D-List

By Laura P. Valtorta

Official Book Club Selection by Kathy Griffin (Ballantine Books, 2009) is the best biography I’ve read since Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and Murakami Is a genius. This includes Einstein, by Walter Isaacson (which I stopped reading when I discovered that Albert collaborated on all his great writings with his first wife, Milena Maric, who never got any credit).

I love Kathy Griffin. She dates Steve Wozniak, fucks Jack Black, makes fun of religion, does not drink alcohol, and gets banned from talk shows and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Who could ask for more?

I watch “My Life on the D-List” on Bravo, I watch all her stand-up comedy specials (“Everybody can Suck It.”) and I remember her from Seinfeld (“Jerry Seinfeld is the devil”) and "Suddenly Susan." Clara and I saw her show in Atlanta last year, in person. She puts down everybody. She’s just irreverent enough, and she laughs at herself. Her stories about Oprah are hilarious.

Kathy is not perfect. She straightened her hair. She abused her body with liposuction and plastic surgery. It's too bad that Hollywood induced her to abuse herself like that. Einstein had great hair, and he didn't mess with that.

Official Book Club Selection is Super Griffin material. It describes her rocky road to stardom. It spotlights the hypocrisy. It highlights the sexism in show business. The chapter about her failed marriage to Matt comes across as real. The entire book is real. There is no ghost writer involved. Just Kathy, telling everybody to suck it.

Bonnie, Doug and I walked out of the Japanese movie Departures, directed by Yojiro Takita, with our emotions roiling. Watching this film, you start out laughing and end up feeling every other emotion including fear of death.Whew! It's a lot like hang gliding at the Nickelodeon.

Excellent acting is the thing. Tsutomu Yamazaki as Sasaki, the old man who owns the "casketing" company, makes this film memorable. You want this guy as a dad. Sasaki's direct hiring practices, and his savage appreciation of food are wonderful. "This dumpling is so good I hate myself."

Masahiro Motuki plays Daigo, a young cello player who loses his position with an orchestra and moves back to his home town with his wife, Mika, played by Ryoko Hirosue. Daigo has fears about his ability as a musician. Plus, he's still mourning his parents' divorce.

Ryoko Hirosue apparently started her career as a makeup model on a big TV ad.That's surprising. In Departures, she's a young housewife just following along until she finds out her husband is handling corpses for a living. Then she revolts.

The film steps inside Japanese life, highlighting the charms, magnificent scenery, and everyday griminess of life in a small Japanese town. You're inside a small company. At the local steam bath. Revisiting old friends. What do the Japanese think about death? This movie lays it on the line without being preachy.

The emotions in Departures seem genuine althought they occasionally spill over the top. The cremation scene with the man yelling "Ma," is overblown, but this is an exception.

Departures won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 2009.

What is it with the movie-viewing public? Today's article in the Wall Street Journal notes that the Weinstein Group was losing their shirts until they came out with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. This movie has received numerous negative reviews about being vacuous, unnecessarily violent, and not the least bit funny. After seeing the preview, I wouldn't waste my time seeing it. And yet, it took in an enormous amount of money at the box office this past weekend.

The Weinstein Group produced The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love when they were at Miramax. These were both excellent films. Why can't we see more movies like that? Has the taste level of Americans deflated along with the economy?

Funny People, starring Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler, was a much more entertaining movie than I expected since the premise involves a burned-out, dying comedian trying to attach meaning to his life. Rogen and Sandler are excellent actors, with the ability to portray emotion without overacting or falling into a sea of pathos. Director Judd Apatow casts his wife and daughters in supporting roles, which is distracting but does not manage to kill the movie.



Seeing Reign on Me several years ago made me realize that Sandler can act. He can guide his character through tragic circumstances in a funny way without losing his grip on the story. His emotions are always believable on screen. In both Reign on Me and Funny People, Sandler jumps into the character head first. He loses himself in the story. After seeing Funny People, it's difficult to remember that Sandler the real-life comedian is married, has children, and reportedly had an excellent relationship with his late father.

Books, Movies, Writing

August 16, 2009
This is my new blog about books, movies, weird people, and the writing life. I plan to describe very little about my day job as a lawyer. After work, I write books, screenplays, short stories, and letters, always with the hope of publishing. My books Family Meal and Start Your Own Law Practice are available on Amazon.com. Social Security Disability Practice is available from Knowles Publishing at their website.

Kathryn Bigelow's movie The Hurt Locker released about a month ago, leaves the audience feeling depressed about the morality of the United States. Why did we start this senseless war in Iraq? The story by Mark Boal follows the psychological lives of three soldiers whose mission together is to defuse unexploded bombs. One of the soldiers is a careful planner, one is emotionally wounded by the experience, and one is a blatant risk-taker. Each is a fragment of a person. Mixed together they make up about half a personality. Most of us are more complicated than that. We do more than perform a risky job very well, or take cool control of a situation, or break down because a friend has died. We look at the bigger picture. Where is the world headed? What is the practicality of certain moral customs? What is the best choice for the natural environment. None of the characters in this film sees the bigger picture. That is why they are all limited and sad.

The strongest protagonist in this movie is the bleak landscape of Iraq where life consists of shooting and being shot, sand, goats, and suspicion. This is the life whether you're an adult hoping to scare off the soldiers, or a 12-year-old boy whose corpse is used as a bomb