In My Town Blogathon - San Francisco

My Hometown Blogathon

Wide Screen World had a great idea for a Blogathon, focus on a film made in your hometown. Great idea!

I grew up in one of the most famous cities in the world, San Francisco. I now live in a nearby suburb, but nothing quite compares to roaming the city and discovering new things.

Of course I can choose from a vast array of films that are based in my beautiful City by the Bay, but it’s specifically the “roaming the city” aspect that made me choose my selection, Medicine for Melancholy.

This 2008 indie film stars Wyatt Cenac (Micah) and Tracey Heggins (Jo) as African-American twenty something’s wondering how to react to each other the morning after their one night stand. It’s a quiet little film that probably isn’t for everyone; it’s very talky and doesn’t have traditional rom-com qualities. It’s not a love story in the making. It’s more about class and race and how two people in the same city can lead completely different lives. I appreciated what it was trying to say about relationships and especially about the gentrification of my beloved city.

Micah lives in a crappy one room apartment in the Tenderloin, not a good neighborhood! How believably refreshing though, because none of us can afford to live the Painted Ladies Victorian homes they always show when we get a view of San Francisco. Sorry, rents are high in the city and none of us use the cable car for commuting! This film stayed clear of all of that.

Lastly, this film managed to take me somewhere I have not been to yet and that’s the MOAD museum. I liked getting a glimpse at some of the installations.

This film made me think, brought up questions that should be looked at and led me around a San Francisco I know, but don’t normally see at the movies.


Medicine for Melancholy

Horrible Bosses - Film Review

*Well how embarrassing! I’ve made a blog blunder. I scheduled this review ahead of time, but wasn’t quite finished with my review. I had the trailer all set and I just needed to do a little tweaking. I fell asleep last night and this post went live minus the review! I hope you’ll forgive me. Here it is now…

I’ve been waiting quite awhile for this film to come out. It has so many of my favorite comedic actors and that includes Kevin Spacey; that guy is hilarious. My favorite right now though has got to be Charlie Day. This guy walks on screen and you start laughing. I watch my 2 hour block of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia repeats on Comedy Central every Monday night. That show is nothing without Charlie!

So the plan was to go with my daughter who has been blessed with the same sense of twisted humor as her mom and then my son got added into the mix. My son is 14 and half and this is an R rated movie. Let me start by saying that I actually do take age and ratings into consideration. However, I do believe you need to take the individual kid into account. Personally, I was taken to Blazing Saddles at 7 and was raised on George Carlin and Richard Pryor comedy albums. Here’s the thing, my father taught me that funny is funny, period.

Because of the star power in this film, I was pretty confident that Jennifer Aniston would not flash her boobs and that no one would be “getting it on.” My daughter has been working a crazy number of hours at her new job and it finally came down to going without her or not going at all. I was correct about the film, other than language; I didn’t have too much to worry about. There were drug references, but it was definitely shown in way that drugs are bad. My son already watches Family Guy and plays Gears of War, so I’m really kidding myself that I’m keeping him from stuff. A mother-son bonding session was in the works.

My son is a bit easier to please than me and my daughter so I’ll begin by saying that he absolutely loved this film. I, on the other hand, describe it more as funny-esque as opposed to laugh-out-loud funny. All the actors seemed like they genuinely enjoyed working together and watching them play off of one another was the best thing about this film.

I was not falling out my seat in huge guffaws, but the story line was interesting and took some twist I did not expect.

We see good reasons that these guys would want to kill their bosses, yet we know going in that these guys are not going to very competent, so there are no worries that this will go over into “too dark” territory.

Jennifer Aniston really held her own amidst a sea of raunchy guys. It’s probably harder for audiences to accept that the object of her characters desire is Charlie Day more than her tawdry talk. Still, much like in Going the Distance, Charlie Day really shines brighter than everyone he’s around comedically. Sudiekis is always the thinks-he’s-cooler-than-he really-is-guy, and Bateman is always the guy too smart and sweet to be in his situation, this allows Day to be the over the top, goofy guy and he plays that role to the hilt.

In the end, my son has now replaced this film as his favorite comedy movie, bumping out Dinner for Schmucks. I have a higher standard for my comedy movies and although this was enjoyable, I could easily have waited and watched it on DVD.

This wasn’t as funny as I thought it was going to be, but I still had a good time with all these fun performers.

Song of the Week - More Than This/Roxy Music

Well, I can't go too long before I revert back to my 80's ways! This video is rather strange, but the song is awesome!

Project Nim - Advanced Screening

I was very excited to get advanced screening tickets to the new HBO Documentary, Project Nim. I’ve always wanted to respond to the one of shout outs from Entertainment Weekly, but when my kids were small, I didn’t have the luxury to run out to the movies on whim. Still, with working full-time and having to take a BART train into San Francisco by 6pm, it was still a challenge to get myself there, but it was worth it.

My husband met me after work and we hopped a bus to the theater. It was necessary to arrive an hour before show time and there was quite a bit of waiting around. It was worth it to this moviegoer to not only see a film that was already on my summer watch list, but to see it for free and before everyone else!

The film chronicles the life of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee that was hand picked to learn sign language in the 1970’s in a project at Columbia University. Nim’s life was also chronicled in the 2008 book: Nim Chimpsky, The Chimp Who Would Be Human. As usual, I completely planned to read this book before seeing the film, but I never had time. However, I still feel the book would fill in some gaps and better explain some aspects of Nim’s life that didn’t make it into the film.

The film is a great glimpse into life in the 70’s as much as it’s about this chimp’s life. There are so many free-spirited, free-love characters that were in Nim’s life that it almost seems made-up. The hippie mom who brings Nim to live with her family and lets him run amuck, the mustached professor that seems more interested in banging hot, young research students than properly overseeing his project, and the primate research worker who’s happy to share long walks and his joint with Nim.

Although I feel I would get more nitty-gritty knowledge by reading Elizabeth Hess’ book, no book can take the place of footage of the adorable Nim in action. This chimp is easy to fall in love with, but we also learn that humans can only safely be with chimps for a few years. As Nim matures, he becomes aggressive and the film does not shy away from talking about the damage he did to handlers and even showing that some people fell out of love with him because of this.

One of the most interesting aspects of this film was how the central players did not turn out they way the would have been portrayed in a fictional account. The medical researcher was not the evil, heartless, animal hater you would think and ironically, the cruelest time in Nim’s life is when he is rescued and sent to an animal sanctuary. This part of his life is particularly interesting and the part that makes me want to read the book to delve in more. Nim is left alone in a cage with no socialization. Howeve,r this is not the end of Nim’s journey and the viewer will be satisfied that the whole story has been told. It will raise many questions as to how man treats animals and what are responsibility is to them. This film made me think for days and that has to be the ultimate compliment for a documentary.

Song of The Week - Faster/Matt Nathanson

Faster – Matt Nathanson

This is a nice summer song to get stuck in your head. Since I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I hear Matt a lot on the local radio stations and he always seems like a great guy. He’s sort of on the cusp of really breaking out. Maybe this new album is the one?