Started out the day by watching The Misfits. What an awesome movie. I really like it.
Gods, I wanna just grab Marilyn Monroe and kiss her. Okay, you can all giggle now.
The film's not only Marilyn Monroe's last completed film, but also Clark Gable's. Gable's performance was not nearly as interesting as Monroe's, seeming mostly like a one note, debonair old cowboy--actually, in many ways his performance reminded me a lot of John Huston's (Misfits director) performance in Chinatown. A charming, irascible old guy. Only in Chinatown, Huston's performance of course had a more sinister tone to it than Gable's in Misfits. Gable's strong moment in the movie, for me, was when he was drunk and shouting for his kids who obviously weren't there. I think maybe Huston directed Gable this way on purpose, as at the beginning of the movie, we see Gable as Monroe's character pretty much seems to--someone to be friends with, but not much more. It's in his drunken hollering that we first really see this guy's hurt and vulnerability.
But I wanna talk about Marilyn Monroe. She's so good. She really was capable of conveying a lot with her facial expressions--she was obviously much better at that than anyone else in the movie. And I daresay no one but Marilyn could have played that role, as it requires your eyes to be magnetised to her at all times, wondering at this strangely charismatic, radiant creature and her tragic sensitivity. "Why do your eyes look like you've just been born?" one character asks her at one point, and we the audience have been sort of wondering this all along, especially as this innocence in her eyes seems to co-exist with a darkness that comes with experiencing all kinds of emotions with no protection against them.
Brilliant casting in the movie. Everyone fit their roles like a glove. Even if they hadn't been movie stars, it would have been brilliant casting.
The movie’s story, written by Arthur Miller, was also a brilliant meditation on death and losing people and things we love, or trying, and perhaps failing to cope with their absence or emotional unavailability. Marilyn had a lot of lines I particularly liked, such as one she spoke softly, wonderingly, that was something like, “Maybe we should always just forget the promises people make to us.”
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Yesterday, I received a rather large package from Cryptess. Among other things, it including some of the best artwork I've ever seen her produce. Really wonderful stuff, and I love that Cryptess girl.
I also went to North County Fair mall yesterday for the first time in a very, very long time. I was happy to see that the place had a comic book store again.
Other than that, yesterday, my first of two days off from work, involved me driving around listening to Aimee Mann, Jesus and Mary Chain, and David Bowie. To-morrow's my only other day off this week, and I intend to get some real stuff done. In fact, I intend to get some real stuff done now. So here I go!
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