10 June
God, I'm exhausted.
Thursday, as I said, I worked until 12.30a, and then got into work at 9.30a yesterday because last night was my only night off until the show closes and I didn't want to stay too late.
Of course, I ended up staying late anyway, working until 7.30p, just hanging around until 8.30p. I wanted to go downtown to my darkroom and dump my film off and then catch a movie of some sort. I thought about seeing Gladiator again, but I thought that if I did, I might run out of readers!
The problem is that there is damn well nothing playing these days! Gone in 60 Seconds opened yesterday to a big one star from the Daily News (I wasn't doing Rate-a-Trailer™ then, but I thought at the time that it looked like Con-Air--a big bunch of noisy nothing), and I've seen about everything left worth seeing.
Except for Hamlet. So I headed downtown to get to my darkroom, which was just as closed as closed can be, as I was unaware that it closes at 7p rather than 10p on Fridays in the summer, but it took me longer than I expected to get down there, and I didn't have time to get to Hamlet!
So I went to the UA a couple of blocks away, as the 19th St., a ten-plex, was playing exactly three movies, Small Time Crooks, MI2 (seen it, seen it) and the dreaded Gone in 60 Seconds. The UA was showing The Big Kahuna (had missed the start of the last screening), Dinosaur, Shanghai Noon, U-571 and Passion of Mind (none of which I would have been caught dead in), Gladiator (would have had to wait over an hour for a screening that wasn't sold out), and Sunshine, the new Ralph Fiennes picture. Now, I had heard mixed things, but I'd go see Ralph Fiennes read the phone book, so I bought my ticket and went in.
Unfortunately, watching him read the phone book would have ultimately been more entertaining.
The movie is about three generations of a Hungarian Jewish family, the Sonnenscheins (translation, Sunshine, get it!), and each generation has a Ralph Fiennes in it, he plays father and son and grandson, and he really is extremely good--he makes all three roles completely different, but the film itself was just completely ponderous and neverending.
It was all assimilation and Hungary and special tonic and WWII and fencing and Communism and atrocities and I wasn't ready to kill myself by the time it was over, like I am with really bad movies, I just was deadened. The movie beat me into submission.
There were excellent performances, particularly Rosemary Harris, who was luminous, and her real life daughter, Jennifer Ehle, as the younger version of the same character, James Frain and John Neville as the older and younger versions of the same character were also excellent, and Miriam Margolyes just plain doesn't work enough.
Also in the good column were several extremely hot love scenes by Ralph Fiennes #3, since ol' Ralph does desperate, yearning sex while still wearing clothing better than anyone I have ever seen, plus you get to see his dick in one scene, which is swell, but for the fact that the scene in question is of him being tortured by Nazis, so it wasn't all sexy or anything.
William Hurt is terrific, as usual, and I love him with all my soul, but any film where you think "Hey, there's Bill Hurt, that sure perks up the picture!" is a film in trouble, as he's not generally what one would call a firecracker.
And my God, Ralph #2 is in love with this woman who is so tiresome that when she says to him "Perhaps you will kill me one day, when you tire of me," I was begging God that that moment had at last come.
The real problem was that I was certain that the fucking thing would never end and that it would just be generation after generation of Jewish Hungarian Ralph Fiennes', each with a different sort of facial hair.
I have extremely good time sense, (which is surprising, since I'm always late everywhere), but I can usually tell within ten minutes or so what time it is, no matter how long it's been since I've seen a clock. Well, when I left that theatre, I didn't know if the film had been three hours long, or five hours long, or several days long. I didn't know if I had missed work and rehearsals and everyone was worried or what. Was it still June?
Turns out that it was something over three hours, and I didn't get home until 2.15a.
Rate-a-Trailer™ is short today, 'cause there were only four trailers after the ten commercials (what is this, England?), and three of them, What Lies Beneath, Thirteen Days, and The Patriot have all already been Rated. So there is only one.
Jesus' Son
This seems to be a dreamlike film about a drug addict and his various friends and the girl that makes his heart go pitty-pat, and if it's half as good as the trailer makes it look, it'll be transcendent. I had heard of the film, but Billy Cruddup doesn't exactly make me rush to the theatre, and I'm sick of movies about heroin addicts. Now, I'm dying to see it.
What can't you wait to see this summer?
And we're still talking about celebrity encounters, how we suck up insults, and one question turned into a Survivor discussion, so I separated the discussion.
Today's horoscope:
Be willing to make changes. Sensitivity and a different perspective could add zest to your interactions with your beloved.
One year ago today:
And people think New Yorkers are crazy...
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Last Updated Sat 10 June 22:47:09 2000