 7 Years |
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I don't think I have much to say, but I felt like writing an entry since it was seven years ago that I posted my first one online. Crazy. So my little brother and sister and I went to see World Trade Center last night. I'm still not sure what compelled me to be interested in seeing it. I haven't read any reviews yet, but I hear that they're mostly positive. I did catch Joel Siegel (assclown) saying that it helped him to feel optimistic about the human race, and that tipped me toward wanting to see it because who doesn't want to feel that way? I think it was a combination of things: I wanted to check out the new movie theater, I wanted to hang out with my siblings, I really like Maggie Gyllenhaal, and I don't know. It seemed like the thing to do. I'm not sorry I saw it, but I didn't really think it was all that great. (Spoilers included.) Stepping aside from the issues relative to the commercialization of a tragedy, I'm trying to evaluate it simply as a movie. And I have to say, as a person who sometimes greatly relishes the cheese factor, there was way too much cheesification in this film. I usually really like Maria Bello, but she was just not used properly in this. Her eyes, while they might have been her actual eyes, were so startlingly blue that it looked like they must have been a product of CGI or strange contacts. It was weird. I don't know. Something about her performance just didn't sit well with me. Michael Pena was outstanding; if anyone deserves any kind of recognition come awards time, he's the one. The thing I disliked the most was the whole storyline of the Marine. I felt like it would have been much more effective for the audience to meet him when he shows up with his flashlight and finds the men. The whole backstory was so heavyhanded and barfalicious that it really took me out of the movie. Even if that is how it really happened (feeling God call him to New York while staring at the cross in church) and even if he was the only guy left at Ground Zero that first night (which seems weird) until the other Marine showed up (CRAZY CRAZY Tom Cruise's cousin from Lost), it was just too much. He felt like a video game character to me instead of a person. I don't think we were supposed to laugh when he said, "WE ARE MARINES. You are our mission," but we did. I have to say, the best things in the movie were the characterization of the rescue workers and the overall realism of the performances by the actors who played them. I liked seeing Moonlight Graham as the paramedic, and Stephen Dorff was excellent (I know!) as an emergency worker. They're who I felt for the most, because they just climbed down there amidst the fire and concrete, in that darkness, and knew they could die at any second but still worked like hell to get the survivors out. I think Stone did a great job of capturing that. So, overall. Good: the actors except for Maria Bello (even though she is usually awesome), especially the men who played the cops and the medics and the firefighters, the re-creation of the look of the fallen towers, and the make-up job on Pena and Cage's faces as they lay in the rubble. All first class. Bad: the melodramatic Marine portrayal, too many swelling heroic music cues, the hallucinatory conversation between Cage and Bello, and Cage's utterly fake pearly white veneers that were completely unrealistic for a Port Authority cop and distracting to a serious fault. Maybe I'll take some time to anaylze what this movie means on a larger emotional or societal scale and whether or not I think it should have been made on another day. It was not a terrible movie and definitely had some very good parts, but overall, it was too Michael Bay for me. A word on Stephen Dorff -- I almost didn't recognize him, but the truth is that I have always had a soft spot for him because of that movie where he played the teenager who'd been kidnapped unbeknownst to the knowledge of the parents who raised him and then goes to find his real parents (mom: Patty Duke). I loved this movie and used to watch it every time it came on. And ... here it is. Gotta love the IMDb. Anyway. I had my employee evaluation today, and it was very positive. I know I've said it before, but there is no greater boss on earth than mine. In a society where so many employees live in that TPS Report-esque world of workplace hell, I am so damn fortunate to work for hands down the most brilliant person I have ever known and certainly one of the kindest, most gracious, and most understanding individuals on the planet. My heart will be broken when she retires, which she could deservedly do any day now, and it will certainly be this organization's loss. And I just got a raise, which is honestly just gravy. I know I won't work here forever, but I know I'm lucky to have ever worked with her. And this is not just because she said nice things about me on my evaluation! It's mostly because in seven years, there has never been one moment when I haven't felt completely supported by her, when she hasn't had the answer to any random and bizarre question I have asked, when she hasn't taught me patiently how to do something completely foreign to me and seemingly impossible to understand, when she hasn't been totally understanding like when I was going bananas and needed to go to my therapy appointments during our busiest time of the year, or when I've witnessed or heard her treating anyone with anything but utter respect. She is so respected throughout this building and throughout this state because she is just the best, no contest, end of story. There has never been and will never be anyone who can do what she does better. I hear that other people in other areas of the organization are afraid to work for her because she is perceived as brutal in her corrections, but correcting something that's wrong isn't brutal. It's what she's supposed to do, to teach us how to be better. Those people are just dumb. When something we write bleeds with the red ink of her pen, that's a good thing, because it means it doesn't go out making no sense or doing something stupid. I don't know. Maybe there are bosses out there as great as she is. But really. I doubt it. Tonight I'm going over to watch my sister try on wedding dresses that she ordered online. Ack! Wild. I told an old friend of hers the other day (who used to be and might still be in love with her) when I ran into him at the Vietnamese place that I have no reservations about her future husband. None! Zero. It is so refreshing and relieving to feel this way. I think if I did have any reservations about him that it would really suck. Would I keep them to myself? Would I tell her? Ugh. I don't even want to think about it. I am so glad she has found someone who loves super heroes, speaks Spanish, has a nice family, knows things about the world, is a deep thinker, is a flaming liberal, and as mentioned previously, has one of the best laughs ever to reach my ears. Not to mention that he madly loves my sister and seemingly would do anything for her. Thank God one of my siblings is in a healthy and functional relationship for once! It is a beautiful thing.
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