Exte: Hair Extensions

I came into this movie expecting it to do something fairly predictable: to hire only incredibly beautiful women and then deploy a plot explicitly designed to chastise women for all their vanity. It did not do this at all. At all. If anything, Exte was remarkably respectful of the work done by stylists and of the very complex business and social relationships that exist in a salon. The protagonist is an apprentice, and there is no question that she works incredibly hard at many skills: the difficult craft of cutting hair, the constant research and training demanded by ever-evolving trends, even the responsibility of caring for one's clients and respecting not only their investment, but their very personal relationship to their hair as part of how they present themselves to the world. The film featured a large cast of women and did a remarkably fair job examining the salon as a business environment of real value and complex relationships that is run almost entirely by women.

I wouldn't go so far as to use the word "feminist" for Exte; there's a lot of weird abortion shaming. But by the end of the film the lesson learned by Yuko is not that she should be chastised for vanity, but that she recognize the value of hard work and solid relationships, so I was pretty happy with this.

Then there's the plot. I'll see if I can summarize it and if I can communicate exactly where Exte and I disagree on the real crime here. The hair extensions gone mad came from a woman who was kidnapped and used for organ harvest. I know what you're thinking: they harvested her hair for extensions at the same time. Nope. Not at all. I know what else you're thinking: the extensions will get their vengeance on the harvesters. Also no. They are, as far as we know, happily harvesting away somewhere.

Here's what happens: a pervy coroner shaves her head like he does all the corpses because he has a hair fetish. When her hair grows back he decides she's just magnificent, steals her corpse, and slowly fills his apartment with her hair. Eventually he sells some as extensions and things get violent. Finally, he is sliced into three small parts by the extensions and becomes a shoe, head, hair, hat creature that is harmless because he can only scuttle around making small squeaking sounds. [Oh, Spoiler Alert] I tried to find a picture of this, but no such luck.

As far as I can tell, the moral of the movie is not about organ harvest at all, but rather: Don't be pervy.

I watched the movie because I got extensions yesterday. There is something inimitably creepy about having someone else's hair on your head. The hair has a wholly different texture than my own and feels foreign. Exte wholly disagrees with me on this point. There is nothing wrong with extensions at all, unless you buy them from some weird guy.

[Photo: Exte features a lot of tongue hair growth, which I think is supposed to gross you out because of hair-in-mouth aversion. A lot of Exte relies on the viewer being grossed out by hair. Consequently, no one who has ever painted, swept, or cleaned a salon has anything to fear from this film.]

The people from Coraline seem to have another movie coming out. 

Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom is shameless, non-stop kitschy nostalgia, and it is a weird nostalgia, because it is aimed at an audience that does not remember the stuff it is nostaligic about. It is a movie for the Etsy generation. An Instagram movie. It may be the Wes Andersonest of all the Wes Anderson movies, but I would not know, because I have only seen The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic all the way through, and neither of them left much of an impression, to be perfectly honest. To be perfectly honest, I may have avoided the more beloved of his movies (Rushmore) because I fear the uncomfortable conversations in which I say horrible insincere-sounding things like, "Yeah, a lot of people like that movie" or "I really liked the shoes in that movie." (I'm terrified of hurting people's feelings, I'm terrified of being judged for my taste. Why am I writing stuff here on a blog about movies...?) 

Wes Anderson: I put a bird on it. 

So I had no plans to like Moonrise Kingdom. I thought I would damage my eye-sockets with all the eye-rolling Moonrise Kingdom would require. However. I was totally charmed by it. I thought Ed Norton's Khaki Scouts troupe leader was funny and sincere and believable. Frances McDormand was great. The sweet naive sexuality and romance were flat and unrealistic in the way a good picture book is. 

What does this mean?

Do I have to turn in my dried-up humorless cynic card? 

SW&tH

What if told you there is a movie, in theaters now, with the following actors in it? Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane. You would think, that sounds like something pretty great, probably fairly violent, maybe a Guy Ritchie crime caper, or maybe some medieval epic, with lots of historical accuracy and very cool costumes. Or maybe you wouldn't think that because you don’t know all their names, but you know these guys.

See? Those guys. Maybe they would be working class weirdos in a Mike Leigh film. Maybe they would be the supporting cast in a new Danny Boyle sci fi movie. What you would probably not think is this: all those actors are the dwarfs in the second weak retelling of Snow White to come to theaters this summer. This is Snow White and the Hunstman, starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron. Theron, by the way, is a phenomenon. I felt like everyone else understood that this was a silly movie--Chris Hemsworth especially seemed to maintain an ironic smirk the whole time. Maybe that's just his face, or his character. But Charlize Theron, I don't think she knows how to phone it in, and her performance is almost embarrassing because it's too good for the film she's in. Unlike Kristen Stewart. There is an amazing scene near the end of the movie, where Kristen Stewart gives a sort of St Crispin's Day speech, inspiring the troupes, but in that same face-touching, dead-eyed style of naturalistic acting that has occasionally worked really well for her, when she played a sullen teenager. "Iron melts," she growls, in a weird halfway English accent. "But it also writhes about inside itself." I have no idea what any of this means. But I would definitely like to be kidnapped by that band of dwarfs.

Quick-review: Strigoi

I have finally watched Strigoi. I have meant to since Netflix started bringing it up in my recommended movies area.

Netflix has two means of recommending movies: one is to take a film and lump it into every possible conceivable genre (quirky visually-striking intellectual thrillers anyone?) and insist that I must watch this movie because I love this genre that was clearly generated by Netflix solely to bully me into watching this movie. For me, this movie is Santa Sangre. Netflix has wanted me to watch Sante Sangre for what seems like years. I did, and we'll discuss that later.

The other way Netflix recommends movies is to very rarely bring a film up, as if to say "oh. also this movie exists. I dunno. No one has watched it yet, but you know. It could be ok. You're probably not interested anyway as all you ever talk about is how much you want to see Santa Sangre."

Strigoi is one of the latter films, and precisely because Netflix's recommendation was so non-committal, I watched it.

I love this movie. It is the only vampire movie I think I've ever really loved.** It's what I want vampire movies to be, and it's precisely what they never are. Twilight would have us believe that vampires tell us about ourselves, about our desires and about what it means to belong to a community. Twilight sits on a throne of lies. Strigoi does those things, and it does so well. It's funny, it's incredibly sad, it is without a doubt the only time I have ever seen a vampire drink another's blood, and I felt it achieved something emotional and true.

This movie is touching and distressing and if I were to write a full list of adjectives to accurately describe it I would sound like Netflix.

Which leads me to question: What if Netflix is an entity so advanced in its knowledge of one area of information that it is an intelligence unto itself, and because of its incredibly nuanced love for film, can never be understood by others?

What if Netflix is the singularity, and the singularity is simply an awkward movie nerd?

Recommended genres for me today:

• Visually-striking Chinese Kung Fu Movies
• Gritty Crime Movies Based on a Book
• Independent Road Trip Dramas
• Quirky Buddy TV Comedies

These recommendations don't sound like they come from a computer. They sound a lot like the people I used to work with at the video store, talking to someone about something they just returned: a movie they grabbed off the new releases rack without much thought for its book adaptation or the cinematography of the fight scenes.

I don't remember the genre Netflix used to recommend Strigoi to me, but I'd like to think that my max-star rating has prompted Netflix to design a whole new genre of recommendations for me. Something about Soviet Russia that isn't set in Russia. Something about communities and the social devastation of a million quiet betrayals. Something about the impact of land ownership wars that are waged entirely in paperwork, without any family ever moving from their land, without anyone ever really knowing who truly owns what. Something about coming home to find your grandfather has been drinking your blood and living with him anyway.

**EDIT: There is one other vampire movie I love, and I also compared it to Twilight, which is horrifying.

[photo: Thomas Wolfe was wrong: you can go home again, and when you do, you'll finally achieve all that you couldn't face in med school.] 

News about Oldboy is always interesting, but I'm fascinated by a couple of other things in this article:

1. Use of whom in the first sentence: "whom has been following this remake." It's a complex sentence, but still.
2. Martha Marcy May Marlene, Silent House, and Spike Lee's vision of Oldboy constitute a trend of "thrillers"? You have to make a pretty broad definition of genre to wedge those three movies into the same category. I guess it would be undiplomatic to say so, but I suspect what Elizabeth Olsen has an un-Olsenlike reputation for is "acting." Or more accurately, "not reminding me of Full House."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0KUUOWq3JA

The Westerfeld Effect

I had to look up this post again today, not for the last time I'm sure: http://scottwesterfeld.com/blog/2007/03/midi-nighters-on-tv/ .

Sullivan is really into My Little Pony right now. He says, "My little pony my best friend." So I was thinking, Sullivan is a brony. Only then I realized, Sullivan is two, so actually he's just a toddler watching a cartoon for toddlers.

brony tshirt

I'm always trying to express this thing, where you twist a thing too many times and end up with something very conventional, either the same thing you started with or something worse. I think Scott Westerfeld explains the phenomenon really well, and since I often want a name for it, I think we should call it The Westerfeld Effect. Right?