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Eli Cross

Eli Cross


Last Updated: 4/3/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: In a Relationship
Age: 42
Sign: Scorpio

City: City of Dangles

Who Gives Kudos:

The Lost Ba.. (2)
LukeIsBack... (2)
Honey West .. (2)
Friday, February 06, 2009 

My goal this year is to post at least one blog a month (hey, that's better than my current average, so quitcherwhining). I figure that way I can at least do a catch-all of miscellaneous shit before it's so old I can't remember what happened anymore.

So, housekeeping first.

• BREAKING NEWS UPDATE - - No bullshit, this item has just been added into this blog because it couldn't wait. Industry "agent" IT Models (itmodels.com) has a girl on their site whose stage name is -- no joke -- Chlamydia Caine.

Chlamydia Motherfuckin' Caine!!! I can't wait until her sister, Gonorrhea Gash begins performing. I hear Chlamydia only does anal scenes with her boyfriend, Syphilis Steel.

And god wept, I believe is the next verse...

Okay, where was I... *sigh* 

• Forgot to gloat over Best High-End All Sex and Best Director Non-Feature for ICON. {BEGIN GLOAT}

• Thinking about starting a Twitter account to eliminate the need to blog shit like gloating over awards. I also think it would be delicious irony for someone who hates texting as much as I do to have a Twitter account.

• Since I started going out for auditions I've gotten cast in a web series, a cheesy slasher flick (uh, y'know, sorry T.K. but it IS covered in cheese), two student films and a pilot. Not bad. Starting to look for an agent (which is like looking for a good colonoscopy). Details on availability of said projects as they progress.

• Beginning prep on the next big project for SexZ Pictures. It's a sword & sorcery epic called Daughter of the Wolf. {/GLOAT; BEGIN TEASE}

Okay, so the fucking Oscars. In the interest of bludgeoning you with my own opinions, I thought I'd list each of the major movies of the year and tell you what you think about them.

THE WRESTLER - My overall reaction is a big shrug of the shoulders. I was unimpressed by Mickey Rourke who struck me as bulky, plastic-faced, and largely unmoving. I thought the script was immature and emotionally retarded, and Aronofsky once again utterly failed to impress me as a director.

Evan Rachel Wood is unbelievably, breathtakingly, incredibly bad and belongs nowhere near a movie unless she's paid full price for her ticket. Marisa Tomei was amazing, and deserves all the praise being heaped on Mickey Rourke.

CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON - Yeah, I've heard all the arguments; it's a ripoff of Forrest Gump (bullshit); It's emotionally distant (it should be, it's Fitzgerald); It's slow (you mean it's not a music video).

I think the pacing and emotional tone are entirely appropriate, and I really enjoyed BB. It's also fucking gorgeous. As for the Gump argument, it's really easy to turn that around and say that Winston Groom's retardopalooza novel was nothing but a lift of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso from the 16th century. Wait for a completely original plot, and you wait forever.

Was this the best film of the year? No, but worthy of a shitload of praise? Hell yeah.

MILK - Okay, I realize that the passage of Prop 8 was a big, and unjust, blow to the GLBT community in California, but that's no reason to inflict "classic" status on Milk's narrow shoulders, or on us as viewers.

Like all Gus Van Sant movies, Milk is a mess. It's structurally indulgent and emotionally sloppy as hell. Sean Penn's performance is only remarkable if you're watching the movie constantly aware that you're watching Sean Penn acting. If it were just some guy who wasn't incredibly butch and didn't beat up paprazzi on a regular basis, you'd say, "the guy in the lead didn't really have the chops to carry the movie, though..."

Milk is fine, but that's all it is. It's a Lifetime movie for gay people. Absent it's political agenda this movie is no more Oscar-caliber material than Transformers.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - I admit I haven't watched this yet, and it's because of the hype. I have the screener. It sits there laughing at me. But every time I finally break down and watch something the critics have bukkaked with praise, I end up loathing it (I'm lookin' at you Blue Velvet and Sideways and Breaking the Waves).

I admit I've got issues. I hate Bollywood movies. I find them silly, garish and irrelevant, and it makes me really nervous that they're the new flavor du'jour in Hollywood.

Also, while I really like Shallow Grave and 28 Days Later, I find it hard to believe that the director of The Beach and Sunshine has crafted something that is to the medium of film as fire is to human civilization. This is my skeptical face...

THE READER - Haven't we all seen this movie about 22 times already? Really, this movie is a such a retread of a dozen other projects, it makes me wonder if someone didn't just sit in a room and say, "Hey, there's no holocaust documentary this year... what can we make that the old Jews in Hollywood will ensure gets nominated?"

FROST/NIXON - I love this movie, and while I'm just as blown away by Frank Langella's performance as everyone else, I have to admit I thought Hopkins was better. Also, I'm never quite sure I believe Sam Rockwell as a real human being.

GRAN TORINO, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD - Were these movies robbed? Not necessarily, but there was definitely an attempted mugging given some of the weaker contenders. I think both were much stronger than narrow-appeal, politically-correct pap like Milk and The Reader.

THE DARK KNIGHT - Best. Movie. Period. Nothing else even comes close, and it isn't because I'm a geek and it's about Batman. I loved Iron Man, but I'm not bitching because it didn't get nominated. Dark Knight got fucked because it's percieved as a superhero movie, but it isn't.

It's a modern day film noir. It's complex, dark, brilliantly acted and flawlessly executed. If the 70s were the golden age of American cinema (and they were), Dark Knight is the only film this year that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with the anti-hero classics of the 70s. It's emotional breadth and intensity is unmatched by anything I've seen in years, and it's only the fact of its broad appeal and critical success that kept it from getting the attention it deserves.

I stopped paying serious attention to the Academy Awards in 1982 when Raiders of the Lost Ark lost Best Picture to Chariots of Fire. After this, I might have to give up completely.

10:06 PM
 
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The Lost Baron

 
Chlamydia Caine? Some people really think subtlety is too time-consuming. "Clappy Clara," at least, would have a minimum degree of mystique to it.....Congrats on the win for "ICON." ....You opening a Twitter Account would be a godsend...for Twitter. That annoying CNN turd with a grandiose sense of self-importance Rick Sanchez has one, so Eli Cross on Twitter can only increase the average IQ of twitter geometrically. (And, yes, I know that everything before the word "Rick" in the last sentence describes about 90% of the people who appear on camera on a regular basis at CNN, but, these days, it seems I cannot think or say or write the word "CNN" without that phrase coming out.)....Congratulations on getting casted! As for an agent, have you considered Mark Spiegler? ;-)...."Daughter of the Wolf" has a sword and sorcery theme? That could most definitely work. I know that many of us certainly did not flock to "the Beastmaster," "Red Sonja," "Bloodrayne" and the more recent "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" because we were aching to to see their olympic-level swordsmanship. As long as you avoid painful anachronisms (like "Van Helsing" having automatic crossbows, and "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" having a super-gigantic crossbow--shaped curiously a lot like a .50 calibre Ma Deuce--that only King Kong could load and fire), it sounds good. (For some strange reason, visions of the Fourth Doctor's scantily-clad, skean dubh-wielding Tarzanette companion Leela are coming to mind...)....I did not see all the movies you discussed above. As for the ones I did:....I liked "The Wrestler." It was drab and dreary. However, I really liked the scene where Marisa Tomei's stripper character confronts Randy and tries to set a professional limit on their relationship. That scene shows the tension involved in keeping one's industry/professional personna and life separate from one's personal life. It was ironic that this scene was approximate to the one wherein Randy is at his butcher job trying to distract a pesky customer who is trying to unmask him....."Frost/Nixon" was also well done. I also like Langella's performance, although I had a hard time buying him as Nixon because I remember the real Nixon, and the make-up people were either not as skilled or as lucky as the ones who made Bruno Ganz look like Adolf Hitler in "Der Untergang." Langella looked about as much like the real Nixon as the actor playing Goebbels in "Der Untergnag" looked like the real Goebbels. On the plus side, it was a kick to see the old-fashioned rotary telephones. You and I can both remember that era, when telephoning was actually a skill requiring a functional short-term memory and an ability to follow steps, as opposed to something any simian with an opposable thumb could do. I miss those days. We had a better class of people back then because the people of the era did not spend every waking minute with eyes and digits arc-welded to their blackberries and Iphones.....I agree with you 100% on "The Dark Knight."....I disagree with you about "Revolutionary Road" and "The Reader." To me, "Revolutionary Road" is just another permutation of "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," and "Less Than Zero," which were not really all that interesting to begin with. Spoiled, overfed, over-pampered, grossly over-self-indulgent subarbanites stuck in an angsty pon farr for meaning while enjoying a luxurious standard of living unimaginable to Americans of earlier centuries and, even, of earlier decades.....As for "The Reader," it is based on a quasi-autobiographical novel by a German Judge. The movie deviates from the novel to make the male character more likeable, but the deviation is not as awful as those of the film versions of "Force Ten From Navarone," "Dark of the Sun," and "The Dogs of War." That being said, I think the film and book are more about the post-1945 generation of Germans trying to relate to their parents/elders who were adults during the war, than they are about the Holocaust per se. In this sense, "The Reader" is closer to Wibke Bruhns book "My Father's Land" (about her father, Major Georg Klamroth, who was murdered by the Nazis in August 1944) and Katrina Himmler's book "The Himmler Brothers." "The Reader" also reminds one of Monika Hertwig, the daughter of Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes breakthrough role in "Schindler's List.") The big question of this genre is the universal one of "Am I a better person than my parents/those who came before me?" The Holocaust, here, is only a manifestation, a symptom of this tension. In North America, this question can play itself out in the form of "Am I a bastard/bully/drunkard like my father, or am I a better man?"....Another thing I liked about "The Reader" was Kate Winslet's performance. For all her faults, Hannah Schmitz is a disciplined frood, and this makes her more bearable, if not more likeable, than whiny, bitchy April Wheeler who could not find her towel with both hands.....Thank you for another Blog. You are an excellent writer. I wish you the best of luck with all your projects.

 
Posted by The Lost Baron on Saturday, February 07, 2009 - 9:36 AM
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LukeIsBack.com

 
Great writing as always. So, you gonna let me post this on CindisNakedTruth along with a hot picture of you and kylee? xoxo, Cindi
 
Posted by LukeIsBack.com on Saturday, February 07, 2009 - 9:36 AM
[Reply to this] 
Heidi Mayne
Heidi Mayne

 
I am autmatically intrigued by the title of your new epic.... I can't wait, I love that genre!!
 
Posted by Heidi Mayne on Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 6:41 PM
[Reply to this] 
Honey West Adult Books
Honey West

 
Personally, I think Hollywood stopped making movies worth seeing around 1945..just kiddin, but not much. Great read, luv your blog.

 
Posted by Honey West Adult Books on Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 6:41 PM
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