Sofia's Epic Fail

4 out of these 7 women have speaking roles. 

Was that harsh? Well, watching her new film The Beguiled felt like a one and a half torture ride to nowhere's-ville. I want my time back, and my money. And I want her to make better films, but that's not going to happen is it? 

The film was marketed as a radical feminist revenge story, perfect for the chauvinist rhetoric of the Trump era, but Valerie Solanas it is not. It's not even a 'hell hath no fury…' kind of thing. As I said, it's about an hour and a half of nothing. Which is a fair assessment of basically all of her films, yeah I said it. It had such great potential. It's a Misery meets Gone with the Wind story based on a Clint Eastwood movie from the 70's (arguably the best era of America filmmaking). With a stellar cast like Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell, and the up-and-coming Elle Fanning, you were thinking how could this go wrong? In all respects apparently.

Admit it, this part from the trailer is why we all wanted to see it. 'Get me the anatomy book'.

I have to give it up to the marketing department. They did a great job with the theater art, the promo art, the trailers, etc. Basically building up this turd in a dress so that people would shelve out 11 dollars to see it. I saw it with a friend earlier today and we witnessed quite a few walk outs. At first we thought it was because we were basically screaming at the screen, but we couldn't help ourselves. Eventually, we realized that the walk outs had the right idea. 

So stop fucking with us, Coppola. Just because you're Hollywood royalty doesn't mean you can do no wrong. In fact you can do so much wrong to some seriously ripe and brilliant material that it kind of taints your family's legacy.

The film is photographed beautifully; with low-lit interiors, candlelight and sunshine, and dressing that looks like it's actually a house that has been lived in and not a matte painting that was put up the day before. Costumes are en pointe and that's about the only positive things I have to say about the film. I know it was just released, so unlike most of my reviews I'm not giving away the plot. Here's what we know. Colin Farrell is a Union deserter; a Irish mercenary who has been badly injured and is found on the outskirts of a large Southern plantation in Virginia. He is taken in by the children and their headmistress who have had to lay low three years into the Civil War. It's pretty obvious that 6 girls in their sexual prime or in puberty and a woman a bit past her prime but still hot AF (Nicole Kidman) would create sexual tension with the one man they're keeping in the house so palpable you could cut it with a bread knife.

I will give her the director of photography a lot of credit. He managed to make a dull film very pretty. So you have that to look forward to. 

Firstly, this house she runs with 6 pupils seems to have an endless supply of food and wine. What the actual fuck? Every movie about the Civil War, or any war for that matter is about people having no food or rations. Also, three of the girls don't even have speaking parts. That's a waste of space, they literally do nothing. You could just cut them out of the film and save the budget. For an hour and a half run time, I would say there's about 20 minutes of dialogue which is par for the course for a Sofia Copolla film. Every single time there is a moment for potential pathos, drama, and hubris, she builds that moment and then kills it. It's like getting really close to orgasm, and then the person falls asleep on you.

Although it appears deliciously sexually devious, the actually sexuality of this film has about as much erotica as a 13 year old's vampire fan fiction.  

It's almost as if Sofia is afraid of the sexuality of this film, which is basically the driving force of the plot. Even scenes that should be highly erotic are creepy and weird. Scarlet O'Hara crying on Ashley's chest was more erotic than anything in this movie. For a mostly silent film with no plot and no nuance of the main characters it seems to kind of move into the category of Avant-Garde, which I believe is actually Sofia's calling. But go Avant-Garde all the way. Film on 16mm silent Bolex cameras, with a 10 minute run time, and save us the grief. She so desperately wants to be considered a serious artist, but she comes off as uber-pretentious. She breaks so many film rules that it's just not right. 

I know breaking film rules can be fine, but what we think of as breaking is actually bending. Tarantino does it, Scorsese does it. But rules are there for a reason. Example: Your main characters have to be nuanced. They have to be three dimensional. They have to have motive good or bad. There has to be a plot that moves forward and doesn't just meander around waiting for shit to happen. I don't care how pretty it looks. 

People think that she's so unique because she plays up the subtlety which is actually giving her audience a giant middle finger. There's being subtle, which is fine, and then there's saying nothing at all, and that's what this film does. I don't need resolution, I can leave a film without closure as long as the film presents interesting questions to consider later. This film does not. You leave the theater thinking…'well, that happened'. Sofia is should really stop writing her own films because she writes about 30 pages and stretches it to an hour and a half run time (I keep mentioning that because it felt way longer). It's kind of sad that coming from such a talented family, we'll think of The Bling Ring as 'the good one'. Hard pass.

Trailer below...I mean...whatever.

One Person Carried the Entire Season

Best friend and girlfriend of Poussey finally find an appropriate tribute to their lost loved one and I cried all the way home. 

It's rare in a multi-protagonist show that one person stands out. Early on, before OITNB became a thing, most of the first season was about Chapman. The writers saw that this clearly didn't work so they gave everyone a storyline, an arch, and a flashback …standard multi-protagonist rules, just watch Lost.

I was talking to a friend earlier about Mad Men, getting a little sidetracked, but that did also start out about one person; Don Draper, and then evolved with a plethora of new characters and the OG's having some serious stories, laments, and flaws. That's what makes them relatable.

Spoilers coming but you should have watched it by now; that show basically invented the binge watch culture.

Daya at the climax of Season 4. Sensing a pattern here. 

A little bit on what is happening in the new season. Daya shoots the sadist CO Humps in the leg, and a riot breaks out in the prison. The riot actually lasts through out the entirety of the season and that MCC bitch Linda somehow gets mistaken for a prisoner so she's along for the ride. If you remember correctly, The girls at Litchfield are pretty eccentric to put it mildly so the riot has some wonderful and sometimes cathartic twists and turns. It's really a great season, and there's one woman that carries it through to the very end.

Taystee leads an action to throw away the 'bribes' that the governor provides in order to stop the riot because according to her, it wouldn't be justice.

If you haven't guessed, I'm talking about Tasha 'Taystee' Jefferson. Poussey's best friend. Danielle Brooks who plays her is barely old enough to rent a car, but her training at Julliard did her well, to say the least. Usually we focus on actors 'on the brink' if they bag a role like Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook at the ripe young age of like 23. When OITNB started, Brooks was actually the exact same age, and has maintained a consistency to the character and a commitment to the arch of Taystee. This season was definitely hers. I don't know of the season's past if I could assign them as belonging to someone. No, she doesn't get the most airtime, or the smartest quips, but my god, the depth of this girl was incredible.

And of course they set in on fire because they want 'to be motherfucking taken serious!' You go Taystee.

I kept having to remind myself of the youth of this actress and subsequent inexperience because you would never be able to tell, and though just like every season, a different character gets a flashback, and in the end, it's all about Piper (who is the worst), Brooks upstaged everyone in her passionate fight as Taystee struggles to deal with her grief and get justice for Poussey.

At the climax of the last episode, it was like watching a Shakespearean tragedy, just watching the performance that Brooks gave. I don't often say this, but it seemed to come from the bottom of the gut, and I cried rivers. It was a catharsis that no one was expecting, and Brooks definitely spread her acting wings.

What Brooks is able to accomplish as an actor in this scene is beyond me. She keeps you guessing the entire time, and the emotion is so palpable that it's impossible to separate yourself from it. 

But what's truly important is that she is instrumental and a catalyst in every episode. As an actress, she has so much stamina, and so much of herself to give to the role I have no idea how she didn't fall down from exhaustion by the end. I've really never seem anyone so committed and playing the same character for 5 years, but her nuanced performance gives her so much staying power. It boggles the mind as to why we don't acknowledge her more. For such a tender age, you would never expect her to carry a show of over 30 main characters in its most chaotic season, but she managed, and she should be commended for it. There are a lot of brilliant actors that make up the Litchfield prisoners, and usually it is Uzo Aduba (Suzanne 'Crazy Eyes' Warren) who walks away with the Emmy's, which she definitely deserves, but I was taken aback at how well Brooks managed some really tough and complex material. Put it this way, if there was a riot at a prison I'd want to shadow Taystee, and if we were doing acting exercises at Julliard, I'd want to do them with Brooks. She is somewhat of an unsung talent that deserves way more recognition than she gets.

Prolly seen the trailer, but here it is anyway, it premiered in early June on Netflix so your binge should just about be over by now. Happy watching!

Happy Kubrick Day!

Kubrick was a prodigy from the age of two. At 20 he had achieved more than most hope to do in a lifetime, and none of us were prepared for what he had up his sleeve next. 

Every once in a while someone comes along and changes the scope of the entire industry in which they practice. I honestly don't think there will ever be someone more unique and important to the landscape of cinema than Stanley Kubrick. On this day in 1928, in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, Stanley was born to well-to-do middle class parents. He was a bit of a genius from the word go, and though he never excelled in school (in fact would regularly cheat off of his fellow classmates because as he said 'he just wasn't interested) he was a prodigy. By 18 he had quit school and was hustling chess in Washington Square Park, and eventually made enough to buy his own camera. On April 12, 1945, when the world mourned the loss of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stanley, at 16 captured one of the world's most famous photographs. A newspaper vendor sitting in his kiosk hear the West Village surrounded by the headline that one of the greatest presidents was no more. This catapulted his career, and by 19 he was working for Life magazine. He was taking some of the most beautiful and timeless photos that usually it takes a few degrees and decades to achieve in terms of talent. 

The photograph Kubrick took at 16 that landed him a job with Life Magazine.

By his mid-twenties, his parents sold their life insurance and coupled with his chess winnings, Kubrick was finally able to afford to make his first film; a boxing caper called The Day of the Fight. It was pretty abysmal as a freshman filmmaking effort but started to get him noticed and within two years he was signed to a small but reputable production company for which he made Killer's Kiss, The Killing, and Fear and Desire. Now, I know these films sound like nothing you've heard of. I'd like to think they were basically Stanley in training. But it they were instrumental in getting him noticed by Hollywood and they hired him to direct the much troubled production of Spartacus starring Kirk Douglas. Stanley would later say it was the most difficult experience of his life (second only to Lolita) because he was so stagnated by the studios, and being a child prodigy and an unquestionable genius, it wasn't easy for him having everyone else tell him what to do, especially when he was the director. 

Every image Kubrick put on screen has become iconic and unforgettable. This is the infamous still from Lolita when Delores Hayes is first introduced. 

The pain paid off and gave him license to finally do what he wanted on his own terms, and thus starts what we now know as Kubrick the auteur. His next film, was also arguably his most controversial, adapted from the equally controversial novel by Vladimir Nabokov; Lolita and ending with the insanely polarizing Eyes Wide Shut. There's my history lesson for ya'll. If I start blabbing on about Kubrick I'll never stop, so in the interest of saving time I'd like to touch upon just one of his films how ever hard that might be for me because every single one is so unbearably brilliant and creative, it literally hurts my soul that I can't talk about all of them. But as I always say, the films speak for themselves, so after you read this, go ahead and rent 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket, or my personal favorite, Barry Lyndon and do yourself a favor. 

The film I've chosen to talk about is Eyes Wide Shut. I wanted to challenge myself and not gush about a film that I'm deeply in love with nor indulge in the aesthetic brilliance of Dr. Strangelove. I'll just speak from the heart on this one. 

The masks we were as adults, quite literally translated in Eyes Wide Shut with haunting imagery.

Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick's last film, and also arguably his most polarizing, and what a way to go. It was released posthumously, and my dad and I snuck in to a packed theater and sat on the stairs to watch it in 1999. Now, I know it's the last film you want to see with your parents, and at first I have to say the 16-year-old me didn't really dig it, what 16 year old would? One time, an ex-boyfriend of mine once asked; 'what's that film about?' I kind of ignored that question because how can that be answered without a full on dissertation? I think Scorsese describes it best; it's a film about illusion. The way it's photographed suggests that everything might not be in happening in the conscious world. It seems like New York, but it's surreal in a way, it seems like your wife, but what is she hiding behind that smirky stare, what is she trying to tell you? It's that dingy grey area that we all ignore within a relationship. It's not just secrets and lies, and its not disillusion with the person that you once fell in love with. It's us as human beings and that very grey area as to whether we are inherently good or bad. Do we act upon urges? Do we almost? Is that almost just as bad? That's just scraping the tip of the iceberg. Let's talk about aesthetics. 

Both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as principal actors gave the performance of their careers, and were basically put through hell in order to do so. I'm sure that considering those two were still married at the time went home at the end of every day and asked themselves those very questions that they had to explore as the fictional Dr. and Mrs. Hartford. It's not an unraveling or a disillusion of marriage; in fact it's quite the opposite. In the end the two decide to stay together for what reason? It's something we can't possibly rationalize or reconcile, all of which is in tune with the whole mystery aspect of every choice each character makes. We don't know why Bill Hartford goes to that infamous sex party. Perhaps it was because his manhood was threatened, perhaps it was in retribution to his wife telling him that she once lusted after a stranger even while having sex with him. But the truth of the matter is that we don't know. Kubrick is not one to give you easy answers or a way out. 

In my opinion, Kubrick is telling us that we will never be perfect people, and in fact there is no such thing, and even though we think we might lead the ideal life; be a good wife to a successful husband, live in opulence comfortably on the Upper East Side, and on the surface have everything we might ever want or need, below the surface is a festering stench of mendacity, insincerity, and frustration with all of that perfection. Perhaps he's saying that we are all inherently bad people, and we don't act on those impulses that we desperately want to because of one reason or another; in this case it's to save a marriage, but the irony is, the marriage is not even one worth saving. 

Kubrick slowly meditates on this static image of Alice Hartford (Nicole Kidman) as if to scream at his audience; what exactly is behind that devilish smile of hers??

My favorite scene is when Bill and Alice (Cruise and Kidman respectively) smoke pot and she in a haze of anger and frustration fueled by a drug-induced frenzy finally tells her husband exactly what she thinks of him, and of the life that they've built together. 'If you men only knew' she bellows. And the expression on Bill's face says it all; he finally realizes that he was never a husband, and barely even a man and has no right to pontificate about the human condition.

Back to aesthetics, because Kubrick started out as a photographer, he knew exactly how to window dress the mise-en-scene with clever lighting so that everything would appear ominous and somehow dreamlike.  Bill and Alice weren't living a dream, they were living a nightmare which interspersed itself constantly with their waking life of banal dinner parties, small talk, and that daughter of their that neither of them really pay attention to, and once the two worlds collide, the truth comes out. Anyway, that's my half baked theory. And the beauty of the Kubrick catalogue, everyone has one. Watch Room 237; it's a documentary about everyone in the woodworks that has some kind of weird theory about The Shining. And considering it was made in 1980 and people are still arguing about it today as if it was the holy gospel, that shows you how timeless and untouchable every single one of his films was. That's the genius of Kubrick, and that is why his presence in cinema changed its history. Happy birthday sir. Instead of shy away from controversy, he embraced it. And in doing so was met with a great deal of opposition, but in the end we can all acknowledge that he was the one who won. From a satire about the Red Scare to a romantic interpretation of a love story between a middle aged man and a 12 year old girl, Kubrick found the beauty, the comedy, and the pathos in every story he retold. There are a lot of imitators, but there will always only be one.

Below...clips to drive my point home.

Kubrick...

My Doppleganger on OITNB

Brook Soso played by Kimiko Glenn

Let's firstly admit that the hardest thing for a writer to do for scripted TV is something that involves multi-protagonists. Lost nailed it, but those shows are few and far between. Those of us who have watched Orange is the New Black from beginning to end can see that the writer's first avoided this, but soon realized that the gold was in the neck (supporting characters) not the head (Piper Chapman). They also had enough wear with all to utilize the same 'flashback' recipe that worked so well for the Lost cannon. It's simple math. You have a prison, there's clearly more than one person there, and each one of the supporting characters has a reason they ended up in federal corrections, so why not use half of each episode to explore that? And boom, they struck gold. The first season was very flawed, but because it was so innovative, exploratory and unapologetic it was good bait and got all of us hooked. But had they stuck with following around the needy, entitled Chapman (Taylor Schilling) for all three seasons ratings would have plummeted faster than Donald Trump's. 

By the second season, they started giving the more prominent supporting players their own episodes and flashbacks. One in particular that sticks out is Lorna Morello's (Yael Stone). I've heard men who couldn't care less about that show say that they loved that episode and talk about it with vigor. Morello starts off the series as a rather hair-brained quasi-racist Italian from Jersey whom we don't necessarily hate but we definitely don't respect. The hyper-feminine inmate can't stop talking about some boyfriend and their subsequent wedding and we soon realize she has delusions of grandeur. She also seems to be somewhat sexually ambivalent in that she seems totally committed to this nameless faceless man, but allows Nicky Nichols (Natasha Lyonne) to go down on her on a daily basis. She keeps collaging what she calls a 'vision board' for what she absolutely believes will happen upon release, but somewhere deep inside of us we know that something is not exactly lining up. In the second season we learn the gravity of all of it. Turns out Morello was actually a 9th-level stalker of that guy she claimed was her fiancee and was convicted of breaking into his house on several occasions.

One of the most heartbreaking stories of the inmates of Litchfield. Lorna's plight is unforgettable even though totally implausible.

The genius of the writers made us actually feel for this woman in her flashback episode because as the truck driver for Litchfield, she decides to take off one day to that man's house and finds that he's in the middle of planning his wedding to someone else. She puts on the woman's veil and takes the world's saddest bath in their house. And we just can't help but feel sorry for her. 

By the third season, the writer's had covered most backstories of the Litchfield inmates who have more than 4 minutes of screen time with one serious omission. Someone whom I connected to immediately, and someone who talks about her life so much to her inmates that in fact she might not need an actual backstory episode; Brook Soso. She's introduced in Season 2 as a quirky, naive, teeny, and highly educated blabber-mouth who annoys everyone around her, sticks out like a sore thumb, but has a sweet disposition regardless. By season 3, she's finally pushed to her breaking point, by being constantly picked on, dehumanized, and bullied, culminating in Leanne's (Emma Myles) cutting off her hair while she's sleeping, the likes of which we haven't seen since the soap in sock beating of Gomer Pile in Full Metal Jacket. 

Everyone at Litchfield is given some kind of forgiveness and turnaround. Even the homophobic meth head Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning) has a 180 degree change of character, the only one who seems to be actually getting worse is Chapman herself. But Soso seems to have always remained an innocent, never plotting or being vindictive, she's the classic victim, but by the end of the season she turns from victim to survivor and we can't help but applaud that. 

Brook finally stands her ground.

The writers definitely give her her comeuppance though. Considering she's one hell of a smart cookie she retorts to her bully by saying 'it's hard for me not to be condescending when you're literally beneath me right now' when the others are forced to wash the floor. And my personal favorite; 'I can't help that I have Pocahontas hair and it's not my fault you chose Meth over teeth'. 

SPOILER ALERT. Stop reading here if you still haven't finished the season, I mean it's been two months get on it. In the last episode, the barrage of negativity against her takes its toll and Soso, left without any other options takes about a drum of Benadryl, saved by the grace of Poussey, Crazy Eyes, and mostly Taystee. And in the last episode gets inducted into their clique, considering she's been a lone wolf from her induction day. She might not be the most dynamic inmate at the Litchfield Correctional Facility, nor one with any kind of interesting journey to prison. All we find out about her is that she had a strict mother who pushed her since she was old enough to walk.
As women, we can all find one or more characters from the inmates at Litchfield to relate to. I definitely see aspects of myself in Gloria, Nicky, Flaca, and of course Red, but Soso had my heart from the word go. Her story might not be as interesting and dynamic as everyone else's but her character is one that I recognize very well. 

Finding peace in the freedom lake.

In a brief flashback we see her get scolded for playing the piano wrong, and as a child upon whom piano was forced, I totally remember that and can fully relate. Keep in mind I had Russian teachers fresh out of the Soviet Union, so it wasn't pleasant. I personally can also relate to when she straight up asks for help and gets none. With Healy (Michael Harney), the chauvinistic old-timer with ancient morale and a strict disposition telling her that depression is all in her head and she just needs to lighten up and the prison doctor trying to shove SSRI's down her throat, when all she wanted was just a little acceptance, we can understand why Soso felt so trapped. And in that amazing lake scene when she clings arms with Poussey (Samira Wiley) and then physically and metaphorically jumps into her circle, it's such a release. It seems that most things that happen to her, happen unfairly, and perhaps that's why she's not given a backstory. Everyone else is definitely guilty whether they were forced to do what got them incarcerated or not. But Soso is almost like a child. She has an adolescent innocence about her, and even though she can be a know-it-all and seems to never shut the fuck up, we're all glad that Taystee was able to revive her. Let's hope for a full on Soso episode in Season 4. 

5 Film Characters I Relate Too

Of course they are all going to be female, and I could really only pick 5 before it became redundant. I know that one of them is a TV movie character, but still. Also, 2 are based on actual people but honestly I don't give a shit. Also I had to choose from contemporary films because it's just a bit weird to say that I relate to Liv Ullman from Persona or Gena Rowlands from Woman Under the Influence (which I do, but both of those concepts are dated and I wanted something that would also be relatable to my readers. You're welcome :) 

Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) in Julie and Julia (2008). On the cusp of 30 and terrified about it, working as a mid-level nobody in a cubicle with nothing to show for her last 29 years except a tiny kitchen apartment in Queens and a loving orange cat, this New Yorker at a crossroads who was such an admired writer in college only no more, decides to change her life by cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, not devoid of regular meltdowns and panic attacks. In the end, changing her life. As she says in the film 'I was drowning and Julia pulled me out of the ocean.' To which her husband quips; 'Don't get carried away.' Yet another problem I have. Also the obvious parallel that we're both bloggers, if you missed that you're really thick. 

Susannah Kaysen (played by Winona Ryder) in Girl, Interrupted (1999). The chain smoking, sarcastic before sarcasm was a thing, Susannah just doesn't seem like she belongs anywhere or cares about anything, but it's actually the opposite. She probably cares too much and her heart is too big for normal people, all the while her biggest life goal is 'not to end up like her mother' (no offense mom). She sees life as a giant version of the myth of Sisyphus and herself as the one cursed to roll a boulder up a hill only to see it fall down again and repeat for all eternity, and no where else does life feel like that than in LA. Another writer too. 

Harper Pitt (played by Mary-Louise Parker) in Angels in America (2003). The borderline insane wife of a closeted law clerk, Harper constantly seeks life elsewhere...in her mind with the help of copious amounts of valium in 'wee fistfulls'. Not to say I'm a pill popper, but I am a notorious day dreamer, where my fantasy life is far more interesting than my life at hand. I don't have a 'Mr. Lies' (played by Jeffrey Wright) to fly me around to Antarctica, but I'm in constant limbo between the banality of my ordinary life, and the spectacularity of my fantasty life. 

Jasmine (played by Cate Blanchett) in Blue Jasmine (2013). Who didn't relate to Jasmine? I mean that's why she won the Oscar isn't it. We all have a bit of Jasmine in us, in that we may snap at any moment because we as women are delicate beings and if one doesn't handle with care, we can self destruct if all we've done is put our faith in others rather than ourselves to take care of us. Jasmine is devastatingly flawed. The only thing being more devastating is that she doesn't lose hope until the very very end, and even then perhaps not, that she can reinvent herself and change her life for the better despite the cards she's been dealt. The ending shows you that continuing to have hope even in the face of the most hopeless of circumstances is the craziest thing a woman could do. 

Kirsten Dunst as Justine in Melancholia (2011). It's very simple really, though Justine doesn't say much, her actions explain everything about what kind of woman she is, whether it is bathing nude in the blinding light of melancholia or laying motionless face up in a river, Justine is a rare breed of human. She is uncomfortable in fact traumatized by otherwise happy events like her own wedding, and can't stand being near anyone who seems to antagonize her. But in the face of a literal apocalypse she is able to be the source of comfort and unwavering strength to anyone who needs her. In an actual disaster, she would be the bastion of strength because she's aware that there's nothing left but that to do.

Trailers below:

My Top 10 Films Directed By Women

I was inspired by this article: Top 100 Movies of All Time… By Female Directors and also a facebook thread I started a while back that I now can't find where I asked everyone to write a female director to see if we could make it to 100. And we made it well past 100. We all know filmmaking is the boy's club, but some of the best filmmakers out there right now and in the past are women. Trailblazers, innovators, theorists, and originals most of all, here are my top 10 films directed by the gentler sex. 

1. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren) 1943

2. La Souriante Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac) 1923

3. The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino) 1953 

4. Orlando (Sally Potter) 1992

5. The Piano (Jane Campion) 1993 

6. Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce) 1999

7. American Psycho (Mary Harron) 2000

8. At Land (Maya Deren) 1944

9. Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat) 2001

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold) 2009

Honorable mentions below: 

To My Best Friend In The Whole Wide World

Us back in the day.

So I re-watched yesterday's finale of Parks and Recreation this morning at work and realized something really strange. For those of you who don't watch the show, 1. You suck, 2. You'll know it's the one where Anne and Chris leave Pawnee forever and ever and Leslie and Anne have to say unbearably tearful goodbyes to each other. The end nearly killed me, I was bawling which is something I never do in comedies, so bravo Parks and Rec. 

But this morning I noticed something different. Leslie and Anne's goodbyes runs in direct parallel to me having to say goodbye to one of the most important people in my life; my best friend Dominique Lefebvre who has been with me through thick and thin, through all my poor and questionable decisions, and been not only a solid shoulder to cry on, but the warmest pair of arms that hug me. She's stood by me during my best moments (literally), and helped me up from my the floor at my most painful moments. She's a treasure. I sadly haven't seen her in a very long time, basically not since moving away from New York which was in 2010 unless you count our Brief Encounter (one of our favorite films!) in Los Angeles in 2011 where we celebrated my 26th birthday with a bottle of champagne, caviar, and Beard Papa's cream puffs like a baws. 

The three musketeers (our best friend Steven is in the middle) at our favorite go-to, Suite. A gay bar 2 minute walking distance from all of our apartments. Kareoke was a tradition. 

But there's not a day that went by in those almost 4 days where we didn't talk in one way or another, or touch base. So let me just give you some exposition on her. She's French Canadian, and now has to move back to Montreal this Sunday. But, because of Gchat, Skype, and Facebook, I'm sure we'll survive...and yet it's the end of an era! 

She's a filmmaker, as well as a lyricist. She is extremely talented and we met completely by accident when I crashed an MFA mixer before our classes even started at Dodge Hall in Columbia University's School of the Arts. Someone had suggested leaving the bar everyone was at and finding another one, and me having lived in NY for three years already, new the perfect place. We ended up seated next to each other at the now closed Cooper 35/Asian Pub (Rest in Peace) near the Bowery, drinking 4$ mojitos and chatting and then all spending the night at another friend's place. Since that night, we were inseparable. We got lots of teases for being joined at the hip even though we weren't even in the same department, and when mommie dearest came to visit NY she immediately fell in love with her, and my mom is hard to please. 

Freckles on her graduation day so pretty and proud!

But more about Dom, or 'Snickers' as I call her, which she hates so I basically stick to 'Freckles' (we're Lost fans, her name for me is 'Blondie', thanks Sawyer). Anyway, she is extremely talented, writing and directing as well as producing a many shorts during her time in Columbia, all which were brilliant. In fact, I've written about them before, you can find them here: Make Way For The Gossip Queen. I know that wherever she is she's going to go far and accomplish great things. Her tenacity, sense of humor, originality, loyalty, and creativity round out such an amazing person that I am so unbelievably lucky to call my friend, that I have no doubt that whatever she seeks out to accomplish, she will. I love you sister, and remember, that maid of honor promise still stands :) I'll miss you more than I already do, but I know that no matter what (as sappy as this is about to sound) we'll always be as close as we were when we lived two streets apart in New York. And in the words of our favorite band: Thank you for the music. 

Here's her website where you can see what kind of work she does: 

Dominique Lefebvre

And just for old times, here's something for you Freckles: