 2008. 

It was the hardest single class I've ever had, and also the most rewarding. It showed me that there was hope for the film industry as long as visionaries like Schamus were still big players in the game, and really understood the medium better than the money-hounds. 

Schamus and one of his favorite collaborators; Ang Lee. They made three films together.

Here's what I THINK happened, because no one really knows. I'm sure it will be made public soon. Focus, though being owned by Universal has maintained its integrity throughout and also its loyalty to independent film. Universal was feeling antsy and decided out with the old and in with the new. Focus made it's home in New York City where film is still appreciated as an art form, so they decided well, to hell with that, we'll sell our souls and move the whole company to Los Angeles, leaving Schamus and everyone he ever made famous or important back in NYC to fend for themselves. 

A little history about Schamus. He started out with his own company called Good Machine, and personally pioneered the New Queer Cinema movement along with producers like Christine Vachon (another visionary) and her company Killer Films, which is also New York based. Together, they released the films of Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, Derek Jarman, and others, building a repore within the indie world as mavericks of cinema. 

Schamus and fellow renegades of cinema, director John Waters and producer Christin Vachon.

Once Schamus started getting more notice, he took things into a more mainstream direction and founded Focus Features, which gave him the opportunity to take small independent films that no one else would touch like Francois Ozon's masterpiece Swimming Pool (2003), and Todd Haynes' definitive work Far from Heaven (2004) and managed not only to make them financially successful, but to win them all kinds of acclaim from the Palm d'Or (for The Pianist (2002)), to multiple Oscars and nominations (For Milk (2008) and (Brokeback Mountain (2005)) all the while maintaining what Gene Kelly repeats somewhat ironically in Singin' in the Rain (1952) ...dignity, always dignity. 

Brokeback Mountain (2005), a film who's meteoric rise and lasting affect on cinema culture would not have been possible without the guidance of James Schamus.

If I could just open things up here for a minute and speak to James Schamus directly, I would say that you sir, were a paragon, and an iconoclast of cinematic distribution and production in a sea of people who just want to make a quick buck. You have always held up your high standards and never given in to pressure. You've made successes out of the most unpredictable situations, and helped some of the best films of the last two decades be seen and appreciated. Focus will not be the same without you, and neither will the realm of American cinema. Without you, many masterpieces that only you would see the potential in will falter into nothingness, and that is why your departure from Focus is so genuinely sad on all of us. But I at least know that this is not the last we'll hear of Schamus. I have a feeling he'll stick to his principals as he always has and go back to his indie roots, championing the underdog, and remaining an integral cog in the scope of cinema. We all wish you the best. 

Below some trailers for Focus films: 

I Have a Recommendation...8 Years Too Late

A Bradley Cooper that's a professional chef? Where do I sign up?

I've been starved for a good show to watch, I've basically seen everything. And I'm glad Orange Is the New Black (2013 - ) has come out, but I've only watched one episode thus far so I can't blog about it yet, but that's probably the next one I'll do. Hulu just released a show that was cancelled criminally after only one season based on Anthony Bourdain's incendiary bestselling memoir 'Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly' (published in 2000) where the unapologetic bad-ass celebrity chef talks about his times working in upscale restaurants in New York and misbehaving in the most ridiculous fashion. He was basically the Keith Richards of the kitchen, snorting blow and drinking liters of vodka whilst cooking some of the best haute cuisine that city has ever seen. 

Cover of the book the show is based on.

Anthony Bourdain, doing what he does best.

Fox in all of it's wisdom (meant to be read with sarcasm) decided to make a PG version of the book with Bradley Cooper as the titular character, much like what Fellini used to do with Marcello Mastroianni playing a character aptly named Jack Bourdain who is now over a year sober and has been hired on a 'suicide mission' to revamp a Bowery hotspot named Nolita with no staff and 24 hours before opening night. 

He assembles his old mates from the good old days promising all kinds of shit that never comes to fruition, but it's his dream team, and he's the best in the business so in the words of Tim Gunn, it's time to 'make it work'. 

Butch, Sundance, and the pastry chef that wears a bandana.

Cooper is brilliant and hilarious as the enlightened and sober Bourdain (who in real life as we all know didn't remain sober, well for the most part) trying his best to serve the best and most creative dishes to his picky customers whilst dealing with a crabby waitstaff, and incompetent hostess, and every example of Murphy's Law falling on his head every morning. 

He's still the lady's man, almost to the point of being a nympho and can you blame him? He's extraordinarily hot, and the man can grill a salmon like nobody's business. That's a winning combination right there. 

The cast.

The show is called (of course) Kitchen Confidential, and ran from 2005 to 2006 before being cancelled but I was overjoyed when Hulu bought the rights to it because it definitely deserves to be seen. It features a stellar cast; Nicholas Brendon from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, John Francis Daly from Freaks and Geeks fame, John Cho from Star Trek (the new franchise) fame, and Bonnie Summerville from her tiny stint as Ross' girlfriend Mona from Friends (1994-2004). Also, Jamie King is there for masturbation fodder so it's a winning combination. 

It's a good ol' dirty shitshow, with the laughs to back it up and the most unseemly behavior, everyone is constantly horny and/or doing it with each other. And Jack (Cooper) is the most gung-ho about it all, just as long as his patrons and his boss (Frank Langella) are happy with his impeccable talents as a chef. 

Shit just got weird.

One of my favorite characters is Owain Yeoman as Steven Daedalus the Sous. An immigrant from jolly old England, he's a high-functioning sociopath that frequently drinks on the job, hits on anything with legs, and has some of the best one-liners I've heard in TV pretty much ever. He and Bradley Cooper make a great Butch and Sundance (which they refer to themselves as) and perk up the show just a few notches to where it's actually a pleasure to watch. 

The rest is pretty predictable for a half hour sitcom; hijinks ensues, trouble brews, tension between the floor and the kitchen reach boiling points constantly and everybody gets laid. I'd work there in a heart beat. So I'm giving this one a solid recommendation. The whole series is available online. Go for it, then go eat some seared sesame crusted tuna...you'll get the joke once you've watched the show. Is that enough of an incentive?

Just When Mad Men Gets Boring It Gets Interesting Again

Lost Bette gets some help and more from an unexpected source.

Let's admit, season 6 has been less than stellar and more than predictable. I think it's like the whole cast is starting to get sick of it all and when your party host is tired themselves and passing out on the couch it's time to leave the party. But this last episode had so many unexpected turns that I think it was a last try to get this show back to up and running status rather than dead in the water status. Adding so many new characters and neglecting the base ones was clearly not a good strategy so they decided to go back to basics. 

They must have noticed that even the most die-hard Mad Mennies were starting to despise Don Draper, and without him, there is no show, so enough with him being a totally sadistic borderline rapist romantic novel villain and just mellow him out why don't ya. Which is what they did, the episode wasn't exactly about him, all of the main characters had an interesting arc this time. Through the filter of unseen and unexpected desire, they explored many of the characters' primal vices. 

tension brews between the not so happy couple.

Maybe it was a desperate attempt to recapture the magic of the first few seasons, but it worked. Peggy and her scruffy leftist, marxist scribbler boyfriend Abe are at odds like an old married couple because basically she won't let him be a man. All of the decisions run through her, and she doesn't even let him to house renovation work. It's like working in advertising and having to compete with Don for so long has made her grown a penis. This tension comes to a shocking climax when the unsafe neighborhood that they live in (the upper west side, oh my god scariest place on earth) makes her so paranoid that she accidentally stabs him right in the stomach with I think the end of a lamp or something I don't know, I just know I hadn't had this much exhilarating fun watching a show since that poor Brit had his foot run over with a lawn mower at Sterling Cooper. 

Peggy and Abe go through some serious shit, had they stayed together afterwards, and it's not clear if they do, it would make for a great story to tell at parties.

There's also lesbian tension between Megan and her agent/costar who is clearly crushing on her, but she's brutally rebuffed, like Megan is Garbo or somebody. That other woman could get anyone she wants. Don just happens to be away getting his son Bobby ready for camp and guess who's there to surprise him, the character we all love to hate and cringe at the mere sound of her voice; Bette (forget what her current last name is). And what ends up happening? Well you guess. It has been a while since they've done nothing but fight, and she has lost all that weird weight and dyed her hair back to blonde. She looks almost exactly the same as she did when the series started and can't help being irresistible to men again. Her husband isn't there, and his wife is at home, perfect timing, and you know what? As sick as it is to think of Don and Bette in bed again I actually enjoyed it. I was glad it happened. It made us understand how lonely Don actually is because he spent his entire adult life pushing people away. Anyway, I was satisfied after watching this, and I haven't been able to say that about Mad Men in a while, so Bravo!

Cosmopolis: A Study in Existentialism, Capitalism, and Asymmetrical Prostates

A limo ride  to nowhere.

If you read Don DeLillo in your formative years chances are you were a bit fucked up in the head, but that yielded only the urge to understand the hypocrisy of the world to a better degree…you probably read a lot of Bret Easton Ellis along with that. Now, if you watched Cronenberg growing up, congratulations you’re probably smarter than 95% percent of the world’s population, and moreover if you actually understand all of his films on body-horror, pan-existentialist levels, then you’re a fucking genius.

A few of his newest films have been rather polarizing. A Dangerous Method (2011) was schmaltzy crap the whole way through. And Cosmopolis (2012) got all kinds of black and white reviews, it’s the kind of film Armand White loves to write about. The kind of film that gets a mixed reaction at Cannes, and Rotten Tomatoes has a meltdown over because film critics turn into 5 year olds; All having something to say each at a louder more obnoxious volume than the other. 

Sarah Gadon plays the wife of Billionaire playboy Eric (Robert Pattinson) who promises that one day they will indeed have sex, but never delivers. Probably a smart move on her part.

I had heard a shit ton of bad press about this film, but it was mostly from people that didn’t ‘get it’ and were faux film critics to begin with in the tradition of Ben Lyons who just tear it to shreds because they don’t understand allegory and post-capitalist theory and still manage to make 6-figure salaries (Fuck Ben Lyons is basically what I’m saying) he’s probably never watched anything of Cronenberg’s past Dead Ringers (1988)). 

A prostate exam during a meeting with his financial advisor yeilds the metaphor that Eric has an asymmetrical prostate, take it for whatever you think it might mean.

This is a film that combines sexual frustration and depression of fear of being-in-the-world, particularly of being powerful, both sexually and otherwise, and the inner struggle that exists in the responsibility which that power comes with. Also, the boredom that comes from knowing that everything is too easily accessible weather it be billions of dollars or seriously hot French tail. It is a Jean-Paul Sartre manifesto on film, and no one better to understand that and make it erotic than David Cronenberg. I thought the film was fantastic, and thought most didn’t and it barely got distributed, it finally landed on Netflix, so good for it, a bunch of teenagers can now be either confused as fuck or take up reading DeLillo and start speaking with a French accent.  Either way, it’s one of Cronenberg’s more complex and erotic films, which is exactly how he initially made his name in the business, mixed with some political pathos, it makes for one hell of a mindfuck. 

I Miss Gogol Bordello!

Eugene Hütz has become somewhat of a sex symbol in his own right and rightfully so.

It was 2007, I was living in the East Village finishing up my miserable BA in Cinema Studies. My good friend Erin was always down to meet me at the local watering hole slash only place we ever met for drinks, the now closed Cooper 35 in Cooper Square  near the Bowery, and one of these nights we were talking music. I mentioned this band called Gogol Bordello which everyone in New York between 19 and 25 seemed to be in fervent love with. After about 5 or 6 whiskey sours, we decided we were going to walk, yes walk to the Lower East Side to this bar we'd always heard of but not yet had the balls to visit called Mehanata. The story was that it was a Bulgarian bar in existence for over 20 years and was basically the hub in which Gogol Bordello was born. 

Gogol Bordello, a band that fused authentic Eastern European gypsy folk songs with American punk rock. It's a good thing.

I made eyes with the door guy and he let us all in for free. We walked into a dim smokey bar playing Easter European fusion punk gypsy music. The air was illuminated with red tinted christmas lights and revealed a few strange New York City types sitting around, speaking Russian to each other with a bottle of Vodka at each table. We made our way to the bar and the bartender insisted that we drink Rakia, a kind of Bulgarian moonshine not even available in the states unless you bought it on the black market which they always did. It was delicious, and we got wasted in a matter of minutes. Then we went downstairs. 

Downstairs was a whole different animal. It felt like a seedy club. There was a DJ booth, and a few crystal balls from 1972. Strobe lights were the only source of light down there, and myself and Erin soon learned that we didn't have to walk all the way through people and up the stairs to the outside to chain smoke; our favorite activity. You could apparently do it on the back stairs whilst a drunk girl leans up against your knee and tells you you're beautiful. 

Eventually it started getting crowded and around 1am Erin and I decided that we needed fresh air to have a cigarette in (oh the fucking irony) and we shimmied our way through dancers and goosestepped our way over drunks until we were at the entrance. We lit up and talked about god knows what for a few minutes. All of a sudden, I see her eyes get extremely wide and her speech getting instantly slow. She seemed to be looking at something directly over my shoulder, and I was horrified at the thought that there might be a really tall ghost breathing just on the back of my neck. After a few seconds of drunken hesitation I turn around only to be shoved slightly into her direction (she was in front of me) and I felt bangles hit the small of my back. Before I had a chance to look and see what was behind me, a pair of large hands steadied me from behind and a soft voice spoke 'scuze me doorling', and I knew exactly who it was. 

Don't get too excited, I don't like Madonna, here's a still from her film Filth and Wisdom (2007) with Eugene Hutz who basically plays himself, and Gogol Bordello appears in the film as his character's band.

It was urban legend that Eugene Hütz, the charismatic, enigmatic and eccentric lead singer of Gogol Bordello still showed up to DJ at the bar that had made him famous, and all of a sudden, there he was, decked out in striped skinny jeans, a spangled gypsy scarf wrapped around his waste and that unmistakable handlebar mustache, bumping into me. I was stunned. It was up to par with a normal person bumping into I dont know...Brad Pitt. He was even more amazing in person. Around 6'3, with the most commanding presence, we immediately followed him in and basked in his presence at the bar, trying to non-chalantly stare at him. Neither of us had the nuts to talk to him, but we did end up dancing our asses off, and were at Mehanata every Saturday hence forth until I moved to to the Upper West Side when I began my Master's at Columbia (humblebrag!) and it was just too far to travel. I listened to them all day and all night for a good year after that experience until they stopped coming out with new music, and I'm just wondering two things, well three things; 1. Why have they not recorded a new album? 2. When can I come back to New York and go straight to Mehanata from JFK? 3. Miss Erin Kenealy, will you still come with me when I go? 

Here are some videos and clips, get into them, they're awesome! 

The first one is a video for their most famous song 'Start Wearing Purple' which was actually filmed right in Mehanata when the band was starting out and had no money, having to shoot at wherever they were welcome. 

Below is a trailer for a film that Zhenya (that's a casual way to refer to someone named Eugene in Russian btdubs) called 'Everything is Illuminated' (2005) and turns out he's a bloody good actor too. 

Below the trailer for 'Filth and Wisdom' (2008), where Hutz basically plays himself.