I Nearly Died

[Note: The title of this post isn’t meant literally, but as a euphemism]: Two days ago I wrote about my recent lower back pain, which reached epic proportions yesterday. Bent over and moaning. Nearly weeping at times. It’s tolerable in the morning, and I’m walking around like an 89 year-old by 3 pm. Right about now I could use a nice codeine-and-Tylenol cocktail. Because that chiropractor I saw on Wednesday just gave me a standard quick-fix treatment — I felt great for 45 minutes and then the pain came right back.

Yesterday morning I spoke with a friend about possible remedies and she told me never to work sitting down again…sold! I now have two stand-up desks. She also told me to go to a holistic Santa Monica chiropractor named Fernando Mata. I hobbled over to his office yesterday at 4 pm, and he eliminated about 80% of the agony. I’m suffering from a sprained back, he said. Ligaments. It’ll take six to eight weeks to be completely back in the pink. I’m taking pain pills, wearing a lower-back brace, carrying a cane around, applying an electric heating pad, installing a chin-up bar.

Hell Is The Guy Sitting Behind Me

It was my bad luck to sit in front of a compulsive scribbler during a screening that I attended last night. During the entire film (and I mean during the entire three-hour running time) this asshole was writing furiously on some kind of paper pad, and noisily. Wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha-wusha…Jesus! I didn’t have the nerve to turn around and say “would you please consider shifting gears and just make occasional quick notes like most critics do and stop scribbling during every single scene“?

It was easily as distracting as sitting next to someone compulsively texting.

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Historic Performance, All-But-Guaranteed Best Actress Nomination

Earlier this week a few L.A.-based Hollywood columnists were politely disinvited from attending last night’s screening of Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color (IFC Films/Sundance Selects, 10.25), the must-see lesbian romantic drama that won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or last May. All publicists and marketers want online conversations to be sparked by the heat and excitement of Telluride or Toronto, but if I were running Sundance Selects I would let these guys see Blue before things begin on 8.28, and not just because it’s difficult to wedge a three-hour film into a compressed Toronto screening schedule. It’s vitally important to see Blue now, I feel, because of Adele Exarchopoulos‘s incandescent, unstoppable lead performance as the teenaged lover of supporting costar Lea Seydoux. Because AE will absolutely be one of the five Best Actress Oscar contenders this year. We’re talking an almost-done deal — really.

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Carrey Dividend?

Kick-Ass 2 has opened with a thud. (Deadline is projecting $15.6 million for the weekend.) Can we at least get a little respect for Jim Carrey‘s performance as Colonel Stars and Stripes? Marshall Fine says it’s “the only performance in the film that has any weight to it, and seems to be in a different universe altogether. Carrey does something with the thrust of his jaw that both defines the character and makes him almost unrecognizable behind even a small bandit mask. It’s actually an interesting characterization, but of a character given too little time to…make an impression.”

“Mah Well Came In, Bick”

For his performance as Jett Rink in Giant (’56), James Dean dug himself into a very deep mannerist hole. His Texas cracker accent was thicker than bean dip, and made his voice sound even more nasally and high-pitched than usual. And it was totally at war with consonants. The idea, apparently, was to un-enunciate as much as possible, speaking almost entirely with mood sounds and surly slurrings. If he’d gone all the way Dean would have avoided consonants altogether. Try to say “mah well came in, Bick” without the first letter in each word. I just did and it sounds something like “ahh ehhl ‘ame ihn, Ick.” That‘s what Dean was shooting for.**

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