I wouldn’t call these reviews so much as personal responses to movies I’ve seen recently. These are all up for rent - check them out! Or not, as the case may be…

Mirror Mask
I’ve been crushing on Neil Gaiman lately and thought his movie would be a good choice despite its lack of commercial success. This was meant to be this generation’s Labyrinth and Dark Crystal and I think in many ways it succeeds. A wonderful standalone fantasy with a brilliantly crafted world and Jim Henson Studio’s peerless creatures as well as some fantastic art and direction from Dave McKean. Its strength lies in its visuals – the characterizations and story are just fine but they don’t carry the movie. That’s not to say it’s all eye candy; there’s definitely some wonderful substance here, it’s just that the visuals go above and beyond.

It’s PG and more weird than scary for the most part. I think it would be fine for the family, though I don’t want to give the impression it’s just for kids either. I’m all grown and stuff and I enjoyed it greatly.

The Good Shepard
I like Matt Damon, and I like spy movies – you’d think this movie about the birth of the CIA would hold great appeal. Really, I think I’ve discovered that I like –Hollywood- spy movies. Give me Will Smith running from the NSA over this movie any day. Give me back my shiny American Heroes…or even cool dark anti heroes.

I don’t think there was anything –wrong- with the movie. It was different, in pacing, story telling, and characterization, and isn’t that what everyone is screaming for? Stop giving us the same one dimensional characters, we say! Stop spoon feeding us plots – complexity is okay! Do something original, for heaven’s sake! Give us some believable realism! I guess when you do that, though, you end up with something relentlessly depressing – a depressing story, depressing visuals, depressing characters…all leading up to a horribly depressing theme. I don’t remember even –one- ray of hope in this movie.

There were absolutely some ‘cool’ factors – I love that cloak and dagger spy shit and the movie had plenty of that. And there was something chilling and infectious about the movie overall – I still have bits of dialogue stuck in my head. It was a good movie – maybe even an excellent movie, but I would never watch it again and it’s not one I would recommend unless you want to get incredibly depressed.

Children of Men
Okay I have to get all my pervy Clive Owen drooling out of the way before I say anything else about this movie. Clive Owen is sex on a stick. From that gritty voice to those sexy eyebrows to those little curls on his neck…mmm.

At any rate, obviously I think Clive Owen was brilliant in this movie – all sexual harassment aside, I think he’s a good actor. The supporting acting was equally brilliant. What really got my attention, though, was the directing. A mix of slick, sexy noir and surprising video game cinematography, this film really got my attention. We went seamlessly from smoke filled, shadow-ridden scenes to bumpy almost-first-person action shots – every scene was compelling and beautiful.

All that said, I found the story a little weak. There were some bothersome plotholes and a lot they didn’t take the time to explain. It was enough to make me want to read the book to see if the questions they left hanging had answers. It’s actually pretty rare that acting and directing can make up for a poor story, but I couldn’t look away! There was one perfect scene that just blew me out of the water, but I don’t want to give major spoilers – I’ll just say it really is worth a watch. In spite of being a story about a dystopic future world, filled with violence and profoundly sad moments, it made some truly beautiful statements about the sanctity of life and humanity, and it was an essentially hopeful movie.

Music and Lyrics
Drew Barrymore can crank out these fluffy romantic comedies like nobody’s business. While not exactly original, it was well done for its genre. Hugh Grant was charming, playing…well, the same sort of character he always seems to play…and Drew Barrymore was adorable…like…always. There was a lot of self deprecating humor all around, though, and plenty of parody; they obviously didn’t take themselves too seriously, thus avoiding an embarrassing scene. They also made a few clever insights into the music industry that brought a smile to my face.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad date movie and it was good for a few laughs. I preferred The Wedding Singer though.

Catch and Release
Nothing like the death of a loved one to get the laughs rolling in! Somehow, this dark comedy actually worked – maybe it was the quality actors or clever, believable characters. Maybe it was the grossly inappropriate humor, or the multiple trainwrecks.

I hadn’t heard of this one – they showed it on the plane during the six hour flight from San Francisco to DC. I’m glad I didn’t read through it; it’s a worthwhile movie full of very human characters. A problem I have with a lot of chick flicks is that they tend to make men out to be evil and women out to be long suffering but secretly strong or some such crap, unless they are a mother in which case they are the devil, only misunderstood. These people were all different, all human, all just trying to pull it together and find happiness. The different relationships were wonderfully done and the train wreck moments were believable and without cynicism. For being such a dark movie, in fact, it was –remarkably- lacking in cynicism, and that was refreshing.

One of my webhaunts, sakeriver.com, is hosting a mixed tape exchange. Each month, we send out a mixed CD to someone on the list - we end up mailing and receiving CDs from all over the world! Here are the picks for this month.

American Music
Ironic first song for a mix with so many imports, but I picked this because it’s an upbeat, feel good song by the Violent Femmes and has fond memories attached to it.

Son of a Gun
Off Nirvana’s Incesticide album, this one puts a smile on my face and brings me back to my teenage days, when I was but a little punkette…

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
Alright, enough hyperactivity – time to mellow out with The Postal Service. I get this song stuck in my head every time I get on the DC metro. I kind of like the video too – check it out here: Video

Alphabet Town
Elliott Smith is a favorite musician of mine (he’ll appear again later on the disk) and I had a hard time picking which songs of his I should include. I chose Alphabet Town because it seemed to flow nicely after TDSAT and is very representative of Elliott Smith’s style. To give credit where credit is due, I should mention that Irami of hatrack is the one who introduced me to Elliott Smith’s music, in 2001 I think.

In The Aeroplane Over the Sea
This is the song that opened me up to Neutral Milk Hotel - it is the title track of their 1998 album. I wish they would make more, but I can listen to their first two again and again. For me they were an aquired taste, but my husband liked them instantly. Go figure.

Four Winds
I heard about Bright Eyes for the first time at a Rufus Wainwright show and got sucked in to both the story of this artist and the music itself. It’s always encouraging to hear good indie music getting respect from the pop giants. This is one of their most recent songs, and makes me think of The Stand. The whole album, Cassadega, is really solid.

Let it Rain
Ok Go is a delightful band with lots of great energy that is evident even in this slightly more mellow song. I thought this one fit the best with the mix, but they are worth checking out and listening to more for certain.

Everbody Knows
I’m a huge Rufus Wainwright fan and greatly enjoy Leonard Cohen’s lyrics, so putting them together is just a toe curling experience all around.

Flathead
The Fratellis and their new album were being talked about on hatrack for a bit, so I picked them up and don’t regret it at all. While they still have some growing to do, I think (and if I remember correctly, Tom D. agrees with me :D), but they make for a catchy and enjoyable listen.

Darts of Pleasure
Franz Ferdinand is just pure fun! Darts of Pleasure is a good example of a solid song that, for whatever reason, never got the heavy radio rotation that other songs on the record received. It’s refreshing to know that this isn’t one of those records with two songs worth listening to and then a lot of filler.

Smiley Faces
We’re hitting a very nice, upbeat groove with this stretch of songs and Smiley Faces by Gnarls Barkley seemed like a good fit. I honestly have never listened to the album all the way through, but I like this song and a couple others by him :).

Is it any Wonder
Keane has everything I look for in an artist and none of my pet peeves. I only started listening to him recently but he’s in heavy rotation and it was hard to imagine a playlist without something by him. I chose Is it any Wonder simply because I thought it fit the mood at this point in the mix - still peppy but looking toward winding down.

Me and the Major
Belle and Sebastian is just a bucket of charm :). This is another artist I’m fairly new to, but they are darling and I wanted to share one of my favorite tunes by them.

Two Way Monologue
Sondre Lerche is adorable and I like the video for this song. You can check it out here. The whole record is worth a listen - I tend to enjoy it in the bath for some reason…

Days Go By
This acoustic version of a popular club song by Dirty Vegas wound up on the mix I put in my discman for jogging this summer, quite by accident (I’d meant to put the club mix there instead). It gave my run that night this sort of dream like feel and I ended up keeping it on. Every once in a while it randomly gets stuck in my head.

Poison Oak
Have I mentioned really liking Bright Eyes? This one has everything a Bright Eyes song needs, from emotive lyrics to kickass backing.

Inaudible Memories
I don’t think I was able to go anywhere this summer and fall without hearing Jack Johnson on the radio, but what the heck, he’s good! I like that it feels as though he could be playing this song in my living room or out on my front porch.

In my Arms
From Rufus Wainwright’s debut album, this song has that timeless feel I like so much in Wainwright’s sound. I think he’s an old soul :).

Twilight
This seemed a fitting one to close with. There is something very tender and terribly sad about this Elliott Smith song - it breaks my heart and I can’t stop listening to it.

In other musical news, I’ve developed a crush on Cocorosie, so the next mix might be a little less indie/punk/poprock and a little more hiphop/electronica/freakfolk. I actually listen to a lot of different stuff, but I didn’t want my mixes to be -too- ADD.

I’ve been spending a lot of time brewing lately – letting ideas soak, building infrastructures, saving money. Though it doesn’t appear as though I’ve produced anything in quite a while, I remain optimistic; any day now everything is going to split wide open. I have been feeding the beast, just not letting it out of its cage.

And one way to feed said beast* is by soaking up the culture. I spent my Saturday in DC, enjoying the cherry blossom festival with some friends from Hatrack. It was crowded but delightful in spite of hurting my knee and having to limp around most of the day. I’m young, I’m in decent shape…not entirely certain what happened there.

As one can only enjoy a mix of trees, parades, and karaoke for so long, we soon retreated to one of the many museums in DC – The National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical at first – how many paintings of dead white guys could one really look at anyway? Well, apparently quite a lot. It’s a wonderful museum, particularly when you want something you can see in a day. I really liked how the gallery was organized into little themed rooms and time lines and walked away feeling like I’d learned something about American History and Art that I wouldn’t have otherwise. There were quite a few people that I was surprised to realize I had never seen a picture of. Thomas Edison was one; we decided he looked like Edward Norton. Then everyone started looking like Edward Norton…perhaps I have a fixation. Even those faces I had seen before took on new life in that gallery – the image of Mark Twain stands out in my mind as having a captivating presence.

I particularly enjoyed a room full pre civil war thinkers. This quote was on the wall:

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms. –Wendell Philips, 1852

It was a room full of rabble rousing trouble makers. How could you not appreciate it? There were a lot of heavies in that room – Susan B. Anthony, Fredrick Douglas, John Quincy Adams. I think my favorite was the portrait of William Lloyd Garrison. He looked so unassuming but he wore this little smirk and had a glint in his eyes. Rather than looking pinched and pious he looked on fire, with flushed cheeks and shining spectacles of justice.

Okay…maybe shining specs of justice is over the top.

John C. Calhoun, who rested in the Webster Gallery (and happens to have the same surname as one of my characters, not entirely by accident – I have an odd sense of irony) looked psychotic and I can’t believe he approved his portrait. Even so, it was a well done image and I can’t say I feel too badly about the way he’ll go down in history as a whole. On the other hand, I’m hoping there were better busts of Rockefeller out there – the one in the Gallery made him look like some sort of frog. Yikes!

One of my favorite portraits was of Roy Lichtenstein– or, as I so eloquently put it, ‘That guy who did the comic book looking paintings’. Yeah, I’m a tremendous dork in real life. He was peeking from behind a paint brush and just looked amused and young and brilliant.

The opposite wing of the building housed the American Art Museum, which was equally fascinating. I must admit, I got yelled at for taking photos *hangs head* God as my witness, there were no signs! I won’t post any of the photos, but there are some already available online.

This is called Interception by Mark Tansey. The scale is huge – taller than me, and I’m pretty tall. It took up a whole wall, and that tunnel just –consumed- you when you stood and stared at it. I like how it goes from almost abstract at the top to incredibly realistic at the bottom, showing a range from simple texture, form, light, to fascinating detail and color.

The Folk Art exhibit was very cool – I’m a sucker for that weird sort of stuff, like giraffes made of bottle caps and cross stitched Jesus pictures with Xs for eyes. Junk sculpture has always been a liking of mine…I’m suddenly wondering (not without trepidation) if my parents still have any of my many attempts.

At any rate, once we had finished with the museum (or rather, once I got hungry and tired and cranky and wanted to go) we decided to indulge in some food and shopping. Cosi’s was excellent and reasonably priced. Blah blah blah, it’s a chain, blah blah blah, anti corporate, blah blah blah…sometimes you say big deal and eat a damn salad, am I right? It was around this time that my knee started to hurt really awfully, which kind of tainted the rest of the afternoon, but it was still fun to chat and act silly in the book store, reading romance novel names and generally causing a public ruckus. Then it was time for dinner at the always reliable Chicken Out. So sue me.

I really wanted to go to an exhibit in Roslyn VA called Bodies the Exhibition, but by that point I was pretty much dragging my leg behind me and felt it was time to go. I would like to go another time, perhaps when I can spend the day in there with a sketchbook. And so I hobbled off to home to sleep, only realizing my many social faux pas in the morning. I am certain at least one person in the party thinks I am a complete psycho. Ah well…I –was- holding a carry out container full of chicken in a rather fancy exhibit hall and wearing a tee shirt claiming that I was cute, and they should put me in charge. In my defense, I had paid for that chicken and if no one else would eat it I was damn well going to take it home. Also, the shirt was a gift from my mother. Also it was clean.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have attempted (badly) to explain all that, though. Ah well – it just goes to show you that even at the end of a day like that, I’m still the same slightly rough around the edges sort of person.

*okay, I must interject here – I don’t have an inner beast. I’m not some kind of furry…not that there’s anything wrong with that. If I were to identify with a particular animal, it would be, of all things, a turtle, and a turtle can hardly be described as a beast. I am guilty of overusing a metaphor, nothing more!

My excitement for the day: I gave Sasha, my pet turtle, a bath.

There he is in all his turtle-y glory. And yes, that freakishly large hand is mine. I am fond of turtles and feel an odd sort of affinity with them - though not to the extent that I want to -be- one, mind. Maybe it’s their association with good qualities like care and wisdom, or maybe it’s all the turtle stories I heard as a kid. In the fables the turtle always seems to come out ahead in spite of being a little slow and silly looking - I guess I like that.

In other news, I am floundering over this week’s Illustration Friday, bumbling through a possible contest entry, slogging through a friend’s book, and generally just getting by. My expectations for myself are not all that high at the moment, though - there’s a Mafia game over on The Angry Crayon and those tend to wear me all on their own, so trying to squeeze out more creative juices is a job and a half. I managed to kill someone off and the turtle is clean - I can’t complain.

Edit: And to continue the turtle theme, some turtle art by me! This first one is for Illustration friday, and the theme was hide. The spots were at my daughter’s insistence and I think they added something to the little guy.

And this is my avatar in any number of places - those are my initials in red.

Yes, yet another person has joined the blogosphere. Quite a lot of this will be me throwing things out there and seeing what (if anything) comes back. I’ll also do what every blogger does and share some of the exceptional bits of my (possibly very uninteresting) life.

A little about me. ‘BRB’, in addition to being a popular internet acronym for ‘be right back’, happens to be my initials. I’m a youngish (ha!) mother of one, a homebody, and a sillyheart. I like to draw and write and spend time with my family, and every so often I enjoy a good book. I figure my ‘favorites’ aren’t any more interesting than the 57402348394 other favorite lists out there, so I’ll just let that sort of thing come out if it comes up.