Key Video 4512

Four gold stars for Notes On A Scandal!


I watched the film last night and was blown away by Judi Dench's performance.  It's unusual that a jaded ex film theory student like myself is blown away like that, and although I do truly always love Dame Judi, this was the penultimate character for her I thought. 

Breathtakingly vicious and manipulative, her Barbara is as layered as any real live human being, unusual for a film script these days.  In fact, the layers of each main character in the film, Barbara, Sheba and Steven, are peeled away like the skin of an onion-- as the film progresses we get deeper and deeper into their psyches and man, are they all twisted!


The are also all twisted up in the affair that art teacher Sheba (Cate Blanchett) is carrying on with her seemingly abused 15 year old student, Steven.  Lonely and intense fellow teacher Barbara befriends Sheba, who she alternatively loves and hates for her beauty and bourgeois sensibilities, and she uses their closeness to pull Sheba further and further into her web of neediness when she discovers the affair.

Embassy Home Entertainment 2087

The day after a big holiday Monday is usually a very sad day for music new releases. All the music distributors and shippers shut down on Monday holidays. Because of this, the labels traditionally keep the Tuesday releases pretty slim the day after the holiday. So R. Kelly and Perry Farrell are both pretty lucky with two new albums out today. Without much competition, the albums might do a little better than they probably should. Most Janes Addiction fans would probably appreciate it if Perry Farrell just stopped making music. He managed to make some brilliant albums in the late 80s and early 90s. He even did pretty good with his post Jane's Addiction band Porno for Pyros. "We'll make great pets" is still repeating in my head after all these years. It was a super catchy song.

Perry Farrell started playing music in the brilliant but short lived band Psi Com. The band released one self titled album in 1985. He went on to create two excellent album with Jane's Addiction. "Nothing's Shocking" and "Ritual de lo Habitual" had a major influence on many of us who grew up in the late 80s and early 90s. Especially those of us growing up in southern California. These albums and their singles were heard everywhere. Everyone had the tapes blasting in their cars and I swear that I probably heard Jane's Addiction at least once a day, somewhere. The band became known as the symbol for alternative music. Back when alternative actually still meant something. Perry Farrell also went on to create the alternative music festival known as Lollapalooza. This was  a pretty exciting festival for kids who had never experienced anything like this before. Perry Farrell also released the movie "The Gift" in 1993. While this may be one of the worst films ever released, it remained one of my favorites for many years.

As I waited with my boyfriend, Corey, in the Emergency Room loading dock, nurses, aides, cleaning people and, I think, some illegal immigrants would rush through. The energy was frenetic. It was like someone spliced together all the link and filler scenes from a TV medical drama, and edited out the entertaining parts where you find out the doctor’s sleeping with the wife of the man who runs the hospital who is an alcoholic/pill addict and, even more tragic, votes Republican.

We learned that Corey had appendicitis. They wanted to perform surgery that night. Our plans to play poker and go dancing would, in all likelihood, have to be cancelled.

A cute picture of my boyfriend, Corey

Corey is a self-professed control-freak, and this would reveal itself in many ways. He would grill anyone who entered our room with the same battery of questions, to which he would receive, more or less, the same answers. I didn’t ask why, but I secretly theorized that he was waiting for one of them to “slip up” and say something like, “Well, you may be feeling discomfort because your uterus is over-extended,” to which Corey could then raise his pointed finger and exclaim, “Ah, ha! Got you! I’m a boy and I don’t have a uterus! Because of my hysterectomy last year.”

My boyfriend won’t find that joke funny, but he’s all cripple from surgery, so I’m safe.