La Femme Recommends...Tiny Furniture

Tiny Furniture (2010, Lena Dunham):  I have to admit that I didn't go into Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham's 2010 directorial debut expecting much, I was just looking for something to watch on Netflix streaming that wasn't too long or serious.  Girls, Dunham's HBO series has been blowing up the internet lately and I have found it both endearing and slightly irritating so I was interested to see how this would compare.  From what I know of Dunham, I was sure that this movie would be about how the poor little rich girl didn't know what she wanted to do with her life and would whine her way through the whole movie (too close to home?). In a a way this movie is exactly that: Aura (Dunham)  has just graduated from a liberal arts college in Ohio with a filmmaking degree, her boyfriend has broken up with her and she has to come back and live with her successful artist mother and overachieving high school age sister.  Immediately, Aura feels adrift in her old home and begins to act out.  Her misadventures include inviting a guy who has no interest in her to stay at her apartment while her mother and sister are out of town, getting a job as a day hostess at a restaurant, hanging out with her party girl friend Charlotte (a delightful Jemima Kirke) and having sex with her dirty hot chef crush in a tube on the street.

I thought the movie was going to ask the viewer to sympathize with someone like Aura.   Instead it  makes fun of her and other privileged people like her.  When writing this review I was planning on writing a sentence contrasting Aura's good qualities to her bad but I realized that most of the things we see in her are weaknesses and bad qualities (entitlement, pettiness, cruelty, self obsession).   I think this is a strength of Dunham's and she has the ability to both endear and frustrate the viewer, sometimes in the same scene.  Dunham also has a very interesting relationship with the camera and isn't afraid to look bad on screen, sometimes literally in the unflattering outfits and way she shoots her body.  At times, I was almost horrified with the way she would shoot herself without a shred of vanity.  The performances are generally acceptable but I wouldn't say any are outright amazing.  The two weak spots to me would be Laurie Simmons, Dunham's mother who plays her mother in the film.   I found some of line readings excruciatingly mannered.  Dunahm's screenplay was honest, raw and at times heart wrenching, and writing is Dunham's greatest strength.  She has a flair for dialogue and mixes comedy and pathos is a way that is reminiscent of the best of Woody Allen. For all of her strength as a writer, as a director she has a long way to go.  Some of the directorial quirks were also a bit dristracting, particularly the recurring use of a static shot that becomes vaguely blurry.

Tiny Furniture both lightly ribs and reassures the viewer that sometimes you don't have to know exactly where you are going in life (I just wouldn't recommend having sex in a tube on the street to figure it out).

Julie

La Femme's Top Five...In Defense Of

As a self proclaimed cinephile (read: movie snob), I am definitely aware of the canon of films that are acceptable to like and films that aren't.  You better like Citizen Kane and Breathless and you had better hate Crash, The Blind Side and Transformers with every fiber of your being.  Well, today in La Femme's top five, I am going to praise five movies that I think deserve some respect!

I'm as mad as hell that no one respects these movies!

There are three kinds of movies I am going to defend for this list.  I have two modern films that are unfairly maligned by the movie geek community, two that didn't get the attention they deserved when they came out, and one that has fallen into obscurity but is an absolute gem.

The Hated:

1. Shakespeare in Love (1998, John Madden):  Yes movie geeks, I know it beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture (maybe because it is a better movie.  Please read William Goldman's excellent and hilarious essay here on why Saving Private Ryan isn't as great as people think it is).  But I think it is important to judge a movie on its own merits and not the Oscars it did or didn't win.  First of all the script is by Tom mother*%@#ing Stoppard, one of the most respected living playwrights.  The art direction and costumes are divine.  All of the performances (ok maybe not Ben Affleck, what is he doing there?) are wonderful, especially Gwyneth Paltrow (I am a staunch Gwyneth defender.  Remember, that leave Britney alone guy?  Well that is me except with Gwyneth).  She is really the heart of the film, she gives a heartbreaking, human, beautiful performance.  The romance is totally believable and Joseph Fiennes is totally dreamy.  Plus, it's funny.  I mean maybe it is more funny to English majors and Shakespeare nerds, but still I find it utterly charming and delightful and perfectly constructed.

Rufus has to leave the room when this is on.
Too many quick cuts!

2. Moulin Rouge (2001, Baz Luhrmann):  My name is Julie and I love Moulin Rouge.  There, I said it!  I like it for all its unabashed pageantry, and although it may give my epileptic dog Rufus a seizure, I am no longer afraid to profess my love for this piece of fluff.  Baz Luhrmann is certainly a flashy director with his manic cuts and over the top style.  The use of modern pop songs in the soundtrack is clever and the performances of those same songs are the film's best moments.  I also find that there are moments of real emotion and they help infuse this traditional love story with an unexpected pathos.  For example, when Nicole Kidman's voice breaks at the end when singing to Ewan McGregor, it is a poignant and authentic moment.  Those are the kind of moments that keep me coming back to this kinetic, sometimes ridiculous film. Plus, I love a good musical and I think I may or may not have listened to the soundtrack so much, I wore out the CD.

The Ignored:

3. Me and Orson Welles (2008, Richard Linklater):  I am actually not a complete Richard Linklater lover despite my unending love for Before Sunrise / Before Sunset (again, see them!).  But this little gem that came out a few years ago deserves a lot more respect than it ever got.  Yes, it stars Zac Efron, but he  gives a surprisingly competent performance as a young man who lucks into a role in Orson Welles' Broadway production of Julius Cesar.  The real reason to watch the movie really isn't the script or the production design or the solid performances by Efron, Claire Danes and Ben Chaplin.  No, the reason to watch it is Orson, (or Uncle Orson as we call him in our house :)) or more specifically the performance of Christian McKay as Orson Welles.  Welles is a figure that has been portrayed onscreen many times and I imagine will be forever but McKay captures this ambitious, young, genius perfectly.  He is at once pompous, arrogant and stubborn but also caring, generous and loyal.  Every time McKay is in a scene you can't keep your eyes of off him.  He hasn't really been seen since, but, please, someone give this man a role!

4. Warrior (2011, Gavin O'Connor):  Warrior only came out last year and should have been a big hit.  Remember that movie The Fighter?  Well, Warrior is everything that movie wanted to be but wasn't.  This is a story about UFC fighting, which I admit is totally dumb.  But really, it is a universal and timeless story of a broken family, two brothers and their father, trying to make things right between them.  There are great performances by all three male leads (Nick Nolte, Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy (who deserves his own sentence!), but the movie also takes all the sports movie tropes and although it certainly follows a formula it infuses it with meaning and relevance.   Now, for Tom Hardy.  I actually think I would watch this man read the phone book.  He may be the most exciting actor out there right now, what I love about him is his utter commitment to each character and his willingness to transform before your eyes (and I don't mean just physically because he is terrifyingly muscular in this film).  I don't know if I can think of a more magnetic screen presence than him at the moment (see Bronson!).

The Forgotten:

5. Ball of Fire (1941, Howard Hawkes):  So, K and I like to do movie marathons (right now we are in the midst of a never-ending Spencer Tracey marathon) and last year we watched a bunch of Howard Hawkes movies.  I like to think of myself as a bit of a movie expert but the biggest surprise of our Hawkes marathon was Ball of Fire.  It stars one of the baddest bitches of all time, Barbara Stanwyck.  She is everything I want to be:  smart, funny, sexy and warm.  Like many of the screwball comedies of the era, the plot is a bit convoluted.  Gary Cooper is a scientist and Babs is a gangster's moll who ends up hiding out with his group of adorable but bumbling scientist friends (spoiler: they totally fall in love).  When people talk about Howard Hawkes I never hear this movie mentioned and I think that is a shame, it really is one of the most charming and funny screwball comedies I have ever seen.  I love old movies but I am the first to admit that old comedies can be completely un-funny.  Ball of Fire is one of the great and rare ones that stands the test of time.  It is relevant and funny and completely winning.  This is the kind of movie that people who say they don't like old movies would love.

I hope that at least one of these tickles your fancy.  As always they are all available on Netflix.

Julie

It's Noon Somewhere-White Strawberry Sangria

It is almost summer even if the weather doesn't want to play nice.  But even though it doesn't feel like summer, this time of year, I get in the mood for summer foods...and drinks!

The view from my window today.  Gross!

One of the best summer drinks has to be sangria.  I love the sweet and fresh taste of homemade sangria and it is a great way to drink cheap wine and stretch your cocktail budget.  I have always made red sangria but decided give white sangria a try.  So last weekend (and yesterday!) I decided to whip up some white sangria with strawberries and lemon.  I would say this is my new favorite and almost the best sangria I have ever had (the best was at Tapas 24, a modern tapas restaurant, in Barcelona where they give you a sangria slurpee!).

All you need is:

• 1 bottle of dry white wine (It is absolutely appropriate to use an inexpensive wine. Since you are diluting the wine you wouldn't want to use an expensive one.  I used a dry white wine from Chile.).  You do want to use a dry instead of a sweet wine because there are other sweet elements and you want a dry wine to counteract that sweetness.
• 1 apple, cored and sliced
• 1 cup of hulled and sliced strawberries
• 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup of white rum
• Lemon lime soda (I used diet 7up).  You just need enough to top off each glass, I actually didn't measure how much I used.

Mix all the ingredients except the soda together into a large pitcher and put them in the fridge to cool and for all the flavors to marry.  You want to keep it chilled for at least four or five hours before you serve it. 

Summer in a glass!

Once it is chilled, serve it with ice and topped off with some lemon lime soda.  The amount of soda you put in depends on how much you want to stretch the sangria.  When I made it the first time we topped up each glass individually and I think we got about 2.5 glasses each.  When I made it again yesterday, I used a larger pitcher and just poured the soda over it before serving and we each got three glasses.

This is a great and easy summer cocktail.  It would be tasty with all kinds of food and I really love it as an alternative to cocktails at a summer party.  It is economical, tasty and super pretty.

Here's to summer!  Salud!

Julie

La Femme Recommends -Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012):  Beasts of the Southern Wild is sadly the only movie I saw at SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival) this year.  Luckily, this was a good choice.  Beasts is the directorial debut of Benh Zeitlin and it has already made a splash on the festival circuit winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Camera D'or (Best First Feature) at the Cannes Film Festival.  The film focuses on Hushpuppy (an amazing Quvenzhané Wallis, who may give one of the seminal child performances), a wise beyond her years, poetic, and mystical six year old girl.  Hushpuppy lives with her father (each in their own houses) in "the Bathtub", a lawless but idyllic bayou south of New Orleans.   The storm everyone in the Bathtub expects to come and wash them away happens, at which point the film takes on a sort of contained apocalypse as the members of the community do their best to keep their homes and way of life intact, all while the eponymous Beasts that have been predicted by Hushpuppy's teacher begin their journey to the Bathtub.  The cinematography is  gauzy and nature filled, and one could describe it as an end of the world movie made by Terrence Malick or early David Gordon Green (a la George Washington).  There are some scenes that are so beautiful they will take your breath away, the title sequence in which the residents of the Bathtub throw a party and Hushpuppy runs with firecrackers through the night is staggeringly beautiful.  Overall, some of the more magical elements didn't work for me but I found the performances to be strong and Zeitlin has created an atmospheric and beautiful world in this film.

Beasts of the Southern Wild will be released in theaters later this year.

Happy movie going!

Julie

It's Noon Somewhere -Ginjinha

Ginjinha bar on Largo des Sao Domingo, Lisbon.

Ginjinha is a sour cherry liquor that is popular in Lisbon. It is a little pick me up that you stop in and buy by the shot to enjoy on the street right outside the tiny hole in the wall you buy it from.

When we were in Portugal, trying ginjinha was definitely on the top of our list.  So, we went to a place in the  Largo des Sao Domingo, which it turns out is the place where ginjinha originated.  You walk up to the tiny bar and order and they give you a little shot in plastic cups with a couple of the sour cherries in the bottom.  Then you walk outside and enjoy the beautiful Lisbon night and drink it with locals and tourists alike.  They are open all day and late into the evening, so you can stop by almost anytime.  We ended up going to this ginjinha place before dinner, at about 8:00 p.m.  but we also had it in the afternoon at another small bar by the train station and late at night in a market, this time in a chocolate cup (my personal favorite)!

So what does Ginjinha taste like?  Honestly, like cherry cough syrup, not to my taste at all.  Of course, that didn't stop us from buying a bottle to take home so we can relive our Portuguese  adventures.  

Bottoms up!

Julie