How Do You Know

Q: How Do You Know when you have no desire in any capacity whatsoever to write a review?

A: After seeing "How Do You Know" (2010).

Try being without a guy for 14 seconds, Reese. That's all. Just 14 seconds. Come on! You can do it! Can't you? No? You can't?

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Blob

Dreadful effects. Shoddy sets. Porous acting. It must be "The Blob" all right, that supposed classic of campy 50's cinema (1958 to be exact) about an amoeba-like alien that crash lands in rural Pennsylvania and, as it must, terrorizes a small town. Well, sort of terrorizes it. I had never seen the film as directed by Irvin Yeaworth and not until after did I realize its "auteur", according to ever-reliable Wikipedia, "directed more than 400 films for motivational, educational, and religious purposes." This shows. "The Blob" really doesn't blob it up all that much and the film itself isn't all that.........fun.

Steve (Steve McQueen) and Jane (Aneta Corsaut) are out - to use the parlance of the times - parking when a meteor streaks through the sky. They drive off to investigate and happen upon an old man running across the road with the gelatinous blob attached to his hand. They immediately take him to the town doctor who orders Steve back to the crash site to see if anyone saw what happened to the old man. But while Steve is away The Blob grows in size and swallows up both the doctor and his nurse and Steve returns just in time to see it. He tells his story to the disbelieving cops (Earl Rowe and John Benson) who calls the parents of Steve and Jane in to take their kids home. Not to be thwarted, Steve and Jane sneak out, team up with their pals and head off to warn their fellow citizens. Eventually it is The Blob vs. The Town.

I was under the strict impression this was of the, as they say, So Bad It's Good variety. But it's not So Bad It's Good. Not even close. It's just Bad. Bad-Bad. It's not Overtly or In-Your-Face Bad, which might have made it enjoyable, it's just sort of Summer Night, Leisurely Stroll Bad. It's completely indifferent to all it's non-goodness. It wreaks of a director who's churned out, well, over 400 films and is just slapping together another one on the assembly line. The acting isn't terrible, per se, it's just boringly wooden. The only moment in its entire truncated running time when it rises to the level of genuine So Bad It's Good entertainment is in the aforementioned scene when The Blob takes out the doctor and the nurse. Kudos to Steven Chase (Doctor Hallen) and especially to Lee Payton (Kate the Nurse) for taking it up a notch. Unquestionably the finest line reading of the whole film is Payton's: "Doctor, I'm frightened." This scene is majestic is in its kitsch. IMDB tells me Payton never acted before or after so perhaps this was Payton's one shot at a career and she went for it. She failed, sure, but her claim to fame is indelible.

Also curious is the film's presentation of its teens. McQueen, of course, would go on to become the so-called King of Cool, the anti-hero of anti-heroes, Frank Bullitt and Virgil Hilts, yet in "The Blob" he's all gee-whiz and aw-shucks. Sure, there's a scene where he drag races but, heck, the law doesn't even lock him up. He gets let off with a warning. And the vagrants against whom he races don't even turn out to be vagrants at all. They're his friends! They help distribute warnings about The Blob! And look at how his dad doesn't even question his son when he gets called down to the police station! "You saw a monster? Well, sure you did. No doubt at all. What a good boy." Can't he even ground him?! WHAT'S GOING ON?! DOESN'T ANYONE PLAY BY THEIR OWN RULES IN THIS TOWN?! Of course, if your "auteur" specifically made motivational, educational, and religious movies it all makes sense.

"The Blob" can only be defeated by a bunch of longhairs. Man, is this movie from Squaresville.

Houdini's Magic Ticket Blogathon

Dan of Top 10 Films had an awesomely inspired idea whereby he wondered what might happen if he were to be granted access to the magic ticket used by the young protagonist of the 1993 Schwarzenegger vehicle "Last Action Hero" to literally enter the world of his favorite movie. "What if," he wondered, "there was a magic ticket that could transport you into your favorite film? What film would I choose?" Except one film isn't nearly as much fun and, thus, he posed several different questions in relation to getting your hands on that precious magic ticket.

Being an idiot, I completely forgot about this most inspired blogathon until brilliant posts began appearing everywhere. It's such a fantastic idea I decided I wanted to be late to the party rather than miss the party altogether. I'd say I'm fashionably late but I'm probably too late to be fashionable. I'm the guy who shows up after midnight when half the people have already left or are tired and just want to go to sleep and starts drinking and hobnobbing anyway. And so, if I were granted a magic ticket......

What character would you most like to be sat next to on a plane?

If this was the Eurorail the answer would, of course, be Celine. But this isn't the Eurorail. It's a plane. So I'm going with April Drennan (Lizzy Caplan) in "Hot Tub Time Machine." This may seem like an odd choice but consider that she's a kind-hearted, striking rock journalist. I can't think of anyone better to be seated next to on a plane than a kind-hearted, striking rock journalist. Especially if our connecting flight gets delayed until the following morning and we go catch (this is the 80's remember) that Debbie Gibson show in town.

What character would you most want to enjoy a passionate romance with?

Tripler in "The Romantics." I know, I know, she's played by my Official Cinematic Crush Malin Akerman but this is the role that made me first swoon for her. She's blonde, she's crazy, she smokes...sigh. What I'd give to have one night in a hotel overlooking a Venice canal (heck, I'd settle for The Sundowner Motel in Montello, Wisconsin) with Tripler. Oh, the things we could do. Wait, did I just type that out loud?

If you were a cop who would you want as your partner?

Sgt. Al Powell in "Die Hard." Sure, John McClane can take on anyone and anything but that, of course, means he's always taking on anyone and anything. Al Powell, on the other hand, spends most of the first film chatting on a CB, shows up for a small cameo by phone in an office hundreds of miles away in the second and is nowhere to be found in numbers three & four. The bigger the movies get, the more Al Powell fades into the background. If I'm going to be a cop, I just want to fade into the background.

What animated feature would you love to walk around in?

Why "Fantastic Mr. Fox" of course. Even though Mr. Fox would likely enlist me in some harebrained scheme and I'd wind up dead in that garbage pail behind the Chinese restaurant along with the Rat.

What movie gadget would you love to try out (or steal)?

The speakers in "This Is Spinal Tap" that go to 11. Then I would give them to Ra Ra Riot when I see them live in November.

What film's plot would you alter and how would you do it?

"Cocktail." I would prevent Tom Cruise from smiting Elisabeth Shue by taking up Bryan Brown's dare and sleeping with that promiscuous floozy at the bar. Ugh. The movie's awful, sure, but that was the first time I can recall watching a movie and thinking to myself, "No, no, no!!! Why would you do that?! Stop it, you idiot, STOP IT!!! YOU CAN'T CHEAT ON ELISABETH SHUE!!!" It still stings after all these years.

What adventure based on earth would you most like to go on?

"The question isn't what are we going to do? The question is what aren't we going to do?" Oh, what I'd give to tag along on Ferris, Sloane and Cameron's day off. I suppose you might say, "But Nick, you live in Chicago. You could have that day off right now." On the contrary. If I did it on my own today I couldn't ride around in a 1961 Ferrari and I couldn't get those seats at Wrigley (are you kidding me?!) and I couldn't get to stand in the Sears Tower because it's the Willis Tower (gag) now and I couldn't get to sing "Twist and Shout" on a float because I'd get arrested and "Oh Yeah" by Yello couldn't be allowed on the soundtrack because this isn't the 80's and and I couldn't get to go to Chez Quis because it doesn't exist and I couldn't get to have Mia Sara along for the ride.

What one film would I most want to be transported into, simply to be a part of that world?

"Love Actually."

Official Cinematic Crush Update

My newly christened Official Cinematic Crush Malin Akerman is set to star as a code operator whom John Cusack's disgraced (is there any other kind?) former black ops agent is called upon to protect in Kasper Barfoed's forthcoming "The Numbers Station."

I mean, after all, much like Johnny Depp was born to play Hunter S. Thompson, Malin was born to play a code operator. Am I right? Guys? I'm right, aren't I? You're seeing this too, aren't you?

To paraphrase Charlie Kelly, she's gonna operate code all over everybody's asses.

My Eyes Are Bleeding

The top 4 films at the box office this past weekend were...

1.) "Paranormal Activity 3"
2.) "Real Steel"
3.) "Footloose"
4.) "The Three Musketeers 3D"

That's why my eyes are bleeding.

Take Shelter

Foreboding storm clouds gather. Rain begins to fall. Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) looks down at the drops in his hand. It's not rain. It looks like acid, perhaps even motor oil. Curtis wakes up in a panic, drenched in sweat. It's just a dream. Or is it a vision? And if it's a vision, is it true? Or is he potentially crazy, standing on the outer limits of schizophrenia? Curtis almost seems to believe it could be either.

He is a good man. A family man. He has a loving wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and they both love their daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart), who is six years old and deaf. This necessitates good medical insurance which Curtis has via his good job as a construction manager. His life isn't exciting or glamorous, just......good. His friend and co-worker Dewart (Shea Whiggam) tells him this and it is at this moment we know for certain that goodness cannot and will not last.

Curtis's dreams and/or visions get worse. The dog attacks him and gnaws into his arm. He wakes in a sweat. He puts their inside dog outside and erects a fence to keep it in. Tornadoes drop from the sky. He wakes in a sweat. He goes about re-constructing their shoddy old tornado shelter out back into a modern day Cold War bunker complete with canned food and gas masks. At the same time he visits a psychiatrist and attempts to work through his problems. He visits his mother (Kathy Baker) who was diagnosed a schizophrenic when he was merely ten and has been in assisted living ever since. He tries to glean from her the symptoms she remembers before losing it all completely.

The most brilliant and frightening aspect of Jeff Nichols' film is the way in which he both realistically tells a very fantastical tale and fantastically tells a very realistic tale. This is due in no small part to Nichols mostly un-showy direction but also due in very large part to the work of Michael Shannon who, if the movie gods are just, will land an Oscar nomination in three months time. He's always been a little off-kilter, such as in his pretty good 2006 film "Bug" with Ashley Judd that actually shares some things in common with "Take Shelter." Heck, even in Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" monstrosity he managed to inject a little off-kilterness into the proceedings simply by being himself. Here he carefully crafts a character that quite obviously is not right and is a little frightened that he's not right but not the sort of person who wants to alarm anyone that he's not right (he spends a great deal of time apologizing for any odd behavior) because he's not entirely sure why he's not right even though all the while he seems rather certain the fact that he's not right might just be a very real harbinger of something ominous on the figurative horizon. You're never quite as alarmed by his descent as you would ordinarily be in such a movie because he manages to convince you it's all in his head and he knows it's all in his head until it's not all in his head and he unleashes a scene of terror so authentic you momentarily feel as if you're in the room with him (and them).

Chastain, who spent most of Terrence Malick's "The Tree Of Life" merely being sumptuously framed, is his equal. As opposed to merely being the Suffering and/or Supportive Spouse she comes across as both but in a very real way, disturbed and confused by her husband's actions, angered by his strange decisions, but willing to stick it out and offer help because she genuinely loves him.

The third act is blistering, approaching over the top but avoiding it, and packed with a couple reversals that are shattering because momentarily the film seems headed for an open-ending before taking a switchback and opting for another open ending when it briefly seemed it might be headed for something else entirely. Two older ladies exiting the theater in front of me were quite audibly debating it and both hit on different interpretations. Then they asked me what I thought and I offered what I had concluded while watching the credits roll: You could read it a dozen different ways.

Maybe that's what it's like to have schizophrenia. Maybe Christopher Walken in "Blast From The Past" wasn't as much a kook as he seemed. Maybe one of these days Harold Camping will get the date right.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Twentieth Century

Talk about a film changing with the times. "Twentieth Century" (1934), Howard Hawks first comedy talkie and the movie that launched the immense star of Carol Lombard, is billed quite distinctly as a screwball comedy. "A harum scarum adventure," wrote Mordaunt Hall for the NY Times 77 years ago. Here, in 2011, this viewer saw a much more grisly tale interspersed with some dizzying dialogue and occasional comedy about a maniacal producer named Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) with a sinewy moustache, slapdash hair and a deranged glint his eyes (not unlike Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein") who manipulates and molds Mildred Plotka (Lombard), lingerie model, into Lillian Garland, toast of Broadway. Put a flowing black cape on this dude and he'd be tying Lombard to the train tracks. Eventually his boorish behavior drives her away before he schemes his way back in.

The opening 15 minutes is fairly frightening, though extremely well done, as we watch Jaffe break the hapless Plotka all the way down and then build her back up, forcing her to recite one line over and over and walk through a fake door over and over and follow chalk lines for stage blocking and finally eliciting from her the proper scream by thrusting a pin into her back. And it's all worth it because the play is a resounding success, as are the next several before Jaffe's distinctly cruel ways cause the newly christened Lillian to break off the partnership. Jaffe promptly threatens to hurl himself out a window, Lillian promptly decides to stay and he promises to tone down his antics. He promptly hires a private investigator to track her every move. She finds out and promptly (finally) flees the coop for Hollywood, turning into a motion picture star and sending her demanding mentor into a tailspin.

Now with creditors hot on his trail after yet another flop, Jaffe hops the Twentieth Century Limited bound for Chicago (victim of a crack by some cockamamie New Yorker who thinks he's better than us). Guess who else is aboard said train? It is here on the train where "Twentieth Century" most resembles a screwball, I suppose, with Jaffe and Lillian next door to one another, going in and out, and Lillian dealing with her boyfriend who wants to deal Jaffe a punch to the nose and Jaffe's long suffering assistants who gradually become more alcoholic as the film progresses to the escaped mental patient doubling as religious nitwit skulking about the train and putting up "Repent! The end is near!" stickers (not unlike Harold Camping) who unwittingly tricks a hapless assistant and Jaffe into thinking he can finance the new play.

Yet it all spirals into more wanton trickery by which Jaffe pulls Lillian right back into the spiderweb and the film ends the way it started. It's "12 Monkeys", really, without the time travel and 12 monkeys. It's depressing. Like, super depressing if you stop for just a second and consider it. Did this ending make people howl at the cinema in 1933? Poor Lillian. You could argue she makes her proverbial bed and has to sleep in it but nontheless, Jaffe's pretty much a horse's ass and not in the Steve Carrell on "The Office" sort of way. And if you think about it some more it's not unlike the Michael Bay/Megan Fox relationship. A tyrant finds a model, sculpts her into his every desire, turns her into a star, and fed up with his wicked ways she breaks off the partnership. Except, of course, whereas Jaffe fails to turn Valerie Whitehouse into the new Lillian Garland it appears that Bay has managed to turn Rosie Huntington Whiteley into the new Megan Fox.

Michael Bay can't even fall into trouble with creditors.

Perfect Excuse To Post A Killer Song

Canadian chanteuse Lindi Ortega's straight-up iPhone video for her Great Red Spot-sized brilliant tune "Angels" just won Best Music Video at the iPhone Film Festival. I didn't even know there was an iPhone Film Festival! But there is! She won! Because of course she did! It's awesome! The song's awesome! She's awesome! So here's the video! Swoon......

Dear Nicole Kidman

You're a fantastic actress. Whenever someone asks me to list my Top 5 Favorite Actresses, I include you. Did you know that? I put you in my Top 5 Favorite Performances of 2010? Did you know that too? A lot of people get on your case about the plastic surgery and the fact your forehead doesn't move but I got your back. So what if your forehead doesn't move? You're still better than 96.4% of actresses whose foreheads do move. You're like Michael Jordan during the second three-peat. You know, he couldn't jump and dunk like he used to so he perfected that fadeaway jump shot and he got to the free throw line. You're all like, "Yeah, my forehead doesn't move, so I'll just f--- your s--- up with this line reading and with this lip tremble and with not reacting when you expect me to react. How you like them apples?!" Long story short, I respect your skills. But...

I got mad when you starred in an Adam Sandler movie. I did. I'll admit it. I won't try and cover it up. But I cooled off about it. These things happen. I understand. You probably wanted to upgrade the solarium and put an aquarium in the den. That's cool. But...

Now you're starring in a Nicolas Cage "I'm Super Duper Broke, I Need Cash And I Need It Now, So I'll Make Anything! Do You Hear Me?! ANYTHING!!!" Movie.

IMDB tells me your next film is an Intrepid Reporter Investigates A Death Row Case that co-stars (gulp) Zac Efron and......Matthew McConaughey? What?! Adam Sandler to Nic Cage to Matthew McConaughey?! Who's next, Dane Cook?!

I'm not saying you've gotta go for the Oscar every time out, Nicole, but there are enough actors and actresses out there slumming in schlock to make the world go 'round. Come on, girlfriend, we need you on our team. Come back to where you belong. Please.

Sincerely,
Cinema Romantico

Meek's Cutoff

Welcome to a momentum-free zone. Director Kelly Reichardt’s take on the Oregon Trail wagon train opus has no interest in maintaining any sort of momentum it begins to generate, probably because those hopeful settlers coming across the continent never got much momentum going either. You’re making your way and things seem all right but then you come across a river and you have to ford it, you have to ford the oxen and the wagons and tiny birds you’re keeping in cages and then you have to dry off and get everything packed back up and then start again. An axle breaks on the wagon and you can’t just hit up Jake’s Auto Parts for a replacement, nope, you’ve gotta re-fashion it yourself. Your wagon train happens upon a steep ravine and so you have to lower the wagons one-by-one with every member of your party holding onto it for dear life by a rope you hope holds.

The characters in "Meek’s Cutoff" are forever moving, hopefully forward, hopefully to catch up with the Columbia River which will hopefully take them to the mystical Willamette Valley, but for their all their movement it feels distinctly, purposely, like they never get anywhere. The empty rocky vistas always look the same. It’s always one more hill, it’s always “one day, maybe two.” In quiet, plaintive tones Reichardt implicitly captures how it must have felt to be these brave and reckless pioneers, not to suggest she, as they say, puts us in their shoes, but in that helpless feeling of going and going and going and getting nowhere.

The wagon train consists of Solomon and Emily Tetherow (Will Patton and Michelle Williams), Thomas and Millie Gateley (Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan) and William and Glory White (Neal Huff and Shirley Henderson) and their young son. Their faithful (in theory) leader is Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) who has the buckskins and the big, brawny beard and the tall tales but seemingly no sense of direction. Everyone think he’s lost. Not that they’d call him on it. Well, eventually they do. At least, Emily does. “We ain’t lost,” he replies. “We’re just finding our way.” (Read: We’re lost.)


They need water, of course, to survive and Meek leads them to a watering hole only to deduce that, tragically, they can’t water there. Why not? At this point Reichardt does a curious, brilliant thing. We watch from the point of view of the bonnet-wearing women as the men stand a little ways off and debate. At first I thought the volume on my TV was turned down too low and so I turned it up. I still couldn’t hear anything. Maybe,”Can’t water” and “Head south” but that was it. It’s a subtle shift in point-of-view and Meek’s Cutoff is all about point-of-view. The camera remains with the wagon train for the duration of the movie. There are a few wide shots of the wagon train making its way but these are only to underscore the helplessness, not to provide bearings, and if characters ride off or on up ahead the camera does not follow and stays behind. And at this point at the watering hole Reichardt, working in conjunction with her screenwriter Jon Raymond, slyly shifts the primary point-of-view to Emily.

She’s the first one who sights the Indian (Rod Rondeaux), watching the group silently from a ridge. Later she sees him again and chases him off. They debate. Is the Indian alone? Should they let him be? Should they track him down and kill him before he brings them harm? Solomon and Meek ride off and capture the Indian. Solomon wants to let him live because perhaps he can guide them to water. Meek wants to slit his throat on the spot. The Indian lives, but rather than make him a symbol the film leaves him at arm’s length, too. He can’t understand them and they can’t understand him. It’s just more disorientation and even with the Indian possibly working as guide they still don’t seem to know where they’re going (possibly because the Indian doesn’t want them to know where they’re going, but who knows?!).


The pace of "Meek’s Cutoff" may seem slow in the context of what we are conditioned to so often expect, yet the sensation gleaned in every scene and in nearly every frame is one of desperate and fearful urgency, real lives being played out before you with real stakes, characters that simply exist rather than coming across as great actors greatly playing their parts (which they are). The cinematography is breathless but leaves you pinned in and occasionally claustrophobic. It can be discomforting to watch but eventually you realize you’ve taken this journey with these people and you’ve reached the same point. The actual end leaves many questions unanswered while still working as a picture perfect resolution of the film’s emotional arc. Is it strange that the final words made me think of the key wisdom in another 2011 western film, the animated "Rango"? Try as they might, these characters can’t walk out on their story.

The Ides Of March

Pennsylvania Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) stands at a podium before a giant American flag a week before the Democratic primary in that ceaselessly figuratively bloody battleground state of Ohio talking about the issues. You know, distribution of wealth, dependence on foreign oil, so on and so forth, the issues that drive a Presidential election. Or do they? The scene flips to backstage, the rear of the American flag, where Morris's campaign manager and junior campaign manager, Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), respectively, are discussing how North Carolina's Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright) is threatening to swing an all-critical 356 delegates the other way and ensuring the nomination for Morris's opponent. Issues? What issues? This primary won't turn on any stinkin' issues. It will turn on a backroom deal. Call me a "Million Dollar Baby" devotee, because I am, but it made me think of Morgan Freeman's majestic line: "Everything in boxing is backwards."

What is the Presidential Primary process but a boxing match? A down and dirty, fifteen round, heavyweight boxing match? Everyone, often even people within their own candidate's camp, throws punches. And "The Ides Of March", directed by Clooney with a firm, non-showy hand, and based on Beau Willimon's play "Farragut North", is the director himself, a noted political activist, throwing an unmerciful right hook.

Meyers, young and brilliant, is approached by his opponent's campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti). Against his better judgment, in defiance of Zara's most treasured trait (loyalty), Meyers agrees to meet and is told by Duffy that his camp is going to secure the Senator Thompson's endorsement by promising him the position of Secretary of State, thereby sealing the nomination. Therefore, Duffy explains, he should jump ship to join the winning team. Meyers tells Zara and together they appeal to Morris to offer the same deal to Senator Thompson to get him on their side but Morris refuses. He doesn't like Thompson and he made a pledge not to play that ideal-less game. Eventually a muckraking bastard - excuse me, a muckraking bitch (Marisa Tomei, convincing as always) somehow acquires the inside scoop on the whole sordid affair and threatens to drag Meyers down.

Meanwhile Meyers gains a political sex buddy in the form of nearly too young Molly (Evan Rachel Word), an intern for the Morris campaign and daughter of the Democratic National Committee's Chairman. But this, as it must, leads to yet another sordid revelation which also threatens to drag him as as well as the campaign down. And while the majority of the cinematic glitterati seems quite taken with the way Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan generate sexual tension with no dialogue and just facial expressions in "Drive" I must admit I felt the dialogue-heavy scenes between Gosling and Wood in "The Ides Of March", the way Clooney frames them in medium shots to start and then pushes in to close-ups, crackled much, much more.

Meyers is meant to be the audience surrogate, not necessarily in so much as he's the character for whom we most care but that he starts as someone with true belief in a cause and then feels it get slowly stripped away. The film builds to a moment of unbelievable, genuine suspense, a face off between Meyers and Morris that is of such immense quality precisely because for a moment or two there you actually aren't sure how it will play out. But then you realize it doesn't matter how it plays out. It's already been played out. And not in a good way.

Loyalty and ethics, not election results, are the key concerns here, yes, but I was struck more by the plight of young Molly, not least because in light of The Manic Pixie Dream Girl piece I put up at AM last week that generated much discussion in the comments about the plight of cinematic female characters in general. Here's a character portrayed as a piece on a District of Columbia chessboard, maybe even a piece of meat in a US Capital butcher shop. She gets used, abused, discarded, with little to no characterization other than what she represents to the various men swirling all around her. I have no idea whether or not this true to the life of the various comely interns that must be floating all about the politicized world, but it's indicative of how a human being inside the cutthroat boxing ring of politics can easily get trampled. Then they have a press conference about you and forget you ever existed.

Friday's Old Fashioned: From The Terrace

"So much is going on, yet nothing happens." You hear that phrase, or a variation of it, often in relation to cinema. Except when it comes to "From The Terrace" (1960) because in this movie so much is going on and, in turn, so much happens. It's got everything! Disappointed fathers, vengeful sons, alcoholic mothers, beautiful women, more beautiful women, late hours, fancy houses, private offices, liquor cabinets, airplanes, uncomprising photographs, a Big Speech, a character actually named Sage Rimmington, a seemingly omnipresent music score by Elmer Bernstein that re-inforces everything, Paul Newman dialing up the suaveness to "11" and Joanne Woodward taking on a hairdo that makes her look a lot like a late 50's Lady Gaga (which makes her a couple fingers of scotch hotter than she already was). It spans years, decades, so much so that if a couple characters get hitched we will instantly flash ahead to several years later in the marriage when inevitable discourse has set in because there isn't enough time, you see, to chart the evolution of the whole thing. Make no mistake, this is a melodrama. A serious melodrama. It's the White House Christmas Party of melodramas. If you will indulge me.....

Alfred Eaton (Newman) has just returned home from the war - that's WWII as this is 1946, Philadelphia - to find his mother (Myrna Loy) an alcoholic wreck and his father (Leon Ames) still running the family mill and still expecting his son to take it over which Alfred has no intention of doing because he not only wants to be his own man, he wants to be a better man than his father. He and his pal Lex (George Grizzard, talking like a cliched Dartmouth man) hatch a plan to start an aircraft manufacturing company at a cocktail party where Alfred first spies Mary St. John (Woodward) who's on the arm of Jim Roper (Patrick O'Neal) to whom she's engaged, not that this would prevent from Alfred from swooping in, asking her to dance, turning her off at the same time he's turning her on, and court her with Newman-esque intensity and style and, thus, despite the reservations of her parents who want her to marry "well" and not to some boy who's father owns a - gasp! - mill, Mary says so long to Jim and says yes to Alfred and they move into a majestic home with scads of money and so on and so forth but wouldn't you just know that Alfred starts to neglect his wife for his job which puts a strain on the marriage and sends Mary seeking solace in the arms of down-but-not-out Jim Roper and Alfred seeking solace in the arms of the daughter of a rich coal miner whose property Alfred has gone to inspect because he actually left the aircraft job - did I forget to mention that? - when he realize his business plan didn't match his partner's business plan and......

I lost my train thought. Ah hell. I think I've introduced the movie enough.

Clearly the movie's intent is to turn Alfred into his father, becoming the monster swore he would never become, and demonstrating how despite our best intentions we are all our father's sons. It seems oddly content, though, to let Alfred off the hook much more easily than his poor spouse who as the film progresses is portrayed more and more as a status seeking what-have-ya. Her affair is painted as cold, calculating, desperate and his affair is painted as lovey-dovey, two people doing the wrong thing against their better judgment even though they both know the wrong thing really is the right thing. The closing shot, for God's sake, could have landed squarely in "Hot Shots: Part Deux."

Did "From The Terrace" forget that Mary had a chance to take status by marrying Jim Roper just as her parents wanted but shot down that idea and insisted on marrying Alfred even though his business plans at that point were far-fetched? Did it forget that Alfred is the one who initiates the neglectful marriage by working long hours, going on the road, and never being home? I'm not saying this excuses Mary from her actions but merely asking why does it excuse Alfred from his? Because he gives a Big Speech at the end?

Perhaps it's because "From The Terrace" is nothing more than trash. Glorious, ebullient trash. It's ludicrous, but damn, man is it fun.

CIFF Day 2011

Every year during the Chicago International Film Festival, which generally runs the first couple weeks of October, I always - always - have other things going on. And thus, rarely am I able to take advantage of it like I should, if I'm able to take advantage of it all. So this year I said no. This year I took a stand. This year I took an entire day off and proclaimed it to be my CIFF Day 2011! Yay!!! And so tomorrow I'm partaking in three movies on the big screen. That's three. I can't remember the last time I saw three movies in one day on the big screen, mostly because I'm pretty sure I've never seen three movies in one day on the big screen.

My 10/14 CIFF Schedule (each synopsis is taken directly from the CIFF web site):

Take Me Home at 2:15. "Thom (Sam Jaeger, NBC’S Parenthood) just can’t win. After losing a job offer and getting evicted, he decides to buckle up as an illegal New York City cab driver. When he picks up Claire (Amber Jaeger), they embark on a trip neither one anticipated. This comedy finds solace in the back seat of a cab, the landscape of the USA, and even in a complete stranger. This classic road movie shows how a little cross-country drive can lead you to a different exit."

Nobody Else But You at 5:40. "The ambiguous suicide of local beauty, weathergirl, cheese model, and Marilyn Monroe look-a-like finds an eager sleuth in David Rousseau, best-selling crime novelist. When Rousseau visits a remote Alps village for the reading of his friend’s will he unwittingly, but irresistibly, gets caught in the tangled web of murder and small town politics in this off-beat mystery."

Note: This was the #1 movie I wanted to see at CIFF. And the only other two shows were 1.) Sold out and 2.) The same night as the Zola Jesus concert (which was last night and which I'm mentioning solely so I can shamelessly link to my current favorite song ever). Which is why I made Friday my day. I mean, sure, My Week With Marilyn and We Need To Talk About Kevin and A Dangerous Method and all those sorts of things are here but, hey, I can see those when they come to Chicago later in the year. I want to see a freaking French film with an absolutely bodacious synopsis that I might not ever get to see otherwise.

The Silver Cliff at 8:00. Violeta, a dentist in Rio de Janeiro, is happily married and still engages in passionate morning lovemaking with her husband. Then he leaves on business and calls to tell her he never plans to return. Confused, she begins to wander the streets, trying to figure out what happened and why. Rio is as much a protagonist as Violeta, its energetic and melancholic landscapes a reflection of her changing moods in this ode to resilience in the face of heartbreaking loss from Gold Hugo winner Karim Aïnouz (Madame Sãta).

So that's my CIFF Tripleheader. America to France and back to the Americas by way of Brazil. And there is also a Norweigan movie on Sunday I'd really like to check out too but in case I don't make it I'm not officially holding myself to it. Here's hoping it lives up to how excited I am about it.

New Girl & Lines

On account of the Major League Baseball Playoffs taking over Fox TV for the next few weeks, "New Girl" is not set to air a new episode again until the first week of November. Thus, my "New Girl" blogging will have no choice but to go on hiatus. Sigh...just when it was starting to win me over (read: wear me down). But I thought I'd write about something I'd been thinking about for the last week and a half or so.

A couple Thursdays back on my current favorite TV show "Parks and Recreation" there is a moment when Ron Swanson's villainous ex-wife Tammy #1 (indie queen Patricia Clarkson) has shown up at his office on account of him being audited by the IRS and her leading the charge. In an attempt to save Ron, his friend and co-worker, the ever valiantly clueless Leslie Knope, tries to explain Ron is needed in a meeting. Tammy #1 replies: "I'm sure Ron will remember the meeting fondly when he's making toilet wine in federal prison in Terre Haute."

That line made me laugh so hard I cried. Honest to goodness. I cried. I had tears streaming down my face. It's not just a great comedic line but a great phonetic line. Go ahead and say it out loud. ......I'm waiting...... "I'm sure Ron will remember the meeting fondly when he's making toilet wine in federal prison in Terre Haute." And it dawned on me right then and there - in four episodes "New Girl" hasn't had a line in the same hemisphere as that line.

TV shows are all about quotable lines. That's what allows for word of mouth. I love "Parks and Recreation" so much partly because it's so sweet and genuine and partly because all the characters are awesome but I also love it because week after week after week it serves up deft, hilarious lines. They keep coming. It never ends. Stacked right on top of one another, kinda like how moments after Tammy #1 says this, the mega-brilliant Aubrey Plaza's dryer-than-Death-Valley April Ludgate says to the camera "She's like the cold, distant mother I never had - I love her" which just made the tears stream faster.

So get it together "New Girl." No buzz for your show is gonna build if you don't have people saying to one another things like, "Last night, was LITERALLY the funniest line I've ever heard." 

50/50

What's most striking is that for a film about a character diagnosed with a rare form of cancer who essentially has an, ahem, "50/50" shot at survival is how little the characters progress emotionally. Typically in what we'll call for lack of a better term Disease Films, the change in characters is gargantuan and obvious while, on the other hand, "50/50" is about on par with how far pieces move on a cribbage board. It underscores how even in the midst of the most life altering revelation imaginable, we really change as people in the tiniest of increments, though those increments are, in fact, quite huge.

What's also striking about a film dealing with a cancer patient is how little we see of the patient undergoing cancer treatment. We see him talking things over with a therapist and getting shuttled to and from treatment sessions and we even see him strike up a friendship with a few older patients while they all wait together to undergo chemotherapy but the decision by writer Will Reiser and director Jonathan Levine is to keep the focus primarily on what transpires outside the hospital. This is not the film cheapening what is in reality an absurdly difficult process but choosing to show how what keeps someone in this particular situation going is what transpires outside the hospital.

At age 27 Adam Lerner (Joseph Gordon Levitt), a quiet do-gooder who doesn't drink or smoke or take drugs or even seem to use harsh language, is told he has spinal cancer. His support network is established - well, in theory it's a support network. His mother (Anjelica Huston, deft and brilliant) is worrywart who badgers her son about everything with only the best intentions that, of course, causes her son to wait a whole 2 days before actually telling her he has cancer. She wants to move in. He says no. His artist girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard) will take care of him. Except it's clear from the get-go their relationship is in mildly dire straits, explained when he tells his best friend and co-worker Kyle (Seth Rogen, a far better second banana than leading man and kind of resembles what Tony Roberts used to be to Woody Allen) that they haven't had sex in weeks. This is confusing to the pot-smoking, beer-swilling Kyle because all he ever seems to have on his mind is sex and, sure enough, once he gets the obligatory shock at Adam having a terrible disease out of the way he immediately begins to determine how they can use these news to score chicks.

Adam is sent to a therapist, Katherine (Anna Kendrick, who has the film's best line precisely because of how she says it - "I won't take no for answer"), who isn't really a therapist but a grad student working on her dissertation. (She also streamlines things by doubling as the New Love Interest.) Adam is her, uh, third patient. She says things straight outta Psych 101 and tries to touch him tenderly on the arm as a means to reassure which only freaks him out. He also makes friends with a couple older patients with more pronounceable forms of cancer who turn him to the medical ganja and offer perspective.

All the relationships in this film are far from perfect. Adam won't return his mother's calls because he can't take her ceaseless worrying. It turns out Rachel is not being faithful. Kyle just seems to be using Adam to further his own agenda. Katherine, in truth, has no idea what she's doing and even admits in an awkward real world situation to her patient that she sort of stalks her ex on Facebook. All these characters have faults, to be sure, but they are also completely unequipped with how to approach the situation. Adam's unequipped, too, as the film moves along we realize "50/50" is as much about this little group's inability to communicate as it is about its main character's medical battle.

In the magnificent scene at the dinner table when Adam is trying to break the news to his parents he asks, "Have you seen 'Terms Of Endearment?'" This line works wonderfully on two levels. One, it's essentially saying without 'saying' it that "50/50" has no interest in being "Terms Of Endearment." This won't be a hardcore take on such a situation, rather a situation that spotlights how one when undergoes such a traumatic experience he or she needs - requires - comfort away from the endless crap. "50/50" is an illustration of the comfort which goes back to why scenes in the doctor's office are few. Two, this line speaks to our modern day pop culture saturation. Seriously, if I were diagnosed with the disease (knocking on wood - knocking on wood) my first thought unquestionably would be, "Well, Kylie Minogue had it. And she told it to fuck off. So I can tell it to fuck off, too!" I imagine thinking about it in that sort of context offers......comfort.

Admittedly, "50/50" does not stray far from the expected structure. But it colors in between those lines so adeptly it lets the film rise about any formula to which it may adhere. The last line is so perfect, so simple but so eloquent, it should be copied and pasted and forwarded to every screenwriter in Hollywood. I dig movies that are First Acts.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Rally 'Round The Flag, Boys!

Here's what confuses me - in the opening moments of Leo McCarey's 1958 film, Harry Bannerman (Paul Newman) and his wife Grace (Joanne Woodward) are in their bedroom and in the midst of that been-there, done-that talk about how they have no time for each other anymore as a couple and so on and so forth and so they decide they will book a room for a night at the St. Regis Hotel and upon deciding this the shot in the bedroom widens and we realize......they have two twin beds. You know, because in the 50's a movie couple couldn't be seen with the same bed. I mean, what did the filmmakers think Harry and Grace were going to do in that hotel room? Play canasta?

All this is to say that "Rally 'Round The Flag, Boys!", adapted from the book by Max Shulman, is very much of its time. Essentially it's a cinematic sitcom with superior actors. Did you ever see the episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" where Debra is running for PTA President and this upsets Ray because now he will have to - ye gods! - look after the kids and clean the house and cook dinner and so on and so forth? This is not too far off from the initial act of "Rally 'Round The Flag, Boys!"

Grace, you see, belongs to committees. Lots and lots of committees. All kinds of committees. Name a committee, she's on it. This doesn't sit well with ol' Harry because if she's busy with a committee the odds that he'll be sitting home alone with a frozen TV dinner (apparently Harry can't work the oven himself) increase. He just wants a little time with his wife! Is that so much to ask?! She suggests the hotel getaway only to debunk every day as a possibility because of one thing or another. So Harry wonders why she even suggested it if she knew all along it wasn't going to happen? Because Harry, this is a clever way of showing that even though the film forces her into an apron, she still wears the pants in your relationship. (Ms. Woodward was nobody's toy.)

This is proven further when they attend a committee meeting about the military wanting to put a top secret base in their idyllic home of Putnam's Landing. The townfolk want nothing to do with it. Grace is nominated to chair the anti-top-secret-base committee and Grace nominates Harry to go to Washington and press the military to move this base somewhere else.

Hijinks, as they must, ensue. Not only does Harry find himself attempting to aid the military's base proposal rather than prevent it, he discovers his next-door neighbor, the vivacious Angela (Joan Collins) who is pleasantly persistent in trying to get Harry into the sack - well, make that one of the two twin beds - whose husband is one of those never-at-home twits, has followed Harry to D.C. and booked them a suite at which point - wouldn't you know it?! - Grace turns up. Uh oh! Although while you expect this to lead directly into an extended sequence where Harry has to juggle these two women and keep them apart it instead most unexpectedly (read: refreshingly) has Grace find out pretty much right away what's going on. She storms out, never mind that Harry wanted nothing to do with Angela and had only wound up pantsless on account of a few fortuitous circumstances. She doesn't know and so Harry will have to spend the remainder of the film trying to win his away back into the good grace of Grace.

The film opens with, and continues with for awhile before forgetting about it, a narrator suggesting a radio play, information that doesn't necessarily need to be relayed since we can see what's going on with our own eyes being relayed anyway. It also chooses to include a discombobulatingly superfluous subplot featuring a young Tuesday Weld who pines for a boyfriend that seems to exist solely to set up a bit of hijinks at the end that could have been set up in any fashion. It's a waste that makes the film feel overlong.

Paul Newman, meanwhile, who was so often the epitome of cooly laconic, his smile never revealing too much, spends his time in this movie mugging and contorting and buffooning and, in arguably the film's funniest moment, swinging drunkenly from a chandelier. Collins does complementary work as the Eisenhower-era femme fatale but, seriously, Joanne Woodward's dowdy dresses and occasional horn-rimmed glasses can't fool me. You're telling me Joan Collins was hotter than Joanne Woodward? No way Joan Collins was hotter than Joanne Woodward. (Not that I'm biased, though, of course, I am. Completely. 100%.)

In the end, despite Grace's best efforts, Putnam's Landing falls prey to the military base which turns out to be a training and staging ground for sending the first monkey into space (though if you don't think more hijinks are waiting in the bushes, you're crazy). The plot detail here is clear. Social and scientific revolution is coming. Except, of course, in the final shot of the film, when Harry and Grace finally make their date at a room in the St. Regis Hotel, we see the two of them separated by a night table, each sitting on a......twin bed.

That social revolution didn't really start until about 1963, after all.

New Girl: Wedding

You know, it's funny. I'm going to a wedding this Saturday. Weddings are so fantastic because they somehow become these pockets of time unto themselves where everyone is happy and dressed to kill and there are refreshments and merriment and great music (so long as you have a great DJ) and you inevitably catch yourself looking around at a moment when you're sitting down catching your breath and thinking, "Why isn't life always like this?" And then you remember, "Oh. Right. I'm wearing my rose-colored glasses right now."

The third episode of "New Girl" revolves around that old standby, a wedding. (Note: On the way to the Nebraska/Wisconsin game this past Saturday my friend Matt forced me to watch the pilot episode of NBC's "Whitney" on his phone to prove to me just how awful it was, an episode that revolved around......a wedding. And believe it or don't, but "New Girl's" version, while 3,343 x worse than "Parks and Recreation's" Andy/April wedding episode last year, was 2,772 x better than "Whitney's" version of a wedding. Whitney Cummings isn't mercurial. She's just shrill.) Nick's ex, The Waitress (i.e. Caroline), will be at the wedding and, thus, Nick and Coach and Schmidt enlist Jess to masquerade as Nick's date. One caveat: Jess can't be herself. No mercurial dresses, no nicknames, no chicken dancing, no - as the saying is now going with Zooey - adorkableness. Which is why it's supposed to be funny when 7 seconds after slipping into a fairly stunning dress Jess puts in buck teeth. Sigh.  (Though I did totally dig Jess's biker shorts under the dress, a gag which lacked a proper payoff.)

So at the wedding all three guys are set up with their own storylines: Nick will eventually re-gravitate to The Waitress (i.e. Caroline) and then find out she has a boyfriend and then get sloppy drunk, Schmidt will find himself smitten with a former crush who is now sober while fighting off the advances of his wedding-only sex buddy (Natasha Lyonne, who I remember having a little bit of a crush on back in the days of "American Pie" and "Slums Of Beverly Hills" and who has now apparently turned into - forgive me, dear readers - Shaquille O'Neal in the off season) and Coach finds himself in competition with a cocky kid usher. The show's aim with these multiple storylines is admirable and, I think, more of an attempt to give them all personality (as opposed to archetypes) but they still haven't come anywhere close to figuring out how to incorporate this many angles into a 20 minute run time. The pace has gotta pick up or else they'll feel slack and unresolved. Like they do here. Coach's, in particular, is barely followed through with in any capacity whatsoever. Did they run out of time or did they have no idea where to take it?

(Parenthetical Tangent: "New Girl" also seems determined to end every single episode with all four putting aside their minor squabbles and coming together as one unified quartet in some sort of ridiculous but sweet manner. Seriously, this is how all three episodes have ended. It's like the way "Scrubs" always used to end with the "lesson".)

If anything, watching "New Girl" has honed my appreciation for a show like the majestic "Arrested Development" which continually managed to work in something like 22 storylines every single episode and still have plenty of time for witty lines and brilliant sight gags and both poignancy and poignant absurdity and just plain absurdity. Poor "New Girl" can't even remember they had a cocky kid usher for more than 14 minutes before he's already been unwittingly tossed on the scrap pile.

Yet this episode, more than the other two, suggested that maybe, possibly, potentially something is there, simmering. Zooey's getting into the groove, I think. She spends a good chunk of the episode over-acting but you know what? This ain't "All The Real Girls." It's a freaking sitcom. Let it loose! I enjoy her over-acting. That's been my favorite part of all these shows. Her. The payoffs still need to hit harder and/or actually exist and that pace really needs to find the zone and they really need to figure out who in the hell these three guys are but if they can do all that......

I'm beginning to understand the life of a TV critic. Fox just picked up "New Girl" for whole the season and now we're all stuck. Those have us who have agreed to subject ourselves to every episode want it to get better and are maybe even willing to lie to ourselves to convince ourselves it's better. The TV critic for the Chicago Tribune wrote this last week: "Viewers will come to see Deschanel, but they'll stay for the whole package because smart writing, confident timing and characters that are both familiar yet surprisingly fresh make 'New Girl' the most promising comedy, and one of the most promising shows, of the season."

Last week my reaction to that sentence was, What in holy hell is that person talking about? What show are they watching? Now I'm coming around to it. The TV critic is merely watching "New Girl" with rose-colored glasses.

5 Years Since Mohicanland (Part Deux)

I have a more in depth piece up on Anomalous Material today in honor of the 5 year anniversary of my pilgrimage to North Carolina to see the filming sites for my all time favorite movie, "Last of the Mohicans", but thought I'd serve up a few more images from that same sojourn today on Cinema Romantico. Enjoy!

Red Wing, MN. My dad's hometown in the distance, as seen from the bench in Bay Point Park where I chilled for God knows how long the first day of the road trip in a melodramatic attempt to re-connect with my past.

Yes, I really stopped in Elizabethtown - for lunch and to aimlessly wander - on my way to North Carolina. Drew Baylor's road trip a year earlier in my current favorite movie ever was at least 30% responsible for FINALLY getting me to take my Mohicanland road trip. I wanted to pay honor. Deal with it.

When I was trying to find the place in Dupont State Forest where Hawkeye, Cora, Alice, Uncas, Chingachcook and Duncan were walking alongside the river - "I ain't your scout" - I somehow ended up here looking down on the river instead. Let's not talk about it, okay? I'm still a little bitter.

This is the waterfall - the highest of Triple Falls - you see all of them walk right by prior to the aforementioned scene. This is taken from the vantage point of where I had lunch and then sat for a good 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours. Better than St. Patrick's Cathedral. 

The forest where Duncan sort of confronts Magua - "Magua said, understand English very well" - and Cora briefly sees the cougar.

The rocky slope over there to the left of High Falls is what you see Hawkeye, Uncas and Chingachcook scaling near the end when they are going after Cora & Alice.

Where - in Chimney Rock Park on the Skyline Trail - Hawkeye uses his double-fisted muskets to take out two bad guys.

Where Uncas hides before busting out and bashing the Huron in the face, triggering his assault on Magua in the tragic attempt to rescue Alice.

My personal Mecca, Alice's jumping point, up close and in your face.

Kylie: Back To The Silver Screen

Kylie Minogue, hot on the heels of starring as a heavily tattooed lesbian in "Jack and Diane", a film which features......uh......some other people as characters of some sort up to something somewhere (does it matter?), is now set to star opposite some woman who won an Oscar in a film called "Holly Motors" which was directed by someone from France (or possibly Luxembourg) which is about varying characters doing a multitude of things in different locales. Or something. Why do you care about the specifics, anyway? Did you hear what I said?

KYLIE MINOGUE IS IN IT.

If they're handing out free 10 oz bars of gold you don't ask the specifics, do you? No, you just consider yourself lucky and go and get one. So just shut it, be thankful and get down this morning to this.

A Scene For Today