18. Whole Lotta Rosie &...

Lyrics

Wanna tell you a story
'Bout a woman I know
Ah, come to lovin'
Ooh, she steals the show
She ain't exactly pretty
Ain't exactly small
Forty-two, thirty-nine, fifty-six
You could say she's got it all!

Never had a woman
Never had a woman like you

Doing all the things
Doing all the things you do

Ain't no fairy story
Ain't no skin and bone

But you give it all you got
Weighing in at nineteen stone

You're a whole lotta woman
A whole lotta woman
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
And you're a whole lotta woman

Oh honey you can do it
Do it to me all night long

Only wanna turn
Only wanna turn me on

All through the night time
And right around the clock
Whooh! To my surprise, Rosie never stops
You are a whole lotta woman
Whole lotta woman
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
A whole lotta woman
Ohh yeah

Oh, you're a whole lotta woman
Whole Lotta woman
Whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta Rosie
You're a whole lotta Rosie
Whole lotta woman-man-man-man-man
Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Whole Lotta Rosie
Whole lotta woman
Oh, whole lotta woman


I am not very familiar with AC/DC. As I've written before, I am not really a fan of hard rock. Yet from what I've seen and heard from AC/DC, they seem like a very fun group. They never seem to take themselves very seriously and every performance of theirs is filled with exuberant joy. Their songs seem to be above all about the fun of rocking the hell out (if that is even an expression). I was a bit surprised that this is the only AC/DC song in the top 2000, but the radio 2 listeners aren't really hard rock/metal fans either. My favorite AC/DC song is actually Highway to Hell. The lyrics of the song are an example of AC/DC's fun approach to rock. They tell a joky story about someone loving a fat woman named Rosie. To find a movie to link to this song was therefore the easiest thing in the world. It's a comedy about a man in love with a fat woman named Rosemarie. It wouldn't actually surprise if the name Rosemarie (who throughout the film is called Rosie) was chosen as a nod to this song.

The Movie: Shallow Hal (Peter & Bobby Farrelly, 2001)

People, sometimes quite understandably, hate the fact that on television we often get a lot of reruns of old shows. They are seen as an easy uncreative way to keep us glued on the television. This is probably right, but there have been many great shows, which many of us haven't actually seen and if it wasn't for reruns we wouldn't be familiar with them. I, for example, would have not been familiar with Seinfeld if it wasn't endlessly shown in reruns on television. And there have been very few shows, movies or books that have influenced my interaction with popular culture as much as Seinfeld. For example I don't think I would have appreciated Pulp Fiction (and other Tarantino movies) as much if it wasn't for Seinfeld. And through the show I've also learned that not every story necessarily have to follow logic, or be moral. I will someday write more about Seinfeld, but I bring this up because one character in Shallow Hal is played by Jason Alexander. He plays George Costanza, which is probably the best character on the show. And anytime you cast Jason Alexander in a comedy, the comedy is at a huge disadvantage from the start. The comedy has to be really great in order for you not to get distracted and think about how much better and funnier Jason Alexander was in Seinfeld. And how Seinfeld was much better and funnier than the comedy you are watching. Shallow Hal helps itself even less by turning Jason Alexanders character into a lighter version of George. Here he also is terrified insecure guy who obsesses over unimportant details. He breaks up with a woman, because her big toe is not her biggest toe.

Shallow Hal is unfortunately not on the same level as Seinfeld, but it is not a bad movie. I saw it once a long time ago and didn't like it. This time I found it much more interesting. It is also a nice follow-up of the previous movie I've discussed, Nurse Betty. Shallow Hal too, is, partly, about our own perception of things and about falling in love with our own fantasies. It's not often very funny, but I think the Farrellys were more interested in creating awkward situations than in creating funny ones. And they succeeded at it. This makes the movie sometimes so incredibly dark that it is quite surprising the Farrellys managed to get away with it. And if they had decided to make this a more dramatic, instead of comedic movie, they could have had made some kind of dark, utterly weird masterpiece.

The plot is fairly simple. Hal (Jack Black) vows on his father's deathbed to only go out with well-shaped women. This doesn't bring him much luck. So when in an elevator he meets Tony Robbins, a relationship guru, he makes Hal see the ' inner beauty' of women. This is meant literally, which means that if Hal meets a fat woman who is a good person, he will see her as a beautiful perfectly shaped woman. The problem for Hal is that he doesn't know that Robbins did this to him. So when he meets Rosemary a fat woman who helps children and works for some Amnesty International-like organization he sees her as Gwyneth Paltrow and thinks she is beautiful. Of course Rosemary knows she's fat and finds it a bit hard to believe that Hal will find her beautiful. But he seems sincere and so they start dating. This leads to some truly brilliant awkward and suspenseful scenes. You wouldn't expect scenes to be suspenseful in a romantic comedy, but here they are. Too many romantic comedies (or dramas) follow what Roger Ebert calls the Idiot Plot. This means that the lovers fight or can't get together because of some small misunderstanding that could have been easily solved if the characters didn't behave like idiots. Here the opposite happens. There actually should be misunderstandings that could drive Hal and Rosemary apart. And in each scene we expect something to go wrong with them. But since both Hal and Rosemary have been established as basically decent people we hope things will not go wrong. For a while the movie only consists of scenes in which the tension of something going wrong is built up, only to be released by the end of the scene. This would not work in most such comedies, but here the movie sticks to its own established logic. Thus it creates such awkwardness and, indeed, suspense that this is one of the few romantic comedies that at times have made me feel uneasy watching it. Unfortunately after these scenes culminate with a brilliantly dark scene in a restaurant the movie rushes towards a conventional third act with a slightly nonsensical happy ending. This is not the movie's only problem though. Especially in the scenes with Tony Robbins it is a bit too much on the nose and a bit too moralistic about how we perceive beauty in our current society. It is sometimes perhaps also a bit too judgmental. But on the whole I was pleasantly surprised by it.

17. Radar Love &...

Lyrics

I've been drivin' all night, my hands are wet on the wheel.
There's a voice in my head that drives my heel.
My baby call said I need you here.
It's half past four and I'm shifting gears.

When she's lonely and the longing gets too much,
She sends a cable coming in from above.
Don't need no phone at all.
We got a thing that's called radar love
We got a wave in the air
Radar love

The radio's playin' some forgotten song.
Brenda Lee's coming on strong.
The road has got me hypnotized,
As I spin into a new sunrise.

When I get lonely and I'm sure I've had enough,
She sends comfort coming in from above.
Don't need no letters at all.
We got a thing that's called radar love
We got a line in the sky
Radar love

No more speed I'm almost there.
Gotta keep cool, now, gotta take care.
Last car to pass, here I go.
The line of cars drove down real slow.
The radio plays that forgotten song.
Brenda Lee's coming on strong.
The news man sang his same song,
One more radar lover gone.

When I'm feeling lonely and I'm sure I've had enough.
She sends the comfort coming in from above.
Don't need no radio at all
We got a thing that's called radar love
We got a light in the sky
We got a thing and its called radar love
We got a thing that's called
Radar love


This is an enjoyable, but pretty forgettable song. I am not really a fan of Golden Earring, but it is quite unfortunate that there haven't been any other Dutch bands to follow in the rock footsteps of Golden Earring. This is probably the only Dutch band that consistently managed to make quality rock songs and that was quite successful at it. The lyrics made it pretty hard for me to link it to a logical movie and the video didn't make things easier either. Eventually I decided that you could make the case that the song is about a guy who thinks he can make love to a woman through the use of technology. The woman he is in love with could be a singer on the radio. There is actually a fairly recent movie where a woman is in love with a soap actor she has only seen on television, that fits this interpretation of the song.

The Movie: Nurse Betty (Neil LaBute, 2000)

Nurse Betty is the kind of movie I love the most. It is wildly inventive, unconventional and is often quite unique. It's plot may sometimes lack logic, but the director is more interested in making a point than in telling a conventional story. The movie can't be classified in one genre. It is sometimes melodrama, sometimes a harsh thriller and sometimes slapstick comedy. Sometimes it's all of this in one scene, yet it nearly always works. There are also some wonderful scenes, great performances and some great dialogue.

Betty is a naive, silly waitress, living in a crappy town in Kansas. Everyone is unhappy here. Not only because of the horribleness of the town, but also because they've resigned themselves to the fact that there lives won't change much. They will be forever stuck in this shithole in Kansas with their crappy jobs and lousy marriages. The only distraction in their lives is the trashy soap opera A Reason To Love. While they watch it they have the chance to escape their lives by fantasizing that maybe, someday they too will live in beautiful mansions in LA, have challenging jobs and be surrounded by beautiful people who will love them (at first sight). And Betty may be the biggest A Reason to Love fan in town. She is especially smitten by a character called Dr. David Ravell. One day while watching the soap her white trash no-good husband is brought home from his work by two hired criminals who want to retrieve some drugs he's stolen. The confrontation doesn't end well and Betty's husband is killed. This is witnessed by Betty, who gets in shock. She can't distinguish the real world from the soap opera anymore and thinks that everything David Ravell said in the soap was meant for her and that he is her ex-fiancee. So she sets out to L.A. to find and marry him. When the two killers find out Betty was a witness to their crime they go on a search to find and kill her The confrontation between the two killers (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock(!) ) and Betty's husband is a fantastic scene. It's wonderfully written, incredibly tense and performed fantastically by everyone involved. It is, I would even say, on the same level as the first scene in Pulp Fiction.

The movie is thus about how we fantasize about having another, better more successful life than our real one. We create images in our head of the perfect different lives we could lead. The movie is not very subtle about this. Not just Betty, but every character we meet is chasing a fantasy of some other life he or she hopes lead. Morgan Freeman's character for example is projecting a fantasy of innocence and purity on Betty. In a scene we see him having an imaginary dance with her. By finding and loving her he hopes that his life as an awful criminal could somehow end and that she will somehow make him a better more decent person. 'Dr. David Ravell' is a soap opera actor who dreams that one day A Reason to Love will become truly great and rise above the trash that it is. So when Betty meets him on a party and addresses him as his character quoting lines from the show he doesn't see her as a deranged person, but as a brilliant actress who auditions for the show and who can stay convincingly in character for more then three hours. This was by the way of the funniest scenes I have recently seen. It's interesting that the movie only makes the point that we are all chasing fantasies of other lives, but doesn't say that this is necessarily a bad thing. Morgan Freeman gets killed because of his naive belief that he can make his life better through Betty, but sometimes chasing a fantasy can really make our lives better. As a waitress for example tells Betty she fell in love with the Italy of the books and movies. This made her eventually visit Italy. And while it may not have been like in the books or in the movies and while she is still a waitress, she had visited Italy and that was a great experience for her. It was the highlight of her life. And Betty eventually escapes the horrible life in Kansas and gets a role in A Reason to Love.

Some minor notes to end. I liked how much of this film is shot in the style of a soap opera. It is full of bright colors and bright lighting. And the house interiors are deliberately made to look more like movie sets of house interiors than real house interiors.
The actors are brilliant. Greg Kinnear and Renee Zellweger as David and Betty can play this kind of role in their sleep. But I was surprised how good Chris Rock is at playing a killer. And Morgan Freeman has recently had some unchallenging and boring roles. But here he reminds us that he can be (and is) a really great actor.