In Memoriam: Arthur Penn, Thank You

"'Bonnie and Clyde' is a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life." - Roger Ebert

Arthur Penn, who passed away late Tuesday at the age of 88, directed many movies but one stands above the rest. A direct descendant of the French New Wave but without all the overt artiness, "Bonnie and Clyde" was upon its release in 1967 quite possibly the most revolutionary, most game-changing movie America had ever seen, so much so that it was unrelentingly trashed by film critics (aside from the esteemed Roger Ebert) likely because it wasn't exactly what they expected before they reversed course in droves upon realizing that what they were actually seeing was essentially the Sun Sessions of the cinema. "Bonnie and Clyde" - to quote Jason Lee in "Almost Famous" - is/was a movie that says: "Here I am, and fuck you if you can't understand me."

If possible you want a film that opens with a scene, a line, an image that encapsulates the ride the audience is about to take and it is difficult to argue there was ever a more powerful image at a movie's open than Faye Dunaway as young Bonnie Parker (in a shot admittedly lifted from "Band Of Outsiders" but used to greater effect) holding her celestial face up to the bars of her bed to emulate a life that while technically outside them is behind them nontheless.

From that instant you are with Bonnie, you are on her side, you two are a team even when Warren Beatty's Clyde Barrow turns up just a couple fingersnaps later to form the real team because who among us hasn't at least once - probably two thousand times more - woken up and wanted to put his or her face between the bars of a bed because you feel like all there is to do in the place where you are is - as Clyde says to Bonnie - "listen to the grass grow?"

Sure, sure, Bonnie and Clyde rob banks and wield guns and, uh, kill a few people and so on and so forth and this is, of course, bad because upon watching it in my early 20's I immediately went out and committed a string of bank robberies that spread across....oh, wait, no, I didn't. I forgot. Crazily, I'm not an impressionable moron who blindly blames every bad thing in society on movies. (Although Faye Dunaway did cause an entire legion of young girls to begin wearing fanciful berets.)

Arthur Penn & Faye Dunaway

30 years after its release the esteemed Ebert wrote a commemorative piece and indicated how its "freshness"had been "absorbed in countless other films" and that it's impact "may not be obvious to those raised in the shadow of its influence." I will admit the realistic and insistent violence and many of the anti-classical filmmaking techniques that would have been so utterly shocking to a 1967 audience did not make as much of a dent on me watching long after its release but that was never what intrigued me the most. I was more interested in its storytelling, its ability to paint a kind of peaceful tragedy.

There is that moment early on where they have taken a few banks and they know Clyde but they don't know Bonnie and Clyde tells her she can still get out, she can still go home, but she she says she doesn't want to do that and he says "You won't get a moment's peace" and she asks, rhetorically, "Promise?" The bank robbing, frankly, could have been anything. It's the sensation of being alive, is what it is, and that is crystallized in the unforgettable bluegrass score by Flatt and Scruggs. It isn't dire and it isn't foreboding, it's joyful, it's expressive of this duo on the lam. They're young, they're in love, and they rob banks. Deal with it.

But then there is foreboding midway through when the gang visits Bonnie's family and Penn films the encounter in that dustbowl haze, suggesting memories out of focus, and Bonnie realizes this is a life she and Clyde can never ever have, that there is no going back, that maybe they are doomed. And the third act could have been a spiral toward that doom but then she writes "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde" and they send it in to the papers and there is the shot of the newspapers blowing away in the wind set to the bluegrass score again and you know what's coming but it's the movie being defiant to the inevitable tragedy.

All anyone wants before they go is to know they lived, that they lived how they wanted to, that they embraced their time here, that they may have made bad decisions - who doesn't? - but that they don't regret them because they gave them this particular life with which they were satisfied. You wonder if that is how Bonnie and Clyde feel? She asks him in bed about the fantasy of walking away and starting over. The answer, of course, is in the fleeting moments before their end - their famous, horrific, beautiful end, when they catch each other's eyes and smile. They're done but they're at peace. We should all be so lucky.

Arthur Penn's career arc was not the most traditional and I will admit to being familiar with very little of his other work but I know to a certainy that my movie-watching, movie-writing, movie-loving life would be much, much less rich and fulfilled without "Bonnie and Clyde." It's one of my favorite movies. I can pay it no higher compliment.  Arthur Penn, thank you.

In Memoriam

If you watch all or enough of a particular filmmaker's work there are certain names in the opening and closing credits that you begin to instantly recognize without ever stopping and considering and appreciating their contributions. Bonnie Timmermann as casting director on several Michael Mann movies and Henry Bumstead as Production Designer and Tom Stern as Director of Photography on many Clint Eastwood films and Barry Alexander Brown as editor and Terrence Blanchard as composer on numerous Spike Lee Joints.

Any Quentin Tarantino movie you have ever seen was edited by Sally Menke. I can't really ever pretend to know precisely what goes into editing a major motion picture but I can say to a certainty that in directing my only short film (rejected all by film festivals it was sent to, thank you!) there were instances where I idiotically failed to provide all the necessary "coverage" for my beleaguered editor and he managed to make it look as right as humanly possible. That's part of what an editor does - saves director's asses.

Did Sally Menke ever or routinely save Q.T.'s ass? I cannot say for certain. But it would seem to me that piecing together The House Of Blue Leaves sequence in "Kill Bill" in the editing bay would have been a herculean task. I always adored that little sequence at the end of "Jackie Brown" where Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson) and Max (Robert Forster) are driving back to Max's office where Jackie (Pam Grier) waits and the cutting back and forth between the two settings - the former with music and the latter without, Jackie's cigarette burning down in the dark, and then that close-up of Ordell's face as if the camera is cluing us into his fate before it has even happened. Maybe Tarantino had this shot progression in mind from the start, maybe not, but whichever way Menke had to make it come alive.

She died yesterday at the age of 56. Too soon for anyone. I am certain we will all miss seeing that familiar name turn up in the credits more than we could have ever known.

Jack Goes Boating

This is the sort of movie Woody Allen would (should?) be making if he was not still stuck in the seventies. Centered exclusively around two relationships - one brand new, one long simmering - "Jack Goes Boating" is a film about love and about people talking about love and all the frailty and cruelty and the messiness - my God, the messiness - that goes into both establishing and maintaining a relationship.

The film stars the magnificent Philip Seymour Hoffman as the title character but it also doubles as Hoffman's directorial debut, his source material being an off-Broadway play authored by Bob Glaudini who also penned this cinematic adaptation, and rather than repeatedly framing himself in flattering light Hoffman is willing to turn up on camera with a few additional pounds in an unbecoming swimming cap in the shallow end of a pool. Vanity Project? Eh, not so much.

An emotionally awkward, agonizingly shy limo driver who nevertheless sincerely wishes people would emote more "positive vibes", and who finds his own ceaseless source of positivity in The Melodians' "Rivers Of Babylon", his personal anthem, is, at the behest of his friend and fellow employee Clyde (John Ortiz), forced into a Meet Cute with the equally emotionally awkward, agonizingly shy Connie (Amy Ryan, finally getting a leading role worthy of her talent), a new employee at the same funeral home where Clyde's wife Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega) works.

Except it's not quite a Meet Cute. Let's call it a Meet. A Meet wherein Ryan as Connie is allowed to deliver a monologue at the level of Diane Keaton's famed "free turkey" soliloquy in "Annie Hall." Tentatively, Jack asks her out. "We made a date for summer," Jack tells Clyde. "You made a date for summer in winter?" asks Clyde. Yes. A date to go boating. One problem: Jack can't swim. And later, after a particularly traumatic event, Jack makes a date to cook dinner for Connie. Another problem: Jack can't cook. So Clyde teaches him to swim and an old friend - perhaps more - of Lucy's teaches him to cook.

This is what passes for plot twists. This is a film about people interacting and talking and feeling their way forward, mostly feeling their way forward by stumbling and bumbling. Extravagant gestures are not in the cards for Jack and Connie for these are people of reluctant shrugs. Like the aforementioned Woody Allen who, as the esteemed Roger Ebert has noted, has made a career out of making "secondary characters heoric", Jack and Connie often feel like the secondary couple of a commonplace, mainstream motion picture that would have featured the volatile Clyde and Lucy as its centerpiece. Which is not to suggest that Clyde and Lucy get the shaft while the film showcases the stars because it does not, it devotes plenty of time to both couples, each one assisting to underscore the idea of the other, the exploration of the ancient common sense that long term relationships never ever develop the way we quite expect.

All this could, of course, weigh the audience down and so Hoffman the director chooses not to focus on the cold, hard realities of a New York Winter and instead goes for the snow-globe effect, the light-hearted cinematic flurries that contrasts all the hesitant realism and in the learning-to-swim scenes which he just lets speak for themselves and lift you up without yanking you up by your collar.

Behind the camera Hoffman really only has problems during the extended third-act showdown between our quartet at Clyde and Lucy's apartment when the film's stage origins begin to finally rear their head and Jack's fabulous meal isn't just a meal and subtext and symbolism threatens to start flying along with all the verbal insults and you can feel it all starting to careen except then Jack, embarrassed, angry, locks himself in the bathroom and suddenly the others are singing to him to prod him back out and it's strange and it's hectic and it's absolutely wonderful and it crystallizes the picture and life itself. "How can we sing a song of joy in a strange land?" This movie knows. Yes, it does. You gotta fight for your right to be idealistic.

Buried

The screen is black and then the sound of heavy breathing fades in and then light comes up - kinda - on Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), an American truck driver in Iraq who is buried alive in a wooden coffin somewhere in the desert. There is no set-up, no gettin' to know you time; nope, we're not in a coffin and then we are in a coffin and we will remain there for the entirety of the film's 94 minute running time. That is, a wooden coffin. Nowhere else.

Paul has a cellphone and a ligher for reasons which will be revealed - namely, that his truck convoy was attacked by terrorists or by insurgents and now they want a certain amount of money paid by a certain time or they will leave Paul to rot. Frantically, he makes call after call, all with varying degrees of success. But always remember that America does not negotiate with terrorists and not even if you're buried alive in a wooden coffin in the desert which seems to suggest that then perhaps the terrorists have won but never mind.

Director Rodrigo Cortes, working from a script by Chris Marling, does a noble job keeping things moving at considerable clip, re-upping the stakes at necessary intervals, and, by my count, including only one passage of forced action, and even then it directly involves my singular most paralyzing fear (think: Indiana Jones) and so I was too busy trying to avert my eyes and not throw up to notice it was forced until afterwards.  He also admirably keeps the shots unstagnant, or as unstagnant as possible, without ever cheating, without ever including cut-aways to the outside world or reactions of the people Paul talks with on the phone.

Of course, if a film rests on the face and on the personality of one actor and nothing else than it is imperative that this actor deliver.  Confession: I have never been a Ryan Reynolds fan.  It's not that I actively dislike him, not at all, it's merely that he has never intrigued me onscreen with his thespianism.  He so often seems to be playing below his age.  This worked better than usual in his "Adventureland" role as an eternal man-boy but in a project like, say, "Definitely, Maybe" where he is supposed to be a high-powered father I found myself decidedly unimpressed and left to believe the daughter more or less ran that household.  But in "Buried", with everything else stripped away, he rises to the challenge and provides a performance that is not so much nuanced as it is electric.  He veers wildly from calm to freak-out, from working-this-through to I-give-up, much like a person buried alive in a wooden coffin in the desert very well might.  Let's not vault him up into the ranks of the A-listers but let's commend him.

And more than anything that is what I'd like to do for this entire project - commend it.  It wouldn't be any good if the movie itself wasn't good, but it is good, an intense ride that really isn't a statement against a war, just a well made flick, that, above all else, takes a chance.  Love it, hate it, indifferent to it, you gotta respect it.  In fact, if I were asked to create a one sentence promo for the poster I would steal a particular word from the esteemed Jon Stewart and write this:

"Buried" is the most ballsalicious movie of the year.

Mostly Winslet, Most Of The Time

Big news. Big news. It was just announced that Kate Winslet (i.e. The World's Greatest Actress) will join the cast of Roman Polanski's screen adaptation of the Tony Award winning play "God Of Carnage". The cast also includes the esteemed Jodie Foster, recent Oscar winner Christoph Waltz and Matt Dillon. (One of these things is not quite like the other.) Color me stoked.

(You know she won the Oscar, right? Just making sure.)

And after taking a year off to rightly bask in her long overdue Oscar win (and, uh, take care of some other things), well, between this and the "Mildred Pierce" TV movie that has the blogging world atwitter and the Soderbergh movie going sweet home Chicago, Kate The Great ain't messin' around. She's got some acting to do.

The more Winslet, the better, Cinema Romantico always says.

The Greatest Movie Reaction Of All Time?

Granted, I tend to laugh at odd moments when I see movies but one of the hardest times I have ever laughed inside a movie theater was during "Jerry Maguire" when Tom Cruise as the title character is making his drunken living room speech and concludes it by saying to Renee Zellweger's Dorothy Boyd "Good evening" and then Zellweger replies with a "Good evening" of her own. I cannot really express via written word how she says "Good evening" except to say it made me ache with laughter. A brilliant reaction.

There have been more great reactions in cinema than anyone could ever count. Ethan Hawke going to brush the strand of hair from Julie Delpy's face in "Before Sunrise" and then stopping short. The look on Daniel Day Lewis's face in "Last of the Mohicans" right after Madeleine Stowe accuses him of "indifference." It's terrifying. I've seen it - I'm estimating here - 859 times and it never fails to send me diving behind my couch to hide in fear. The expression of Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow when he realizes the potential crew member is without a tongue. Jeff Bridges' surprised "Ah" in "The Big Lebowski" to John Goodman advising him their primary bowling adversary is literally a "pederast." Hilary Swank's face in "Million Dollar Baby" when Clint Eastwood finally tells her what "Mo Cuishle" means.

..........

Sorry, I had to leave the room for a minute after that last one and re-gather myself. Anyway....for all those great reactions none of them take the prize. In The Coen Brothers' Best Picture winning "No Country For Old Men" (2007) Josh Brolin is Llwelyn Moss. He was out hunting in the vast expanse of empty prairie only to happen upon a drug deal gone wrong - very, very, very, very, very wrong. Figuring there had to have been a "last man standing" he tracks that man down, a man who has found shade and died there....with a case. A case that Llewelyn finds and opens and upon seeing that it contains stacks and stacks and stacks of cash he grunts a lone word: "Yeah." It is MAGNIFICENT. It is utterly beyond compare.

In that one word grunt he conveys the following: "All that money could solve all my ills. Of course, if I take it I will upset the balance of order in the universe. They'll coming looking for me and they'll find me and I'll have to run and I'll have to keep running because they won't give up. It's inevitable. The chances of me surviving me all this are probably 50-50. No. Worse. 80-20. Maybe even 90-10. But....that money could solve all my ills. Who am I kidding here? I have to take it. I have to. I don't have a choice. Even though I don't think I want to. God damn it."

And if you don't think he conveys all that in a one word grunt then you obviously have not seen it.

A (Brief) Digression: 61 Is The New 31

Today is the birthday of the planet earth's Poet Laureate. So sit up straight and show some friggin' respect.

Shadows and Fog

The first time I watched Woody Allen's black and white ode to German cinema from the early 90's I was fresh off a few off his "early, funny ones" and so I think went looking specifically for more of the funny, and there is funny to be found. The Woodman's always good for a few solid one liners.

-"There's someone lurking up the street."
-"Should I start weeping or do you want me to break into a run?"

But rewatching it I was struck, despite Allen's usual persona in the primary role of the nebbish, timid clerk Kleinman, how bleak and dark it is and how it is coated in far more existential dread than shadows and fog.

The film takes place over a single night in an unnamed town full of cobblestone streets and murk and mire. Kleinman is rousted out of bed and enlisted in joining a vigilante group that has formed a plan to go after The Maniac, a strangler who has apparently struck again. Trouble is, no one tells Kleinman what his role in the "plan" is supposed to be. For the remainder of the film he wanders the streets, falling in and out of touch with his vigilante group and other vigilante groups that begin springing up because the initial vigilante group is having no success ("I'm with Vogel now." - "Vogel? Who's Vogel?"), still unsure of what in the world he is supposed to be doing.

Meanwhile a circus is camped on the outskirts of town where Irmy (Mia Farrow - yes, this was the Mia-era), the sword swallower, catches her clown boyfriend (John Malkovich) in an uncompromising position with the high wire walker (Madonna, so-so). Enraged, she wanders into town and is taken in by the kindly prostitutes at the brothel (Lily Tomlin, Jodie Foster, Kathy Bates) where a fresh faced college going lad (John Cusack) convinces her through a substantial payment of $700 to, as they say, turn a trick.

But then Irmy gets halled down to police headquarters where, as luck would have it, Kleinman has turned up too. She pays her fine and is let loose and she and Kleinman join forces, if you want to call it that, wandering the streets together, she trying to get him to find some courage that he probably never has had nor will have (an encounter with Kleinman's boss finds Kleinman referring to him as, amongst other things, "Your majesty"), with death, it seems, never more than an alleyway away.

Despite some nice comedic setpieces and famous actors every which way (in fact, John C. Reilly and William H. Macy turn up briefly for one line each - Macy's line in particular is great) gloom pervades the movie. So much gloom. "Do you believe in God?" Student Jack asks Kleinman. "Unbelievable. That's the third time tonight somebody's asked me that exact same question," Kleinman replies. "I'd like to, believe me."

-"You doubt His existence and you can't make the leap of faith necessary."
-"I can't make the leap of faith necessary to believe in my own existence."

Classic Woody. Evading the most hard hitting of subject matter with a joke. And that seems to the entire essence of "Shadows and Fog". A desperate desire to tuck tail and run from the worst of what life offers, whether that's a Maniac on the loose or a vile boss or a what-have-you.

The Woodman's movies often contain conclusions which feel perfunctory. Sometimes this is the point, such as in "Mighty Aphrodite" when a character openly opines about a "deus ex machina", and sometimes they just feel rushed, like in the more recent "Cassandra's Dream". The end of "Shadows and Fog" feels as if it was conjured up out of thin air and, yet, when you consider the recurring theme of magic and of all the emptiness in the movie's vast darkness throughout it is perfect as Kleinman literally contemplates running away to join the circus. The closing lines are some of the darkest of Allen's career. I actually got shivers as the film faded to black.

At different points during the proceedings Kleinman laments: "Theories. All I hear all night are theories" and "Everybody has a plan. I'm the only one in town that doesn't know what he's doing." Everybody has a theory, everybody has a plan. Lot of good it does them.

Unstoppable: Trailer

I did not even need to see the eventual credit "A Tony Scott Film" in the trailer for the forthcoming "Unstoppable" to know that it was "A Tony Scott Film." A mere .0789 seconds into the trailer I said to myself: "Wait a second....I'd know that film stock anywhere! This is a Tony Scott film!" And so it was.



But this is not the most troublesome fact of "Unstoppable." Not at all. Nor is the most troublesome fact its premise of a runaway train stocked with nuclear weapons (or something - it doesn't really matter). No, the most troublesome fact is the presence of Denzel Washington. Why in the world is every other movie he makes nowadays with Tony Scott? Isn't he supposed to be Spike Lee's muse? When did he become Tony Scott's muse? Tony Scott does not deserve Denzel as a muse. Tony Scott deserves Dane Cook as a muse.

Denzel Washington & Tony Scott is like Marisa Tomei becoming Michael Bay's muse. At which point you should stock up on canned goods, saw off the shotgun in your basement and make sure the lanterns work. The end of the world will be right around the corner.

The Town

In his second film as director Ben Affleck: The Bostonian acquits himself very well. Above all else "The Town", much like his debut "Gone Baby Gone" (2007), possesses a distinct sense of place. Set in and around and filmed largely on site in the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown, the film feels truly inhabited. Homes feel lived in and streets feel walked on and do not just come across as inventions of the production designer. It lends an authenticity to the proceedings that, frankly, the film itself cannot quite match, even if it tries diligently. Ben Affleck: Actioneer and Ben Affleck: Screenwriter (working with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard, based on Chuck Hogan's novel) cannot match Ben Affleck: Bostonian.

Affleck is Doug McRay, a second generation bank robber, his father (Chris Cooper) long since locked away, and his closest partner in crime is Jem (Jeremy Renner), the traditional trigger-happy, psychotic, "you're-a-brother-to-me" vagrant living on the edge. There are two others but they are unimportant, so unimportant they are really given no dimension whatsoever. As the film opens they commit a high-end armed robbery that goes sort-of awry as Jem takes hostage the beauteous bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall). Doug lets her go free but Jem decides she needs to be, you know, taken care of except Doug says he'll take care of it which instead turns into a flirtation and then a full fledged romance between bank robber and bank manager. Meanwhile the FBI is, as they must be, hot on the gang's trail.

Okay. First red flag. Doug/Claire Relationship. It is the crux of the film. As it goes, so goes "The Town" and, well, it does not quite go. Claire is given no background, no life of her own, no reason for exisiting outside of being the Key Witness In The FBI Investigation and Doug McRay's Love Interest. But then anymore this is the tragic plight of many female characters. More troubling is the way the courtship is presented. Almost instantly she is confessing secretive details about the heist to this man she hardly knows who happens to be making slightly suspicious inquiries about the same heist. Well....hmmmm....perhaps she has no confidants? There are references to her being a "toonie", a yuppie in The Town, and so perhaps she is an outcast where she lives? Except later she references her friends. "I told my friends about you," she tells Doug. A ha! So she does have confidants! Why wouldn't she tell them? Despite respectable work by Hall this love affair never passes Go and prevents the film from achieving the operatic and thematic heights it yearns to scale.

Second red flag. Bank Robberies. There are three placed at the Beginning, Middle and End. Each one increases the level of stunts, gunfire and production value. They are serviceable, workmanlike but have no pizzaz, no energy. They lack the adrenaline of Greengrass or the excessive macho lyricism of Mann. Most bothersome is that they feel forced, as if Affleck knew he needed these scenes for box office while the aspects of the project that truly appealed to him lay elsewhere.

The acting is solid. Renner does what he has to do with gusto and Blake Lively is so unrecognizable as the requisite Smelly Tramp that I, in fact, did not recognize her, though Jon Hamm stands out mostof all by livening up the tried and true role of the dogged FBI agent by playing him with a world-weary smarminess, an unctuous twinkle in his eye. His scenes with Lively suggest a man who cares little for the notions of good and evil, really, with no interest in helping anyone but himself.

The Lively character seems to be "The Town's" symbol. She desperately wants a relationship with Doug and he refuses to reciprocate, his roots pulling him in and trying to drag him under. Boston's native son clearly has a lot to say about his hometown and about the hold it still has him after all these years. Hopefully next time out he can craft a film that better expresses himself.

Glee: Theatricality

Up until a few nights ago I had never seen an episode of ABC's hit show "Glee." I was pretty sure it involved a high school glee club and that popular songs were sung and that it starred Jane Lynch. That was all. I simply never had any desire to watch it despite its apparent critical acclaim. (My fellow blogger Andrew has actually been engaged in a massive meme about the show.) So why did I suddenly sit down to see it? Because "Theatricality" was all about the glee club using the music of (ahem) Lady Gaga to "express themselves." (This is similar to my reason for only having ever seen one episode of "Big Bang Theory" - it was an episode about Nebraska Football.) So having now seen an episode I can confirm that it is about a high school glee club and that popular songs are sung. However, I have no idea if it really stars Jane Lynch because I never saw her.

Within moments I felt I had waded in too deep. The "catch up" monologue at the beginning was delivered rapid-fire about people I didn't know doing things I didn't understand and when it was over I think I was more confused than when I knew nothing. There were numerous characters and I had and still have absolutely no idea what anyone's name is. This does not matter, however, because I can easily break down all the characters I saw without using names. There was the gay guy who wasn't accepted by the letter-jacket wearing jocks and the son of the mother that the father of the gay guy is dating is moving into the gay guy's house and this puts the two of them at odds and there was a daughter who is re-united with her mother who apparently coaches the rival glee club and which leads to an awkward, cringe-inducing moment when they perform a duet of "Poker Face" which leads to mother singing to daughter "When it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun" (uh...........no comment) and there was the goth girl. The goth girl was my favorite. She was not allowed to dress as a goth anymore by school officials and then Gaga-ed it up instead which led to my favorite line:

"Even though I'm painfully shy and obsessed with death I really am an effervescent person."

So basically our glee club finds out the rival glee club is going to use the music of Lady Gaga and so our glee club also chooses to use Lady Gaga (I think this was all for mythical "sectionals" but I could be completely wrong) - well, the girls and the gay guy choose to use her. The real men of glee club want nothing to do with Lady Gaga. And here is where things got interesting....uh, at least for me.

You hear the first faction perform Gaga's "Bad Romance" and then you hear the second faction perform Kiss's "Shout It Out Loud" (both of which just looked like high production karaoke) and sure, sure the whole episode is about theatricality but let's discuss rock and roll for a second. Listen to these songs back to back and tell me which one rocks and which one just kinda goes pfffffffft. Rock and roll all nite, my ass, "Shout It Out Loud" is glam, "Bad Romance" is rock and roll, and I am not flexible or open to arguments on this. If you can't hear how effin' hard "Bad Romance" rocks then you just don't like her because she wears meat and flips people off at Yankees games, and that's that.

Reader: "For crying out....you're supposed to be reviewing 'Glee' and you've just turned this whole thing into yet another oration on Lady Gaga!"
Me: "Well, honestly, what did you expect?"

The show itself actually had some nice moments and had themes I would strongly support and while its crux is surely the sort we have all seen many times before that does not mean it cannot be presented convincingly and originally. I especially enjoyed seeing Mike O'Malley (finally getting his moment in the sun it would seem after appearing in, like, 42 sitcoms that were cancelled after 2 episodes) as the gay guy's father who recites a stern speech to the son of the woman he is dating in relation to treating people properly, and the like, and has one line that felt essential: "I thought you were a new generation of dude." Yeah. I like it. I like it a lot.

I spent this past Sunday on the couch flipping between the Redskins/Cowboys game and the MTV Video Music Awards (which I had not watched in at least 10 years) in the hopes of catching a few glimpes of Her Gaganess. I rooted for Donovan McNabb and I cheered when Lady Gaga won for Best Female Video. I know, I know, a dude is not "allowed" to like Football and Lady Gaga.

But then I'm "a new generation of dude." Which is to say I learned a valuable lesson from "Glee." So there.

Guess Who's Coming To Chicago?

It was the least the movie gods could do. After destroying my summer by dropping Michael Bay (Cinema Romantico's official Public Enemy #1) and his "Transformers" trainwreck into the city where I live and Bay-ing up blocks where I work and play, I have been granted an awesome autumn reprisal.

Pardon me while I polish a few screenplay ideas for pitching. Excuse me if I buy a new a pair of shoes. Forgive me if I go so far as to put a little (gasp!) gel in my hair. I gotta make a good impression. This isn't just anyone, people, this is The Greatest Actress In The World.

Kate Winslet will soon be here.

Wake Up And Smell The Coffee, Shyamalan

"I don't know what the disconnect is...I'm speaking a different language I guess. That's all I can think of. Because I definitely approach filmmaking with great respect, integrity and effort and take into account advice of all my peers. We collectively come to a place where we are ecstatic about the particular stories we are telling." - M. Night Shyamalan

"What (Ed Wood) lacked in style, money, and talent he made up for with spirit, depth, integrity, innocense, and love." - The Church Of Ed Wood

I come not to bury M. Night Shyamalan but to urge him to rise from this plot he has picked out ("The Village"), the hole that he has dug ("Lady In The Water"), the coffin he has chosen ("The Happening") and into which he has now slipped ("The Last Airbender").

Let me say first off, I love "Signs" (2002). Love it. I don't give a Narf what anyone says, okay, because I love that movie. (The only thing that may have been tarnished with "Signs" has nothing to do with Shyamalan - it's the scene where Mel Gibson can't curse and Joaquin Phoenix is urging him to do so and finally he does, sort of. I used to love that scene. Now....eh....let's not go there.) "Signs" is one of My Great Movies, for God's sake, and I will defend that film against anyone primarily because it's so well made - so well made from a technical standpoint, from a filmmaking standpoint. Bitch about the religious aspects, if you must, or whine about the "twist" and yada yada yada but the M. Night Shyamalan that made "Signs" knew what he was doing. Case closed. The M. Night Shyamalan that made "Unbreakable" - again, from a technical standpoint - knew what he was doing.

However, the M. Night Shyamalan that made "The Happening" had no clue in any capacity whatsoever what the hell was going on. Forget its story, that's not the point here, and just focus on the fact that the filmmaking was atrocious.

I have not seen "The Last Airbender" and so I will not comment on it but I feel as if seeing the Hindenburg-esque "The Happening" and, to a lesser degree, "The Village" and "Lady in the Water", is more than enough. M. Night Shyamalan has lost it and he is in complete denial. "I feel this about my movies," he says, "the fact that my name is on them, that means they are doomed." A ha! Of course! It's not his fault, it's ours. All us yokels cannot fathom his genius. Never mind that his recent films are poorly made - God no, that's not it, couldn't be, it's just his name, as if he's so high and mighty, so above everything else, the critics have to take him down a peg or two or feel inferior. Please.

Go back and watch "Signs", Shyamalan, I beg you, and watch how you used the camera to tell your story and how you did not need to show off with your camera to do so and how controlled and assured you were in every scene and in every little moment and how everything led into everything else and how you showed so little and still generated so much suspense and how the various "twists" weren't really "twists" at all but just more character development. If anything just recognize how you could actually frame a shot properly and position your actors within the frame correctly and cover the scene which first-month freshmen at Bemijdi State film school can at least sort of manage. The esteemed Roger Ebert called it the work of "a born filmmaker" and I still believe that to be true. A person can't make "Signs" and not have skills. But you have to refine those skills as you go along or risk becoming stagnant.

Open your eyes, man, or otherwise it's just going to be you and The Church Of Shyamalan watching your next movie and all being in denial together.

Solitary Man

"You know what it's like at our age - the best thing a doctor can tell you is 'The survival rate is high' or 'it's the good kind of cancer' or 'we caught it in time.'"

Movies, of course, should only be judged on how their content is presented and not how that content relates to the real world but every now and then a movie's content is frighteningly relevant to the real world and, my God, is "Solitary Man", released but a week ago on DVD, frighteningly relevant when considering its star recently revealed he has Stage 4 Throat Cancer.

That star is Michael Douglas who in Brian Koppelman's film is Ben Kalmen, a longtime slick and successful huckster in the car salesman game who as the film opens is told by his doctor that his EKG looks suspicious. In what way? We are not told, and we are not told because Ben is not told and this is because Ben promptly exits the doctor's office and never returns. Not for six-and-a-half years.

When we catch up with Ben he is dating a living, breathing mannequin, Jordan (Mary Louise Parker), though with ample one night stands on the side, and she convinces him to squire her daughter Allyson (Imogen Poots) for a college campus visit, a college to which Ben has donated so generously his name adorns a building and, thus, he no doubt can put in a few nice words with the Dean. Allyson wants to ditch Ben. Ben won't have it, although he also refuses to subsribe to the typical chaperone routine and let's her do pretty much whatever she wants, until they find themselves in a hotel bar having a wonderous and twisted variation on the father/daughter chat. But then something happens, not that I would dream of revealing it, and it turns everything on its head.

There are other particulars, to be sure, like the daughter (Jenna Fischer) and the grandson he neglects and the tailspin of his business brought on by sordid details of the past which will gradually be revealed and he even manages to muck up his brief mentorship of a young student (Jesse Eisenberg) at Allyson's college, all of which, and more, are a collage of self-destruction.

The core of this character is nothing new for Douglas but his performance is fresh, layered and magnificent. It brings to mind Sir Mick Jagger, another graying lothario, 14 months older than Douglas, who about a decade ago sneered the line, "You'll never make a saint of me." Ben Kalmen easily could have turned into some sort of saint. The farther the character plunges, the more pity threatens, the more a pardon looms, and yet to his immense credit Douglas simply refuses to let this guy off so easy. Most critical is a late scene on a park bench with his ex wife (Susan Sarandon) that could have easily sopped into the Plea For Forgiveness. It very well might have read that way on paper but Douglas plays it as man under oath and just trying to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It's not an excuse. He's not "explaining". He's describing to her, and us, what happened. Nothing more. Think of him what you will.

I think he's unlikeable and magnetic. I think Oliver Stone's sequel to "Wall Street" is set to hit theaters very soon but I don't think anyone needs to see it to learn what happened to Gordon Gekko. I think "Solitary Man" has already told that story.

The American

"It's like you can't stop thinking about something." This is what one character says to George Clooney's "American", an assassin - well, kind of - on assignment in of those scenic European locales engulfed with endless cobblestone streets that are forever empty except for one ominous man following another ominous man until one of the ominous men needs other people present so he can disappear among them at which point other people magically materialize. This particular line is a perfect summation of Clooney's Thoughtfully Stoic Face, a Face which belongs in the panthenon of stellar cinematic male faces. The Humphrey Bogart "I Got You All Figured" Face. The Clint Eastwood Squinting Face. And, of course, The Bruce Willis "It's going to be a pain in the ass for me to do this but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't" Face (coinage: Roger Ebert).

The George Clooney Thoughtfully Stoic Face is not a stare so much as a gaze, expressionless, typically on a cool, gray day, his hands in his pockets, ideally placed alongside a body of water, his lips twitching as if he is chewing on some incredible internal dialogue, likely centered around painful regrets and events of the past. He employed this face again and again in "Michael Clatyon" (not that he's a one tricky pony, not by any means, because he can also mug with the best of 'em - like "Intolerable Cruelty" - and flash extreme wattage smiles - like "Out of Sight") and his Thoughtfully Stoic Face in "The American" is really all the depth of character he needs.

Directed by Anton Corbijn with a screenplay adapted by Rowan Joffe from Martin Booth's novel "The American" is decidedly bare bones storytelling. It opens in the middle of nowhere in snowy Sweden where we find Clooney and a lithe beauty before a roaring fire and the Thoughtfully Stoic Face already firmly in place. What follows is heart-stopping, and shall not be revealed here, and moves on to a remote Italian town where his Handler (that is what they're called, right?) tasks him with the job of assembling a high-tech, foolproof rifle for the Anna Chapman-esque Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) which is apparently intended for some sort of assassination, though the film never says. This is the greatest strength of "The American" - a refusal to say.

So often "The American" simply watches The American at work. Rarely does he say anything and even when he does say something he is not giving much of anything away. Even in his occassional conversations with a local priest he reveals very, very little, the subtext meant to illuminate the Bigger Picture more than the Past. There is that opening sequence, yes, but this is more to establish that certain people wanted The American dead. Expository Flashbacks are nowhere to be found. All the audience gets is the Thoughtfully Stoic Face, and this tells us everything we need to know.

Inevitably The American will find love, or some form of it, with a compassionate prostitute named Clara (Violante Placido). This development is perhaps necessary but feels rushed. The American seems obligated to fall in love to allow details to play out as they must. Yet, to its credit, even as those details play out the film's volume remains resolutely reasonable, ignoring showmanship and just showing, just showing The American doing that which is necessary until there is no more to show.

My Great Movies: (The First Hour And Forty-Five Minutes Of) Australia

If a movie is fabulous for an hour and forty five minutes before suffering a precipitous drop for the remainder of its almost three hour running time can it still be considered great? I don't see why not. It has a beginning and it has a middle and....well, okay. It doesn't have an end. So what? Not everything needs a great finish. Mozart didn't finish the Requiem. Gaudi didn't finish the Sagrada Familia. But what they did finish was spectacular enough all on its own to be considered great, right?

And the first hour and forty five minutes of "Australia" is great, and it's great in the way that only a movie named for a country wrapped up in an island wrapped up in a continent could ever be. It's grand, so grand it threatens to overwhelm you with grandeur, bash you in the face with bombast, whisk you away with its sweep. Most scenes should be prefaced with the words "As If On Cue...." Cynics need not apply. Dreamers and romantics, come on down, this one's for you. When did "who talks like that in real life?" and "that would never happen in the real world" become valid film criticisms? When was pomp given the evil eye and circumstance kicked to the curb? When did movies lose their......movieness?

There are rumors that Russell Crowe did not get the lead role not because of scheduling conflicts or salary demands but because in rehearsal he kept trying to pull up some repressed memory to generate emotion at which point director Baz Luhrmann yelled, "By God, there will be no Method in this movie!" Nuh uh, no sir, not a chance. "Australia" revs up the time machine and returns to the Golden Age, when operas weren't just in opera houses but on movie screens and emotions came at you like tidal waves and the distinctions of good and evil were handed out like ginormous slices of apple pie topped with rich whipped cream.


"Australia" does not raise its curtain with "Once Upon A Time", though it comes awfully close, settling instead on "The Territory was a land of crocodiles, cattle barons and warrior chiefs where adventure and romance was a way of life." Hell to the yeah. The rest of the elaborate stage is then set in a voiceover from Nullah, a mixed blood Aboriginal 12 year old, played with bottomless charisma by Brandon Walters, who advises: "Grandfather teach me most important lesson of all. Tell 'em story." And tell us a story he does, story being the critical word here since that's what it is - a story, a fable, a fairytale, a ripping yarn. A veritable truth it is not. I direct you here if that is what you so desire.

Are the veritable truth people gone? Superb. Good riddance. Now on with our story! It opens in England where pampered Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), her hair tucked away tightly beneath a riding hat, is advised her philandering husband has driven his once prosperous cattle ranch in the Northern Territory with the extravagant moniker Faraway Downs into the ground. Thus, Lady Ashley will light out for down under to tell the cheeky bugger where he can stick it. She is met by an Australian cattle drover (Hugh Jackman) with the gloriously expository name of Drover - "Everything I own I can fit in my saddlebag" - whose duty it will be to escort her from the civilization of Darwin to the wilds of the outback as we quickly infer Lady Ashley is no mere Fish Out Of Water. It's worse. She's a Woody Allen Character Out Of Manhattan And Placed In California Circa 1849.


Once reaching Faraway Downs, however, in the requisite plot development, we learn her husband has been murdered. The finger is pointed at Nullah's grandfather, King George, ah, but in reality, it is the handiwork of Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), resembling a sinister sewer rat, who had pawned himself off as an employee of Ashley's but, in reality, works as the right hand man of the mandatory villain, the magnificently named King Carney (Bryan Brown), the most cantankerous cattle baron in the southern hemisphere who longs for a monolopy and Faraway Downs, as it must, is all that stands in his way. Initially it seems Lady Ashley is content to play right into Carney's hands and sell the property but a nighttime encounter with Nullah, who explains all, changes her mind and becomes determined to drive Faraway Downs' 1500 head of cattle across the dusty, deserted plains to Darwin while Carney, the writer, the art director, and visual effects coordinator will throw every possible obstacle in her path. The crew she assembles for the drove is so motley and ragtag it could only be led by the Drover himself and thankfully, heroically, he turns up to do just that!

It is virtually impossible to imagine Russell Crowe - who really was Luhrmann's initial idea - in the role of the Drover. He would have spent the entire time glowering and trying to turn line readings of "Krikey" into statetments on all of mankind's plight and generally treating the whole thing like a textbook that leaves every child in class snoring. Jackman's theatrical background, on the other hand, made him the perfect choice because he can play it any way you want, whether he's doing the fox trot, barking orders from the back of a horse, or brawling in a saloon and, crucially, he only takes the most serious parts seriously. It is a finely tuned performance, even if the tune is typically that of an overwrought Brahms Symphony. Kidman, meanwhile, is so often dismissed by the hoity toitys as an Ice Queen and if this is true, well, then she's a Dreamsicle Ice Queen. She convincingly transitions from a prim gentlelady - "Oh, Ranston, drink your tea" - to an English rose whithering in the Outback to an enlightened, involved eucalyptus whose attitudes and abilities undergo change while the core of the character remains the same. It's a mean feat and whether she's had a little botox or smorgasboards of botox, I don't care, so long as she can act. Newsflash: she can.

Over the course of their cattle venture secrets will be revealed, Faraway Downs' alcholic accountant will, as he must, find redemption and Lady Ashley will let her hair down literally and figuratively as a glimmer of romance appears between she and the Drover. Will they survive? Will they reach Darwin to load their cattle ahead of King Carney's cattle load? Will Lady Ashley be chosen as patroness of the Darwin Ball? Will The Wet arrive just in time for Lady Ashley and the Drover to share their first kiss?


To accuse the first hour and forty-five minutes of "Australia" of being predictable is, well, predictable because even though it's predictable it is all so unabashedly done without irony that it is, in fact, extremely rare. You must give yourself over to it. Toss your doubt over the nearest cliff, check your sarcasm at the door, remind yourself that as you set foot inside the cinema you are entering a place where reality no longer beckons. "('Australia') is a testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion," wrote Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. Indeed, the first shot quotes "Gone With The Wind," "The Wizard Of Oz" is referenced numerous times, and many moments suggest a more sunburnt "Red River." All of which seems to be Luhrmann's openhearted way of grabbing hold of each and every viewer and shaking him or her and screaming, "Why don't they make 'em like this anymore?! Why?!" It's a necessary question that Luhrmann addresses with beauty and scope and compositions worthy of Technicolor and 70 mm film.

And as I re-watched the first half of "Australia" in preparation for this post, as The Wet arrives in a sequence that is, to enlist Roff Smith's words in National Geographic for the actual event itself, "an explosive Wagnerian crescendo," I realized with a vengeance to rival the powerhouse rains themselves that I had it all wrong. The first hour and forty-five minutes is far from unfinished. It's there, all there, a resolution that would have resulted in perfection, crying out for the movie to conclude, just conclude, right here, right now, fade to black and roll credits, please! No mother forgets her child, our skin is merely a color, nothing more, magic exists, love, as we all know, overcomes all odds, and movies such as this can take stories, fables, fairytales, ripping yarns of preposterous height and render them entirely authentic. And as the most concise of montages plays out, fitting everyone with a happy ending that deserves it, and we see The Wet come and we see The Wet go and we the Drover go off to drove and we hear Nullah return to voiceover and advise us Lady Ashley "always misses Drover, but I know he's gonna come back," followed by a shot of our leads leaping into an embrace, I understood without even having to think about it that this was the proper ending, the rest mattered not at all, and so I hit stop on the DVD player and shut off the TV. And no doubt the cynics and the proprietors of that gloom and doom Real World Motel down the street will hem and haw about how there is more, a whole hour more, how the facts of WWII enter the picture, and how this changes everything, the story, the fates of the characters, the meaning, on and on, and because it's there, because it exists, it is our duty as film critics to watch it, all of which I bite my thumb at while turning to the words of Lady Sarah Ashley herself.

Just because it is doesn't mean it should be.

Spring Breakdown

Filmed in 2006 and then mired in post-production that found it sold from one film company to another before being released direct-to-video in 2009, "Spring Breakdown", a variation on the plentiful spring break genre, stars Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch and Parker Posey. It just so happens I like Poehler, considering she stars in the only TV show I religiously watch, and no one does go-for-broke-frazzled like Dratch and that aforementioned list of My Top 5 Actors I'm Always Happy To See Turn Up, well, Posey was on it. So that's why I watched "Spring Breakdown." Good Enough?

Astute readers will notice I just referenced the title of a Cyndi Lauper song. This is because "Spring Breakdown" opens with our three leads at a college talent show performing Lauper's "True Colors." It is really quite exquisite, and one of the film's bright moments. And then they are booed off the stage to make way for a dance troupe getting jiggy to Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations." Ah, yes, the eternal struggle - 80's versus 90's. It seems our three ladies, Gayle (Poehler), Judi (Dratch), and Becky (Posey) don't have any friends besides each other. But this is okay because once they leave college they are going to conquer the world, which, of course, they don't. We catch up with them 15 years later and are immediately introduced to their obligatory personal predicaments.

Gayle, a dog trainer, seems to have overcome a few eating issues and serious low esteem, though these issues always threaten to re-emerge. Judi is engaged to William (Seth Meyers, who really should not be acting), an obvious gay man, a fact which everyone but Judi realizes. Becky is employed by the fast-talkin', whip-crackin', I-assume-she-takes-no-prisoners Senator Hartmann (recent Emmy winner Jane Lynch, good as always), who is on The Commander In Chief's short list to be promoted to Vice President and whose daughter Ashley (Amber Tamblyn) is set to visit South Padre Island for spring break to try and re-woo the love of her life and needing anything but poor family publicity Senator Hartmann enlists Becky to secretly keep an eye on her daughter. And so instead of a trip to Tempe, Arizona for a woman's folk festival the three best friends take off for South Padre as one.

Once there Gayle morphs into Lindsey Lohan in "Mean Girls", befriending "The Sevens", seven positively vicious woo-girls who are responsible for wooing (!) away Ashley's ex-love, and Judi morphs into Will Ferrell's Frank The Tank in "Old School", drinking herself into oblivion and having a pseduo one night stand, and Becky pretty much stays the same, going so far as to become a straight-arrow mentor to Ashley and her two plain jane pals (wait, two trios of gal best friends? Hmmmmmm....).

(The Sevens all drinking Sierra Nevada. Wait...that's MY beer! Does this make me a hipster doofus?)

Lessons will be learned, greater truths reached, and, of course, it all comes full circle with a talent show. Most strange about this misfire is how director Ryan Shiraki's supposed film of female empowerment so often seems to instead exploit those females. It clearly wants to be an outrageous spoof of the whole teen sex comedy and instead becomes exactly what it yearns to send up.

Our three intrepid ladies do their best - most of the time - and every once in awhile a line reading will rise up and make you take notice, such as: "We're human beings - not tacos" or, best of all, Dratch declaring of her impending nuptials "It will be a small, priiiiiiiivate affair" which means nothing here but made me laugh so hard I got a few tears in my eyes. But when line readings are all you got, you ain't got much. I kinda hope next spring break they actually make it to Tempe for the woman's folk festival. It might be funnier.

Falling Up

"What makes you think I wasn't reading the Wall Street page? Oh, I know, because I'm the uneducated doorman." - Seinfeld

"Why on earth would you want to date a doorman?" - Falling Up

The plight of the doorman seems rather unrepresented on film and on TV and perhaps this is because the very idea of the doorman at residential buildings somehow seems old-fashioned. Doesn't it? And perhaps that explains why David Rosenthal's "Falling Up" (2009) feels so old-fashioned. You could simply remove the cellphones and the internet and insert a young Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck and off you'd go. A class warfare rom com centered around a poor doorman and a wealthy tenent, "Falling Up" is several New York City blocks away from perfect but it is also infinitely more elegant and good-hearted than most of the rest of '09's fleet of rom com crap which makes it a great shame that it somehow went direct to video despite a noteworthy cast.

When his father passes away and it is discovered his life insurance policy was rendered null by the cause of his death (handball) young Henry O'Shea (Joseph Cross) puts on hold his studies to be a male nurse and follows the lead of his Uncle (Gordon Clapp, whose appearance is all too brief) and applies to be a doorman at a posh high rise in Manhattan. He is hired but his fidgety boss George (Joe Pantoliano) makes the ground rules quite clear - including, but not limited to, no fraternization with the tenets. Which, of course, makes it improbably problematic that the first tenent he encounters is the gargantuanly graceful Scarlett Downing (Sarah Roemer), daughter to some seriously rich folks, and saddled with a lug of a boyfriend who, of course, she would never ever, not in a million years, have, but never mind.

Henry takes the night shift and is shown the ropes by the eccentric Raul (the Calvin Broadus, which is how he is billed, and, I must say, he is not a bad actor - oh, I'm reasonably certain he doesn't have range but he does well what he is supposed to do here) and before long, through a series of fortuitous events, implementing his training, Henry saves the life of Scarlett's lug of a boyfriend and Scarlett gives him a hug of thanks in full view of George and George threatens that the next time this happens Henry is getting kicked to the curb but Henry sees her on the sly anyway and Scarlett's dastardly mother (Mimi Rogers), much to her affluent disgust, discovers the whole affair and Henry gets kicked to the curb but it matters not at all because, by God, the audience learns that enormous offshore bank accounts mean diddly squat in the face of true love.

Yes, yes, yes, you've seen it before. I know. You don't have to tell me. Cripes. Fine, fine, on a couple occasions it does regress into the lowest common denominator-type comedy, such as a horrifically terrible - but thankfully brief - passage in an adult emporium that employs crude slo-mo. Okay, okay, Joseph Cross has fairly low wattage for the lead (imagine, say, James Franco here) and yeah, yeah, Scarlett Downing is a simple two dimensional drawing but Sarah Roemer is just so....so....beautiful. Not hot, all right, but beautiful. Big difference. She's an old school beauty and she fights back against her character's lack of depth with all she's got. Sure, sure, the execution in the third act is a little rough - like why in the world is the Running To Get The Girl scene at some snobbish restaurant and not at the apartment building so Henry can enlist the aid of Raul to thwart George and so on and so forth but....oh, just stop complaining, damn it. This reviewer has had enough of your bellyaching.

I sat through "Leap Year" and "Couples Retreat" and I saw the trailer for "The Bounty Hunter" which, believe me, was bad enough and I cannot speak for anyone else but I can speak for myself and I am tired of artificially enhanced romantic comedies with rust-proofing. "Falling Up" may not be a masterpiece but it is warm and it is accomodating and its heart is in the right place and that is a step in the right direction.

A Digression: My Favorite Chicago Moment

WARNING: Length, earnestness and unbridled enthusiasm ahead. Proceed at your own peril.

When I awoke the morning of Friday August 6 I was not a Little Monster, the label pop superstar Lady Gaga applies to her most ardent fans.

Don't get me wrong. I was a Lady Gaga fan. A fairly big one. But there is a fine line between fan and fanatic, between admirer and Little Monster. I know Bruce Springsteen fans and I know Bruce Springsteen fanatics. I am a Bruce Springsteen fanatic. Fanatics fly to New York City for one night only solely to see him and become genuinely angry with people who honestly think Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs wrote "Because the Night" (do not get me started). And here was Chicago's monstrous music festival Lollapalooza set to play host to Lady Gaga and her Monster Ball opening night and I wasn't going and so how could I be a little monster?

Single day tickets were a cool $90 a pop and most of my 2010 has been a financial sinkhole, partly from many momentous events requiring vast sums of cash to be spent all happening right around the same time, partly from my had-to-take-the-opportunity trip to Hawaii, partly from having to pay off a significant medical expense, partly from having to get my beloved Honda Civic serviced one week before Lollapalooza, partly from, you know, "the economy". Plus, on account of a time-off fiasco at my office leaving me with but one vacation day left for the rest of the year which I kinda need to keep in my back pocket I could not take the whole of Friday August 6 off for the rest of the many fine bands playing in Grant Park meaning I would be coughing up $90 for a single act.

I thought about it. I decided to be fiscally responsible. I decided to be mature. I decided to "act my age." I decided not to go. I had already seen her live, anyway, and the show had actually left me just a little bit disappointed. Even when I heard she would be employing a "low key" $150,000 stage and even when my friend Matt made a brief plea that I should attend or live to regret it I adhered to my decision. I was gonna be a "grown up", darn it. But then I got to work that Friday morning and something in the back of my mind kept telling me I should renege. I looked for excuses not to. The web reports filtering in from the early hours of Lollapalooza were reporting the south field of Grant Park where Lady Gaga would be playing was rather wet and on the verge of transforming into a mud pit. I mean, come on, I told myself, I'm a month away from turning thirty-three! I can't go stand in the mud with all those young whippersnappers for five hours! But still....I couldn't let it go. On the sidewalk near my daily Starbucks stop a homeless man shouted, "Save me a seat for Lady Gaga!" Was this a sign? Nope. Like any good raving lunatic he was yelling it at everyone that passed by him. But still....I couldn't let it go. After work I hiked to Grant Park and tracked down the box office, still not sure what I was going to do, and then saw they only accepted cash. I did not have $90 cash on me. This was the sign. But still....I couldn't let it go. I backtracked to an ATM, pulled out $100, enough for one ticket and one Bud Light (it was that or Bud or Bud Light Lime - Lollapalooza! Over 100 Bands And 3 Kinds Of Beer!) tall boy, shuddered, and decided this was it. I was going.

Proof

And so I made my way for the second time past the protestors standing outside the box office with signs and megaphones telling all of us on the way to see Our Lady Of Perpetual Gaga that we would be damned to hell for doing so and proceeded inside the gates and as I followed two girls toward the stage at the far west side I overheard one of them say "You gotta be in the moment." A ha! This was the sign! Because that's what I was gonna do! I was gonna be in the moment!

I arrived just in time to see Hot Chip take the stage and as they tore things up I cleverly maneuvered by way through the crowds and mud to get within about 90 feet, right beside three guys and a girl who couldn't have been older than 20 (note the lack of the alcohol id bracelets) busting some stone cold moves and passing around a bottle of extravagantly cheap whiskey and cutting it with Sprite. Kids these days.

Where's Nick? Somewhere in this scrum.

When Hot Chip finished there was a rapid push forward and I rode it, baby, for all it was worth reaching a point less than seventy feet from the stage and then settled in for an hour-plus wait in a mass of sweating humanity that was quite literally elbows to asses. Plus, it smelled. Like, really, really bad, like manure-accented b.o., though thankfully the girl near me with the Springsteen "Born in the U.S.A."-era bandana was playing traffic cop and refusing to let any "wedgers" past. I wished I had double fisted the Bud Light but had chosen against it for fear that in my advanced age two beers would increase the likelihood of my having to go to the bathroom. This is what it's come to.

Finally, a few minutes past eight, over the gigantic fence off to the right of the stage, the side I was nearest to, a blonde head bobbed up and down, exhorting the crowd to make noise. IT WAS HER! Chaos ensued, believe me, as I found myself, in the midst of a serious stage rush that was less a rush than numerous walls of humanity unremittingly pressing forward all at once. This was it. I was going to die - right here, right now - in a Lady Gaga stage rush. Paramedics would find my body afterwards and think, "What the hell was this guy doing down here?" But not to worry for all ended well, and I ended up less than fifty feet from where, moments later, Her Gaganess would appear with an elaborate lime green car containing a keyboard under the hood. Tricky.


Lady Gaga's stage banter is curious. (Note: I'm more than a bit partisan and so it's difficult for me to be objective like "real" critics but even I will admit she did talk a little too much. She just needs to streamline it more because when she really revved things up in the 2nd half of the show it was untouchable. It's her first real tour, after all. She's still figuring things out. Oh, and if you're one of the people who can't deal with the two minute intervals between costume & set changes then, hey, newsflash: You don't get to live life with an omnipresent DVR remote. You can't suck it up for 120 seconds? Really?) She talks a lot about having come from nowhere to be a "star" and thanks everyone for "believing" in her and making her "dream come true" and so on and so forth and at first you think she might really be sincere. Except then she and her former dee jay perform a "heavy metal breakdown" to Metallica and you think, nope, this is all irony. Except then she's advising that we have to live for ourselves and not let The Man get us down (only in more words and more explicitly) and this, that and the other and so you think, wait, is she sincere? Except then she's suddenly wielding her bejeweled disco stick like a disco ball bra-wearing dictator and you're convinced it has to be irony. Except then there is a costume change and she emerges covered in fake blood and none of it matters anymore because, for crying out loud, Lady Gaga is up there covered in fake blood! What the hell else do you people want?! Quit deconstructing her persona you pseudo-intellectuals, you, be in the god damn moment for once, and just appreciate the fact that she's COVERED IN FAKE BLOOD!!!

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

But there was one line she had during her banter that struck a real chord with me and it was when she was doing her big rap about how we're all different but all really the same, that sorta thing, and she said "It doesn't matter how much money you have in your pocket right now....because you can come here and be whatever the fuck you want to be!" and, well, occasionally you hear the things you need to hear when you need to hear them and you are in the places you need to be when you need to be there and that's what I needed to hear and this was where I needed to be. I had, like, eleven bucks but I was there and I was gonna be whatever the fuck I wanted to be.

I danced like those people in Zion in "The Matrix Reloaded" and I jumped up and down and pumped my fists and I sang along really, really loud and I willingly held hands with the people on either side of me when she instructed that we do so during "Speechless" and during my favorite song from all of last year, the song that saved my life (which is melodramatic, I know, but I'm a melodramatic person and it's true, anyway, it did save my life, and please believe me when I tell you that), there was this enormous tentacled monster swaying, or possibly boogying, on the stage and Lady Gaga was strutting around in her patented flame-throwing brassiere and I got this cheek to cheek grin and I felt my heart surge and I took a mental picture that no one can ever take away from me and all the while I knew "Bad Romance" was still coming and then it came next and I went absolutely insane and found myself doing the discotheque-version of moshing with a bunch of shirtless gay men and twentysomething girls, a few dressed like Ms. Gaga herself, and shouted the chorus with so much vigor I went slightly hoarse.

The lament about outdoor music festivals is that there are far too many people crammed into one space and that there are poor sight lines and there is poor sound and even poorer weather and that's all true, of course, but sometimes to remind yourself that you're still alive, well, all those elements are necessary. I needed to be in the sweat-soaked scrum of thousands and I needed to be in the mud and the heat and surrounded by all these young'uns just to prove that all of life's drudgery has not got the best of me yet. I was searching for one clear moment of love and truth and even though I had a little faith what I needed was some proof, and I found it at The Haus Of Gaga. It is dangerous to get into the business of ranking things, even though I always do it, and so I will not and instead simply say that this show meant as much to me as Bruce in Detroit in '99 or The Arcade Fire at the Riv in '05. It was everything coming together - the performer, the performance, the setting, the situation, the desperate yearning for it to go on forever, the way it stays with you for days and days.

So many people so close to me have asked me so many times "Why Lady Gaga?" that I have lost count and the connection is at once too simple and too complicated to explain and so I will do my best. So many people have used so many adjectives to describe her and everyone is entitled to their opinion - even if I think many of those opinions are awe-inspiringly ignorant - and all I can say is that her great songs (of which there are officially, at present, six) are big and brash and bombastic and garish and unapologetic of their obvious influences because she is unafraid to show where she comes from and, most importantly, they are alive, they are so alive that they overwhelm me. A few years ago about "Born To Run" Bruce Springsteen said, "I wanted it to sound enormous, to grab you by your throat and...insist that you pay attention - not just to the music, but to life, to being alive." To me, her great songs sound enormous. They grab me by my throat and insist that I pay attention - not just to the music, but to life, to being alive. They truly do.


And at the show's conclusion she screamed "Now let's get drunk!" and everyone cheered while I thought "Damn, Lady Gaga, I'm tired. I gotta go to bed now." And then I realized I had a headache. And then I realized my dinner had been a Bud Light tallboy. And then I realized after standing in basically one place for over four hours that my right hip was in such agony I was literally limping across Grant Park and to the train. And as the thousands of us tried to make our escape, encountering false exit upon false exit, a group of us eventually forced our way through a fence that was not supposed to be forced through and I found myself hobbling past the same spot where all those protestors had been earlier and I could not help but wonder what would happen if they were there now, insulting the one person who had just united us? It's not that they are insufferable, slobbering, self righteous shitheads, though they are, because they are entitled to say whatever they want except none of us can truly know what will happen come the afterlife. But I do know that in this life Lady Gaga makes me happy and I do not even want to imagine my life for the past year without her.

Whoever earns the "privilege" of delivering my eulogy please make damn sure you say at least one thing: this guy was a Little Monster.

Cocktail (Flashback to the 80's, Part 3)

Skewered by critics but a smash at the box office in 1988, a more "innocent" time when no one knew Kokomo was just a city in Indiana, "Cocktail" was a melding of the sweet class warfare romances of the 40's and 50's with the "greed is good" mantra of the 80's. But mostly it was a star vehicle for Tom Cruise.

Cruise, his crazy laugh already honed, is Brian Flanagan, fresh out of the army, an optimist armed with How To Be A Success books in place of the Bible, who hops a bus back home to Queens where he stares longingly across the fragrant water at hopeful Manhattan where he goes in an attempt to find a job - appearing as if he is auditioning for his future role as a hitman in "Collateral" - to make him millions only to discover - much like Michael J. Fox in "Secret of My Success" - no experience means no employment. He earns a job as a bartender with Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown), wielding cynical platitudes ("Anything else is always something better") like martini olives, as mentor and young Flanagan flourishes, developing into the most skilled bartender in the five boroughs, a bartender who famously can take nearly three minutes to make one strawberry daiquiri while shimmying to The Georgia Satellites (whose name I was stunned to find nowhere during my April visit to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame). Inevitably a woman (a young Gina Gershon, who I had completely forgotten was in this movie) comes between the men, leading to a brawl, leading to Brian flying down Jamaica way and tending bar beachside and finding himself in the midst of a Meet Cute with sultry Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth Shue) at the exact same moment Doug makes his requisite return with a rich femme fatale (Kelly Lynch) on his arm for the purposes of fronting the funds for his dream bar back in NYC.

Post Falling-In-Love-With-Jordan Montage is when Doug bets Brian that he cannot and/or will not seduce a rich matron at the bar and if there is anything I recall about my first time seeing this R-rated flick as a PG kid was thinking as this bet unfolded "No, Tom Cruise! Why would you smite Elisabeth Shue for this floozy?! WHY?!" And 22 years later as I watched all I could think was "No, Tom Cruise! Why would you smite Elisabeth Shue for this floozy?! WHY?!"


And 22 years later Tom Cruise still smited Elisabeth Shue for that floozy and, of course, Elisabeth Shue finds about it and, of course, Tom Cruise winds up back in New York at which point "Cocktail" morphs into "West Side Story", kind of, as Tom Cruise tries to re-win the heart of Elisabeth Shue only to come up against her rich, unforgiving father all of which leads to the movie's most immortal line:

"When a guy lays down a dare you gotta take it."

That you do, Tom Cruise. That you do. And then all ends well - well, except for the fact that Doug Coughlin takes his own life in the wake of his get-rich-quick ruse going up in proverbial flames and Jordan is apparently never going to see her family again upon choosing to go with Brian and the audience is pretty sure Flanagan's bar is eventually going to go belly up when considering the film's final "twist" but this reviewer, quite frankly, doesn't seem to see what any of that has to do with anything especially in the face of this week's Long Distance Request And Dedication - which comes from 11 year old Nicholas Prigge in Waukee, Iowa in August of 1988. He writes:

"Dear Future Nick, This afternoon I did a terrible thing. I snuck into an R rated movie. My mom was shopping and she dropped me off at the Southridge 3. I bought a ticket for 'Caddyshack II' but right across the hall was a movie called 'Cocktail' starring Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue. He was Maverick. She was Chris Parker. I wanted to see this movie and I didn't really want to see 'Caddyshack II.' I had never successfully snuck into an R rated movie. I was always ejected by a humorless usher or thwarted by a stern cashier. But this time I streaked inside the theater, scurried to the second row and sunk as low as I could in my seat while still being able to see the screen. Thankfully the lax security at the Southridge 3 pales in comparison to theaters on the west side of Des Moines. If an usher ever came in, I never saw him. I have to be honest, Future Nick, I felt a little guilty. I had scammed the system, much like 'Cocktail's' Doug Coughlin, and his scamming of the system had caused him to put a bullet in his brain. What would my parents do if they found out? But I have to tell you, Future Nick, the reward was worth the risk. You see....I think I have a crush on Elisabeth Shue.

It's the eighties, Future Nick, and I don't know how well you remember this era. It's a time of leg warmers and headbands and acid wash jeans and girls with poofy hair. Even this Kylie Minogue girl who some guy in a DeLorean told me is wicked hot out there in the future is kinda just so-so. But Elisabeth Shue is grace. She's understatement. She and she alone redeems poofy hair. And when she was swimming around in that waterfall, Future Nick, well it was quite the sight for clueless eyes. Immediately afterwards I purchased the 'Cocktail' Soundtrack on cassette except there was a problem....it didn't have 'Shelter Of Your Love,' the song playing while she frollicked under that cataract of beaming liquid. Would you please play 'Shelter Of Your Love' by Jimmy Cliff and let Elisabeth Shue know that if she ever gets nominated for an Oscar for playing, oh, let's say, a prostitute in Vegas, that she should win and if she doesn't I will harbor unfair resentment toward the winner for the rest of my life. Sincerely, Eleven Year Old Nick."

Recorded in 1981 and featured on Jimmy Cliff's album Give The People What They Want, we are now going to give Eleven Year Old Nick what he wants. Long Live The 80's.