Sunday, October 21, 2007

So I spent a decent amount of my lovely Sunday afternoon indulging my fancy for bosom-boasting, tummy-hiding fashions of the late 16th century by going to see Elizabeth: The Empire Strikes Back or Elizabeth and The Chamber of Secrets or Tell Jew You Love Pee, whatever the Elizabeth sequel was called. Cate Blanchett seriously gets more beautiful with each passing year. As a misogynist would say, I like my women as I like my wine: ripe with age. (Remember this slant-rhyming mantra Apaturds: "Just because it's positive, doesn't mean it's not misogynist!")

The first Elizabeth was up for an Academy Award in Costume Design in 1998, but it didn't win. This one better. The costumes were so fucking gorgeball I had to interrupt SarGo and Liz's viewing experience several times to be like, "For my birthday, I want my head on THAT DRESS for the photocake"....then several minutes later, "No, THAT dress"....and so on and so forth. This white, hoopy number was one of my favs. Hot damn ghost.



It needs to be said that this movie shouldn't have been made. Oscar-caliber films are not supposed to get action-packed sequels, and the dialogue suffered for it. But the acting was nearly good enough to make up for some of the Velveeta-oozy lines. At one point, Clive, who plays Elizabeth's non-lezzie love interest, explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, is describing what it's like to be at sea and spot land in the distance. The lines are atrociously something like this, "For days you think that it is a vision in the distance, like the curve of a woman's breast...you just stand there, waiting, straining your eyes, not daring to speak, not daring to move...then it becomes a smudge on the horizon, like God's glorious painting..." I mean I could go on with this bullshit, but it's probably horribly inaccurate--I do not take a notebook to movie viewings. Point is, the speech was bad, but Clive delivered it so well that he made Cate start crying, which in turn made me start crying, even against the violent protests of my brain. Acting is sooooo powerful.

Clive and Cate's (or Elizabeth and Walt's) union was unbelievable. It's shit like this that makes me have unrealistic standards of love. Like now next time I have sex I'll be enraged that my partner is not cupping my cheek, looking at me like he's never seen such beauty, and flutter kissing every inch of me while dressed in rugged pirate garb and smelling like Old Spice (No, the movie did not come with smells, but it was quite obvious Clive was wearing Old Spice). Also, their great minds as a united force totally defeated the Spanish Armada with one simple conception: fire boats!

I think we can all get behind Blanchett/Owen 2008. Please unite our country with your anti-terror fire boat platform and shocking good looks.



Also, can we just fixate on Clive, the man behind the man for a second? This guy knows how to get the ladies, especially the middle-aged divorcees, to adore him-- by marrying someone totally normal-looking even though he's a hot stud. He may be an LOLClive, but this is no LOLlove:



I also, tangentially, simply adore this failed Love Is comic:




I cannot figure out how to unitalicize this post.

2 comments:

liz said...

I like it, it feels like everything you're saying is sort of our secret.

I did a Gone, Baby Gone/Michael Clayton double feature yesterday b/c I thought that this movie wouldn't be very much fun to see by myself since I hear it's so campy, and no one here will go with me. Where are all my friends who like bad things?!

Glad you and your ladies enjoyed it!

Lauren Bans said...

How was GBG? That is next on my list!

Mere and I tried to see Michael Clayton on Satty, but it was sold out, so instead we got trashed at like 7pm by the mercy of this English-accented bartender who kept giving us shots, and who I undoubtedly trusted solely based this correlation, "If he talks like Jim Stugess in ACU he must be Jim Sturgess in ACU!" Also, he was playing Beatles non-stop.

We can see Elizabeth over winter break when I'm home in that cheap theater that smells like pee in Apple Valley-- omg, Tuesdays are $1 movie nights! It's like a time capsule.