connect

Was it fascinating? Did it feel like the amazing future? Were you all too aware of the mounting cost relative to what you were actually doing?

I have a mouse pad that was in a box for years, during which time a rubber band on top of it had time to turn into hard bits that stuck to it. Any suggestions? I could pick most of it off, but not enough.

I’ll read how a cooking oil will become rancid, or the oil in nuts, or the oil in whole-wheat flour. But I never notice. I never find that something has now become disgusting in that way.

(Although I’m not crazy about nuts to begin with, and I’ve never had a fresh one from a tree or anything, so it’s possible I’m reacting to something there.)

How much do you notice rancidity? Do the people around you detect it similarly?

Some discussions online mention rancidity in connection with supertasting, but I strongly suspect I am a supertaster because I have to go very light on most bitter ingredients, cut back on sugar in a recipe so it doesn’t just taste like sugar, find too much fat to be gross, and so on. [Reading about supertasting is such a blend of sadness and vindication. You mean grapefruits are genuinely supposed to taste good? And an avocado all by itself? And raw pineapple? Honestly?]

Tom Schiller film with a strong SNL connection. Never really properly released. Today known as a more or less lost film that has Bill Murray. I was curious about it because it was obscure and because I had been looking for the Schiller shorts from the early SNL days that had Belushi, Radner, etc.

Zach Galligan plays it so blankly; maybe he was told to.

It’s all a love letter to the golden era of Hollywood, but I don’t like the golden era at all, so this was a real slog for me. It’s odd, but not nearly as interestingly odd as Guy Maddin.

From reading articles online, I began to get the feeling that the whole film was just a studio trying to get out of a contract they’d made with Lorne Michaels as cheaply as possible.

I’ve meant to see this for a few years. The English Wikipedia article says “anti-melodramatic” and “unsensationalistic”, which is very appealing.

I didn’t think it would matter that I know only a few very basic facts about Van Gogh, but in seeing it, it seemed there was a lot you were supposed to recognize. And with events, not knowing whether they happened or whether Pialat was inventing, often left me not knowing what to think about them.

Thoughts, in order

• It must be a pain in the ass to get all that period stuff for a film set in like 1870 or whenever.
• Everyone at this new place is integrating him into things (whether he wants it or not). Is France 150 years ago a warmer place than anywhere I’ve known?
• Why is this girl so into this old guy? Life doesn’t seem that slow and boring for her that I would buy this. Was this in particular a real event at all, or was Pialat just liking the idea that of course pretty young girls want old guys in the arts? I did see one other Pialat movie some years ago, which was about a girl and her dalliances and how she didn’t really love anyone except her daddy, who so-coincidentally was played by Pialat himself.
• The man playing Van Gogh was rather still compared to everyone else, in the way that a non-actor would be. Apparently this guy did some acting but was mostly a singer.
• The girl was a bit inexperienced compared to the rest, and this came out in emotional scenes where there wasn’t quite enough body language sometimes.
• Around the two-hour mark, they and Theo hang out way too long in a brothel. I suppose you’re supposed to be engrossed by the polygon of Van Gogh and Theo and the girl and the prostitute Van Gogh has long had a thing with. The girl trying to not care, etc. But you are two hours in at this point.
• I did like that, in the last minutes, life was resuming for everyone else. Because that is what happens. Even though it is hard to believe that the world will continue without our selves.

I’m not being very positive in this, I know, but I still appreciate the existence of anything anti-melodramatic and unsensationalistic.

One of the flop Saturday Night Live movies based on one-note characters stretched out to feature length.

When it was trying to be serious about psychological health, it was relatively all right, but every bit of “comedy” fell so absolutely flat. Al Franken must have wanted to say something genuinely helpful but was limited by the shape of the opportunity at hand. Both needing to be a comedy in general and needing to keep his character as somewhat ridiculous.

Stuart had a family of stereotypical screw-ups. His brother’s role was too broad where he had to be both a beer-drinking football-fan kind of idiot at times and insightful at other times.

Stuart was obviously gay, but they couldn’t really touch the issue in 1995, so he had this female friend who was unrealistically around at all times when you need another person to observe or smile at whatever is happening. Although it mentioned that she was his sponsor in some self-help group, and maybe being a sponsor requires being around all the time.

I made it through an hour before starting to fast forward.

Set in New York City in live television of the 1950s, a show like Sid Caesar’s, an aging alcoholic movie star like Errol Flynn.

In reviews, everyone loves it so much. Maybe they all remembered the fifties. One commented that it would look questionable to today’s audience that the viewpoint character chases an uninterested woman, wears her down, and she finally gives in and then likes him. Yes, it did indeed.

Overall, I suppose it was okay. It did feel like wacky events were presented a little too straight in some way so they would come across to me as unrealistic rather than comedic.

It tries to be touching about the movie star being brave and reconnecting with his daughter, but it didn’t get enough screen time.