famillles, je vous hais!

Spent X-mas in Halifax, for the first time in 14 years. It was thoroughly unpleasant: my father is in poor health, his galpal was in a Holiday frenzy, and the city looked small and ugly, for the most part. Fought with my brother, and just felt generally on edge. I am really glad to have left. I am back in Montreal, and worried that my apartment may be infested with bedbugs. Hopefully it's just dust mites.

further to last post

Follow-up to last post: forgot to mention the best part of the Marc Jacobs's interview with Chloe Sevigny. She mentioned that she used to poppers with a friend in London. This must be the first time in recent (any) memory that an American actress has admitted to consuming poppers.

Chloe Sevigny

Read an interview with Chloe Sevigny today in a fashion mag, and it's nice to see she is still relatively candid and uncensored, despite more than a decade as a movie star. She managed to intelligently dis a few other celebs, including Nicole Ritchie, Fergie ( the singer), and the cast of Will and Grace, and, while gushing about how wonderful 'Big Love' is, managed to let slip that her movie career has suffered because of the tough shooting schedule. She also mentioned her publicist is often pissed off at her, and admitted to Marc Jacobs, who conducted the interview, that the reason she has been dressing more conventionally recently is that she is trying to play the Hollywood game a little bit. I also liked her bit about not having any actor friends, except for Natasha Lyonne, and trying without success to get said friends to accompany to her to various pointless Hollywood events. I was happy to see she hasn't mellowed, sold out or had her spirit crushed by the soulless H'wood PR machine, while at the same time admitting she plays the game to a degree. She also confirmed she is still one of the most film-literate young American actresses Most of the time actors cite 'their character' as their only motivation. It's all about the role, or maybe the script, at most. Rarely do they mention the director or other actors. Probably because their agent is the one that decides for them.

On another note, I head home to Halifax for X-mas tomorrow, and I am sort of dreading it. I really don't do Christmas.

I was feeling a bit angry and down, after visiting my crazy friend M yesterday, when her 16-year-old nephew, whom I'd met over a decade earlier, several times, even helping babysit once, refused to come out of his room to say 'hello' to me. M was in town to take care of him while his father was out of town. He had recently moved to Mtl to live with his Dad after being expelled from school in Ottawa for dealing drugs. I remember him as a 5 or 6-year-old, but I spoke to him briefly on the phone, and he sounded decent enough, so I could only feel offended and hurt that he wouldn't come out of his room ONCE for the 2.5 hours I spent in the apartment. I guess it upsets my need to see myself as pretty cool for a 38-year-old, someone a teenager would naturally want to hang out with.

Saw 'Cassandra's Dream' tonight at Cinema du Parc: a disappointment, it felt rushed and too plot-driven, with little exploration of the brothers' motives, except in the most superficial way: they were aspirational and ambitious, OK. Also, while Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson were all competent, especially Farrell, some of the secondary characters felt 2-dimensional: especially Kate, Farrell's girlfriend. Am still an unconditional fan of Woody's, but I think he should make fewer movies, and this London venture feels played out. In this film, he seemed to be out of his element. Allen feels too besotted and impressed with the Brits, a bit in awe of them, which translates into too much fancy name-dropping: Claridge's, the Connaught, images of the Gherkin. It all feels too post-cardy. His New York films are also somewhat unrealistic, or were in the past, with little real grit, but when he sticks to the milieu he knows best: neurotic Upper West Side Jews, the results seem more believable. I'm glad his next movie, 'Whatever Works', with Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood, is set back in NYC.