My Office

Confession: I've been dying to do this post for a really long time. I know full well that it's extremely self-indulgent, but honestly, if I were to come across such a post on someone else's blog, I'd be hugely fascinated. Let's go ahead and say that's half the reason I'm publishing it. My office is the one room in our apartment that's wholly devoted to movies. It's the upscale version of the bedroom of my youth, which was papered, floor to ceiling, with filmic paraphernalia. It's a pretty spot-on reflection of me. Here I'll give a tour of its sections, all of which, you'll see, follow a color scheme ("Oh god, here we go," I heard you say...)

These posters alternate frequently, with one cardinal rule: I must adore the film and the poster. I won't put up that which advertises garbage simply because it's pretty, nor will I put up a poster for a great movie if it's ugly (i.e. no "Winter's Bone").

Moving to the left, this is the wall adjacent to the last one. Hanging above my worktable is an amalgamation of stuff culled from my old bedroom, from ticket stubs to magazine clippings to film school equipment. Clockwise from top left: quite possibly my favorite shot of Meryl Streep, a ticket assemblage with stills of Bette Davis and Cary Grant, a photo I took of my favorite local theater, a reel from my grandfather's projector, a decoupage of various stubs, an original photo of the "Gone with the Wind" premiere (a gift from a friend), pics of Maria Falconetti and Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart and, finally, my student film -- all on one little reel.

I've long been enamored of Vanity Fair covers, and found they were among the very few magazine-sized, tack-on-the-wall sort of things that warrant a large frame by themselves (it doesn't hurt that these particular fold-outs fit that color scheme perfectly). Along with them we have actual Vanity Fair issues, a picture of my honey, a few awards (oh, stop), a poster for "The September Issue" and, tucked away with the other mags, the very September Vogue in question -- that Sienna Miller-fronted beast from 2007. (Beneath the mags is a desktop computer, but that, like the worktable, isn't all that fetching.)

My "Hours" gals. This is one of my favorite posters ever. It's SO beautiful, and worthy of permanent placement. To account for the size of the space it had to fill, I had to cut it and squeeze it into a smaller frame. Here's the secret: I trimmed around the the right side of Meryl and moved her closer to Julianne and Nicole. No one ever notices.

I know, I know -- it's SUCH a bloody cliche. But come on -- it's in Italian.

When Brandon and I combined our stuff, his "Titanic" joined my "Brokeback Mountain" and "Atonement," and thus was born our Love Conquers All wall. The knickknacks include my grandfather's projector, its corresponding match that I found at a thrift shop, old cameras, an old hat (we like to pretend it belongs to Angelina "I want my son back" Jolie), a slate, the clamshell for "King Kong," 3D glasses and framed pics of Katherine Hepburn, Cate Blanchett, Orson Welles and Greta Garbo.

A lot of people accuse me of being anal for alphabetizing my DVDs. The response is simple: a) I am rather anal, and b) How the hell would I ever find anything if they weren't aplhabetized!?! This is where the geek in me comes out full-blast -- this here is my baby. My film collection is my favorite material thing on the planet. It's been growing for over a decade and, as you can imagine, I am in firm, life-sustaining denial of DVD being replaced as the premiere home video format. Not under my roof, darling.

If you've taken the time to read this, I hope you enjoyed my little office tour, and I hope I made it entertaining enough to distract from the self-indulgence. Now, back to work...

Prisons and Imaginariums; Hardy and Heath

Goodness me, May has been an especially dry month here at Your Movie Buddy. I feel I very rarely offer impromptu posts on this blog anymore, and mainly provide links to my published work (not that there's anything wrong with that). So, let's talk something cinematic, shall we? But only briefly, because I need to get back to work, as usual.

On Friday, I rented two DVDs, which I don't do nearly as much as I used to. It's not that I've upgraded to NetFlix or OnDemand (I've never used the former, and would get slapped if I used the latter); it's that the only Blockbuster in my area that hasn't rolled out the GOING OUT OF BUSINESS signs isn't exactly close enough to guarantee not paying late fees. And we all know Blockbuster is the only movie rental store left on the planet. *Sniffle*

Anyway, I picked up "Bronson" and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," two 2009 titles filed under "Never Got Around To It." "Bronson," the much more anticipated of the two, was, as my colleague Pete Croatto so aptly put it, a raging disappointment. You can imagine my shock when a film that looks as though it's capable of creating the sensation of pumping Red Bull through your veins was barely able to keep me awake. This is the kind of movie I fear so many filmmakers of my generation will create. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn clearly has a handle on stylized hipness, but in favoring that, he blows the chance to really dig into this beefy true story. The result is a pretentious bore of an artistic experiement. Its savage, saving grace is British actor Tom Hardy, who underwent one of the most drastic transformations in recent memory to play the lead character, and gives a feral, captivating performance. Practically through its entirety, "Bronson" makes you wish the performance was being showcased in a nicer package.

"Parnassus" was pretty much precisely what I expected it to be: a darkly whimsical, moderately entertaining fantasy with handsome art direction and garish visual effects. Picture, if you can, HBO's "Carnivale" linked, by Alice's looking glass, to the heaven scenes in "The Lovely Bones." The "anything goes" aspect of the Imaginarium (when you enter, the environment changes to accommodate your fantasies) somewhat validates the low-level CGI, but that really sounds like a cop-out. And hell if I gave a hoot about any of the characters, so abstract are the film's emotions. Again, salvation lies in the acting, especially that of rising star Andrew Garfield (the "Red Riding" trilogy) and fallen star Heath Ledger in his final performance. I don't think too many people realize how special Ledger was, and how profound a loss was his death. This guy wasn't just another handsome It Boy, he was the real deal -- a chameleon who perished while hitting his professional prime. In "Imaginarium," he speaks in a thick and dirty UK accent, and while the work isn't on par with his "Dark Knight" and "Brokeback" personae, it teases us with his metamorphosis capabilities. Had he lived, could he have grown to become the male Meryl Streep? It's a tantalyzing and tragic thought.