Slowly Going Bald
"Look, we're gonna spend half the night driving around the Hills looking for this one party, and you're gonna say it sucks, and we're all gonna leave and we're gonna go look for this other party. But all the parties and all the bars, they all suck. I spend half the night talking to some girl who's looking around the room to see if there's someone who's more important she should be talking to, and it's like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause she's wearing a backpack."
Saturday, December 10, 2005
5 Comments:
Just finished reading your review of Memoirs of a Geisha and if you had actually read the book you would have realised that there is more to the story than "prostitutes" pouring tea and twirling their fans. However, given that you've only seen the movie it just goes to show that, as predicted, the movie was incredibly shit.
By 
, at
5:26 PM, December 11, 2005
Yeah, this is maybe the 11,000th ostensibly good book turned into an inferior film. You think people would catch on after a while. This is why I'm reluctant to see Narnia.
But I didn't read the book, never had any plans to do so, and don't see myself reading it any time soon. It's so far beyond my realm of interest that only a dear, true, trusted friend could persuade me to read it, and only after years of cajoling. And that friend would have to be Heidi Klum.
I know there's more to what geishas do than twirling fans and pouring tea. For instance, kimonos. And make-up. And tea pouring. It's a fascinating world. Fascinating.
Also, any exchange of sex for money, culturally condoned or not, pretty much falls into the realm of prostitution, as uncomfortable as that word may be to some. Tough but true.
By 
Dan Carlson, at
6:06 PM, December 11, 2005
Great review. :) I read Memoirs of a Geisha a few months ago with my book club, and I couldn't put it down. I haven't seen the movie yet (?), but I can imagine that the movie won't translate the psychology behind those crazy geishas as well as the book did. End even after reading the book, we spent about an hour of our book club meeting trying to differentiate between geishas and prostitutes. The best American analogy we could come up with was a woman who dates a wealthy older married man, knowing nothing will ever come of it except a Prada purse and the occasional stay in a nice hotel.
I know I'm not Heidi Klum, but it really was a good book. But I won't push it too hard, because it's probably not your genre anyway, and the movie just may have ruined it for you. :)
By Chez, at
10:04 AM, December 12, 2005
Some of the comments you're getting are great. I didn't know you were such a racist, you racist.
By Sarah, at
10:25 AM, December 12, 2005
I'm actually pretty proud of all the insane, insane, insane comments I'm getting. Just goes to show you that you can never predict which review will be the source of baseless complaint and moronic responses. I thought that the nutjobs that responded to the Goblet of Fire review would be untoppable, because some of them were really unbalanced, but I was wrong. Geisha is causing the kind of tempest in a teapot I haven't enjoyed since college.
It seems that most of the people are pissed that I seem to lack respect for the culture just because I didn't like the movie. Well, it's not a good movie. It's overhyped, over-stylized, and uninvolving. I'm not even reviewing the book, much less the culture. I'm reviewing the movie, which was disappointing. And some idiot objected to my use of the phrase "training montage." Unbelievable. Sayuri, the main character, goes through a variety of practices in a sequence set to music, complete with narration like "What takes years, you must learn in weeks." It was a perfect example of a training montage.
But there's a bigger danger in accusing me of cultural intolerance simply because I disliked the film. It's taking social tolerance too far. Respecting a culture doesn't mean giving a free pass to every piece of media based on that culture. Disliking Will & Grace doesn't mean I'm homophobic, it means I don't like crappy sitcoms. If I gushed about Geisha and gave it a rave review, based not on its merits but simply on the fact that it's specifically about that culture, then I'd be doing a disservice to members of that culture and the profession to which I aspire. It's a film review, not a press release.
"...and if the Left has a problem with that, they should vote for somebody else."
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...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces....
O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
--Look Homeward, Angel
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
--John Stuart Mill
We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
--G.K. Chesterton
We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
--August Van Zorn
--Stephen King
Film lovers are sick people.
--Francois Truffaut