VIRB

Usually this is the time of year where I spend every other weekend inside the Phoenix Art Museum and therefore have artsy stuff to blog about, but this summer has been busier than normal. I'm taking some classes which are occupying an extraordinary amount of my free time. However, I do want to take a weekend to just sit in a movie theater and watch about four different movies in a day and let Harkins or AMC pay for the air conditioning. I'm really bummed that I missed seeing Indiana Jones in the theater. What happened to the days when one blockbuster movie would play for the entire summer? Jeez, nowadays if you don't get into the theater on the opening weekend, you might just miss it altogether.

A few weeks ago I did go see Sex and the City, and I have to ask the question, "Where did Sarah Jessica Parker go and who is this starving mule in the Vivienne Westwood bridal gown?" It hurt my eyes to see her face SO LARGE onscreen. She was never a raving beauty, but she was quite cute at one point in her career. And you know what happened to her? It wasn't age, it was YOGA. I have several friends who got all yogified, and yes, it will give you a flat belly, but it doesn't do nice things for your face. Too much yoga just makes women look hard-edged and drawn. And once you hit 40, no one wants to see you in a halter top a low-rise jeans anyway. If you don't believe me, go watch Parker inThe First Wives Club, and compare her lovely curves in that movie to the bony, hard-faced creature in Sex and the City. Doesn't even look like the same person.

I've been utilizing my Netflix membership to the max. A rundown of some of the best stuff I've seen the past few months:

• The Salton Sea - Val Kilmer plays a meth addict looking for revenge on the dealers who killed his wife. Spectacular screenplay which takes an unexpected turn every time you think you've figured it out, simply stunning performance by Kilmer, and by far the best opening scene in recent memory. This one stays with you a long time afterwards.


• Wristcutters: A Love Story - Patrick Fugit is a suicide victim who finds himself in an afterlife limbo that looks an awful lot like the California desert. Shannyn Sossamon is the sidekick who is searching for "the people in charge," since her death was an accident, not a suicide. Darkly funny plot, weirdly terrific music by "Romanian gypsy punks" Gogol Bordello, and Tom Waits as the Happy Camper.


• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Jim Carrey actually proves he can act without contorting his face into painful shapes. He plays a man who submits to a questionable medical procedure that promises to wipe his brain clean of memories of his former girlfriend (Kate Winslet). Makes you wonder: if you could do this, would you?


• Fargo - One of those movies I just never got around to seeing, I can now understand what all the fuss was about. Why this keeps getting billed as a "black comedy" is beyond me...it's more of a bizarre murder mystery where you find yourself laughing and aren't quite sure why. "Yah - You betcha!"


• The Great New Wonderful - Follows an ensemble cast through the year following 9/11, when so many people were rethinking the direction of their lives. Heavy, but not in the ways that you would expect.

And some of the worst:

• Conspiracy - As much as I enjoy Val Kilmer, I could barely make it through this ridiculous plot, which is an unintentional parody of the insane, lunatic-left conspiracy theorists over at the Daily Kos. Shoulda just named this one "Halliburton is Evil and all White People are Racists!" Why did Kilmer even agree to do this bilge? So he could stomp woodenly through this putrid dialogue? Seriously, if he hadn't already been so far off the A-list radar at the point he made this film, it would have been career suicide.


• Masked & Anonymous - Did a bunch of stoners get together and write down all their acid-rant conversations? Do we have to watch? Trying to wrap a plot around this was pointless, and I've never found Bob Dylan particularly mesmerizing. Leave the slacker philosophizing to Richard Linklater, please.