Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

flicks

by

I am not a terrific actor. I have zeal, and am unafraid, but i always balk at surrendering myself entirely to a persona that is not wholly my own. Acting, for me, is a series of motions, and when i am acting i string them together as fluidly as possible. Sometimes, though, i know the movements and the words so cold that i stop speaking and let the character speak through me. Those are the moments when i am truely an actor.

Despite not thoroughly mastering the art of acting, i am slowly becoming more aware of the acting of others. I can see, now, the vast difference between motions being gone through and characters. This sight has turned live theatre into something much nearer to a sporting event for me, but what it has truly revolutionized is the screen. No longer can i appreciate overwrought dramas or lightweight sitcoms, where the actors are just punching the lines in all the right places; acting is not pummeling. No longer can i endure even the most viscerally executed CG action sequences; not if i have to suspend my disbelief in the characters doing the fighting.

It might sound like a revolution of criticism, but that’s only because the standards for what we call “actors” have sunk so low. Suddenly i get the point of the Academy Awards — they are not to award the most favorite actors for the most fun roles. No. They are for the actors who chose not to appear in their movies, instead letting their characters speak for themselves.

I wish i could do it, but for the time being i am content to appreciate it. I am more than content to drink up masters like Ian McKellen, who skips from playing fairytale heros and villians to portraying the imperfections of real life without skipping a beat. I love ensembles, like the one on West Wing, who are so in on the show that i have trouble watching them on talk shows and award ceremonies when they are just being themselves.

I like that I can see this all now, a layer beyond the story and the movement and the words. Yay for college education.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/11/106870870418760368/

by

Neo trying to fly faster than the speed of sound hit a chord inside me, not because The Matrix is nearly programmed to resonate with every twenty-something who feels separate from the world that contains them but because I have done it so many times before. Neo’s flying feel so much like my own dreams, from his straight upward ascent to his endlessly accelerated forward flight to his feet first nearly-crash landings. All of it could be cut scenes from inside my own head.

In short: yes to the flying, no to the Burly Brawl, yes to the Architect dialog, no to the Morpheus monologue, yes to the mansion fight, no to rave scene, yes to anytime Trinity kicked someone’s ass, and maybe to buying the careful but convoluted explanation of rogue programs.

There, I didn’t spoil anything, did I?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/06/200403325/

by

I am met only with incredulity whenever I mention that I haven’t seen it. Personally, I don’t understand the sheer and utter disbelief most people express when they find out that you haven’t seen a movie. Movies need to be found, sat down in front of, paid attention to. Much easier to hear music; I feel as though I ought to reflect back an equal amount of shock at people who claim that they don’t know any songs by David Bowie, or the Beatles.

Various women in my life have managed to seat me in front of the classic flicks of the eighties, but I still have survived with a big gap in the area of mid-nineties cultish comedy classics, to which my noise was firmly upturned at the time. The one movie that most often draws a reaction from my friends and colleagues is Office Space. How, oh how, could I appreciate working in a corporate office without having watched Office Space?

A more surefire tact would have been to mention that Jennifer Aniston played one of the few female roles in the film, but apparently she isn’t worth a mention in the midst of such apt critique of the business world. Something about “PC Load Letter?”

Taking pity on my ignorance of this film classic, my colleague John took it upon himself to loan me the DVD for my home viewing pleasure. And, well, I have derived some pleasure from it, though not as much as everyone seems to expect me to. I should preface this with a caveat that I only managed to sit through half of this dreadfully paced farce, and so could still be missing out on some golden epiphany that comes nearer to the end of the film.

I just don’t think it’s funny. I cannot have pity on hapless morons just because they work in an office, and I certainly can’t find the mocking of the Y2K code replacement especially amusing since grunt work like that is what averted a worldwide financial and nuclear fallout on New Year’s Day that could have effectively canceled my spectacular first kiss.

Aside from the obvious support of any character who romantically pursues Ms. Aniston, there was one scene in the movie that especially struck me. The bit about having a million dollars. We’ve all thought about having it, but I don’t know that the thought ever occurred to me that what I would do with it would be the ultimate reveal as to what I should be doing with my life.

I figured out what I would do while at an art show with Melon, Erika, and Kate over the weekend. I would do art. Not just pictures, or music, or words. I would surround myself with inspired and beautiful things and with tools, guitars, pianos, canvases, empty notebooks, and just create all of the time, every day.

What’s funny is that after you answer the million dollar question, the answer doesn’t seem so obscure any more. This weekend I spent a day going through my belongings from childhood through high school graduation in preparation for my mother’s quickly approaching settlement on a house, and everything I found was art. Academic papers, a comic book I had drawn across the headers of my eighth grade math notebook, a folder full of scrawled out short stories, two full-program scripts from high school health fairs, a binder of plotting outlines for my own series of superhero comics complete with logo designs, a pile of literary magazines that I edited. No science fair projects. No math tests.

A million dollars would just confirm what I’ve tried to do all along. Would it for you?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200352480/

by

I feel as though there’s something i have to tell you — i really owe it to you. It won’t be easy, but i have to. But, first you should know that when i got back home last night from Lyndzapalooza i felt as if i had bruised everything that i had: fingers, muscles, voice, brain, and heart. I was, as i put it so eloquently to Elise, “a piece of hurt.” Not that it’s any excuse for what i’m about to tell you, but i just feel as though you should have an idea of the state i’m in.

I cried at the end of Armageddon. There, i’ve said it. I cried, not only for the characters on screen, but for myself — for having so knowingly bought in to a written-by-committee tearjerker that barely aspires to B-movie status because of one thing: Bruce. Bruce Willis. The man doesn’t always make the best movies out there to be made, and he isn’t always the best actor that could be found, but you just don’t kill him. Do you understand? Don’t kill Bruce. Because, in killing him, you force him to let loose, to lose control, to unlease all of the pathos and weariness that he has built up during the shooting of countless Die Hard movies as well as the physical emotiveness he reserved while dubbing his voice into the Look Who’s Talking series. And when you let me know that for the entire population of the Earth, including those of us spending our waning hours watching this bland by-the-numbers Bay/Bruckheimer creation, the only thing that stands in the way of our imminent deaths is the noble self-sacrifice of Bruce Willis then by god maybe the end is nearer than we think, because i will be blown into a thousand pieces by errant space debris before i’ll watch Bruce sacrifice himself again to save a pansy talentless hack like Ben Affleck who draw the straw of death fair and fucking square! Do you hear me?!?! Straw of death.

Like i said, i’m not especially emotionally stable right now. Apologies. Hopefully you don’t think any less of me for it.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200308389/