Cynthia Hawkins

… that I’m late in posting here.  First, I offer a few alternatives to the late-summer, early-fall movie slump that plagues us each year in Watch This, Not That.  Then, after seeing Inception no less than three times (so far), I’ve finally figured it out: there is no figuring it out.  Also, I call Christopher Nolan a smart-ass cheat, and I mean that endearingly.  Lastly, for now, I explain why my grandfather crush on Robert Duvall should be yours in a review of his latest film Get Low.

Ralph Fiennes as Francis Dollarhyde, aka the Red Dragon, hastens, naked and tattooed, down a flight of stairs, his johnson wagging in every direction as if sketching an imaginary landscape. It’s like a character all its own in this scene, Fiennes’ member, with its own momentum and its own agenda (getting ready for the starving artist’s show in the lobby of the Marriott) and most likely its own spot in the end credits. I don’t know about the latter. I didn’t stay long enough to find out. There are some things you just don’t want to know about your friends, like the maximum circumference their penis can chart.

My friendship with Fiennes began the way most friendships begin, as a mere idea hatched in Jane Austen’s drawing room. “Take a turn about the room with me, my dear Margaret,” I said to my other friend who is not Ralph as I latched an arm around hers.

Read the rest at The Nervous Breakdown and take a gander at this photo a bartender in a Galway pub took of Margaret and me, plotting mischief, days from the “Ralph incident” and therefore still smiling:

Just like pretty much everyone, I was all over this guy in the late ‘80s.  The machismo oozing like a held note on a soundtrack saxophone.  The steely-eyed ruggedness.  The deep wrinkles already etched into his forehead as if to say, hell yes, I’ve been chopping wood for three days with nothing but a butter knife. The sort of offbeat sense of humor that gets lesser men quietly ushered out the side doors of convenient stores and libraries with their arms around their cardboard mats and bagged whiskey.

“What did one shepherd say to the other shepherd? Let’s get the flock out of here!”  You know when Mel said it, it couldn’t have been funnier.

And don’t forget that lopsided smirk of the potentially deranged.  And I mean deranged in a good way.  Riggs deranged.  Deranged like I’m-going-to-trick-this-suicidal-man-to-back-off-the-ledge-by-acting-crazier-than-he-is kind of brilliantly, methodically deranged.  Oof!  Color me Caramel Shimmer number 58 if these weren’t the good old days when Mel was a mixed bag of awesome and Lethal Weapon ruled.  With my help.

Lethal Weapon I, then II, and by Bird on a Wire, I had grown spectacularly resplendent.  I fluttered in the air of our collective importance, dusted his shoulders, nestled in his shirt collars, sheltered his eyes in a visor-like flip.  They had wind machines on set just for me.  Wind machines and Aquanet and a team on standby with all manner of hair pick.  I was carefully crafted.  Mel was carefully crafted.  But then … you could see the cracks in the façade beginning to form.  Well, if you were as close to the man as I was, anyway.  I mean, didn’t you ever wonder why I’d begun to make my slow retreat after that?  Maybe I was born in ’86, but I knew damn well what he was implying when he narrowed his gaze at the mirror and accused me of being Richard Lewisy.

So I left.  Little by little.  Sure, I could have peeled off all at once like an old band-aid from an ankle bone, but every time I’d resolved to be gone for good he’d lay it on thick with all the desperate primping and the Rogaine.  I left like a shoplifter gathering courage in a Walmart dressing room – one stuffed pant leg after another until there was nothing left to skim past the detectors with on my final run but me and an egg-shaped wad of pantyhose.  Piecemeal, baby, that’s how I did it.  Home free.  No second chances.  No looking back.  Then, just like pretty much everyone, I watched as cans of spray-on hair and collections of plugs tried to fill the void I’d made, as he refused to go the way of Bruce Willis and just embrace it, as the steely-eyed, rugged, deranged machismo of old began to sharpen itself into the steely-eyed, rugged, deranged machismo of grocery store tabloids.

This can’t be a coincidence, his nosedive into insane-with-anger territory and my withdrawal.  I blame myself.  I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, if only I’d stuck around, Mel and I could have kept it business in the front and party in the back and crazy locked away in the basement.

Garage-sale variety olive-green corduroy, elbow patches, hems too short. His jacket pocket produced answers one afternoon like strips of paper from cracked fortune cookies. The pocket on the right, to be exact. It had been an ordinary jacket, but then as he stood on the corner of Huisache and Market Streets, angled toward the vast parking lot and pausing to pinch the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, he was thinking,what the hell have I done? And the second he jammed his hands into his jacket pockets the right one answered with a small paper ribbon lapping at his knuckles. He thumbed it free. Unfolded it. You have made an ass of yourself, it read in the small, even print of capital letters. At first, he’d thought announcing a weight-loss competition for the women of his office had been a good idea. Now his pocket confirmed what the sick sprawl in his ribs and Annette Demarcolo’s middle finger had told him already. It was not.

Read the rest of “Deep Pockets” at Fictionaut.

Meet Hannah, the only kid I know who takes notes in movies.  As bad as I am now, in terms of movie nerd-dom, she’s destined to be three times worse.  I recently took Hannah, who has quickly become “Avatar: The Last Airbender” obsessed, to a screening of The Last Airbender and asked her a few questions afterward to get a feel for the differences between the series and the film.  You can find our conversation below and my review of The Last Airbender at The Nervous Breakdown.

Cynthia:  So, what did you think?

Hannah:  I really don’t like that a fish died.

C:  Does a fish not die in the series?

H:  He turned into that little circle of peace thing.  What’s that circle of peace thing with the two parts?

C:  You must mean yin and yang.

H:  Yeah, yin and yang.  That’s what it did in the series, but –

C:  But we don’t want to give anything away for people who want to see it.  So you’re saying that scene wasn’t like the series.  What else wasn’t like the series?

H:  Um …

C:  Without giving things away.

H:  Well, Prince Zuko only had a small scar.  It didn’t really look burned like it looks in the series.

C:  His scar wasn’t prominent enough in the movie?

H:  No.

C:  Okay, but this sounds like you’re just finding little things that are different. What about the story, the overall story and what happens?

H:  Well, usually their visits to the different villages take a bit longer.  I was surprised the movie went by really fast.  A lot faster.

C:  And the big battle in the end – does that happen in the series?

H:  No.  That doesn’t happen.

C.  Oh.  Really?  That doesn’t happen at all?

H:  No …. Well.  I haven’t watched it all.

C:  So tell me what you’ve watched.

H:  I’ve watched all of Book One except the last episode.*

C:  So you haven’t gotten there yet.  It could still happen.

H:  Yes.  Probably.

C:  So what did you think of all the characters?  Were they what you expected?

H: The brother was a little different than I expected.

C:  Yes, he was quite serious in the movie.

H:  Yeah.  He was more serious.  And also when he met the princess, she was engaged.

C:  Oh.  So there was a lot more story to it.

H:  Yes.

C:  Well, sometimes they can’t put everything in because then it’d be six hours.

H:  But that’d be okay.

C:  What about Aang?

H:  Oh, well, in the series his name is …

C:  They pronounce it “ayng” in the series but “ahng” in the movie, but it’s the same name.   I really liked him in the movie.  I thought he was super cute.

H:  Actually, I like him better in the series.  I think he looked better animated than in real life.

C:  Really?  Why do you think so?

H:  I don’t know. He just does.

C:  Interesting.  You know what?  I liked him far better in the movie than in the series, because in the series he’s a little bit … obnoxious.  A lot obnoxious.  He’s not obnoxious in the movie at all.  He’s really sweet.  What do you think?

H:  Yeah.  I think he might have been sweeter in the movie, and in the series he gets fussy sometimes and I don’t really like that.

C:  You were telling me something about that earlier, that you thought he could be a real big brat.

H:  Yes!

C:  In the series, you said he did things like withheld information from the others that was really important.  Things like that.

H:  He did that several times.  I think because in the series, it’s longer than the movie.  If they don’t have time to explain him, then you just wouldn’t like him when he does things like that.

C:  So, right after the movie, you turned to me and made the “so-so” sign with your hand. Why did you do that?

H:  It was kind of iffy in some parts.

C:  Why?

H:  There were things that weren’t in the movie that were in the series that I missed.

C:  A lot of things or just some things?

H:  Just some things.

C:  Overall, would you recommend it to someone who already likes the series?

H:  Yes!

C:  Why?

H:  Well, if I could forget about the iffy parts, then I would recommend it because it really is a very good movie.  Is that it?  Because I wanted to say something else.

C:  Sure.  Say something else.

H:  I liked Appa, the flying bison.  He looked exactly the same.  And the special effects for Appa were really good.  Okay.  That’s it.  Hannah out.

*Hannah watched the last episode of Book One the day after this exchange and reported, aghast, that, “There is no big wave!”

Fellow San Antonians:  Nicole Holofcener’s film Please Give is now playing in our area, and if you missed my review of it at The Nervous Breakdown you can still read it right here.

You know what I’m doing at 5 am?  Not sleeping.  Like I haven’t been sleeping for the past hour and only intermittently for hours before that.  You know why?  Because when I have been sleeping I’ve been dreaming that my life is not real, that I’m in a “sideways” kind of Matrixy/Sixth-Sense purgatory trying to work it all out.  Thank you “LOST”!

That said, I’ll weigh in on the series finale (spoilers aplenty).  I would just like to take a moment to tell my husband I was SO right.  “You aren’t going to learn any more about the island than you already know,” I said to him hours before the finale began, “So, move on.”  And it would seem moving on was the whole theme.  What we thought was an alternative reality perhaps created by Jughead’s explosion turned out to be a waiting place for the afterlife in which everyone needed to find enlightenment – in other words, their memories of their real lives.  Aptly named (if not comically, as Kate pointed out) Christian Shepherd fills Jack in:  Jack’s dead in this alternate world as is everyone else.  Some of them died before Jack, others after.  The island was real for all its wonkiness, and these are the people who’d meant the most to each other in life from the gravity of their experiences together.  I’m guessing Hurley and Ben lived awhile after Jack as the new caretakers of the island since they indicate as much to each other:   “You made a great number two,” “and you were a great number one,” and so forth – and no I’m not going to make a bathroom joke.  You go right ahead.

Did the plane make it?  Let me tell you something.  The only thing that can survive a submarine blast, or any kind of doomsday scenario, are the cockroaches and crusty codger Frank Lapidus.  In any kind of disaster, I want to be standing right beside that man.  Can he fly that plane off the island?  With a little duct tape, hell yes!  He’s Frank Lapidus!  But does it make it?  Kate tells Jack in sideways afterlife, “I’ve missed you so much,” which would seem to indicate that she spent enough time to “miss him so much” after leaving him on the island.  But then again, when Claire gives birth to Aaron in sideways afterlife (gah!?) this seems to be the big reunion with him she’s been waiting for since being separated from him on the island, as in perhaps she doesn’t make it back to reunite with three-year-old Aaron in real-world L.A.

Okay, okay, probably none of this is new or insightful and there are a plethora of more detailed, more wonderful blog posts regarding the “LOST” ending … but it’s five a.m., and I’m thinking aloud!  Cut me some slack here.  I did love this as a last episode, though.  I love that just when I guessed what’s coming next I was surprised.  And I thought no one could ever pull a Sixth-Sense on me again.  The fact that Lindelof and Cuse managed to?  Brilliant.  Now shoo so I can get some sleep.

So, my latest at The Nervous Breakdown, If the Shoe Fits …, was inspired by two things:  my surprisingly impulsive denial after a friend said to me, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were that into Star Trek” and then my daughter announcing the other day, “My mind is full of logic, like Spock,” while making the shape of a heart with both hands.  I thought it’d be funny to discuss the ways in which Star Trek intersects with everyday life while at the same time trying to pretend it doesn’t.  Hopefully I pulled it off, and if I didn’t you can just enjoy this photo I’ve titled “Damnit Jim!”:

Now at The Nervous Breakdown, my essay on preserving the integrity of my Netflix queue:

Mine was the first family on our street to own a VCR.  I’d walk the neighborhood kids in and show them the buttons on the player the size of an industrial microwave oven.  “We can record stuff on T.V.,” I’d explain, head cocked back with the smugness of a Scorcese gangster, “and play it back.”  The irony being we had nothing to record, although we had found an airing of Nighthawks on a Saturday matinee.  We were the first with a VCR, but the very last with cable.  Dad was holding out on principle.  “Pay for television?  Only a fool would pay for something that you should get for free,” he’d say before queuing up Nighthawks.  Again.

Radio Shack was the only place we could rent movies after an extensive application process that delved back three generations and required your home, wrist watch, and teeth fillings as collateral.  It wasn’t long before we’d gone through all ten titles in stock, half of which starred Don Knotts.

“All right,” dad said one afternoon as the near-useless VCR sat, staring back at him, big-buttoned in silent mockery.  “We’ll do it.”  And he didn’t mean we’d be getting cable.

Back we went to Radio Shack where he planned to shell out the $100 required for buying a movie on VHS.  One we could keep forever and shove under the noses of the neighborhood kids!  Except mom and dad bought the Jane Fonda Workout.  I dragged my hand all the way down the banister to the parking lot in protest and accidentally cut my finger on a rusty nail.  I had to get a tetanus shot because of Jane Fonda.

At any given moment in my house for months, you could walk through my living room and find someone doing butt squeezes with Jane in her belted leotard.  And I’ll tell you something no one outside of my family has ever known.  My dad owned silver tights for the purpose.  (I mean really, dad, one-hundred bucks on Jane Fonda when Cannonball Run was sitting right there on the shelf next to it?) read more here