OCTOBER 2006 MOVIE REVIEWS
X-MEN 3: The Last Stand (2006) – It’s strange to take a psychological character study, make two competent financially successful films and then ignore what worked by making an impersonal action film, complete with foolish jokes right out of a Swartzenegger vehicle. You figure that Bryan Singer’s departure was a great deal of the problem. I don’t think he would have been happy with the script that was shot. I never read the comics books, but the first two movies were solid. A shame they ended like this.
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (2006) I read the book in the 1990s and it was pretty funny, but maybe not a natural movie since the witty writing style was a biggest plus. Director, Jason Reitman makes up for it by punching up the dialogue. Another good decision was downplaying the central kidnapping plot element that was far less interesting than just the day to day happenings and charm of the lead character played note-on by Aaron Eckhart. Like many movies it gets going stronger than it finishes, but it’s witty, well-paced and only 90 minutes. The trailer suggested a movie that was close to an instant classic, but the film is simply above average being a rare smart comedy.
THE DEPARTED (2006) – Marty and the mob is always worth a look and this film stays entertaining a lot longer than Casino. The mole cop and the crooked cop is a great idea and it makes me want to see the Hong Kong original. Supporting performances by Marky Mark and Alex Bladwin offer some fun moments too. It’s just hard to think of Nicholson as a mobster for as fun as he is to watch. Still, I was on the road forgiving the movie anything until it ended the same way as PENN AND TELLER GET KILLED. It seemed more Hong Kong than Martyville.
FRIENDS WITH MONEY (2006) – Movie Stars are supposed to play themselves, but they are also supposed to be dynamic and interesting. Jennifer Aniston is a mystery. I have seen enough of her films to safely say that she has no sense of fun. She’s the girl on a date that you want to like, but her conversation is so dull that you understand why she doesn’t have a boyfriend. To cast her alongside Francis McDormand, Catherine Kenner and Joan Cusack must be some sort evil joke to prove that she isn’t an actress. The movie itself is forgettable. I saw it a few weeks ago and the best I can remember, it was about four women with varying problems.
RUMOR HAS IT (2005) – Sticking with Aniston again because Trish feels that she got the shaft in the Jolie thing. I have to ask what happened to Rob Reiner. Didn’t he use to make good movies? I’d have to head to back to A FEW GOOD MEN to remind myself. RUMOR was a clever idea for a movie. The Graduate theme had a lot of places to go and this movie went to the wrong ones. Costner playing within his bounds of regular guy does fine. Shirley MacClaine gets away with being a little too much. Richard Jenkins as Aniston’s father is solid in a quirky performance. He’s one of those guys you’ve seen a dozen times and finally put a name with him. It’s unsatisfying, but short which is at least something.
+BURDEN OF DREAMS (1982) – The story of making the film Fitzcarraldo is racked with problems. A political situation gets them kicked out of their shooting location early on. You get the idea that they are somewhat lucky to escape with their lives. A second location is found and a good portion of the film is shot and then he loses his principle actors and has to re-think the whole enterprise. Slowly the film focuses on the natives that act as extras and bearers of the equipment and props. They are very lucky to get the work which pays a great deal more than they’re use to. Still, Herzog has that romantic noble savage psychology in him. He regrets that his contact and contact by the west in general will ruin their culture. But do they even want to keep their culture? Work is sporadic and rival tribes are killing each other so gathering and cultivating food isn’t easy. Herzog integrates some of their culture into the movie by showing the process of making this nasty hooch that’s fermented by their own saliva. Klaus Kinski of all people is too grossed out to drink it on camera. The title comes from a quote by Herzog in the middle of the film. “If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams, and I never want to live like that.” In some ways BURDEN is similar to LOST IN LAMANCH, the Terry Gilliam failed attempt to make Don Quixote. But BURDEN is superior because it’s not just about the difficulty of making a film but the difficulty of life and how overcoming obstacles is a human victory separate from the ends themselves.
DANIEL (1992) – Based on the book by E. L. Doctorow that pretty much re-writes the Rosenbergs case with a more innocent seeming family instead so as to imply that their execution was nothing but McCarthyism. Timothy Hutton plays the grown son in the 60s that goes from wanderer growing into war protestor right where his parents would have liked.
INHERIT THE WIND (1960) This was near the beginning of Stanley Kramer’s classic “the world’s on trial” period that began with the Defiant Ones and ended with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. INHERIT is an actor’s showcase and was a must-see Broadway play in the 1950s. Kramer casts Spencer Tracy and Frederick March in the leads who are nothing but veiled representations of Clarence Darrow (Tracy) and William Jennings Bryan (March). Darrow takes the side of Enlightenment and Bryan the side of Puritanism. You could tell with the sound down that the emotional March is the heavy while the quiet and reasoned Tracy is our hero. Tracy frames the Darwin battle as a free expression question which probably seemed like a very liberal sustainable idea. Today you could make the same movie with some college administrator PC advocate thumping his code of conduct book versus some student who held an Affirmative Action bake sale.
DON’T LOOK NOW (1973) – I had just recently heard of this classic chiller based on a book by Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca) and we decided to watch it on Halloween. Donald Sutherland is a restorer of classic architecture and he and his wife (Julie Christie) travel to work on a church in Venice shortly after the death of their daughter. Soon the wife meets a psychic that warns them to leave the city. The husband doesn’t believe in such nonsense so what explains all the weird stuff he sees? The movie is noted for a racy sex scene between the leads and the Venice setting couldn’t be better for this material.
WEDDING CRASHERS (2006) – My favorite Frat Pack movies are the ones with Vince Vaughn, the only real unapologetic actor in the series. Next I like the Wilson brothers, Luke before the more popular Owen. Two out of three ain’t bad here although the insufferable Will Ferrell shows up for a cameo at the end. There isn’t much about this movie that strikes as real. To crash weddings is one thing, but to give speeches and pose during the cake cutting is a Bugs Bunny short. So if you can deal with that and characters shouting the truth to each other one room from the people they are duping then you will get some laughs. You also get Christopher Walken as the father, Jane Seymour as a Mrs. Robinson spoof, and Rachel McAdams as the fetching object of desire. I can’t say that it was good and yet I laughed quite a few times at all the nonsense.
(+ denotes exceptional film)
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Summer Movies
CATCHING UP ON MOVIE REVIEWS
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES N.M. (1998) – Kiefer Southerland’s directorial debut features a shaky script that takes the film into more contrived areas as it proceeds. The good news is the acting rises above the material with Sutherland leading the way as the boss a hold-up gang that spends the movie on the run. Vincent Gallo is great casting as the creep with a decent heart. Kevin Pollack is a kidnap victim that starts to identify a little too much with the criminal life. In short, this is a Tarantino rip-off that can’t match the wit.
THE NAKED KISS (1964) – I think Samuel Fuller must be an acquired taste, because although he is well revered by foreign critics and indie movie makers, I just don’t see the greatness in these rough B-movie efforts. His leading lady (Constance Towers) is 10 years too old for the part of a prostitute who waltzes into town and for no apparent reason goes straight and dedicates herself to a kids hospital. The leading man Anthony Eisley is the sheriff. He’s fighting attraction to Towers, doesn’t believe the conversion and wants her in jail. The screen presence and acting ability of these leads seems about right for an episode of the RIFLEMAN. You could put a cowboy hat on either of them and they’d look like extras in any number of early TV shows. When I’m retired and have nothing but time, I will watch some Fuller movies with the sound down to see if his directing style actually rises above the shoddy plots and acting.
MELVIN AND HOWARD (1980) An early Jonathan Demme film that won Best Original Screenplay and best supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen). In fact, Steenburgen won about every accolade as the flaky wife of Melvin. The movie is based on a story of a man that claimed to have picked up Hughes in the desert one night and drove him to Vegas. Robards plays Hughes early in the movie with the typical zest you’d expect. Paul LeMat plays Howard as the nary-do-well husband and father that is surprised to wind up in Hughes will years later. I’m not sure why the movie is so highly rated. It seems to be nothing but a pitiful white trash escapade.
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (2004) – This is a movie of little character situations with some scenes that really play well and others that seem entirely unreasonable. The writer/director Miranda July also plays the socially inept artist female lead. John Hawkes plays her male counterpart, a recently divorced father with two kids trying to adjust. The conventional part of the story has these two misfits trying to get together and it works pretty well. The story of the kid’s adjustment to divorce is also decent, and the relationship between Miranda and gallery owner is compelling. But you could pretty much cut every other character and subplot out of the movie and not miss it.
CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974) – An entertaining film from the hit or miss Robert Altman. Elliot Gould and George Segal meet each other in a California poker room and decide to team up as gamblers betting the ponies and playing cards. This atmosphere usually makes for an entertaining beginning and in the hands of a decent director this material works the whole way through. The central question the script poses is whether it’s action or results that these men seek. It also answers one of the central questions as to why good players go through bad streaks. When you play well and win money the action becomes a drug and if you don’t watch out you start to crave the action over the money and then you give it back.
+CACHE (2005) Often times I’m at a loss for something interesting and I let Netflix talk me into this recent French psychological drama starring Juliet Binnoche and directed by Michael Haneke. Without giving away too much, Binoche and her husband are being semi-stalked by someone from the husband’s past. The movie really gets the subtlety right and the mystery plays out at a very good pace. One of the most interesting facets is the unspoken question of whether Binoche is having fling with a family friend. You get to answer it for yourself.
THE PIANO TEACHER (2001) – After enjoying CACHE, I immediately rented Haneke’s earlier acclaimed film. American audiences may recognize Isabelle Huppert from I Heart Huccabees. Here she gives a disturbing performance as the Masochistic title character. It has less of the nuance that I enjoyed in CACHE and some of it is down right mean. Thankfully I saw it second or I may not have tried Cache. Based on these two films I would probably give anything future Haneke film a chance even if I know that I won’t be the right audience for all of them.
EIGHT BELOW (2006) – Researchers on Antartica have to leave some dogs behind in the dead of winter and the movie follows the survival of the dogs. The movie sustains excitement, and sorrow proving once again that you don’t need named actors or even dialogue if the story is solid enough. It doesn’t hurt that we have a sled dog ourselves.
THE MATADOR (2005) – This is Pierce Brosnan’s second attempt at turning his glossy James Bond persona into a darker version of the same character. I thought that the first try, THE TAILOR OF PANAMA, worked quite well and he doesn’t really disappoint here either. Brosnan has a license to kill here like Bond and he’s the symbolic matador killing the bull. Greg Kinnear shows up as the everyman that meets Brosnan on a business trip and they become friends sort-of despite a few misfires at first. It’s resolved in a typical American movie way which is not a criticism but a good way of understanding the American outlook on life. The French director Haneke would have found a much more bleak way to end it and that would have been in line with the way the French see the world.
THE MODERNS (1988) Alan Rudolph explores the ex-patriate American culture in 1920s France. I don’t think Nick Hart played by Keith Carradine was a real person, but many of the others characters – Gertrude Stein, Hemingway – are. A few years later, Rudolph tackled the same time period for “Mrs. Parker and the Viscous Circle” which I like better. Carradine makes a surprisingly effective leading man and the young Linda Fiorentino is solid object of affection, but the story itself goes from lighthearted to dark and then to silly and then to contrived. I seldom like it when serious bitter rivals evolve into comedic bitter rivals followed by timely deaths that solve the nature of the conflict for the characters.
HAPPY ENDINGS (2005) - The title refers to the kind of massage that Kevin Costner was trying to get in Scotland. An ensemble cast including Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhal, Tom Arnold and Jason (Son of John) Ritter go about their lives in whatever way touching upon the lives of one another. The main plots are Kudrow possibly re-connecting with the son she gave away and Tom Arnold being taken for a fool by Maggie Gyllenhal who is either pregnant by Arnold or his son Ritter. The situations are handled with both humor and sadness with a decent overall style.
+MY VOYAGE TO ITALY (2001) – Martin Scorsese divides the film into 2 parts and 243 complete minutes to explore the greatest of classic Italian cinema with commentary on directors, actors, and stories. The major players are Fellini, De Sica, and Rossellini, with Antonioni and Visconti showing up for laughs. I found it somewhere in the first hour and was so engrossed I didn’t realize 3 hours had past. The films are interesting in themselves, but it’s Scorsese’s commentary that pulls you in and keeps you watching. This was especially true in the postwar Bergman/Rossillini collaborations and Fellini’s 8 ½, a movie I appreciated much more with Scorsese’s take.
MEET THE FOCKERS (2004) – While Marty is busy telling film history, Bobby is playing MEET THE PAYCHECK. The once interesting actor is not only willing to play a cartoon version of himself, he’s willing to do so in sequels. Scorsese answered by casting Jack Nicholson in his latest DeNiro role. Other Oscar winners, Hoffman and Streisand show up for cheap laughs. Episodes of My Name is Earl seem more plausible.
+FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982) – One of the few cinematic treats I have left to look forward to is watching the entire Ingmar Bergman output. I believe this is the 4th film I’ve seen after Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, and Three Strange Loves. The movie is 188 minutes and paced so well that it never feels overlong. Fanny and Alexander are two young kids that deal with the death of their actor father and the introduction of the strict clergyman stepfather. Plenty of temperamental theatre characters make for some lighthearted subplots.
(+) denotes exceptional film.
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES N.M. (1998) – Kiefer Southerland’s directorial debut features a shaky script that takes the film into more contrived areas as it proceeds. The good news is the acting rises above the material with Sutherland leading the way as the boss a hold-up gang that spends the movie on the run. Vincent Gallo is great casting as the creep with a decent heart. Kevin Pollack is a kidnap victim that starts to identify a little too much with the criminal life. In short, this is a Tarantino rip-off that can’t match the wit.
THE NAKED KISS (1964) – I think Samuel Fuller must be an acquired taste, because although he is well revered by foreign critics and indie movie makers, I just don’t see the greatness in these rough B-movie efforts. His leading lady (Constance Towers) is 10 years too old for the part of a prostitute who waltzes into town and for no apparent reason goes straight and dedicates herself to a kids hospital. The leading man Anthony Eisley is the sheriff. He’s fighting attraction to Towers, doesn’t believe the conversion and wants her in jail. The screen presence and acting ability of these leads seems about right for an episode of the RIFLEMAN. You could put a cowboy hat on either of them and they’d look like extras in any number of early TV shows. When I’m retired and have nothing but time, I will watch some Fuller movies with the sound down to see if his directing style actually rises above the shoddy plots and acting.
MELVIN AND HOWARD (1980) An early Jonathan Demme film that won Best Original Screenplay and best supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen). In fact, Steenburgen won about every accolade as the flaky wife of Melvin. The movie is based on a story of a man that claimed to have picked up Hughes in the desert one night and drove him to Vegas. Robards plays Hughes early in the movie with the typical zest you’d expect. Paul LeMat plays Howard as the nary-do-well husband and father that is surprised to wind up in Hughes will years later. I’m not sure why the movie is so highly rated. It seems to be nothing but a pitiful white trash escapade.
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (2004) – This is a movie of little character situations with some scenes that really play well and others that seem entirely unreasonable. The writer/director Miranda July also plays the socially inept artist female lead. John Hawkes plays her male counterpart, a recently divorced father with two kids trying to adjust. The conventional part of the story has these two misfits trying to get together and it works pretty well. The story of the kid’s adjustment to divorce is also decent, and the relationship between Miranda and gallery owner is compelling. But you could pretty much cut every other character and subplot out of the movie and not miss it.
CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974) – An entertaining film from the hit or miss Robert Altman. Elliot Gould and George Segal meet each other in a California poker room and decide to team up as gamblers betting the ponies and playing cards. This atmosphere usually makes for an entertaining beginning and in the hands of a decent director this material works the whole way through. The central question the script poses is whether it’s action or results that these men seek. It also answers one of the central questions as to why good players go through bad streaks. When you play well and win money the action becomes a drug and if you don’t watch out you start to crave the action over the money and then you give it back.
+CACHE (2005) Often times I’m at a loss for something interesting and I let Netflix talk me into this recent French psychological drama starring Juliet Binnoche and directed by Michael Haneke. Without giving away too much, Binoche and her husband are being semi-stalked by someone from the husband’s past. The movie really gets the subtlety right and the mystery plays out at a very good pace. One of the most interesting facets is the unspoken question of whether Binoche is having fling with a family friend. You get to answer it for yourself.
THE PIANO TEACHER (2001) – After enjoying CACHE, I immediately rented Haneke’s earlier acclaimed film. American audiences may recognize Isabelle Huppert from I Heart Huccabees. Here she gives a disturbing performance as the Masochistic title character. It has less of the nuance that I enjoyed in CACHE and some of it is down right mean. Thankfully I saw it second or I may not have tried Cache. Based on these two films I would probably give anything future Haneke film a chance even if I know that I won’t be the right audience for all of them.
EIGHT BELOW (2006) – Researchers on Antartica have to leave some dogs behind in the dead of winter and the movie follows the survival of the dogs. The movie sustains excitement, and sorrow proving once again that you don’t need named actors or even dialogue if the story is solid enough. It doesn’t hurt that we have a sled dog ourselves.
THE MATADOR (2005) – This is Pierce Brosnan’s second attempt at turning his glossy James Bond persona into a darker version of the same character. I thought that the first try, THE TAILOR OF PANAMA, worked quite well and he doesn’t really disappoint here either. Brosnan has a license to kill here like Bond and he’s the symbolic matador killing the bull. Greg Kinnear shows up as the everyman that meets Brosnan on a business trip and they become friends sort-of despite a few misfires at first. It’s resolved in a typical American movie way which is not a criticism but a good way of understanding the American outlook on life. The French director Haneke would have found a much more bleak way to end it and that would have been in line with the way the French see the world.
THE MODERNS (1988) Alan Rudolph explores the ex-patriate American culture in 1920s France. I don’t think Nick Hart played by Keith Carradine was a real person, but many of the others characters – Gertrude Stein, Hemingway – are. A few years later, Rudolph tackled the same time period for “Mrs. Parker and the Viscous Circle” which I like better. Carradine makes a surprisingly effective leading man and the young Linda Fiorentino is solid object of affection, but the story itself goes from lighthearted to dark and then to silly and then to contrived. I seldom like it when serious bitter rivals evolve into comedic bitter rivals followed by timely deaths that solve the nature of the conflict for the characters.
HAPPY ENDINGS (2005) - The title refers to the kind of massage that Kevin Costner was trying to get in Scotland. An ensemble cast including Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhal, Tom Arnold and Jason (Son of John) Ritter go about their lives in whatever way touching upon the lives of one another. The main plots are Kudrow possibly re-connecting with the son she gave away and Tom Arnold being taken for a fool by Maggie Gyllenhal who is either pregnant by Arnold or his son Ritter. The situations are handled with both humor and sadness with a decent overall style.
+MY VOYAGE TO ITALY (2001) – Martin Scorsese divides the film into 2 parts and 243 complete minutes to explore the greatest of classic Italian cinema with commentary on directors, actors, and stories. The major players are Fellini, De Sica, and Rossellini, with Antonioni and Visconti showing up for laughs. I found it somewhere in the first hour and was so engrossed I didn’t realize 3 hours had past. The films are interesting in themselves, but it’s Scorsese’s commentary that pulls you in and keeps you watching. This was especially true in the postwar Bergman/Rossillini collaborations and Fellini’s 8 ½, a movie I appreciated much more with Scorsese’s take.
MEET THE FOCKERS (2004) – While Marty is busy telling film history, Bobby is playing MEET THE PAYCHECK. The once interesting actor is not only willing to play a cartoon version of himself, he’s willing to do so in sequels. Scorsese answered by casting Jack Nicholson in his latest DeNiro role. Other Oscar winners, Hoffman and Streisand show up for cheap laughs. Episodes of My Name is Earl seem more plausible.
+FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982) – One of the few cinematic treats I have left to look forward to is watching the entire Ingmar Bergman output. I believe this is the 4th film I’ve seen after Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, and Three Strange Loves. The movie is 188 minutes and paced so well that it never feels overlong. Fanny and Alexander are two young kids that deal with the death of their actor father and the introduction of the strict clergyman stepfather. Plenty of temperamental theatre characters make for some lighthearted subplots.
(+) denotes exceptional film.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
That Spike Lee Joint
I watched a good deal of the Spike Lee Katrina Documentary on HBO. This documentary is long and it’s full of a lot of angry people immediately after the storms passed, but the anger wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. So Spike uses more recent interviews to help direct the anger at the closest possible Republican. Let’s see, the Mayor is a Democrat – Governor is a Democrat – President is a Republican – Yeah, it’s the federal government’s fault.
But attaching the blame to Bush isn’t as simple as hoped because there seemed to be a contradiction about what the federal government should have done. On one hand Nagin clearly says that Gov. Blanco refused to give Bush the authority to send the National Guard. Blanco all but admits that she refused to cede control by refusing to answer the question directly. The Blanco problem is further compounded by the revelation that Nagin and Blanco have been political rivals since he supported her opponent in the most recent election. Though the documentary doesn’t spend much time here, there seems a great likelihood that Blanco kept the Feds waiting simply to make Nagin look worse.
After spending too little time on that nugget, the documentary produces people that say Bush should have ignored Blanco and sent troops anyway. So it’s still his fault. But wait, not long after the troops arrive we hear many interviewees complain about the behavior of the troops in action. Some citizens felt like Iraqis living with an occupying army. Though never stated, it seemed pretty likely that Bush circumventing Blanco would have been ripe for a police state accusation.
We hear an anecdote about the great LBJ coming to town after a 60s hurricane for a photo-op. But then Bush is criticized because his appearance is a photo-op. The end result is that the documentary gives a voice to so many different complaints that you can choose any villain that you want and Spike certainly chooses Bush.
Nagin’s lackadaisical approach to the coming storm was a big blunder. The shot of those flooded school buses a few days later and the realization that they should have been carting people out of town Saturday night was not given any play here. Still, Nagin comes off as a pretty decent guy that seemed more interested in solutions than politics while Blanco seems more interested in her power and shifting blame.
The average viewer is supposed to gather that America’s racism let the people in New Orleans down. If Lee believes that people can only survive in New Orleans with Federal hand-holding, then maybe he’s accidentally asking us if we should go to the trouble of re-building New Orleans at all. Why are we to think it won’t happen all over again the next time? Does the average taxpayer really want the responsibility every time a storm is brewing in the Gulf? If I were to believe the tone of the overall film as reality then I would vote to bulldoze the place and plant sugarcane.
I watched a good deal of the Spike Lee Katrina Documentary on HBO. This documentary is long and it’s full of a lot of angry people immediately after the storms passed, but the anger wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. So Spike uses more recent interviews to help direct the anger at the closest possible Republican. Let’s see, the Mayor is a Democrat – Governor is a Democrat – President is a Republican – Yeah, it’s the federal government’s fault.
But attaching the blame to Bush isn’t as simple as hoped because there seemed to be a contradiction about what the federal government should have done. On one hand Nagin clearly says that Gov. Blanco refused to give Bush the authority to send the National Guard. Blanco all but admits that she refused to cede control by refusing to answer the question directly. The Blanco problem is further compounded by the revelation that Nagin and Blanco have been political rivals since he supported her opponent in the most recent election. Though the documentary doesn’t spend much time here, there seems a great likelihood that Blanco kept the Feds waiting simply to make Nagin look worse.
After spending too little time on that nugget, the documentary produces people that say Bush should have ignored Blanco and sent troops anyway. So it’s still his fault. But wait, not long after the troops arrive we hear many interviewees complain about the behavior of the troops in action. Some citizens felt like Iraqis living with an occupying army. Though never stated, it seemed pretty likely that Bush circumventing Blanco would have been ripe for a police state accusation.
We hear an anecdote about the great LBJ coming to town after a 60s hurricane for a photo-op. But then Bush is criticized because his appearance is a photo-op. The end result is that the documentary gives a voice to so many different complaints that you can choose any villain that you want and Spike certainly chooses Bush.
Nagin’s lackadaisical approach to the coming storm was a big blunder. The shot of those flooded school buses a few days later and the realization that they should have been carting people out of town Saturday night was not given any play here. Still, Nagin comes off as a pretty decent guy that seemed more interested in solutions than politics while Blanco seems more interested in her power and shifting blame.
The average viewer is supposed to gather that America’s racism let the people in New Orleans down. If Lee believes that people can only survive in New Orleans with Federal hand-holding, then maybe he’s accidentally asking us if we should go to the trouble of re-building New Orleans at all. Why are we to think it won’t happen all over again the next time? Does the average taxpayer really want the responsibility every time a storm is brewing in the Gulf? If I were to believe the tone of the overall film as reality then I would vote to bulldoze the place and plant sugarcane.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
A History of Violence (A Movie Review)
Viggo Mortensen has an impressive range. Having recently seen him as the no-good brother in Sean Penn’s INDIAN RUNNER, you would think he would be forever typecast as the loser. Here he plays the mild-mannered husband, father and small businessman and he plays it note perfect. When his restaurant is invaded by gunmen, his defeat of those thugs is a great heroic movie moment. As the rest of the movie unfolds, Viggo’s range is tested as he reveals more of his true self. He should have been nominated.
Unlike other movies based on graphic novels such as Sin City, and The Road to Perdition, a History of Violence doesn’t have that overly stylized art direction that takes you out of the realness of the story. Cronenberg makes up for this by inventing his own things to take you out of the story. For instance, Maria Bello and Viggo Mortensen by their actions do not seem to have been together long enough to have produced a high school aged son. There is some sort of excitement between them that exists in the world of newness. It seems like he is just recently in her life or he just returned from war.
When the violence heats up, we expect as an audience to see some gore, but sometimes the gore we see is stylized in the slasher movie mode instead of the cops and robbers mode. It draws too much attention to that style and leads you away from the act.
But the only truly groaning preposterous part of the film is the affectedness of William Hurt’s performance. Of course, Hurt made his career playing the driest of leading men and his attempt to give a character some spice is so offbeat and comic it just doesn’t match the action happening simultaneously.
The last thing, though minor, is that the son overcomes a bully we're to believe because he is the son of Viggo and inherited the same prowess. The only problem is that the actor that plays the son isn't quite right for the kind of transformation and it seems forced rather than natural.
For all I know maybe these are elements of graphic novels that fans have long ago forgiven or even expected, but this was actually a good idea and a more decent story than the average movie and I think that those certain elements detract from the overall result.
It’s a bubble film for me. Sometimes I watch these movies again and they grow on me enough that I forgive the imperfections. Other times, the imperfections scream louder subsequent times and I write them off. I’m wondering where this one will take me.
I've seen FORREST GUMP on TV a few times in the last couple of years, and though it was a movie that I critical of the time, especially Hanks voice choice for the character, I have since come to admire and enjoy it. Go figure.
Viggo Mortensen has an impressive range. Having recently seen him as the no-good brother in Sean Penn’s INDIAN RUNNER, you would think he would be forever typecast as the loser. Here he plays the mild-mannered husband, father and small businessman and he plays it note perfect. When his restaurant is invaded by gunmen, his defeat of those thugs is a great heroic movie moment. As the rest of the movie unfolds, Viggo’s range is tested as he reveals more of his true self. He should have been nominated.
Unlike other movies based on graphic novels such as Sin City, and The Road to Perdition, a History of Violence doesn’t have that overly stylized art direction that takes you out of the realness of the story. Cronenberg makes up for this by inventing his own things to take you out of the story. For instance, Maria Bello and Viggo Mortensen by their actions do not seem to have been together long enough to have produced a high school aged son. There is some sort of excitement between them that exists in the world of newness. It seems like he is just recently in her life or he just returned from war.
When the violence heats up, we expect as an audience to see some gore, but sometimes the gore we see is stylized in the slasher movie mode instead of the cops and robbers mode. It draws too much attention to that style and leads you away from the act.
But the only truly groaning preposterous part of the film is the affectedness of William Hurt’s performance. Of course, Hurt made his career playing the driest of leading men and his attempt to give a character some spice is so offbeat and comic it just doesn’t match the action happening simultaneously.
The last thing, though minor, is that the son overcomes a bully we're to believe because he is the son of Viggo and inherited the same prowess. The only problem is that the actor that plays the son isn't quite right for the kind of transformation and it seems forced rather than natural.
For all I know maybe these are elements of graphic novels that fans have long ago forgiven or even expected, but this was actually a good idea and a more decent story than the average movie and I think that those certain elements detract from the overall result.
It’s a bubble film for me. Sometimes I watch these movies again and they grow on me enough that I forgive the imperfections. Other times, the imperfections scream louder subsequent times and I write them off. I’m wondering where this one will take me.
I've seen FORREST GUMP on TV a few times in the last couple of years, and though it was a movie that I critical of the time, especially Hanks voice choice for the character, I have since come to admire and enjoy it. Go figure.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
PCU - Politically Correct University (1994) - A movie review
Puritanism has never been dead in America. It just takes different forms at different times. It’s an attitude more so than a belief system. It lives in people that insist the world be fashioned to their own pure standard. In Salem, women were burned as witches for not adhering. In New York City men cannot smoke a cigar in a tavern without the threat of arrest. In college campuses, students are expelled for holding affirmative action bake sales. Larger forms are the drug war and the Kyoto Treaty.
Those on the left that abhor Salem and even liken it to McCarthyism have no insight into their own Puritanism. Because what is Political Correctness other than an insistence of a pure adherence to today’s version of enlightenment? The reason you cannot smoke in a New York City bar comes from the same thinking that made the colonials dress modestly, both were designed to protect the body, although from different things. The students expelled for holding an affirmative action bake sale were performing a sacrilege against the latest tenant of secular divinity. So brings us to the slight and mostly forgotten movie, PCU.
Trish remembered this movie fondly from college and although I never had any interest in it, I was busy cooking and didn’t squawk when she put it on. I tried to simply ignore it, but I found myself laughing more than once. It was in some ways typical, but in other ways it showed a boldness.
It’s the only movie I have ever seen that treats the self-important PC groups as the intolerant and self-righteous creeps that they are. All the usual complaint groups are marching around campus as you’d expect they would be while a group of good-time Charlies led by Jeremy Piven do everything they can to disrupt these pretentious bastards. Piven and Co. are the heroes we already know from Animal House. They care little about school, but they like a good time and these PCers are ruining the fun around campus. The first act of rebelliousness is early on when the vegetarians are marching against the evils of meat and Piven’s gang lies waiting at the top of a building and then flings raw hamburger meat upon them, gross and yet not unappreciated by the audience.
Another explanation for the rebelliousness is that Piven’s one-time girlfriend is a member of the marching anti-men feminists. She’s lambasted early by another fem for having a relationship with that pig, but you can tell that she still likes him and is only going through the motions of sanctimoniousness. We know that Piven will win her back amidst the other chaos that is soon to follow.
Jessica Walter (Play Misty for Me) is the Dean of students that is trying to kick Piven’s crew out of school ala Animal House. And this is where the movie takes a Hollywood turn. David Spade leads the group of prep school types. He’s singled out as a “Republican” and he plans to help Walter get the Pivens kicked off campus. Not once in the film do Spade and his Republicans ever comment on the PC nature of the campus, instead they are solely designed to be the arch enemy of “libertarian” Piven and Co. I suppose this was the trade-off for getting the movie made. You can make fun of all the excessive PC groups as long as the real villain is still a Republican. That the Republicans and Piven would rather fight among themselves than find alliance against the totalitarians of correct thought is funnier than flinging the meat, because it's such a twister stretch for a writer.
Peter Biskind wrote a book about the politics of 1950s cinema that is quite fascinating. He looks at classic films, but also at popular films and cult films. He analyzes the different kinds of approaches taken by authority figures and places those attitudes into groups. If I were to write a movie about cinema in the 1990s, I would certainly include this movie because it gets to the heart of the era. Not only does it capture the shrillness of PC groups in a way that will probably never be tackled again, but it exposes the knee-jerk anti-conservative response of Hollywood on any subject.
PCU ends with the PC groups coming to their senses as Piven and Co. share in a George Clinton concert. The PC groups just needed to find their fun inner child, while the conservatives will never be fun. It’s significant because it shows that modern Hollywood values are less based on beliefs than attitudes. Anything conservative must be suspect, even their own conservative inclinations. Reaching out to the most anti-social liberals is more favorable than making common cause with those that they actually agree with.
The late Dick Schaap was on Crossfire in the early 1990s. The topic may have been what to do with Tonya Harding following the Kerrigan incident. Schaap and Buchanan agreed that Harding should be kicked off the team, but Schaap was so upset that he agreed with Pat, he kept insulting Pat by the way he kept saying he can’t believe he’s agreeing with him on anything and implying that Pat was a fool. I remember more about Schaap’s embarrassment than I do anything else. The same emotion was present here and therefore resolved in a most unrealistic way.
Puritanism has never been dead in America. It just takes different forms at different times. It’s an attitude more so than a belief system. It lives in people that insist the world be fashioned to their own pure standard. In Salem, women were burned as witches for not adhering. In New York City men cannot smoke a cigar in a tavern without the threat of arrest. In college campuses, students are expelled for holding affirmative action bake sales. Larger forms are the drug war and the Kyoto Treaty.
Those on the left that abhor Salem and even liken it to McCarthyism have no insight into their own Puritanism. Because what is Political Correctness other than an insistence of a pure adherence to today’s version of enlightenment? The reason you cannot smoke in a New York City bar comes from the same thinking that made the colonials dress modestly, both were designed to protect the body, although from different things. The students expelled for holding an affirmative action bake sale were performing a sacrilege against the latest tenant of secular divinity. So brings us to the slight and mostly forgotten movie, PCU.
Trish remembered this movie fondly from college and although I never had any interest in it, I was busy cooking and didn’t squawk when she put it on. I tried to simply ignore it, but I found myself laughing more than once. It was in some ways typical, but in other ways it showed a boldness.
It’s the only movie I have ever seen that treats the self-important PC groups as the intolerant and self-righteous creeps that they are. All the usual complaint groups are marching around campus as you’d expect they would be while a group of good-time Charlies led by Jeremy Piven do everything they can to disrupt these pretentious bastards. Piven and Co. are the heroes we already know from Animal House. They care little about school, but they like a good time and these PCers are ruining the fun around campus. The first act of rebelliousness is early on when the vegetarians are marching against the evils of meat and Piven’s gang lies waiting at the top of a building and then flings raw hamburger meat upon them, gross and yet not unappreciated by the audience.
Another explanation for the rebelliousness is that Piven’s one-time girlfriend is a member of the marching anti-men feminists. She’s lambasted early by another fem for having a relationship with that pig, but you can tell that she still likes him and is only going through the motions of sanctimoniousness. We know that Piven will win her back amidst the other chaos that is soon to follow.
Jessica Walter (Play Misty for Me) is the Dean of students that is trying to kick Piven’s crew out of school ala Animal House. And this is where the movie takes a Hollywood turn. David Spade leads the group of prep school types. He’s singled out as a “Republican” and he plans to help Walter get the Pivens kicked off campus. Not once in the film do Spade and his Republicans ever comment on the PC nature of the campus, instead they are solely designed to be the arch enemy of “libertarian” Piven and Co. I suppose this was the trade-off for getting the movie made. You can make fun of all the excessive PC groups as long as the real villain is still a Republican. That the Republicans and Piven would rather fight among themselves than find alliance against the totalitarians of correct thought is funnier than flinging the meat, because it's such a twister stretch for a writer.
Peter Biskind wrote a book about the politics of 1950s cinema that is quite fascinating. He looks at classic films, but also at popular films and cult films. He analyzes the different kinds of approaches taken by authority figures and places those attitudes into groups. If I were to write a movie about cinema in the 1990s, I would certainly include this movie because it gets to the heart of the era. Not only does it capture the shrillness of PC groups in a way that will probably never be tackled again, but it exposes the knee-jerk anti-conservative response of Hollywood on any subject.
PCU ends with the PC groups coming to their senses as Piven and Co. share in a George Clinton concert. The PC groups just needed to find their fun inner child, while the conservatives will never be fun. It’s significant because it shows that modern Hollywood values are less based on beliefs than attitudes. Anything conservative must be suspect, even their own conservative inclinations. Reaching out to the most anti-social liberals is more favorable than making common cause with those that they actually agree with.
The late Dick Schaap was on Crossfire in the early 1990s. The topic may have been what to do with Tonya Harding following the Kerrigan incident. Schaap and Buchanan agreed that Harding should be kicked off the team, but Schaap was so upset that he agreed with Pat, he kept insulting Pat by the way he kept saying he can’t believe he’s agreeing with him on anything and implying that Pat was a fool. I remember more about Schaap’s embarrassment than I do anything else. The same emotion was present here and therefore resolved in a most unrealistic way.
CLEARING THE BASES by Mike Schmidt – (A book Review)
Bob Costas had a great HBO special in May about Steroid use. While his panel of Tim McCarver, Joe Margan and Bob Gibson each had varying sympathies for the players, they all admitted that steroids were bad for the game. Costas thinks that steroids are the second biggest blight on the history of the game following the pre-1947 segregation, because both factors resulted in baseball not having the equal and honest competition that it deserved.
Schmidt’s book is here to take advantage of the controversy by allowing a clean player to weigh in on the happenings. Like most jock books we get a synopsis of his career as a platform to lay his inside opinion on. I remember the 1980s Schmidt from the Pete Rose and Tug McGraw era. I knew little about his beginnings and I was glad he caught me up.
As well as giving a career capsule, Schmidt also explains early free agency starting with Curt Flood on into Catfish Hunter and Dave McNally. On the one hand, Schmidt says the players deserved their freedom of movement and the ability to earn as much as the market would bear. But he also thinks the frequent player movement has been a negative for baseball. This duality of thought is a common thread through the book. Now a lot of people have ambiguous emotions about the way baseball has changed over the years and you can’t fault Schmidt the person for not being sure which is the greater good, but the point of writing a book is to make a stand on the issues not just say that you’re torn between them. Which is better Mike, free movement or guys staying put?
He was on record as saying in the past that if steroids were available in his day he would have used them. He now says that the comment was off the cuff and he wouldn’t have. Steroids are ruinous to the game, he says. But then he explains that the increase in home run production is just as much a result of a tighter wound and fresher balls, and smaller ballparks. So the real culprit can be whatever we want it to be.
The most interesting story is Schmidt’s relationship with Pete Rose. Schmidt started intervening with Bud Selig a few years back and even brought Rose to Selig so that Rose could admit he bet on baseball. Schmidt says that Selig was happy for the admission, but less than impressed with Rose’s lack of emotion over the confession. Selig wanted Rose to feel badly, I guess. Though Rose still had a shot with Selig, his chances were ruined around the time Pete’s book was due to come out. The early leak of the book coincided with the HOF announcements where the Rose news overshadowed Selig’s buddy Paul Molitor being enshrined. DOOM!
I suppose the title is Schmidt's play on clearing the air with his thoughts, but I think Schmidt shouldn't have written the book until he could make some more definitive value judgements.
These are the kinds of books I grew up on, and the ones that taught me a love of reading, although they were mostly written by the likes of Sparky Lyle and Graig Nettles. They usually leave me less than excited these days. The only one from the last few years that stands out is the one written by Jim Kaat.
Bob Costas had a great HBO special in May about Steroid use. While his panel of Tim McCarver, Joe Margan and Bob Gibson each had varying sympathies for the players, they all admitted that steroids were bad for the game. Costas thinks that steroids are the second biggest blight on the history of the game following the pre-1947 segregation, because both factors resulted in baseball not having the equal and honest competition that it deserved.
Schmidt’s book is here to take advantage of the controversy by allowing a clean player to weigh in on the happenings. Like most jock books we get a synopsis of his career as a platform to lay his inside opinion on. I remember the 1980s Schmidt from the Pete Rose and Tug McGraw era. I knew little about his beginnings and I was glad he caught me up.
As well as giving a career capsule, Schmidt also explains early free agency starting with Curt Flood on into Catfish Hunter and Dave McNally. On the one hand, Schmidt says the players deserved their freedom of movement and the ability to earn as much as the market would bear. But he also thinks the frequent player movement has been a negative for baseball. This duality of thought is a common thread through the book. Now a lot of people have ambiguous emotions about the way baseball has changed over the years and you can’t fault Schmidt the person for not being sure which is the greater good, but the point of writing a book is to make a stand on the issues not just say that you’re torn between them. Which is better Mike, free movement or guys staying put?
He was on record as saying in the past that if steroids were available in his day he would have used them. He now says that the comment was off the cuff and he wouldn’t have. Steroids are ruinous to the game, he says. But then he explains that the increase in home run production is just as much a result of a tighter wound and fresher balls, and smaller ballparks. So the real culprit can be whatever we want it to be.
The most interesting story is Schmidt’s relationship with Pete Rose. Schmidt started intervening with Bud Selig a few years back and even brought Rose to Selig so that Rose could admit he bet on baseball. Schmidt says that Selig was happy for the admission, but less than impressed with Rose’s lack of emotion over the confession. Selig wanted Rose to feel badly, I guess. Though Rose still had a shot with Selig, his chances were ruined around the time Pete’s book was due to come out. The early leak of the book coincided with the HOF announcements where the Rose news overshadowed Selig’s buddy Paul Molitor being enshrined. DOOM!
I suppose the title is Schmidt's play on clearing the air with his thoughts, but I think Schmidt shouldn't have written the book until he could make some more definitive value judgements.
These are the kinds of books I grew up on, and the ones that taught me a love of reading, although they were mostly written by the likes of Sparky Lyle and Graig Nettles. They usually leave me less than excited these days. The only one from the last few years that stands out is the one written by Jim Kaat.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
MUNICH (2005) – A Movie Review
Steven Spielberg’s great downfall is that he has sold his own talents too short and has spent too much of the latter part of his career trying to make “important” message pictures. Thank God Alfred Hitchcock never fell for such trappings. Spielberg doesn’t seem to understand that yes message pictures win Oscars, but that hacks can make message pictures. What other director could have made JAWS or RAIDERS as well as Spielberg? And when he makes these pictures he never seems to want to let them stand on their own. Even his better “important” pictures are ruined by Spielberg’s comments. The schmaltz that works for ET or Close Encounters is just a part of Spielberg and it winds up in everything. For instance, the real life ending of Schindler’s was a kick in the suit pants to say look this is important just in case you didn’t figure it out already. The opening of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN begins in modern-day Normandy so that we can later reflect on the importance of the saving. Give us some credit. Both were needless and became a substitute for the viewer’s ability to add his/her own importance to the events. In Munich the DVD allows you to watch a special introduction by Steven Spielberg. I could not even stomach the idea. If he made the movie correctly then it wouldn’t need a special introduction.
The two main drawbacks for me going in were the slow pace I read about and the source material “Vengeance” that’s factual content is widely disputed. It didn’t help either that Spielberg gave the impression in a number of interviews that the Palestinians haven’t been heard enough, followed later contradictory comments that he himself would die for Israel. The good news is that it’s a very human story and the pace is somewhat slow but not terrible. And although the Israeli hit squad members come away shaken by the act of vengeance, I didn’t stop rooting for them. Yeah some members may question their own actions and that is supposed to make us think about “what hast vengeance wrought,” but you are still allowed to make up your own mind. The Israeli government official played by the great Geoffrey Rush is sort of a heavy in his bureaucratic way, but I didn’t hate him either. I enjoyed the planning and execution of the retribution and the way the human elements were sprinkled within. Spielberg waits the whole movie to finally show us how the Israeli Olympic Team is murdered and he does it inter cut with our hero Eric Bana is flagrante delicto. Some may see that as artsy, but I found it disturbing when you think about how the victims were real people with living relatives. There were more subtle ways I think to show Bana breaking down. Do you think the parallel action is described that way in the book?
So, in short, I liked Munich more than I thought, but Spielberg’s pretentious phase still irks me.
Steven Spielberg’s great downfall is that he has sold his own talents too short and has spent too much of the latter part of his career trying to make “important” message pictures. Thank God Alfred Hitchcock never fell for such trappings. Spielberg doesn’t seem to understand that yes message pictures win Oscars, but that hacks can make message pictures. What other director could have made JAWS or RAIDERS as well as Spielberg? And when he makes these pictures he never seems to want to let them stand on their own. Even his better “important” pictures are ruined by Spielberg’s comments. The schmaltz that works for ET or Close Encounters is just a part of Spielberg and it winds up in everything. For instance, the real life ending of Schindler’s was a kick in the suit pants to say look this is important just in case you didn’t figure it out already. The opening of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN begins in modern-day Normandy so that we can later reflect on the importance of the saving. Give us some credit. Both were needless and became a substitute for the viewer’s ability to add his/her own importance to the events. In Munich the DVD allows you to watch a special introduction by Steven Spielberg. I could not even stomach the idea. If he made the movie correctly then it wouldn’t need a special introduction.
The two main drawbacks for me going in were the slow pace I read about and the source material “Vengeance” that’s factual content is widely disputed. It didn’t help either that Spielberg gave the impression in a number of interviews that the Palestinians haven’t been heard enough, followed later contradictory comments that he himself would die for Israel. The good news is that it’s a very human story and the pace is somewhat slow but not terrible. And although the Israeli hit squad members come away shaken by the act of vengeance, I didn’t stop rooting for them. Yeah some members may question their own actions and that is supposed to make us think about “what hast vengeance wrought,” but you are still allowed to make up your own mind. The Israeli government official played by the great Geoffrey Rush is sort of a heavy in his bureaucratic way, but I didn’t hate him either. I enjoyed the planning and execution of the retribution and the way the human elements were sprinkled within. Spielberg waits the whole movie to finally show us how the Israeli Olympic Team is murdered and he does it inter cut with our hero Eric Bana is flagrante delicto. Some may see that as artsy, but I found it disturbing when you think about how the victims were real people with living relatives. There were more subtle ways I think to show Bana breaking down. Do you think the parallel action is described that way in the book?
So, in short, I liked Munich more than I thought, but Spielberg’s pretentious phase still irks me.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
GRIZZLY MAN (2005) – A Movie Review
One of the recurrent themes in Werner Herzog’s work is extreme obsession. The Klaus Kinski characters in AGUIRRE and FITZCARRALDO are good examples. Herzog’s own documentary MY BEST FIEND about his troubled relationship with Kinski the actor demonstrates some sort of an obsession of Herzog’s to risk the dangerous fire of Kinski to produce a greater work of art. That said, I don’t know how the 100 hours of videotape shot by grizzlyman Timothy Treawell wound up in the hands of Herzog, but there is hardly another filmmaker could have gotten more out of it.
A lot of documentaries try to refrain from editorializing the lives of their main characters with their own voice. They usually do so through their use of footage. Herzog is different. He develops strong opinions of what he’s seen and he delivers those thoughts at the end as if he were just another audience member watching these things unfold with us.
I think the typical and weaker choice with this material would have been to paint Treadwell as a misunderstood, ahead-of-his-time outsider. If portrait documentaries fall into any particular cliché then this is it. The filmmakers are so many times dying to tell you why their subject is enlightened and unusual in the ways of the world as we know it. Even if we don’t like their subject, we’re made to admit that he is a mad genius at the least. Herzog makes the stronger choice here of plainly saying that Treadwell read benevolence and reciprocal caring into an indifferent animal that only saw him as food. He does so over a close-up shot of a bear giving us a blank stare. Treadwell loved the Bears and the bears merely tolerated him until the fish ran out.
I also like that Herzog traces Treadwell back to his acting ambitions and failures that seem to leave the man as a wannabee Marlin Perkins soap boxing to save animals that aren’t really in the kind of danger he suggests. It removes any myth that the guy was any kind of singular phenomenon, but a regular guy driven by an obsession that costs him the ultimate price.
Herzog has in his possession a video tape of Treadwell and his girlfriend being mauled and eaten by the bear. He tells us that the attack happened so quickly that Treadwell gets the camera turned on, but he doesn’t remove the dust cap in time so that all you can hear is the yelling and the girlfriend pounding the bear with a frying pan before she too succumbs to his appetite. Instead of playing the audio, Herzog plays this tape wearing headphones in front of Treadwell’s friend and heir. He gives her play by play of what he hears and then gives her the tape and suggests that she never listen to it and that she should destroy it. Even if the tape was hard to understand, hardly a filmmaker would have missed the exploitive choice to play it for us. Herzog instead inserts himself into the drama and puts the moral question to Treadwell’s friend. It’s troublesome because it seems a bit staged, but what he tries to do dramatically by passing the dilemma to her is an interesting idea.
One running theme from Treadwell’s discussion with the camera is that he loves the bears to the point that he would never hurt them and he’s prepared to die for them. He’s obsessed with anyone else who comes within his sphere and when some men do, he convinces himself that he is all that stands between the man and the animal. And as Treadwell fails to become the martyr from hunters after years in the attempt, he begins to suggest that he’ll be just as much a martyr if he dies at the hand of the animals themselves. It’s just the kind of illogical and obsessive idea that must have drawn Herzog to the project. Treadwell’s obsession with martyrdom means he will get there anyway he can. So Herzog uses interviews and the footage to show how Treadwell changed his mind and returned to the wilderness in 2003 past his usual time into the fall where the bears that knew him were in hibernation and strange bears fighting for a short food supply would be even more dangerous. He then gives us Treadwell’s last standup hours before his death in which he alludes to his possible death and kind if lingers on camera past his purpose like a man might stare one last time at his wife before going to war.
Instead of falling into the dramatic trap that it all has to have some meaning, Herzog goes to lengths to show us that his death was probably purposeful and entirely meaningless or just the opposite of the obsessive plan. Herzog does not let stand any pretense that the mauling had meaning outside of his friends that are sad that he is gone. His choice as a filmmaker made me re-evaluate how other people’s stories are fed through the documentary machine to create heroes and strange charming characters. GRIZZLY MAN, if nothing else, will change the way I examine other nonfiction films.
One of the recurrent themes in Werner Herzog’s work is extreme obsession. The Klaus Kinski characters in AGUIRRE and FITZCARRALDO are good examples. Herzog’s own documentary MY BEST FIEND about his troubled relationship with Kinski the actor demonstrates some sort of an obsession of Herzog’s to risk the dangerous fire of Kinski to produce a greater work of art. That said, I don’t know how the 100 hours of videotape shot by grizzlyman Timothy Treawell wound up in the hands of Herzog, but there is hardly another filmmaker could have gotten more out of it.
A lot of documentaries try to refrain from editorializing the lives of their main characters with their own voice. They usually do so through their use of footage. Herzog is different. He develops strong opinions of what he’s seen and he delivers those thoughts at the end as if he were just another audience member watching these things unfold with us.
I think the typical and weaker choice with this material would have been to paint Treadwell as a misunderstood, ahead-of-his-time outsider. If portrait documentaries fall into any particular cliché then this is it. The filmmakers are so many times dying to tell you why their subject is enlightened and unusual in the ways of the world as we know it. Even if we don’t like their subject, we’re made to admit that he is a mad genius at the least. Herzog makes the stronger choice here of plainly saying that Treadwell read benevolence and reciprocal caring into an indifferent animal that only saw him as food. He does so over a close-up shot of a bear giving us a blank stare. Treadwell loved the Bears and the bears merely tolerated him until the fish ran out.
I also like that Herzog traces Treadwell back to his acting ambitions and failures that seem to leave the man as a wannabee Marlin Perkins soap boxing to save animals that aren’t really in the kind of danger he suggests. It removes any myth that the guy was any kind of singular phenomenon, but a regular guy driven by an obsession that costs him the ultimate price.
Herzog has in his possession a video tape of Treadwell and his girlfriend being mauled and eaten by the bear. He tells us that the attack happened so quickly that Treadwell gets the camera turned on, but he doesn’t remove the dust cap in time so that all you can hear is the yelling and the girlfriend pounding the bear with a frying pan before she too succumbs to his appetite. Instead of playing the audio, Herzog plays this tape wearing headphones in front of Treadwell’s friend and heir. He gives her play by play of what he hears and then gives her the tape and suggests that she never listen to it and that she should destroy it. Even if the tape was hard to understand, hardly a filmmaker would have missed the exploitive choice to play it for us. Herzog instead inserts himself into the drama and puts the moral question to Treadwell’s friend. It’s troublesome because it seems a bit staged, but what he tries to do dramatically by passing the dilemma to her is an interesting idea.
One running theme from Treadwell’s discussion with the camera is that he loves the bears to the point that he would never hurt them and he’s prepared to die for them. He’s obsessed with anyone else who comes within his sphere and when some men do, he convinces himself that he is all that stands between the man and the animal. And as Treadwell fails to become the martyr from hunters after years in the attempt, he begins to suggest that he’ll be just as much a martyr if he dies at the hand of the animals themselves. It’s just the kind of illogical and obsessive idea that must have drawn Herzog to the project. Treadwell’s obsession with martyrdom means he will get there anyway he can. So Herzog uses interviews and the footage to show how Treadwell changed his mind and returned to the wilderness in 2003 past his usual time into the fall where the bears that knew him were in hibernation and strange bears fighting for a short food supply would be even more dangerous. He then gives us Treadwell’s last standup hours before his death in which he alludes to his possible death and kind if lingers on camera past his purpose like a man might stare one last time at his wife before going to war.
Instead of falling into the dramatic trap that it all has to have some meaning, Herzog goes to lengths to show us that his death was probably purposeful and entirely meaningless or just the opposite of the obsessive plan. Herzog does not let stand any pretense that the mauling had meaning outside of his friends that are sad that he is gone. His choice as a filmmaker made me re-evaluate how other people’s stories are fed through the documentary machine to create heroes and strange charming characters. GRIZZLY MAN, if nothing else, will change the way I examine other nonfiction films.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
CAPOTE (2005) (A Movie Review)
The trick in bringing a biography to the screen is getting the human being right and using the real details to interpret motivation and events. I lately criticized TUCKER because the over-the-top style served as a mask for the real man, a charlatan. Coppola decided to remove any complexity or ambiguity from the character so that Tucker is idealistic and harmless and the real villains could be the powerbrokers. In lesser hands, CAPOTE could have centered on the wit and charm and New York nightlife and Truman could have been simply a cartoon like Tucker with ability for prose. Writing IN COLD BLOOD could have simply been Capote finding his soul, a dual struggle of the homosexual and the criminal trying to find a place in backwards America. Those were the easy and usual choices and about what we could expect from a typical Hollywood film.
Luckily, these filmmakers find a much better central conflict in the story. Is Capote and artist or a humanitarian? George Clooney’s famous Oscar speech in March addressed this issue and told us of all the great humanitarian things Hollywood is responsible for. Clooney didn’t say that Hollywood chose humanitarianism over artistry. He doesn’t think the two are exclusive. But Hollywood is more comfortable being humanitarian, because you get quick credit for that while being a real artist mostly goes unnoticed.
Truman Capote's first struggle in CAPOTE is simply writing the story. The locals are less than helpful and the murderers won’t talk with anyone. He has no qualms about keeping the murderers alive long enough to get their story on paper. He has no qualms about wanting them to die once he does. The climax is the realization that his lack of effort contributes to kiler's ultimate execution. How much this bothered the real Capote, I don’t know. But the filmmakers do a great job of making this the doing of Capote’s fame as an artist and the undoing of Capote as a human being. It’s a much bolder choice than we expect from the average Hollywood film that often times create super villains that our heroes either defeat (ala James Bond) or succumb to (ala CONSTANT GARDENR).
It don’t mean to say that they nailed the real Truman Capote. I think don’t think any movie every fully nails a real person, even documentaries only show you the impressions that the filmmakers want to display. For instance unlike Normal Mailer who has spent most of his life trying to outdo his most important work, Capote didn’t try. Capote instead settled into celebrity and socialite. He spent his last years on the talk show circuit drinking himself to death. The written epilogue at the end of the movie suggests that this experience is what “ruined” the artist. That’s an interpretation and wholly valid within the known facts. It fits the theme rather than a party-line.
In contrast, George Clooney brings Edward R. Murrow to life in an amusing and interesting way, but he’s not really interested in honestly exploring Murrow’s motivations behind his exposure of McCarthy. He just uses McCarthy to make his point that the red scare of the 1950s was bogus and people were terribly ruined for nothing. In fact, the real Murrow’s exposure of McCarthy wasn’t about the validity of the communist threat, but about demagoguery alone. Whatever his politics, Murrow was an anti-communist himself to the point that he later regretted making a documentary about the plight of rural America that the Soviets would later use as their own anti-American propaganda. Only a few years after Clooney’s events, the real Murrow went to work for the U.S. government and helped craft pro-American messages. Instead of choosing an interesting man bites dog angle, Clooney stops at the point his intended message is disseminated. The Clooney movie turns with the subplot of the colleague who is beleaguered by the Times Columnist and eventually commits suicide. I don’t know the real history here, but I know by the way it’s presented that something is being left out. Whether the character is fiction, a composite or whether the co-worker had other mitigating issues, no healthy and innocent person commits suicide because of unfair press. This is the only hinted at motivation for Murrow and it's weak pillar once you examine it.
In contrast, whether true or not CAPOTE's conclusion that suggests that the harrowing experience of writing IN COLD BLOOD ruined Capote is consistent with his self-destruction, even if Capote’s demise can be read by others as a result of ego, hubris, and alcoholism. Here’s a guy who alienated many of the people he once included as friends after he published some magazine excerpts from a book he was writing society-life. In contrast, it’s very hard to think that the Murrow at the end of Clooney’s movie could become a spokesman for anti-communism or regret what the Soviets would do with his work. Therefore, the movie rests simply as a message vehicle that arrives at its intended destination but can nary drive 2 feet forward from there.
One of the illusions that Hollywood falls for is that comedy is entertainment and drama is art. Many would say that OCEANS 11 is entertainment and GOOD NIGHT is art, but in actuality both films are aimed at entertainment, the difference is that OCEAN'S is designed for box office and GOOD NIGHT for recognition. Both are directed squarely at a specific audience and they both hit their target. The popcorn movie fan responded exactly the same with his dollars like the leftward leaning Academy member did with his vote. If you don't enter GOOD MIGHT with the idea that the red scare was bad, you are given two reasons to start thinking so, Murrow's co-worker was driven to suicide and McCarthy was overbearing. So you are either already converted to that thought or you're supposed to use your emotions to climb aboard. I don't know how that's any different than responding to OCEAN'S with the emotion of momentary happiness that laughter brings.
Maybe it’s possible to begin as an artist and by accident unleash a trendy message along the way, but for the true artist it should be akin to digging rocks out of a yard and happening upon a $10 bill. I cannot say that CAPOTE is art itself, but it’s certainly on a path to art if nothing else, and the lesson it teaches about art is a minority voice in the community from which it comes. Although my viewed list from 2005 is hardly exhausted, I think it’s the best film of the year.
The trick in bringing a biography to the screen is getting the human being right and using the real details to interpret motivation and events. I lately criticized TUCKER because the over-the-top style served as a mask for the real man, a charlatan. Coppola decided to remove any complexity or ambiguity from the character so that Tucker is idealistic and harmless and the real villains could be the powerbrokers. In lesser hands, CAPOTE could have centered on the wit and charm and New York nightlife and Truman could have been simply a cartoon like Tucker with ability for prose. Writing IN COLD BLOOD could have simply been Capote finding his soul, a dual struggle of the homosexual and the criminal trying to find a place in backwards America. Those were the easy and usual choices and about what we could expect from a typical Hollywood film.
Luckily, these filmmakers find a much better central conflict in the story. Is Capote and artist or a humanitarian? George Clooney’s famous Oscar speech in March addressed this issue and told us of all the great humanitarian things Hollywood is responsible for. Clooney didn’t say that Hollywood chose humanitarianism over artistry. He doesn’t think the two are exclusive. But Hollywood is more comfortable being humanitarian, because you get quick credit for that while being a real artist mostly goes unnoticed.
Truman Capote's first struggle in CAPOTE is simply writing the story. The locals are less than helpful and the murderers won’t talk with anyone. He has no qualms about keeping the murderers alive long enough to get their story on paper. He has no qualms about wanting them to die once he does. The climax is the realization that his lack of effort contributes to kiler's ultimate execution. How much this bothered the real Capote, I don’t know. But the filmmakers do a great job of making this the doing of Capote’s fame as an artist and the undoing of Capote as a human being. It’s a much bolder choice than we expect from the average Hollywood film that often times create super villains that our heroes either defeat (ala James Bond) or succumb to (ala CONSTANT GARDENR).
It don’t mean to say that they nailed the real Truman Capote. I think don’t think any movie every fully nails a real person, even documentaries only show you the impressions that the filmmakers want to display. For instance unlike Normal Mailer who has spent most of his life trying to outdo his most important work, Capote didn’t try. Capote instead settled into celebrity and socialite. He spent his last years on the talk show circuit drinking himself to death. The written epilogue at the end of the movie suggests that this experience is what “ruined” the artist. That’s an interpretation and wholly valid within the known facts. It fits the theme rather than a party-line.
In contrast, George Clooney brings Edward R. Murrow to life in an amusing and interesting way, but he’s not really interested in honestly exploring Murrow’s motivations behind his exposure of McCarthy. He just uses McCarthy to make his point that the red scare of the 1950s was bogus and people were terribly ruined for nothing. In fact, the real Murrow’s exposure of McCarthy wasn’t about the validity of the communist threat, but about demagoguery alone. Whatever his politics, Murrow was an anti-communist himself to the point that he later regretted making a documentary about the plight of rural America that the Soviets would later use as their own anti-American propaganda. Only a few years after Clooney’s events, the real Murrow went to work for the U.S. government and helped craft pro-American messages. Instead of choosing an interesting man bites dog angle, Clooney stops at the point his intended message is disseminated. The Clooney movie turns with the subplot of the colleague who is beleaguered by the Times Columnist and eventually commits suicide. I don’t know the real history here, but I know by the way it’s presented that something is being left out. Whether the character is fiction, a composite or whether the co-worker had other mitigating issues, no healthy and innocent person commits suicide because of unfair press. This is the only hinted at motivation for Murrow and it's weak pillar once you examine it.
In contrast, whether true or not CAPOTE's conclusion that suggests that the harrowing experience of writing IN COLD BLOOD ruined Capote is consistent with his self-destruction, even if Capote’s demise can be read by others as a result of ego, hubris, and alcoholism. Here’s a guy who alienated many of the people he once included as friends after he published some magazine excerpts from a book he was writing society-life. In contrast, it’s very hard to think that the Murrow at the end of Clooney’s movie could become a spokesman for anti-communism or regret what the Soviets would do with his work. Therefore, the movie rests simply as a message vehicle that arrives at its intended destination but can nary drive 2 feet forward from there.
One of the illusions that Hollywood falls for is that comedy is entertainment and drama is art. Many would say that OCEANS 11 is entertainment and GOOD NIGHT is art, but in actuality both films are aimed at entertainment, the difference is that OCEAN'S is designed for box office and GOOD NIGHT for recognition. Both are directed squarely at a specific audience and they both hit their target. The popcorn movie fan responded exactly the same with his dollars like the leftward leaning Academy member did with his vote. If you don't enter GOOD MIGHT with the idea that the red scare was bad, you are given two reasons to start thinking so, Murrow's co-worker was driven to suicide and McCarthy was overbearing. So you are either already converted to that thought or you're supposed to use your emotions to climb aboard. I don't know how that's any different than responding to OCEAN'S with the emotion of momentary happiness that laughter brings.
Maybe it’s possible to begin as an artist and by accident unleash a trendy message along the way, but for the true artist it should be akin to digging rocks out of a yard and happening upon a $10 bill. I cannot say that CAPOTE is art itself, but it’s certainly on a path to art if nothing else, and the lesson it teaches about art is a minority voice in the community from which it comes. Although my viewed list from 2005 is hardly exhausted, I think it’s the best film of the year.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
PHOENIX
I was there once as a kid. Trish has two college friends that live there now. One is married. The other was married this past weekend. We went. She left early in the week and I went late Thursday on Southwest with a stop in St. Louis. We were supposed to stay on the plane and pick up more passengers. They made us exit our week-old plane for a non-specific reason and another plane flying in from Omaha took us to Phoenix. The first plane smelled a lot newer.
Although we were sent to another plane, we kept the stewardesses. They were funny. When we landed near 11pm, the PA stewardess said that if we were connecting to another flight that we should fire our travel agent. The pilot kept giving us updates from game 6 between the Lakers and Suns. During the flight I read this book about a guy who runs super marathons. He once ran a relay race where he was all ten teams. It was 150 miles long. He consumed 27,000 calories during the run. His wife puts up with it.
Phoenix has grown since I was a kid. They have things like Borders bookstores these days. After I won some money playing poker at the Indian Casino in Scottsdale (see The Nuts), I almost bought Barry Greenstein’s book, but then I remembered that it was nearly $10 cheaper online. Waste not, want not. I read a little about Barry while Trish bought a new dress for the wedding. The one she brought was too light for a windy day on top of a mountain. Barry said some things I have never heard a poker player talk about, good common sense things. The one that sticks out most is that poor poker players aren’t necessarily stupid, the ones playing the bigger stakes were smart enough to make their money some other way but they just aren’t poker savvy. I don’t know how that is supposed to help me win, but it made me want to buy the book anyway.
The rehearsal dinner was at a local Italian pizza joint and the food was very authentic. We sat next to a groomsman from Milwaukee. We had the same question for the waitress, what is Italian Beef? She didn’t know either. It was put on the menu especially for the rehearsal dinner. She left for the kitchen and returned to tell us that it was beef with Italian seasoning. I still wasn’t sure what that meant, but ordered it anyway. Turns out that Italian beef on this particular night was filet Mignon with squash and asparagus. Those who ordered the spaghetti marinara missed out. The groomsman from Milwaukee said he had to give the best man speech or that all the groomsmen were teaming up to do so. He didn’t know what to say and asked advice. I told him to start off with a funny story about his friendship with Bill and then end with something more heartwarming. We joked about it for a while although he took the advice the next night. I wish I remembered what he said.
After dinner we went to this old restaurant for martinis. It reminded me of Chasen’s of Hollywood that I saw in the documentary THE LAST DAYS OF CHASENS. You entered from the back through the kitchen like in Goodfellas or Swingers. The kitchen staff was welcoming albeit busy. Empty tables everywhere but we couldn’t sit. In fact, they were a little peeved that we just came to drink. They made us give up our barstools to dinner guests.
I woke up at 6am the day of the wedding. My body clock screamed 9am. I got a paper and checked out the American League East Standings and Real Estate. Homes are priced at about the same rate as Orlando. Trish and I drove to Taliesin West, the winter home of Frank Lloyd Wright during his last 20 years. The property began as a camp and his apprentices built the entire compound from Wright’s plans. Apprentices still today live on the property and graduate with an accredited degree in architecture. They live in tents their first year as they construct their own dorm rooms. We could have toured their houses, but instead chose to see the Wright private quarters.
After our 90 minutes of Wright, we met Tricia’s cousin Amy, her husband and two boys for lunch. The 4-year old Caden had already been to tee-ball and swim lessons that morning. The year old Jase had already thrown up all over the kitchen. They were good people and the boys were spirited and sweet. Caden did not want any part of chips and salsa and he didn’t like the menu choices. The kid needed a hot dog. I was a hero for pointing out the grilled cheese on another part of the menu remembering that I lived off of them as a kid. The light-eating Caden ate half of it. His mother told us he weighs 27 pounds. Brother Jase, a week from his first birthday weighs 17 pounds and all 17 of those pounds were pounding the rice they ordered for him. He would ball it up in his hands and put one in his mouth and the other on the floor. What our dog would have given to spend one supper at their house. After lunch and that aforementioned shopping trip, I needed a nap before the ceremony.
The wedding was at the Hilton on a Hilltop. The chosen spot looked straight through the valley and onto Downtown with the mountains sitting gladly behind like they were built by a Hollywood set director to finish the picture. It was windy. It was hot. The ceremony was short and very American. The Anglo groom marrying the Asian bride with a black minister, a mariachi band playing background and Navaho poem read for good measure. E Pluribus Unum. I should say that Trish was also a reader on this day and although she hates speaking in public, she gave it real heart.
A great many of the guests were lawyers and one guy told me flat out that Bush should be impeached for the wiretapping business.
What about Lincoln suspending the writ of habeas corpus or FDR interning the Japanese? Our lawyer said that history has concluded that they were both wrong. Ah, but wouldn’t Congress have been equally wrong to impeach either of them considering their importance to history? But Bush isn’t important to history says my lawyer. Iraq was a mistake and Clinton or Gore would have invaded Afghanistan after 9-11.
How can you be so sure, I say? We were attacked 4 times during Clinton’s presidency and he did little in the way of response. Even so, Bush lied about why we were going into Iraq, said my lawyer. I remember he said that Saddam was a bad man and was terrible to his people. That’s not enough of a reason to invade a country he replied. Then why did we send troops to Haiti and Bosnia?
Bush lied about the weapons of Mass Destruction, the lawyer tells me. Do you mean the sarin gas they found that would kill 500,000 people or the British intelligence report that they were trying to buy Yellow Cake in Africa? Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11 says the lawyer. Like Hilter had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor says me.
Bush should have gotten permission from a judge to tap people’s phones, he continues. I ask what makes an unelected judge so special. It’s the checks and balances system in the constitution, he says. But I ask why a judge is the last word. Why not the equally un-elected CIA official?
He says that judges stand up for the constitution. Like they stood up for the first amendment when the Campaign Finance Laws were passed, I enquire. Ruling on constitutional points is their job according to the constitution, he tells me. According to the constitution or according to John Marshall, I ask. Well thank god for Marshall, he says. Or otherwise we’d need fewer lawyers, I quip.
Take this gay marriage proposal, he continues. It’s unconstitutional to not allow gay marriage.
What about polygamy then? Is that unconstitutional?
Well that’s a different case, he says. You can’t have guys marrying their sisters. Or is that something else?
It’s when you have more than one wife, I say.
Well, I’m not sure about that, but I’m sure gay marriage is constitutional because you can’t legislate morality, he concludes.
Whose morality? The war on poverty or giving free prescription drugs to old people and ultimately universal health care is a morality question that doesn’t bother the Left. And both sides of the capital punishment debate cite morality as well. Without morality, which laws would be left standing?
It went on like this for a while as a mental exercise simply to see how well I could debate a member of the bar. It was good fun and he seemed like a decent guy, although I think it took enough out of the both of us.
Trish and I made our way outside after sunset and the cool breeze and night sky were glorious. The mountains beyond downtown had mostly disappeared but the lights gave the valley a whole new look. I noticed that mountain to our East had a few houses lit up. A local told us that you weren’t really allowed to build on those mountains anymore, but a few people were grandfathered in. It looked like a nice view and a pain-in-the-ass commute. Oh, don’t worry she said. I don’t think anyone that lives up there has to work.
A bridesmaid’s husband said that he interned for Senator Kyl years back though he didn’t share his politics. He did admire Kyl for being an honest and direct man. The guy was worth a good deal of money and still drove a 1989 Chevy suburban that must have been leaking gas. He hated riding with Kyl because the gas smell bothered him. He would complain to John about buying a new car, but Kyl said he liked the way the Suburban rode.
I asked if he had ever met Barry Goldwater and he said that Goldwater spoke to his 6th grade class. He personally asked Goldwater if he would ever run for President again and Goldwater said no. He said that Goldwater lived along Camelback road and pointed in the general direction. He said McCain’s house was in the dark patch between us and downtown. He was invited there once for some event maybe it related to his work for Senator Kyl. Kyl, everyone thought, lived in or near Tucson.
Why did a city such a Phoenix grow up in the middle of the desert, I asked someone that night. I was the told the Salt River was probably the reason. I never got to see the river. It’s thought that Phoenix is now the 5th largest city in America having surpassed Philadelphia since the last census, though the metropolitan area alone is outside the top ten. This is especially interesting since Phoenix is a post Civil War phenomenon, the city is not even 150 years old.
I could have sat out on that balcony in the cool breeze and looked at the Phoenix valley all night long, alone or in conversation. The desert sometimes seems desolate and lonely, but I know what Glenn Fry meant by the Peaceful Easy Feeling. At night and with the lights down below it isn’t so bad.
A cheer to Patty and Bill and the memory of a short jaunt to Phoenix.
I was there once as a kid. Trish has two college friends that live there now. One is married. The other was married this past weekend. We went. She left early in the week and I went late Thursday on Southwest with a stop in St. Louis. We were supposed to stay on the plane and pick up more passengers. They made us exit our week-old plane for a non-specific reason and another plane flying in from Omaha took us to Phoenix. The first plane smelled a lot newer.
Although we were sent to another plane, we kept the stewardesses. They were funny. When we landed near 11pm, the PA stewardess said that if we were connecting to another flight that we should fire our travel agent. The pilot kept giving us updates from game 6 between the Lakers and Suns. During the flight I read this book about a guy who runs super marathons. He once ran a relay race where he was all ten teams. It was 150 miles long. He consumed 27,000 calories during the run. His wife puts up with it.
Phoenix has grown since I was a kid. They have things like Borders bookstores these days. After I won some money playing poker at the Indian Casino in Scottsdale (see The Nuts), I almost bought Barry Greenstein’s book, but then I remembered that it was nearly $10 cheaper online. Waste not, want not. I read a little about Barry while Trish bought a new dress for the wedding. The one she brought was too light for a windy day on top of a mountain. Barry said some things I have never heard a poker player talk about, good common sense things. The one that sticks out most is that poor poker players aren’t necessarily stupid, the ones playing the bigger stakes were smart enough to make their money some other way but they just aren’t poker savvy. I don’t know how that is supposed to help me win, but it made me want to buy the book anyway.
The rehearsal dinner was at a local Italian pizza joint and the food was very authentic. We sat next to a groomsman from Milwaukee. We had the same question for the waitress, what is Italian Beef? She didn’t know either. It was put on the menu especially for the rehearsal dinner. She left for the kitchen and returned to tell us that it was beef with Italian seasoning. I still wasn’t sure what that meant, but ordered it anyway. Turns out that Italian beef on this particular night was filet Mignon with squash and asparagus. Those who ordered the spaghetti marinara missed out. The groomsman from Milwaukee said he had to give the best man speech or that all the groomsmen were teaming up to do so. He didn’t know what to say and asked advice. I told him to start off with a funny story about his friendship with Bill and then end with something more heartwarming. We joked about it for a while although he took the advice the next night. I wish I remembered what he said.
After dinner we went to this old restaurant for martinis. It reminded me of Chasen’s of Hollywood that I saw in the documentary THE LAST DAYS OF CHASENS. You entered from the back through the kitchen like in Goodfellas or Swingers. The kitchen staff was welcoming albeit busy. Empty tables everywhere but we couldn’t sit. In fact, they were a little peeved that we just came to drink. They made us give up our barstools to dinner guests.
I woke up at 6am the day of the wedding. My body clock screamed 9am. I got a paper and checked out the American League East Standings and Real Estate. Homes are priced at about the same rate as Orlando. Trish and I drove to Taliesin West, the winter home of Frank Lloyd Wright during his last 20 years. The property began as a camp and his apprentices built the entire compound from Wright’s plans. Apprentices still today live on the property and graduate with an accredited degree in architecture. They live in tents their first year as they construct their own dorm rooms. We could have toured their houses, but instead chose to see the Wright private quarters.
After our 90 minutes of Wright, we met Tricia’s cousin Amy, her husband and two boys for lunch. The 4-year old Caden had already been to tee-ball and swim lessons that morning. The year old Jase had already thrown up all over the kitchen. They were good people and the boys were spirited and sweet. Caden did not want any part of chips and salsa and he didn’t like the menu choices. The kid needed a hot dog. I was a hero for pointing out the grilled cheese on another part of the menu remembering that I lived off of them as a kid. The light-eating Caden ate half of it. His mother told us he weighs 27 pounds. Brother Jase, a week from his first birthday weighs 17 pounds and all 17 of those pounds were pounding the rice they ordered for him. He would ball it up in his hands and put one in his mouth and the other on the floor. What our dog would have given to spend one supper at their house. After lunch and that aforementioned shopping trip, I needed a nap before the ceremony.
The wedding was at the Hilton on a Hilltop. The chosen spot looked straight through the valley and onto Downtown with the mountains sitting gladly behind like they were built by a Hollywood set director to finish the picture. It was windy. It was hot. The ceremony was short and very American. The Anglo groom marrying the Asian bride with a black minister, a mariachi band playing background and Navaho poem read for good measure. E Pluribus Unum. I should say that Trish was also a reader on this day and although she hates speaking in public, she gave it real heart.
A great many of the guests were lawyers and one guy told me flat out that Bush should be impeached for the wiretapping business.
What about Lincoln suspending the writ of habeas corpus or FDR interning the Japanese? Our lawyer said that history has concluded that they were both wrong. Ah, but wouldn’t Congress have been equally wrong to impeach either of them considering their importance to history? But Bush isn’t important to history says my lawyer. Iraq was a mistake and Clinton or Gore would have invaded Afghanistan after 9-11.
How can you be so sure, I say? We were attacked 4 times during Clinton’s presidency and he did little in the way of response. Even so, Bush lied about why we were going into Iraq, said my lawyer. I remember he said that Saddam was a bad man and was terrible to his people. That’s not enough of a reason to invade a country he replied. Then why did we send troops to Haiti and Bosnia?
Bush lied about the weapons of Mass Destruction, the lawyer tells me. Do you mean the sarin gas they found that would kill 500,000 people or the British intelligence report that they were trying to buy Yellow Cake in Africa? Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11 says the lawyer. Like Hilter had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor says me.
Bush should have gotten permission from a judge to tap people’s phones, he continues. I ask what makes an unelected judge so special. It’s the checks and balances system in the constitution, he says. But I ask why a judge is the last word. Why not the equally un-elected CIA official?
He says that judges stand up for the constitution. Like they stood up for the first amendment when the Campaign Finance Laws were passed, I enquire. Ruling on constitutional points is their job according to the constitution, he tells me. According to the constitution or according to John Marshall, I ask. Well thank god for Marshall, he says. Or otherwise we’d need fewer lawyers, I quip.
Take this gay marriage proposal, he continues. It’s unconstitutional to not allow gay marriage.
What about polygamy then? Is that unconstitutional?
Well that’s a different case, he says. You can’t have guys marrying their sisters. Or is that something else?
It’s when you have more than one wife, I say.
Well, I’m not sure about that, but I’m sure gay marriage is constitutional because you can’t legislate morality, he concludes.
Whose morality? The war on poverty or giving free prescription drugs to old people and ultimately universal health care is a morality question that doesn’t bother the Left. And both sides of the capital punishment debate cite morality as well. Without morality, which laws would be left standing?
It went on like this for a while as a mental exercise simply to see how well I could debate a member of the bar. It was good fun and he seemed like a decent guy, although I think it took enough out of the both of us.
Trish and I made our way outside after sunset and the cool breeze and night sky were glorious. The mountains beyond downtown had mostly disappeared but the lights gave the valley a whole new look. I noticed that mountain to our East had a few houses lit up. A local told us that you weren’t really allowed to build on those mountains anymore, but a few people were grandfathered in. It looked like a nice view and a pain-in-the-ass commute. Oh, don’t worry she said. I don’t think anyone that lives up there has to work.
A bridesmaid’s husband said that he interned for Senator Kyl years back though he didn’t share his politics. He did admire Kyl for being an honest and direct man. The guy was worth a good deal of money and still drove a 1989 Chevy suburban that must have been leaking gas. He hated riding with Kyl because the gas smell bothered him. He would complain to John about buying a new car, but Kyl said he liked the way the Suburban rode.
I asked if he had ever met Barry Goldwater and he said that Goldwater spoke to his 6th grade class. He personally asked Goldwater if he would ever run for President again and Goldwater said no. He said that Goldwater lived along Camelback road and pointed in the general direction. He said McCain’s house was in the dark patch between us and downtown. He was invited there once for some event maybe it related to his work for Senator Kyl. Kyl, everyone thought, lived in or near Tucson.
Why did a city such a Phoenix grow up in the middle of the desert, I asked someone that night. I was the told the Salt River was probably the reason. I never got to see the river. It’s thought that Phoenix is now the 5th largest city in America having surpassed Philadelphia since the last census, though the metropolitan area alone is outside the top ten. This is especially interesting since Phoenix is a post Civil War phenomenon, the city is not even 150 years old.
I could have sat out on that balcony in the cool breeze and looked at the Phoenix valley all night long, alone or in conversation. The desert sometimes seems desolate and lonely, but I know what Glenn Fry meant by the Peaceful Easy Feeling. At night and with the lights down below it isn’t so bad.
A cheer to Patty and Bill and the memory of a short jaunt to Phoenix.
Monday, May 01, 2006
MARCH/APRIL MOVIES
I don't hand out the coveted Stamper (+) this month. I think my expectations were too high.
THE LONGEST YARD (1974) – I saw this as a kid, but after Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper and the other good ole boy films. It’s a comedy early on with some of the same kinds of scenes, but Eddie Albert’s warden character is a lot more serious than the way they try these things today. It sets up the movie as the smart-ass versus the bad-ass as Burt Reynolds glib manner puts him deeper and deeper into trouble. The basic plot is Reynolds was once a pro-bowl quarterback who punches a few cops and winds up in the pokey. He plans on doing his short stretch with minimal effort. Eddie Albert wants Reynolds to help him coach his football team of prison guards. After one thing and another Reynolds puts together a team of inmates to give the guards a warm-up game and that game becomes the resolution to the film. Seeing it today, I realize that it’s not as realistic as I once remembered, but it’s certainly one of Reynolds better roles and films.
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU (1996) – Only Woody Allen could make a 30s musical with modern day actors and locales. He puts together a great cast with Goldie Hawn, Drew Barrymore and Edward Norton joining himself and frequent player Alan Alda. You even get young Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts for good measure. The movie centers around the conventional romance between Barrymore and Norton and how bleeding heart Goldie Hawn helps get hoodlum Tim Roth released from jail. Of course, Roth proceeds to woo Barrymore away from Norton, much to even the bleeding hearts dismay. Lucas Haas plays the son of Alda and Hawn who is a staunch conservative to the surprise of both parents, luckily it turns out that he has a brain tumor that is causing this. Roberts is Allen’s love interest. Though he has a few sparks with ex-wife Hawn too. The plot is silly, but the song selection is great. The title comes from a tune the Marx Brothers used as a running gag in MONKEY BUSINESS (1932). We even get a scene of guys dressed as Groucho doing a number on New Year’s Eve.
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965) – John Le Carre as an author is a great representation of a liberal democracy so assured of itself that it allows contrarians to question the legitimacy of the cold war and western intelligence gathering techniques. I wonder if it ever bothered Le Carre that Soviet Writers attempting to make the same moral equivalence would have wound up in the Gulag? Here Richard Burton plays a British spy that pretends to go off the reservation in order to be recruited as a double agent. He winds up in the East Germany where an ex-Nazi and a Jew have their own inner-communist political battle that Burton becomes a part of. Le Carre’s point seems to be that we’re no better than them because we’ll use ex-Nazi’s as our agents inside East Germany even if those Nazis are trying to kill Jewish commies. I appreciate the efforts that a Le Carre must labor in order to make the Soviets our moral equals, but it’s mischievous to convolute such a plot while ignoring what a Soviet writer like Solzhenitsyn went through for expressing the reality of the USSR. I can imagine the fun that Le Carre had preaching the people’s paradise as he sat in his quiet English garden.
CONSTANT GARDNER (2005) Hey, look. Old Le Carre is back post cold war with a story about “evil” corporations. Now let’s remember that Le Carre spent a career equating us with the Soviets, a regime that killed people wholesale at a much greater number than the Nazis. But at least they weren’t making a profit. Now, I think I read the book was actually about the tobacco industry or some other liberal hobby horse, but since pharmaceutical companies have really yet to take their knock in Hollywood, this story was re-made so that their good acts wouldn’t go unpunished. Despite the politics, I was ready to give the movie a chance because Ralph Fiennes is always good and Rachel Weiss won the Oscar and I would have enjoyed a suspense film if at least the action was pulled off properly. But this movie was as thin as the soup that Stalin served the prisoners. Fiennes who can play alpha male or doddering fool gets to be the fool here and we get to think his hippy wife (Rachel Weiss) married him just to further the “cause.” It’s told in flashback, despite Syd Field’s warning, with Fiennes using the past to try and figure out if Weiss’ death was foul play. I suppose the conclusion of the film is just another chapter in how the little guy is punished severely and the big boys are given just a mild scolding. But the biggest mystery is not what happened to Weiss on screen, but off. I can’t figure out why she was even nominated, let alone won an Oscar for this routine performance. Can anyone name even an eye twitch or chin shift that Weiss hasn’t already shown us in ABOUT A BOY, THE MUMMY or ENEMY AT THE GATES? They show her naked pregnant, but it had to be makeup because she’s currently pregnant. Was that so daring that it was worth an Oscar or did they just love it that Merck was taking it on the chin? Now you’d think that a group such as Hollywood that probably uses VIAGRA like Pez might find some sympathy with Pfesier or maybe they blame such companies for their own addiction. Poor oh Amy Adams that gave a really plucky performance in JUNEBUG, one that should be longer remembered. Anyway, I’m 0-4 with Le Carre. I first saw the RUSSIA HOUSE with Connery and Pfeffier and it was a yawn. I rented the BBC mini-series “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and there wasn’t much entertainment value there either. Maybe Le Carre is just a rightwing hoax masquerading as a progressive in order to see if liberals will applaud even the thinnest attempts at entertainment if they’re in the name of “the cause.”
WALK THE LINE (2005) –I haven’t been out to a movie since last June and the movies like this I would have normally seen at release are starting to trickle into NetFlix. Of all the things I read about this movie, the most obvious point I never heard. This is simply a movie about Johnny chasing June all over creation until she consents to marry him. Even the obligatory childhood scene has J.R. (Johnny) listening to ten year old June on the radio singing with her family. The music is there, of course, and we even get an Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, and I think a Carl Perkins along for the ride. I can’t fault the Academy for giving an Oscar to Witherspoon, she plays it with an array of emotions, distractions and conflicts while being strong and feminine. It’s the exact opposite of Rachel Weiss’ one-note effort in GARDNER. Jaquin Pheonix doesn’t look like Johnny Cash, but he is such a likable actor and so committed to any role that you certainly forgive this pretty early on. Trish noted how mean Cash’s father (Terminator II ala Robert Patrick) is portrayed and I told her that Johnny is really nice about his father in the auto-bio saying they were tough times and he had the strain of trying to feed his family during the depression. Patrick gives a really strong performance as the old man, especially if you saw his turn a couple of years ago on the Sopranos as an everyman who gets into gambling debts with the mob. The movie was about what I thought it would be, a standard enough biopic that rises above the genre with good music and strong performances.
SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) – The Squid and Whale is a horrible title and heavy handed symbolism, but the film plays much more nuanced. I’m a big fan of Noah Baumbach’s debut effort the 1995 comedy, KICKING AND SCREAMING. While that was his part autobiographical look at college life, this movie goes further back into childhood and explores the breakup of the marriage and the effect on the kids who witness it. Laura Linney was a great choice for the mother, because she has that pretty and yet plain quality simultaneously. She becomes whatever her facial expression is. Jeff Daniels is one of those overlooked second-tier actors that can usually find an interesting thing about any character with nonverbal reactions. I always think back to his portrayal as Joshua Chamberlain in GETTYSBURG. Chamberlain was the least interesting character in the book and yet Daniels makes him the equal of Longstreet and Lee. In this film, Daniels is the professor once up and coming that drifted into has been or never was. Laura Linney is the wife that becomes a writer under the shadow of Daniels and a more successful one. If the competition between writers wasn’t enough, Linney’s constant cheating makes him even more bitter and vindictive. The opening scene has the couple playing doubles tennis with their two kids. Daniels tells his oldest son to take advantage of his mother’s weak backhand and the match is won with three straight points hit to her weak side, one of which hits her person. You begin thinking Daniels is a creep, but when you learn that he has been living with her cheating you are more sympathetic. But then Daniels behaves terribly toward the kids and you don’t know who to root for. The point, I guess, is that it’s hard to know whose fault these things are, which lets everyone off the hook in the end.
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK (2005) – Making my way through the list of 2005 award winners brought the acclaimed George Clooney offering. Clooney decided to shoot the film in that period black and white to resemble the way we may have seen clips of Edward R. Murrow on TV. The point of the movie is to drive home for the umpteenth time that Joe McCarthy was a louse and he nearly ruined America. Thankfully, Clooney assumes we already know this about McCarthy so here we simply see Murrow take issue with wild and unsubstantiated statements made by McCarthy. It was a hell of an idea that Murrow had, really. I suppose Clooney was dismayed that John Kerry’s many misstatements about his war record weren’t fully covered during the 2004 campaign and he wanted to remind the press that they have duty to uncover the real record. When McCarthy claimed that 200 people in the state department were agents of the Soviet Union, I kept thinking about John Kerry claim that he was on an illegal mission to Cambodia sanctioned by the Nixon Administration during the Christmas of 1968. It was seered in his memory, was it not? Where was Murrow to ask Kerry why President-elect Nixon wielded such power? Good job, Clooney, you made your point well. My favorite part of the film were the nuances that captured the flavor of 1950s culture and corporate life. That Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. must pretend not to be married in order to retain their CBS jobs provides a few laughs. The smoking commercials add nice flavor as well. The shame of Joe McCarthy is that he has become the goat that the Left uses to stain the entire anti-communist era in America. It’s the equivalent of summing up the whole Civil Rights struggle based on Jesse Jackson’s race-pimping and corporate shakedowns. Every big cause has its opportunists and that the Left continues to return to McCarthy would suggest that he was the last powerful man to try those tactics when they themselves have learned to use them oh so sweetly. If Clooney must make a point about the red scare, I’d like to see him tackle the Chambers/Hiss case which was actually a much bigger deal back when the intelligencia pegged Hiss as an innocent man. That outrage has quietly faded since the release of the Venona Papers. Coincidently, the release of the Venona Papers showed that McCarthy's claim of numerous communists in the state Department was just about right although he never knew it. It's to Clooney's credit that he'd let the real McCarthy speak. Clooney's issues with that aspect of the cold war are honest enough that he doesn't need the Randy Quaid to play up all the caricatured aspects that the Left would have loved. The result was that we were able to decide how much of a menace he really was and the real McCarthy hardly seemed dangerous compared to the monster we always hear about. He seems about as opportunistic as any current guy on Capitol Hill. It's a shame that Clooney is mired in bugaboos when he is such a talented and engaging screen personality with a great eye for directing. Movies last forever while fashionable causes gently fade away. I, for one, am glad that Cary Grant didn't spend his time making a film about FDR's court packing scheme or his supposed foreknowledge of Pear Harbor.
UP AT THE VILLA (2000) – What’s Sean Penn doing with all of these ex-pat Brits living in Tuscany? They needed a tough rouge that’s what. Kristen Scott Thomas spends the movie with other men to simply keep herself from Penn. Therefore we have to wait the whole movie to feel like Penn “earned” her when we really know he had her at “ciao.” Early on we get to see some Florentine exteriors, and all through we see some countryside shots, but you get the feeling that a London soundstage hosts the most. Derek Jacobi turns up as the flaming Brit all bitchy like heroine’s generally flock to. Edward Fox plays the too old suitor that Thomas should and won’t marry. Anne Bancroft plays a princess of some sort all full of eccentricities and gossip. Without giving away the plot, Thomas denying the rogue Penn sets her on a course that only Penn can rescue her from. There’s a nice shot early on from a church across the Arno River that Trish and I found last year. That probably had more to do with us finishing the film than anything else. It was all based on a novella by M. Somerset Maugham of Razor’s Edge fame.
TUCKER (1988) – I was suckered into Tucker when I saw it in the theatre. It has a funhouse style and some winning performances from the likes of Jeff Bridges and Martin Landau. But looking back, the style is really a subtraction to a bio piece, but I suppose it was necessary when the bio part if so removed from reality that reviewers might point it out. History sees Tucker as more con man than visionary, while Coppola portrays him as a victim of corporations and crooked politicians. You’re allowed to, I think, when anyone is the “little guy.” Now I’m not trying to be too harsh on what is a fun movie, but I’m just mad at myself for falling for the mythology the first time around.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I had to name the top 3 of the month they would be:
SQUID AND THE WHALE
WALK THE LINE
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU
I don't hand out the coveted Stamper (+) this month. I think my expectations were too high.
THE LONGEST YARD (1974) – I saw this as a kid, but after Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper and the other good ole boy films. It’s a comedy early on with some of the same kinds of scenes, but Eddie Albert’s warden character is a lot more serious than the way they try these things today. It sets up the movie as the smart-ass versus the bad-ass as Burt Reynolds glib manner puts him deeper and deeper into trouble. The basic plot is Reynolds was once a pro-bowl quarterback who punches a few cops and winds up in the pokey. He plans on doing his short stretch with minimal effort. Eddie Albert wants Reynolds to help him coach his football team of prison guards. After one thing and another Reynolds puts together a team of inmates to give the guards a warm-up game and that game becomes the resolution to the film. Seeing it today, I realize that it’s not as realistic as I once remembered, but it’s certainly one of Reynolds better roles and films.
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU (1996) – Only Woody Allen could make a 30s musical with modern day actors and locales. He puts together a great cast with Goldie Hawn, Drew Barrymore and Edward Norton joining himself and frequent player Alan Alda. You even get young Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts for good measure. The movie centers around the conventional romance between Barrymore and Norton and how bleeding heart Goldie Hawn helps get hoodlum Tim Roth released from jail. Of course, Roth proceeds to woo Barrymore away from Norton, much to even the bleeding hearts dismay. Lucas Haas plays the son of Alda and Hawn who is a staunch conservative to the surprise of both parents, luckily it turns out that he has a brain tumor that is causing this. Roberts is Allen’s love interest. Though he has a few sparks with ex-wife Hawn too. The plot is silly, but the song selection is great. The title comes from a tune the Marx Brothers used as a running gag in MONKEY BUSINESS (1932). We even get a scene of guys dressed as Groucho doing a number on New Year’s Eve.
THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965) – John Le Carre as an author is a great representation of a liberal democracy so assured of itself that it allows contrarians to question the legitimacy of the cold war and western intelligence gathering techniques. I wonder if it ever bothered Le Carre that Soviet Writers attempting to make the same moral equivalence would have wound up in the Gulag? Here Richard Burton plays a British spy that pretends to go off the reservation in order to be recruited as a double agent. He winds up in the East Germany where an ex-Nazi and a Jew have their own inner-communist political battle that Burton becomes a part of. Le Carre’s point seems to be that we’re no better than them because we’ll use ex-Nazi’s as our agents inside East Germany even if those Nazis are trying to kill Jewish commies. I appreciate the efforts that a Le Carre must labor in order to make the Soviets our moral equals, but it’s mischievous to convolute such a plot while ignoring what a Soviet writer like Solzhenitsyn went through for expressing the reality of the USSR. I can imagine the fun that Le Carre had preaching the people’s paradise as he sat in his quiet English garden.
CONSTANT GARDNER (2005) Hey, look. Old Le Carre is back post cold war with a story about “evil” corporations. Now let’s remember that Le Carre spent a career equating us with the Soviets, a regime that killed people wholesale at a much greater number than the Nazis. But at least they weren’t making a profit. Now, I think I read the book was actually about the tobacco industry or some other liberal hobby horse, but since pharmaceutical companies have really yet to take their knock in Hollywood, this story was re-made so that their good acts wouldn’t go unpunished. Despite the politics, I was ready to give the movie a chance because Ralph Fiennes is always good and Rachel Weiss won the Oscar and I would have enjoyed a suspense film if at least the action was pulled off properly. But this movie was as thin as the soup that Stalin served the prisoners. Fiennes who can play alpha male or doddering fool gets to be the fool here and we get to think his hippy wife (Rachel Weiss) married him just to further the “cause.” It’s told in flashback, despite Syd Field’s warning, with Fiennes using the past to try and figure out if Weiss’ death was foul play. I suppose the conclusion of the film is just another chapter in how the little guy is punished severely and the big boys are given just a mild scolding. But the biggest mystery is not what happened to Weiss on screen, but off. I can’t figure out why she was even nominated, let alone won an Oscar for this routine performance. Can anyone name even an eye twitch or chin shift that Weiss hasn’t already shown us in ABOUT A BOY, THE MUMMY or ENEMY AT THE GATES? They show her naked pregnant, but it had to be makeup because she’s currently pregnant. Was that so daring that it was worth an Oscar or did they just love it that Merck was taking it on the chin? Now you’d think that a group such as Hollywood that probably uses VIAGRA like Pez might find some sympathy with Pfesier or maybe they blame such companies for their own addiction. Poor oh Amy Adams that gave a really plucky performance in JUNEBUG, one that should be longer remembered. Anyway, I’m 0-4 with Le Carre. I first saw the RUSSIA HOUSE with Connery and Pfeffier and it was a yawn. I rented the BBC mini-series “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and there wasn’t much entertainment value there either. Maybe Le Carre is just a rightwing hoax masquerading as a progressive in order to see if liberals will applaud even the thinnest attempts at entertainment if they’re in the name of “the cause.”
WALK THE LINE (2005) –I haven’t been out to a movie since last June and the movies like this I would have normally seen at release are starting to trickle into NetFlix. Of all the things I read about this movie, the most obvious point I never heard. This is simply a movie about Johnny chasing June all over creation until she consents to marry him. Even the obligatory childhood scene has J.R. (Johnny) listening to ten year old June on the radio singing with her family. The music is there, of course, and we even get an Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, and I think a Carl Perkins along for the ride. I can’t fault the Academy for giving an Oscar to Witherspoon, she plays it with an array of emotions, distractions and conflicts while being strong and feminine. It’s the exact opposite of Rachel Weiss’ one-note effort in GARDNER. Jaquin Pheonix doesn’t look like Johnny Cash, but he is such a likable actor and so committed to any role that you certainly forgive this pretty early on. Trish noted how mean Cash’s father (Terminator II ala Robert Patrick) is portrayed and I told her that Johnny is really nice about his father in the auto-bio saying they were tough times and he had the strain of trying to feed his family during the depression. Patrick gives a really strong performance as the old man, especially if you saw his turn a couple of years ago on the Sopranos as an everyman who gets into gambling debts with the mob. The movie was about what I thought it would be, a standard enough biopic that rises above the genre with good music and strong performances.
SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) – The Squid and Whale is a horrible title and heavy handed symbolism, but the film plays much more nuanced. I’m a big fan of Noah Baumbach’s debut effort the 1995 comedy, KICKING AND SCREAMING. While that was his part autobiographical look at college life, this movie goes further back into childhood and explores the breakup of the marriage and the effect on the kids who witness it. Laura Linney was a great choice for the mother, because she has that pretty and yet plain quality simultaneously. She becomes whatever her facial expression is. Jeff Daniels is one of those overlooked second-tier actors that can usually find an interesting thing about any character with nonverbal reactions. I always think back to his portrayal as Joshua Chamberlain in GETTYSBURG. Chamberlain was the least interesting character in the book and yet Daniels makes him the equal of Longstreet and Lee. In this film, Daniels is the professor once up and coming that drifted into has been or never was. Laura Linney is the wife that becomes a writer under the shadow of Daniels and a more successful one. If the competition between writers wasn’t enough, Linney’s constant cheating makes him even more bitter and vindictive. The opening scene has the couple playing doubles tennis with their two kids. Daniels tells his oldest son to take advantage of his mother’s weak backhand and the match is won with three straight points hit to her weak side, one of which hits her person. You begin thinking Daniels is a creep, but when you learn that he has been living with her cheating you are more sympathetic. But then Daniels behaves terribly toward the kids and you don’t know who to root for. The point, I guess, is that it’s hard to know whose fault these things are, which lets everyone off the hook in the end.
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK (2005) – Making my way through the list of 2005 award winners brought the acclaimed George Clooney offering. Clooney decided to shoot the film in that period black and white to resemble the way we may have seen clips of Edward R. Murrow on TV. The point of the movie is to drive home for the umpteenth time that Joe McCarthy was a louse and he nearly ruined America. Thankfully, Clooney assumes we already know this about McCarthy so here we simply see Murrow take issue with wild and unsubstantiated statements made by McCarthy. It was a hell of an idea that Murrow had, really. I suppose Clooney was dismayed that John Kerry’s many misstatements about his war record weren’t fully covered during the 2004 campaign and he wanted to remind the press that they have duty to uncover the real record. When McCarthy claimed that 200 people in the state department were agents of the Soviet Union, I kept thinking about John Kerry claim that he was on an illegal mission to Cambodia sanctioned by the Nixon Administration during the Christmas of 1968. It was seered in his memory, was it not? Where was Murrow to ask Kerry why President-elect Nixon wielded such power? Good job, Clooney, you made your point well. My favorite part of the film were the nuances that captured the flavor of 1950s culture and corporate life. That Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. must pretend not to be married in order to retain their CBS jobs provides a few laughs. The smoking commercials add nice flavor as well. The shame of Joe McCarthy is that he has become the goat that the Left uses to stain the entire anti-communist era in America. It’s the equivalent of summing up the whole Civil Rights struggle based on Jesse Jackson’s race-pimping and corporate shakedowns. Every big cause has its opportunists and that the Left continues to return to McCarthy would suggest that he was the last powerful man to try those tactics when they themselves have learned to use them oh so sweetly. If Clooney must make a point about the red scare, I’d like to see him tackle the Chambers/Hiss case which was actually a much bigger deal back when the intelligencia pegged Hiss as an innocent man. That outrage has quietly faded since the release of the Venona Papers. Coincidently, the release of the Venona Papers showed that McCarthy's claim of numerous communists in the state Department was just about right although he never knew it. It's to Clooney's credit that he'd let the real McCarthy speak. Clooney's issues with that aspect of the cold war are honest enough that he doesn't need the Randy Quaid to play up all the caricatured aspects that the Left would have loved. The result was that we were able to decide how much of a menace he really was and the real McCarthy hardly seemed dangerous compared to the monster we always hear about. He seems about as opportunistic as any current guy on Capitol Hill. It's a shame that Clooney is mired in bugaboos when he is such a talented and engaging screen personality with a great eye for directing. Movies last forever while fashionable causes gently fade away. I, for one, am glad that Cary Grant didn't spend his time making a film about FDR's court packing scheme or his supposed foreknowledge of Pear Harbor.
UP AT THE VILLA (2000) – What’s Sean Penn doing with all of these ex-pat Brits living in Tuscany? They needed a tough rouge that’s what. Kristen Scott Thomas spends the movie with other men to simply keep herself from Penn. Therefore we have to wait the whole movie to feel like Penn “earned” her when we really know he had her at “ciao.” Early on we get to see some Florentine exteriors, and all through we see some countryside shots, but you get the feeling that a London soundstage hosts the most. Derek Jacobi turns up as the flaming Brit all bitchy like heroine’s generally flock to. Edward Fox plays the too old suitor that Thomas should and won’t marry. Anne Bancroft plays a princess of some sort all full of eccentricities and gossip. Without giving away the plot, Thomas denying the rogue Penn sets her on a course that only Penn can rescue her from. There’s a nice shot early on from a church across the Arno River that Trish and I found last year. That probably had more to do with us finishing the film than anything else. It was all based on a novella by M. Somerset Maugham of Razor’s Edge fame.
TUCKER (1988) – I was suckered into Tucker when I saw it in the theatre. It has a funhouse style and some winning performances from the likes of Jeff Bridges and Martin Landau. But looking back, the style is really a subtraction to a bio piece, but I suppose it was necessary when the bio part if so removed from reality that reviewers might point it out. History sees Tucker as more con man than visionary, while Coppola portrays him as a victim of corporations and crooked politicians. You’re allowed to, I think, when anyone is the “little guy.” Now I’m not trying to be too harsh on what is a fun movie, but I’m just mad at myself for falling for the mythology the first time around.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I had to name the top 3 of the month they would be:
SQUID AND THE WHALE
WALK THE LINE
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU
Monday, April 24, 2006
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK (2005) (A Movie Review)
Making my way through the list of 2005 award winners brought the acclaimed George Clooney offering. Clooney decided to shoot the film in that period black and white to resemble the way we may have seen clips of Edward R. Murrow on TV.
The point of the movie is to drive home for the umpteenth time that Joe McCarthy was a louse and he nearly ruined America. Thankfully, Clooney assumes we already know this about McCarthy so here we simply see Murrow take issue with wild and unsubstantiated statements made by McCarthy. It was a hell of an idea that Murrow had, really. I suppose Clooney was dismayed that John Kerry’s many misstatements about his war record weren’t fully covered during the 2004 campaign and he wanted to remind the press that they have duty to uncover the real record. When McCarthy claimed that 200 people in the state department were agents of the Soviet Union, I kept thinking about John Kerry claim that he was on an illegal mission to Cambodia sanctioned by the Nixon Administration during the Christmas of 1968. It was seered in his memory, was it not? Where was Murrow to ask Kerry why President-elect Nixon wielded such power? Good job, Clooney, you made your point well.
My favorite part of the film were the nuances that captured the flavor of 1950s culture and corporate life. That Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. must pretend not to be married in order to retain their CBS jobs provides a few laughs. The smoking commercials add nice flavor as well.
The shame of Joe McCarthy is that he has become the goat that the Left uses to stain the entire anti-communist era in America. It’s the equivalent of summing up the whole Civil Rights struggle based on Jesse Jackson’s race-pimping and corporate shakedowns. Every big cause has its opportunists and that the Left continues to return to McCarthy would suggest that he was the last powerful man to try those tactics when they themselves have learned to use them oh so sweetly.
If Clooney must make a point about the red scare, I’d like to see him tackle the Chambers/Hiss case which was actually a much bigger deal back when the intelligencia pegged Hiss as an innocent man. That outrage has quietly faded since the release of the Venona Papers. Coincidently, the release of the Venona Papers showed that McCarthy's claim of numerous communists in the state Department was just about right although he never knew it.
What a shame that Clooney is mired in bugaboos when he is such a talented and engaging screen personality with a great eye for directing. Movies last forever while fashionable causes gently fade away. I, for one, am glad that Cary Grant didn't spend his time making a film about FDR's court packing scheme or his supposed foreknowledge of Pear Harbor.
PS: Dude's comment about using the real McCarthy made me realize another point. It's to Clooney's credit that he'd let the real McCarthy speak. Clooney's issues with that aspect of the cold war are honest enough that he doesn't need the Randy Quaid to play up all the caricatured aspects that the Left would have loved. The result was that we were able to decide how much of a menace he really was and the real McCarthy hardly seemed dangerous compared to the monster we always hear about. He seems about as opportunistic as any current guy on Capitol Hill.
Making my way through the list of 2005 award winners brought the acclaimed George Clooney offering. Clooney decided to shoot the film in that period black and white to resemble the way we may have seen clips of Edward R. Murrow on TV.
The point of the movie is to drive home for the umpteenth time that Joe McCarthy was a louse and he nearly ruined America. Thankfully, Clooney assumes we already know this about McCarthy so here we simply see Murrow take issue with wild and unsubstantiated statements made by McCarthy. It was a hell of an idea that Murrow had, really. I suppose Clooney was dismayed that John Kerry’s many misstatements about his war record weren’t fully covered during the 2004 campaign and he wanted to remind the press that they have duty to uncover the real record. When McCarthy claimed that 200 people in the state department were agents of the Soviet Union, I kept thinking about John Kerry claim that he was on an illegal mission to Cambodia sanctioned by the Nixon Administration during the Christmas of 1968. It was seered in his memory, was it not? Where was Murrow to ask Kerry why President-elect Nixon wielded such power? Good job, Clooney, you made your point well.
My favorite part of the film were the nuances that captured the flavor of 1950s culture and corporate life. That Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. must pretend not to be married in order to retain their CBS jobs provides a few laughs. The smoking commercials add nice flavor as well.
The shame of Joe McCarthy is that he has become the goat that the Left uses to stain the entire anti-communist era in America. It’s the equivalent of summing up the whole Civil Rights struggle based on Jesse Jackson’s race-pimping and corporate shakedowns. Every big cause has its opportunists and that the Left continues to return to McCarthy would suggest that he was the last powerful man to try those tactics when they themselves have learned to use them oh so sweetly.
If Clooney must make a point about the red scare, I’d like to see him tackle the Chambers/Hiss case which was actually a much bigger deal back when the intelligencia pegged Hiss as an innocent man. That outrage has quietly faded since the release of the Venona Papers. Coincidently, the release of the Venona Papers showed that McCarthy's claim of numerous communists in the state Department was just about right although he never knew it.
What a shame that Clooney is mired in bugaboos when he is such a talented and engaging screen personality with a great eye for directing. Movies last forever while fashionable causes gently fade away. I, for one, am glad that Cary Grant didn't spend his time making a film about FDR's court packing scheme or his supposed foreknowledge of Pear Harbor.
PS: Dude's comment about using the real McCarthy made me realize another point. It's to Clooney's credit that he'd let the real McCarthy speak. Clooney's issues with that aspect of the cold war are honest enough that he doesn't need the Randy Quaid to play up all the caricatured aspects that the Left would have loved. The result was that we were able to decide how much of a menace he really was and the real McCarthy hardly seemed dangerous compared to the monster we always hear about. He seems about as opportunistic as any current guy on Capitol Hill.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
DAY REAGAN WAS SHOT
25 years ago today. I was in the 6th grade. I don't remember if the teacher had told us or if it came over the loudspeaker. It had only been 2 months since his swearing in and I got into trouble for hanging out in the music room watching it with the 5th grade instead of returning to class after recess. It was certainly one moment of civil disobedience I don't regret. The teacher gave me a stern look when I returned, but later asked me what Reagan said in his speech.
Just a few night ago I watched THE DAY REAGAN WAS SHOT on DVD. It was produced by Oliver Stone so the basis was how Alexander Haig put us on the brink of nuclear war with his pompous attitude. Whatever. Richard Crenna plays Reagan and quite well. He doesn't give that characatured James Brolin impersonation act. Richard Dreyfuss plays Haig crazier than you've ever seen him. I remember the "I'm in charge here" commnent by Haig and even as a kid thought it anything but a power play despite the media's tizzy. Dreyfuss's Haig is like some sort of inquisition cardinal arguing with the rest of priests.
The good news is that with Haig taking all the heat, Ron, Nancy, Howard Baker, George Bush, Cap Weinberger and company all come off as decent people. It made the thing quite compelling despite the conspiracy theories.
25 years ago today. I was in the 6th grade. I don't remember if the teacher had told us or if it came over the loudspeaker. It had only been 2 months since his swearing in and I got into trouble for hanging out in the music room watching it with the 5th grade instead of returning to class after recess. It was certainly one moment of civil disobedience I don't regret. The teacher gave me a stern look when I returned, but later asked me what Reagan said in his speech.
Just a few night ago I watched THE DAY REAGAN WAS SHOT on DVD. It was produced by Oliver Stone so the basis was how Alexander Haig put us on the brink of nuclear war with his pompous attitude. Whatever. Richard Crenna plays Reagan and quite well. He doesn't give that characatured James Brolin impersonation act. Richard Dreyfuss plays Haig crazier than you've ever seen him. I remember the "I'm in charge here" commnent by Haig and even as a kid thought it anything but a power play despite the media's tizzy. Dreyfuss's Haig is like some sort of inquisition cardinal arguing with the rest of priests.
The good news is that with Haig taking all the heat, Ron, Nancy, Howard Baker, George Bush, Cap Weinberger and company all come off as decent people. It made the thing quite compelling despite the conspiracy theories.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
REMEMBER BACK IN 1992?
I bought a stand-alone DVD burner a few weeks ago and have been in the process of turning the old VHS tapes into DVDS. I threw away about 80% of my VHS in 2001, but kept the things that I couldn't ever buy on DVD.
Tonight I'm recording the 1992 Republican Convention and it's notable for a number of things, Pat Buchanan's infamous speech, Reagan's last major address, and Dan Quayle's last major address. I didn't remember that Bob Dole gave a pretty good speech between Quayle and Bush. These days it seems that VPs and Presidents give their speeches on different nights. George W. Bush can be seen with a full head of brown hair sitting next to Barbara in the box.
Everybody is using the "I didn't inhale" line as part of their shtick, at varying degrees of effectiveness. Reagan even refers to
I noticed that Quayle's oldest son doesn't clap for anything, even his own father, despite the fact that Marylin and the other kids seem to be enthusiastic. Kay Bailey Hutchison shows up as a state office holder in Texas. Condoleza Rice shows up and speaks earlier that night listed as a former assistant NSA person under Bush 41. Even the new people are older than we think.
A bunch of speakers kept calling for term limits, the line item veto and a Republican congress. Little did they know that Bush's defeat would lead to all of this just two years later. Though, of course, Republicans forgot term limits and the court struck down the line item veto. Yeah the only thing we seemed to have gotten was guys with an (R) next to their name that spend a lot of money. I was so idealistic in 1992.
Leading into Bush 41's speech was a little documentary narrated by Robert Mitchum. Always a fan of Mitchum, I forgot this detail and confirmed it on IMDB. I also learned that Mitchum was one of the few
Speaking of
The 1992 convention became notorious in the media, especially because of Buchanan. The media spent two years talking about how it split the party and what not. But this ineffective convention that lead to defeat really set the stage for the 1994 Congressional takeover based on ideas over personalities. The 1992 loss was a blessing in disguise in that we wound up with a decent sized tax cut. But much of what could have been done hasn't been done and since this is the first year where there majority seems to be in trouble, it's criminal how they wasted such an opportunity.
Anyway, 1992 is a classic. I'm glad I didn't throw it away.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
FEBRUARY 2006 MOVIES
Not much action this month. Too much poker and reading
BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970) - Sam Peckinpah’s follow-up to THE WILD BUNCH packs just one blood-letting scene and that’s the death of a large dessert lizard intended for food. Jason Robards is his usual solid as the title character and some decent characters actors like Slim Pickens and David Warner help too, but I don’t understand this movie’s reputation as a classic. The overly broad comedy coupled with the overdone death of the west theme doesn’t bring any freshness to either. The great MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE was savaged by critics for much less than this. Of his films I have liked THE GETAWAY most followed by RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and then the WILD BUNCH, but I didn’t love any of them. I saw STRAW DOGS last year and was pretty disappointed. Either his films are too dated or I just don’t respond.
JUNEBUG (2005) – After torturing Trish with some of my recent art house choices, she was quite happy that I selected this film. The story of a city sophisticate returning to his rural North Carolina roots could be full of Doc Hollywood gags and Hee Haw references but it was instead a very human picture. Amy Adams is getting the buzz because she plays the most hyper of the characters and steals most scenes, but a lot can be said for the rest of the cast that lets her do it gracefully. The underrated Scott Wilson plays the father as a typical southern patriarch dealing with an overbearing wife. Wilson was the other killer in the 60s docudrama IN COLD BLOOD. He was also a victim of Charlize in MONSTER, the one that made me want to see her fry post haste. What’s exceptional about the film is the way Alessandro Nivola’s son character has mixed emotions throughout about family and obligation. Most movies would simply give him anger or cowardice or some simply emotion to play off for 90 minutes. Here we get to see him make the struggle that probably led to his leaving in the first place. Celia Weston is the mother character that you’ll recognize from other movies and TV shows.
+METROPOLITAN (1990) – It was finally released a few weeks ago on DVD, Criterion Collection even. I wonder if that was the holdup, they needed to dig up some extras. It’s a story about some college aged Manhattan kids who are back for Christmas holidays participating in the debutante season. A kid less rich is befriended by the group and he’s in a sense the audience’s eyes and ears to that world. I didn’t even like it when I first rented it in 1995. I thought it was slow and without much point. The following year it came up in conversation at work and I was surprised how many lines I had remembered. I decided that it was deceptively witty and when I revisited it soon after I became a big fan and still am. For all the times I’ve seen it, this was the first time in letterbox. Director Whit Stillman gave commentary joined by the editor and actors Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols. The film was made super low budget and they detail that process in the commentary. One of the most interesting things is that these kinds of rich kids are usually the villains in movies. Here they’re quite human despite the money.
LORD OF WAR (2005) – It begins as a comedy on the arms industry and it’s quite effective, but midway through Nick Cage develops a conscience of sorts and this turns the film into a sermon. Shortly after the reform, Cage snaps out of his worry and becomes just as numb as before. You realize later that Cage has a moment of clarity simply because the audience likes him too much and the political points are being lost. But since the movie has no where to go with a reformed Cage he simply reverts. Ethan Hawke shows up as the federal agent assigned to bring Cage down and boy does that guy need a hamburger. The way Cage bounces from concerned husband and father to indifferent crook is a major flaw and the ending doesn’t pack the intended punch. If the filmmakers simply had the guts to make Cage aloof all the way through with no consequences, this could have been a classic black comedy. Otherwise they should have simply made another Syriana.
HIDE AND SEEK (2005) – That horror film where DeNiro’s little girl seems eerie is alright for the genre, but not entirely satisfying. They do a decent enough job of fooling the audience for a spell, but the movie only has one way to end once you guess it. I suppose most will do so somewhere before we’re supposed to be surprised.
Not much action this month. Too much poker and reading
BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970) - Sam Peckinpah’s follow-up to THE WILD BUNCH packs just one blood-letting scene and that’s the death of a large dessert lizard intended for food. Jason Robards is his usual solid as the title character and some decent characters actors like Slim Pickens and David Warner help too, but I don’t understand this movie’s reputation as a classic. The overly broad comedy coupled with the overdone death of the west theme doesn’t bring any freshness to either. The great MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE was savaged by critics for much less than this. Of his films I have liked THE GETAWAY most followed by RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and then the WILD BUNCH, but I didn’t love any of them. I saw STRAW DOGS last year and was pretty disappointed. Either his films are too dated or I just don’t respond.
JUNEBUG (2005) – After torturing Trish with some of my recent art house choices, she was quite happy that I selected this film. The story of a city sophisticate returning to his rural North Carolina roots could be full of Doc Hollywood gags and Hee Haw references but it was instead a very human picture. Amy Adams is getting the buzz because she plays the most hyper of the characters and steals most scenes, but a lot can be said for the rest of the cast that lets her do it gracefully. The underrated Scott Wilson plays the father as a typical southern patriarch dealing with an overbearing wife. Wilson was the other killer in the 60s docudrama IN COLD BLOOD. He was also a victim of Charlize in MONSTER, the one that made me want to see her fry post haste. What’s exceptional about the film is the way Alessandro Nivola’s son character has mixed emotions throughout about family and obligation. Most movies would simply give him anger or cowardice or some simply emotion to play off for 90 minutes. Here we get to see him make the struggle that probably led to his leaving in the first place. Celia Weston is the mother character that you’ll recognize from other movies and TV shows.
+METROPOLITAN (1990) – It was finally released a few weeks ago on DVD, Criterion Collection even. I wonder if that was the holdup, they needed to dig up some extras. It’s a story about some college aged Manhattan kids who are back for Christmas holidays participating in the debutante season. A kid less rich is befriended by the group and he’s in a sense the audience’s eyes and ears to that world. I didn’t even like it when I first rented it in 1995. I thought it was slow and without much point. The following year it came up in conversation at work and I was surprised how many lines I had remembered. I decided that it was deceptively witty and when I revisited it soon after I became a big fan and still am. For all the times I’ve seen it, this was the first time in letterbox. Director Whit Stillman gave commentary joined by the editor and actors Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols. The film was made super low budget and they detail that process in the commentary. One of the most interesting things is that these kinds of rich kids are usually the villains in movies. Here they’re quite human despite the money.
LORD OF WAR (2005) – It begins as a comedy on the arms industry and it’s quite effective, but midway through Nick Cage develops a conscience of sorts and this turns the film into a sermon. Shortly after the reform, Cage snaps out of his worry and becomes just as numb as before. You realize later that Cage has a moment of clarity simply because the audience likes him too much and the political points are being lost. But since the movie has no where to go with a reformed Cage he simply reverts. Ethan Hawke shows up as the federal agent assigned to bring Cage down and boy does that guy need a hamburger. The way Cage bounces from concerned husband and father to indifferent crook is a major flaw and the ending doesn’t pack the intended punch. If the filmmakers simply had the guts to make Cage aloof all the way through with no consequences, this could have been a classic black comedy. Otherwise they should have simply made another Syriana.
HIDE AND SEEK (2005) – That horror film where DeNiro’s little girl seems eerie is alright for the genre, but not entirely satisfying. They do a decent enough job of fooling the audience for a spell, but the movie only has one way to end once you guess it. I suppose most will do so somewhere before we’re supposed to be surprised.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
PROBLEM WITH THE MOVIES
When movies began to shift to the left it wouldn’t necessarily bother you to see a businessman or corporation as a villain. It was still a fresh idea. Fred MacMurray played a great cad in THE APARTMENT. Steve McQueen managed to be the hero and the villain in the THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR.
The Military Industrial Complex was also ripe for satire and villainy. After so many heroic World War II film, DR. STRANGELOVE was a nice dose of balance.
And who didn’t like to see Sidney Poitier give it to the man in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT after so many blacks in film history were subservient to whitey?
Wasn’t it fun to watch Katharine Hepburn outsmart and out-lawyer Spencer Tracy in ADAM’S RIB?
Wasn’t it interesting to see Al Pacino play a non stereotypical homosexual in a mainstream movie like DOG DAY AFTERNOON?
None of the above movies were offensive and they were all believable and progressive at the same time. The intention may or may not have been to push the political dialogue to the left, but they didn’t hit you over the head with social policy, they just showed you characters behaving rationally in the context of good storytelling.
From what I’ve read, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN could fit into the same tradition of the aforementioned films. The problem is that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN was stale before it was even made. Although it’s in some ways very original, it’s not surprising. We already know that society is the villain in this one without reading any further than the premise.
Remember when Jonathan Demme stuck to the novel of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and let his psycho be a homosexual? He was so in danger of losing his liberal card that he was made to atone by making PHILADELPHIA. And his movies have been right on the PC plantation ever since.
PASSION OF THE CHRIST was ignored by the Academy and called anti-Semitic on the basis of a line or two while others simple dismissed it as too violent. But suicide bomber movies like PARADISE NOW are nominated in all their glory.
The problem with movies isn’t that they’re liberal, but that they’re so reliably liberal that they have nothing original left to say. Given a list of characters and their situations and you can almost write the movie yourself.
A few months ago we were playing poker and I was in the minority defending the war in Iraq. The same guys that talk in the familiar center-left talking points concerning that issue have been relentless in their lampooning of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. There was debate as to whether KK, JJ or KJ should be referred to as a Brokeback Mountain hand. Lately in another game I’ve been playing in, a player has been quoting “I don’t know how to quit you” when he’s on a draw and faces a tough bet. He’ll use the accent and he always gets a big laugh. It’s not insignificant that when I first knew him in the late 1990s he invited us all to his birthday party at a pizza joint that he was also using as a charity event for Aids. And the same guy has two gay brothers for crying out loud.
When Ang Lee accused the Christian Right of calculated silence on his movie, he was simply too self-involved to realize that the people offended by movies like his are the least likely to watch movies anyway. The average parent is probably more offended by the kids cussing in BAD NEWS BEARS.
The reason so many people are teasing BROKEBACK is that we’ve been given such a steady diet of the same PC tribulations that they cease to be tribulations anymore. Issue movies are no longer stories with complex heroes and villains, but too often the same black and white good guys and bad guys that the Left has always ridiculed in the old rightwing movies.
The result for people like me who like movies is that I wind up seeing them on DVD or HBO if at all. It’s not a boycott, but casual indifference.
Some people in Hollywood understand this enough that they make more even-handed movies. For as much as a Bolshevik as Tim Robbins is personally, he does a good job of making his rightwing characters real people. Bob Roberts was a much more appealing character than we could have expected even if he was the bad guy. I thought DEAD MAN WALKING was so even-handed that I was surprised to find that the intent was for me to feel sorry for Sean Penn. Even CRADLE WILL ROCK makes Bill Murray’s anti-communist character more human and sympathetic than any others I could name.
Now maybe Robbins is so secure in his beliefs that he doesn’t think he needs to create cartoon villains or obvious heroes to make his points. That so many others do so is maybe a sign of insecurity in those beliefs. One of the Greeks maybe Aristotle said that all ideas should be freely expressed among the educated even those ideas that seem obviously wrong because experience shows that so many seemingly wrong ideas turned out to be right and without discussing bad ideas it’s hard to remember the merits of the good ideas in the first place. In other words, the biggest champion of the truth is an open dialogue.
I don’t mind political movies, even ones I disagree with. I admire someone like Clooney for tackling political subjects although I think his postulating that this act is noble, dangerous, and somehow career threatening is overstated to the point of comedy. What the movies lack is an open-dialogue that doesn’t even need to seek the truth, but it just needs to provide some variety.
When movies began to shift to the left it wouldn’t necessarily bother you to see a businessman or corporation as a villain. It was still a fresh idea. Fred MacMurray played a great cad in THE APARTMENT. Steve McQueen managed to be the hero and the villain in the THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR.
The Military Industrial Complex was also ripe for satire and villainy. After so many heroic World War II film, DR. STRANGELOVE was a nice dose of balance.
And who didn’t like to see Sidney Poitier give it to the man in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT after so many blacks in film history were subservient to whitey?
Wasn’t it fun to watch Katharine Hepburn outsmart and out-lawyer Spencer Tracy in ADAM’S RIB?
Wasn’t it interesting to see Al Pacino play a non stereotypical homosexual in a mainstream movie like DOG DAY AFTERNOON?
None of the above movies were offensive and they were all believable and progressive at the same time. The intention may or may not have been to push the political dialogue to the left, but they didn’t hit you over the head with social policy, they just showed you characters behaving rationally in the context of good storytelling.
From what I’ve read, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN could fit into the same tradition of the aforementioned films. The problem is that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN was stale before it was even made. Although it’s in some ways very original, it’s not surprising. We already know that society is the villain in this one without reading any further than the premise.
Remember when Jonathan Demme stuck to the novel of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and let his psycho be a homosexual? He was so in danger of losing his liberal card that he was made to atone by making PHILADELPHIA. And his movies have been right on the PC plantation ever since.
PASSION OF THE CHRIST was ignored by the Academy and called anti-Semitic on the basis of a line or two while others simple dismissed it as too violent. But suicide bomber movies like PARADISE NOW are nominated in all their glory.
The problem with movies isn’t that they’re liberal, but that they’re so reliably liberal that they have nothing original left to say. Given a list of characters and their situations and you can almost write the movie yourself.
A few months ago we were playing poker and I was in the minority defending the war in Iraq. The same guys that talk in the familiar center-left talking points concerning that issue have been relentless in their lampooning of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. There was debate as to whether KK, JJ or KJ should be referred to as a Brokeback Mountain hand. Lately in another game I’ve been playing in, a player has been quoting “I don’t know how to quit you” when he’s on a draw and faces a tough bet. He’ll use the accent and he always gets a big laugh. It’s not insignificant that when I first knew him in the late 1990s he invited us all to his birthday party at a pizza joint that he was also using as a charity event for Aids. And the same guy has two gay brothers for crying out loud.
When Ang Lee accused the Christian Right of calculated silence on his movie, he was simply too self-involved to realize that the people offended by movies like his are the least likely to watch movies anyway. The average parent is probably more offended by the kids cussing in BAD NEWS BEARS.
The reason so many people are teasing BROKEBACK is that we’ve been given such a steady diet of the same PC tribulations that they cease to be tribulations anymore. Issue movies are no longer stories with complex heroes and villains, but too often the same black and white good guys and bad guys that the Left has always ridiculed in the old rightwing movies.
The result for people like me who like movies is that I wind up seeing them on DVD or HBO if at all. It’s not a boycott, but casual indifference.
Some people in Hollywood understand this enough that they make more even-handed movies. For as much as a Bolshevik as Tim Robbins is personally, he does a good job of making his rightwing characters real people. Bob Roberts was a much more appealing character than we could have expected even if he was the bad guy. I thought DEAD MAN WALKING was so even-handed that I was surprised to find that the intent was for me to feel sorry for Sean Penn. Even CRADLE WILL ROCK makes Bill Murray’s anti-communist character more human and sympathetic than any others I could name.
Now maybe Robbins is so secure in his beliefs that he doesn’t think he needs to create cartoon villains or obvious heroes to make his points. That so many others do so is maybe a sign of insecurity in those beliefs. One of the Greeks maybe Aristotle said that all ideas should be freely expressed among the educated even those ideas that seem obviously wrong because experience shows that so many seemingly wrong ideas turned out to be right and without discussing bad ideas it’s hard to remember the merits of the good ideas in the first place. In other words, the biggest champion of the truth is an open dialogue.
I don’t mind political movies, even ones I disagree with. I admire someone like Clooney for tackling political subjects although I think his postulating that this act is noble, dangerous, and somehow career threatening is overstated to the point of comedy. What the movies lack is an open-dialogue that doesn’t even need to seek the truth, but it just needs to provide some variety.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
JANUARY 2006 MOVIES
GOING IN STYLE (1979) – I remember seeing some of this movie as a kid and I don’t know why I remembered it as a comedy except that the trailers tried to paint it as one. It’s sometimes funny but more drama than anything else. Three old men George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg decide to rob a bank out of sheer boredom. All three pull off their roles well, but I was especially impressed with Burns who rose above the schmaltz of Oh God franchise among other things. To ruin the plot, Strasberg becomes ill and dies. Burns and Carney decide to give most of the money to Carney’s nephew and they take the rest to lose in Vegas. Instead of losing they come away with a bigger stack than they got out of the bank. The whole thing is handled in a very unsentimental way and I came away enjoying it for its quiet tone and interesting performances.
SPAGHETTI WEST (2005) – A documentary about Spaghetti Westerns is quite interesting when the subject is Eastwood, but wanes when they talk about Klaus Kinski and the myriad of films with the title Django. The period of filmmaking didn’t last long, but it produced a whole lot of celluloid and it influenced the American westerns that followed.
MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004) – The movie was described as a missing time recollection and how a teenager studies UFOLOGY to learn what happened to him that day years ago when his little league game was rained out and he woke up in his basement with a bloody nose. There was also a second little leaguer that became a gay prostitute after getting a little too cozy with the baseball coach. Despite the review I read, the other kid is the one that actually dominates the film, and though I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, I’m sure it’s tame compared to the gratuitous graphic nature of this movie. Men come off pretty lousy in the piece; they are poor fathers, absentee fathers or pedophiles while the women are all long suffering.
THE CLEARING (2004) – Robert Redford shows up so infrequently these days you have to wonder what he looks for in a script to finally do a film. Here Redford is kidnapped in the first 5 minutes by Willem Dafoe and it’s easy to see that he isn’t a professional at such jobs. The men begin to have pretty normal conversations about their wives and their regrets and although one is rich and the other is poor, both wish they could have been better husbands. Redford has another woman on the side, but he still loves Helen Mirren the most and he comes to realize that during the snatching. The movie is told in separate action with Mirren and the kids learning things days after they happened inter cut with Redford on the day of the incident. I thought the movie was compelling enough but maybe the device of good guy/bad guy parallel lives has been done a bit too much. HEAT may have had the classic take on that issue.
ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930) – I’ve seen it countless times and I decided to start the new year with a Marx film to remind me that life is pretty great. I think it’s the best of the early talkies, because although it has the same technical limitations, and it’s nothing but a filmed version of their long-running stage play complete with Groucho’s asides, it still brings laughs in buckets. Groucho’s intro speech was my standard audition monologue for years. The “I shot an elephant in my pajamas” got a laugh every time. I don’t think it ever got me any parts, but it was fun to deliver. I auditioned for Disney once in college and one guy on the panel laughed all the way through. He must have been familiar with the movie.
+LOVE ACTUALLY (2004) – WHEN HARRY MET SALLY was a clever and unique film when it debuted in 1989, but it spawned so many half-assed imitators and created such an obnoxious sub genre that I have little patience for what Americans do with romantic comedies. In fact, I think that the resurgence of witty teen comedies is a direct result of creative minds tired of the adult genre. A minor teen comedy like TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU was more interesting than any romantic movie comedy that Meg Ryan has made since 1989. One romantic comedy that I liked was the Julia Roberts vehicle, NOTTING HILL. I don’t know whether it was the mostly British cast or just the fact that it didn’t try to be too cute. And now the British film, LOVE ACTUALLY takes the British version of these films one step further. It was one of the best films of 2004 and I’ve seen it twice again this month and it just plain works on every level. It finds a very honest way to deal with the subject using humor, sadness and even some sentimentality. It also helps that the cast is amazing, using about half the British actors any American could name, and some you recognize and can’t name. A few interesting Americans show up too. Like any movie with a big cast, there is a little too much of people running into one another randomly in a big town like London, but I can forgive SHORT CUTS ands MAGNOLIA for this so why not forgive this worthwhile effort too.
PIE IN THE SKY (1995) – I had no business watching this movie except that it came on when I was writing email and it had a couple of laughs and I wound up seeing too much of it to turn it off. Josh Charles stars as a guy obsessed with the traffic and his idol, John Goodman, the traffic reporter on the radio. He meets Anne Heche during college and although they have a decent spark, they lose touch until a few years later when he happens to run into her in a Los Angeles diner. The audience gets to wait around for Josh to have his big shot as traffic reporter and reconciliation with Heche. Films shown on TV are a great study of the economics of time. Why is it that we’re more likely to sit and watch something on TV, when we wouldn’t watch the same thing on DVD if it sat right in front of us? Or why is it that we’ll be held captive by some movie that comes on that we enjoy when we own the same DVD and never bother to put it in? I don’t fall victim to it as much as some I know, but now that we have HBO again, I notice that it happens with greater frequency than I would have predicted. I won’t sit and watch films on commercial networks no matter how much I like them, but I know many that will wade through the commercials instead of putting in the same DVD.
THE GREAT RAID (2005) – A war movie based on real events that lacks the rightwing Rambo heroism or the leftwing cynicism and gore. It’s simply about a group of American soldiers tasked with liberating a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The men in the camp are leftover from the Bataan death march years earlier and if disease doesn’t kill the last 500 of them, then the Japanese will probably execute them as they retreat in order to leave no war crimes witnesses. The mission holds no strategic value, but saving the men is the right thing to do. The value of honor is summed up when Benjamin Bratt tells James Franco that the mission is the most important thing any of them will ever do in their lives. Success will lead to an inner glory that the men will carry with them forever. It has a quiet sort of tone and a slow pace, the kind you might expect for a movie made for HBO. It could have been 20 minutes shorter maybe, and the subplot of the beautiful woman in the underground helping the prisoners is too movieish, but the characters mostly seem like real people. And if you consider it an ode to the old fashioned 40s era war movies, then it’s downright restrained.
+WAGES OF FEAR (1952) French film and winner of the Cannes film Festival. A group of streets bums are given the task of taking some explosives to an oil field over bumpy terrain. They’ll be risking their lives but making so much money they can’t pass up the offer. Theirs great suspense and more challenges along the way than one screenwriter generally imagines realistically. We even get the pining French girl for our hero to return too.
OCEANS 12 (2004) – It’s been on a lot this month and although preposterous it’s so much fun that I keep on in the background. Like the first, the music is good all the way through and the dialogue delivery funny in a dry sort of way. The Clooney/Pitt banter is always fun and the little things with Bruce Willis showing up and the Sixth Sense jokes are worthwhile too.
GOING IN STYLE (1979) – I remember seeing some of this movie as a kid and I don’t know why I remembered it as a comedy except that the trailers tried to paint it as one. It’s sometimes funny but more drama than anything else. Three old men George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg decide to rob a bank out of sheer boredom. All three pull off their roles well, but I was especially impressed with Burns who rose above the schmaltz of Oh God franchise among other things. To ruin the plot, Strasberg becomes ill and dies. Burns and Carney decide to give most of the money to Carney’s nephew and they take the rest to lose in Vegas. Instead of losing they come away with a bigger stack than they got out of the bank. The whole thing is handled in a very unsentimental way and I came away enjoying it for its quiet tone and interesting performances.
SPAGHETTI WEST (2005) – A documentary about Spaghetti Westerns is quite interesting when the subject is Eastwood, but wanes when they talk about Klaus Kinski and the myriad of films with the title Django. The period of filmmaking didn’t last long, but it produced a whole lot of celluloid and it influenced the American westerns that followed.
MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004) – The movie was described as a missing time recollection and how a teenager studies UFOLOGY to learn what happened to him that day years ago when his little league game was rained out and he woke up in his basement with a bloody nose. There was also a second little leaguer that became a gay prostitute after getting a little too cozy with the baseball coach. Despite the review I read, the other kid is the one that actually dominates the film, and though I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, I’m sure it’s tame compared to the gratuitous graphic nature of this movie. Men come off pretty lousy in the piece; they are poor fathers, absentee fathers or pedophiles while the women are all long suffering.
THE CLEARING (2004) – Robert Redford shows up so infrequently these days you have to wonder what he looks for in a script to finally do a film. Here Redford is kidnapped in the first 5 minutes by Willem Dafoe and it’s easy to see that he isn’t a professional at such jobs. The men begin to have pretty normal conversations about their wives and their regrets and although one is rich and the other is poor, both wish they could have been better husbands. Redford has another woman on the side, but he still loves Helen Mirren the most and he comes to realize that during the snatching. The movie is told in separate action with Mirren and the kids learning things days after they happened inter cut with Redford on the day of the incident. I thought the movie was compelling enough but maybe the device of good guy/bad guy parallel lives has been done a bit too much. HEAT may have had the classic take on that issue.
ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930) – I’ve seen it countless times and I decided to start the new year with a Marx film to remind me that life is pretty great. I think it’s the best of the early talkies, because although it has the same technical limitations, and it’s nothing but a filmed version of their long-running stage play complete with Groucho’s asides, it still brings laughs in buckets. Groucho’s intro speech was my standard audition monologue for years. The “I shot an elephant in my pajamas” got a laugh every time. I don’t think it ever got me any parts, but it was fun to deliver. I auditioned for Disney once in college and one guy on the panel laughed all the way through. He must have been familiar with the movie.
+LOVE ACTUALLY (2004) – WHEN HARRY MET SALLY was a clever and unique film when it debuted in 1989, but it spawned so many half-assed imitators and created such an obnoxious sub genre that I have little patience for what Americans do with romantic comedies. In fact, I think that the resurgence of witty teen comedies is a direct result of creative minds tired of the adult genre. A minor teen comedy like TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU was more interesting than any romantic movie comedy that Meg Ryan has made since 1989. One romantic comedy that I liked was the Julia Roberts vehicle, NOTTING HILL. I don’t know whether it was the mostly British cast or just the fact that it didn’t try to be too cute. And now the British film, LOVE ACTUALLY takes the British version of these films one step further. It was one of the best films of 2004 and I’ve seen it twice again this month and it just plain works on every level. It finds a very honest way to deal with the subject using humor, sadness and even some sentimentality. It also helps that the cast is amazing, using about half the British actors any American could name, and some you recognize and can’t name. A few interesting Americans show up too. Like any movie with a big cast, there is a little too much of people running into one another randomly in a big town like London, but I can forgive SHORT CUTS ands MAGNOLIA for this so why not forgive this worthwhile effort too.
PIE IN THE SKY (1995) – I had no business watching this movie except that it came on when I was writing email and it had a couple of laughs and I wound up seeing too much of it to turn it off. Josh Charles stars as a guy obsessed with the traffic and his idol, John Goodman, the traffic reporter on the radio. He meets Anne Heche during college and although they have a decent spark, they lose touch until a few years later when he happens to run into her in a Los Angeles diner. The audience gets to wait around for Josh to have his big shot as traffic reporter and reconciliation with Heche. Films shown on TV are a great study of the economics of time. Why is it that we’re more likely to sit and watch something on TV, when we wouldn’t watch the same thing on DVD if it sat right in front of us? Or why is it that we’ll be held captive by some movie that comes on that we enjoy when we own the same DVD and never bother to put it in? I don’t fall victim to it as much as some I know, but now that we have HBO again, I notice that it happens with greater frequency than I would have predicted. I won’t sit and watch films on commercial networks no matter how much I like them, but I know many that will wade through the commercials instead of putting in the same DVD.
THE GREAT RAID (2005) – A war movie based on real events that lacks the rightwing Rambo heroism or the leftwing cynicism and gore. It’s simply about a group of American soldiers tasked with liberating a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The men in the camp are leftover from the Bataan death march years earlier and if disease doesn’t kill the last 500 of them, then the Japanese will probably execute them as they retreat in order to leave no war crimes witnesses. The mission holds no strategic value, but saving the men is the right thing to do. The value of honor is summed up when Benjamin Bratt tells James Franco that the mission is the most important thing any of them will ever do in their lives. Success will lead to an inner glory that the men will carry with them forever. It has a quiet sort of tone and a slow pace, the kind you might expect for a movie made for HBO. It could have been 20 minutes shorter maybe, and the subplot of the beautiful woman in the underground helping the prisoners is too movieish, but the characters mostly seem like real people. And if you consider it an ode to the old fashioned 40s era war movies, then it’s downright restrained.
+WAGES OF FEAR (1952) French film and winner of the Cannes film Festival. A group of streets bums are given the task of taking some explosives to an oil field over bumpy terrain. They’ll be risking their lives but making so much money they can’t pass up the offer. Theirs great suspense and more challenges along the way than one screenwriter generally imagines realistically. We even get the pining French girl for our hero to return too.
OCEANS 12 (2004) – It’s been on a lot this month and although preposterous it’s so much fun that I keep on in the background. Like the first, the music is good all the way through and the dialogue delivery funny in a dry sort of way. The Clooney/Pitt banter is always fun and the little things with Bruce Willis showing up and the Sixth Sense jokes are worthwhile too.
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