And maybe someday I can get mine to be as lusciously curly as hers is.

Of course, mine will be a solid grey by then. But I’m working on it.

(That’s Lenora Crichlow from the UK Being Human.)

So I asked him to answer a few questions about how he got started in playwriting.

§

Did you really start writing plays in Carol’s class, or did you do it before that? 

I wrote a play, once, when I was in second grade. It was about three pumpkins on a fence before Halloween. That’s all I remember about it and it never got performed. My hiatus lasted until I took the playwright class with Carol Wolf.

My fifth grade play was about the Hope Diamond. It did get performed but nobody had any idea what the Hope Diamond was, so it wasn’t a successful production. Did you do a lot of other types of writing before you started writing plays?

I did. I wrote short stories infrequently and a rough draft of a rough novel.

Why did you decide to start writing plays?

So the first assignment was to write a three page play. I brought it that next week to class and I was terrified that people were going to laugh at me and tell me what a horrible piece of garbage it was. It wouldn’t have mattered. Just seeing people standing up and reading my words, reacting to them as they read was instantly addicting.

How did you decide to start sending them out? Lots of people took Carol’s class and never sent their stuff out.

This was Carol’s fault. I had one short play and she said I should send it to Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre’s Eight Tens @ Eight competition. If she hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have and that might have been the end of it. But, the play got accepted and I was like, “Wow! Where else can I send plays to?” So I began looking for places.

Where did you find the places to keep sending them?

I started on the internet. I use Yahoo! because I have a sentimental streak. And just type “ten-minute play submissions.” Then I started clicking through the results and found places that way. I joined the Chicago Playwright Center (www.pwcenter.org @ $60/year) because they have a “playwright opportunities” posting site where places looking for plays post their openings. I purchased a book, A More Perfect Ten, by Gary Garrison, which has about a dozen opportunities in the back. Also, the Dramatists Guild Resource Directory lists opportunities. And lately I’ve been watching a form En Avant Plawrights (http://enavantplaywrights.yuku.com/) Where opportunities are also listed.

You’re 4 for 4 (I think?) with the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theater 8 10s at 8 Festival, and your play “The Fruits of War” has been performed on 6 continents. I assume you’ve had other plays performed in various venues. What makes your plays so awesome in terms of getting produced?

6 continents? You flatter me. But, three continents, 5 countries.

Dammit. Really thought you had the 6 continent thing going.

No other play has been [as] successful [as The Fruits of War]. But most of them have gone on to have several productions. I don’t know for sure, but I think that it may be a simplicity of set requirements in most cases and a universal appeal. Most of these plays don’t take place in a specific place but they touch on values and ideals that exist around the world and the directors and actors can put their local touch on the play. For The Fruits of War, although it’s always the same script, it is seen very differently in Brisbane, Australia compared to Chennai, India to Oakland, California.

How do you go about writing your plays? I assume like most of us you get your inspiration from that small “Writers’ Ideas” store in Madison, WI. How long does it take you? Yes, it’s the horrifying “Your writing process” question.

Depends on the play. In every case except for the first play I spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of the play, what it is that I’m feeling and what it is I’m trying to say. And I try to think of a way to say it that might give it a twist. The Fruits of War is about the stupidity of retaliating against an enemy because they retaliated against you. The concept would pass as a farce if so many lives didn’t pay the cost.

So how do I make people see it differently. Then I write. The Fruits of War was written in a week of mornings as I sat in the truck I used to drive. I wrote furiously until it was time to drive. Then I typed it up and took it to class. I got feed back, rewrote, got feedback, sent it to Short + Sweet and the rest is, well, interesting.So ideas come from everywhere. I listen and allow myself to react to what I hear and read. Then I ponder and sometimes it’s short and sometimes I may ponder on an idea for a year or more. Oh, and I often try to write more than I need since it’s easier – my opinion – to edit out rather than to fluff it up.

I always find the plays that I write the fastest tend to get the best reception. Does it work that way for you, or do you rewrite a lot?

Mostly, yes, I agree. I think that’s because those plays are coming straight through from the sub-conscious straight to the fingers. But bad plays happen like that, too. The real trick is to be willing to abandon the play/idea when it turns out to be a dud. On my computer I have 30 files for 30 plays. I’ve only have 9 ten-minute plays that have been produced. Half those files hold stinkers that I may never work on again. There isn’t any reason to go back when there are new ideas already percolating in front of me.

What about for sending them out? Do you keep a schedule or a checklist? Like, “I must send out 5 plays per month…” 

I keep a submission record for each play in the file with the play. I keep track of when I sent the play, to whom I sent it, and when the production is. Most places don’t tell you you’ve been rejected. So when I go through the file and see a date has passed I know the play has been rejected. You should also not be afraid of submitting to multiple places at once. Everyone wants an unproduced play. I figure that if I hit the jackpot and two or more accept the play at the same time, the table are reversed and it is I, the playwright, that gets to do some rejecting.

Best thing about writing plays?

Seeing the play on the stage. Knowing that I am part of a creative process that includes other people who are compelled by what I’ve written to bring it to the stage and in turn affect an audience. (Or should that be infect an audience? Hm.)

Worst? 

A constant fear that I’m going to run out of ideas. It’s a constant fear that eats at me while I am hastily writing down yet another idea for a play that I won’t be able to get to for a year or more because of the dozen other ideas I’ve already committed myself to.

You’ve clearly done well with your 10-minute plays. Are you going to move into one-act or full-length plays? Or is it simply easier to get produced writing 10-minute plays?

I’ve written three full-length plays and they have gotten progressively less awful. What’s nice about ten-minute plays is that you have a greater chance of getting produced. (In Short + Sweet Sydney they produce over a hundred plays in a five week period. That would never happen with full-length plays.) There’s not much call for one-acts that I can see. I’ve written a couple and they haven’t been produced. But I do submit them when I can. Also, consider my production resume – which theatres ask to see when you submit a full-length play. I have 9 plays and 30+ productions. That looks good and I hope will improve my chances of getting a longer look when my play lands on some artistic director’s desk.

Every screenwriter in Hollywood was first a playwright. (Seriously. First thing out of their mouths.) Any plans to start screenwriting? 

As an evolution of writing I think that would be a step after I have had a full-length play produced somewhere. It’s a different mindset as I look at it. With a screenplay you can literally be in Paris and then in Moscow in moments and jump back again. You can have characters with one line and are never seen again. Frugality does not seem to be a watchword for screenplays. And the formatting is different and the guardians of the gates are different. But, yes, I’d like to try to write a couple screenplays to see how that feels.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how useful is “I’m the playwright” as a pickup line?

I’m married so I don’t have to worry about it. But, I think when it comes to being in the theatre world, in small theatre, to say – and of course casually, as if almost by accident – “I’m the playwright,” will indeed get you attention. I’ve been taken out for coffee and inundated with questions. I will say this, though: if my play was the worst one of the night, I’d keep my mouth shut.

So…has this happened to you yet?

No, it hasn’t happened to me. I have had directors come and tell me that the actors are scared/nervous once they find out the playwright is in the theatre. That makes me wonder what kind of playwrights they’ve dealt with before. I’ve been fortunate so far.Oh, in one of the Short + Sweet festivals my play did get the lowest votes by the audience. But I wasn’t there.

(In fact, I had a discussion with a friend that I can’t even remember the last time I found an actor so attractive I’d like to get trapped in an elevator with him. Hers: Alexander Skarsgard.)

I think the first time I discovered Matt Damon was the most interesting guy on screen was in Dogma, when he and Ben Affleck were so much more interesting than the crap going on around them* that I decided that they were in a different, better movie, one I wanted to see (a whole hell of a lot more than I wanted to sit through any more of Dogma). I love the Bourne movies to pieces. I even liked The Brothers Grimm, which is a textbook case of taking an interesting screenplay and knifing it through the heart.

But the movie that sealed the deal for me in terms of “a Matt Damon movie is practically an auto-buy for me” was Ocean’s 12. Did you see this? Don’t. It’s a completely terrible movie. I’m amazed reading my own review of it, because as time has gone by, all I can remember is how much of a paycheck deal this was for everyone involved. But Matt Damon totally showed up in Ocean’s 12. Everyone else is reading their lines off of cue cards and Damon is selling his part, unbelievably horrible plot and all.

Here’s the tricky thing about the “Matt Damon” character: his shtick is that he is a regular guy. He’s not pretty like Pitt and Clooney, he’s not flashy like Tom Cruise. Damon is never going to play the psychopathic serial killer on Dexter. Given my general rule about Hollywood actors (that they’re always hiding a big secret), I’m pretty sure that Damon’s regular guy persona means he is a serial killer in real life. You know. It happens.

So. Matt Damon. Love him. Even in really middle of the road family flicks like We Bought A Zoo.

You know everything you need to know from the title of this movie. Guy’s wife died, his children are really lost and aimless, guy decides to buy a house out in the country, which turns out to have a run-down zoo attached to it. Guy decides to save the zoo, discovers he was also lost and aimless but now has a purpose. Of course, he might lose everything as a result of trying to save a run-down, crappy zoo. Tell me: how do you think this movie turns out?

The most annoying thing about this movie is that it has bad language in order to win the coveted PG rating. The rest of the movie is totally a G.

Thomas Haden Church plays Damon’s brother and he is completely frickin’ hilarious. He has maybe 5 minutes on-screen and he’s hilarious in all of them.

Also in the movie: the most charming 7 or 8 year old actress ever, Scarlett Johanssen (fully clothed, sorry guys), and Angus Macfadyen being a loud, drunken Scot. (But I repeat myself.)

Anyhow, if you’re looking for a halfway decent (albeit predictable and non-earthshattering) family flick, We Bought A Zoo is pretty cute.

*You’d think that Dogma would have taught me to avoid Kevin Smith. But no. I’ve seen a couple since then. And now I have totally sworn off seeing movies Smith may have also viewed, let alone directed.

“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring.”

and

If printed books do become obsolete in the next 50 years, Franzen is pleased that at least he won’t have to see it. “One of the consolations of dying is that [you think], ‘Well, that won’t have to be my problem’.”

Here’s to hoping that Mr. Franzen was quoted wildly out of context, because there’s nothing to say to that other than, “Oy gevalt.”

Let me help you out with this, Jonathan: the medium is not the message.

A physical book is just a thing.

(Also, Luddism isn’t nearly as cute as Luddites seem to think it is. But I’ll save that for another time.)

When Darin and I moved from Los Angeles back to the Silicon Valley, I think we donated about 30 boxes of books to whatever charity organization we were gifting with our things. When we moved from the house into the rental house at the beginning of the remodel, I think we got rid of another 30 boxes. When we moved from the rental back into the house, we were so determined to get rid of physical objects that even though we’d started to move to mostly e-books, we still had another 20 boxes of books we gave away.

We didn’t give away the ideas.

We didn’t give away the amazing writing (or lack thereof — you know who I’m talking about).

We gave away the things.

We had several bookcases built into our house, mostly by the front door and in my office), and that’s pretty much all the bookcases we need. If I really went for it, I could get rid of at least a third of the books in my office and not even notice.

Here’s the thing, Jonathan: in today’s brave new world, you can still have a book on paper if you really need it. There are tons and tons of print-on-demand places — in fact, your big fancy-schmancy publishers are probably using the same POD outfits that self-published authors are. We just don’t have to, anymore. Now I can have my books any time, anywhere I want.

You know what else I can have, Jonathan?

• Bigger print anytime, if I want it, without having to pay the exorbitant large-print edition prices.
• A copy of the book seconds after I hear about it.
• Books that have been out on the market more than 3 months. Try that in a bookstore, these days.

I don’t want to fill my house with more stuff. I still want to read lots of books. E-books are an awesome way to fulfill both of those needs.

Besides which: bookstores are not really great places right now. For one thing, they’re hard to find: here in Silicon Valley, where we’re all living in the future, there’s a Barnes and Noble at the Pruneyard, and a Barnes and Noble over on Stevens Creek and…uh…yeah, that’s all I got. The biggest independent bookstore in the area I can think of (actually, to be honest, its the only indie bookstore I can think of) is Kepler’s, which closed once in 2005 and, now with the retirement of the owner effective today, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it went out of business again real soon now. There are NO Barnes and Nobles in the entire city of San Francisco (although they do have more independent bookstores).

I knew Borders was going to go out of business when I realized that their entire floor design was built around their bargain books giveaway, which was always placed right inside the front door, no matter what Borders I went to. Barnes and Noble, which I always liked better because they were far, far more likely to actually have the book I was looking for, has replaced its yards and yards of bookshelves with games and caps and other knickknacks most decidedly un-booklike.

Making it far more likely that they don’t have the book I’m looking for anyhow. Chain bookstores haven’t made discovering new books a better task for the past number of years. An independent bookstore like Kepler’s is great for that (always found something on their tables), but they’re 25 miles away. And I don’t like to be the kind of person who discovers something in a shop and then buys it online — if I discover it in your store, you deserve the sale.

And as I’ve said: I don’t want physical books any more.

So we’ll keep our collections of Terry Pratchett books and Patrick O’Brien books and the Harry Potter series on paper. And a really kickass beautifully laid-out and photographed cookbook collection. But 99% of the time I don’t need actual physical books to enjoy them, Jonathan. I read them for the words. That’s what I remember about the experience. Not how whatever device — Kindle, iPhone, or paper and cardboard — felt in my hand.

Oh, and that book smell people are always yammering on about? Glue and mold, among other things. You’re welcome.

§

Update: There’s an article in the paper about Kepler’s challenges and how they’re planning on facing them.

One thing I really needed to figure out was what to do about my laundry room.

Pre-remodel, all I’d had was a hallway for the washer and dryer, which meant I usually ended up doing the laundry in the dining room. Which we therefore rarely used because there was always a huge pile of laundry on the table. I also had a gigantic clothes rack installed in the corner of the dining room for all of the air-dry stuff: my workout clothes, my unmentionables, my sweaters… Basically, our dining room was the laundry.

After the remodel, enough space was added to make the laundry room an actual room, with cabinets and things.

My new laundry room, complete with laundry

And the best part is the one that most people don’t even notice.

Go ahead, look for it….

No, not the Amazon box. That needs to go out the side door to the recycling bin. Ignore the box.

No, not the huge quantity of cabinets that I haven’t even filled up yet. I know, right? How is that possible? I have no idea. I’m not trying especially hard to fill them; I figure that will just come with time.

Oh, all right, here it is:

The clothes rack

I did lots of research, trying to find a)an indoor clothes drying rack that b)could handle lots of laundry and c)would get the hell out of the way when not being used. Lots of people have walked through my laundry room only to have me point out the rack and then they say, “Whoa! I noticed your piles of laundry and your empty Amazon boxes, but I did not notice that.”

I eventually ended up on a Swiss site, because I couldn’t find anything domestically made that fit my requirements. I almost went for a British kitchen rack, but I decided the sleeker Swiss German model fit our needs better. I can’t find the exact model we got online, but I’m pretty sure it was a Stewi.

This thing is awesome, particularly as 92% of my clothing now requires air-drying.

It works like this: you lower the rack from the ceiling using a very high-tech “twine” system.

The rack, lowered

Then you open the wings.

Prepared for flight

Then you load it up, however you like, either with things hanging on one of the rungs, or laying flat out over several, and retract the whole thing up to the ceiling.

I will have clean clothes again soon

I am very fond of my Miele washer and dryer, and the long counter over there on the left-hand side, currently loaded with many baskets’ worth of laundry is quite nice too. But this drying rack is DA BOMB.

It was such a thrill to be chosen for the production! It’s nerve-wracking when you’re in the theater, waiting for the show to begin: What if it isn’t any good? What if the other plays are so much better that mine just seems stupid? What if other people think it’s great and I think it’s stupid?

Long story short: I thought my play turned out pretty good. I’m never going to be able to see my work cold, though: I always know what was going through my mind when I wrote something, and I know that certain things I wanted to achieve aren’t there (and maybe it wasn’t clear to any of the participants that they were there). The guy I went to the show with (I’ll call him “Darin”) liked my play very much, which is always quite a relief to me, as he is what they call in the business “A Very Tough Critic.” I know what he’s like critiquing my work, and I’m his wife; I can’t imagine what it’s like to work for him.

Still: it’s always easier to see other people’s work from a distance. It’s completely difficult to see yours without knowing how the sausage was made.

Although I did know something about the production of the play in the festival written by a friend of mine, something that affected the final staging quite a bit. I didn’t tell Darin until the play was over, and he was shocked. “My God, that was the worst thing about that play!” he said. Apparently it was an element obvious to everyone except the director, who insisted on running with it anyhow.

One of the “nice” things about being a playwright is that you are, in fact, the final say on how your work is staged. No one can change a word without your say-so. Actors are on book, dammit; there is no “improvisation” or “inspiration” with the text as there is in movies and TV. The playwright has the right to pull the play at any time, because they own the copyright on the play. Screenwriters traded that power for money, so screenwriters get paid a lot to get shoved around and shat on; playwrights make no money whatsoever but are considered the author of the work.

Just depends what you think is important, that’s all.

Anyhow. It’s really exciting to see real live people saying words I wrote in a situation I dreamed up. I can’t imagine getting tired of that.

This is both good and bad.

Timing can also show you specifically where you’re spending the time too. Kind of scary to see the three most popular applications I’ve used int he past week are Safari, Civilization IV, and Twitter.

Everything during the past week

But what if I want to see how I’ve done specifically with my writing? I created a Group called “Writing” and put all of the applications I consider part of my writing into it. So let’s peek at that:

Writing – this past week

Yeah. Kinda had a bad drop off there during the past few days. But it’s been better throughout January, right?

Writing – all of January

I didn’t get so much done while I was in Hawaii, and it’s neck and neck with the time I’m spending in MarsEdit writing blog entries. I actually have done okay, writing-wise, throughout this month. (You’ll notice a couple of apps don’t show up in the weekly view but do in the monthly: yes, that’s because I didn’t use them at all in the past week. Also a good way to track whether or not you’re using those must-have apps.)

But I haven’t been wasting my time doing other stuff, have I?

Too much chatting

Okay, so…yeah, I probably need to use my MacFreedom app a little more heavily at this point and stop chatting.

Anyhow — I don’t check Timing every day, but I find it really, really useful when I want to see how I’m doing at keeping control of my computer time.

One of the important soundbites I took away from that day was to forget the old mantra, “Look where you’re going.” That’s stupid. That’s how people drive off of cliffs. They see the cliff, they drive off of it. No, the thing they said was “Look where you want to go.” If you want to stay on the road, focus on the road. After you’ve driven for a while, you don’t have to instruct your hands on how to turn the wheel (remember how tiring that part of driving was?) and you’ve got a relationship with your feet on how heavy to ride the pedals. No, your job is to point the car correctly. Your autonomic functioning takes over after that.

Doing those “gratitude journals” and stuff sounded so hokey to me when I first heard of them. Let me rephrase: I absolutely love hokey stuff, but not when it substitutes for, y’know, actual work. So often things like gratitude journals are described as being modern versions of magic spells: do this and this and this, and you get X, Y, and Z in return. Suh-weet deal.

But, when I thought about it, I decided that a gratitude journal wasn’t supposed to take the place of anything else. Focusing on things I was grateful for — whether inside or outside of myself — is always good. I force myself to look at the good things in life, because like so many other people if I don’t work hard at it, I ruminate over the bad things that happen.

You know, the old hokey saying “Energy flows where attention goes.”

Note the similarity there to “Look where you want to go.”

I’ve mentioned in an entry a while back that I like the Happy Tapper’s Gratitude Journal for iPhone app. (There’s an iPad version too.) These apps are good-looking, they’re cute, they’re fun. They make it Not Hard to write down your 5 things every day.

After a while of doing this, your brain gets very good at picking out the good things about the day. You focus not on what makes you upset or angry, but what makes you happy, what gives you energy or peace or joy.

And doing this is especially good during the times you’re angry and you want to knock someone’s block off.

Which happens to be where I am right now. Seriously. I’ve been seriously rethinking my values and what kind of person I want to be, because someone I know seems to have done something bad to me, and I’m wondering how to respond.

While I was thinking about this situation, I saw the following quote (while I’m putting up quotes and epigrams) from Abraham Lincoln: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

I don’t want to be that person.

I want to be the kind of person who looks forward, who doesn’t let the turkeys get her down, and who doesn’t use her blog to really hurt someone back. Because I know full well that I could. I have a very high Google ranking. I could really do some damage, simply by putting something here, even if no one ever reads it.

It was kind of scary to realize that I was the kind of person who’d ever consider doing that.

I’m not going to focus on bad things. I’m going to go find ten things in my life today that I’m grateful for, that make me happy, that make me feel alive, and reset my brain.

The cool thing is, I can even think of one thing I’m grateful about in regards to this situation (that I’m being deliberately oblique about), and I’m not being snarky at all. You really can retrain your brain.

In hardback.

From the UK.

When I read it, I thought, “Darin’s going to kill me if he finds out how much I paid for a book that I absolutely loathe.”

I managed to finish it and put it away, out of sight, out of mind.

At which point The Girl came to the US, and there’s been tons of gushing/ecstatic/over-the-top glowing about it and I’ve been baffled. What is wrong with you people?

When I heard there was a US remake of the Swedish movie coming out, I thought, Nope, not seeing that. But then it was David Fincher directing…and Steve Zaillian writing… and there was nothing else to see last night…

And…I still don’t get it. Actually, it’s even worse than that. I think you people are insane.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the story of a disgraced journalist (Daniel Craig) who gets a hail-Mary pass from a wealthy industrialist (Christopher Plummer) who will pay him a huge amount of money to use his amazing deductive skills –

(During the scene where Plummer hires Craig, Darin leaned over to me and said, “This is a total wish fulfillment story.” I said, “Oh yeah.”)

– to investigate the murder of a girl on a remote island 40 years ago. He is aided in this quest by the antisocial, yet amazingly brilliant and super-competent Rooney Mara. Because of the Law of Conservation of Movie Stars (“Today’s movie budgets don’t allow you to fill the whole movie with stars, so if there’s an actor you recognize in a small role, you can bet they’re important”), it’s not hard to figure out who the bad guy is. The Law of Conservation also allows you to figure something else out ahead of time, but I’ll leave that to the viewer.

Let me get the good out of the way: the direction, the art direction, the acting, and the dialogue were great. This feels like a European movie, as opposed to most American movies, which feel like they were filmed on a Universal backlot (even if they were filmed on location). Everyone (except Craig) has a Swedish accent (with various degrees). The score by Trent Reznor is great.

I still hated it. There are so many problems with this movie, most of which come from the source material.

The original title of the book in Swedish was Men Who Hate Women, and that’s a more apt title than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Everything about this story has to do with violence, particularly sexual violence, toward women. Drew McWeeny at HitFix had a good essay recently about when are we, the Viewers, going to start drawing the line at depictions of rape and sexual violence in movies? Is that a good topic for drama or for crime? Of course. But as McWeeny and others have pointed out, often it’s all we get. And we’re offered sexual violence and that’s supposed to be meaningful in and of itself. Even worse, it’s often so explicitly offered that it’s not violence, it’s pornography: it’s meant to titillate.

There’s a whole bit of backstory, just touched on in the movie (I can’t remember whether it’s dealt with more in the novel or not) about Sweden’s history with the Nazis. Huh, that’s interesting…but never pursued. One of the bad guys was involved with the Swedish Nazi party. Is that part of what he did? We don’t know. Is it coincidence that he was a Nazi and a psychopath? Are we simply supposed to equate Naziism with psychopathy? (If so, congratulations: you’ve just cheapened one of the most complex psychological and political situations we’ve ever had to face on this planet.) The whole reason one whole series of girls dies is because they’re “Jewish” or “immigrants” — a factor never explored, just touched on, as though, y’know, we all know about that.

The murder mystery involves several generations of a wealthy Swedish industrialist’s family. There’s a particularly…unusual…psychological dynamic between one of the mid-40s generation and one of the mid-60s generation that’s an important part of the story, and we’re never given any idea how in the hell this happened. Did one teach the other? Does it run in the family? Is it just that they’re Swedish? Or is living on this island making them crazy? We don’t know. We’re just supposed to take it as given that such a thing is possible and apparently no one else in this family, who all live in close quarters, ever noticed. Um, okay.

Much more up close and personal, however, is The Scene, and then The Aftermath Scene. In case you haven’t heard, one of the main characters gets raped, extremely brutally. (She actually gets raped twice, but people pretty much only refer to the second rape when talking about “the horrible rape scene.”) This happens on-screen in the movie; it goes on for pages, with extreme detail, in the book. She then exacts her revenge, in a similarly brutal way, also explicit in book and movie.

The entire point of these scenes in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is that as a result of all of this she gets money. That’s it.

I’ve read a number of places that “Oh, this sets up some stuff in the later books” — I don’t care. In this movie and this book, the end result of two rapes and a revenge assault is that she gets money. She gets access to her own money without any consequences whatsoever. That’s the entire point of this story arc in Dragon Tattoo and it infuriates me.

She isn’t affected emotionally — she not only has other lovers right away, she becomes so emotionally involved with one of them that she undertakes a ridiculous, over-the-top international scheme to right a wrong done to Daniel Craig’s character. She’s not overly clingy or emotionally needy; she isn’t standoffish. No, she’s perfectly well-adjusted sexually and emotionally. Horrifying, painful rape? No problem! Horrible physical and mental assault you perpetrate on someone else? Just do it! You’ll barely remember it happened five minutes later.

She isn’t affected physically. She has no concern about strangers, about her own body, about where she is at any time.

She isn’t affected at all. The same extraordinarily gifted, socially-maladjusted woman we see at the beginning of the movie is exactly the same at the end of the movie.

I haven’t worked in rape counseling…can anybody tell me if this is how it works?

I also got the feeling, from the book and movie and from lots of reactions I’ve read, that we’re supposed to see Salander’s Revenge Assault as “empowering.” That we’re supposed to cheer her on because “he deserved it.” I got a different message from it: if you’re a technical genius who happens to film her own rape and if you happen to have access to lots of computer equipment and if you’re willing to engage in horrible, bloody assault, you are empowered. Otherwise, suck it: you’re a wimp.

The best thing in this movie is that apparently absolutely everyone in Sweden uses Macintosh, so that’s good.

(I totally forgot to mention at least 25% of this movie is people staring at photos or at newspaper clippings or computer screens, and then they react as though they’ve seen something incredibly significant…that’s completely non-obvious to us, the viewer. It’s not deeply interesting dramatically, to say the least.)

Anyhow. This year’s nominations were announced this morning. (By the way, Oscars people: your site completely sucks in look and layout. Look into this, would you?)

Since I haven’t been posting about the movies we’ve seen this year (something I want to change, because after a while I can’t remember what I thought of a movie, and it’s fun to go back and look), I’m going to look at the movies nominated for Best Picture and say a few words about the ones we saw (listed in alphabetical order, since that’s how I got them off of the site).

The Artist

Between The Artist and Midnight In Paris, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m seeing the same cuts of film that everyone else is. People seem to be going batcrap insane over The Artist and I’m like…”Wha’?” Yes, lovely, it’s a silent film made today. It has gorgeous set design and the two main actors, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are extremely charming. But…but… The Artist the story of a major silent film actor (Dujardin) who loses everything when sound comes into movies and the Great Depression hits. A young woman who’s been a big fan of his for years becomes a big star but still cares deeply about this man when he becomes a washed-up, self-destructive alcoholic.

That’s right, folks: we have yet another movie where the woman exists to make the man feel better about himself. Bérénice Bejo’s character has no existence other than to make life better for Jean Dujardin. True, unlike most movies today, she did get more speaking lines and she didn’t have to have sex with him in order to prove he was heterosexual. But what we have here is not an improvement over that kind of crap.

Rated: Did. Not. Like.

The Descendants

We liked The Descendants a lot — hey, the cinematography convinced us to give Kauai a try, you know? The Descendants tells the story of a man (George Clooney) whose wife enters an irreversible coma after a boating accident, whereupon he has to get to know his kids again and he gets to know his wife more than he did when she was awake. Among other things, she was having an affair, and George decides he needs to track down her lover.

It’s much like Alexander Payne’s other work (Election, Sideways, About Schmidt) — it’s pretty low-key, and pretty realistic in terms of reactions. What do you do when you’re in the situation? Movies would have us believe that people operate at the peak of their emotions all the time. It’s so low-key, though, that it feels minor. What are we supposed to get out of all of this? I don’t know. A subplot involves Clooney’s extended family owning one of the last large parcels of land in Hawaii and planning to sell it for half a billion dollars. I don’t know about you, but when I start hearing numbers like that my understanding of the problems involved goes way down. Oh bummer, to whom do you sell you land for outrageous sums of money? Several of the questions Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress raises in this entry occurred to me too while I watched this movie.

And, honestly, I can’t believe George Clooney is up for Best Actor for this. He’s good — hey, he has us believing that George Clooney’s wife would cheat on him — but I’m kind of stunned at the accolades he’s gotten.

Rated: Good. Not stunning.

Hugo

Hugo is the story of a boy who lives in a Parisian train station and changes the lives of everyone around him. He’s completely alone…yet manages to create a family out of the strangers he meets and change many lives. It’s a very charming film, with fabulous cinematography (funny how you don’t think cinematography really matters, until you see a film that uses it to its utmost) and great performances (too many to list, but I liked just about everyone in this movie). It really does transport you (heh) to another time and place.

It’s also a good family film. We all enjoyed it, on different levels. And man, is that really difficult to do these days.

The downside of Hugo is, as Darin put it after we saw it, that a huge part of the emotional payoff comes from the characters’ love of movies. I can’t quite explain that without recapping the entire film, but trust me on this. And…well…we love movies. I love movies so much I moved Darin to LA so I could go to film school! There’s nothing I’d rather discuss all day long than movies!

And I’m not as invested in film as these characters are.

So I’m left a little cold by the ending, which should instead fill me with emotion and sentimentality and the rest.

(My friend Otto, who loves film as much as I do (more, probably), succinctly summarized the problem with the climax of Hugo with “that end had moments approaching ‘this is the part of the awards show where Scorsese’s acceptance speech talks about the importance of film preservation’” and he is dead on correct about that.)

However: the performances are great, the look is awesome (the rare movie that needs to be seen in 3D), and I did feel completely transported to another world and time.

Rated: Excellent

Midnight in Paris

Okay, this is the movie from last year that completely sets me off.

This is the one that makes me wonder if I’ve seen a bad print of the movie.

Because this movie annoyed the hell out of me and I rant about it at every opportunity.

Screenwriter Owen Wilson is in Paris with fiancée Rachel McAdams and her unbelievably annoying parents. He is wondering whether he should pursue financial success as a screenwriter (check out the hotel room they’re in) or follow his first passion, novel writing. Owen discovers a portal back to 1920s Paris, where he meets the amazingly hot Marion Cotillard and hangs out with the social circle of Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald and the whole Lost Generation crowd. And of course Owen Wilson fits right in with them.

Ken Levine is totally right with his Pet Peeves About The Dialogue – the dialogue in this movie is oh-my-god fake. The tensions and conflicts are horrifying fake and 1980s sitcom-level (not a compliment). The intellectual pretensions (mostly in the scenes with Michael Sheen, but all of it, really) made me grit my teeth — it’s not a remarkably intelligent conversation if I can spout all the same nonsense several lines ahead of you. And the direction? Holy crap. There is one scene where Cotillard and Wilson are walking along the street where it looks she’s spending all of her concentration searching for her mark, finds it, stops, turns, and says her line. It was the most amateurish thing I’ve seen in a movie in a while, and believe me, I’m not blaming the actress for that one.

And all of the women in this movie…that’s right, we have a winner! They exist to prove to the man that he’s worthwhile. Because that’s what we do, apparently.

I can’t even tell you about whether the acting was any good or not. I was so overwhelmed with the rest of the crap in this movie. The only thing I remember liking unreservedly was Adrian Brody as Salvador Dali. Hilarious. Also, about two minutes total on-screen.

Rated: UGH. <STAB> HATE.

Moneyball

We saw this whenever it came out (checking with IMDb…September? Really? That’s usually a dumping ground for movies, but…okay). I still remember it positively, perhaps amazed by the dialogue, which was delightful, and the fact that somehow the screenwriters (among them, the ultimately credited/nominated Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, but others got in on the action too) managed to make a business book about baseball a pretty good movie about what little teams face when competing against the big guys. How thinking different can actually pay off…well, until the big guys start thinking that way too, and then you’re screwed.

I don’t know whether Brad Pitt can act or not, but he certainly is a movie star: he is completely comfortable on-screen with what he’s doing, and he’s always interesting. I don’t think that means Best Actor though.

Rated: Very good.

As for the other movies on the list:

• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: I haven’t heard anything about this movie. I’ve never heard of a major motion picture that so completely doesn’t exist on anyone’s radar. Maybe it’s just been overwhelmed by other movies during December, I don’t know.
• The Help: I’ve heard this book is the best thing since sliced bread and the performances in the movie are great. Nevertheless, it really looks like another “story about black people focusing on the white main character” tale and that’s just tiresome now.
• The Tree of Life: All I’ve heard about this is “Terrence Malick,” which is enough to make me not go. I guess that makes me a Philistine. Well, okay.
• War Horse: If we see this, it would be with the kids, I guess. I don’t know enough about it. I don’t know anyone who’s seen it, either.