...the things women do to each other...


Last night while I was watching Titus (it took me a long time to get into it and figure out what was going on, but once i got the rhythm i couldn't help but be enthralled) I had to wonder how on earth Julie Taymor could be so violent in her direction of the film version of the play...even though the play itself is violent, as Shakespeare intended.

One of the most gruesome scenes takes place when Empress Tamora (played so deliciously by Jessica Lange) orders her two sons (whose resemblance to 80s music sensations the Nelson Twins is almost eerie) to attack and rape the daughter of her arch enemy, Titus.

While it's true Tamora doesn't stick around for the whole thing, she certainly knows what Lavina's fate is going to be and Lange plays the unflinching bitch oh so well.

The thing is that even though this kind of woman on woman barbarism doesn't (thankfully!) happen often in real life, women can be so vindictive and nasty to each other in other ways. Whether it's engaging in office gossip or "stealing" boyfriends or pushing each other aside to move up the corporate ladder, it's pretty scary.

Men aren't this way with each other...I just don't get it!!!

When I popped Titus into my dvd player the other night I didn't know what to expect. I've never been overly crazy about Shakespeare and I had definitely never heard of his play (Titus Andronicus) this movie is based on. I mostly had chosen the film because I'm a big Jessica Lange fan and knew she was in it.

It took me a while to find my way through this crazy, violent mix of time periods and fashion, but once I started feeling comfortable with the dialogue (closer to Shakespeare's original than ours) and the actual plot (a good chunk of which is due to a bloodthirsty need for revenge) I found myself bizarrely fascinated with the colors and just how consumed Jessica Lange's character becomes with her determination to avenge her son's death.

If you go on the imdb message board you'll witness a fierce debate on whether Titus is too violent and disoriented in time to be any good. Many people don't like the film; many people do.

Anthony Hopkins once said he felt this was half King Lear, half Silence of the Lambs. I'd said that at times Titus feels more like half Saw.

I like the review Amazon has on their site:

Amazon.com essential video

Considered by many to be Shakespeare's worst play, Titus Andronicus is a bloodthirsty tragedy full of villainous heroes and bottomless revenge--hardly the stuff of big-screen directorial debuts, it would seem. Yet Julie Taymor dives headfirst into moviemaking with Titus, a spectacular adaptation that manages to find beauty and humor in the piles of carnage.

The story begins simply enough by Shakespearean standards: celebrated Roman warrior Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins) returns from a hard-won victory to bury his slain sons and avenge their deaths by killing the eldest son of his enemy, Tamora, queen of the Goths (Jessica Lange). Tamora responds by seducing the impressionable new emperor and setting all of Rome into a downward spiral of revenge, madness, and death.

Taymor, who won a Tony for her Broadway production of The Lion King, throws all her theatrical sensibilities at the story--armies are exquisitely choreographed, blood is shed so beautifully that it hardly seems real, and characters are costumed in symbolic combinations of ancient Roman and 20th-century garb.

She plays up the dark comedy at every opportunity, lending a carnival flavor to the story's most gruesome moments. Excellent performances from Hopkins (whose deranged Titus is more than a little reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter), Lange, and the supporting cast help make the endless treachery credible. --Claire Campbell

Never has a cover more accurately captured the spirit of a movie than this one...or at least that how's it seems to me. The Postman Always Rings Twice (the 1981 remake) has some of the strangest, most unromantic sex scenes I've ever witnessed in a film.

Certainly the acting is first-rate. You can't get much better than Jessica Lange (always, always terrific in whatever role she takes on!) and Jack Nicholson (never one to suffer fools, but surprisingly sensitive, at times, in The Postman.)

Nicholson and Lange play two people savagely in love. One minute it seems they want to kill each other, the next they can't bear to be apart. I didn't particularly care for Postman; it made me very uneasy and yet, oddly, there were times I wanted to laugh when the scene wasn't supposed to be funny.

Even so, The Postman Always Rings Twice satisfied a curiosity I'd long had...since it first appeared in the early 80s and it always seemed I was too young to be allowed to watch it. For some reason, when I was eleven, I had the idea it was a horror flick.

In some sense, I guess it is!

Great dialogue, smart writing, oddly funny moments and a tense and fast-moving pace make this hard-to-put-down. Richard Price is a gifted author who can make a novel both literary and compelling. The story unfolds in your mind as vividly and breathlessly as any movie ever could.

Sometimes I find myself thinking of someone I used to know and wonder how she's doing. In this age of Google searches and Facebook stalking, it's hard to imagine you can't find someone from your past. But sometimes people just can't be found...

"You Could Be Happy" is a beautifully sweet and sad song by Snow Patrol that captures the spirit of wishing someone well, even though things didn't end well when you last saw each other. The first time I ever heard the track off their Eyes Open album I was struck by how universal it is to wonder about someone you once cared for so much.

The lyrics go like this:


You could be happy and I won't know
But you weren't happy the day I watched you go
And all the things that I wished I had not said
Are played in loops 'till it's madness in my head

Is it too late to remind you how we were
But not our last days of silence, screaming, blur

Most of what I remember makes me sure
I should have stopped you from walking out the door

You could be happy, I hope you are
You made me happier than I'd been by far

Somehow everything I own smells of you
And for the tiniest moment it's all not true

Do the things that you always wanted to
Without me there to hold you back, don't think, just do

More than anything I want to see you, girl
Take a glorious bite out of the whole world


I know in my heart I will never ever see this person again...and I have no clue how she is doing these days, but I like to imagine that she is happy and well.