Somebody’s got to remind me not to go to the Kabuki for movies. For some reason I’ve got it stuck in my head that it’s perfect for dinner and a movie afterwards, and I always forget how they stuff you into cramped seats in a tiny 100-seat theater with a screen not much bigger than my TV. They run a disclaimer now before the movie, promising a big renovation with stadium seats and everything else to update it to the late 1990’s, so maybe that’ll change. But I’m boycotting it until I hear otherwise.

Tonight’s pick was Curse of the Golden Flower. This is a very, very silly movie. Absurd, even. For a lower-budget, action-heavy movie, that would be charming. But with as much pomposity as is in this movie, it just comes across as bloated, tedious excess.

Now, I’ve seen two of Zhang Yimou’s other movies: Hero, which was beautiful, full of intermittent action sequences, and completely nonsensical; and House of Flying Daggers, which was beautiful and exciting for the first 20 minutes and then turned into relentless tedium. So I’ve seen two and didn’t like either, but went ahead for the third; you’d be right in asking, who’s the idiot now?

Well, although both were ultimately bad movies, they did succeed on the visuals, so I expected more of the same. And when you’re going for spectacle, you want to see it on a big screen. The problem with Curse of the Golden Flower is that the spectacle just never lets up, so it all cancels each other out and leaves nothing memorable but a bright, blurry excess.

Every single scene is another designed and built to impress. Most of it is shot after shot of elaborately-dressed people walking down the hallways of the Forbidden Castle, past rainbow-colored doorways and pillars that look more like Willy Wonka’s factory than feudal China. Occasionally it cuts to a scene with hundreds or thousands of people working in the background while two people reiterate a plot point that’s already been established a dozen times over. For the more tranquil moments, it cuts to a Chinese stronghold in a dramatic mountain crevasse being besieged by dozens of ninja assassins. Every shot either has a million people in frame, or one person and a million set decorations.

Of course, this all works with the theme of the movie, such as it is. The story is about the Emperor’s dysfunctional family, and to convey the idea that they’re trapped by all the excess and ritual and tradition and political intrigue, you’ve got to show them bearing the weight of obscenely excessive wealth. But like everything else, that theme is explicitly repeated several times; the movie even has the two leads write it out on paper with English subtitles. Looking for deeper meaning in something so gratuitously silly and excessive is pointless, so the whole thing comes across like set designer porn.

Reviewers who are up to speed on Chinese cinema are always lamenting that everything released now gets compared to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but you just have to bring it up. There’s no denying that that movie changed how Chinese movies are perceived in the US. The problem, as I see it, is that that was a genuinely artistic movie — it took a form of popular art and used it to tell a truly adult story, subtly hiding its theme of freedom vs. being locked into expectations and roles behind over-the-top special effects and action scenes. It was high-art substance told with a low-art style.

As a result, movies like House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower are being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics as if they were art movies, when they’re really just pure style over substance. A lesser movie reviewer would make some comment here about how the Emperor has no clothes, but I’m above that. So I’ll just repeat my main point: this movie is hella lame.

I wasn’t a big fan of Jesus is Magic. In fact, it managed to do what I never would’ve thought possible: by the end of it, I was kind of sick of Sarah Silverman and wanted her to go away.

If you want to read somebody who can write say what I’m thinking, Stephanie Zacharek’s review once again lays it all out, Mouth of Sauron-style. I’d add that it wasn’t just the musical numbers that were unnecessary and went on too long, but the routine itself. At the time I saw the movie, I’d just seen Silverman do a short set at a benefit concert in the city, so I’d already heard all her material.

Obviously, that’s not her fault — that’s what comedians do. And her delivery is perfect, which is actually part of the problem. When she’s so good at making her routine come across as spontaneous, it ruins it when you realize she’s just performing well-rehearsed material.

And that’s why I’m really looking forward to her Comedy Central series, which starts in February. She’s just brilliant in small doses, and a half-hour time limit will just about do it. And most of the material’s got to be new every week, so there’s a bonus.

Plus, I’ve watched the intro about 12 times now and it still cracks me up:

Before I give anybody the wrong impression, I should point out that the past few months have been just great for me. Being under-employed suits me just fine, and for the first time in a very long time I feel like I’m on top of everything and just plain content.

Still, it’s getting really hard to be single these days.

Not for the obvious reasons — I’m really digging having so much time to myself and keeping completely to my own schedule with little-to-no obligations to anyone; so much so that I’d even go so far as to call it awesome. And when I go to the store, right there bang as soon as I walk in there’s a long aisle of Valentine’s Day decorations and candy and cards and all that, and I actually get a little spring in my step, knowing that I don’t have to fool with any of that nonsense.

No, the problem comes after I get past the Valentine’s aisle and just try to buy food to keep me alive and blogging. They make it really hard to buy just enough food for one person.

You might think those frozen microwavable dinners are the key, but I swore those off not long after I graduated college. There’s just something inherently depressing about buying them. Plus, they’re generally bad for you. It’s a vicious cycle, no doubt perpetuated by a grocers’ conspiracy — single-serving food makes you fat and unsuitable as a life partner.

“But what about those Healthy Choice deals?” you may be asking. Well, I can’t bring myself to get those, because I have a penis. Don’t blame me, blame the marketing department. I buy a Healthy Choice dinner, and the next thing you know I’m at a cafe table in the city chatting with my girlfriends about shoes while pouring myself a big bowl of Special K.

I’ve lived alone for about 15 years now, and not to toot my own horn (something else you do a lot of when you live alone), but I can make a mean cheeseburger. I’m talking about something so perfect it’ll make you weep and unless you’ve steeled yourself or have superhuman self-control, maybe even pee a little. But making hamburgers means committing yourself to at least a pound of ground beef and eight buns. And then the race is on: you’d better be ready to get your Wimpy on, because you’re going to have to eat a pound of hamburgers in less than a week before it all goes bad.

Tonight I went with my old college standby: English peas, corn, and a couple of those Pillsbury crescent rolls. Simple, easy to make, relatively healthy, and a perfect alternative if you’re tired of meat (or too poor to get meat, which is how the ritual started). At least, it used to be. When I was in college, they had single-serving cans of peas, corn, and the rolls in a 4-member pressurized canister. I could stock up on dozens of them, perfect for the eventuality that I have to lock myself in a bunker and finally have enough time to read, but then ironically break my glasses and just have to sit there eating peas.

Apparently Corporate America didn’t cotton to my corn-eating ways, because now they only sell it all in Jumbo Why Haven’t You Started A Family Yet, Loser? sizes. Huge cans, big beefy American cans, enough to feed a pre-casino Indian tribe. And good luck finding any kind of pressurized pre-formed bread dough product in sizes smaller than eight-per-can.

I started making dinner with the best of intentions, but of course ended up eating it all, the caloric equivalent of a whole bag of cookies. On corn and peas. What a cruel world this is.

It all reminds me of a joke that everybody’s heard but I’ll type it here anyway: when I was checking out at the grocery store, the clerk said, “You must live alone.” I said, “Oh, because of all the single-serving stuff I’ve bought.” She said, “No, because you’re fucking ugly.”