movies just aren't DARK enough for me

[lauralh]

I admit that I laughed all the way through Kate and Leopold, though not for reasons the screenwriters intended. The whole idea that people can fall in love after two days of sort of annoying each other simply strikes me as ridiculous. (Spoiler: he only stays in present-day NYC for under a week.) However, I did rather like the fact that the actor thought he was an actor. Although Breckin Meyer is just far too earnest to do that kind of thing justice. Everyone else did pretty well, including Natasha Lyonne (of course, since she's basically perfect), in the mockery. But really I would have actually liked it if they had just gone Todd Solondz with it. Ha, wouldn't it be funny as hell to hand him a romantic comedy script and let him rip it to shreds? Even just directing it, but putting his bite into it. I'm thinking Election or even Addicted to Love. Because I don't mind romantic comedies (I've seen almost every Hugh Grant movie for godssake) but I just want a healthy dose of irony in them, dammit. Especially when the material is ripe for mockery, and sort of toes the line but never comes close to going over it. America's Sweethearts also guilty of this, but even worse. That was just a huge disappointment because it came SO CLOSE but never pushed it. This at least was obviously never going to push it. There were only slight hints (like when they put him in a margarine commercial).

Ah well. It's inspired me to perhaps do something similar, except, you know. Better. I especially like the idea of people telling the truth and being considered insane. I've wanted to do something like that for years. Shades of Vanilla Sky and even Hearts and Souls (where as a youth Robert Downey Jr. saw ghosts but after they went away, convinced himself they were merely an hallucination). Even seeing Vampyros Lesbos gives me ideas about that, sort of like that Buffy last year where she thinks she's in a mental institution. An idea: people who are ranting and raving about vampires being put in asylums, but the shrink in charge actually does believe in vampires and studies each patient's delusion.