Amanda Hocking

Also, she posted my letter to Jane Austen (among other fancy postings by other even fancier people), and you should check it out, if you enjoy reading things I say.

Here’s something else I realized while watching both The Breakfast Club and Lucas today: Saying I love “bad” 80’s movies is pretty redundant. No movie from the 80’s good. Don’t get me wrong. I love them. All of them. If it’s from the 80’s, I’m totally into it.

And The Breakfast Club is one of the most awesome movies of all time. (I have a movie poster of it in my office, and my ringtone on my phone is “Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds.) I actually cried when John Hughes died, and then suffered incredible frustration when I spent the next week explaining to everyone who John Hughes was and why he was so friggin amazing.

But let’s be honest – The Breakfast Club is so cheesy. It really is. And Lucas ends with a slow clap! It actually ends with everyone in the school looking at poor adorable Corey Haim and doing a slow clap!

I’ve been my whole life for a real-life slow clap moment, and I still haven’t found one. I’ve stumbled across many moments where I clapped, and nobody else did, so it wasn’t really a slow clap. It was more like a clap fumble.

But someday, I’ll have a slow clap moment, and that will be the single greatest day of my life.

I just watched The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel anything. It may be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

I posted a review of it on Amazon (I’m working on reviewing more things). Here’s what I wrote:

I wanted to like this.

I’ve been a fan of Gilliam’s for years. I love his work on Python, and Twelve Monkeys is one of my favorite films. I even loved Baron Muchausen. So I was prepared for weird. Absurd. Outlandish.

I’ve also been an avid fan and ardent mourner of Heath Ledger. I knew the challenges presented to the director trying to film around scenes that were already shot and could never be added to. The death of Ledger left an absence in the screen that would be hard to correct.

What I was not prepared for was a film so disjointed, so incoherent, it scarcely had a plot.

The CGI was so terrible – particularly in the scene where Valentina is running through broken glass. I’ve seen better graphics in a SyFy movie.

And the Devil? I don’t even know what to make of him. I’m not sure what happened in the end, and I’m sure I was supposed to be pulling for Anton, but I could care less.

That’s the problem too. There was no character development whatsoever. I never cared about any of them. Not even Heath Ledger or Christopher Plummer, who I have a strong affinity for no matter what they do. To make me disinterested in the final performance of Heath, in the final images I’ll ever see of him on screen, is quite a feat indeed, yet Gilliam managed to accomplish that.

On top of that, the character of Tony written for Heath does not seem to be the same character written for Colin Farrell. This is not a  discredit Colin Farrell. I feel like he did a good job with what he had, the way most of the actors seemed to do – they just had nothing to work with. Heath’s version of Tony seemed to be a bit… iffy. He was clearly a con man, but he also seemed to have some redeeming qualities. Colin’s character seemed random and distracted and vaguely maniacal. He also apparently sold starving kids to have their organs harvested.

Some of the film did have beautiful costume direction, and the sets – when they were sets and not cartoonishy CGI – were lovely. In a few abstracted moments, the genius behind Gilliam did show through – but most of that is already shown in previews. Watch a trailer and you’ll see the best the film has to offer.

Johnny Depp and Jude Law – who are normally captivating – gave forgettable and unnecessary performances. They truly did not add anything to the film nor did they need to be in it. However, I applaud them for giving their salary to Matilda Ledger.

I ordered the film On Demand tonight, and I planned on buying it anyway, because even if I didn’t like it, I felt like I ought to own the last film Heath Ledger was in it. I will not be buying this film.

In fact, I felt like its a disservice to his memory. It’s unfair to put his name on this piece of garbage and have this be the last thing people remember him for.

Tonight, I’ll be watching the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus for the first time, in which I’ll turn into a blubbering mass of sadness (I’m assuming, since I cry every time I see the preview), and then proceed to tweet/facebook obsessively about the tragic loss of Heath Ledger.

I’ve always been fascinated by death, not in a morbid Jeffrey Dahmer sorta way, but in a I-don’t-believe-its-possible way. There. I said it. I don’t think death is real. I don’t think I’ll ever die. It’s just not possible for me not to exist. It’s not.

This leads to confusion and excessive mourning when people do die because I don’t understand where they are. I don’t understand how its possible or what happens. They can’t not be here anymore. It doesn’t make sense.

This especially true with celebrities. I can still their face on the screen. They can’t be dead. See? There they are.

And I’ve been blessed with a life that’s been virtually death free. I’ve lost one uncle, whom I wasn’t very close to, and that’s it. All my grandparents are still alive. My parents, aunts, cousins, brother, friends, etc. All in good health (mostly).

So, its perhaps because of that, that Heath Ledger’s death has become the most traumatic event in my life. I did always enjoy him, but I can’t define what exactly made it so horrendous. Even when Layne Staley died when I was 17 and crazy obsessed with Alice in Chains, it didn’t effect me this harshly.

I’ve also always been a big River Phoenix fan. Well, not always. In fact, I’ve probably only enjoyed him since his death since I was 8 when he died. And in some strange obsession with that, I can’t watch movies where Joaquin Phoenix dies.

In fact, I prefer to watch films where nobody dies. That’s not true either. I like the Hills Have Eyes and Lost Boys and American Psycho very much.

Look – the thing is, I’m always constantly obsessing over my mortality. What it means. How it would be to live forever and how it would be die. I don’t want to die and I’m not particularly afraid to – I just don’t understand it.

I can’t explain why Heath Ledger’s death effected me so deeply. I know it’s crazy. I never met him. I have nothing to miss. Everything I’ve always known of him still exists in the exact same form I knew of it. For me, nothing has changed at all.

But it is what it is.

And I am aware that my three favorite films – The Dark Knight, My Own Private Idaho, and The Crow – all had young, rising stars that died before their release. I did not do this on purpose, but I can’t lie that didn’t effect my subconscious somehow.

I also really love John Hughes and Jim Henson, but in defense of them, I loved them before they died. And I love the Culkins, who are alive. So… I don’t only love dead things. I just mostly love dead things. That really puts the whole vampire thing in perspective.