A Fable

"Once upon a time there lived a girl. She slept in a lovely little cottage made of gingerbread and candy. She was always asleep. One morning she woke up, and the candy had mold on it. Her father blew her a kiss and the house fell down. She realized she was lost. She found herself walking down a crowded street, but the people were made of paper, like paper dolls. She blew everyone a kiss goodbye, and watched as they blew away."

(My So-Called Life, "The Substitute")

Moments of Claire-ity (1): Shopgirl

I kinda made some oath two weeks ago, to watch all of Claire Danes' movies. Today I'm in quotation-mode, so don't expect a big review ;).

"Are you the kind of person that takes time to get to know, and then when you get to know them - they're fabulous?"

"Shopgirl" is a very nice piece about love and desire. Mirabelle (Danes) is a young artist working as a shopgirl. Her life seems empty, so she tries to start a relationship: First with the very unexperienced and annoying Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), later on with the 60-year-old millionaire Ray (Steve Martin, who wrote the script based on his own novella). I cannot really describe which direction the movie takes without spoiling to much, so I just use another quote from Roger Ebert's review:

One of the things you cannot do in this life is impose conditions on love. Another impossibility is to expect another's heart to accommodate your own desires and needs. You may think that cleverness, power or money will work on your behalf, but eventually you will end up feeling the way you really feel, and so will the other person, and there is no argument more useless than the one that begins with the words "But I thought we had an agreement."

"Shopgirl" seems to have no real "moral" or "message", it's just a portrait of how life is - and it's a well written and well played portrait, especially by Claire.

Ladies of Interest (9): Claire Danes

I really wanted to proudly announce the completion of the pencil works for the FedCon-Stuff, but... I just watched the second episode of "My so called Life" and I sorta kinda felt the necessity of doing another LoI-Post. Don't know why... ;)

The long-time reader won't be very surprised by Ms. Danes' ascension into the ranks of the Ladies of Interest since the simple glowing effect of her Yvaine in Stardust left me that ... enchanted. So I only hesitated shortly when I saw her smiling from a DVD-Box-Cover in the nearby MediaMarkt. "Willkommen im Leben" was the title and I remembered how the ex-fellow-student (is there an english word for "kommolitone"?) reminisced in nostalgia and Claire-Adoration some time ago.

I never saw an episode of that show before last week, so nostalgia's out of the picture - but just after two episodes I think I can already understand why it's so loved by lots of people. It really IS good, as far as I can tell (just google it). Plus, there's this girl, you know. Not so much with the glowing but almost unbearable amounts of cuteness. Examples on the left.

Teenage-(No Mutant, No Ninja) Batch would've fallen madly in love with 15-year-old Claire Danes instantly like 50% of the viewers did (the other 50% fell in love with Jared Leto, I hear), while Twen-Batch is of course much too grown-up for that (prefering the older, glowing version ;) ).

Anyways, learned some things about Claire when reading a biography:

- She had her first on screen kiss before having her first real one. Huh. That must've been ... difficult, I think. She almost complained about having to kiss (a then 22 years old) Jared Leto every day- I guess millions of teenage girl viewers wanted to have her problems.
- She was a persona non grata in Manila and her movies were banned in the phillipines after she ranted about the city in an interview (mentioning rats and the lack of a sewage system).
- She turned down the female lead of Titanic because she didn't want to be typecasted for "romantic" roles. She probably just didn't want to kiss Leonardo DiCaprio again ;).
- She did star in an unhealthy lot of flops - no wonder she stayed under my radar for so long.

But that time's gone, I will not rest before I've seen all those bad movies just because of her. Even Mod Squad. ;)

P. S.: Gamer, Flatmate: I want this Terminator-Evening ASAP! Maybe we could start with the third part?

She's glowing!

It's high time to add my own personal praise for one the very few movies I can't get enough of. I watched it again two weeks before with the flatmate and the player. I watched it yesterday after a stressful day of working on my diploma thesis, I was just in need. If it hadn't been 1 a.m. I just would've watched it a second time right after. Well, I just watched it again (after another hateful day of diploma thesis crap, I am SO FED UP TO THE BACK TEETH I JUST DID ONE EFFING PAGE TODAY, please let it be over soon). And I could give it another round just right now... God I love Stardust.

Yvaine is glowing brighter every time. If I continue watching this beautiful movie on a daily base I'll be blind by the end of the month ;). Really, that glowing is just... I don't know... the sweetest, cuddliest, cutest, awwwwwwwwwest thing I've ever seen in a movie. Just thinking of it makes me grin and probably glowy for myself. Yeah, Claire Danes does add to the warm impression, I confess. Hey, wouldn't it be sooo great, if every girl shone and twinkled when she's happy? ... Okay, they actually do that, but... you know what I mean.

Though the gleaming really IS the one thing that raises this movie beyond every other, it's just plain beautiful on so many other levels. The landscapes, the pictures, the people, the adventure, the humor, the score... *sigh*. And she's glowing. Did I mention the glowing? I am sorry Mister Gaiman, I'm with the player on this: Compared with the movie, your book (on which the movie is based) is only ... nice. Yes, there are occasions where a movie actually IS better than the book. The book isn't really that bad, it's just so much more serious and less gleamy than the movie and so very... different. Definetly no Sandman, but that's another genre again.

Anyways, the humor. The scene where Tristan and Yvaine meet for the first time alone is pure gold:

"... and over there it's where [the star] landed, and right here... this is were it got hit by a magical FLYING MORON!"

"So you're gonna be a birthday gift for Victoria, my true love!"
"HUH! But of course! Nothing says 'romance' like the gift of a kidnapped injured woman!"

She didn't glow then, though. Which she does later on. A lot. After she's fallen in love with Tristan. Awwww, just look at her on the left....

If you, dear reader, haven't seen the movie yet, DO SO! I really mean it. I won't allow you to read another blog-entry, if you don't!