"Snobbery is looked down upon."

Internet, probably you should all watch Metropolitan.

I watched the trailer for The Great Gatsby yesterday, like I guess everyone of a certain stripe did, and what struck me most about it was that when you finally see Gatsby, I didn’t see Gatsby, I just saw Leonardo DiCaprio. It was a weird letdown. The rest of the trailer is like this tiny beautiful pounding world but every second he’s on the screen—and this is all happening in less than two minutes or whatever, of course—I am just ripped right out of it. I didn’t even know I had feelings about this casting choice until now. So I was thinking about this, and thinking about who I might have liked to see as Gatsby more than DiCaprio, and that’s when I realized that even when I read the book (in high school, and not ever since), I had in my mind a picture of what all the characters looked like, but even when the image in my mind didn’t match up with the casting of the role (for some reason I always imagined Tom Buchanan to be much older, rounder, and redder than Joel Edgarton—not sure why), it was less jarring than seeing an actual person, any actual person, physically embodying Gatsby. Because overall I never formed a picture of him in my mind. He was just a generally man-shaped blob, a shadow with a smudged-out face. I was never able to get a grip on him. Which I guess is maybe the whole thing. Although if I had to pick how he would be rendered on the big screen I guess it would be via Kate Beaton illustration. He could interact with all the live characters like the weird penguin dance scene in Mary Poppins! But with more gin.

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My Husband Knows Me

“What are you watching?”

“Tiny Furniture.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a movie.”

“Oh, I thought it might be a reality show. About people who make tiny furniture.”

“No, it’s not, it’s a movie.”

“But you’d totally watch a reality show about people who make tiny furniture, wouldn’t you.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Meaghan posted something about this book by Sarah Manguso, Two Kinds of Decay, which sounds like something I’d like to read, although if I ever do that it will ultimately probably be because of the cover. It looks so much like this great Evil Dead poster that Mondo did a while ago, which has been sold out for forever, and copies of which, last time I checked, were going for some preposterous amounts of money on eBay. What’s the point of this? I’m not sure. I just like these creepy hands and trees a lot, I guess is all I’m saying.

austinkleon:

VAN MORRISON HIGH KICK!

Sorry, did I not tell you this was becoming an All The Last Waltz, All The Time, Forever blog?

This is a trailer for Chimpanzee, a new Disney documentary that follows a pack of chimpanzees in the wild, including one lil baby chimp whose mother is killed by a leopard and who is then inexplicably adopted by the family’s adult male leader, who begins to shirk his leadership duties to take care of the little guy, who he is supposedly not evolutionarily-biologically wired to give a shit about! Amazing! Also is one hell of a wasted opportunity for the use “Solsbury Hill,” which we should all recognize as the all-time greatest trailer soundtrack to a feel-good father/son family drama. 

"When given the choice between watching Babe, Jumanji, Now and Then, or Casper in 1995, children across the country would black out, become comatose, and wake up days later in the hospital after being diagnosed with stress-related exhaustion. As the rats on Hoggett’s farm sang, “If I had words to make a day for you, I’d sing you a day filled with repeat viewings of Babe, Jumanji, Now and Then, and Casper. Then I’d order us a Bigfoot from Pizza Hut."

The Hairpin | Why 1995 Was Probably the Best Year Ever for Movies

THIS IS ALL TRUE EXCEPT THE JUMANJI PART. Jumanji is the worst. I know I am alone in holding this opinion—apparently not EVERYONE had their first panic attack while seeing the movie in theaters on New Year’s Eve with their parents—but I stand by it. The Chris Van Allsburg book is just lovely, though.

…And here comes the dawning realization that my first panic attack may have resulted from the horror of seeing, for the first time, a beloved book thoroughly bloated and mangled in its big-screen adaptation. Oh my god, I was a total snob! Such a little high-strung snob!

The movie’s still awful, though. Awful.

Joe and I watched Drive last night.

"Some college students manage to persuade the town’s big businessman, A. J. Arno, to donate a computer to their college. When the problem- student, Dexter Riley, tries to fix the computer, he gets an electric shock and his brain turns to a computer; now he remembers everything he reads. Unfortunately, he also remembers information which was in the computer’s memory, like the illegal business Arno is involved in."

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) - Plot Summary