with the gals away the movies will play

Wife and daughter out of town, visiting family in California — Mahattan Beach and San Fran. With them gone the house is empty and quiet. So to fill the void and my time I’ve been watching a lot of movies, more than I have in some time.

This weekend, among other movies, I watched:

The Informers, based on the Brett Eston Ellis book of the same title, which as been called a novel but seems more like connected stories. In any case, I’m interested in any works of BEE’s. Set in 1983-84, this is typical Ellis fair, involving rich LA young people that do a lot of drugs, have a lot of sex. Sort of the counter-view to, say, John Hughes version of the 80s, which much less ominous, more bubblegum pop. It didn’t do well at the theater, but I liked it, for the 80s details as much as anything else. Although one thing that seemed off was the that the girls’ hair styles seemed more late 90s, i.e. straight and blonde as opposed to done up with Aquanet and brown with frosted blonde highlights etc. But maybe things were diff in LA at the time.

Good performances all around, especially by Kim Basinger and Winona Ryder, who deserves more roles but for some reason seems to have gone a little undeground — very GenX. Mickey Rourke is a good scarey guy, as per usual. Billy Bob Thornton is okay, but I’ve never been a big fan of his anyway, especially since he fucked up All the Pretty Horses, although I’ve heard it was the studios doing more than his, but in any case a serious missed opportunity.

At this point, I think the only novel of Ellis that hasn’t been made into a movie or is in production to be made into one is Glamorama. But then Ellis is,  at least in part, bank rolling these projects. Perhaps the reason he moved from NYC back to LA area. He’s an ex-prod on this film. And it seems a worthy effort. Not as good as Less Than Zero and American Psycho but then the original material wasn’t as good so. But then those movies had actors in roles they were made play, baby — Robert Downey Jr. and Christian Bale.