Here’s how real this just got…. Argo, the movie Amitis Frances Ariano starred in, won the Academy Award’s Oscar for Best Picture and i’m thinking the award is due in large part to the participation of this actress that we here at the Bar None scored an exclusive interview with. Read on, believe it, then thank me later.
From Amitis’s mouth to your ears: The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony
[Press 'Play' for a song that comes straight from Amitis's dance card]
Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the pot luck that is my life. Not only do i get to see a movie as good as Argo but then i’m fortunate enough to interview not just one but two of the actresses in this Oscar nominated film, and to top all that off they both are as sweet as they are talented and beautiful. i got so much luck spilling out of me, i’m about to get some of it on you.
From the juiced-box and not the soundtrack: The White Stripes – Fell in Love with a Girl
[Press 'Play' for the second best song in the movie...and not on the soundtrack]
Ramblings: Panty Linings Playbook
Final Proof: 3 Shots
You know how you get drunk wearing a suit? Not the part when you talk too loud so that everyone within shouting distance knows how over the top you went and not the part when everyone can smell the sheen gleaming in the sick that streaks your lapels. No, there are those moments before everyone becomes your best friend and before you get so phony all your bars are full of reception, before you try too hard to be funny and to fall in love, moments when you are a little off kilter, a little skewed but still you feel a little more you than you’ve been in a while because you are sincere and honest enough to let the crazy out a crack and you accidentally become endearing. That’s what Silver Linings Playbook is like.
“I’m going to switch this envelope out for the one that says ‘Argo’.”
SLP is a romantic comedy that is neither, and all the better for it. You know me and if you don’t, i’m the guy that came up with “dramantic comedy” or “drom-com” and go ahead, you can keep mocking me even after you steal that expression because that’s also the kind of guy i am. i hate romantic comedies more than i hate life itself and i only went to see this because it was nominated for an Oscar and plus the only thing easier in life than hating romantic comedies is mocking them and i’m all about the easy.
Imagine my surprise when i didn’t hate this movie. Why i didn’t is a whole ‘nother story—not really, it’s the whole story of this post and i didn’t hate the movie because it wasn’t a romantic comedy, it was a sexy shell with some serious drama deep down at the bottom, like panty liners hidden inside scanty panties. Also, the ending was happy in the movie just like panty liners are happy in their own way because it means she’s not pregnant, am i right?
“You’re so hot, and not just the sweaty kind.”
Basically i got emotionally invested in the characters here and i never do that for a movie like this unless it is this. Why? Read on, Buttercup.
The best thing about this movie were the actors and you know how sometimes you don’t know what makes a good actor because you can’t really put your finger on it? Go and see SLP for a good lesson on that. Chris “Mother” Tucker takes the role of the nutso friend and drives it straight to the place you’d expect and drops it off there without taking us anywhere. Some other guy (John Ortiz) plays the BF and you watch him going, “Yeah, he’s the BF because he’s acting the way the BF is supposed to”.
But Bradley Cooper (who is the person i will sleep with right after Eliza Dushku if i go gay) and Jennifer Lawrence (who i would sleep with first no matter what) fucking nail their characters. They play crazy perfectly because they don’t “play crazy”, they play crazy people trying to act normal which is a whole hell of a lot more realistic.
“You overpaid for your track suit, babe.”
The other good thing about this (yeah, i’ll skip the part about how De Niro finally gets his acting chops into a meatier role than he’s been served in a long time) is the director who’s some guy called David O. Russell (who also directed the fuckin’ excellent The Fighter). The cool thing about his directing is that you don’t notice it, which is what good directing is about (unless you go the other way where the directing is the best part of the movie, like Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula or Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War).
Everything comes together in this movie and chips in to elevate it above the normal level of a rom-coma and even if that doesn’t make it Oscar worthy, it still makes it worth a viewing.
Meanwhile, at the same sex marriage gala…
Buzz Kills (Watch Out for Spoilers)
Sex: 2½ Shots
“No, that’s a roll of dimes I keep in my pocket.”
Sure, i love Jennifer Lawrence (“Tiffany” in this movie), but more importantly i like her a lot. She’s hot but she wasn’t always hot and she won’t always be hot but what she will always be is a good actress and fucking cool. For the good actress part all you have to do is watch Silver Linings Playbook to see what i mean and for the cool part check out these quotes.
Not to sound rude, but [acting] is stupid. Everybody’s like, ‘How can you remain with a level head?’ And I’m like, ‘Why would I ever get cocky? I’m not saving anybody’s life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I’m making movies. It’s stupid.
Or, and this is my personal favorite,
I went to the doctor today and got a chest X-ray of my lungs and discovered that my breasts are uneven! That was all I saw.
You know me (and if you don’t, my breasts are uneven too), i’m all about the investigative journalism, so let’s take a close up and personal look at this, shall we?
Jennifer Lawrence Bar None Wallpaper – Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
Like with most of the actresses, there are single shots of Jennifer in my drawers, down below. Just scroll all the way down until you hit the “Continue reading” link and then do just that.
Another wonderful actress gracing this movie is Julia Plenty of Stiles (aka “Veronica” here). i’ve liked her ever since i didn’t see her that one Heath Ledger movie (10 Things I Hate About You) but saw some Stiles stills and she was gorgeous and it was kinda like this.
Julia Stiles Bar None Wallpaper – Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
What else is good about SLP? Here’s the blow by blow from my notes:
[Glimpses of] Ex-wife (Nikki / Brea Bee) in the shower
Closeups of JL’s [Jennifer Lawrence's] “necklace”, i.e. cleavage & the moles [which i've just realized is a great fucking name for a girl's band]
Vaguely dirty talk @ restaurant: Older mature lesbian with younger girl on her lap explaining / teaching her what to do [i put this dialog down in my drawers, if you really care.]
JL’s bare back
JL’s dance costume rocked halter top
One of my favorite lines from the movie was more about sex than romance. This exchange is between Bradley Cooper’s character (Pat) and a guy taking advantage of Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) sexually.
Jordie
How am I being rude?
Pat
Oh, you know. You know. Come on. Sometimes it’s [casual sex] okay with girls like this, they wanna have fun, and sometimes it’s not okay because they got a broken wing, and they’re hurt, and they’re an easy target. And in this case, in this particular case, I think that wing is being fixed.
i already talked about the woman naked wife in the shower in the blow by blow and her name is Brea Bee and she’s this kind of ginger hot.
Regency Boies graced us, the screen and the film with her brief yet remarkable presence as “Regina”.
Also making the film a better place to be is Samantha Gelnaw, who played Jake’s Finacée.
For those of you more into quick passes than tight ends, there was Bradley Cooper in this.
Bradley Cooper rocking the sober in the Bar None
Drink: 2½ Shots
There was tons of drinking and drink references but it didn’t ply a serious role in the movie and that’s what 2½ shots tastes like.
Here’s the blow by blow:
PAT
Danny was in for assault because of crystal meth and alcohol.
DANNY
Bad combination.
—Pat explaining to his mother why Danny was with him in the mental hospital
BC (Bradley Cooper) brings wine bottle to dinner at Ronnie’s
Wine @ dinner
“LOL, we’re drinking expensive champagne and you sold out for a cheap ass Bud.”
Don’t drink too much, don’t hit anybody, you’ll be fine.
—Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro) giving his son advice before a football game
Beer @ tailgate [party]
JL swigs Bud after putting De Niro in his place
White alcohol on ice @ Xmas
Chris Whatsisname [Tucker] drinking Bud at formal dance recital
When JL is stressed she marches straight to the bar, pounds on it, and asks for a vodka. Then a guy offers her another one.
Champagne on the table at the dance contest
Rock & Roll: 2½ Shots
It’s not my fault everything is 2½ shots, talk to the movie. i went 2½ here because the soundtrack has some really cool songs (two White Stripes jams, and even some Zeppelin!) but not all of the songs are on the OST, so don’t buy it without checking it out closely first.
Some guy way cooler than me over at a real blog called Indiewire put together a complete list of all the songs in the movie, not just the ones on the soundtrack.
A cool song on both, which is not necessarily rock and roll, is “Girl from the North Country” by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Norman Blake, W.S. Holland & Marshall Grant.
The Waiting Room at the Wig Salon
Boring Technical Crap
Written by:
Matthew Quick (novel “The Silver Linings Playbook”)
David O. Russell (screenplay)
The short bus just got shorter
Directed by: David O. Russell
Starring
Jennifer Lawrence – Tiffany
Jacki Weaver – Dolores
Julia Stiles – Veronica
Brea Bee – Nikki
Regency Boies – Regina
Samantha Gelnaw – Jake’s Fiancée
Bradley Cooper – Pat
Robert De Niro – Pat Sr.
Chris Tucker – Danny
Anupam Kher – Dr. Cliff Patel
John Ortiz – Ronnie
Bottom Line
Great date movie because it’s almost a great movie.
This the kind of story i can get into. This cute young lady was taken all the way down because she got drunk and ran through her apartment complex in her panties. This is the hole truth and i don’t know how deep i need to get into this but i’ll go as deep as i can.
Michelle was a busy little beaver at her friend’s and went down in her underwear at 4:30am to snatch something from her car but couldn’t come again back into the apartment building because she was unable to find her way.
Bar None Artist’s Sketchy Memory
As Michelle isn’t a pussy, she tooted her own horn for 20 minutes to get her friend’s attention and when that didn’t work, she tried to open every apartment door on the 2nd floor and climaxed by setting off the fire alarm.
The neighbors wanted some piece so they called the cops; that’s when the arresting officer noticed that she was without pants. And appeared intoxicated.
Bar None Artist’s Misdirection
By the way, all this happened down under. Under where? Florida, of course.
Bar None Dregs
i was attacked by a Panda
At the end of January, a vicious Panda was set loose in the Bar None. He got in and gutted my blog, causing me to hemorrhage readers at an alarming rate. Currently, i’m trying to staunch the flow with my words and stimulate blood flow with the photos, but the losses are severe.
I’ll show you a picture of that but, be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart.
Guess what day the Panda SEO algorithm took effect.
Would i rather have the the readership i had before being Panda raped? Of course i would. What will this change? Unfortanately…nothing. i didn’t opoen the Bar None to be famous, that was only the cool part. i set up shop because i love to write about this kind of shit and i will continue to write this shit whether my readership is one or one million. i’m here for me, when it comes down to it, and i’m staying.
Go here for a complete list of all my websites on one page so you don’t miss out on any of my shit.
From the juiced-box (kinda…) and the soundtrack: Preparation for Attack – Alexandre Desplat & the London Symphony Orchestra
[Press 'Play' for Jazzical, jazz mixed with classical]
Ramblings: Mission Accomplished
Final Proof: 3½ Shots
You know how you get drunk on Irish coffees? They’re dark and sweet and bitter and you don’t realize how much of them you’ve drunk because they’re so smooth but the real problem is you’re drinking them in a bar, squeezed into a booth and the caffeine kicks in pretty damn quick and so your leg starts to bounce and you squirm in your seat and you really have to pee but you’re trapped between a passed out Marine who’s packing and a girl you have a crush on that you’d rather crawl on than over so the tension mounts and the pressure builds and you catch yourself having a super suspenseful time even if there’s not a lot of action. That’s what sitting through Zero Dark Thirty is like.
Jessica Chastain accidentally enters the Men’s Room
Kathryn Bigelow is cool and hot which is good because it means the movies she makes are exactly like that and Zero Dark Thirty is no exception. What’s not to like about a film that has action and hot actresses and not even a scentilla (it means ‘a little whiff’, and yes, it’s a word, can’t you see i just wrote it?) of romance. Making this more of a macho movie than both The Expendables combined.
Kathryn Bigelow makes good decisions (well, apart from marrying James Cameron) and this movie is full of the good decisions like telling the story of killing Been Lauden through a girl’s eyes. The other good decision was about the torture and you know me (and if you don’t, you don’t know the meaning of torture, kiddo), the closest i get to political is listening to Rage Against the Machine so i’m not going to the torture place in this blog (apart from my writing style). Alls i’m gonna say is that Bigelow made the right decision starting off the movie with authentic cell phone recordings left behind by 911 victims from the Twin Towers or the planes. That shot of reality will sober you right the fuck up and put the torture scenes in the right perspective.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want, just no more Nic Cage.”
Another good decision Big&Low made was not to go too intense with the torture. Maybe you wanna know if the torture scenes were too much and lemme tell you they were just enough. i’m a wimp when it comes to shit like torture and rape scenes in movies and the older i get the wimpier i become and i’m very fuckin’ older so if i think the torture wasn’t too traumatic, you probably won’t either.
Other than that, Zero Dark Thirty is a good drama and a good thriller and a good detective movie and a good espionage movie and a good action movie (especially the last 30 minutes) and when you have all those good movies mixed up in one, it can really suck sometimes but here it doesn’t because it’s good.
A quick game of ‘How Deep Can You Put Your Hands In Your Pockets’
So why only 3½ Shots? Because it’s all of those things that make it good that i just mentioned. Where The Hurt Locker took new ground and not just broke it but blew the shit out of it (if a little unevenly), Zero Dark Thirty stays within the parameters of the mission and gets the job done but without any of the shock and awe i was hoping for.
Buzz Kills (Watch Out for Spoilers)
Sex: 1½ Shots
For the first time, 1½ shots is actually a good thing. No i haven’t gone Bieber on you, i’m just saying that in an action film the only kind of nudity you want is nudity in action, like bare breasted females fighting topless or something and short of that, just give me pretty ladies and hold the romance, please. Which is what Bigelow gives us here.
In case you were worried i’m becoming too politically correct, here’s the notes i took:
JC [Jessica Chastain]‘s ass looks nice in tight slacks as she leaves the torture room
i don’t know if i knew Jessica Chastain (“Maya”) or not before this movie but what i do know is i love her hair. i’ve always had a thing for gingers (or ‘strawberry blondes’ as we called them at my end of the bush) and the other nice thing about Jessica is that she can act better than you, and this i know because she was nominated for an Academy Award and you weren’t.
The drapes DO match the…drapes.
Fun trivia: Jessica Chastain likes cleavage so much, even her chin has cleavage. Check out the picture i just posted. And then check out this.
Jessica Chastain Bar None Wallpaper – Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
Before i forget, there are solo shots of the actresses filling my drawers. Just scroll to the bottom of this post until you see the headline.
We were blessed with two actresses whose talent was matched only by their beauty. Unfortunately, their appearances on screen were like touching myself in the shower (over all too quick), but don’t worry, i’ll post some shots here so that you can make the moment last.
Starting with Lauren Shaw (“Lauren” in the movie) who is not just drop dead gorgeous and also and actress but is a stunt woman as well. How cool is that!? i’ll fucking tell you how cool it is, it’s way fucking cool.
Lauren Shaw Bar None Wallpaper – Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
Wrapping things up is the beautiful Jessica Collins (“Debbie”). The first time i fell in love with her was when she played the Miniature Killer in CSI, and then i got to fall in love with her again in her brief appearance here. i also want it to go on record that she has the cutest nose. If you ever find yourself wondering what kind of nose i like, it’s this kind.
Drink: 2 Shots
There were enough references to keep me busy scrawling shit in my little notebook throughout the movie which means about 2 shots.
Wine at dinner with brunette [Jennifer Ehle as 'Jessica'] & JC [Jessica Chastain]
We got lots of wine.
Good, bring me back a bottle.
–phone conversation between Maya & Jessica
Wine at pre-mole meeting
JC drinks something out of a clear plastic cup after her friend dies
Martinis @ a Kuwaiti bar
Bud for lunch with security guy @ Pakistani fast food
Beer on tap in a bar
Rock & Roll: 3 Shots
It’s like i was talking about in the intro section, there’s a lot of tension and suspense even if there’s not a lot of action. Until the last 30 minutes, which is a close to real time account of what it looked like when they wasted Ben.
“That man is playing Galaga. Thought we wouldn’t notice…but we did.”
Apart from the nice score that Alexandre Desplat made, the music in Zero Dark Thirty is rock and roll. Well, there’s only one other song and it’s not on the soundtrack and it’s the song they play to torture a guy with: Rorschach – Pavlov’s Dog
You know how you get drunk on Irish coffees? They’re dark and sweet and bitter and you don’t realize how much of them you’ve drunk because they’re so smooth but the real problem is you’re drinking them in a bar, squeezed into a booth and the caffeine kicks in pretty damn quick and so your leg starts to bounce and you squirm in your seat and you really have to pee but you’re trapped between a passed out Marine who’s packing and a girl you have a crush on that you’d rather crawl on than over so the tension mounts and the pressure builds and you catch yourself having a super suspenseful time even if there’s not a lot of action. That’s what sitting through Zero Dark Thirty is like.
For the first time, 1½ shots is actually a good thing. No i haven’t gone Bieber on you, i’m just saying that in an action film the only kind of nudity you want is nudity in action, like bare breasted females fighting topless or something and short of that, just give me pretty ladies and hold the romance, please. Which is what Bigelow gives us here.
There were enough references to keep me busy scrawling shit in my little notebook throughout the movie which means about 2 shots.
