The Office

Holy Shit! I stayed up super late last night and woke up super early this morning and watched the whole goddamn DVD set. Fricking hilarious. It was shot on DV, documentary style, it's a mock documentary of office life in slough, england. The lead character is soooooo painfully awkward to watch, adjusting his tie, in this nervous, desparate need for acceptence. More painful than even Larry David. Genuis. Deeply sad, especially the Tim character...the most humane of the bunch, the one we identify with. You see in moments his confidence and swagger spiraling downward as he tries to be happy in a dead end shit situation. The romantic angle between him and Dawn is one of the most sadly realistic portrayals of romance I've seen for the under 30 set.

I see the preview for new Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, Scarlet Johannson movie about young folks and romance and I can tell it's going to be so cheesy and awful and typical Hollywood. He falls in love with her at first sight, she is taken, he is preoccupied with his new job, she turns out to be his co-workers daughter, she likes him because he's different than her other beau, he tries for the romance and it doesn't work for some reason, he spirals downward, she discovers something bad about her current boyfriend and realizes that Topher is a good guy, Topher gets his shit together, they fall in love. Grand.

The whole romantic comedy genre has become super annoying to me because all it fulfils is our notions of romance shaped by previous romantic comedies....it's a fricking racket. It's like the dentist who gave me braces when I was little...it cost money to spread my teeth out. Then, I'm older and I learn I need gum surgery because my teeth are too spread out. I'm sure when I'm even older, I'm going to need jaw surgery or something because my gums are too large, or some bullshit. Self-fulfilling racket. That's what typical romantic movies are.

Also saw Closer - Clive Owen is a badass. I've got two favorite supporting actors this year - Clive and Thomas Haydon Church from Sideways. Julia Roberts sucks ass. Natalie finally did something different in the first 1/3 of the movie, then resorted back to her old ways of playing a giggling 13 year old. But I appreciated her adjustment. Jude Law gets out-acted by Clive Owen and sucks more and more to me.

Closer is honest and brutal. The middle 1/3 of the film is by far the strongest...the ending, I found, quite lame and unsatisfying.