Whenever I watch a movie like A Better Life or Sin Nombre, my mind inevitably hearkens back to the last time I visited the outlet mall or the expensive cheese section of my grocery store, and I am reminded of the obscene amount of money that I spend annually at both. These thoughts fill me with such a sense of self-loathing that in order to cope, (clearly) it is necessary for me to invoke the anesthetizing properties of the marathon online shopping binge. The sheer magnitude of charging involved in these episodes eventually forces my sister to bean me in the face with a two-by-four, separating me from the computer and sending me sprawling onto the floor, where, as I lie twitching, the narcotic consumerist voltage eventually dissipates from my central nervous system.
Follow along with me now because the next part gets a little circuitous…
When I put The Artist on hold at my library, it was still on order, meaning that they had not yet procured the actual DVDs, but they were in the process of doing so. It may have still been playing at one or two of the cheap theaters. Even still, after placing my hold, I discovered that I was #1286 in line. I expect I will be seeing The Artist possibly next February.
A month or two ago, I finally got around to going through the list of Academy Award nominees and reserving anything I hadn’t already seen. It turned out that Demiàn Bichir was nominated for Best Actor for A Better Life, neither of which I had ever heard of before. Everybody else in the world probably already knew this, just as they know he didn’t win the award. Jean Dujardin from The Artist did.
Anyway, so I put A Better Life on hold, and I was #58 in line. Now I think of all those people who are going to watch The Artist and who probably won’t see A Better Life. And it makes me sad because in my opinion A Better Life should be required viewing for anyone taking for granted the McDisney dream that a lot of us live every day. People like me. And I’m not saying that I’m a terrible person or anything. But, if you want to talk about 1%, it means a different thing when applied globally.
I don’t want to get all preachy. That’s no fun. Putting the politics away now.
A Better Life is really the story of a father’s love for his son. And it’s this element of the film that could make even the Grinch’s heart grow three sizes. And then the Grinch would start bawling uncontrollably, simultaneously hiccupping and sobbing about how he hasn’t spent enough time with his father since he moved away, rivulets of snot cascading from his nostrils into a handkerchief with the words, “I’m Toast” embroidered on the corner.
Then the Grinch would visit the J.Crew online factory website just, you know, to see…
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