Eccentric Flower:199902/triad the second
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twenty-three february triad the second Uh-oh, another postcard and the pixels are barely dry on the previous one from this morning. And here I thought today would be a John Cage day ("I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.") This one's Diane's fault, and like the previous one it is threefold. - - - I agree with this essay almost completely. The only revisions I'd make would be to reverse the gender conclusions in part V - I find that women are more likely to write journals which are compelling to me than men are. (I do not expect this to generate a huge shock in the audience.) Oh, and in part VI, while I don't think that my private life is anyone else's business, I feel that when one goes public with one's diary, it's really too late to worry about telling your intimate inners to complete strangers, eh? And it doesn't bother me as much as it does him. - - - I understand being attracted to men. I've seen plenty of men I could imagine hopping into bed with (and yes, I've come close on a few occasions, but not for some years). OK, they're usually beautiful smooth elfin types, I admit - i.e. girly in many ways - but then, what about Harrison Ford? Isn't he sexy to everybody? Where I break ranks with a lot of women, though, is on this Nick Cage fellow. There have been only two movies where he didn't annoy/disgust me, and in both cases he was taking his essential ickiness and using it, judo-like, to the character's advantage. (No, I won't name the two movies immediately. I want Diane to guess.) In fact, since then my anti-Cage reaction has gotten so strong that I now avoid movies simply because he is in them. Cage is not physically attractive. However, since that's clearly subjective, set it aside and we'll go deeper. Cage radiates an ugly personality. He alternates between emanating "thug" and "loser" - "loser" is generally earlier in his career, and was at least a little more charming than "thug." Cage is the not-so-bright boy who was born on the fringes of organized crime and is trying really hard to be a made man because he doesn't want to work an honest living. Cage is a cheap punk, and no matter how he tries to conceal it, the cheap punk always comes out, which is why I will never, ever find him convincing as a romantic lead - with the exception of the two films I refer to. In one he is a thug among thugs, and we are watching a romance of thugs; in the other he is a loser among losers, and ditto. One day Cage will appear in a movie where he is used properly. It will not be one which calls for him to be graceful, honest, dignified, suave, intelligent, or handsome. I'm still waiting. I was tempted to see Con Air, bad as it looked, to see if that was the one, but when I learned that his character had a loving wife waiting for him, I couldn't do it. Anyone who's waiting patiently for Cage at home is a fool. Yes, I really do dislike him that much. I'm aware that I'm being unreasonable. When he comes onscreen, I shudder. I can't help it. - - - In Diane's entry which inspired the rant above, she comments, "Oh, are they putting the Roald Dahl back into [the Willy Wonka story]?" meaning, I presume, are they going to make it darker and nastier? This jibes with a movie critic I read the other day who felt the film should be remade because the Gene Wilder version was so obviously flawed. Excuse me? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a tremendously subversive film, very dark, and contains a great deal of Dahl's venom intact. I think people who haven't seen it in the last few years (I generally watch it once a year) tend to remember the more treacly bits, and forget how scary the fates of some of the Bad Children are, how blatantly Dahl's biases are displayed (American lifestyles get the most abuse, probably because two of the Bad Children are American, but the Brits and Germans are not treated kindly either) ... and above all how sarcastic the entire movie is. This film does not need to be remade, and if it is remade, no one will be able to do as good a job as Gene Wilder. With the possible exception of The Only Two Good Mel Brooks Films Ever Made (again, you fill in the blanks), I have never liked him as much as in this film. Go ahead, argue back - I love it.
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