A Digression: The Day After Thanksgiving Miracle

(What better way to commemorate my beloved Nebraska Cornhusker's heavily dramatic victory yesterday over their nefarious nemesis, the Colorado Buffaloes, than with a poem composed in the beautiful, beautiful scotch-infused, post-game glow.)

Alex Henery
hallowed be thy name
a mere swing of your foot
decided a most glorious game.

Our arch enemy vanquished
on the strength of your shoe
a New Year's Day Bowl earned
when you booted the ball through.

Your icy cool demeanor
made Husker nation rise as one
over the goalpost it barely breathed
it wasn't just the game but our hearts that you won.

57 yards, a record etched in lore
your name forever committed to memory
Frazier, Crouch, Rodgers, Redwine, and Rozier
Rimington, Glover, Alberts, and Henery - oh Henery.

Free Versing On The Myth of Fingerprints

Yesterday was "The Myth of Fingerprints" day - that is, I indulge in my once-a-year viewing of one of my Top 5 Favorite Movies (confession: I watched it twice this year, the other time being after Roy Scheider, one of the film's stars, passed away in February). I could have put up the traditional posting (you can read it here), followed by my friend Brad's traditional disparaging comment, but I chose to instead indulge in my annual viewing, always the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and then discuss it. This is by no means a standard review, this is just me going into free verse mode, writing out loud, getting all self-reflective and a bit hyperbolic (who, me?). So consider yourself warned with extreme prejudice.

I really would place this film as #3 on my all-time favorites list. It shares something in common with the two above it (you know them) in so much as it came out of nowhere. I didn't expect it. But I needed it. I needed it at that precise moment. Even though I didn't know it. I was unable to see "The Myth of Fingerprints" in the theater and instead saw it on the Sundance Channel when I lived in the townhouse in Urbandale. As I sipped a scotch in the complete silence of my apartment after the credits had finished rolling last night I tried to recall what my life was like at the time of my first viewing.

I was (thankfully) about to finish my tour of duty managing the movie theater at which point I took a couple months away from the working man's world to crash at my friends' places in Cedar Falls and Iowa City. I was still hung up on a young lady I had only met once whose name I now refrain from saying out loud. I was about to start a new tour of duty at the ad agency and live in a house where the TV was constantly tuned to the WWF (not by my hand, believe me). Never at any point in my life have I listened to more Springsteen, if that tells you anything. Yeah, I was a confused soul.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still confused. I think I'll be confused for the rest of my life. Confusion is part of my nature. But it won't be that sort of confusion. In fact, confused isn't the right word. I was lost. I had no clue. Didn't have a clue about what? Anything. Everything. I was unsure. You live with yourself every day, right? You reach a point where you start to get a little sick of living with yourself, right? Don't bullshit me. It happens to all of us. It was happening to me. And then the Sundance Channel was showing this movie with a family getting together for Thanksgiving that seemed to have the same issues.

This guy Warren (Noah Wyle) was still hung up on a girl that he hadn't seen in years. He was quiet, reserved, spending most of the film acting like his "usual insecure, depressed self". He evades confrontation. He finds himself sleeping alone while everyone else in the family has sex all around him (which is 100% exactly like a New Year's Eve I once experienced when shortly after midnight struck everyone dashed off to different bedrooms to have sex while I sat alone on the couch). His brother gives a speech about how you can't be filled with such overwhelming passion and emotion all the time because it's "not healthy" and and Warren simply replies, "It doesn't work that way." (When I finally forced my mom to watch the movie it was after that line she said aloud, "Oh. He's you.")

The brother Jake (Michael Vartan) was dating this woman Margaret (Hope Davis) and she obviously loved him (and she's also so happy and open and inquisitive and talkative all the damn time - so not a part of this family) but he wasn't sure if he loved her and it wasn't necessarily that he didn't love her, because maybe he did, but because he wanted to push her away because he loved her and she loved him and the whole thing just smelled so strongly of perhaps my greatest obsession - unrequited love.

This woman Mia (Julianne Moore) seemed generally unpleased but maybe it was less that and more that she was so intensely private that it came off as unpleased and, plus, how could I not love someone who gets so obsessed with a piece of art - a fictional book entitled "The Scream of the Rabbits". (When her boyfriend asks "What's the plan for today?" and, so annoyed, she replies "Can we just relax and not make a schedule?" my heart melts.)

This sister (Laurel Holloman) was so young and so hopeful and so happy and so untainted and, damn it, I remembered being like that when I was younger. Not that long ago, in fact. During my brief stint in college I felt a lot like that.

This dad (Scheider) was clearly flawed but, I had to admit, there were a couple things we had in common. 1.) He dug alone time, so much to the point that he lied about going hunting for a turkey to get away from everyone. (My friend Ashley's dad is notorious for mysteriously disappearing from rooms without anyone noticing. I think Roy Scheider's character in this movie would totally be capable of that, and I hope if I'm ever a dad I'll be able to do it too.) 2.) He has a hankering to live at certain points in the past. He's too nostalgic. And when you see him watching the old family videos near the end of the movie, a sad smile on his face, you can truly see it.

The mom (Blythe Danner) wasn't quite like me, but that's what was so perfect about it. I have friends and family who try to pull me out and get me involved and get on my case when I'm being too withdrawn or whining too much about a girl I haven't seen in however many years. She felt like all of them. Unconditional love. I have a nasty of habit sometimes of not communicating as often as I should with the people I love, and I do still love them, and they still seem to love me, and I'm so eternally thankful for it.

This family wasn't my family - not even close - but almost all of these characters were pieces of me. "Last of the Mohicans" came along and helped set the tone for my life in many ways. "Million Dollar Baby" came along when I was very despondent in both my desire to write and movies in general. "The Myth of Fingerprints" came along when I felt like I was starting to get tired of being me.

"There's no point to good memories," says Mia. "They remind you of who you were." "No," corrects her mother, "they remind you of who you are." This movie isn't who I was. It's who I am. It's who I'll be always. God help me, I'm thankful to be who I am, flaws and all. "The Myth of Fingerprints" reminds me of that every single year.

Slumdog Millionaire

Director Danny Boyle poses a multiple choice question with title cards to open his latest opus: How did Jamal Malik win 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" It's because he was lucky, a genius, he cheated, or because it was written. The film's relentless brightness in the face of its relentless darkness paves the way for some high-wire ridiculousness and incredible gaps of logic and that's why the film's opening doubles as its niftiest trick. The ladies sitting next to me in the sold-out theater kept prefacing whispered sentences to each other with the word "Why". As in, "Why did that happen?" "Why would she do that?" "Why wouldn't he do this?" And every time one asked the other something I just wanted to bellow, "'Cuz, ladies, it's written."

This a movie with a Johnny Cash drumbeat for narrative drive and once it gets going it won't stop. It is Shakespearean in scope. It spans a couple decades with three different actors portraying each of our three leads and involves muck and grime and beauty and hope and exotic locales and guns and knives and death and comedy and innocence and corruption and characters who aren't good and evil but GOOD and EVIL and massive, heaping piles of coincidence and a hero who is established very early as willing to go to the most horrific of depths (literally, people - literally!) to get what he wants.

As the movie opens our hero, Jamal (played at his oldest by Kev Patel), is in the hot seat on the game show and only a single question away from earning the ultimate prize. Except it seems certain people affiliated with the program (like the host who helps re-prove the fact that all gameshow hosts would best serve the world by hurling themselves into alligator pits) don't necessarily believe a "slumdog", a guy making a living by serving tea to call center employees, could really possess such intelligence, most especially when such serious bank is on the line. When the show ends for the day with the last question still hanging Jamal is escorted backstage where a bag is promptly thrown over his head and he is tortured in an effort to give up his secrets. He insists he has none and a detective (Irrfan Khan) takes him to another room where he pops in a tape of the episode and demands Jamal tell him how he knew the answer to each question. This interrogation cleverly provides the movie its structure, as each response given by Jamal triggers a flashback that allows the story of Jamal and his older brother Salim to unfold.

The boys lose their mother at far too early an age and soon we are introduced to the "third musketeer" (note: I didn't use that reference for no good reason), the sublime Latika, also an orphan, who will quickly become the love of Jamal's life even if the fates continually conspire to keep them apart for no good reason. Despite this ramshackle upbringing, Jamal's heart stays good. Unfortunately, Salim's heart turns bad. Good Brother/Bad Brother and, of course, Love Interest Who Remains Pure Despite Being Caught Up In Bad.

That's sorta' the thing, after the beginning - when the boys and Latika are acting out of desperation - the screenplay does not really bother to provide them with basic motivations. The most blatant example of this comes after Jamal and Salim fall in line with a no-good-man who lures children to a camp with kindness, sends them out on the streets to beg and then takes their earnings. The brothers are able to escape and hop a train only to, as they must, get thrown from it, wind up in the dirt on the right side of the tracks to allow the train to barrel past and reveal, sitting gloriously and ever so conveniently to the left, the Taj Mahal! Thank the heavens! This allows the brothers not only a clever opportunity for a money-making venture but a visually sumptuous setting where they can do it! Bonus!

And if Jamal is searching the crowded, frenetic Mumbai streets for Latika don't presume he won't happen upon someone he happens to know who, as it happens, is capable of providing her exact whereabouts!

The arc, too, for all three characters is fairly traditional but, I must admit, these thoughts I'm whining about all came to the forefront after the movie was finished. Like I said, it's Shakespearean. When you're watching "Romeo & Juliet" you're not shaking your head at the myriad of coincidences because you're caught up in the prose. It's why Danny Boyle fills "Slumdog Millionaire" with a pulsing soundtrack and a, shall we say, whirling dervish of a camera. It's why the closing credits include a Bollywood dance number, so that you don't start questioning things until you get out of the theater. The whole movie is "steady like a train, sharp like a razor."

I'm not sure the movie itself deserves a Best Picture nomination, as some have claimed, but I'm damn certain Danny Boyle deserves a nod for Best Director. He made me believe.

My Great Movies: Pieces of April

The Burns family, father, mother, son, daughter, grandmother, is on its way to New York City where the oldest child, April (Katie Holmes), is hosting Thanksgiving dinner. They are well into the journey and the movie, without revealing too many specifics, has made us aware the relationship between April and her family was not and is not harmonious. They are riding in their car. The mother, Joy (Patricia Clarkson), advises she can only think of a single nice memory throughout the course of her whole life involving April. She tells it: "She was about three or four, and she was sitting at the window, and she turned to me and said, 'Oh, mother, don't you just love every day?'" The daughter in the backseat, Beth (Allison Pill), makes a curious face and says, "That was me."

At this revelation, Joy loses it. She forces her husband, Jim (Oliver Platt), to stop the car and she hops out. Jim follows. Joy rants and raves about the horrendous time that was April's childhood and how disturbing it is that she does not have even one pleasant memory of her oldest daughter and can't bear the thought of actually carrying out this trip. Jim takes hold of her and states, "That's the whole point of going. We're making a memory."

The memory is so peculiar, so powerful. It remembers what it wants in the way that it wants and will revise and eliminate without discretion. As you get older lines can blur and the most unpleasant part of moments in the past are erased. Yet, this phenomenon does not just happen as you advance in age. Often you find yourself editing as the moment unfolds before you to make certain you retain only what you want.

What is it about the Thanksgiving holiday that makes for so many films about dysfunction. Sarah Vowell has written: "It is curious that we Americans have a holiday that’s all about people who left their homes for a life of their own choosing, that was different from their parents’ lives. And how do we celebrate it? By hanging out with our parents!" Fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters become determined to make this rare get-together perfect. Obviously, there are well-adjusted, balanced families who also celebrate this day but they are not as interesting. The Burns Family of writer/director Peter Hedges' "Pieces of April" is. April is determined to prepare this feast. Her dad is determined to get her family there for the feast and to enjoy it once they do. April's boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) is determined to finish a task of his own he won't reveal to her. Beth seems determined to ensure the entire enterprise ends in failure.

Everyone endures their own various forms of hardship. Helplessly chopping at onions and peeling potatoes, April is no expert chef (I have yet to be master of ceremonies at a Thanksgiving but, rest assured, when the day comes my attempt to stuff the turkey will end up a lot like April's) but things take an even greater turn for the worse when her oven stops working. The holiday meal in peril she turns to her neighbors for help. First, an older married couple (Lillias White and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and a wacko with a new stove (Sean Hayes, in a performance I must admit I did not care for).

Meanwhile, out on the road, April's family encounters a dead squirrel and deals with a grandmother who is there but not really and gorges on a meal of donuts in fear of what culinary surprises await them at their ultimate destination. And then there is the biggest misfortune of all, the one hovering over the entire film - Joy has cancer and this may very well be her final Thanksgiving, her final chance to connect with April.

This could have been the film's gigantic misstep. A saccharine disease movie with Joy made out to be a saint as she and daughter hold hands at the end and all is forgotten. But writing of Hedges and, most especially, the acting by Clarkson (she was rightfully nominated for an Oscar) prevent this from happening. Yes, she lives every day with disease but of this fact she does not want to be reminded, as she is in the opening when every family member too-cheerily greets her with a "How are you feeling?" She is embittered, partially by the cancer, sure, but we also get glimpses that it might have been more than just April who caused their relationship to go off the rails. Joy compliments Beth while simultaneously sleighting her. She smokes pot with her son, Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.) to ease the pain and her following treatise on the pleasures of fictional rap icon Smack Daddy is at once humorous and load-bearing.

Joy: "He doesn't care that I'm old and sick and falling apart. He sees my soul. He's not fickle. He's there for me."
Beth: "Like dad?"
Joy: "Well, your father can't sing."

This is an exemplary writing. It is unique and could work on its own but it also comments on their marriage without explicitly saying so. The movie is packed with that type of dialogue and provides each character a specific voice, even the secondary players. The husband and wife who initially offer April the services of their oven seem to communicate with the real rhythms of a couple that have been married a long time. Additionally, Hedges is very in tune with the pattern of words people tend to use. Notice at the start when Jim cannot find Joy and bursts into Timmy's bedroom, asking "Do you know where she is?" Timmy replies, "I don't know." Pause. "Who?"

In the title role Katie Holmes too offers a solid performance. Her usual sunny persona fits in perfectly. Yes, she's got the colored hair, and the tornado-sky eyeshadow, and the tattoos, and the snakeskin boots, but she's still a girl from upstate. An upstate punk. It's why when she is searching for someone with an oven to assist that guy and girl with the black clothes and guitar cases won't help. They see through her facade.

Derek Luke plays a key role since one gets an overt sense he is a good fit for April and might be the one to have prompted this family get-together in the first place. He makes her get up and makes her take a shower and makes her start the meal. He is so upbeat about the situation that even a violent altercation on the street with April's ex cannot dim his enthusiam. When he leaves the apartment on his errand she catches him trimming the front door. "They don't deserve decorations," she says. "Yeah, but you do," he replies. All this makes it unfortunate that the film's one flaw - aside from Hayes' strange turn - is Bobby's small sidestory. In reality, he has gone out to acquire some nice clothes to make himself that much more presentable to her family. It's a sweet touch that deepens the character. Except as presented to us we're slightly tricked into thinking it might be a drug deal, or something of the sort. There was no reason for the misdirection. And the fight on the street leads to a truly awful moment where Bobby fits a crude stereotype as he greets April's unwitting family and seems to drive them away.

It's unecessary not just because it's crude but because her family seeing the apartment's unwelcoming exterior and their brief encounter with the thugs who have just beaten up Bobby would work well enough to serve as the means to cause their flight. It doesn't fatally damage the film because it isn't vital but it's an unfortunate development in an otherwise brilliant movie.

The finale left many critics dissatisfied. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon called it "rushed and a little tough to buy." I disagree with those critics. I felt the end was the film's highlight and could not and should not have been done another way because to belabor its point would have rendered it less effective.

At the beginning it is established Timmy is the photographer of the family and he has been documenting Joy's last days. Beth wonders why he has to bring his camera to April's. Joy deadpans, "So I can always remember this day." The moment at the end when mother and daughter re-unite and then when the rest of the family arrives is done in montage as if it were a series of photographs. There is one brief image of Oliver Platt standing with his arm around Katie Holmes. You so often see actors and actresses playing family members and maybe there is a passing resemblance but it so often fails to feel truly authentic. But, despite not sharing any other scenes together, in that moment they look like a real father and daughter. His eyes seem to say "Wow, she pulled this off" and her eyes seem to say "Wow, I pulled this off". It absolutely wrecks me.

You watch this sequence and you know it won't solve everything. All the rifts have not been patched up and they will all have to go through the unavoidable loss of Joy but it's okay because right now, at this moment, they can edit all that out. They've made a memory.

Marty

Upon watching "Marty", the Oscar winner for Best Picture in 1955, and #5 on my list of Twelve Movies I Need To See, in which a lonely butcher (Ernest Borgnine, who won the Oscar for Best Actor) who still lives with his mother, happens to a meet a just-as-lonely schoolteacher named Clara (Betsy Blair) as they take the tentative first step toward a possible romance, I realized this film needed to be re-made right away. So no sooner did I mail the DVD back to Netflix than I was on the phone with an exec from Paramount pitching my idea.

The exec (he asked me not to give his name) liked the idea but decided a few changes were in order before giving it the proverbial green light.

1.) He instantly decided the remake needed someone more comically inclined to play the lead, allowing for more wacky hijinks to ensue. "Wacky hijinks?" I asked, slightly taken aback. But the exec ignored me and declared, "Kevin James it is! He's a lovable schlub, but a slap-sticky schlub."

2.) While the exec stressed he "appreciated" Betsy Blair's performance in the original, he decided a more "glamorous" actress was necessary to portray Clara. "Well-" I started, only to be cut off by the exec bellowing "Reese Witherspoon! We'll put her in some frumpy clothes, maybe a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, but because she'll still look like Reese Witherspoon it won't hurt the box office." This time I couldn't even manage one word because the exec was already saying....

3.) "We need someone capable of producing more laughs for Marty's mother. You know, to play off Kevin James." "More laughs?" I asked, my neck cramping. After a brief debate the exec decided on Elaine Stritch (who plays Alec Baldwin's mother on "30 Rock"). "Perfect!" I said, finally a little relieved. "She was raised a Catholic which means she'll be able to really get a hold on the film's addressing of Catholicism." "Catholocism?!" thundered the exec. "No, no, no, we're completely cutting the religious angle. In fact, the Sunday morning in the film when everyone's getting set to go to mass, we're changing mass to brunch." "That just seems...." I trailed off, leaving the exec a window to climb through and continue.

4.) The exec saw "what they were going for" in the scene where Clara's blind date at the ballroom offers Marty five dollars to pose as an old army buddy and take her off his hands only to have Marty turn the jerk down and then approach Clara after the blind date pays another guy to do the same thing but decided it would be more "humorous" if in the remake Marty agrees to pose as the old army buddy and falls in love with Clara that way. "Then, " explained the exec, "we have the zany misunderstanding angle to play off of! When Clara meets Marty's best friend, Angie, he can have Angie pretend to have been in the navy, too, except, of course, Angie accidentally spills the beans which could drive Clara away and then lead Marty to have to win back her hand." "Isn't the zany misunderstanding angle a little overdone?" I asked. But the exec was already thinking about how....

5.) He wants to change the ballroom location to a swank club instead. He plans to cast Paul Ruud as Angie and he can introduce Marty to the world of club-hopping. "That way", the exec told me, "we can work in a Fergie cameo." Bewildered, I cried out, "A Fergie cameo?!" But the exec had already moved on to...

6.) The end, when Marty simply decides to call Clara on the phone over the objections of his mother and friends. "It won't cut it," the exec decided. He wants Marty to run through the streets (preferably during a rainstorm) to her house and declare his love from the porch. After all, the remake has to end with the money shot - a lover's embrace. And while Marty's running the exec plans to put Fergie on the soundtrack. A cover of Tom Petty's "Running Down A Dream". "Running Down A Dream?" I repeated, my head spinning. "Sure," said the exec. "Marty's running down his dream? Get it?" At that point I threw my phone into a nearby ravine, but it was too late. The next morning I saw the "Marty" remake was a go picture.

And all of this is to say that I greatly enjoyed "Marty". I enjoyed it because it felt very real. The ebbs and flows of the movie seemed based on the characters themselves not what the moviemakers were telling them to do. Which means that all of this is also to say a movie like "Marty" is probably never going to be made in Hollywood ever again.

Quantum of Solace

I broke one of my own rules and read the reviews of my three favorite reviewers before seeing the lastest installment in the never-ending James Bond franchise. It's a Bond movie, I thought, what could they really give away? As it turns out, quite a bit, because all three (read them here, here and here) struck the same exact chord - namely, who is this new Bond and what happened to the old Bond?

I understand my wants in these movies may be different from others and I understand rebooting these long-running franchises is all the rage and I understand people want dark, brooding heroes to go with these dark, brooding times and I understand the original Ian Fleming books portrayed Bond as being a much more dark guy than the movies tend to but it seems to me that they were what they were for so long for a reason. Am I wrong?

I briefly pondered not even seeing "Quantum of Solace" after these reviews but then I realized that was all wrong. I should look at this information as a blessing in disguise. Okay, so he's not the Bond I want. So what? "Quantum of Solace" wanted to be an action movie with a guy who just happened to be James Bond as the main character. Fair enough. Now that I already had my bias out of the way I could watch the movie for what it was and what it wanted to be and judge it on that all alone.

Which is why after all this build-up I'm afraid to report "Quantum of Solace" is not much of an action movie. Oh, there's a ton of action, but none of it is very thrilling. Director Marc Forster is a man with some hard-hitting credits to his name ("Monster's Ball", "Finding Neverland") but it seems this genre is not his - to quote a parody of 007 we all know - "bag, baby". It seems he prepped for the film by watching Paul Greengrass's two "Bourne" movies over and over and over and over. The camera takes herky jerky to a new level. I don't mind the hand-held, potentially vomit-inducing camera (roller coasters make me puke, but not hand-held camera - go figure) action but you can't use it solely to confuse us.

The camera wobbles all over the place in "The Bourne Supremacy" but what is so amazing is that you're never confused. I mean, the pace of that movie is relentless but as it goes along you understand what's going on, who's who, who's doing what, why they're doing it, where they're going, etc. etc. etc. "Quantum of Solace" is just moving the camera wildly in a futile effort to disguise a great deal of insipid CGI.

As I left the theater I thought about what one action sequence from the movies I've seen this year that I enjoyed the most, and you know what scene popped to the forefront? The bank robbery at the start of "The Dark Knight". I loved that scene. But then as I thought about it I realized it's not truly an action sequence, per se. There are gunshots but there is not endless exchange of gunfire. No fighting and punching. No leaping across yawning chasms and running away from something seconds before it explodes. I liked that scene because of how it was put together. It's beautiful, well-crafted filmmaking. "Quantam of Solace" is the exact opposite. It's loud and just a huge, sprawling mess.

It's a lot like every other so-so action movie we get week after week. The Bond movies used to stand out because they had Bond. James Bond. The last exchange of the film between "M" (Judi Dench) and Bond is telling. She says, "We need you back." And he says, "I never left."

Is he sure about that?

(Extra Note to Bond Producers: Alicia Keys is not Kylie Minogue. Remember that next time.)

Why Claire Forlani Should Be A Bond Girl

I'll never be placed in charge of the Bond Franchise, and, for the most part, that's probably a good idea. It's the same reason I should not be placed in charge of the Batman Franchise, which is to say I'd cast Billy Dee Williams as the Caped Crusader my first day on the job. Ninety six percent of the world would hate me, despise me, send me death threats. But there would be four percent - come on, you know it - who would embrace my "unique" vision and make it their own personal cult classic, especially after they learn I'd also cast Pam Grier as Catwoman. (Further Note: My "Batman" movie would offer no standard action sequences. Either the scene would start immediately after the action had finished or the instant before the action started we would do a wipe pan and cut directly to after the action had finished. I mean, what studio wouldn't want to back this?) But I'm digressing before I've even really started.

If I were given the keys to the car that is James Bond my top priority would be to cast Claire Forlani as the primary Bond Girl. No doubt this would raise a great deal of eyebrows considering that Ms. Forlani has never been noted that often (if at all) for her acting skills. She's a beautiful woman, of course, but many women in the biz are beautiful. Her roles, meanwhile, are not what one would term A-List. You might recall her from that movie she was in with Freddie Prinze Jr. or that computer movie she was in where Tim Robbins was a bad guy or "The Rock" in which she appeared briefly as Sean Connery's daughter, earning her the prize of delivering the immortal lines, "I don't think we should romanticize what happened between you and her. Meeting in a bar after a Led Zeppelin concert. And I was the result." Better yet, you probably don't recall her from any of those. And you shouldn't. (Of course, one could argue that maybe she was born to play a Bond Girl since she played Sean Connery's daughter but that sounds like a session in therapy so let's just stay away from it, shall we?)

So why am I saying a woman from a Freddie Prinze Jr. movie should be a Bond Girl? Well, I came to the realization when I first saw her co-starring role in that movie where Brad Pitt played Death-come-to-earth "Meet Joe Black". Awful movie. I worked at the movie theater then as a manger and one managerial duty was to screen new movies before they opened to make sure all the reels had been put together properly. It sounds like a good gig and sometimes it was since sometimes you had a full theater of people having a good time at a great movie. But sometimes it was just you and one other manager. And sometimes no one else wanted to watch it and so you found yourself staying up until nearly three in the morning all by yourself in an empty theater watching "Meet Joe Black" and wishing Death would hop off the screen and whisk you away. (Why was that movie so long? What studio exec let them get away with that running time?)

The one good thing about the film was very obvious and is essentially all that kept me from falling asleep or strangling myself with the film in the projection room and it was this: Claire Forlani's eyes. Her eyes ravished me. You know how Halle Berry's eyes in "X Men" glowed when she did whatever it was she did? Claire Forlani's eyes do that but without the aid of special effects. Her eyes can manage the same trick as Angelina Jolie's lips - stand out in a movie despite all the dreck surrounding them.

A Bond Girl isn't necessarily required to be a great actress. After all, you're not really acting. What you're doing is three-fold. 1.) Trading drolleries with the star, which can, and almost should, be spoken in precisely the same tone throughout the film's running time. 2.) Looking sultry. 3.) Matching up to Bond himself.

There's one thing you can say with certainty about 007 and I'm not talking about his affinity for martinis or his perilous feats. No, I'm talking about the look he gets (at least the look Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig get) when they meet the Bond Girl for the first time. They size her up in an instant. His eyes give away the fact that he's not in need a of a dossier on her whole life story since he already has her figured out. A Bond Girl has to be able to match this look. She has to size him up while he's simultaneously sizing her up and indicate she doesn't have to stand for his s--- even though she might very well choose to do so. (The first scene in "Casino Royale" between Craig and Bond Girl Eva Green explicity references all of this.) If it doesn't appear that she too can look at him once and glean his history in a blink of her eyes the whole enterprise is for naught. Forlani's eyes can sell that quality. If they put her in a room with a high ranking Al Queda official her eyes would allow us to gain knowledge of Bin Laden's exact whereabouts in seconds and if they put her opposite whoever 007 may happen to be she would be able to unearth his essence even quicker.

I'm not saying Claire Forlani was meant to play someone like, say, Lady Macbeth but I think if she was a Bond Girl she might make a few people think she was made to play someone like Lady Macbeth. On second thought, maybe she could play Lady Macbeth. You're telling me you wouldn't go around killing everybody in Scotland if she told you to and then looked at you with those eyes?

Recently Seen Trailers

Brief thoughts & feelings on a few previews I've seen:

* "Four Christmases". I said in my fall preview that I really wanted to see this rom-com with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. Except the trailer makes it look...uh...well...not so good. But I'll still plunk down my hard-earned money to see it in fear of knowing that it was a bad decision and that I knew it would be a bad decision and then I'll wonder why I still made the decision when I knew it would be a bad decision and told myself I'd wonder why I made the decision when it would be a bad decision and then I'll wonder that if I knew it and told myself I knew it and that if....oh, why do I do these things to myself?

* "Doubt". Based on his own play, John Patrick Shanley's film stars Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffmann and Amy Adams in a story about a nun accusing a priest of abusing a student. There's always the fear movies based on plays can be a bit too stagy and, who knows, that may end up being the case but the preview sure makes it look like the three leads have got it goin' on.

* "Australia". I said this one had my name written all over it. Well, after seeing the preview I can safely say my name is not just written on it. My name is woven deep, deep into the fabric of this one.

* "Valkyrie". Seeing the trailer for this one in which Tom Cruise plays the man out to assassinate Hitler brought to mind "Dirty Dancing". Bear with me, I'll explain. "Dirty Dancing" was, of course, set in the 60's and, yet, during the "climactic" dance number between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey what song is playing? "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life." And all you can think is - yeah, I know this movie is in the 60's, and I know I need to suspend disbelief, but, man, this is sooooooo an 80's song.

Tom Cruise looks in "Valkyrie" how "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life" sounds in "Dirty Dancing". It's just not right, man.

* "Bride Wars". Kate Hudson stars in a movie about two brides who are set to have their weddings on the same day and are none too happy about it. The other bride is played by (massive gulp) Anne Hathaway. I understand this was done prior to the release of "Rachel Getting Married" but please, Anne, for God's sake, I beg you, don't be the next Kate Hudson. Don't be the next Kate Hudson.

* "Revolutionary Road". Remember that list I made of the four movies I'd hyped the most all-time in my mind? Well, after the preview I saw this one becomes #5.

Changeling

When it comes to Clint Eastwood the director it is all about the script. I realized this watching his latest effort, "Changeling", based on the true story of a woman in the 20's, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), whose young son disappears. His directorial style is famous among movie buffs. It is spare, lean, and economical. If he has a great script from which to work this fact serves him well. He doesn't overstuff his film with directory flourishes to show us what a genius he is and simply lets the actors and the writing convey the emotion. (See: "Million Dollar Baby", "Unforgiven".) However, if you give him a subpar script, or a by the numbers script, this fact hampers him and that is exactly what happens with "Changeling". Yes, Eastwood the director can certainly set up a shot and he always employs lighting very well but he is unable to use his camera to get across the emotion. He simply can't do it.

It suffers from the same fate as his recent "Flags of our Fathers". It is what I like to call Fifth Grade Play Syndrome. In fifth grade plays darn near every kid has a part and all the parents show up to see their kid and so the director has to ensure he ushers every kid out there for at least one scene but because the director doubles as the fifth grade choir director and hates his job he doesn't care if the play is any good and all that matters is getting every frickin' kid out there at some point to let his folks take a few pictures.

"Changeling" and "Flags of our Fathers" have numerous characters and in both of them it seems as if Eastwood is just ushering characters on and off the stage with no real thought to how they feel or what they are doing. "Okay, Timmy, it's your scene now. Get out there. Okay. Good. Done. Now get back here. Jimmy? Jimmy, it's your turn. Get out there." I pull up my review of "Flags of our Fathers" and see I termed it like watching a "documentary on the History Channel with higher production values".

I don't want it to seem that I'm unsympathetic. The real-life stories of both Christine Collins and the soldiers at Iwo Jima are serious matters but once you choose to commit these tales to film you have to make them dramatic in order to honorably pay tribute. Simply trotting out the information piece-by-piece with no regard to how you are doing it does not make for a dramatic film and hinders our empathy for these people who really existed and really had to go through these horrible events.

Watch "Changeling" and the compare it to, say, David Fincher's "Zodiac" or Curtis Hanson's "L.A. Confidential" (just stop this one when it "ends"). You will notice the difference. In the latter films, whether based on fact or fiction, the directors are able to take sprawling stories with large casts and make them very real and very immediate.

The first half-hour or so of "Changeling" is actually quite involving and, to no surprise, primarily focuses on Christine Collins (Jolie is solid in the role) as we meet her and her son Walter and then watch as Walter goes missing and then the police find her son except we don't really know if it's her son or not and we're not sure if the police are on her side or not or if she really is losing her mind. In these sequences Eastwood's style pays off. He doesn't hint one way or another and we find ourselves being drawn into her plight, wondering who is right. But then the movie brings in more corrupt cops and mean doctors and crazy lunatics at a psych ward and serial killers and lawyers and a crusading priest (John Malkovich) and it stops being a movie and becomes a re-enactment. An re-enactment with high production values.

(Postscript: I did not want to haphazardly insert the following into my review but it is important to mention my current Actress-Of-The-Moment Amy Ryan turns up in a tiny supporting part as Jolie's Best Friend In The Psych Ward. She exists for two reasons only: 1.) Exposition and 2.) Helping Jolie's character to stand up the tyranny of the evil psych ward doctor. Or, to say it another way, Ryan is really not playing a character. Yet it must be said that she does what she can with it and really sells her most important line but, for God's sake, can someone give this woman a main role? In a world where Jessica Simpson gets to play leads is that so much to ask?)

Synecdoche, New York

This will not be a review of a acclaimed writer Charlie Kaufman's ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Being John Malkovich") directorial debut. I will not indicate that Phillip Seymour Hoffmann portrays a theater director in New York and is dying, or maybe just thinks he is dying, and earns a lucrative grant that allows him to stage a play of cosmically epic proportions because none of that really indicates anything, belive me. Instead of reviewing the movie I'm simply taking this opportunity to order you to see it and I don't wish to ruin your experience while you carry out my order.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not recommending that you see it, or suggesting you see it, or advising it might be a good idea next Friday night to see it. I'm ordering you to see it. Are we clear? As of this exact moment you are without choice. You will see "Synecdoche, New York". I know this is an extreme leap of faith but you have to trust that you will understand when you are in the theater since, as stated, you have no alternative.

Now I also don't want you to get confused and think I'm giving this order because "Synecdoche, New York" is the Best Movie of the Year. I don't think it is. In fact, I'm not even sure if I liked it. Well, maybe I did. I think. But possibly not. Yet, who the hell cares? It doesn't matter. Like and dislike is a useless term in the face of this movie. All it must be is seen. There has never been a movie like it. You sometimes leave a movie and want to let it gestate for a few hours before you decide what you thought of it. Sometimes you want to let it gestate for a few days, a few weeks. You will want to let "Synecdoche, New York" gestate until you have kids and they have kids. We all wondered what Kaufman would do when given complete control over a film rather than just the screenplay and here we have our answer. My God in heaven, do we have an answer.

So go see it. Like I said, that's an order.

Which Last of the Mohicans Character Are You?

So yesterday my friend Nicolle advised me her brother had watched "Last of the Mohicans" and indicated he saw himself as Hawkeye, the Daniel Day Lewis character. Naturally, this made me happy. Anyone who compares themselves to a "Last of the Mohicans" character is a friend of mine. I then, as I must, got to thinking. I wonder what character from "Last of the Mohicans" everyone would be?

Soon I realized there is no one alive more qualified to determine this than me. So I wasted no time inventing a brief quiz meant to answer this question. Take a few minutes of your life to pour over the quiz below and soon you too will know precisely which "Last of the Mohicans" character you are.

What "Last of the Mohicans" Charact… » Free Online Quizzes

Zack and Miri Make A Porno

So based solely on the above title of writer/director Kevin Smith's film one is left with three obvious questions. 1.) Do Zack and Miri really make a porno? 2.) If so, why do they make it? 3.) And if so, is making a porno really all they do?

To answer the initial query, yes, Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) really do make a porno. I cannot stress this enough. There is gratituous nudity. A lot of gratuitous nudity. And because it is, as stated, a Kevin Smith film ("Clerks", "Mallrats") there is even more gratuitous language than gratuitous nudity. There is enough gratuitous language here to fill every ship in the navy. It comes in waves, giant, monsoon season waves of cursing. And there is a visual gag that is so disgusting I won't even attempt a metaphor because no metaphor could accurately convey how awful it is.

Okay, so they make a porno. But why are they making it? Well, they're making it because platonic friends since first grade Zack and Miri who are now roommates are low on funds and, thus, their electricity and water is shut off the night before Thanksgiving. However, a recent trip to their high school class reunion afforded them the opportunity to meet a Hollywood porn actor (Justin Long) who speaks glowingly of the business's financial windfall and since Zack and Miri have just become internet sensations due to unfortunate and gratuitous circumstances they hit on the idea to make a porno film and reap the rewards. They enlist, among a couple others, Kevin Smith utility-man Jason Mewes (Jay of Jay & Silent Bob, who I admit to not recognizing until he finally put on a stocking cap), real-life porn stars Traci Lords and Katie Morgan (who, and this might just be me, had a speech pattern eerily similar to Jane Krakowski's on "30 Rock") and Craig Robinson who as Delaney, Zack's co-worker at a coffee shop, becomes producer of the porno and darn near steals the real movie.

Robinson is the warehouse manager on "The Office" and you get glimpses of his brilliance - that dry, extremely deadpan delivery of his - and here he shows just how hilarious he can be with more screen time. He is saddled with a wife who is mentioned again and again as being crudely awful and because Smith hides her until the end she takes on an almost mythic quality. When she is revealed, Robinson's line to close out the scene is perfectly delivered. It will make you want to cheer. I almost applauded it.

In the end, however, the movie turns out to be a little bit more than just a backstage story. The structure follows that of a traditional romantic-comedy fairly faithfully. In the third act it even turns into what the esteemed Roger Ebert has coined as being the Idiot Plot, wherein if one character just said one thing than everything everyone goes through wouldn't be necessary. Boy and Girl who like each other slowly come to realize they love each other except just when they are about to reveal their love something in the screenplay stops them and then other entanglements arise that prevent this reveal and then Boy and Girl get mad at each other and break apart and....I hope I haven't given away too much! But the beauty is found in the fact that amidst the Idiot Plot and the sea of all the gratutiousness the movie against all odds really does turn out to have a heart and to make you root for the two leads.

A lot of articles prior to its release made the comparison between "Zack and Miri" and the many recent films of Judd Apatow ("The 40 Year Old Virgin", "Knocked Up") but I will go on record as saying that while I may not have laughed as hard and consistently as I did at some Apatow films I actually found "Zack and Miri" more moving. I truly did. I really enjoyed this movie.

It takes its time to set us up for the sequence (set to "Lift Me Up" by Live, and I don't even like Live!) in which the two platonic friends finally are forced to have sex for the sake of the porno and it is pure and affecting in a way a great deal of "serious" movies aren't, even as the rest of the movie crew stands off to the side watching. Allow me to summarize things by being Movie Review Quote Guy because I just can't help it.

The scene in "Zack and Miri Make A Porno" in which Zack and Miri finally have sex is the most luminously romantic three-and-a-half minutes of the entire year! Guaranteed!

Happy Go Lucky

There is a certain type of character familiar in movies. The person nearly glows with happiness. They are kind to a fault, endlessly talkative in the nicest of ways, relentlessly outgoing, positively beaming with earnestness, yet as the movie progresses you see this person is using so much happiness to shroud a sadness or some sort of painful memory. (Think: Amy Adams in "Junebug".) But Poppy (Sally Hawkins), the heroine of Mike Leigh's new film, does not match this stereotype. Oh, she's happy. And giddy. And talkative. But she's not trying to pull over anything on anyone. She says she loves her life, and you believe it.

The first scenes lay the groundwork for what will follow. Poppy rides her bike into town and stops in a bookstore. She tries to make chit-chat with the shop's lone employee. He is not receptive. She scans the shelves, all the while trying to get this unsmiling guy to open up. "Are you having a bad day?" she asks. "No," he replies, simply. He is almost stunned by a person who can be in such a genuinely good mood, and she wants everyone to do their best to feel like her.

Leigh's film does not employ a conventional arc so much as it offers recurring vignettes. Poppy hangs out with her roommate and sister (both decidedly not as all-the-time bubbly as she). She is a grade-school teacher and has to deal with a young boy who starts bullying classmates. She attends a flamenco dancing class with a friend. And, most importantly, after her bike is stolen (note her reaction to said event and then think about how you would react in a similar circumstance) she is forced to learn how to drive and takes lessons from an instructor (Eddie Marsan) who, of course, is Poppy's polar opposite. He is a paranoid, eternally irritated man, the sort who when he yells transforms into a tsunami of spit and constantly has to remind her "I'm a very good instructor" probably because he needs to remind himself. Her scenes with him in the car are like watching the Happy Police in the interrogation room trying to break down the Bitter Suspect's wall of armor.

If this film had been made in America there would have been gigantic cue cards in the story, meaning Poppy would have begun the movie as a Happy Person only to have Something Bad occur in the middle which causes her to become a Sad Person only to Rebound in the third act and become a Happy Person once again. Alas, this is an English film and Leigh does not play by the same rules. There is a transformation to Poppy that finds the perfect middle ground and, yes, maybe you can see it coming but I don't attend movies to play the guess-ahead-game. I let them absorb me. I was absorbed.

I could have done without the final scene. It does not fundamentally change the outcome and therefore cannot ruin the movie itself but it says out loud what the short scene preluding it did solely through Hawkins' marvelous body language. She is earning a lot of acclaim for this role (I remember noting to myself that she was the best thing in Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream" in a supporting role as Colin Farrell's significant other) and it is deserved. Nearly every line of dialogue she speaks is followed with some sort of winning mixture of a laugh/chuckle/snort. She's so pleased every hour of every day she just can't help herself.

She's why the uneccesary final scene didn't bother me too much. Her happy go lucky interrogation wore me down. I confess.

Recently it seems that earnestness has almost become a negative trait in our society. The word painful often precedes the word earnestness in sentences. I cannot even begin to understand this sentiment. What, would we prefer people to be fake? I just wish anyone who uses the phrase "painfully earnest" could spend a few hours in the car with Poppy.

How I Feel

The following is an essay written by Sarah Vowell titled "Vindictively American", posted here in its entirety, included in her book "Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World".

My friend Esther Blaauw and I were watching the Acht Uur Journaal - Holland’s eight o’clock television news. Emphasis on “watching.” After three months at the University of Leiden, in April 1992, my Dutch vocabulary hadn’t progressed much past koffie, bier, and “My name is Sarah, how are you,” words and phrases which didn’t get much broadcast journalism airplay. The screen flashed pictures of buildings on fire. The newscaster said, “Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Los Angeles Dutch Dutch.” I absentmindedly sighed, “Fires in southern California, what else is new?” But Esther turned her gaze from the TV set to stare at me. “What?” I asked, just as the newscaster said, “Dutch Dutch Dutch Rodney King.”

Esther explained that a jury in Los Angeles had acquitted the four police officers accused of beating Rodney King. That surprised me, having seen the video. “Now,” she said, “the whole city is on fire.” That did not surprise me, having seen the video. Four people were dead from the mayhem. I stared at the smoky pictures. But Esther watched me, glaring at my hands accusingly, as if I could throw a brick through a shop window ten thousand miles away. She told me, only half joking, “Of course you’re not going back there.”

“Back where?” I asked.

“America.” It sounded like a dirty word.

“I don’t live in America,” I said. “I live in Montana.” I smirked a little, thinking of my hometown, in which the police report tends to consist of cute items like somebody walking past The Paint Pot on Main Street called in to say they noticed through the window that a coffeemaker had been left on. Not exactly Florence and Normandie.

Still, Esther wouldn’t drop it. “Why would you ever want to go back there?” she scowled, waving at the TV, where a palm tree was in flames.

“Because it’s huge” was the only thing I could come up with.

I wished that I could describe the hugeness. That it wasn’t just a huge mess. I wanted to tell Esther about the Montana sky and how it’s so gigantic that Montana is called Big Sky Country and how I missed it so much I pretended that behind the constant Dutch ceiling of clouds there was a big range of mountains with snow way up top. I wanted to tell her that even though I liked being twenty minutes away from Amsterdam, I was the kind of person who will sit in a car for the thirteen hour drive to Seattle - for Esther the equivalent of driving to Greece - just to see a band I like. I wanted to tell her that every time I meet her for some dinky thimbleful of coffee in the student union I daydream about big steaming diner cups and so many free refills you can’t help but talk real fast.

I wanted to tell her that looking at those riots on TV was digging a hole inside me and could she try and understand. But I ran out of there. I didn’t have the heart to try and explain why my lunatic homeland was going up in smoke to a resident of that sane little country whose craziest cultural brouhaha had been the great tulip mania of 1636. I jumped on my little bike and rode through the little town past a couple of little windmills. I went up to my little room and fell to pieces.

I finally fell asleep after listening to a Beach Boys song about twenty-nine times on my Walkman - “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Wouldn’t it be nice if four people weren’t dead because four other people mauled their fellow citizen with billy clubs, over and over and over again? Wouldn’t it be nice if all those men and women weren’t running onto freeways and shooting guns in the air and shooting guns at each other and looting TV sets out of stores and being teargassed and terrorized and slain? Wouldn’t it be nice if that truck driver wasn’t lying in some hospital bed barely hanging on because a mob tore him out of his truck and attacked him en masse? Justice, wouldn’t that be nice? I guess I needed to hear towheaded California boys singing something so beautiful and so sappy as “Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true.” The song ends “Sleep tight my baby,” I kept rewinding that part.

Wasn’t that why I was in Holland anyway, to get some rest, to take a break from the chaos? It just so happened I decided to leave the country during the Gulf War, an action I didn’t understand then and don’t understand much better now called for by a president I did not vote for once and would not vote for again. Studying abroad required a lengthy application process. I remember the exchange program office organized a seminar on anti-American sentiment a few weeks after smart bombs were dropping into Iraq. We had to sit in a circle and they asked each one of us, “What would you do if you were abroad and some foreigners came up to you and expressed anti-American sentiment?”

“Agree with them,” I said.

I think I wrote on my exchange program application that I wanted to study in the Netherlands to do research on the paintings of Piet Mondrian, but I didn’t say why the paintings of Piet Mondrian appealed to me. Those painting were clean little grids, immaculate white rectangles and perfect black lines brightened by cheerful, childlike squares of red, yellow, and blue. They symbolized a real kinder, gentler country - Holland - a place of universal health care, efficient public transportation, a well-educated citizenry, and merry villages crammed with bicycles and flowers and canals. I wanted out of the huge Jackson Pollack canvas that is the USA, vast, murky, splotched, and slapped together by a drunk.

I got to do my Mondrian research all right, but when I showed up in Leiden I was told the art history courses I came to take “happened last semester.” Not speaking Dutch, in order to stay - and keep my financial aid - I had to sign up for some random classes in the languages I do speak, English and French. The low point was registering for a literature course called Vision on America During the ‘80s. Great. Like I crossed the Atlantic to pay nineteen dollars for a Jay McInerney paperback. I came all this way to the land of bread-for-breakfast for the grand purpose of explaining to my classmate that this thing called Count Chocula in Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland is a chocolate-flavored cereal with a vampire theme. Luckily, I loved the teacher, Professor d’Haen, who glowed a little when recalling his student days in some - to him - romantic place like Ohio or Pennsylvania.

Just before the riots we’d read Don Delillo’s White Noise from 1985, a book I had liked mainly because a character in it had a thing for Elvis. But the morning after I heard about Los Angeles, I dove into that book as a talisman of truth, rereading it in a single sitting, eerily noticing the claim that “we need catastrophe” and that “this is where California comes in.” I relived its “airborne toxic event,” its insistence that “all plots tend to move deathward,” its fixation on a thousand cheap American details - the supermarket shelves and the cars we drive and the food we eat in the cars we drive.

And I wept. I tossed all my Mondrian books on the floor and hugged that apocalyptic American novel to my chest and rocked back and forth, missing all of it, death and Elvis and California and catastrophe. I wanted Jackson Pollack. And I wanted to go home. I got on my bike and rode to McDonald’s and read the book again, smearing its pages with fries.

Post-Halloween Fright

So with Election Day hovering on the horizon I had typed up a post listing all the Things I Hate About Movies since, you know, by this point in the political process I'm so sick and tired of the whole damn thing my body literally aches for it to be over.

However, one of the items on my list was the fact that Hitchock's "Notorious", one of the finest films ever made and containing arguably Ingrid Bergman's greatest performance, had not been re-released on DVD in some time. The most recent re-release had been the Criterion Collection version of it back in 2001, but I hadn't seen the movie at that time and it is has long since been out of print (I know because I've checked about once a month for at least three years).

As I readied myself to publish the post I thought that maybe I should make my monthly check just to see if maybe by some strange miracle "Notorious" had been re-released recently so I didn't, you know, look like a moron when someone read what I wrote and pointed this out to me.

Lo and frickin' behold, it WAS re-released!!! A mere three weeks ago!!! Are you kidding me??? (I swear this all happened just like I'm saying it did.)

Of course, this means that I must refrain from publishing that post about things I hate. What, you think I'm gonna' piss off the movie gods now?