Monday, February 4, 2013

Isabella Rossellini's Glass Legs: Dancing Fellini-style with a Kid from the Hall


Bridled with a beautiful score and a tone similarly playful to The American Astronaut, this eye popping film-stock disloyal romp blows performance anxiety and the fans that empower same into absurdest proportions with delightful art school justifying results.
While perhaps not as revolutionary as Green Porno, as MILF laden as Death Becomes Her, anyone that might feel empathy towards films that transcend yet remain loyal to the trappings of film school grad projects with apparently blackmailed A grade B list talent and / or has a healthy regard for full sized real womanly scaled glass legs filled with sudsy lager should check out this film for at least an offhanded inspiration to Google up some jpgs of Isabella back in her days working for the news, or with David Lynch, or just being awesome in general as an alternative weekend break from the usual lightness of being into unhealthy Juliette Binoche obsessions.
Nothing to do with anything, but She's Having a Baby is riding the rails on the next channel I surf too after Saddest Music in the World slithers into credits. Couple scenes before the part I remember most, Kevin Bacon's character getting called out for not knowing what he wants, whether the wife and child and domestic compliance, or wild coke fueled rides on monthly models of the mean. Haunted... When the Minutes Drag. I should feel chills, I remember in 1988 reacting to that scene while having no desire to follow Kevin's lead, to apply his situations or choices to my own life. And now here I am, balanced on my own glass legs wherein beer swills like golden promise and foamy fun, trying to dance and beginning to feel my heels crack against the hard, gritty surface of the reality that in a day or three I will be a father, I will be holding a newborn to my chest trying to bond as a father and as a care giver and as a worthwhile person instead of the indecisive, self-obsessed, neurotic and narcissistic putz I've perfected playing at most of these past 40 years.
And suddenly I fiercely miss John Hughes. Of all the cats in the world I respect or admire, few spring to mind this very instant as the person I might most like a big old sloppy hug from, and maybe a few words of reality check. I'm sad he's gone, his work gave image and voice to far more of my high school years than I should probably publicly admit. Sure, there was loads of content I didn't get until years later, doesn't change the fact that I took it all in, and when it mattered, heeded the cautionary elements quite well, thank you.
And speaking of feeling lost and in need of direction, the next film to traipse across the screen is Anna Paquin and Jeff Daniels in Fly Away Home. No wonder I got so emo while talking to my Mom on the phone, clarifying questions about my birth, my brother's; trying to contextualize my held dear slivers of memory, where and when, a high stakes game where bits I've potentially made up to fill in the gaps and subsequently held true for decades can be debunked within seconds by a witness that'd been on the scene.
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