Intolerable Cruelty

sneerpout has a comment thread where Intolerable Cruelty came up. She was saying how she likes the Coens, but the combo of Catherine Zeta Jones and "everyone say(ing) it's crap," was keeping her away from the film. Here's what I said, over two posts:

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I liked it. Ulrika liked it.

I wouldn't classify it as a screwball comedy at all. But when the house lights came up, I turned to Ulrika and said, "I wonder if anyone north of the Tehachapis will get that?" -- Meaning, anyone not in or from LA. It strikes me as a very LA movie... Not unlike Steve Martin's LA Story, if with considerably more bite.

Put it to you this way: Many of the characters I either went to school with, or saw their parents.

Or, to put it a slightly different way, have you ever seen Swimming with Sharks? Kevin Spacey, Frank Whaley, Michelle Forbes? Very funny if one knows anything at all about Hollywood, and probably impossibly over-the-top if one doesn't. Trouble is, it isn't over-the-top -- it is, if anything, restrained.

The one thing nobody gets if one hasn't been close enough to Hollywood is this: I don't care what you've heard about star tantrums. They're all true, or true enough. But studio executives are the most childish people on the studio lot. The most extreme star comes nowhere close to a studio exec.

This is why people look at The Player, or Intolerable Cruelty, or Swimming with Sharks, and think they're caricatures... when, really, they're understated character studies.

Anyway, this horse is now thoroughly dead, but... there it is. :)

Links of LJ

So, I'm looking over the various posts in selfportraits. I find self-portraits fascinating, almost kinda like personal ads. I mean, just for the plot lines and character development, if naught else.

So, I see an interesting post. It was by wicked_wish. I follow the link, and read.

Funny stuff, I tell you. Check out "The Sweet Geek's Guide to Surviving Halloween". Or a treatise on slash, and "Poor Johnny Depp".

Great stuff. Can't wait for the movie.