David Gordon Green's strange career

My oh my how the mighty have fallen. Just around 12 years ago a total no name of a director David Gordon Green debuted his first feature film George Washington to wide and -albeit over the top- acclaim. The film, about a group of rural urban kids in a the mid-west who try to cover up a tragic mistake, even made Roger Ebert's Top Ten List that year and had people comparing Green as a sort of up and coming Terrence Malick-like talent. The follow-up just 3 years ago was All The Real Girls which pitted Zooey Deschanel and Paul Schneider as shot struck lovers in -again- a rural mid western town. It also got great reviews and further advanced word that Green was the next Malick. What with the way he would shoot a particular scene and explore the deepest and simplest parts our very nature. Pretty deep stuff and incredibly artsy too. Gordon Green followed that one up with another simple slice of life Undertow and finished off this incredible run of praised films with Snow Angels in 2008- a scathing and dark look at the dark underlinings of a small town, the film was filled with divorce, murder, a lost child, adultery and a desperate stalker. It's a knockout of a movie that only grew better with repeat viewings.

This is where Gordon Green started to make our heads scratch. He followed Snow Angels with Pineapple Express. I'll admit it a good, funny, memorable movie but definitely not something I ever thought Green would end up doing ditto the follow-up which was the much less successful Your Highness. Yea you heard right Your Highness, a film that made my worst of .. list last year and represented career lows for all involved including Nathalie Portman and James Franco. A trend was starting to show. The "stoner movie". Gordon Green has resorted to making raunchy, stoner movies that don't have anything at all to do with his first four subtle feature films.

His latest came out just a few months ago. The Sitter is mindless, brainless fun yet we expected so much more from him. In it a newly thin Jonah Hill has one messed up, crazy night accompanied by these little brats that try to spoil the party. Of course drugs is involved so are other illegal activities. Yet where are the handprints that first made Gordon Green such a hot commodity in the indie circuit? Has he sold out? Should we even blame him for going to the other side? It's such a strange turnaround for a career that promised so much in the way of artistic prowess. I haven't given up, especially since Gordon Green is just a mere 37 years old, and this odd career is -I'm sure- only going to spring up more surprises.

Elizabeth Taylor's legacy & the personal connection I have with the Legend herself

It's funny how only when someone dies do you truly appreciate the work they had done over their long, illustrious career. Elizabeth Taylor died yesterday morning at the age of 79. I knew all about her and the legend she had created through my grandmother who had been a Taylor fan since watching Cleopatra more than 47 years ago in a movie theatre. Not only was she a fan but she would always mention how people thought she looked like Taylor. I saw it too in old pictures and even as we speak she looks like older taylor. My grandmother not only looked like her in the pictures I had seen that dated way back to the 40's and 50's but she acted like her too. Taylor was a tough cookie that took nothing from nobody. She stood her ground and helped raise awareness for causes that caught her heart, most importantly the millions she donated to AIDS charities. She had gay friends that impacted her greatly, most notably Rock Hudson who died of AIDS himself in the 80's.

My grandmother -behind all the madness I see in her and the ferocious, sometimes abnormally tough character she might have- has a heart of gold that translates into giving to others and caring too much to bear. She's always talked to me about Taylor's eyes, the purple that laid in them and the rarity that came with having such awestruck beautiful eyes. She'd talk about watching Cleopatra and other films of hers. I have never been a big fan of the film myself and you won't find many film connoisseurs warming up to it either, it was a colossal flop in its day but something about it grabbed many mainstream film goers into its lovingly grandiose design -Grandma included. Everything that made Taylor a superstar was in the film, her looks were to die for and the overall grandiosity of her character on screen made for a larger than life portrayal of a biblical figure.

She was seen more as a superstar than as an actual actress by my Grandmother and that's in fact what many loved most about Taylor. The royalty that came with her and the men that went down to their knees begging to marry her (8 marriages in fact). Behind all that was an actress and not more an example than in Who Killed Virginia Woolfe? which rightfully won her an Oscar in 1967. A brave performance in which Taylor de-glammed herself and became the opposite of what Grandma envisioned of her. In the thick of things Taylor had beauty but she also had heart on screen, almost everybody will admit she had her duds but you couldn't deny the presence on screen or the formidable impact she had on Hollywood. When I got the news she died yesterday morning my heart floundered, I thought of my Grandmother and how she would take the news. A woman she had looked up to for decades was gone but in typical fashion it was as if nothing happened. Her reaction was like any other, she was sad but was more concerned with the daily trials that were happening in her own life. Elizabeth Taylor would have acted the same way.