‘Tis the season

I had an eggnog latte at Starbucks yesterday. I realized: I don’t really like eggnog. Anyway.

Yesterday was the notification date for semi-finalists in Gap’s model casting call, and I haven’t heard anything. So yeah, c’est la vie. I entered that thing knowing probably nothing would come of it, but the past few days I kept thinking, what if I did make it? Oh well. I won’t quit my day job. For now.

In other news, after some two seconds of deliberation, I joined Netflix. And so the steady stream of DVDs begins.

My first two movies are Billy Elliot and Cruel Intentions. Oh, shush. Yes, Cruel Intentions is a guilty, glossy, luxurious romp, but I have to say, it carries the dead emotional weight of a bad TV movie. (Ryan Phillippe’s bare ass notwithstanding.) I couldn’t help comparing the movie to one of my favorites based on the same source, Dangerous Liaisons, the 1988 version with Glenn Close and John Malkovich. To its credit Cruel Intentions follows its predecessor plot almost scene by scene; however, it’s less sure in the modern setting. The very subtle situations lose their heft when given to young (talented and pretty, though they may be) actors. In Dangerous Liaisons you get the sense that the middle-aged aristocrats played by Close and Malkovich are truly falling apart–we’re talking Drama with a capital “D”–but here, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe play spoiled brats to whom you just want to say, get over it!

Those two lead roles and this story are simply made for older actors; otherwise the very heightened emotional themes–love, power, revenge, humiliation, desperation–are rendered mere melodrama and lose their ability to move us. Don’t get me wrong: I know Cruel Intentions wasn’t made to win Oscars, but I’m just sayin’.

Billy Elliot is fantastic. I empathize with the story a lot… not that I was ever in such dire socioeconomic circumstances, but I danced a lot in school, and though my parents were supportive throughout that time, any actual future career in the arts was discouraged.

Jamie Bell, what a talented actor and dancer. (He can also be seen as Smike in the upcoming movie adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby.) And I was pleasantly surprised to see that the ballet excerpt at the end is from my favorite production of Swan Lake, directed by Matthew Bourne, who adapted it to a modern setting and cast all males in the swan roles–in fact, the adult Billy is played by Adam Cooper, who was the Swan in the Bourne production.