Jay Jay Eight & Family: September 2011

Presenting a new and (hopefully) recurring blog feature: HE SAID/SHE SAID with The Contessa and Mattie-O. Tentative format of "next day's gchat log" may someday graduate to actual coherent paragraphs, but we feel the casual milieu lends itself well to the snark we're sure will be the feature's hallmark.

Anyway, here are our thoughts on DRIVE. Spoilers are in white text, so you'll have to highlight them after you see the movie or decide you don't care because fuck DRIVE and the horse it rode in on, amirite?

On with the show!

4:15 PM The Contessa: I realized while going to sleep last night that that fucking douchebag director thinks he made his own Taxi Driver

4:16 PM instead of a socially awkward psycho, he misstepped and created a mentally retarded psycho. and then had him keep his shirt on. Bull. Shit.

4:20 PM Mattie-O: yeah i read something to that effect in a review today

or anyway called out the relationship as being like the Travis/Jodie Foster one in TD

4:21 PM The Contessa: gross. I hate that movie even more. Also, way to equate a grown woman and single mother with a 13 year old prostitute

4:22 PM Mattie-O: She looked about 13 though

4:23 PM I was about to say its probably impossible to combine the "cool, calculated loner" archetype with the "violently psychotic loner" archetype

but then I remembered Lee Marvin in Point Blank

so basically, Drive = failed Point Blank

with color pallette imported from Point Break

and also, for a movie called DRIVE, he really didn't do enough driving

4:27 PM The Contessa: indeed. You know what I'm seeing in 1 hour? The French Connection.

Suck it DRIVE.

4:29 PM Mattie-O: WTF was Albert Brooks' character thinking at the end anyway? I thought he was supposed to be smart enough to not get stabbed to death

ou had ALL DAY to plan that murder

The Contessa: he wasn't smart enough to not be the jesus figure though, so he's dead!

4:30 PM that was the most pretentious 95 minutes i have ever spent with you

4:31 PM and we saw Inland Empire AND that survelliance tower Wim Wenders movie together

Mattie-O: uh, LOST HIGHWAY OPERA Christy

never forget

The Contessa: Oh my god

I TOTALLY forgot

that was the worst. I think the Jack Daniels and PTSD wiped that from my memory

4:32 PM Mattie-O: the worst part is that we dressed up nice...making us complicit in the pretense of it being not a high-school production

4:33 PM The Contessa: Bakersfield High's production of FAME is offended by your comment

4:34 PM Mattie-O: yeah true, RHS New Players was 200x better than that shit

4:35 PM oh, another amusing-to-me tangent:

4:36 PM so, pretty much every review of Drive mentions Le Samourai as an antecedent

which, not sure if you've seen it, but Refn fucking wishes...Alain Delon is cool personified in it

4:37 PM but because of that I forgot that his character does actually have a name

the dorkiest name for a badass in all of movies I think

Jef Costello!

then I remembered that today and laughed

4:38 PM The Contessa: I'm glad you can laugh about something associated with Drive,

it just makes me angrier and angrier when I think of it.

Mattie-O: i'm still laughing about that 4 minute elevator smooch too

4:39 PM The Contessa: the most uncomfortable 4 minutes I've ever spent in an elevator. And I've been trapped in an elevator during a blizzard

4:40 PM about 11 people on facebook were just creaming themselves about the movie

I am unfriending them all

ways for me to unfriend you - stalking me and liking DRIVE. That's it

4:41 PM Mattie-O: well, in retrospect, I definitely didn't hate it as much as you did, but all the shit I didn't like was in the 2nd half

4:42 PM really I was disappointed that the heist scene/car chase ended too early. that was pretty well staged

he ron pearlman death not so much

4:43 PM what was the point of that fucking mask? other than a strained stupid metaphor

The Contessa: but the first half was all lady porn done by a misogynist. Ryan Gosling builds cars, doesn't talk, carries kids to their rooms, doesn't try to touch you ever. Ladies are stupid and unsexual mommy cows. They LOVE that stuff!

4:44 PM I did like the 80s movie credits car chase though

Mattie-O: yeah that was good...too bad the 80s music got MUCH worse as it went along

The Contessa: yes. it. did. WOW

4:45 PM Mattie-O: and also yes to the weird non-sexuality of that relationship. 10 of the first 30 min was them just staring at each other waiting for some characters to just develop on their own

The Contessa: don't worry. they didn't.

4:46 PM that mask still infuriates me.

Mattie-O: now imagine that movie without cranston, perlman, or brooks

its tough to get so little out of such a good supporting cast

4:47 PM = backhanded REFN DIS

4:48 PM The Contessa: nice.

4:50 PM Mattie-O: xtina hendricks shoulda been the main girl maybe

or not in the movie at all

4:51 PM The Contessa: I was trying to think of some clever movie to refer to say what it would be cranston, et al. and I couldn't think of ANYTHING that would be that offputting, oddly paced and completely uncomfortably boringly bad

not in the movie at all

she's better than that

4:52 PM Mattie-O: so i'm told. i think this was my first time seeing her in anything

other than spilling out of a dress on the red carpet somewhere

The Contessa: Solomon refers to her as BOOBS! Now, unfortunately, I do too every time I see her.

4:53 PM She was in that movie with Katherine Heigl and Fergie's husband.

I wish we had seen that instead

4:54 PM Mattie-O: that sounds like the worst movie ever

4:55 PM esp. if Fergie were also in it

The Contessa: but no one else would think it's a life-changing cinematic event

4:56 PM like everyone does about fucking DRIVE

Mattie-O: it needed more close ups of his scorpion jacket

4:57 PM not sure I got bludgeoned over the head with that metaphor enough times

The Contessa: not even when he asked Albert Brooks if he knew that story of the frog and the scorpion?

4:58 PM was it even a metaphor anymore at that point?

5:00 PM Mattie-O: i'm sure the only reason he didn't recite the whole thing is to maintain the "minimalism"

The Contessa: and also because it had abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING to do with what was actually happening

5:01 PM besides his jacket

alright. I'm out of here

5:03 PM to go see a good movie with a car chase, great casting and subtlety that makes sense

Mattie-O: well it was a pretty boss jacket

The Contessa: I now know what to get you for xmas

5:04 PM too bad all the NYU film students in the audience have already flooded ebay looking for it!

Mattie-O: "so cinematic"

5:05 PM "you just didn't get it baby"

The Contessa: "I just want tell you how much I feel about the movie"

Mattie-O: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

After an impulsive/decisive thrift store purchase, we have two couches for the next few days... Which seemed awkward right up until netflix delivered this bad boy in the mail (which even seconds of the trailer will reveal has aged like fine fine wine):

If you don't already have plans*, come over Saturday night to watch. We'll be projecting that bitch on a screen we plan on returning promptly to Best Buy on Monday so there will plenty of image for all to see. Buckets of popcorn and cheap but tasty beer on premises. Plus I have a single jay**.

*If you do already have plans, break them!
**If there's enough interest, maybe we can combine with a throwback dinner, east 6th street Indian just to make things real saucy.