The Five Year Engagement

Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) are laying in bed. She has just informed him that her psychology postdoc at the University of Michigan has been extended, thereby re-postponing their marriage and preventing their move back to Tom's desired home of San Francisco. An argument ensues, and this argument feels natural and justifiable from the standpoint of each character. He asks her to leave. She gets up to go. He asks her to stay. She returns to bed. He asks to her leave again. She becomes flustered. He says: "Can't I be alone with you here?" It's a killer line because it underscores the very real confusion and un-answerable queries Tom and Violet have at this point in their lives.

The next sequence features Tom having what Hollywood people must consider a Midwestern Male Crisis - as in, he has grown an unfetching lumberjack beard and turned into a modern day mountain man, stalking deer and using fur-encrusted glasses at the dinner table, the same dinner table which is adorned with his precious hunting bow. (Note: I'm from the Midwest. I've never hunted a single time in my life.) As complicated and candid as the previous scene is, this one is broad and obvious, and describes the frustrating problem at the core of "The Five Year Engagement."

After meeting cute at a New Year's Eve party that is like the US Weekly version of the costume party in "Beginners" and the requisite courtship, Tom proposes to Violet and she says yes and when she announces she has been accepted to do her post-graduate work in Ann Arbor he is more than willing to sacrifice his own job of graduating from sous chef to head chef at Clam Bar to accompany his future bride. Yes, even if that means having to accept a job putting sauerkraut on sandwiches at a campus deli. Nevertheless, we (and even she) can sense he is not quite at home, and even I suspect the film may not treat Ann Arbor entirely fair, most of us can identify at one point or another in our lives with his sense of displacement. And so when she announces of her intention to stay even longer it raises harsh but realistic questions about a modern-day union. Is there (should there be) a limit to self sacrifice? Where is the dividing line on selfish? How much of yourself do you have to give up for the other person?

Despite the touching chemistry of Segel and Blunt, the screenplay (co-written by Segel himself and director Nicholas Stoller) routinely collapses in on itself by relying on idiotic devices and refusing to allow the relationship to evolve and/or devolve in the natural way. Instead it offers Roadblock Couples in the form of Violet's professor (Rhys Ifans) and Tom's co-worker which resolve themselves, respectively, via foot chases through alleyways and toe amputations. It's often lamented in failed relationships that the man can't commit and, well, Segel and Stoller have trouble committing to their own idea.

The girl on the left! Give her more to do! GIVE HER MORE TO DO!

Over and over they under-utilize what works best. Consider Alison Brie as Blunt's sister Suzie, who does not simply threaten to steal this movie in the first 15 minutes - she threatens to headbutt Blunt, kick Segel in the groin, clutch the movie while cackling, and then taunt Segel and Blunt while holding the movie up over their heads. But as soon as she winds up married to Segel's best bud Alex (Chris Pratt) after a one night stand that goes on forever and starts having kids, she is essentially dialogue-less until the very end. (Whether intentional or not, this is sort of a subtle commentary on the plight of female characters at the movies.)

The editing is just as problematic. Editing is so often thought of just in terms of cutting shots but the editing of William Kerr (who worked on "Bridesmaids", another poorly edited film) and Peck Prior is a failure of tone and an abomination of pacing. It doesn't get in and out of scenes quick enough - particularly in the latter stages when short cuts of single shots or single lines would have worked to maintain the narrative - and they fail to find any sense of rhythm throughout, causing the whole film to waver between adult and juvenile.

Am I being unfair? In a way, yes. Absolutely. There are some wonderful moments in this movie and some good laughs and if his editors had properly done their job and sliced and diced a good half-hour it would have been ever better. But screw it, I'm grading on a curve. Segel the artist asks some interesting questions in this movie but the time has come for him to start providing them with more satisfactory answers.

My (2nd) Favorite Scene In The Rain

This post is for the second All-Wet Blog-A-Thon hosted by Andrew at Encore Entertainment. Make sure you check it out!

My (2nd) Favorite Movie Scene In The Rain doesn’t actually take the place in the rain. This may sound like a cheat but, I assure you, it isn’t. I’ll explain.

It is the memorial service for the dad of Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom). Once the speeches have been given, toasts made, tap dance routines performed, the reunited band fronted by Drew’s cousin Jesse (Paul Schneider) takes the stage. Drew, perhaps needing a little alone time, retreats from the room where he encounters his requisite Manic Pixie Dream Girl Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst). She has, as she has promised, brought him substantial instructions for a road trip on which he is about to embark. Thus, the time has come for the Protagonist and The Manic Pixie Dream Girl to part. And like any director/writer worth his DGA ID card, Cameron Crowe craves their goodbye to occur in the rain.

Now, at this point he simply could have moved them outside for no good reason and cued up a celestial deluge. But that would have been too obvious, too easy. Thus, he decided to make it an INDOOR rain. Bold. But how to do it? Well, he could have had some memorial-goer light up a cigar or he could have had Jesse’s rambunctious son Samson pull a fire alarm. But that would have been too obvious, too easy. Enter: the giant flaming bird.

Jesse’s band, Ruckus, who once (almost) opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd (“Two of the original members”) chooses to play, of course, a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, “Free Bird”, and Jesse chooses to accentuate the performance with a giant model bird the stagehand will make “fly” above – “pull the pulley across slow and soulful.” But the stagehand is hapless and, thus, as it must, the flying bird veers too close to a stage light, is set ablaze and, in turn, sets the strung banner bearing Drew’s dad’s motto – “If it wasn’t this it would be something else” (as in, if wasn’t this it would be a giant flaming bird) – ablaze before, inevitably, the flying bird breaks free from its pulley and crashes into a table far below, sparking a subsequent blaze. Cue the sprinklers! The band keeps playing. A conga line breaks out. Drew’s sister (Judy Greer) raises his arms to the heavens in one of the most tried & true shots of cinematic rainfall. Claire uses her flight attendant skills to guide people to safety. And Drew and Claire get their unspoken goodbye from across the room……in the rain.

The eternally reviled “Elizabethtown”, a film I have exalted so much Crowe himself once wrote me a letter that simply said “Dude, calm down, even I know it’s not that good”, is often accused by its horde of naysayers as being contrived. Google “Elizabethtown Movie Contrived” and you receive 911,000 results. Uff-da! And fair enough, I say. To each his or her own. You might say this goodbye in the rain is contrived.

I say it’s thinking outside the box.

This Is 40: Trailer

To self-indulgently quote myself, in my original "Knocked Up" review way, way back when I wrote (amongst other things): "Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl are our leads but for my money the counterpoint couple of Pete and Debbie played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are the movie's highlight. In fact, I'll take it a step further. I say this without fear of reprisal. Leslie Mann deserves an Oscar nomination."

This is why I FREAKED OUT when I realized "Knocked Up" writer/director (and husband to Ms. Mann) had decided to revisit the characters of Pete and Debbie in "This Is 40" (scheduled for release this Christmas).

And whether or not you think the trailer looks good, and I think it does, just bear in mind Leslie Mann swore, like, every sixth word in "Knocked Up." I'm pretty sure a lot of the best stuff isn't in this two minutes.

 

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Red Shoes

My Dad recently asked for a list of 10 films he needed to see. Naturally, one of the films I included on this list was my beloved “Atonement.” And when we spoke via phone on Easter Sunday he advised that he had watched “Atonement” and that while it had moved him intellectually, it had not necessarily moved him emotionally. I could not have disagreed more. Granted, it did move me intellectually (not that I would ever classify myself as an intellectual), but it moved me even more emotionally. Tremendously so. After all, that is primarily what I am on the lookout for at the cinema, to be moved emotionally.

I could not help but return to this conversation when roughly 24 hours later I attended a screening at The Music Box of “The Red Shoes” (1948), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s much ballyhooed ode to a ballerina torn between her love and her love of dance. Intellectually, the film was rather sterling. It is supremely crafted, every piece of the screenplay fitted to carry us to a gorgeously melodramatic conclusion. It is wondrous to look at, filmed in sadly extinct Technicolor. I can imagine the esteemed Roger Ebert pouring over this with a filled auditorium in one of his famed shot-by-shot sessions because there is just so much there to see and analyze. And that’s all well and good. If you want to know how to structure a movie, “The Red Shoes” might be a mighty fine place to start. If you want to know how take a moviegoer’s breath away, however, I might suggest starting somewhere else.

Loosely based on Hans Christen Anderson’s fairytale, “The Red Shoes” chronicles young redhead Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) being sculpted into an a primo ballerina by Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), brilliant but ruthless, before falling in love, as she must, with Julian Craster (Marius Goring), the composer hired by Lermontov to create the music for his latest masterwork……The Red Shoes. The ballet, filmed in an elongated sequence that casts aside the pesky forum of a real ballet for something specifically cinematic, is a smash! Vicky could be the greatest ballerina Boris has ever known! Alas, in the cruel eyes of Boris her affair with Julian can only interfere with her abilities. “A dancer who relies on the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer.” Tell us what you really think, Boris! He fires Julian. Vicky goes with Julian. Until Boris chooses to resuscitate The Red Shoes, and their allure is too much for Vicky to ignore, leading to consequences of romantically inclined folly.

I can’t shake from my mind the notion that is the sort of cinematic venture which I typically lap up like a Potbelly’s coffee shake, so what happened? The primary problem seemed to stem from the all-important Vicky/Julian liaison. Not much groundwork is laid for it and when it appears it moves from its ignition to full-fledged Forever And Ever in a single scene. And that’s fine – movies do this all the time – but its transition is less than inspiring, born out of storytelling necessity. It felt a bit Cliff Note-y, which is to say it felt like this: “Vicky Loves Julian. Vicky Must Decide Between Julian And Ballet. Conflict Ensues.”

More convincing is Walbrook who does a masterful job embodying someone so devoted to his profession that his devotion transforms him into an villain, something I suspect he realizes but does nothing to quell because he’s shrewd enough to realize it only aids his job performance. It may have been 62 years ago but he’s actually less hammy than Vincent Cassel in “Black Swan.” In the end he’s like a raving gymnastics coach, pushing his prized pupil to her limits, enraged that she would dare find something more meaningful than The Red Shoes. “Life is so unimportant.” That’s what he says to her! Goodness gracious sakes alive.

And in the end he pushes her to the breaking point. Yet her ultimate demise didn't take me to the edge with her. I literally clasped my hands to my head when Nina Sayers went down for the count. I thought to myself “Well, that was well constructed” when Vicky did the same. Despite the Technicolor, it all came across as cold and calculated as Boris Lermontov.

I was so impressed. I prefer to be awed.

The Quiz

Daryl A. Moon, director of the award-winning* "After the End", recently finished production on his latest short film, "The Quiz", a fast-paced examination of relationships, women's magazines quizzes and a few of the most compelling questions certain to arise in the event of the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

See it right here at Cinema Romantico!


  *winner of the Really Swell Effort, Guys! Award at the 2006 Montello, WI Film Festival

"Don't eat that. It's Pluto."

This is what Vincent says to his older brother in "Gattaca" when Vincent is laying out the planetary system in a parking lot with various stand-ins for the planet themselves, such as an apple for Pluto which his younger brother snatches and tries to eat.

This is to say in "The Not Too Distant Future", which is where "Gattaca" is set, Pluto has apparently retained official planetary status.

Suck it, IAU.

Official Cinematic Crush Update

As longtime Cinema Romantico readers may (or may not) recall, I often used to whine that my ex-official Cinematic Crush Sienna Miller was never properly utilized in some sort of neo-noir film. (I also endlessly pitched my idea for her to star in the Jane Greer role with Josh Brolin in the Robert Mitchum role in an "Out of the Past" remake but, as expected, Hollywood refused to return my calls.)

I only mention it because my current official Cinematic Crush Malin Akerman just completed filming on writer/director Sebastián Gutiérrez's "Hotel Noir", descried by Collider as a "1950s-set film that centers on a detective holed up in a downtown hotel waiting for assassins to kill him." They go on to state: it "is currently without distribution, but it will be shopped to international buyers in Cannes."

Now imagine her in black & white......smoking a cigarette.

It co-stars Rufus Sewell, Carla Gugino, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, and Robert Forster. No word on what part Ms. Akerman plays but would it to be too much to ask for her to get a Dorothy-Malone-In-"The-Big-Sleep" single scene stealing type a deal?

Yes?

No?

What?

Gutiérrez wrote "Snakes On A Plane"?

So then it probably is too much to ask?

Figures.

Hanna

As if Hollywood and Park City furiously mixed up ingredients, Joe Wright's "Hanna" is technically labeled an "action" film, although it's at its worst when at its most action-y and at its best when at its strangest and taking time to study its character despite the fact it falls far short of a true "character study." It's just a hell of a thing, this "Hanna." It's so far off the wall it's gone and left any rooms with walls miles behind, running and wandering through a boundless Moroccan desert. But I'm getting ahead of myself (as I so often do).

Like a female Jason Bourne re-imagined by Judy Blume, the title character (an intense Saoirse Ronan) has spent her 16 formative years in the middle of the Finnish wilderness with her father Erik (Eric Bana, stoic) who has trained her 1.) To fend entirely for herself and 2.) In the arts of the only the most skilled assassin. Why? As will eventually be revealed, Erik, as tradition in this genre stipulates, was a CIA agent who disappeared upon learning an unknowable secret which left him with a death mark. However, he gives his daughter the choice of facing the modern world if she wants it. She does. And so adhering to the most carefully cultivated of plans, Erik sets off via foot while Hanna sends a transmission to the CIA which leads Marissa Weigler (a delightfully unhinged Cate Blanchett) to send in a team to extract Erik which, of course, leads them to extracting Hanna instead who, following her and her father's plan, is waiting for them.

Hanna is taken into custody in Morocco, escapes through skilled and devious means and flees into the desert with Marisa and cronies hot on her trail. Eventually she comes into contact with a family of British sort-of gypsies and forms an oddball friendship with the daughter, Sophie (Jessica Barden), who continually comes across as someone upset she is forced to cruise around in a camper-van as opposed to sitting in bed and watching a "Real Beckham" marathon. She hitches a ride with this pseudo-family with the ultimate goal of reaching Berlin to meet up with her father at Grimm's House.

Those are the specifics. The specifics are sooooooo uninteresting. Wright, working with writers David Farr and Seth Lochhead, has fused some sort of insane hybrid, the first of its kind, a Quirky Action Picture, perhaps? Or maybe just the damndest and most expansive music video ever caught on film. With "Hanna", Wright proves himself - at least thus far - as no master of this seemingly endless parade of martial arts-styled extravaganzas. The choreographed action sequences are clearly choreographed to the point they become stilted. The bits that truly pop are the less conventional, like a creepy scene in which Hanna hides from Marisa under the requisite bed and the camera focuses in on tight on Marisa's shoes which somehow brilliantly clue us into her every thought and move. Or the scene in which we see just what it was that Marisa did to Erik oh so many years ago and how Hanna failed to fall into her sinister clutches then.

It is all whipped up with crisp editing and a snazzy, synthy soundtrack and invested at every turn with supporting characters who seemed to have been recast from a film Werner Herzog failed to make when he suddenly became more interested in electric jellyfish and decided to make a documentary instead. Make no mistake, all the supporting roles are under-written but dutifully over-acted (aside from Bana), and I mean that as a high compliment. Tom Hollander's vile, omnipresent (until he isn't) henchman - speaking of Herzog - is Klaus Kinski by way of the Gay 90's. Knepfler (Martin Wuttke), the man whom Hanna meets in Berlin, is an old stringy-haired magician whose house you would tell your kids to avoid at all costs on Halloween. And Blanchett, in a role that essentially gives her nothing to do except be on the prowl, appears to have made the decision to play it as if she's tracking Luke & Owen Wilson in "Bottle Rocket"

There was something here, I think, ripe for exploration in Hanna's terrifying introduction to a technology-dependent world she does not understand (the scene where she "finds breakfast" for her new family is one of the funniest things you will see on a DVD this year) and although the obligatory Reveal in regards to her backstory contains far more emotion than is typical in these sorts of cinematic offerings it could have reached another level of psychology if the screenplay had properly built to it.

Wright, however, seems entirely content to spare a deeper end game to craft something campy and excessive that gains a whole lotta glory directly from its vast imperfections. In other words, this movie rocked.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Twice In A Lifetime

“I don’t deserve what he done to me.” This is what Kate (Ellen Burstyn) tells her daughters (Amy Madigan & Ally Sheedy) in regards to her husband and their father, Harry (Gene Hackman), who has walked out on them to be with Audrey (Ann-Margaret). And she’s right. She’s absolutely right. She doesn’t deserve it. And yet……Harry doesn’t deserve to remain in a marriage that has become so obviously dormant. And Kate doesn’t deserve that either! This is a sight typically unseen in American cinema where when it comes to the subject of divorce we demand a victor – his fault or her vault. Pick a side! But there is no side. There is no right and wrong. That’s a line so often preached, yet so rarely practiced at the movies.

The film opens on the 50th birthday of Harry, a steelworker in Washington state, and as he sits at the dining room table surrounded by his family Hackman deftly conveys a man who is by no means unhappy but seemingly disconnected – from family, from his wife beside him, from life itself. He goes down to the bar to celebrate but Kate, of her own volition - she’d rather watch TV with the grandkids - stays home. He meets Audrey, the new bartender, and gentle sparks are thrown. They begin seeing each other on the sly. It does not stay sly for long. Yet, when Harry is called on the carpet by his wife there is no denying, backtracking or attempted cover-ups. He tells the truth, and not merely the truth pertaining to the affair but the truth pertaining to their marriage. To quote Scrap Dupris: “There are some things people just don’t want to hear.”

The oldest daughter, Sunny (Madigan, fiery in an Oscar nominated turn), doesn’t want to hear it. She pushes her mother to confront her father and eventually this happens in a brutally plain and unsettling sequence at the town bar, right there in front of Audrey. Kate doesn’t want to hear it, even if Burstyn, in an understated performance, masterfully reveals she is not the suffering wife archetype but a wife complicit in the creation of her suffering. Harry doesn’t want to hear it, either. He’s a cheater, yes, totally true, but he’s not a liar. Well, actually, he kind of is a liar, in that sense that he and his wife and his kids have been lying about the state of the marriage, likely because it’s just easier to ignore the problem than to confront it.

See? These issues, as we know, are complicated but in Bud Yorkin’s film born out of a Collin Welland (who retroactively earns Cinema Romantico’s 1985 I’ll-Buy-You-A-Stella-Artois Award for his non-Oscar nominated work) screenplay they are paid nuanced and honest respect, as opposed to holding steadfast to the Hollywood myth that a montage or a marriage counselor or an “A Ha! Moment” cures all ails. While the plotting of “Twice in a Lifetime” is mostly unspectacular, it is still mesmerizing in the way it holds sway by routinely mixing happy and sad within the same scene. Hell, within the whole movie. To see a character – that’s Harry – triumph, so to speak, by being unfaithful to his faithful wife is startling. It’s also refreshing, not because this sort of behavior should be condoned – though this sort of behavior should be treated genuinely on a case-by-case basis – but because of its awesome candor. Life is a hot & bothered mess where sometimes decisions that appear wrong-headed are, in fact, upon the benefit of time passing, the most level-headed of all. What else did Scrap Dupris say? “Everything in boxing is backwards.”

The film is afforded a second tier of strength by paying attention to its supporting players. Audrey is at once not a clichéd monster and also fully in tune to the havoc she is creating – making it clear that the havoc could very well be for the good of all involved, so long as Harry commits to what he believes. Sunny’s husband is down on his luck and worries that Harry’s life choices will only worsen his plight in the eyes of his wife. Harry and Kate’s youngest daughter, Helen (Sheedy), chooses to marry her boyfriend despite their youth. Harry disapproves, worried she is making the same mistake he and his own wife did, but Kate patiently explains she has learned from their mistakes and will not make the same ones. The eventual wedding set piece could have led to forced drama and a final confrontation but instead provides the film its own unique twist on a happy ending – a fractured family setting aside its differences for the good of the child. That, pardon my French, is some bold shit.

The final shot shows Harry walking into the sunset (while a theme song that sounds suspiciously like “WKRP In Tacoma” plays). It is a shot of countless films and often features a hero post-heroics. And strange as it may sound this shot does evoke something heroic - real people coming to terms with the new trajectories of their lives and the notion that while scary it may very well be all for the better. That's not as easy as it sounds. Neither is making a movie this good.

Flashback: The 1997 Prigge's (Top 10 Performances)

In keeping with the topic established yesterday, today we return once again to the past and the...

Top 10 Performances Of 1997

1. Kate Winslet, Titanic. Triple dog duh.

2. Dustin Hoffman, Wag the Dog. He's riffing on the persona of famed producer Robert Evans, to be sure, but not only is Hoffman ceaselessly hilarious, he finds, almost unbelievably, a soulful core underneath it all, culminating in his final scene which is funny but also grandly moving.

3. Julianne Moore, Boogie Nights. Well meaning but clouded by a druggy haze, she is perhaps cinema's first motherly addict.

4. Mark Wahlberg, Boogie Nights. Fully and improbably conveys the sweeping arc of change his character undergoes.

5. Kevin Kline, In & Out. Taking Tom Hanks' Oscar speech about his high school drama teacher being one of the finest gay men he's ever known and running with it, Kline plays a high school drama teacher outed by his former pupil (Matt Dillon) in his Oscar speech. Kline's co-star, Joan Cusack, playing his bride-to-be, got the Oscar nod because it's okay to nominate comedic performance in supporting categories but not leading ones. Please. This was a truly brilliant turn. Seriously. Watch this.

6. Robert Forster, Jackie Brown. Stoic. Reasonable. Human. And ultimately, poignant. 

7. Robert DeNiro, Wag the Dog & Jackie Brown. Bobby D.'s Last Stand. I remember even then thinking that if anyone else had given THESE two performances in the same year - so wildly different but so perfect and so subtle - they would have been hailed in every cinematic circle known to mankind. But because it was DeNiro back when he was still recognized as a Heavyweight Champ, sadly, it was just kind of acknowledged with a half-nod. "Oh yeah. DeNiro gave two great performances again. Moving on." If DeNiro gave these two performances in 2012 people would think he was taking steroids. (What?)

8. Jude Law, Gattaca. Am I the only one who still thinks Jude's ferocious work as the paralyzed, bitter ex-Olympian is still his career high point?

9. Holly Hunter, A Life Less Ordinary. I get the sense H.H. might be just a little......off-kilter. And this role is as off-kilter as it gets, which is to say her skills harmonize with it perfectly. Also, I really, really, really, really, really like to pretend Hunter improvised the tobacco chewing all on her own without telling anyone.

10. Toni Collette, Clockwatchers. Rarely has social awkwardness been so, uh, awkward on the silver screen. (I mean that as a good thing.)

Flashback: The 1997 Prigge's (Top 10 Films)

My immersion into "Titanic 3D" (fear not! I'm not writing another "Titanic" post! Wait, you DID want me to write another "Titanic" post? No? You didn't? Are you sure? Positive? Okay. Fine.) has taken me back, all the way back to the year 1997.

In retrospect, 1997 is absolutely stacked with fine films and fine performances and, thus, I thought it might be fun to hop in the old blogging time machine. So today I will retroactively name my Top 10 Films Of '97 and tomorrow I will name my Top 10 Performances Of '97. (Note: I don't much care for "As Good As It Gets." I didn't get the hoopla then and I sure as hell don't get it now. Give back Kate's Oscar, Hunt! GIVE IT BACK!!!)

My Completely Personal, Totally Subjective Top 10 Films Of 1997

1. The Myth Of Fingerprints. Is it the "best" film of '97. Heavens, no. Is it my Favorite film of '97. God, yes. I carry this bit of miraculousness with me like William Wallace carried the thistle with him.

2. Titanic. I've gone on at length about this movie many, many times so today let's quote William Goldman, shall we? (Italics his.) "If movies are story, and they are, then screenplays are structure. And what makes this movie the unique experience that it is, is not Cameron's ear for dialogue or his skill at camera placement or his brilliance with special effects. It's his storytelling, folks. If he doesn't deserve a nomination for screenplay, no one does."

3. Boogie Nights. I wrote about this brilliant trashy opera for my 1,000th Post and, yet, it only makes it to #3 on this list. That's how awesome 1997 was at the movies.

4. Wag the Dog. Detailing the elaborate attempt to manipulate a Presidential election, this is a piece of absolute comedic genius. I like it more every time I watch it.

5. Gattaca. Set in a futuristic world where genetic engineering is used to create perfect children, Andrew Niccol's eternally and unfairly underrated powerhouse directorial debut is as much a melodramatic epic as 50's-styled sci fi. And that is why I cherish it so.

6. Jackie Brown. Q.T., the ultimate fanboy, crafts not just a heist picture but an understated adult romance about the frustration and allure of starting over at any age.

7. A Life Less Ordinary. I.LOVE.THIS.MOVIE. Do you hear me, world?! I love it! And I don't care what anyone says!

8. L.A. Confidential. Reader: "Seriously? This jackass put 'L.A. Confidential' AFTER a 'A Life Less Ordinary?'" Yes. I did. Deal with it. "L.A. Confidential" is great and all (such a fine employment of Russell Crowe's talents) and has such an elegant look but how does everyone always forget about the utterly crap ending? Denial?

9. Starship Troopers. A subversive satire of the highest order. (See, Daryl?! It's on here! Don't worry, be happy!)

10. The Castle. Directed by Rob Stich, who directed my #1 movie of 2001 ("The Dish"), this hard-to-find (in America) Australian comedy is not just funny, but funny in a way that oozes absurdity and sincerity equally. Oh, how I wish Stich made more movies. He - to paraphrase Melanie Laurent in "Beginners" - is one of the people who believes in magic.

No Strings Attached

Remember, kids, as Natalie Portman's/Ashton Kutcher's "No Strings Attached" helpfully teaches us, if you are not in a relationship and/or don't have a date to the next wedding to which you have been invited, all your triumphs mean nothing and your life is most likely worthless. So you probably should just go ahead and couple up with the next person you meet regardless of his/her personality or attention to hygiene to be on the safe side.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to stab myself.

The Missing Person

One item of great importance we have lost amidst all our modernization and progression is the Private Investigator. You know the magnificent archetype - Bogart as Marlowe (or someone else) ceaselessly chain-smoking, drinking brandy "in a glass" and exchanging witty repartee with various eccentrics, low-lifes and angelic devils he encounters while solving some sort of elaborate crime. These days our old-school gumshoes have given way to forensics specialists and David Caruso in sunglasses and so forth. About the only place you can find a P.I. is every Saturday at 5:00 PM on NPR on "Prairie Home Companion" in the form of Garrison Keillor's Guy Noir, who, as the name implies, is really just a spoof and not the real thing. What about the real thing?

"The Missing Person", written and directed by Noah Buschel, released (really, really, really limitedly) in 2009, with a classic shadowy look despite its low budget, has front and center a Private Investigator named John Rosow (Michael Shannon). It is clearly a modern world and Rosow is not in love with it. Anywhere he goes - the L.A. promenade, a taxi, a limo - he is told he can't smoke. He is told he by his hirer that he needs to purchase a cellphone that takes pictures. He goes to the store and finds himself with far too many options. Finally, in that classic grumbly Shannon-ese, he says: "I just want a phone that takes pictures." He is a fierce but functioning alcoholic with a terribly tragic secret from his past that is secret to no one in the film but is only gradually revealed to the audience.

Rosow is hired by the wondrously named Drexler Hewitt and the enigmatic Miss Charley (Amy Ryan, who co-produced) to follow a man and a young boy on a Zephyr train from Chicago to Los Angeles. And this job will take him from California deep into the heart of Mexico and back again before winding up, as it must, on the mean streets of NYC. He will encounter suspicious femme fatales, talkative cabbies, old friends who may not be so friendly, and the obligatory feds who are shadowing his and seemingly everyone else's every move. One of the feds says to Rosow: "You have a sad disposition." Boy ain't that the truth.

There is only a minor helping of rapid-fire repartee here. The dialogue takes it cue from the opening moments when a gin-soaked Rosow takes the phone call that sets the story in motion and barely even grunts the word "Hello." Shannon's speaking pattern, after all, has never been quickest on the draw, and that's perfectly fine because it tempers the film in his dry style. He seems very real in a story that at first might strike you as even-keeled parody before morphing into something much more serious.

Yet, at the same time, the tone is so low key that when the revelations that turn the story serious make their appearance, they fail to resonate with as much grandeur as their subject matter necessitates. The confused disconnect post-9/11 that Buschel wants to evoke never really blooms in full.

But Michael Shannon does. The old noir heroes so often found themselves pulled down the unwanted path by a pretty but devious lady or by some manner of fate. Shannon, however, makes us believe that such a terrible event in our nation's past could and did leave him devastated in such a way that he could not recover. And while the script tries to redeem him with a bit of forced happiness right there at the end, he and we know better.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Bad and the Beautiful

Like 1950’s landmark punk-smack “All About Eve”, Vincente Minnelli’s “The Bad and the Beautiful”, released two years later, takes dead aim at the pool of piranhas that is show biz, merely substituting the bright lights of Broadway for the Hollywood Sign. Strangely, though, it seems much less well known. I might not have watched it save for a small blurb in the New Yorker cluing me into its existence. And I dare say this is a film deserving of the same sort of grandiose recognition, both for its lead performance via Kirk Douglas, making like the Harvey Weinstein of his day, demonstrating a romanticism and a charisma that belies an assassin’s streak, and for the film itself in the way that it portrays the movie business as being one that is on any given Oscar Sunday both, well, bad and beautiful.

Neatly divided into three acts, the film opens with director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) and comely leading lady Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner) gathered in the Parisian office of producer Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon) who begs each one to team back up with another old Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields (Douglas), to make a film. Alas, this trio has nothing but nightmares when it comes to Shields. Hell no, they won’t work with him, and via three separate flashbacks each person tells their dreadful Shields story.

Fred and Jonathan become friends at the funeral of Jonathan’s studio mogul father. Sensing a mutual love of the movies, the two men team up – not unlike Affleck & Damon – and take any backlot job they can find, considering Jonathan’s famed father had no assets left, slowly but surely scaling the ladder from the canyon floor with the peak in sight. A significant loss in a poker game to Pebbel himself leads Fred and Jonathan to working off the debt via bad and low budget pictures until one day, determining the time has come to make a “real” picture, Fred shows his pal a script for a potentially brilliant project called “Far Away Mountain.” Jonathan shows it to Harry who quickly approves except……Harry takes all the credit. And when the time comes to tab a director, Jonathan casts aside Fred for a better known veteran instead.

Next up is Georgia, a fierce alcoholic and daughter of a deceased screen legend, she lands a small part in a Shields’ picture, does well and catches the producer’s eye. He will turn her into a star, regardless of whether or not anyone else sees the talent he is certain she possesses. She falls in love with him and he with her and he coaxes a masterful performance out of her that turns her into a star and renders a great film. But when he fails to turn up the night of the premiere Georgia finds him at his mansion with a cheap floozy and Jonathan, ragefully, casts his starlet away, advising no one will ever have that much control over him.

Last, Bartlow, a college professor, has written a best seller that Shields wants to turn into a movie. Ah, but Bartlow, like any writer worth his whiskey, wants no part of it, at least not until his wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame) talks him into it. So off to la-la land they go where, in an ironic twist, Rosemary’s presence prevents her husband from finishing his work on the screenplay, much to Jonathan’s chagrin. Thus, ever wily, Jonathan enlists his leading man, suave Gaucho (Gilbert Roland), to flirt away with Rosemary to his heart’s content to keep her distracted. Flirting, however, turns hot and heavy and the two run off together, only to tragically perish in a plane crash. In spite of this turn of events, filming goes on, Shields, in a disagreement with his director, takes over as auteur, only to flub his duties and make a turkey that he orders shelved. And then things go from bad to worse when he inadvertently reveals that he was the one who tasked Gaucho to commit his adulterous misdeed. Yikes.

All this, of course, makes Jonathan sound like an Academy Award-winning monster, a man you wouldn’t trust with your worst enemy, and leaves you wondering why anyone would agree to avail themselves of a Shields Production. But that’s what makes Douglas’s performance so perfect and perversely affecting. He utterly inhabits the neighborly fiber of a filmmaking overlord that is used to mask a lecherous soul. Each act is magnificently constructed to portray Jonathan, respectively, as a friend, a lover and a confidant, effortlessly reeling in the director, the star and the writer for personal gain and then, at the last instant, when their usefulness has expired, shiving them with his PGA card.

Early on Shields talks of getting the "after-picture blues." Fred councils: "You'll learn to love 'em and leave 'em." Oh, Fred, if only you knew. Because that is part of what Minnelli's film is arguing: that to sustain success in Tinseltown you have to be able to leave behind someone and/or something that you loved with all your heart. Hollywood, as we know, is full of sharks and, as Alvy Singer once noted, sharks have to be constantly moving or they die.

Since seeing the film I have read people arguing that the end, in particular the final shot, is not as tough as was originally intended. I would disagree. It's the two themes commingling perfectly. Our insulted trio states implicitly they will never work with Shields again. But then in a shot that echoes a shot from earlier, they gather around a phone to hear Shields pitching his newest idea to Pebbel. Their faces light up. They know it's gold. Gold, baby! And without overtly saying so, we know they cannot and will not resist.

They believe so much in the Beauty of Hollywood, they are willing to accept the Bad.

Catwoman Wears Heels So Ya Best Step Off

Yesterday a bit of promo art hit the interwebs showing off the beguiling Anne Hathaway in her Catwoman suit for Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming Batman flick “The Dark Knight Rises.” And within 19 seconds of it dropping I could already hear the hatas hatin’ from here to the Australian outback.

Hata: “But she’s wearing heels! This is so freaking typical! You can’t run in heels! This is like Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl in heels! I thought Nolan was supposed to be all about making ‘Batman’ real?! A neo-realistic Gotham, if you will! This is a disgrace! A disgrace, I say! Heels! HEELS???!!! That's it. I already hate this movie.”

Oh yeah? OH YEAH?! It’s called Stiletto Racing, bitches. It exists. That’s right. It does. To quote Britney McGlone: “Running in stilettos is as easy as sprinting. You just need to get up on your toes and don’t let your heels touch the floor.”

And this little Hata cried “Waa! Waa! Waa!” all the way home.

If these ladies can run in heels, then can't we assume Catwoman can run in heels?

You Gotta Have Faith

Imagine you are Mary Magdalene moseying up to the tomb in which one Jesus is resting. And imagine that an angel suddenly appears and rolls away the stone in front of the tomb. And imagine that angel tells you Jesus ain’t here, see, cuz he’s risen so go and tell the disciples. How would you feel? You have to go tell people a guy who died a few days ago in rather graphic and public fashion just rose from the dead. To spread that news would take a lot of faith. Right? Like, a cornucopia of faith.

In “Cookie’s Fortune” (1999) after Willis Richland (Charles Dutton), the caretaker of the matriarch (Patricia Neal) of the title, is accused of murdering the same woman for whom he cares, there is a moment when the hotshot out-of-town detective Otis Tucker (Courtney B. Vance), who really should have his own show on FX, is interrogating a local blues club owner. The owner explains that Willis recently “stole” a bottle of Wild Turkey. But he only “stole” it because he was short on funds and he fully intended to replace it the following day, which he did. Neither Willis nor the owner ever talked of this out loud, it was just an unspoken, unwritten agreement. It was this kind of……faith in one another.

“Cookie’s Fortune” is my favorite Robert Altman film (and, rest assured, Altman made some fine films). And as I wrote last year I can never quite figure out how to express via writing just what it is about this marvelous film that leaves me in such miraculous slack-jawed awe each Easter when I re-watch it. I vowed to just leave it alone. And now here I am a year later still refusing to leave it alone. Such is life.

I re-watch it every Easter because it is set on Easter weekend and while I hesitate to start wading too deep into religious waters on my movie blog, well, my mind during this annual viewing kept drifting back to the matters of faith – whatever faith, whatever religion, whatever doctrine, whatever you believe in, even if you specifically choose to believe in nothing (more power to you). I was raised Lutheran which means I’m introverted, polite to a severe fault, a huge fan of Garrison Keillor, and I believe whole-heartedly in the Virgin Birth. But seriously, it’s a VIRGIN BIRTH. When you take that out of the context of just trying to “pass” Confirmation so you can stop giving up every Wednesday night of your youth and think about what you’re being asked to believe, well, it takes a huge helping of……faith.

Matters of faith are imbedded throughout “Cookie’s Fortune” like the stench imbedded in Manny’s (Lyle Lovett) Catfish Shack. The only reason Willis even becomes the primary murder suspect is because he shows up after midnight to clean Cookie’s guns – just like he said would because he was being, ahem, faithful to the promise he made. (His fingerprints are therefore on the gun that Cookie uses the next morning to commit suicide.) When Willis is carted off to the town jail, local law enforcement leaves the cell door wide open, having faith that Willis isn’t going to tuck tail and run (and he doesn’t). Emma Duvall (Liv Tyler) officially makes herself Willis’s cellmate, to stand beside him in his hour of need because she has utter faith that he did not do it.

On the flip side, the film’s chief villain, Camille Dixon (Glenn Close), does not have the faith. She has so little faith in Oscar Wilde’s text that she takes the liberty of re-writing his “Salome” for the Easter Play. She has so little faith in how her aunt’s suicide will be viewed by the community that she goes about re-staging the suicide as a murder. Local law enforcement has faith that Camille will stay away from the crime scene but over and over she proves that faith to be misplaced.

The most ingenious aspect of Anne Rapp’s screenplay (which meanders without ever feeling pointless) is how it refrains from turning this into a Whodunit? Murder Mystery. Her script never bluffs, never tries to hide its cards. It is up front and never aims to deceive the audience. It shows us straight away that Cookie has chosen to take her own life and that Camille has gone about arranging a stagy cover-up. And by plainly presenting this to the audience we always know Willis is innocent. Thus, the real drama of the film evolves from the way in which we see the townfolk hold fast to their faith that Willis could not have done it and they and we are elated when that faith is rewarded.

At one point Sheriff Lester Boyle (Ned Beatty) declares he is certain of Willis’s innocence. Eddie “The Expert” (Matt Malloy), Holly Springs forensics “specialist”, bristles: “What makes you so sure of that?” Lester replies, simply, perfectly: “Because I've fished with him.” Why, you can almost picture this little exchange popping up in one of the gospels.

Disciple: “Christ has risen! He’s risen today!”
Skeptic: “What makes you so sure of that?”
Disciple: “Because I've fished with him.”

Neither Shaken Nor Stirred

It was one thing when Daniel Craig’s version of James Bond in “Casino Royale” ordered a vodka martini and then claimed to not “give a damn” when asked if he preferred “shaken or stirred.” This, however, is something else. The this to which I refer is the forthcoming ad campaign in anticipation of the latest Bond film – “Skyfall” – in which 007 trades in his martini for Heineken, the drink of choice for cool guys everywhere. And if in the actual film Bond forgoes a martini for one of those hideous green bottles, so help me movie gods, the hissy fit I throw will know no bounds.

Right.

Wrong.

Will Humphrey Bogart give up cigarettes for carrot sticks?

Will Egan Spengler give up Twinkies for radish stew?

Will The Dude give up white russians for white wine spritzers?

Will Nick & Nora give up martinis for Dasani?

Will Captain Jack Sparrow give up rum for fruit smoothies?

And for the 275,334th time in the history of Cinema Romantico, I ask: IS NOTHING SACRED???!!!

The Dish and the Spoon

I don’t always like the movies in which Greta Gerwig stars, but I almost always like Greta Gerwig in the movies in which she stars. She is fearless. She will open a film, like she does in Allison Bagnall’s low rent, digital "The Dish and the Spoon", sobbing sans makeup in a crummy car, ditching her cellphone, driving to a gray and rainy Delaware resort town and then, in the money shot, trudging along a windswept beach in pajama pants with a bag of convenience store calories in one hand and a six-pack of Dogfishhead in the other. This is the polar opposite of glamour.

There is another moment when Rose (Gerwig) calls up her husband on a payphone and screams at him. Then, suddenly, she stops screaming. She gets quiet. She listens and repeats “Yes” and “Okay” over and over and hangs up. But, what happened? Who picked up on the other line? Someone picked up, right? What did he/she say? Why did Rose turn so meek? This is a film that thrives on a lack of information. We know Rose’s husband cheated on her and she has left in a roaring huff. Beyond that, however, we receive no details on her husband, on what brought them together, on the status of their union, on the woman with whom he cheated, etc. She goes to stay at her parents’ summer home. A summer home? Okay, her parents must have money. So why does she have no money? She lost her wallet, yeah, yet something still feels off. Throughout we are left to fend for ourselves, and when we see her driving with an open container, threatening to “kill the bitch” and stealing cash we begin to suspect perhaps she willed her husband to cheat.

She encounters, as she must, a 19 year old English boy (Olly Alexander) – who never earns a name. With his unkempt hair and peacoat he evokes a young Bob Dylan in appearance and evokes someone as confused in real life as Rose, spinning stories of how he came to America for a girl and how his mother may have committed suicide. She takes him in, so to speak, because he has nowhere else to go. At first she is content to lead him on a quest to find the “bitch” who ruined her marriage and “kill” her but eventually it becomes something a little more and, in turn, something a little more disturbing.

Tone is everything here. For all its production modesty, "The Dish and The Spoon" is more the sort of film that chooses exploration of its themes over a distinct sense of reality. For instance, there is an exemplary WTF? passage that involves Rose prodding “Bob Dylan” to dress up like a girl while she sort of dresses up like a boy and they go out on the town. It’s, uh, weird, yet it is underscored later when they dress up for a fake wedding photo, claim to be husband & wife and then attend a dance class dressed as 16th Century Puritans. There is an excessive break from reality occurring - for both characters, yes, but mainly for Rose, probably brought on by her husband’s infidelity but possibly (who knows?) looming for much longer. The inevitable snap-back is frightening and frighteningly inevitable, and Gerwig’s decision to play her mental freefall so plainly makes it difficult to read.

The snap-back re-leads to the real world but no one here seems to feel genuinely happy about it. A film that leaves so much to the imagination leaves you wondering if perhaps these two gawky souls found more comfort in their madness. Which, of course, isn’t comforting at all.

Why Rose Dewitt Bukater Still Matters To Me

This is likely the most personal post I have written in 6+ years of film blogging but it's something I've wanted/needed to write for 15 years. As always, my advance and utmost apologies.

It’s difficult to describe how excited I was to see "Titanic" in late December of 1997. I had first glimpsed the trailer that summer and been overwhelmed, but this was more on account of pairing James Cameron with the most infamous ship sinking in recorded history. My expectations were sky high and one of my best friends said to me in our Iowa City version of "Seinfeld’s" Monk’s Diner a few hours after my last final exam and roughly 24 hours before I sat down to watch said film back home in Des Moines, “I see you leaving the theater and being……a little disappointed.” But I wasn’t disappointed. It transcended even my highest hopes, just not for the reasons I’d assumed.

-----

In 1997 I was a “burgeoning” English major at the University of Iowa. I was idealistic (read: idiotic) and naïve and the whole college rigmarole pissed me off. I had long been under some misguided notion that upon arrival at university I would be allowed to write for hours and hours and read profound books about writing and pontificate at length with other aspiring writers about writing. Instead I was taking slightly more advanced courses identical to courses I’d taken in high school. I was confused. No, that's not right. I was irritated. I’m bad at grasping a foreign language. I wish I knew why but that is a skill I wholly lack. I hardly paid attention in my theater class and got an A but despite willingly dragging my ass to Spanish class at 7:30 every single morning five days a week and listening and taking notes and studying I could still barely string together a complete sentence. The aforementioned last final exam was, as it had to be, for Spanish, and it remains among the most bewildering, terrifying moments of my life.

-----

The first time we see Rose Dewitt Bukater – well, the young Rose Dewitt Bukater – is her arrival at Southampton wherein she gazes up at the RMS Titanic, all 882 feet of it, and says “It doesn’t look any bigger than the Mauritania.” God, was that awesome. It was an aristocratic fuck you. She was 17, I was 19. She was from Philadelphia, I was from Des Moines (though she eventually settled in – ahem – Iowa). She was a socialite, I was an introvert. But she was idealistic (read: idiotic), she was naïve and she was pissed off. I loved her from the get-go.

-----

I had never seen Kate Winslet. Oh, I’d seen her, sure, in "Sense and Sensibility" but that was before I had officially entered Film Fandom and so I didn't see her. "Titanic" was the first time I saw her.

-----

“I know what you must be thinking – poor little rich girl. What does she know about misery?” That's what Rose says to Jack, and I dare say this is what a lot of people – particularly those who didn’t much care for "Titanic" – thought when they looked at Rose. “A bit of a tramp,” is how Jerry described her on "Seinfeld." My friend Daryl wanted to make "Titanic: HISstory", as told from the point-of-view of Billy Zane’s Cal Hockley in order to show him as a victim of a teenage ingenue's fabrications. Critic David Edelstein, much like my friend Rory, dismissed it as an “Edwardian soap opera.” I, however, sided with Jack, who answered Rose’s query by saying “No. That’s not what I was thinking.” I saw what Jack saw. “You’re a spoiled little brat.” She threatened to commit suicide by hurling herself off the back of the ship even though we all know she wouldn’t have done it. She was full of melodrama and angst. She was young and, in turn, she was sort of stupid. ("You're so stupid, Rose!") Like we all are at that age. She wanted something better. It's just that she didn’t know any better.

-----

I remember sitting in my second semester Spanish class, hopelessly depressed, and thinking "I hate this. I am utterly miserable. I don't want to be here. Why am I racking up student loan debt for this?" and then trudging back across campus to Hillcrest Hall knowing in the back of my mind that my days of trudging back across campus to Hillcrest Hall were quite likely numbered.

-----

After "Titanic" became the (then) most successful movie of all time Kate essentially had the whole cinematic world at her feet. She was offered the lead roles in "Shakespeare in Love" and "Anna and the King." Instead she chose to run off to Morocco to make "Hideous Kinky." At the time she said: "Neither my agent here nor in London got the script at all or why I wanted to do it. I ha(d) to say, 'You have to listen to me and this is what I want to do.'" Reading that was the exact moment I became a Winslet Devotee. She had to do what she had to do and she had to do it in her own way even if it was the wrong way because even if it was the wrong way, well, she knew that it was the right way.

-----

There are few sections of a film - any film - that I enjoy more than when Rose turns down entry into that first lifeboat to go below deck into the rising waters to find Jack to find an axe to bring break him free. Not simply because of how it's filmed, though it's filmed brilliantly, but because of what it represents. She is saying so long to security, to certainty, to convention, and to bullshit and there is no going back.

-----

I have written before that Rose Dewitt Bukater is the Scarlett O'Hara for my generation, and I will go to my grave unswerved of that notion. My mother is a person so taken with the character of Scarlett O'Hara a few years back she literally (read: legally) changed her middle name to Scarlett. And I think that's hugely relevant here.

-----

I don't mean to imply in any way that seeing "Titanic" is the reason I decided to say au revoir to higher learning. That would not simply be simplified but ridiculous. I probably knew deep down before I handed over my whopping four bucks and a quarter (yes, kids! really!) what my immediate future held. But it would also be ridiculous to say getting to "meet" Rose didn't give me comfort with my forthcoming decision and with those weird, confusing days (years) to follow.

-----

I had long loved movies. I had only a couple years earlier started authoring (mostly crummy) screenplays. I dreamt of making movies. But I never truly realized how little I understood movies. Being so affected by "Titanic" brought into focus not only how much the movies in general meant to me but how desperate I was to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of them. It made me tear into classic film for the first time and to read voraciously about film history. It was, in a way, in an inadequate yet still crucial way, my own little ragtag version of film school.

-----

There were, as you might suspect, a great number of moments in James Cameron's Oscar winning opus that wrecked me, but one that has remained with me the longest is that framed photo on Old Rose's night stand of Young Rose astride the horse in the surf at the Santa Monica Pier. I like to imagine Old Rose chilling around her house and looking at that picture and smiling and thinking, "Yup. Right decision."

-----

There are many days when I wonder whether or not I made the right decision. Actually, let's make that many, many days. I could have stuck it out. I could have talked to my academic advisor. I could have found a way to navigate around or through that Spanish boondoggle. I could have moved along to the writing courses and film studies classes I so desired. But......would I have missed out on the Epic Arizona Misadventure? Would I have moved to Chicago? Would I have the friends I have? Arizona was a near-catastrophe, but I don't regret it. And I love Chicago. And I love my friends. And I love who I turned into. There is no question in my mind that my life decisions in the winter of 1998 were heavily shaded by my naïve idealism and that, from one perspective, I didn't truly think it through and, in a way, will forever suffer from it. Yet, there is no question in my mind that I wouldn't be where I am and I wouldn't be who I am if it weren't for my life decisions in the winter of 1998. I had to do what I had to do and I had to do it in my own way even if it was the wrong way because even if it was the wrong way, well, I knew that it was the right way.

-----

To paraphrase Planet Earth Poet Laureate Bruce Springsteen, We all grow up and know "it's only a movie"......but it's not.

Of course, it's not. I have a severe quarrel with anyone who says it is.

-----

3D, no 3D, whichever, I can't wait to say hi to Rose again. She means the world to me and she always will.