BEFORE: I'm in the middle of working four days straight, two days at each venue where I'm employed, and thankfully alternating. Right now my body kind of works best if I can get one day off after each day I work, so I can physically recover, however my bank account will suffer if I get that kind of schedule. So it's four days on and then I think two days off. The New York Liberty made the playoffs, which begin next week I think, they're about to release the full schedule for all three (?) rounds which will extend to late October I think. Bad news for me, I forget to account for this possibility when I handed in my schedules for September and October, so I may not end up working any of those playoff games. This seems a bit ridiculous to me, because the schedules are JUST being announced now, and if I didn't mark myself as "available" for those days on my September calendar, then I won't be put on the schedule. But I could not possibly have known the dates of the playoff games by August 14, which is when my calendar was due, if they're just being announced NOW, in late September. Was I supposed to be psychic?
This is becoming a problem, working out my schedule between the two jobs. I used to have two animation jobs, one was always Mon-Wed-Fri. and the other one was Tues-Thurs. Simple, right? Now I need to hand in availability calendars for TWO venues, and I can't predict which open dates either place will schedule me for, so to be on the safe side I'm only making myself available for ONE venue each day. Both venues are encouraging me to leave myself open for more days than there are days with events, because more events could be added later. But I feel if I leave myself open for BOTH venues on the same day, I'll eventually be double-scheduled and then I'll have to cancel events, which I can only do a limited number of times. So I had to consider one job the "primary" and leave myself open for the maximum number of days in a month, that way if a screening comes up at the theater, last-minute, I may be marked available for it, or if someone else is sick or cancels for any reason, being marked as "available" could get me a phone call and another shift. So the other job is therefore "secondary" by default, and I can mark myself available for events already on the schedule, then I've been leaving a few other days open there, just in case, however I don't have seniority so if a concert (or a playoff game) comes up, I might not be contacted at all. I guess I figured that if the WNBA team made the playoffs (again, impossible to predict months in advance) there would be an extra e-mail sent out to all employees to see who might be available to work. Nope, I guess they're just going to schedule the people who had the foresight to keep the day open and somehow predicted the team would have a post-season, and used a crystal ball or a Ouija board to discern which games would be home games, while I completely missed the boat on this one.
I mean, the Nets season is starting up again soon, but it might be fun (and exhausting) to work at at least one playoff game if I could. I guess I should be careful what I wish for. Mark Ruffalo carries over from "Spider-Man: Brand New Day".
THE PLOT: A high-school student feels responsible for a fatal traffic accident and tries to make amends.
AFTER: Now, there appear to be two versions of this film - one is 2 hours and 30 min. long, according to the IMDB. My cable system was offering that version, and I taped that and burned it to DVD. But there is another, longer cut of the film, which is 3 hours and 6 min. long, and that version is playing on Hulu, even though it lists the running time as 2 hours and 30, it's the longer one. Want to guess how I know this? Instead of going downstairs to watch my DVD version (which has no subtitles, although I COULD have dubbed it with captions) I stayed upstairs and watched the Hulu version, where I could toggle the subtitles on. Well, digital streaming with subtitles is better than DVD without, so yeah, I watched the longer version, all three hours plus.
Now, I may never watch the shorter version, now that I've tackled the longer one WITH regrets. It's, umm, it's way too long and I'm thinking now that the shorter version might have flowed a little better and also not taken up so much of my time WHICH is a valuable commodity. But hey, no judgment, if you love to watch people argue for 150 minutes, maybe you'll prefer watching people argue for 186 minutes, I mean, what's not to love? So what if you watch movies to escape from your family drama issues, and the fact that you're always making mistakes and fudging everything up, across the board, or at least it feels like it. Maybe you had an awkward set of teenage years and you just hate being reminded about how little you knew back then, how you constantly were getting into arguments with your parents over every little thing, and how tough it was when you started dating and/or lost your virginity.
But you know, the longer version, I assume it covers more ground, there's a lot that happens in this film, thousands of things in fact, but part of me wishes it was just ONE solid thing happening, something we could all focus on and relate to and it wouldn't be so all-over-the-place then. I should mention that the film was shot in 2005 and the director struggled to create a final cut that would satisfy both him AND the studio. The studio insisted on the 150-minute run-time, and as you might imagine, the director, suffering from Artist Brain, preferred the three-hour cut. There were lawsuits over this, and those went on until 2014, however the studio released their shorter cut in theaters in 2011, and the director's cut was released on DVD in 2012. Some critics and polls now regard this as one of the 21st Century's best films so far, only, umm, which version?
I had never even heard of the film until I saw it in the premium cable channel listings, the plot sounded a bit intriguing, so I kind of put it on the someday/maybe list, then when there was another movie that shared an actor with it, I burned it to DVD, still not knowing what exactly I would be in for when I watched it. And well, that's three hours of my life that I'll never get back, isn't it? Lisa Cohen is a self-centered teenager who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (I realize that sounds a bit redundant, probably every teen in that part of town is self-centered) and goes to school where her teachers are all played by various known actors (Matt Damon and Matthew Broderick at the same school, what are the odds?). She's got a male best friend who she doesn't want to date, and then finds another teen in school when she wants to lose her virginity and get that over with. Gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there?
Lisa also wants to buy a cowboy hat, you know, to wear on that horse-riding vacation with her father, only she can't find one for sale in the shops in the UWS - gee, I wonder why? It's almost like nobody in NYC wears cowboy hats. Does she NOT have Amazon in 2005? But then she sees a bus driver wearing a cowboy hat, and she tries to flag him down and ask him where he bought it, however, in doing so she kind of distracts him while he's working, and he runs a red light and takes out a pedestrian. Obviously it's kind of her fault, also kind of his fault, like he COULD have stopped the bus to ask her what she wanted, or she could have just not distracted him while he was working, but it is what it is. Neither one tells the whole truth of the incident to the police who investigate it, and she later feels guilty about it, and he doesn't.
NOTE: If you like Allison Janney and you don't want to see her character get hurt, then maybe this film isn't for you. If for some reason you WANT to see Allison Janney's character get hurt, what the hell is wrong with you?
Well, this is going to turn into a whole thing over three hours, isn't it? Lisa ends up calling the woman's cousin in another state, and then tracking down that woman's closest friend, and taking up some kind of crusade to get that bus driver in trouble, fired or held accountable for the accident, maybe convince the cousin to file suit for damages, only that won't bring her back or help Lisa feel any better over having played a role in her death. This is also likely to affect her grades if she's spending so much time on this and neglecting her schoolwork, and it may also drive a wedge between her and her mother, not just less time spent together but concern over having another mother figure in her life, and so on.
Lisa also seeks comfort in the arms (and beds) of several men during this time, one of whom is her geometry teacher, and that hardly seems appropriate. Sure, keep making more mistakes to make yourself feel better about the previous mistakes you made, I think that kind of counts as a downward spiral of sorts. It also implies a lack of focus if she can't keep a steady boyfriend, goes from one sex partner to another, and ignores her male best friend and won't even consider dating him. Lisa is kind of unhinged and all over the place, and somebody gave her three whole hours of movie to go off on all these tangents, was that really the best idea?
Lisa's mother, meanwhile, is a Broadway actress who's got a show opening in a couple of weeks, and she's also started dating an admirer of hers from Colombia (the actor is French and has a French accent, but sure, we can buy him as a Latino, he's foreign, right?) and things seem to be going well in her career and this new relationship, however she only gets a bunch of sass and attitude from her daughter, and they seem to be drifting further apart. Well, that can happen when one parent has to be the disciplinarian and the other parent lives far away and only needs to send money and talk about grand plans like taking vacations with his daughter. Lisa and Ramon start going to the operas at Lincoln Center, and the relationship seems to be going well, but then when they go out to dinner with Lisa and Lisa's friend Emily (the best friend of the dead woman) Ramon says something that seems a bit anti-Semitic to Emily, and well, that's probably the start of another downward spiral.
There's also terrible, terrible acting coming from the director, who inserted himself into the film in the role of Lisa's father, who lives on the West Coast and directs commercials, and they talk on the phone frequently and they plan a vacation to a horse-riding ranch that never actually happens, partially because self-centered Lisa never responded to those requests from the ranch over what her meal preferences were. Now, just because you are the director of a film and you CAN cast yourself in a role, it does not mean that you SHOULD. If you're as dynamic as, say, Tarantino, by all means, go ahead. If you're boring as dirt and unable to deliver a line with any conviction, then maybe not so much. If this director played HIMSELF I think I'd have trouble believing him.
If you feel that life is ultimately pointless and we're all just killing time and going around in circles, well, here's a movie that will be just like that for two or three hours, depending on which cut you watch. Remember to be like Lisa and never make the same mistake twice - well, why would you when there are so many NEW mistakes that you can make in the future?
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan (director of "You Can Count on Me" and "Manchester by the Sea")
Also starring Anna Paquin (last seen in "She's All That"), Matt Damon (last seen in "The Rip"), J. Smith-Cameron (last seen in "No Pay, Nudity"), Jeannie Berlin (last seen in "The Fabelmans"), Jean Reno (last heard in "Zootopia 2"), Sarah Steele (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), John Gallagher Jr. (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Cyrus Hernstadt, Allison Janney (last seen in "Drop Dead Gorgeous"), Kieran Culkin (last seen in "A Real Pain"), Stephen Adly Guirgis (last seen in "Jack Goes Boating"), Betsy Aidem (last seen in "Arbitrage"), Adam Rose (last seen in "The Back-Up Plan"), Nick Grodin, Jonathan Hadary (last heard in "The Swan Princess"), Josh Hamilton (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Rosemarie Dewitt (last seen in "Smile 2"), Glenn Fleshler (last seen in "The Seagull"), Stephen Conrad Moore, Gio Perez (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Matthew Broderick (last seen in "John Candy: I Like Me"), Jake O'Connor, David Mazzucchi, Jerry Matz (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories"), Kevin Carroll (last seen in "Till"), Hina Abdullah, Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Kenneth Lonergan (last seen in "White Noise"), Enid Graham (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Brittany Underwood (last seen in "Game Change"), T. Scott Cunningham (last seen in "The Out-of-Towners" (1999)), Michael Ealy (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Krysten Ritter (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Matt Bush (last seen in "Paddleton"), Anna Berger (last seen in "Deep Cover" (1992)), Rose Arrick (last seen in "Ishtar"), Pippin Parker, Kelly Wolf, Johann Carlo (last seen in "Reversal of Fortune"), Carlo Alban (last seen in "Mile 22"), Christine Goerke, Liza Colon-Zayas (also carrying over from "Spider-Man: Brand New Day"), Jason Pendergraft (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Yves Abel, Mel Rocco
RATING: 4 out of 10 heated classroom discussions about 9/11
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