I watched The Royal Tennenbaums last night. Wow, what a great movie. I hate that I missed it in the theater. But on the bright side, that means I got to rent the excellent DVD from the Criterion Collection. Which, of course, was kind of a waste because I didn't have time to watch any of the special features before the movie had to go back.
I got it from Blockbuster. Normally I am pretty much violently opposed to Blockbuster. I've read that they modify films for content without saying so on the box, which is outrageous. Even if that weren't true, which if it is, film lovers everywhere should boycott them, but even if it isn't, I still wouldn't be crazy about them. Because they offer such a limited range of films and their dominance of the market narrows the choices for everyone. I'd much rather rent from a place like Visart that has thousands of interesting and unusual movies, than a place like Blockbuster that has 500 copies of Shallow Hal but nothing by Wong Kar Wai.
(No, I'm not just saying that to be pretentious. I really like Wong Kar Wai. I used to work for an Asian film festival, remember? Actually now that I think about it, we didn't show any of his movies at the festival during the years I was with it. I got in the habit of watching lots of Asian films at the time just to try and keep up. Which must have been how I got into Wong Kar Wai. But I digress.)
So anyway, it's been at least six years since I had been in a Blockbuster and I thought I never would again, but they're running a special right now for $25 which gets you 10 movies (one a week for ten weeks) and a copy of the Lord of the Rings DVD when it comes out. Which we would probably have bought anyway, so it's sort of like getting 10 free movies. Which is enough of a deal that I swallowed my film geek pride and signed up for my little laminated Blockbuster card.
So I guess the moral of the story is, go get the Lord of the Rings DVD from Blockbuster for cheap, make sure your 10 movies are non-controversial films that they aren't likely to have edited, and then go right back to Visart! Or your local equivalent.
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Well, this is completely unrelated to either bathrooms or Wes Anderson movies, but I wanted to point out the exciting news that Victoria Regina Tarot is now available at Barnes & Noble. At least at some. I saw three copies on the shelves at the Southpoint B&N yesterday (7/21), while I was on my way to see "the Bourne Identity". So, big ups to Llewellyn for cracking that market. BTW, "Bourne Identity" is a fun flick, with a great car chase involving a Mini Cooper, good performances by Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, and (even) Matt Damon. Plus they've attached to it the trailers for the Matrix sequels. Woohoo!
Except that only 20 minutes of the film actually had much to do with the Bourne Identity...so they might as well have saved their money and not bothered to buy the rights to the book. I actually did a google search on my cousin's name and found him...i find that rather disturbing. Should I wish you a happy birthday over the net and save my starving grad student/working mama lifestyle the exorbitant price of a stamp....Congrats on the publication!