Entries in the Category "the big lebowski"
Osssssssscars!
I am reading all these bloggers who’ve pledged to see all the Best Picture nominees, or all the films with a non-technical nomination (that’s Sarah Bunting, and she almost did it). Some of them spent two Saturdays in a row parked in a movie theater seat watching five wannabe Best Pictures back-to-back. My major regret going into Oscar night is that I haven’t seen enough of the nominated movies. Living virtually across the street from a limited-release haven like the Cedar Lee, just about every one of these movies has crossed my path (not something I could say back when I was living in Lansing, Michigan--sorry Lansing). I went to an Oscar party in which the crowd was generally well-versed in movies—not just the big ones, but independents, foreigns, documentaries—and I wished I could have given more opinions instead of continually saying, “That looked really good. I heard that was good. I was going to see that. Everything I’ve read online says that was overrated, actually.”
The real problem is this whole being-in-grad-school thing, which will be over soon enough. I’ll be a cultural civilian again by May, and then it’s seeing movies all the time, reading books all the time, just because I damn well want to. And maybe next February I’ll plan my own Oscar film binge.
This year, I had to content myself watching the Oscars having seen only Inglourious Basterds, Up in the Air, Julie and Julia, and one-third of The Hurt Locker. I'm catching up on the other movies at my usual snail’s-pace rate. (Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning movies I have seen in the past few months: Valmont, Mrs. Brown, Frozen River, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Gangs of New York.)
Anyway, here are my totally uneducated thoughts on the proceedings.
Continue reading "Osssssssscars!"
Diversions
File this under "proof that I very much need to return to my usual academic routine." When I'm home all day I screw around on the Internet and lose hours of my life to ridiculous and awesome crap.
You want to know what this is about, click ahead.
A Celebration of Dudes
Hey, did you know that there is a Lebowski Fest? It’s a two-day celebration based around worship of the Dude, the protagonist of the Coen brothers’ 1998 cult film, The Big Lebowski. Lebowski Fest involves a viewing of the film, followed by drinking, bands, and bowling. And probably more than a few controlled substances.
Apparently the Coen brothers based this character around a film producer they knew named Jeff Dowd, who attended a west coast Lebowski Fest a few years ago and wrote about it here.
This year’s LA-based fest (which transpired last weekend, although other fests occur through the summer) featured Dowd, the rug-pissing thugs, and little Larry of the mediocre history essay. (I could quote the line of dialogue most associated with Larry, but it’s insanely inappropriate in this forum. Google it if you are curious.)
Anyway, all this talk of Lebowski makes me happy, because I associate this movie with good things: Jeremy and I have a Lebowski tradition.
Despite the relative brevity of our relationship, we have moved together (by which I mean changed houses) a couple of times already. During the first move, from our separate abodes into a shared apartment back in Kalamazoo, we had a 12-week-old puppy to contend with, among other difficulties, and the move was a strenuous one. Our moving day goal was aimed as low as possible: just get all the crap out of the old places, and into the new one, and we’ll deal with it all in the morning.
In that mindset, after all the boxes had been piled high into our new shared living room, we decided to doctor up a couple of White Russians and put on The Big Lebowski, just to wind down. The 12-week-old puppy was uncharacteristically cooperative, falling asleep in Jeremy’s lap and not stirring for the entirety of the movie. It was, all in all, an enchanted experience, and a lovely way to begin our cohabitation.
And so our tradition now is, every time we move, we pack one box of immediate necessities, the bare minimum of things we need to make it through the night so that we can leave all the rest until the morning: that’s sheets, toilet paper, our cell phones, and the DVD of The Big Lebowski. It’s really a nice juxtaposition: a new start in a new house, celebrated with two guys (Walter and the Dude) who haven’t evolved since the 70s.
We’ll watch The Big Lebowski again May 31. I’ll let you all know how the tradition holds up.