Book Review: The Minus Times Collected

By Michelle Patterson

What is it like to take a time machine back to a time when I was a burgeoning sarcastic twenty-something with a tendency to sneer and a sense of humor as black as it comes? The recent Minus Times Collected, lovingly assembled for its 20th anniversary, is a portal to that time, for me at least. Is it a place I want to be, though?

When confronted with work like this—a relic full of irony for irony’s sake that creates a critical distance on purpose—it only brings out my ponderous side. By definition, isn’t nostalgia supposed to create a sense of wistfulness and yearning? Sure, I like a thumb in my eye when the humor feels earned, and I realize that this style should be different because it isn’t meant to feel cozy and warm. When I looked back at this wicked side of this particular collection it only served to make me realize that there are other and better time capsules, ones that are consistent and head and shoulders above this in quality.

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Paul Gross in the Performance of My Lifetime

By Michelle Patterson

Paul Gross wasn’t about to change just my perceptions of what makes good Art good (the kind with a capital “A”) and what makes bad art bad (the kind that makes you wince at the attempt of it in the first place). “Why aren’t these people afraid of failure,” I’d think to myself. “What made them think that they could do this?”
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The Lowbrow Reader Reader

By Michelle Patterson

Let me preface my take on The Lowbrow Reader Reader which a bit of nostalgia: When I think about the candy I had as a child—the kind that I tried to sneak under my parents’ radar because of the illicit pleasure of spending my allowance on the various toxic-looking treats at the corner store—I only get nostalgic for a few of them and upon closer inspection, my choices were pretty telling. The soda candy, in which the soda-type-liquid is encased in tiny, hard plastic bottle-shaped blobs, was some of the foulest-tasting candy on this earth, both past and present, but I still sucked that down with joyous glee. Candy cigarettes, in both hard and gum form, actually evinced a chuckle from my mom when she did find a pack in the back pockets of my shorts, while doing laundry, because she used to “sneak them,” as well.
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Tindersticks, Claire Denis Film Scores 1996 – 2009

By Michelle Patterson

How I judge whether or not a soundtrack feels organic to its cinematic equal is whether or not it can stand on its own. This does not determine whether or not it is good—the apparent strength of the music isn’t a question—but if it can genuinely remind me of the film when I am listening to it in the quiet of my own bedroom or on the chaotic bus to work.

The clearest role of the soundtracks as experienced in the Tindersticks‘ Claire Denis Film Scores box set is as passive listener. This music stands on its own, without its marriage to the visuals; better yet, it imports another sense of value when associated with an entirely new set of identifiers, all depending on the situation of the listener.
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I’m The Real Victim Here: I Spit On Your Grave Remade and Revisited

By Michelle Patterson

Victimhood has had an ironic stranglehold on cinema since the medium’s very inception. The “woman’s picture,” along with the romantic comedy and action-adventure genres, tap into the potential for an audience to live both vicariously through the film and also fully explore their empathetic side. The horror film has also allowed this to continue for over a century now.
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Slumber Party Slaughter: Don’t Go Into the Shower

By Michelle Patterson

I was not the world’s most together child. In fact, up until the age of 25, I saw morbidity in every little thing and imagined the worst-case scenarios for every event in my life.
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I Spit On Your Grave: Revenge Is Not So Sweet

By Michelle Patterson

While working on this piece, a hopeful idea flickered to life: could 23-year-old Michelle and 33-year-old Michelle be pals? Although perhaps possible, perhaps I’m too hopeful that my past self and present self should be friends in some alternate universe. Seeing as I have yet to shake the pop culture-related obsessions which began in my youth and continue to snowball into one massive contradictory mass, it’s not that much of a long shot, physics quandaries aside.

So until time travel becomes reality, here’s the imagined correspondence between two versions of myself about an important piece of film-making, the original I Spit On Your Grave.
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Ten Reasons Why You Should See In Bruges

By Michelle Patterson

In Bruges, a delightful and surprising film out of Ireland that won critical acclaim in 2008—winning a Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Golden Globe for Colin Farrell, gaining an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and winning numerous awards in its native country—deserves much credit for being a genuinely black comedy.

When it is funny, it creates guffaws a-plenty and when it is black, it is inky, friends. What is most astonishing is how it manages to allow the proper amount of depth within the characterization. Yet, when one considers that the filmmaker, Martin MacDonagh, is a well-established playwright and has a Best Live Action Short Film Academy Award under his belt for his first foray into film, Six Shooter, it isn’t really that shocking. We’re also reminded that Colin Farrell can act. So, let’s settle into the Top Ten Moments of one brilliant piece of Irish filmmaking.
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Andy Barker, P.I.

By Michelle Patterson

One of Andy Richter’s strengths as a comedic actor is something he was just born with: his cherubic face. What the majority of his performances exhibited—in his other (sadly) failed television shows and various film roles—was a wholesome, dimpled mug offset against a usually sardonic soul or secret freak-of-nature. It’s an old show business trick (see Jack Benny and even Dick Van Dyke) but it works.
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Character Actor In A Movie Star’s Body: Roger Livesey

By Michelle Patterson

Acting isn’t that hard to figure out; either you keep it simple or you make it seem simple without giving away your hand. While I’m not an actor, I do know that as a woman in day-to-day life, I have to be able to become a different woman to different people. This is something we all do; people can tell when we really believe in what we are saying and when we do not. Life is full of performances, which makes it that much easier to decide who is a good actor and who is not. The act itself is invisible and instead of seeing a character, we see a person.
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