2011 Ultimate Mix Tape

Back in August I had a long (drunken) conversation on the phone with my best friend Jacob one Saturday evening (Sunday morning). This was less than 48 hours after I had gone ahead and already declared 2011 to be the greatest year for music ever. Jacob explained he had relayed this information to a friend earlier that night and his friend, suspiciously, wondered, "Really? 2011?" A fair question and one that I will address simply by explaining that in no way am I proclaiming this as the greatest year for music EVER. No, no, no, no, it's the greatest year for music I have ever PERSONALLY experienced. That's it.

My poor friends on Facebook know this because seemingly every 15 seconds I was pitifully blathering about yet ANOTHER hellacious concert I'd attended and, well, it was sort of true. The awesome shows just wouldn't stop. And I'm going to self-indulgently list them all again because this list sends my heart aflutter. Handsome Furs twice and Zola Jesus twice and Ra Ra Riot simply doing what they do (i.e. being the best live band on earth) and Jessica Lea Mayfield singing a song acoustic out of necessity on top of her blown-out speaker...

...and this and Justin Townes Earle covering Springsteen and Youth Lagoon blowing up the spot two nights before Thanksgiving (thanks to my friend Cindy for inviting me along to that one because I wouldn't have gone otherwise) and miraculously scoring free Sounds tickets and getting to meet Lindi Ortega and listening to her play an original song I've never heard and that in some sort of small, selfish way I don't ever want to hear again so it can just always be part of that special evening and Lissie at the House of Blues on Lollapalooza Weekend which, honestly, surprisingly, might have been my favorite show of the whole year if not for the mother Mary of all shows.....Kylie Minogue in NYC, a show that did to me emotionally and physically what only my first Springsteen show has done to me which is all that needs to be said and which is why I will never watch or listen to footage of it or discuss it in depth for the rest of my life so it can just exist forevermore the way I remember it in my mind.

Lissie at HOB: terrible sound and a bad angle can't disguise life-affirmation in action.

But it wasn't just the live music. It was the music itself. We discussed Handsome Furs yesterday and yet in any other year I would/could have written an insanely passionate diatribe about Zola Jesus and "Conatus" or Wye Oak and "Civilian" or Lindi Ortega and "Little Red Boots." To find four albums in one year that meant that much to me? The odds are so unlikely I don't even want to consider them. And yet beyond even those priceless works of art there was so much more - songs, songs, songs, songs, an endless towering tide of wonderful songs, so many that when I sat down to compose my annual mix tape I had something like 46 songs (several artists had two or even three) on here. Well, that was ridiculous. This was a mix tape. You can't just throw everything on there! That's cheating, and besides you need to create a mood that reflects your state of mind. So I went about whittling it down to a mere 13 bits of tuneage, a process that was simultaneously difficult (I didn't want to leave anything off) and easy (these were it). It's an eclectic list to be sure but then that's always been representative of my state of mind.

A tip of the cap, 2011. I could spend the rest of my days describing how much your music rocked and still come up short.


1. It's So Easy, The Sounds. My official 2011 Anthem. If only this song was longer. But, of course, to be longer would negate its entire point.



2. Angels, Lindi Ortega. This song is my sunshine. My only sunshine. It makes me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know how much this song means to me. Please don't take "Angels" by Lindi Ortega away.



3. Blue Skies Again, Jessica Lea Mayfield. The greatest dregs of winter and/or arrival of spring song ever recorded. To repeat, that's ever. End of discussion.



4. The Big Charade, Julia Klee. This song makes me want to buy a car right now so I can listen to it in it at top volume with all the windows rolled down.

Big Charade by Julia Klee

5. Take It In, Wye Oak. A massive, rumbling, beautiful musical thunderhead that will leave your emotional flood plain overwhelmed. (Note: This song was released in 2009 but I heard it for the first time this year.)

Listen to the song here.

6. Shake It Out, Florence and The Machine. This isn't gospel music for people who don't like gospel music, this IS gospel music.



7. Will Do, TV on the Radio. I definitely have days where I suspect the line "I'd like to collapse with you and ease you against this song / I think we're compatible, I see that you think I'm wrong" will be on my tombstone. Self-pity aside, this luminous tune is proof-positive TV on the Radio could be an untouchable pop super-group.....if that's what they wanted to be (which I'm pretty sure they don't).



8. Hair, Lady Gaga. To paraphrase Our Lady Of Perpetual Gaga herself, this song makes my heart bleed rainbow syrup. (I was reading somewhere recently a discussion as to whether or not Ms. Gaga had become "overrated" on account of the.....zzzzzzzzzz......whoops! Sorry! The predictability put me to sleep!)



9. Comme Un Enfant, Yelle. A fire-breathing dragon displaced to the discotheque, this song is further definitive proof that when it comes to dance music America has no idea what the hell is going on.



10. Forget That You're Young, The Raveonettes. You know the scene in movies often repeated when characters are looking out a window - in their home, in their car, in a taxi, in a bus, on a plane, etc. - with that sort of beautiful sadness? This song feels like all those thousands of shots combined into one.



11. Collapse, Zola Jesus. ....gasp....



12. When I Get Back, Handsome Furs. My favorite song of 2011. It makes my heart soar on the wings of leonopteryxes.



Hidden Track: Marry Me, Emilie Autumn. It's hidden because, well, I'm fairly certain my insanely exotic musical tastes freak some people out but my immense love of this particular song freaks myself out. (If this track isn't your speed, perhaps this one might be. Might be, I said.)

Cinema Romantico's Person(s) Of The Year

There is a moment in the song "When I Get Back", which opens the Handsome Furs' third album "Sound Kapital" that far exceeds spectacular and nestles right up against the tiny but beautiful territory of life-changing. At the end Dan Boeckner comes in and sings "It might sound simple / It might sound strange......It comes straight from the heart" and it is so indescribably perfect because in our current cynical, ironic, un-earnest world such a notion would sound overly simple and ridiculously strange and so then he repeats again and again and again just to re-inforce it, just to shoot all the haters down, just to speak for all us painfully and proud earnest mo-fos out there! "It comes straight from the heart!" Damn right, it does. Bless this song. Bless this band.

Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry, the husband/wife Canadian duo that comprise in totality Handsome Furs, are Cinema Romantico's Person(s) Of The Year.

As 2011 opened the infamous Mount Rushmore Of Non Bruce Springsteen Albums (central to my ridiculously melodramatic existence) looked as follows:

George Washington: Lucinda Williams' "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road".
Abraham Lincoln: Arcade Fire's "Tunnels".
Theodore Roosevelt: ?
Thomas Jefferson: ?

What constitutes a place on this hallowed vinyl mountainside? Many things. Not simply a killer album, of course, but an album where every single song is killer, so much to the point that even while you have a clear FAVORITE song on the album your "favorite" song switches roughly every 2.5 weeks. It must be an album that survives that initial 1 month, 2 month burst of "I need to hear this all the time endlessly" and lasts and lasts and lasts, etc. It must be an album that while speaking to you deeply at a specific time in a specific way also can stand apart from all that and function on its own as an objectively kick ass piece of work. These sorts of albums, as we all know, are difficult (nigh impossible) to find.

The best example I can think to constitute something that almost but doesn't quite make my Mount Rushmore is Kathleen Edwards' "Failer". 10 songs but I always skip over "The Lone Wolf", only want to hear "Sweet Little Duck" in very rare instances and merely think "Maria" is just okay. It survived a few extra months past that initial burst, unlike many albums, but it still has never equaled to me what it meant right there at the start when I desperately needed and cherished it. Close, Kathleen, oh so close, but no cigar. Ra Ra Riot's "The Rhumb Line" also made almost made it on there, fitting every possible piece of criteria except that, well, speaking honestly, their lyrics have never thrilled me all that much. I cherish that band so much because of their sound, because their sound is how I feel, and lead singer Wes Miles' voice is very, very much part of that sound but the lyrics can't quite bring it all the way home and so it never made it up onto the mountain. (Also, they put the wrong version of "Dying Is Fine" on there.)

I've always liked Handsome Furs quite a little bit. Their first two albums were anthemic, romantic, and mostly enjoyable. But nothing in any way, shape or form could have possibly prepared me for the copious riches of "Sound Kapital", the Theodore Roosevelt of my Mount Rushmore Of Non-Bruce Springsteen Albums. In the last several years I have become enthralled - one might argue, obsessed - with electronic music. Kylie was where that all started, of course, and it branched off into varying directions, and electronic music gets a rap for being - well, let Sub Pop, the record label on which "Sound Kapital" was released, tell it (because I can't possibly tell it any better):

"It’s...the first Handsome Furs album written exclusively on keyboards. This was a conscious decision. Here in 2011, the suggestion that electronic music is cold, alien or unfeeling, somehow detached from the human experience, is as lingering as it is outdated. Handsome Furs don’t just shrug off this myth on Sound Kapital, they reject it with every fiber of their shared being. On this new album they use keyboards and drum machines to forge life-affirming anthems taut with muscle and blood. These nine songs of innocence and experience occasionally look ahead to a better world in the not-so-distant future, but Handsome Furs know what time it is: Now. They are fully engaged in the moment and their surroundings, wherever that may be."

It's a road album, songs Dan & Alexei composed on their travels through Eastern Europe. Road Albums typically come with the ready-made stigma of being lonely, depressed, desperate to be with someone who isn't there or wasn't ever there, a narcotic need to be anywhere else. Maybe the "road" makes us feel that way, but what about "travel"? Travel redeems and rejuvenates and romances. It leaves you breathless while simultaneously replenishing your oxygen supply. You stand on a mountain you've never seen in a faraway place where you've never been and take in different air and just think "Yes." Or maybe you don't think at all. Maybe you just live in the moment.

Living in the moment is so confusing. "Remember those posters that said, 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life'? Well, that's true of every day but one - the day you die." That's what Lester Burnham said in "American Beauty", and the dude made a good point. How can you live every day like it might be your last (a common refrain) when it's also the first day of the rest of your life? I wrestle with these warring notions all the time and, frankly, it makes my head hurt. And "Sound Kapital" is an embodiment of this all-important war. Inexplicably, unexpectedly my entire 2011 sort of turned into a defiant The Year Of Living Every Day Like It's My Last. I could not have hoped for a better soundtrack to accompany it than this album...

1. When I Get Back. See above (and below).
2. Damage. The primary reason I'm naming "Sound Kapital" as the Teddy Roosevelt on my personal album Mount Rushmore rather than Jefferson is because I think this song would be the perfect soundtrack to accompany his Midnight Ride.
3. Bury Me Standing. My least favorite track on the album which means on 89.7% of other albums it would likely be my favorite track.
4. Memories of the Future. When God's had a tough day at the office, He likes to come home, pour a finger of bourbon and put this track on repeat.
5. Serve The People. I've already declared this my official 2012 Election Anthem.
6. What About Us? The first half of the song is all about the pain that a broken heart elicits. The second half is about how freeing it can feel once that pain is gone.
7. Repatriated. This song has more soul than Otis Redding. That's right! I said it! I meant it! I stand by it! What are you gonna do about it?!
8. Cheap Music. I read a review of "Pearl Jam Twenty" where the reviewer was lamenting the absence anymore of traditional four and five piece rock bands, essentially indicting the very "Cheap Music" which Handsome Furs are championing here. And that's fine. That reviewer and everyone else can have all the traditional rock bands they want, I'll take this guy on guitar and this girl on synth and no one and nothing else and be happy because they're more rock 'n' roll than your traditional bands will ever be.
9. No Feelings. The perfect capping song. Why? When you get back from a momentous trip or a life-altering experience you are often gripped with the sensation of having been so overwhelmed with feeling for an extended period of time that you are now, in fact, with no feeling which, of course, is one of the very best feelings out there.

Listen to it. Believe it. Long live "Sound Kapital." Long live Handsome Furs. Long live 2011. Long live The Moment. Long live rock 'n' roll.

Cracking The Sienna Miller New Year's Eve Mystery

The Garry Marshall-produced rom com New Year's Eve with an ensemble cast so large it could triple the population of Atlanta, Georgia is currently pulling down a cool 7% at Rotten Tomatoes. Good grief. But I'm not here today to discuss the apparent awfulness of this movie. I'm here to discuss the so-called Sienna Miller Mystery (so-called because that's what I'm calling it).

Early last year reports were popping up that my ex-Cinematic Crush had been added to the cast of New Year's Eve but there was really no word on who she'd be playing or what she'd be doing. Perhaps, I dreamed, she would be playing the instructor of an ultra-inclusive December 31 scotch tasting at a posh bar near Times Square. Who was to say?! But when the first previews for the film appeared she was nowhere to be found. Hmmmmmmmmm.

When my esteemed colleague Andy Buckle announced via Facebook that he was attending a screening for "New Year's Eve" I pleaded with him to report back as to whether or not she appeared. He relayed that her name was in the credits but she herself was nowhere to be found. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Most news outlets reporting on the film's release still included her name - like this one at Collider.com which was posted on December 5th. But the IMDB profile for "New Year's Eve" does not - I repeat, does not - list Ms. Miller's name. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Then I came across an article from The New York Post - which is, granted, "the worst piece of paper on the east coast", according to Chuck D - who indicated "that Miller did have discussions with Marshall, but that because of schedule issues, the part she was being considered for -- a pregnant woman -- went instead to Sarah Paulson." No one else seems to have corroborated this story but what else is one to assume when people aren't seeing her in the actual film and it isn't listed as one of her acting credits?

And so Cinema Romantico's theory emerges. Remember the December years ago when you met a comely young lass, the friend of a friend, and you really, really dug her and you knew she was invited to your friend's New Year's Eve party and so you waited all that night - trying not to get too inebriated - for her to show up so you could talk to her some more and maybe, just maybe, when magical midnight rolled around she'd be looking for a guy with whom she could share an innocent kiss and maybe, just maybe, the party would transform into a sing-along dance party and she'd know all the words to "Glory Days" too and this would be one New Year that would start off with a harvest of hope and a pasture of promise?

And then she never showed up?

Sienna Miller is that girl in "New Year's Eve." And, of course, if New Year's Eve's had their own Rotten Tomatoes scores, that particular New Year's Eve probably would have received, say, a 7%.

Hugo

At the conclusion of grandmaster Martin Scorsese's enchanting little (but extremely big) 3D tale of a boy named Hugo (Asa Butterfield) who lives with the clocks in a 1930's Paris train station I stayed to watch the credits. The screenplay was by John Logan, and that made sense because Our Man Marty has never written his own stuff, but then the following credit says the movie is based on a book called "The Invention Of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick. This floored me. It shouldn't have, of course, since I knew going into the film that it was based on this book but as the movie unfolded before me I got so lost in it I became convinced that it would have a "Story By Martin Scorsese" credit. No wonder he was drawn to making this book into a film. I just called it the "tale of a boy named Hugo" but that's actually wrong. "Hugo" is the tale of Martin Scorsese.

The Hugo of the title is essentially an orphan, having lost his father (Jude Law), a clockmaker, in a fire and then taken in - as into the actual walls of the train station to tend to the clocks - by his drunken uncle (Ray Winstone) who eventually wanders off and disappears. Hugo remains alone, making the clocks run, stealing food, evading the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), comic relief, and repairing a mechanical automation, which is essentially all that remains of his father.

Hugo earns the wrath of the station's toymaker (Ben Kingsley) which leads to Hugo forging a friendship with the toymaker's goddaughter Isabella (Chloe Grace Moretz) who is desperate for an adventure and gets one when she and Hugo unwittingly unlock the mystery of the automation and, in turn, unlock the mystery of her godfather. He is none other than Georges Méliès, a real life cinematic pioneer who, tragically, in the early cutthroat supply & demand days of the medium was tossed aside when people no longer went to see his films. And it is here that "Hugo" takes an unusual detour.

It sort of shifts the story from its title character to Méliès, taking an extended portion of time to literally sit the characters down and explain to them (and us) who he was, what he accomplished, what happened to him, etc. It's a history lesson in the midst of a rolling, rollicking 3D adventure and while this little boy in whom we have invested our collective emotion gets sent to the sideline, well, does he really?

The Scorsese story is a long and detailed one and if you're searching for all of it, all of the gritty details, I would direct you here. But if you're looking for a condensed and romantic version I would direct you to "Hugo." Its auteur, as is well known, was crippled by asthma from an early age which prevented him from partaking in many activities and turned him into a watcher of the movies. How does "Hugo" open? With Hugo himself watching over the expansive train station from varying vantage points, the trademark Scorsese moving camera moving like kids at a college campus after spring finals. And in the film's second half, upon the introduction of Méliès, he sits back and watches some more. I wouldn't necessarily say the film chooses to switch protagonists midstream and/or momentarily move its current protagonist for the sideline for a flight of fancy. I would say the film specifically chooses to turn its current protagonist into, shall we say, a member of a movie audience. It's kinda bold and it admittedly kinda blunts the narrative impact which, up until then, had been steady like a train. But that leads directly to the ultimate auteur question - as in, if that hadn't happened, would Scorsese have made the movie he wanted to make?

In a sense, the automation is what saves Hugo once his dad dies and the automation is what leads him to Méliès and Méliès and his movies. Hugo and The Automation. Scorsese and Raging Bull. Same diff.

Merry Christmas

Jonathan Traeger Supports Independent Bookstores

Farhad Manjoo recently wrote an article for Slate championing Amazon.com over independent bookstores.

But upon my annual holiday season re-watching of "Serendipity" last night I came to the swift, stunning realization that Mr. Manjoo is, in fact, an idiot. Why? Simple. How would Jonathan Traeger have found Sara Thomas without an independent bookstore?

Catch .44

Remember back in the mid-90's right after the release of "Pulp Fiction" when it seemed like every other weekend someone else was trying to rip off Q.T.'s opus? "Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead" and "2 Days In The Valley" and "Truth or Consequences, N.M." and on and on and on. I could have sworn those days were behind us. Silly me! Enter: writer/director Aaron Harvey's "Catch .44", so bad it went to DVD two weeks after an insanely limited theatrical release back in early December (yes, this December). This might be the worst "Pulp Fiction" knockoff of 'em all. Don't believe me? Let me prove it. You don't mind if I just go ahead and give away the first 10-15 minutes of this thing, do you? You don't? Excellent.

Malin Akerman.....with a gun.

It opens with Bruce Willis in a close-up that brings to mind the extended close-up of - you guessed it! - "Pulp Fiction." Except in this one he's actually speaking. Then it's the opening credits and as the opening credits play the one word that surges to the front of your mind more than any other is......pulpy. Then we are in some roadhouse coffee shop with three pretty ladies and one pretty lady, Tes (my official Cinematic Crush Malin Akerman), presents an extended monologue on the pros and cons of women "faking it." Eventually the monologue ends and the three ladies jarringly snap into Serious Mode and as they do it suddenly dawns on you that they're about to pull guns and stick the place up. (Is this reminding you of the opening to another film?) They do. One of the pretty ladies gets shot dead. Suddenly the scene switches and we realize we're face to face with......the pretty lady who just got shot dead! We've rewound back in time! Ye gods! And then, as if all that wasn't enough, as if on cue, the dead pretty lady's name slides into the frame in big bold neon letters. KARA!!! At that point I started laughing. Literally. Out loud. I mean, come on! This movie can't be serious! Right?! It can't be! It is? No. Yeah. I think it's being serious. Hell, it's so Q.T.-ish people use rotary phones and cassette tapes even though specific references indicate it's present day.

Tes and Kara (Nikki Reed) and Dawn (Deborah Ann Woll) are drug runners or drug pushers or drug peddlers or......I have no idea, really. They carry guns and they do something pertaining to drugs for Mel, a sinister crime boss, and his orders have led them to this roadhouse coffee shop to pick up a shipment or steal a shipment or......I have no idea, really. Mel is played by Bruce Willis who gets top billing even though we see him only for a few fleeting moments right at the start and then not again until almost a whole hour has passed. He's like a cheap Harry Lime imitation.

So, believe it or not, this film actually belongs to the lovely Ms. Akerman. She's the star, and while even I will admit she's decidedly out of her element in the arena of wielding guns and barking lines like "I'm not even going to say it because y'all know what this is!", she does have a certain verve in more relaxed scenes that could translate quite ably to more, shall we say, non-drugs & mayhem material. (She also does a credible job of rocking a toothpick Mickey-Rourke-In-"Iron-Man-2" style.) Her Tes is a waitress at a strip joint who enters the illicit world of drug running or pushing or peddling at the urging of kindly but vengeful Ronny (Forest Whitaker) who saves her from a strip joint jackanapse (even though Tes seemed like she had things under control) who introduces her to Mel and then turns backs up in an apparent effort to not only rescue Tes but pledge his undying love and affection to her (honestly - he does) once Mel has deemed its hers and Kara's and Dawn's "last job" and intends to have them offed in this roadhouse coffee shop.

Malin Akerman.....with a toothpick.

None of it makes much sense. For instance, in the moments before Ronny turns up to try and save Tes and pledge his undying love and affection to her he masquerades as local law enforcement and pulls Tes and her two gal pals over and winds up in a quizzical conversation with them that seems to serve no purpose other than, well, to be quizzical conversation. If he wants to run away with her why wait until she's in a gun-driven Mexican Standoff in the roadhouse coffee shop? Did I mention the gun-driven Mexican Standoff? Dear Lord, the gun-driven Mexican Standoff! It goes on for so long it makes the gun-driven Mexican Standoff of the Tarantino penned "True Romance" look like a 30 second short at Sundance! By the time it finally concludes every single last drop of whatever minor suspense it had to begin with has evaporated. And, more than anything, that's what the unfortunate "Catch .44" comes down to - scene ideas that must have sounded dynamite in Mr. Harvey's head that he couldn't translate to film.

-"Hey! What if I have the three girls drive around to The Raveonettes' 'Dead Sound?'"
-"Okay? But what's the underlying emotion you're trying to get across by doing it?"
-"Never mind that! It'll look way cool!"

Don't get me wrong, "Dead Sound" is a bodacious tune but only people like the real Q.T. and Marty and P.T. Anderson can properly employ pop songs in those sorts of situations. All these random scenes and bits of tuneage and cheap cinematic parlor tricks add up to a terribly unformed film that's straight outta 1995 (or 1987 - there's one fabulously meta moment when Tes plays a song off the 1987 music album of.....Bruce Willis). Seriously, Aaron Harvey, can't you rip off, like, Miranda July instead? Give that a whirl next time.

Oh well. At least you get to see Malin Akerman shoot Bruce Willis. Wait! I mean, spoiler alert! SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

George Smiley (Gary Oldman), a retired British Intelligence agent, is recounting an interrogation he once underwent. He leans forward in his chair as if he is the man across the way staring himself down. The camera finds Oldman's face in close-up as he re-states the long-ago stated words. But it's not the words. It's the face. It's Gary Oldman's poker face and he's daring us, all of us, the audience, to call him out. We can't, much like no one throughout the whole of Tomas Alfredson's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", based on the novel by John le Carré, seems able and/or willing to call him out because they don't know what he's thinking and they don't know what he knows. It must take 15 minutes at least for this George Smiley to even say a single solitary word. That's fairly amazing. This isn't "The Artist", mind you, this is a talkie. But Smiley really, truly only talks when he has something to say or has something he needs someone else to say. In any other situation in any other walk of life he seems to be sitting back and reading everyone and reacting internally. The guy's no blank slate but, my God, does he look like one.

Prideaux (Mark Strong), agent in the British Secret Service (i.e. The Circus), is sent to Hungary to glean a little info for his craggly boss Control (John Hurt). Things go wrong. Prideaux is shot while trying to flee. Thus, Control and his second-in-command, Smiley, are forced into retirement. Time out of the office for Smiley seems to pass with no difference whatsoever compared to his in office demeanor. Eventually, as he must be, Smiley is brought out of retirement to investigate the claims made by agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) that there is a Soviet mole in the upper echelon of The Circus.

Who could it be? It could be Alleline (Toby Jones) who assumes Control's place. It could be Haydon (Colin Firth) who we discover has taken Smiley's spouse for a mistress. It could be Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) who, no offense, kinda lives up to his name. It could be Esterharse (David Dencik). Hell, it could be Smiley. Who's to say? He's not saying, not until he knows for sure, which will be eventually, eloquently revealed in a slow-moving but slow-burning suspenseful way that in perhaps the biggest surprise of all contains - by my count - but a single scene where a character, Smiley's right-hand man Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch), is trying to escape a room without being caught with a particular item of vast importance he's not supposed to have. That's a bigger twist than the film's actual Big Twist, if you ask me. Typical spy movie goings-on are sidelined.

The film skips back and forth between the past and present of Smiley's life (and employs one of the more unique devices to differentiate the switches that I can recall in a film - that is, in one of the very first scenes he gets a new pair of glasses and, thus, for the rest of the film it means that Old Glasses = Past and New Glasses = Present). We learn how this Ricki Tarr came into possession of information regarding the double agent, a short passage involving a doomed (kind of) love affair with a red-headed Russian beauty (Svetlana Khodchenkova) that is the closest the movie really ever gets to humanizing anything. No one has much of a personality, precisely because they can't, and emotional and even political motivation are virtually non-existent. These are men doing nothing more then their jobs.

Get it straight, there are a lot of characters revolving in and out of this movie and a lot of information to digest. It is a foregone conclusion that unless you are Stanley Spector from "Magnolia" you are at one point or another going to get lost. You will be attempting to figure out the scene that just happened and without even realizing it most of the next scene will pass and you will have missed a crucial tidbit and suddenly be trying to figure something else out. Don't worry about it. This simply puts you on the same playing field as everyone else. The film's greatest sensations don't even lay in the Who? or the Why? but in the way it goes about trying to get answers to those questions and specifically in the way Smiley goes about it.

This makes "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" something of a puzzle (on top of the puzzle within the film itself). It's superbly done and superbly acted, particularly by Gary Oldman who deserves an Oscar nod for being so commanding in a role designed to be non-showy, but the big unveiling of the Big Surprise is surprisingly anti-climactic. Then again, that's kinda the way the movie wants it. It's not flashy, it's nuts and bolts, just like Smiley, whom, in the end, we know a little but not much of anything about really.

It's a character study about characters who are actively going to great lengths not to be studied. And that's more confusing than any piece of plot.

Beginners

It's an ancient refrain, but an accurate one. Life goes by pretty fast. Yes. Yes, it does. And if we can all agree that life goes by pretty fast then we can all agree that it seems strange how so often it take us proverbial eons to sit up and assume charge of our lives and live them the way we want them to be lived. Take, for instance, Hal (Christopher Plummer). Guy's 75 years old. He's been married for 44 years. His wife passes away. Then he tells his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) he is and has always been, in fact, gay. And then it's like that moment in Baz Luhrmann's "Australia" after the rains arrive and everything comes into full and vibrant focus. He's, well, ALIVE. At 75! After 44 years of a marriage he didn't necessarily want to be in! (Head in hands.)

Or, for another example, take Oliver. He's 38. He's a graphic designer in L.A. This band wants him to sketch a likeness of each member for their album cover but instead he tries to sell them on an ambitious album insert he calls "A History Of Sadness." A History Of Sadness? Oh boy. He lives alone. He's been in a few relationships but they never last because he simply expects something bad to happen and either ensures that it does or bolts before it occurs.

Or consider Anna (Melanie Laurent). She's a French actress. She seems to have an apartment in every port. Not so that she can retire to them with potential suitors but so that she can run away to one as far away from the current one as possible whenever things start to get hot & heavy with a potential suitor. No, not even hot & heavy, when they start to get mildly warm and a few miles outside the cusp of substantial.

As "Beginners", just released to DVD, opens, Hal has passed away from cancer. But despite this development the film, written and directed by Mike Mills, based on his own real life experience with his father, contains a decidedly playful structure, bouncing around and back and forth and here and there between past and present and colored in with laconic but charming voiceover from McGregor that suggests how monumental details coalesce with the seemingly insignificant details to create an existence. And we see that Hal is not simply meeting this (going-to-be) fatal health issue with quiet dignity but with loud and boisterous dignity. He throws parties, has drinks, shoots off fireworks, invites his not-so-monogamous boyfriend to move in. Not unlike this year's "50/50" the film chooses to ignore the more realistic and impossibly harsh circumstances of cancer but does so, gracefully, to hold high the hope that when one faces something so vicious, one does not have to give up believing in the bright side of life. And perhaps it is his father's death that causes Oliver to reach out to Anna whom he meets at a party in such a way that the whole thing could easily have collapsed from the weight of whimsy, but instead comes across not like real life nor like a fairy-tale but some sort of perfect exotic mixture of the two.

That's the whole film, really. Plummer may be playing a gay man but he (and the writing) resist the stereotype. There is a disease but the screenplay never starts slumming for audience sympathy. The courtship of Oliver and Anna may be quite quirky but both actors do priceless work in the way they effortlessly convey the unease lurking just out of sight the closer they get and the more in love they fall. Why the film even has a cute little dog, for God's sake, who Oliver communicates with in a fashion that brings to mind a more indie Ron Burgundy & Baxter, but Mills, again and again, never conforms to the typical truisms of these sorts of screen stories. He maintains a believably enchanting tone that re-highlights another most ancient maxim. There is a moment when Oliver is very young and his mother - portrayed distinctly as a (by necessity) closet Jew - says to him, "In my new life I'm going to marry a Jew. They're the most hot blooded." In your new life, sister? What about this life?

As "Beginners" will eventually show, it's never too late to begin your life. It's not only an impressive accomplishment, it's a gentle triumph. It's one of the very best films of 2011.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Bells of St. Mary's

You know you're really in for it when a nun at the inner city Catholic school you've been assigned to run advises you the moment you show up that the previous priest in charge wound up being sent up the river to the nuthouse. Except as we will soon see the kids at St. Mary's don't really seem all that bad. Oh sure, they're precocious and rambunctious and maybe even a little mischievous but, heck, when two of 'em get in a fist-fight they conclude by shaking hands and agreeing to get two scoops of ice cream! This isn't Julia Stiles wading into uncharted waters in "Save The Last Dance"! Nevertheless...

Bing Crosby is Father O'Malley, reprising his Oscar winning role from "Going My Way" (1944), who turns up at St. Mary's with the thought that the down-on-its-luck school should be closed and the kids moved to a better building. Ah, but Sister Benedict (her majesty Ingrid Bergman) is having none of it. She and her fellow Sisters are praying that the state-of-the-art building next door will be selflessly donated to them by its owner. This, however, seems ridiculous. The owner is the requisite Scrooge-ish businessman Horace P. Bogardus (Henry Travers) who likes kids as much Sister Benedict likes Father O'Malley on his first day at the job letting all the kids go home early on "holiday."

See, O'Malley and Benedict have different ideas about how things should be done, illustrated through the plights of two students, Patsy (Joan Carroll) whose single mother presses O'Malley to let attend St. Mary's and Eddie (Richard Tyler) whose good heart makes him the target of bullies. In his original review for the esteemed New York Times way back in December 1945 the eternally irritable Bosley Crowther seemed untaken with the scene in which Sister Benedict teaches Eddie how to be a pugilist but I found it entirely amusing - grand dame Ingrid bobbing and weaving and throwing jabs and uppercuts without a hint of self-awareness. In theory the scene is ludicrous, yes, but she proves the theory false. (She also sings. And, of course, so does Crosby. Multiple times. All of which I personally found unnecessary and distracting.)

Patsy is a more serious matter, her pourous grades leading to a decisive moment between our two leads as to whether or not this student will pass or fail. O'Malley thinks she's made progress both emotionally and educationally and too prevent her from graduating might might render all that progress mute. Benedict is understanding but not moved. You can almost sense her dreading a future where scores of soccer (football) games aren't kept so "everyone wins!" and where A's are doled out incessantly for nothing more than "effort!" The sugary sweet handling of this scene by director Leo McCarey belies a very understated but distinct toughness, a toughness that exposes the majority of latter-day "Lean On Me"-esque movies as the clumsy showboating shenanigans they are.

Sadly, that scene's toughness is undercut later when the movie conveniently lets Patsy off the hook (which I suppose is good for Patsy) and undercut even more when Horace P. Bogardus decides to offer his building as a gift to Sister Benedict. Now you knew that "twist" was coming from a few light years away, sure, but that's not the problem. The problem is his transition from sinner to saint happens instantaneously and for no good reason, especially when there is a moment between O'Malley and Bogardus that suggest O'Malley - a man of the cloth! - might just be attempting to manipulate Bogardus into offering the building as a gift. Man, would that have been something. Alas.

"The Bells of St. Mary's" then morphs into a Disease Movie for its final act as a doctor explains to O'Malley that Benedict has contracated tuberculosis - whoops! Excuse me! I meant to say, a "touch" of tuberculosis. Yes. Just a "touch." Can't get too down in the dumps, can we? And the doctor explains to O'Malley it would be in Benedict's best interests to be transferred to a place with a warmer climate but not to tell her of the disease as that might dampen her all-important spirit. Perhaps it seems massively unbelievable that a doctor would refrain from providing a patient her diagnosis but this glaring happenstance allows the film to have a most delicate sledgehammer of an ending.

What's worse? Disease? Or being lied to by someone you thought you could trust?

New Girl: Golden Globe Nominations

Since Cinema Romantico is the web's "most celebrated 'New Girl' blogger" (as declared by Cinema Romantico itself) we would be remiss not to report that the show landed two Golden Globe nominations today - one for Zooey Deschanel for Best Actress In A Comedy and one for Best Comedy.

Thus, Cinema Romantico will be rooting for Amy Poehler to win Best Actress In A Comedy for "Parks and Recreation" and for "Parks and Recreation" to win Best Comedy.

Wait......what? "Parks and Recreation" wasn't nominated for Best Comedy? Oh. Huh. What about "Community?" That wasn't either? "30 Rock", maybe? No? What WAS nominated?

"Modern Family", "Enlightened", "Episodes", "Glee" and "New Girl"? THOSE are my choices? What the f--- is "Enlightened?"

Never mind. I won't be rooting for anything to win Best Comedy.

Go, Amy! (Note: Zooey's totally gonna win. Cuz, you know, the Hollywood Foreign Press will want to hear her acceptance speech more than the others.)

Most Iconic Song In A Movie?

It happens all the time. A famous song or piece of music is chosen for a particular sequence in a certain film and, suddenly, forever and ever, thousands of people will simply associate that song or piece of music with that film. I mention this because I'm fairly certain "The Muppets" makes the finest use of what Rolling Stone recently called The Worst Song Of The 80's (and that's saying a whole lot of something), Starship's "We Built This City". Seriously, watch that scene in the theater and try not to sing along.

And it made me think. It made me think of other magnificent uses of music at the movies. It made me think of.....

Ride of the Valkyries in "Apocalypse Now."

The Blue Danube in "2001."

Moon River in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

As Time Goes By in "Casablanca."

The list goes on and on.

But, of course, as we all know, as noted film historians have repeated time and again with resounding authority, quite clearly the greatest song ever served up for dramatic purpose in a film is this:

New Girl: The 23rd

Have you ever gone to a friend's holiday office party and realized right away the place where they're hosting it is a little drafty and a little worse for wear and the "filet mignon" is actually just flank steak and the open bar consists entirely of Miller Lite and Bud Light and the dee jay is playing Uriah Heep and everyone there is really nice and means well and is trying their best, gosh darn it, but the whole thing is just a deadly dull affair and you wouldn't mind slipping out a side door and maybe going to a movie because, hey, you really, really like movies, much more than holiday parties, anyway, but you can't because you're unfamiliar with the neighborhood and your friend was your ride and so you just hunker down and hope for the best and maybe force a fake smile or two and wonder why oh why you agreed to go along when your friend asked you?

Ladies and gentleman, I give you my viewing experience of the 9th episode of "New Girl."

Re-Visiting Somewhere

Sofia Coppola’s fourth feature film "Somewhere" was the most befuddling cinematic experience I had in 2010 – longer, probably. My initial reaction upon seeing it in the theater was that I did not like it. But by the time I’d hit the sidewalk after exiting the theater I was already wondering, Did I not like it because it was specifically designed to be unlikeable? A character, movie actor Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), who was – to use his own word – “nothing” spending the majority of a movie doing nothing to underscore that very point. An unwatchable life begets an unwatchable film, no? The more I suspected this was the case, the more I suspected Sofia’s genius may be light years beyond any of us. Aside from "Black Swan", there was no movie in 2010 I thought about more than "Somewhere."  


I was afraid to revisit it. I enjoyed its lingering sensation in my mind so much I feared a second viewing might jeopardize it. What if I saw something else, something new that ruined it all? Yet upon seeing "Melancholia", a movie which I both can’t stand and think is sort of brilliant, my mind kept wandering back to "Somewhere." Inevitably, I couldn’t help myself. I gave it a rewatch. And you know what, I saw something else, something new, but it didn’t ruin it. It strengthened it.

The film opens with Johnny Marco driving around and around in circles in his sleek Ferrari in the middle of nowhere. This may seem like nothing but, believe me, it’s nothing compared to the nothingness to follow. Eventually we arrive at a simple shot of Johnny sitting on his couch in his room at the famed L.A. hotel Chateau Marmont. He is smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. That’s all. The film holds this shot for a few seconds short of two minutes. (Here I sense many people getting the same looks on their faces as NBC President Russell Dalrymple when George was trying to explain that Jerry’s potential Pilot about “nothing” would feature scenes of its main character reading. “Read? You read on the show?”) Bold filmmaking doesn’t have to come with an NC-17 rating or excessive, splatarific violence, sometimes it’s simply Stephen Dorff and a piece of furniture.

Eventually he falls asleep in, shall we say, a most delicate position with a lady. And I hardly think there is a more descriptive image of a man so out of tune to the limitless wonders of life than one of him falling asleep in that delicate position with a lady. 


Then a curious thing happens – he wakes to find his 11 year old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) looking down on him. He smiles up at her. Her mom has dropped her off. He takes her to ice skating practice. The movie settles down and watches Johnny watch Cleo skate to Gwen Stefani’s "Cool." Then he drives her home and drops her off. And the nothingness returns. And this nothingness seems to be even more distinctly nothing then the previous nothingness, and it goes on longer. It goes on 20, 25 minutes, and as it does you begin to realize what happened with Cleo. She was the ray of light. The breath of fresh air. The Gwen Stefani song on a jukebox full of vapid isolationist ambient music.

Eventually Cleo will return. And she stays. Her mom babbles something to Johnny about needing “time” for herself. Not that it’s a problem. Really, these later passages with Cleo are no different than the ones without Cleo except, of course, for the presence of Cleo, which sounds stupidly simplistic but actually says everything. Her presence changes her father. It’s so imperceptible it’s radical. It looks like the trickle of a garden hose but feels like an avalanche on Everest. He’s happier, more reassured, more in touch.

But then he has to take her away to camp in the desert. Being a Hollywood leading man he drops her off at the pickup point via a helicopter and as he says goodbye he calls out to her “I’m sorry I haven’t been around!” Except you barely hear it because it’s distorted and drowned out by the helicopter blades whirring. It’s debatable whether Cleo even hears it. One might argue it’s Bill Murray whispering something we can’t hear to Scarlett Johansson but just inverted, but I would say nay. It’s drowned out because Johnny’s words don’t matter without some action.


He returns home. He returns to some of the activities he and his daughter did together. He makes dinner for himself. He lounges in the pool. But it’s not the same. No spark. He’s returned to the nothingness, which he summarizes in the phone call where he says “I’m nothing.” Too explicit? Perhaps, but I reckon someone behind the scenes told Sofia she needed anything in this film that explicitly said something. We’ll let it pass. Then he checks out of the Chateau Marmont and he drives. He drives away from L.A. in his sleek Ferrari, away and away and away, on and on and on. But he can’t get all the way away because that dang-nabbed sleek Ferrari is just as representative of Hollywood as Hollywood itself, so he stops the car, gets out, starts walking, smiles, end credits. Whoosh!!!

I can’t describe the rush of jubilation and liberation I felt as the closing credits rolled and that music played. I think Gwen Stefani described it as “Hella Good.” It’s so, so easy to look at this film and initially assume nothing is there (mostly because nothing is there) but that is precisely because its intent all along is to truly show the discreet yet epic dividing line between nothing and something, how easy it is to unknowingly cross the border into one or the other, how difficult it is to make it back to the side on which you yearn to be, and how exhilarating it can be when you finally make it happen.

Pardon me very much, but I’m retroactively placing "Somewhere" in my 2010 Top 5.

The Muppets

"Why can't you be in a good mood? How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood?" - Lloyd Dobler

When I was living in Phoenix there was an evening, well after midnight, when my friend and roommate Laila and I were mindlessly watching TV and an extended commercial championing some sort of box set of the old "Muppet Show" appeared. It would be impossible to describe the amount of glorious nostalgia that overcame us and in no time Laila was on the phone and placing an order. This is to say that we were very much of The Muppet Generation and that Jason Segel, the star, co-writer and driving force behind the brand new "Muppets" movie, out in theaters now, was very much of The Muppet Generation too. And this is crucial because his film is very much told from the perspective of a person who fell in love with Jim Henson's creations at a young age and has since wondered what happened to them and why they fell out of the limelight. The film directly and entertainingly addresses these questions without losing sight of the fact that above all else The Muppets are optimists of the highest order.

Segel is Gary, an unabashed earnest resident of Small Town, USA, where he lives with his brother Walter who doubles as a Muppet, which is precisely why he long felt so out of place until he came across The Muppet Show itself and fell for the characters which gave him a reason to feel he belonged in this world. Thus, Walter is ecstatic to learn he will be joining Gary and Gary's longtime girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) on their trip to Los Angeles to celebrate their 10th Anniversary. First stop: The Muppet Theater. Unfortunately, a tragic scene awaits. The Theater is in ruins and a fiendish Texas tycoon (Chris Cooper, dastardly quotient dialed up) is set to buy the theater so he can tear it down and have at the precious oil resting underneath. The only chance to save the old place is to round up the gang and put on a show.

This won't be so easy. Gary, Mary and Walter track down Kermit the Frog only to learn he hasn't talked to his famed pals in years. But with a little prodding they take to the road and one by one bring them all back into the fold (who else loves the idea of Fozzie the Bear pandering in Reno?), finally resorting to a montage to speed up the process - one of many bits in which the movie slyly references itself without, kind of improbably, ever becoming overly self aware.

"The Muppets" is packed wall to wall with fantastic, lively tunes ("Me Party" is ripe for a Lady Gaga remake) and celebrity cameos, topped by an all-too-brief face/off between Sweet (Amy Adams) and Dry (Sarah Silverman) and the uberly-striking Emily Blunt as Miss Piggy's Receptionist (which I confess I'm solely mentioning because I'm a guy and I'm a guy who has a thing for sassy English women). Being honest, the movie is a bit of a mess. The narrative at times comes across over-stuffed and under-cooked, a little too much going on to allow for all the storylines to converge properly at the end, but then this a rare film where in many ways the story itself takes a backseat to the tone, to its insistent enthusiasm.

"A hard, cynical world." These are the words of the dastardly oil tycoon and this is the reason the film suggests its main characters have gone un-embraced by newer generations. What good is a Muppet in a CGI World? What good is a positive attitude in a world besieged by unemployment and a flailing economy? It's funny, The Muppets are from a different time and their new movie is not really a movie of, as they say, our times. But it is a movie for our times.

The world can be such a sad place. Yet life can be such a happy song. "The Muppets" have re-arrived to remind us to sing along.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Bishop's Wife

Many years ago in my confirmation class at Immanuel Lutheran Church our Pastor, as he often did (he was, like, you know, a Pastor), asked us to bow our heads in prayer. When the prayer was finished one of my confirmation-mates inquired as to why it was necessary to always bow our heads in prayer? The company line on this matter tends to be "respect for the Lord" or "humble adoration to God" or something of the sort and our Pastor mentioned all that but then he added something off-the-cuff and more remarkable - he said it was once suggested to him that if you looked up in the midst of prayer that you might, you just might, see an angel hovering above you. That I dug. And while I confess that I don't really pray that much anymore, whenever I do I sometimes find myself sneaking a peek to see if an angel is hovering above me. (I'm a corny, sentimental dude, after all.)

Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven), in the midst of the mind-numbing ordeal of trying to get a new fancy-pants cathedral with all the fixings built only to find himself at the mercy of Mrs. Hamilton (Gladys Cooper) - the sort who goes to church just to be seen - and her funds which she will only donate if things are done her way, finds himself saying a little prayer for guidance, except he doesn't merely look up to see an angel hovering, a frickin' angel appears. This would be Dudley.

Dudley, unlike "It's A Wonderful Life's" Clarence, appears to have already earned his wings, he's just not sporting them at the moment and instead comes to earth in the form of the decidedly dapper Cary Grant. Dudley also doesn't play coy with the Bishop and tells him straight-up that he's there to help and, thus, poses as the Bishop's "assistant". Except it would seem that very little assisting is going on. Why on his very first afternoon on the job, while the Bishop off is seeing to one detail or another, Dudley squires, ahem, The Bishop's Wife, Julia (Loretta Young, who unfortunately is the weak link in the production - it seems the role was originally set for Teresa Wright who might have been able to bring more of the necessary sparkle), around town and to lunch. In one passage meant for high comedy The Bishop has gone off to finalize Mrs. Hamilton's massive contribution and then meet up with his wife and Dudley at his older, smaller church downtown to hear a choir of kids sings. Except Dudley makes it so the Bishop gets stuck - literally - in the chair in which he's sitting and can't leave. This leaves Dudley and The Bishop's Wife alone to hear the choir - which, again, Dudley manipulates to sound like St. Olaf's finest - and then stop off afterwards for a bit of ice skating that magically transforms into the Ice Capades and, well, you wouldn't necessarily be wrong to wonder if there are a few sparks flying between Dudley and The Bishop's Wife.

That's what makes this film sort of strange and strangely refreshing. We all know what Dudley is up to right from the beginning - that is, he's merely attempting to show the Bishop how he has neglected both his wife and the Lord Himself in the name of the cathedral construction. But man, does Dudley draw it out to the point where you can't help but wonder if maybe he's gone rogue. So why does he get away without drawing our ire as the first angel in history to appear to be angling to potentially commit adultery?

Partially because he's played by Cary Grant. His smile - which feels omnipresent - is one part mischievous, one part earnest, one part longing, one part "I'm an angel, you know". There is a fantastic scene when Dudley, The Bishop and The Bishop's Wife are all crammed into the back of the taxi and at the precise moment The Bishop decides to call out Dudley as an "angel" in front of his wife the taxi hits a pothole, cutting him off. And the look Dudley sends him is just priceless - firmly funny, or maybe funnily firm.

Partially it's because, well, haven't you ever pined for a gal or a guy that was off limits? God knows full well I have. You don't do anything because you can't do anything, but you can just hang out and shoot the breeze - which often is reward enough itself - and wistfully think about what might happen if you could do something. Except, of course, when you wistfully have those thoughts they eventually just leave you forlorn. The end of "The Bishop's Wife" is technically a happy one, sure, and it is happy (and educational) for The Bishop and The Bishop's Wife, but you can't tell me that Cary Grant's face right there at the end isn't quiet regret.

Angels can do anything. Except get the girl.

Will The Real Babysitter Please Stand Up?

Poser

A Real Hero

New Girl: Bad In Bed

As it turns out, Jess (the mercurial Zooey Deschanel) is, as the episode title explicitly suggests, bad in bed. But is she bad in bed? Or does she just think she's bad in bed? And if so, does thinking you're bad in bed merely result in you being bad in bed because you're convinced you're bad in bed? I'm reminded of the wise words from one of my absolute all-time favorite sitcoms (that was tragically killed off much, much too soon), "It's Like, You Know", when one character says to another in regards to the realm of sex: "It's hard to be good because you're trying so hard to be good."

Here's the thing, in the latter show the conversation that generated that line was taking place between two characters who not only genuinely came across as friends but genuinely came across as having a conversation (if you catch my drift). It was funny, really funny, but it also felt really real. In this particular episode of "New Girl", the morning after Jess has scared away Male Jess (Justin Long - apparently the writers didn't forget about him!) on account of being bad in bed when she chooses to indulge in the faulty lessons of porn movies and literally choke him, there is a sweet moment when Nick and Winston explain to Jess that her sexual expertise isn't the most critical issue. "He doesn't care what you do. I've seen the way that boy looks at you." This is what Winston says. But he says something else. He says, "You need to stop worrying about it" - meaning being good in bed - "completely." CUE THE RECORD SCRATCH!!! There was a scene before the the scene in which Jess scares off Male Jess by being bad in bed in which all the guys, including Winston, are giving her advice on how to be good in bed. If she needs to stop worrying about it completely then why don't they tell her that then?

"New Girl" has gotta take the Christmas break to decide if it wants to ridiculously sweet or sweetly ridiculous because it's just kind of hanging out in dreaded no-man's-land right now. Finding the proverbial sweet spot can be difficult, yes, and many, many shows never find it, but at this point "New Girl" is forcing its characters to act out of character just to try and sell a little extra funny. People will only buy for so long.

Postscript: And don't even get me started on the side-story of Nick hating to get his haircut because he hates the pressure of having to make conversation with the person cutting his hair which is exactly like this Nick - the Nick writing this post. I am always terrified to get my hair cut because I am always terrified of getting the haircut "artist" who wants to make endless chit-chat. Ugh. I was so, so, so excited when I realized this was going to be a plot point of the episode and then......it was forgotten. Not completely, but essentially. What a waste.

Official Cinematic Crush Update

The beguiling Malin Akerman is set to star in a film I didn't know existed until, in a fit of great happenstance, I happened upon the trailer. "Catch .44", in which my official Cinematic Crush stars opposite Bruce Willis and Forest Whitaker, amongst others, appears to be nothing much more than Guy Ritchie As Re-told On The Bayou wherein she and a few fellow bad to the bone mamba jambas attempt to intercept a drug shipment for Bruce Willis. Or something. (For the record, it also stars someone named Reila Aphrodite which might be the best actress name I've encountered since the legendary Moon Bloodgood.) The film was written and directed by Aaron Harvey whose only previous writing and directing credit was "The Evil Woods" back in 2007, a movie with which I'm unfamiliar but sports a poster showing a guy holding an axe whose faced is obscured by a giant parka hood which clearly means it could have only been good.

If this all wasn't distressing enough, my sources (by which I mean ComingSoon.net) inform me "Catch .44" is set for an (exceptionally) limited theater release this Friday, December 9, in New York City and.....wait for it.....Charlotte, North Carolina.

Charlotte, North Carolina?

Really? Is Charlotte the L.A. of the Mid-Atlantic? They couldn't have stuffed "Catch .44" into one of the crappier Chicago theaters for a week? I would've bought a ticket! Honest! (Maybe. Probably not.) But not to worry, fellow Malin fans, because the film will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray way out there in the future on.....December 20th. In less than 2 weeks. Another good sign. Which means in less than 2 weeks I'll be suffering through it and will subsequently file an "anticipated" report.

(Watch the trailer here at your peril. It's actually not as bad as I'm making it sound. It just looks very.....basic and blah.)

Love And Other Drugs

"(S)heer exhilaration at lacking an agenda or a subject in any classical dramatic sense. The film is sometimes nothing more than a dance to music. Spielberg never meant anything really. But neither did Fred Astaire." This is what Antonia Quirke once wrote about "Jaws" and it makes me think about Edward Zwick in so much as his films regularly lack (to the extreme) sheer exhilaration because the guy is never lacking an agenda or a subject in the classical sense. His films are always more than a dance to music. Edward Zwick's never meant anything really but, sweet mercy, does he want to mean something.

This brings us to his latest feature film, 2010'S "Love And Other Drugs", set in that carefree era of 1996 when B.C. was in the W.H. and the economy was booming like The Spin Doctors' "Two Princes" which pops up at the film's outset to cue us to the time & place except, uh, Ed, "Two Princes" was a hit three years earlier. In '93. Perhaps a more appropriate choice would have been "Tha Crossroads" by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Although maybe not. That song was dedicated to the memory of Eazy E who died from complications of AIDS and "Love And Other Drugs" is partially about Jake Gyllenhaal's easygoing, directionless, I-wanna-sex-everyone-up Jamie Randall who gets fired from his job as an electronics salesman for sleeping with the boss's daughter before moving on to becoming a sales rep for drug giant Pfizer who in 1998 begins marketing a certain something called Viagra.

For the first hour Gyllenhaal displays an energy and an old world charm that suggests a dot com Cary Grant (?) and when he links up with his leading lady, Anne Hathaway, by posing as an intern alongside Hank Azaria's doctor, to whom he's desperately trying to sell some Zoloft, and catches a glimpse of Ms. Hathway, uh, sans upper clothing before crossing ethical boundaries even further when he scams her phone number off the doctor's scatter brained assistant, the film excels as an updated screwball romance. Jake & Anne are not quite James & Mila but they are pretty close, steadfastly adhering to an arrangement of Not Quite Friend With Benefits. Truly. She calls him a "shithead" and he calls himself a "shithead" and so they just hook up over and over and the proceedings brim with the energy of the not overly-important. He'll come to understand the true Meaning Of Life and she will learn to Feel and all will end well and everyone will be satisfied. It's kind of, well, a dance to music.

Ah, but this is the Zwickster. And every dance is a benefit for some sort of cause. In this case, the cause is Parkinson's Disease. Which Hathaway's Maggie has, and so the movie will morph from "Palm Beach Story" into "Autumn In New York." This review is not meant to belittle Parkinson's. Not at all. A character at one point says of it: "It's not a disease, it's a Russian Novel." No, no, no! It is a disease! An awful one! And the movie insults it by making it something the movie only deals with when the characters are prepared to deal with it. It is treated merely as an emotional hurdle Jamie must across en route to becoming a better man. This isn't an Issue Movie. This is a farce. This is saccharine whimsy posing as an Issue Movie. 

If there is a sequel don't be surprised if Jamie finds a cure.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

So if you make a movie that puts a Marine and Nun on a small South Pacific island in the late days of WWII you know to surely expect a movie that will play up the disparate differences between these two but that they will eventually learn to co-exist and in dealing with some sort of ready-made crisis will come to discover that deep down where it counts they have more in common than they ever realized possible. Except, of course, "Heaven Knows Mr. Allison" (1957) was directed by the maverick John Huston and John Huston don't play that. If you stop and think about it, Marines and Nuns right off the bat have a whole lot in common. They both have a uniform. The marine gives himself over to his drill instructor, his commanding officer. The nun gives herself over to Christ.  They lead extraordinarily regimental lives. There is a wonderful moment when the Marine indicates he's going to sleep but that he'll be up early, probably too early for her, since he had to get up at 5:30 with the core. The nun replies she had to get up at 5:00 at the convent. The marine replies: "Sounds like you run a pretty tough outfit, ma'am."

The Marine is Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum) who took fire from the Japanese when trying to exit his submarine and was forced to flee and drift for days on a rubber raft before encountering this island, this island where Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr) and Father Philips came to evacuate another priest only to land and learn the Japanese had already attacked the island and either killed or taken the island's priest with them. Not long after, Father Philips passes away, leaving Sister Angela, who has not even taken her final vows yet, to fend for herself. There is food and there is water. Fiji, the closest inhabited island, is a good 300 miles away. Yet Allison thinks it best to give it a shot anyway and Sister Angela says it's worth a shot, too. They go about constructing a top-notch raft but before they can finish it, the Japanese, as they must, fly over the island, scout it, and then bomb it, and then take it over with the intention it seems of turning into a weather reporting outpost. Luckily, Allison has found a cave at an out of the way high point cleverly obscured by the brush and he and Sister Angela will hide out there as their quiet sanctuary is overrun.

Being trapped in a cave could easily lead to marital-esque bickering that could easily lead to a sappy, star cross'd romance. John Huston, however, is too smart and too tough to stand for such nonsense. Most of the business inside that cave solely centers around survival, like an extended passage when Allison sneaks out and down to the enemy encampment to gather food, and there are no flickers of potential love until a sneaky scary passage that occurs in a rainstorm after the Japanese have fled the island in the wake of what appears to be an American naval victory way, way off in the distance. Allison and Sister Angela graciously retire to an abandoned hut, fix a little something to eat, and stumble upon a bottle of Sake. (Oh, Sake. In my experience, nothing has ever gone right on account of Sake.) Allison has a few shots too many and in no time at all he asks, in slurred words, if Sister Angela might forsake her final vows to accept his hand in marriage.

In real life, of course, Robert "Baby, I Don't Care" Mitchum was a renegade that made all other renegades look like choirboys and an unapologetic hard-drinker and so when he flips the switch in "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" from a stand-up guy to a drunk, it's genuinely frightening and, in turn, you can feel Kerr's terror which prevents her fleeing into the rain from melodrama. She just wants the hell outta there - and you can't blame her - and she wants the hell outta there because she made a commitment to which she will adhere. We all make commitments, occasionally those commitments will cause regrets, yet stay committed we must. Or else. For desertion, a marine gets shot. For desertion, a nun loses her immortal soul.

Eventually the Japanese, as they must, return to the island and Allison and Sister Angela return to the cave and this time they will be discovered. But they are spared their moment of reckoning via one of those classic cinematic last-second coincidences. Yet I ask, is it really so coincidental? Make note of what Sister Angela is doing in the moments right before this coincidence - praying. Don't we all want to believe that maybe, just maybe, someone up there, up above, really is listening?