Want to Attend Atlanta Screening?

If you would like to attend the Atlanta, red carpet screening November 17th, tomorrow, Saturday, of the upcoming horror thriller, "Somebody Help Me," starring Omarion, Marques Houston, and Brooklyn Sudano (and blog about it maybe?) please contact: keanesli at theconversationgroup dot com. He'll set you up right.

Could U 2 Be Psychic?

I often have those odd moments where something I'd thought about in passing does come to pass, such as thinking about finding a four-leaf clover, then the next day looking down while walking the dog and viola, a four-leaf clover.

Or more horrifyingly serious, having a strange, ill feeling come over me about a hospital as I passed by one overlooking GA-400, then a couple of hours later rushing my child into that same emergency room. A few days before 9-11, I dreamt of planes swooping into NYC using the bridges into Manhattan as their pathways. I thought not a thing of it until... well, you know when.

Then there's that old devil boy-man, Eason Jordan. Now I admit to a slight obsession with Eason since he was such an Atlanta fixture, starting CNN with Ted and such, and then being one of the first people to be seriously "outed" in the blogosphere. (Over his remarks about journalists being killed in... wherever, Iraq I assume. While Eason was schmoozing it at Davos one year. No lack of ye olde irony there.) Then he runs off with Mariane Pearl (they were perilously close to the alter I hear before someone came to their senses. What was she thinking? Grief will certainly cloud one's good judgement I suppose) and resigns abruptly from CNN -- not necessarily in that order.

So I fell asleep last night thinking of that doofus Eason while reading an article about the making of the badly-titled, A Mighty Heart, into a movie. (Think A Mighty Wind. I often do.) Which is unfortunate as it is a beautifully written, powerful, all-in-one-sitting book. For me, it really was as close as I'll ever get to an inspirational/self-help title as the true love and the deep bond and the friendship shared by Danny Pearl and Mariane just lit-up the entire book.

What a tragic loss for her, yet an intelligent and deeply believable story for all of us who still believe, go figure, in heterosexual, monogamous, romantic love. Or at least cling to the notion of it being possible. It genuinely was so with those two.

I read the book in a wallow of pure bitterness and cynicism over romantic love never ever being sustainable between men and women. Ye olde post-divorce scenario I suppose. Nothing unusual to be in that classically bitter state of mind, having just been divorced then subjected to two subsequent and deeply disappointing relationships. I was in the "Never Again" mindset fer sure, but that book honestly helped drag me back up to a less hardened stance in the romantic love department. Can't say I've forgiven the Islamacist motherfuckers who beheaded precious Danny Pearl yet, but I've made great strides in keeping faith that men and women can co-habitate in harmony.

But I'm diverging from my intended topic... so I fell asleep wondering WTF was up with Eason, and wondering if the Brangelina flick would have a character playing that pumpkin-head (of course not), and low and behold, I wake to the news that Eason has launched... a blog! My my my... the unconscious workings of the mind never cease to amaze me.

Who's Your Daemon?

If you have read the Dark Materials trilogy, no doubt you've thought about what (animal) form your daemon would take. Well, that's always up for great interpretation, but the fan site HisDarkMaterials has a fun daemon name generator you will enjoy playing with.

My daemon name is Pura. That's like the Dark Materials equivalent of... Truthiness! I like it. Also, according to the site, Nicole Kidman has wrapped all her scenes. I cannot wait to see that marvelous ice princess as Mrs. Coulter. (They just need to change her first name to Ann for even more wicked fun and games.)

And The Golden Compass (book 1) movie website is now up. Immerse yourself here.

Put A Stake In It, That Southern Culture Is Dead

Faulkner's not dead; he was just passed-out drunk in his coffin all this time. Talk about dredging-up the past and going places maybe we just shouldn't be going... now some wretched Faulkner family member has sold a vampire script Faulkner wrote in his I'm Really Hammered phase, one that went on for over a decade, to a Hollywood producer. The producer seems deeply enamored, bless his heart, with that absurdist stereotype of some moss-ridden, Hazel Motes-y (or is that O'Conner?) "Deep South" naturally enough. From The Guardian:

Faulkner's estate has given the script to Lee Caplin, a producer who says he would like to set it in the Deep South. Little more is known but there is a revival of interest in adapting Faulkner's work to the screen. It is said Oprah Winfrey wants to make Light in August and Caplin is looking for a writer to adapt Faulkner's 1935 story Golden Land (the only tale he actually set in Hollywood) in the twisted style of a David Lynch film.

So Big Oprah and some fucktard producer who thinks that that drooling, fake gothicist David Lynch is no doubt a brilliant filmmaker are waiting in the wings to leech off the rest of the backwater vapors? Deep South is cool, eh? Most real southerners are so Deep South stupid they'd confuse Faulkner with Colonel Sanders, although he looks an awful lot like an aging Billy Bragg in the above snapshot. (He too likes the ladies much I hear.)

How about methed-out rednecks, mega-church mentalities, gated communities, ghetto culture, I Heart Bush stickers plastered on pickup trucks, fat developers in pink shorts on manufactured golf courses, Wal-Marts and NASCAR nowadays, you clueless Hollywood dickheads? Who'd want to film that crap?

Shut Up and Change The World

Finally went to see Shut Up & Sing, a film I've had an ad for here on the SGR for a while. It is absolutely amazing to watch Natalie Maines not only give the finger to country-fuck rednecks everywhere and the radio industry (as we knew it), but to change the entire music industry in front of our faces, all the while making a complete artistic and emotional shift from within.

Natalie Maines is my freakin' hero. She sings like a dream, and her Dixie Chicks posse can play the holy crap outta their instruments. Plus, you gotta love the hair and makeup. Talk about getting your $8.50's worth. All in all, a righteous ticket to a righteous place in time.

Aquarium Sundays

I was wary of the Georgia Aquarium (a non-profit, that's why it's a dot org), not because of touristy overkill, or as an aqua-ode to Bernie Marcus, whom I adore anyway having working for him for many years, but rather that I'd gotten a negative vibe for aquariums since one was a setting where the morally vapid characters in the movie Closer would act-out their manipulative, twisted little sex crimes on each other.

But since the Georgia Aquarium is just down the street and I discovered it to be a wondrously meditative environment for a grownup (even with hundreds of other people crowding you) and an hours-long delight for a six-year old, I broke down and bought an annual pass. Several visits later, I've almost gotten over the sensation that I'll turn a corner and find Clive Owen creeping about.

Rip Yo Bodice, Ladies

Too much, too soon. Woe to the actor who would foolishly follow Colin Firth's Darcy from the 1995 BBC miniseries-adaptation of Pride and Prejudice; or to a director who stumbles into the obvious, clumsily trampling all over the Gothic fragility and self-possessed sexual smoldering Firth absolutely seared into the hearts and minds and assorted other places of the female anatomy.

A needless Darcy re-creation is almost the cinematic suicide that would arise from toying about with Clark Gable's Rhett Butler, as Colin Firth's have-your-way-NOW, poofy-shirt Darcy pretty much slammed the lid on the chest of the Darcy-ideal, for the serious Austen fan.

Women across North America are not happy with this 2005 release of Pride and Prejudice. Not having seen it yet, I'm already feeling their angst. And when American women are not happy, well, heads will... turn away.

From the New York Daily News today:

The trouble started a couple of months ago when University of Colorado English Prof. Joan Klingel Ray, president of the Jane Austen Society, slagged off the movie in an interview with the U.K.'s Telegraph, criticizing everything from Matthew MacFadyen as the male lead, Mr. Darcy, to the movie's in-your-face sexual imagery.

"The Darcy in the film does not have the quality of attractiveness that Colin Firth has," Ray asserted, referring to the star of the acclaimed 1995 miniseries.

She added: "The film is full of sexual imagery, which is totally inappropriate to Austen's novel. In one scene, a wild boar, which I assume is supposed to represent Darcy, wobbles through a farm with its sexual equipment on show."

Full gossip here.

Tags: Movies, Pride and Prejudice, Colin Firth

It Ain't Easy Being Southern - Part 2

Nope, it just isn't. Although being Southern can be about being easy. I love that classic joke:

Question: What's the Southern girl's mating call?
Answer: "I'm sooooo DRUNK!!!!"

See the movie Junebug and you'll know what I'm talking about. The movie is brilliant, even if you loath Outsider Art, which I happen to, but that's another blog for ya.

Come on, Grrll, I hear you say. Urbanista Southern gals don't really ponder Old South all that much? Given that we're so immersed in New South, right? Well, I wish it was that easy. I don't really like sitting around thinking about The War or Gone With The Wind or Episcopalians paying reparations for slavery.

But as I am a southerner, a movie lover and an Episcopalian, there is simply a point of inevitability, although I've yet to hang with Brad Pitt and Bono and The Archbishop. Actually, one of Ava's friends was baptized by The Archbishop Hizseff on his whirlwind drive-by of (hopefully not insignificant) southern parishes a few years back. (I wore a lovely brown velvet hat and cream colored suit, if I recall correctly.)

Bono was not with him at the time, as that was before Archbishoping duties included hanging out with rock stars to end World Suffering. And if you believe Episcopalians are going to do much of anything that involves leaving the club or the bar (see Bunny's World) then I personally have already ended World Suffering -- singlehandedly!

But then most of you don't drive along Peachtree Street, right over the very spot where Peggy Mitchell died, virtually every day. That alone is weird. Then another time, I was watching Gone With The Wind, yet again, on one of Ted's Gone With The Wind Channels, where it plays in a loop, and Ava came running in just as the Battle of Atlanta was raging on our 18" TV set.

Being fascinated by warfare, and what inquiring child wouldn't be, Ava asked, "Where did that war happen, Mommy?" I tried to be tactful, as children have little sense of "the past," and if you talk about events in history they more or less believe them to be unfolding right here and now, often lurking in a closet in their own bedroom, or under the proverbial mattress.

Still, I found myself blurting out, "Oh that? It happened right out the window, dear."

Actually, the real Battle of Atlanta site is now covered by Tattoo Target over on Moreland Avenue in Reynoldstown, near Little Five Points. Talk about a weird shopping vibe.