Friday's Old Fashioned: The Greatest Show On Earth (1952)

For years whenever I have mentioned my affection for melodramatic films – say, “Titanic” – my father would advise me of the necessity of seeing Cecil B. DeMille’s 1953 Oscar winner for Best Picture, soberly titled “The Greatest Show On Earth.” Still, I had never seen it, and so when I spent a weeklong vacation with him in the Minnesota wilderness a few weeks back, he brought along the DVD. (We were in the wilderness but we were still in an electricity-laden cabin. I’m not a man’s-man, after all.)

Sometimes when I’m feeling low I like to imagine DeMille still alive today and watching Mumblecore. I mean, think about it! What would he say if he saw Greta Gerwig’s lifelike pauses in dialogue or Cris Lankenau and Erin Fisher LITERALLY eating coleslaw onscreen in “Quiet City”?! I don’t mean to insult DeMille or Mumblecore but merely to illustrate that DeMille was, above all, a showman. His background was in the theater, much like Stanley Motts in “Wag the Dog” who explained that he was often accused of being “too theatrical.” Ah, but what is the circus but TOO theatrical? A circus can’t be KIND OF theatrical or a LITTLE theatrical. It’s a circus! It was but a matter of time before Cecil made a movie under The Big Top.

It opens with a towering voiceover that may as well have been ripped right from the pages of Genesis. “The circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline and motion and speed. A mechanized army on wheels, that rolls over any obstacle in its path, that meets calamity again and again, but always comes up smiling.” It’s an effective tone-setter for what is to come, with The Great Orator himself, Charlton Heston, as Brad Braden, General Manager of The Greatest Show On Earth. The Board of Directors plans to reduce the number of shows per day and to only play big cities as a means to cut costs. Braden cuts them off at the pass by signing The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde), the world’s greatest and most daring trapeze artist. This will bring in more people and drive up profits.

Alas, it also means Braden must tell his girlfriend Holly (Betty Hutton), the show’s current #1 trapeze flyer, that she will be downgraded from Center Ring to Ring 1. The Great Sebastian, after all, is the center of attention. Holly accepts but also explains she will do everything in her power to reclaim her rightful spot in the spotlight. This is the main story but far from the only one. Gangsters have their dirty, filthy hands in the Midway concessions and games. Buttons the Clown (Jimmy Stewart), never without his makeup, is hiding a perilous secret. And don’t think that train roaring down the track carrying the circus from place to place won’t eventually wind up……but I won’t spoil it. There are two love triangles – Braden & Holly & Sebastian and Holly & Sebastian & Angel (Gloria Grahame). There is a musical number. And yes, there is, of course, the circus.

That is to say the circus is not merely the backdrop – staging scenes at the show rages all around – but the point. Again and again, “The Greatest Show On Earth” stops with all the character melodrama just to revel in the show itself. Generally DeMille’s film is regarded as one of the worst Best Picture winners of all time. It defeated the highly favored and very well regarded “High Noon”, a film partially famous for choosing to convey its story in “real time”. This lent it a distinct air of realism. And the expected argument might go that “The Greatest Show On Earth” lacks a distinct air of realism, choosing instead to be “too theatrical.” But let’s look at it another way.

When you were a kid and went to the circus, what happened? I can say that my senses were pulled in any number of directions – after all, there is a lot going on. You concentrate on center ring and then you lose interest and concentrate on a different ring and then you lose interest and ask (whine for) your Dad to take you to the concession stand to get popcorn and a program and nachos and then you return to your seat and lose interest in the popcorn and the program and the nachos because there are real life tigers in the center ring and so on and so forth.

“The Greatest Show On Earth” is broad and all over the place, yes, but you smile, you laugh, you gasp, and you shake your head at the absurdity. It's life under the big top.

Finding My Own Silver Lining

My advance apologies, but I needed to write this post. No. You don't understand. I NEEDED to write this post.

Several years ago when I was in the midst of moving from the third floor of my apartment building to the second floor a friend noticed one of my boxes packed with VHS tapes and asked, mildly perplexed: "Is that a whole box of old Nebraska Football game tapes?" Indeed, it was. I did not record every game I watched my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers play but certain ones I did and held onto. I still have them. Granted, as eras changed and VHS was phased out and my VCR stopped working I, in turn, stopped this practice. But, then again, the 2008 Colorado game remains saved to my DVR.

In David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" the character of Pat Solitano Sr., played by Robert De Niro, has shelves and shelves in his study lined with VHS tapes of his beloved Philadelphia Eagle games. This is one of many - and one of the best - details meant to crystallize his O.C.D.

This is not meant to suggest that I have O.C.D. I would not hesitate to say I have O.C.D. tendencies here and there but I also do not want to compare myself to or belittle those who truly suffer from this disorder. This is merely an attempt to demonstrate that I can, in very real ways, identify with the whole crazy gang at the core of "Silver Linings Playbook."

Bradley Cooper's protagonist, Pat Solitano Jr., for instance, has inherited a less than rock solid mental state from his father and suffers from bi-polar disorder. I do not suffer from this disorder but I can attest to often finding myself overwhelmed emotionally, much to my (legendary) detriment, and that in specific situations - often social situations - I can become quite apprehensive.

Without venturing into explicit detail, I will say that just recently I found myself in the midst of the kind of life experience for which we all yearn. As it was happening, I was in touch enough to note that it was happening without allowing the fact that it was happening to adversely affect it happening (which has happened). But then, all of a sudden, as it had to, the experience reached the end-point, and that's when I allowed the fact that I knew it was happening to affect it happening.

Throughout "Silver Linings Playbook" Pat Sr. chastises his son, insulting him and pleading for him to tone down to his craziness without, of course, recognizing his own craziness and how he passed it onto his son. But a moment arrives near the end when Pat Sr., not necessarily reaching a higher plain regarding these flaws, is nonetheless able to deduce that his son is standing on the cusp of something special. As it occurs, you can see De Niro standing off to the side of the frame, watching, the proverbial light coming on, and his desperation to ensure that what needs to happen will happen.

He finds his son. He tells him: "When life reaches out at a moment like this, it's a sin if you don't reach back."

Only when it was too late did I realize that this particular life experience of mine was life itself reaching out to me. I realized this because of the way it has endlessly, frustratingly gnawed at me. I committed a sin. I didn't reach back. I should have reached back.

I honestly can't say if the moment would have turned out any different in the grand scheme if I had. But, of course, that's the whole point. As I stood there, face-to-face with life itself, the O.C.D. side of me kicked in and all I could see was how it couldn't and why it wouldn't work to do something and how it would leave such a bad taste in my mouth if I took action and failed, and because I desperately didn't want that bad taste - because I just wanted it as an illustrious memory - I let it go. And inevitably I wound up with a bad taste in my mouth.

I have taken this hard and am trying to shake it off and, thus, have vowed to take the pledge of Pat Jr., the pledge that gives the movie its title, to heart. I will grasp this failure of mine and hold it up as an example and find a silver lining.

And the next time life reaches out to me, so help me God, I will reach back. I will never not reach back again.

5 Hypothetical Oscar Sore Losers

On Monday night I watched a little bit of “Liz & Dick”, the heavily trashed Lifetime opus starring Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor (which is akin to, say, John Stamos playing Montgomery Clift) and Grant Bowler as Richard Burton. One of the scenes I caught involved the 1966 Academy Awards in which Richard Burton, nominated for Best Actor for “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, was defeated by Lee Marvin for “Cat Ballou.” Moments after this, the camera finds Burton alone in a hallway in the auditorium, drinking and smoking, and Liz finding him to offer consolation and him incredulous that he could lose to……to……Lee Marvin. He! Richard Burton!!!

I confess, I adored this scene, if only because I would like to imagine that is how all Hollywood stars and starlets react to Oscar defeats. This, as it must, got me to thinking. What might five other scenes of actors/actresses post Oscar defeat look like in a bad made-for-cable movie?

Peter Fonda. In 1997 Fonda’s critically-lauded turn in “Ulee’s Gold” ceded to Jack Nicholson’s third victory for his work in “As Good As It Gets.” Imagine Fonda seething backstage. “I made that rat bastard! I wrote ‘Easy Rider’! I gave him a part! I didn't have to give him a part!" Punches wall. "I played a beekeeper! A BEEKEEPER!!! Do you have any idea how HARD that is?! He just plays ANOTHER cranky SOB and wins AGAIN! This is all bulls---! I don't need this!” Storms off.

Peter O’Toole. The legend has never won an Oscar and in 1972 he lost to Marlon Brando. Granted, this was Brando in “The Godfather” and O’Toole stood no chance but this was ALSO the ceremony at which Brando sent the infamous Sacheen Littlefeather in his stead to decline the award. Envision O’Toole, after losing for the FIFTH time, watching Littlefeather from his seat, restrained by his date from charging the stage.

Lauren Bacall. Picture this: an apple-faced usher standing in a hallway outside the auditorium at the 1997 Academy Award ceremony. He hears something to his left and turns that way. He sees Juliette Binoche, hair frazzled, eyes wide, high heels in one hand, Oscar statue in the other, walking/running and occasionally glancing over her shoulder. She hurries past the usher and to his right and disappears around the corner. Then the usher hears something ELSE to his left and turns that way. He sees Lauren Bacall, avenging angel, eyes stone cold, marching like the dude with the fish hook in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer", mumbling to herself. She stomps past the usher and to this right and disappears around the corner.

Bette Davis. Losing out on a third Oscar for her smashing brilliance in “All About Eve” to Judy Holliday for “Born Yesterday”, it is conceivable to suspect this was at least in part to Anne Baxter being nominated in the same category for “All About Eve” splitting votes. Can't you just imagine Bette Davis stalking after Anne Baxter at the after party and throwing a drink in her face? In fact, are we sure this didn't actually happen?

Samuel L. Jackson. In this poll the L.A. Times declared Samuel L. Jackson to be the sorest Oscar loser of the past 17 years when he was bested for his work in "Pulp Fiction" by Martin Landau in "Ed Wood." What they fail to realize is that it could have been - to quote Samuel L. Jackson in "Jurassic Park" - "a lot worse." He could have bum rushed the stage, pulled a glock and taken the whole auditorium hostage. Immediately, host David Letterman attempts to intervene. Jackson shouts: "Motherf---er, I'm in charge! And I want my motherf---in' statue. GIVE ME my motherf---in' statue!"

Jesse & Celine: Will They or Won't They?

I remember being young and post-false-feeling happy ending to a film I incredulously asked my parents, "Mom? Dad? Why do ALL movies have to have a happy ending?" The inevitable reply: "Because real life has so few happy endings." I'm pretty sure I sighed and shook my head.

I was talking with my sister on the phone for Thanksgiving and she - a fellow Tweed Jacket - mentioned the "Before Sunrise"/"Before Sunset" sequel that just finished shooting in Greece and tentatively set for a 2013 release titled "Before Midnight." It will bring to a conclusion the conversational romance of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). My sister expressed her desire for them to get together. But......then she wasn't so sure they should.

Should they?

"Before Sunrise" was released in 1995. Jesse and Celine were in their early twenties. He was an American riding the Eurorail to catch a flight out of Vienna. She was a student riding the Eurorail back to the Sorbonne in Paris. They chat. He asks her to get off the train with him in Vienna and hang out for the night until the next morning. They are at that blessed age when the world seems full of wonder, a night can so easily become timeless, and debating emotional issues is mostly hypothetical. They fall in love. The next morning they say goodbye without exchanging information but agreeing to meet in the same place in six months time. They depart.

So......did they meet six months later?

I was in my early twenties when I finally saw the movie two years later on DVD. I remember pumping my fist (honestly) when the credits rolled. I remember asking out a girl I worked with at the Hillcrest Hall cafeteria at the University of Iowa but doing it in such a way as to evoke a more idiotic Jesse asking Celine to get off the train. I remember my friend Caleb, upon me recounting this story, saying, "You tend to put too much of a romantic spin on these things." (Which is almost completely identical to a line in the movie.) I was hopeful and naive and idealistic. But I chose to believe that Jesse and Celine did not meet again.

Why? Because it would be more tragic that way, of course, and all the great love stories are meant to be tragic.

"Before Sunset" was released in 2004. Jesse and Celine were in their early thirties. He was in Paris on his book tour. She lived in Paris. He was married with a child. She was an environmentalist in a long-term but clearly frustrating relationship. The world was no longer as filled with wonder. Timelessness had given way to time slip-slip-slidin' away. Emotional issues were all too real and scary. And yet......

"I like getting older," Jesse says in the film. "Things feel more immediate." And it was true. If "Before Sunrise" felt like an enchanting fantasy (which is what I still love so deeply about it), "Before Sunset" felt like a genuine drama with amorous overtones. It was clear they electrified one another but it was also clear that in aging they had become sadder and more wary and more cynical. (They had also taken up smoking.) They had, in a sense, become part of that real world where, as our parents said so many years ago, so few happy endings were afforded.

Thus, "Before Sunset" had a more clear cut and, not surprisingly, less romantic ending. It implicitly implied that Jesse and Celine were about to, shall we say, get it on, thereby cheating on their respective partners even if the audience knows that the spirits would totally give them a pass. But beyond that......

I was 34 (going on 35) when I heard "Before Midnight" would become a reality. Part of me was ecstatic, part of me was concerned. Not concerned for the potential quality of the film, which will no doubt be as high as the other two, but concerned for the fate of our dear Jesse and Celine.

In "Before Sunset" Celine mentions she recently re-read her diary from when she was a teenager and realized that her "core" and "the way (she) was feeling things was exactly the same." Jesse concurs that people don't change as much as they think they do.

But they do change. I did. The core of me is exactly the same, yes. Absolutely. In 1997 when I watched "Before Sunrise" I was a romantic and when I watch "Before Midnight" in 2013 I will be a romantic. Except way back when I did not want Jesse and Celine to end up together and in the here and now I want Jesse and Celine to end up together with every fiber of my being. After all, the real world has so few happy endings.

Hells bells. I've turned into my parents.

Holy Motors

The opening shot is of a movie audience. It is facing us. We are facing them. It is watching us. We are watching them. It’s like that glorious moment in “Spaceballs” when Col. Sandurz and Dark Helmet fast-forward through “Spaceballs: The Movie” to locate the exact part of the actual movie which they are currently in. “Everything that happens now, is happening now.” Everything that happens now in “Holy Motors” is happening now. And yet, once now has passed you won’t be able to stop thinking about what happened then.

Is it odd to compare the latest bit of extravagant absurdism from French director Leos Carax to the broader oeuvre of bean fart artisan Mel Brooks? Au contraire. Brooks’ movies were often quite conscious of the fact they were movies and so too is “Holy Motors” fully aware of its cinematic temperament (or, at least, it appears to be). In a very weird but very real way it stirs memories of “Blazing Saddles’” memorable climax in which the fourth wall was broken and its characters found themselves blundering through other movie sets even as their own movie rushed toward its conclusion. Then again, it’s not as if “Holy Motors” is breaking the fourth wall. It’s more as if the audience has been invited through the fourth wall – entered the stargate from the other side, if you will – to see the world of movies if all actors and actresses treated their jobs as seriously as Daniel Day Lewis and worked as frequently as Nicolas Cage.

Denis Lavant is Monsieur Oscar although this is, in fact, but one of eleven total characters he plays – although this is not akin to Peter Sellers taking different roles as different people in “Dr. Strangelove” but the SAME man playing eleven different parts. And this is because Oscar’s occupation is to ride around in the back of a limo loaded with a makeup mirror and assortment of wigs and costumes and "Mission Impossible"-esque facemasks which allow him to transform into a variety of people – ranging from an Eva Mendes-kidnapping troll to an old man laying down in his deathbed.

He calls them “appointments”. But appointments for whom? Later his employer shows up in the limo and questions Lavant’s commitment. “People aren’t believing what they see anymore,” he says. (I imagine Monsieur Cage hears this complaint from his agent, too.) But what people? The audience we saw at the beginning? Are they meant to represent us? Are we more and more often turning up at the movies and not believing what we see? Or are these people producers? Have they had it with actors? Is Leos Carax commenting on CGI and the eventuality of S1m0ne’s running cinematically amock? Or does it have nothing to do with the movies? Is the occupation the point? Are we all just wearing masks to disguise ourselves when we clock in every morning? But then why does Monsieur Oscar’s driver put on her mask (literally) when she leaves the job? Do we identify ourselves through our jobs and then have no idea who in the hell we are when we clock out?

I really have no idea. I’m just spitballing here. “Holy Motors” is all a matter of interpretation. It will, I suspect, elicit cries of “What’s the point?” But the point is you can just sort of fashion the point for yourself. It’s not so much a movie as this bendable, shape-shifting piece of cinema that you can mess around with mentally to assume whatever point you might wish.

Silver Linings Playbook

"I like to think I'm normal and everyone else is crazy." This is the mantra the girl I took to my junior prom often recited. I probably thought of myself the same way. She wasn't really crazy, of course, but that's not really the point - the point is that people, whether by lineage or choice, are so often surrounded by others cut of the same cloth. You're normal. Your family is normal. Everyone else is crazy, even while everyone else assumes they and their family are normal and you and your family and everyone else are crazy.

"Silver Linings Playbook", directed and adapted by David O. Russell from a Matthew Quick novel, opens in the guise of a commonsense chronicling of clinical craziness. Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper, fusing with his character so effortlessly you might not notice how stellar he is) has just been released from the mental institution after an eight month stint in the wake of a violent episode involving his wife. Pat's patient mother (Jacki Weaver) picks him up. His father Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro), seems less assured his son is ready to re-face the emotional rigors of everyday life.

At first, Pat Jr. appears a loner, an outsider estranged from his family, but as we become closer to the Family Solitano we realize that Pat Jr.'s bi-polar disorder is a product of Pat Sr.'s inflamed O.C.D. involving his beloved Philadelphia Eagles, whether gambling or otherwise, shining a knowing, comical spotlight on the way America has become a football-crazed rubber room.

Russell's camera spends much of the film swaying back and forth and zooming in and out and wandering to and fro, a masterstroke suggesting, without becoming a distraction, the inner-workings of Pat's racing mind. He talks full-tilt and without a filter, again and again promising not to ask followup questions and then asking them anyway, unnecessarily charging conversations and situations with pointed queries because he genuinely does not know any better. He admits he does not know any better. Thus, he pledges to do better, to “remake himself”, jogging like an idiosyncratic Rocky and reading Hemingway.

He eventually Meets Cute (Crazy?) with the sorrowfully rageful sister Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) of his married, child-rearing friends Ronnie (John Ortiz) and Veronica (Julia Stiles). She has a stained past of her own involving an ex-husband. Pat looks at Tiffany like she's the craziest person he's ever met. Tiffany cannot believe that someone as crazy as Pat could deign to call her crazier than him. Lawrence, fast becoming one of our best working actresses of any age, crafts a fully formed individual, bawdy but poignant (not tragic), alternately pushing Pat to do better and picking at him when he doesn't. Likewise, she conveys the way in which he honors who she is by not simply saying what she wants to hear.

He resists her erratic charms because, as he repeatedly states, he yearns only to make amends and re-unite with his wife whom he still loves and whom he is convinced will eventually re-reciprocate that love. Never mind that she took out a restraining order against him. Tiffany offers to illegally deliver a letter from Pat to his ex-wife if Pat agrees to become her partner for a Christmas dance contest.

At this point viewers will be forgiven for suspecting a movie about mental checks and balances is on the verge of plunging into sentimentality. And this is partly because Russell's intention is to subvert the sentimentality by serving it in a glorious loony bin of a third act that does what so few film do anymore these days and brings together its entire frenzied horde on a single stage. The setting is no accident. Christmas is a time, the refrain goes, when families come together to set aside their differences. But what they’re really doing is embracing similarities and standing united. In the end, Pat Jr. does not remake himself. He realizes he’s already made and makes his own variation of peace with it.

"The Silver Linings Playbook" has the structure and ethos of a Romantic Comedy, a genre which typically manipulates viewers into ostensibly falling for an emotionally counterfeit ending. David O. Russell, however, subtly, skillfully and wonderfully has crafted a screwball comedy about screwed up but - deep down - loving people continually lying to and manipulating each other. And the conclusion, which has the outward appearance of formula, is not false because it’s the one time this whole dysfunctional clan stops lying and manipulating and finally gives in to what’s true.

This is the best movie of the year.

Giving Cinematic Thanks

The best sixty seconds I have seen so far at the movies this year was not at the movies but in the comfort of my own living room. It's these sixty seconds from "Sunshine" (2007). On a mission to "re-start" the sun - on account of its dying and all - the crew pauses to watch Mercury float before their destination. All life is (probably) about to end but the universe just keeps on keepin' on. 

Thanks, Danny Boyle.

5 Movie Characters To Say Thanksgiving Grace

Thanksgiving. Drinks may have been imbibed during football (or during a re-run of "Miracle on 34th St"). Relatives are starting to get on your nerves. You sit down to dinner. You got stuck sitting next to the cousin you TOTALLY don't like who you KNOW is going to start blathering about his job as an insurance adjustor. You want some relief. You want enjoyment. But the Uncle carving the turkey who's about to say grace just ain't gonna offer the entertaining respite you so desperately need in this holiday moment.

So, who could offer it?

5. Aldo Raine

4. Jackie Moon

3. Juno Macguff

2. Officer Dignam

1. Duane Hall

Celebrating The Myth of Fingerprints Day

The Saturday post-Thanksgiving was always the day my Dad would trot out the synthetic Christmas tree that stands as tall as the tannenbaum in Rockefeller Center in my over-romanticized mind and every time he did my heart would flutter and I’d think to myself “Christmas is only a few weeks away!”

Most every morning I stop at Starbucks for coffee and, as strange as this might sound, the moment every autumn when I realize they have transitioned from their standard stark white cups to their more festive red holiday cups, my heart flutters and I think to myself "'The Myth of Fingerprints' is only a few weeks away!"

At the time, of course, I had no idea what an 8 hour work day felt like but now I know that every Christmas morning in my blue house as a wee lad was as long as an 8 hour work day. My sister and I would perch on the edge of all the presents spilling out from below the tree as we waited for our Grandpa Prigge to finish his morning routine and for coffee to brew and so on and so forth. Again, I understand all of this now. As an ancient thirty-fiver, coffee is Christmas (or any) morning’s most crucial ingredient. But when you’re five you’re just hoping and praying for the coffee machine to make that gurgling noise to signal the end of the brewing process so that, for the love of St. Nicholas, you could start tearing up wrapping paper and scattering bows and ribbon across the carpet.

Of all the 8 hours of every one of the 52 weeks of my year there are none that feel longer than the 8 on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Once upon a time, when I first discovered it and swooned for it in a specific way that I have never swooned for any other movie, I watched “The Myth of Fingerprints” often. Too often, perhaps. So often that I realized in order to save the sensation of its salvation I needed to scale back those viewings. Somehow, some way I managed to accomplish this and eventually I settled on but a single viewing a year. Seeing as how it is one of those films centered around a family re-convening for Thanksgiving, I set the traditional date as the Tuesday before the fourth Thursday in November (although occasionally this is moved back to Wednesday). It has become a momentous annual event in my cinema-obsessed life. And so as the day goes, as the sun rises and sets, as I trek off to work and trek back home, my anticipation rises. My only present is a DVD and opening its case is like ripping open the one gift you’ve had your eye on since early December.

There was suspense in Christmas morning as a kid because you had asked Santa for certain presents and who knew whether or not they’d be waiting. Then you realize, Oh, Santa was in the house all along. Santa always knew what I wanted. The suspense was manufactured – or, more accurately, the suspense never really mattered. Christmas, as the years pass, isn’t about the unfamiliar but the familiar. Being home. Family. Friends. Chili. Oyster Stew. The cloth advent calendar your Grandma Prigge handmade from scratch years ago. Your mom forcing (literally) you and your sister to set up the miniature Christmas nativity and then re-arranging everything you and your sister have set up to meet her specifications. It’s a reminder. This is who you are. This is where you come from.

“The Myth of Fingerprints” is no longer about suspense. Oh, you tend to see little things and reach an even deeper, truer understanding of its themes (like last year) but the broad outline of it now is all about the familiar. Certain scenes and shots and lines have taken on that same warm familiarity as yuletide. I know they will happen. They happen. They still move me and make me smile. Many who have seen the movie see a WASP family. Fair enough. I see a Romantic and an Introvert and a Cynic and an Optimist and a Neurotic and Someone Who Doesn't Know What He Wants. I see all the pieces of myself. This is who I am. This is where I come from. (The guy who changes his name to Cezanne is totally the side of me that loves Lady Gaga.)

Christmas morning ends. It has to end. The wrapping paper and bows and ribbon strewn about the carpet are picked up and thrown away. A big bulbous blank spot now appears beneath the tree where all those boxes lay. Christmas Eve has such a beautifully eerie sensation hovering over it, particularly in the latest hours of the night, and Christmas morning has such warmth, an affability unlike any other day so much that it’s almost ineffable. And Christmas night……Christmas night is bittersweet, a sad smile, a melancholy song, even more so as an adult when you know you likely have to go home – you know, your OTHER home – the following day. And then the Christmas tree itself is taken down later on……oh, heaven help me, that’s just the worst. The room becomes big and empty, that reassuring toastiness giving way to a brisk chill.

“The Myth of Fingerprints” ends. It has to end. The music that skims over the final shot is, to me, The Saddest Music In The World. I love the movie so much. I want it to go on forever. It won’t. It can’t. It’s so bittersweet, it’s Christmas morning giving way to Christmas night giving way to January, and all in the space of a couple minutes. Every year I watch the credits the whole way through. I bid adieu. I remove the disc from the DVD player. I place it back in its case. I put it on the shelf.

Next year seems so far away.

The Deep Blue Sea

As an avid "Atonement" fan I have now and again found myself in conversations with viewers less enamored with the period British film. One complaint often registered is the lack of passion on display in the all-important romance between Keira Knightley's upper class Cecilia and James McAvoy's lower class Robbie. And in a sense their sentiment is correct. There are sparks of passion but only occasionally and briefly. This is because the society in which the characters existed preferred that passion and, in turn, passionate love affairs, especially between differing classes, be buttoned up and closed off. Cecilia and Robbie, to me, clearly had immense passion bubbling below the surface, in particular for one another, and yet felt required to ward it off.

Hester (Rachel Weisz - Oscar nomination, please!), the protagonist of Terence Davies' "The Deep Blue Sea", based on a 1950-written & set Terence Rattigan play, struggles with the same problem, but even more so. Her situation seems to douse any sparks at all. She is married to rich and respected judge, Sir William Collyer, several years her senior. It seems a marriage based, to quote Major Duncan Heyward, on respect and friendship. She wants love. Unbridled, Harlequin-esque love and Collyer, no matter how kind and caring, domineered by a mother who views passion as an incurable disease, is incapable of providing it in the romantic sense of the word.

Thus, she has commenced an affair with Freddy (Tom Hiddleston), a young, brash RAF pilot. They plan to marry when Hester navigates the waters of divorce with Sir William. But is it love? Or simply lust? Or can the two co-exist? Or are they, in fact, intertwined? Or is it neither?

Taking place over the course of one day and indulging in flashbacks often triggered by the billowing smoke of Hester’s cigarettes, it opens with her unsuccessful suicide attempt. There is a bit of rubbish involving a forgotten birthday that triggers her pill-taking but it is clear, and Weisz makes it clear, that this goes beyond one morning. It has been festering. Freddy’s mind is still in the clouds above the Channel. The war may have been horrible but some men don’t seem to know what to do without it. Several times the film permits extended shots of Freddy and his pals in the pub drinking pints and singing songs and the camera always finds Hester looking at her lover and then looking at the others around them. Her smile is forced, attempting to mask a confusion, perhaps even a discomfort. Why is he so jovial here, she seems to wonder, with his lads? Why can’t he direct his enthusiasm toward her, the way she has toward him?

Weisz is exemplary in a most tricky role, cultivating a woman consumed by tenacious emotions that forever are forced to froth below the surface. She practically trembles with what she carries out of sight, as if that cigarette smoke she ceaselessly exhales is an attempt to lighten the load. She makes it clear without showing us that she needs to indulge what she feels because it threatens to overwhelm her if she doesn’t and the time in which she lives doesn’t want her to.

We are fortunate to live in a society where outsized emotions are (mostly) welcome. If Stefani Germanotta wants to re-christen herself, wear a disco-ball bra in public and openly proclaim “I can put a ring on my own f---in’ finger”, she can. She might take flack, sure, because we’ve got more invisible corsets in this day & age than we care to admit, but she can. That’s the thing. Hester can’t. And whether it does today or tomorrow, it’s going to kill her.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

James Bond movies are rife with what the esteemed Roger Ebert has deemed the Fallacy Of The Talking Killer. It states: “The villain wants to kill the hero. He has him at gunpoint. All he has to do is pull the trigger. But he always talks first.” This, of course, presents Agent 007 ample opportunity to make his requisite escape. “The Man With The Golden Gun” (1974), Roger Moore’s second film in the series, is no different.

A suitably weird Christopher Lee, the title character, Francisco Scaramanga, is the world’s finest assassin and has lured James Bond to his island hideaway. He sits down to dinner with Bond. He pulls his gun – his golden gun (loaded with golden bullets). He explains he could have shot Bond when he landed. But he did not specifically because he lured Bond for a beachside duel, Assassin vs. 007. Thus, in this scenario the Talking Killer is not a Fallacy and Christopher Lee, who also has some gobbledygook about evildoing solar power (theoretically the film is about Bond's attempts to retrieve the "Solex Agitator" from the clutches of the villain), sells the character’s vanity with slimy sublimity.

Alas, that is virtually the only thing I liked about “The Man With The Golden Gun”, aside from Britt Ekland’s bikini but that goes without saying. As much as I adored “The Spy Who Loved Me”, I detested this entry, and quite possibly the dye was cast from the moment Scaramanga was revealed to possess……a third nipple. Really? A third nipple? Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Is that supposed to be clever? God knows I love “Elizabethtown” more than any man alive but even I cringe when Paula Deen references the relative with the third nipple.

This suggests the lamebrain ideas at the core of the film. It also might suggest the writer’s room was ornamented with a festive bowl of coke. The opening sequence, after the third nipple’s introduction, is Scaramanga and an adversary stalking in each other in Scaramanga’s custom-made funhouse complete with wax figures. This funhouse is returned to for the (sort of) climax. I can only imagine co-writers doing lines, blaring Olivia Newton John and thinking that a third nipple, funhouse shootout, naming a character Nick Nack and adding an obnoxious Louisiana tourist to TWO (!) chase scenes (on water and in the street) were the epitome of high (groan) comedy.

Looking to cash in on the kung fu craze of the era, the film travels to Hong Kong and places Moore in bouts of not only kicking and karate chopping but sumo wrestling for which the poor, expressionless man is vastly ill equipped. The scene involving his near escape from the two sumo wrestlers is as poorly conceived and edited as you are likely to see in a big time Hollywood release. And these problems speak to the movie as a whole – its action sequences are uninventive and unmemorable (never has a flying car looked so pedestrian) and their awfulness is only augmented by the film’s ho-hum idle talk.

Britt Ekland, meanwhile, might be fetching as Bond sidekick Mary Goodnight and she may totally rock that aforementioned bikini but the script does not shy away from making her spectacularly stupid. In fact, it goes so far as to make it so the last 30 minutes of the film could not even exist without her stupidity. I don't mind suspending disbelief for the sake of a little plot advancement - I truly don't - but can't that be achieved without making a critical character a whopping moron?

And what’s stupidest of all is forsaking the only thing it had going for it - the timeless tradition of symmetry in regards to the opening funhouse shootout paving the way to a closing act funhouse shootout - for pursuit of the Solex Agitator before the Solar Plant blows up. Never has a climax been so anti-climactic.

5 Directors For The New Star Wars Film

By now the whole world knows Disney acquired Lucasfilm for a cool $4 billion and by now the whole world knows that upon acquiring Lucasfilm for a cool $4 billion Disney announced plans to put into production a brand new "Star Wars" live action film for 2015 and by now the whole world has weighed in with varying choices for just who should helm this film which will be judged like no film in history has ever been judged.

Nevertheless, Cinema Romantico still has something to say.

5 Directors To Helm The New "Star Wars" Film

Quentin Tarantino. Adios, Skywalker. Sayonara, Solo. Au revoir, Leia. Farvel, C-3PO and R2-D2. Hit the bricks, Chewie. This is Q.T.’s world and in Q.T’s world, after an opening sequence set to Gram Parsons’ “We’ll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning” in which all the aforementioned characters are revealed to have been killed off, the film focuses itself on the lifestyles of Lando Calrissian, owner of the most happening club on all of Corellia, and his showdown with the rogue son of Mace Windu, Marvelous Marvin Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), who yearns to have his hands in every club in the galaxy and whose unwilling mistress (Rhianna) is (gasp!!!) the daughter Lando never knew he had.

Sofia Coppola. The story of Han and Leia's daughter, Arylide, who pierces her tongue, drops out of the University of Coruscant and decides to snow-shoe across Hoth in an effort to find herself. (Sample Dialogue. Leia: "How did you end up so rebellious?" Arylide: "Are you f---ing kidding me?")

Werner Herzog. An eclectic documentary in which the ever-eccentric German narrates a bracing but romantic inside look of the hand-to-mouth and violent culture of the Tusken Raiders (i.e. Sand People) of Tatooine. (Assume Herzog-ian accent.) “Enduring existence in the harsh arid climate on the planet farthest from the center of the universe, the Tusken Raider is viewed by the civilized world as a mindless monster. But after spending several months in their presence I came to view these nomads as primitive but misunderstood, a product of an environment as unforgiving as outsiders are of them."

Paul Verhoeven. Ever brazen, Verhoeven paints the fall of the Empire as the motivation for a civil war even more widespread and bloody than the first. Mon Mothma is named Chief of State of the New Republic only to find herself in a power struggle with a faction co-commanded by Admiral Ackbar and General Madine who desire a stronger military state.

The Farrelly Brothers. A road trip comedy chronicling the wacky misadventures of Fodesinbeed Annodue, the two-headed announcer from "The Phantom Menace"!!!

Swing Vote

When I was younger, much younger, I was enraptured by politics. I remember voraciously reading biographies of Washington and Jefferson and Madison. I remember getting into verbal arguments with Mr. Calvert, my history teacher in high school, who would always open class with discussions of current events and I happened to take his class at the same time Clinton was attempting to oust the First Bush. Mr. Calvert was a conservative. I was a liberal. Granted, I was a liberal mostly because I grew up in an exclusively liberal leaning household and only knew the basic generalities of what I was talking about but the point remains......I had a passion for politics. That, however, has long since changed.

We're all friends here, right? I can admit something to you, can't I? I can? Good. Here it is. I didn't vote in the infamous 2000 election. I suppose I would have voted for Gore if I had, but I found the whole process, the whole campaign, the whole election, the divisiveness of it and of the nation, so nauseating and depressing that I simply couldn't take it. I lost all interest. I genuinely did not care. F--- it. I got wise eventually and I returned to the voting booth and contrary to the "Wag the Dog" post last Tuesday, yes, I voted. Even so, I did not retain much of an appetite for politics.

"Swing Vote" is a decidedly, necessarily absurd story about a New Mexican yokel Bud - played by Kevin Costner in such a way to suggest the way Gardner Barnes might very well have gone - whose 12 year old daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll), dismayed at her father's routine drunkenness and failure to vote in the day's Presidential election, attempts to cast her father's vote for him only to have it go electronically awry. As it happens and as it must, the election is a dead heat. It all comes down to New Mexico's electoral votes. And New Mexico's electoral votes hinge entirely on that single vote that went awry. In other words, Bud will decide the nation's President.

As you might expect, the press and, in turn, chaos descend on Bud's and Molly's trailer and both candidates, incumbent Boone (Kelsey Grammar) and challenger Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper), turn up to court his vote. Their respective campaign managers, played by Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane, have, respectively, never lost and never won, thus they will do whatever it takes to make their boss's do whatever it takes to earn that vote. So we find Boone, the conservative, winning the hearts of the EPA and Greenleaf, the liberal, threatening to clamp down on the Mexican border.

The humor is generally broad but can, at times, induce pleasant chuckles. The Presidents are revealed to be generally good guys but puppets controlled by their managers. Bud is at first amused by the process then takes the slope downward to a pit of nicey-nice depression at the tail end of the second act when America and the town turn on him so he can rise back up to recite the obligatory speech to the Presidents as the music swells.

It's all handled well enough, maybe even a little better than you think, and Costner (and Costner's amused giggle) are surprisingly solid. But I really saw "Swing Vote" through the eyes of young Molly.

She opens the film full of ideals. She embraces the right to vote, so much more because she still does not have this right herself, and she is sad that her father does not only refuse to embrace it in the same way but that he does not embrace it at all. And as the film's story grows larger and larger, as she meets the President and TV reporters and others, as she sees the Political Machine for what it really is, a place where ideals go to die and victory overrides principals, her passion for the process threatens to wane.

Her father, I think, senses this too and goes to bat. Costner, smartly, never plays the part all that differently, he just slightly adjusts his attitude. Sometimes that's all it takes. And his daughter's ideals in the end are able to remain intact. Hopefully they stay that way.

Headhunters

Roger Brown is a sly corporate recruiter (i.e. “Headhunter”) but more than that he is a skilled art thief, less as a means to indulge his ego than to prop up his ego when considering he is but 5’6 and married to a statuesque Alice Taglioni-ish model – Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund) – whom he is convinced will leave him for someone taller, someone with a bigger, uh, bank account and someone who wants kids. Therefore he spends well above his means, lavishing his special lady with gifts……like, you know, her very own art gallery. It’s enough to bring the guy to the edge of bankruptcy. Which is exactly where he is. Plus, she wants a kid. And he doesn’t want a kid. Perhaps because he’s an art thief on the edge of bankruptcy. And perhaps all this stress is why he is having an affair.

This is the guy meant to be our hero, the entry-point into “Headhunters”, the 2011 Norwegian thriller from director Morten Tyldum, and rather than being driven by any sort of noble goal or effort to right a undeserved wrong he is driven by – as outlined above – deep fear and insecurity. The film's most telling line occurs late in the proceedings when Roger asks another character "Don't you have empathy for anyone?" We might be inclined to ask the same of Roger. After all, he is an adulterous thief addicted to the high life. How can WE as an audience have empathy for HIM? But that, as it turns out, is the very query that drives "Headhunters", it's a journey in which Roger attempts to ACQUIRE empathy. Does he get it?

Like so many cinematic thieves before him, Roger yearns for the requisite Big Score in order to retire from The Game and live the Good Life once and for all, forever forever, without having to put back on the ski mask. He seems to find it when at the opening night of the gallery he has bought for his wife with the money he doesn't necessarily have, he meets worldly, dashing Clas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), an ex-member of an elite Danish army unit. Clas possesses a painting of Peter Paul Rubens. It is worth serious bank, like the retire to a figurative tropical island type bank. Clas is also looking for a position with a well-to-do surveillance company called Pathfinder. It turns out Roger recruits for Pathfinder. Who says miracles can't happen?

So Roger sets up a meeting for Clas with Pathfinder which allows him to slip into Clas's apartment to steal away with the precious Rubens painting to hand off to his sorta unstable partner Ove (Eivind Sander) to take to Sweden to sell. And while I will refrain from revealing any further explicit secrets from this point forward suffice it to say that all does not go as planned. The twists are not only plentiful, they are out there and, yet, entirely believable within the context of the story, a story that is set up from the get go so that each place snaps dutifully into place. Like, say, the two extra-large security guards who appear to possibly be twins. At first you just assume they are a small dose of comic relief. Then you realize their presence has a helpful ulterior motive a bit later on. Again and again this happens.

But what set "Headhunters" apart from so many films of its ilk is Roger's strange, violent, occasionally revolting journey to, against all the odds, become a character worthy of sympathy and worthy of the love of the woman who was not quite what he and we thought. He has seen the light. Or has he? The end, the very end, exists, possibly, as a devious parody of these sorts of movie endings. It's a sly reminder of an ancient adage: It's Only Illegal If You Get Caught.

Why Don't Movies Have This Shot Anymore?

Lincoln

The first few minutes of "Lincoln", taken from Tony Kushner’s screenplay based on the book "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearnes Goodwin, is deft and masterful. At first you worry Steven Spielberg has ripped a page from his own manual by kicking events off with a brutal battle re-enactment, only to move it aside quickly for two black Union soldiers reciting their accomplishments to an unseen face. The shot reverses. The unseen face is President Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis). It tells us that Lincoln is specifically about what he is trying to gain for them.

Two white soldiers approach. They futz around, reciting The Gettysburg Address. One of the black soldiers recites a few of its words too. The words, the movie is saying, have resonated, but now they must be backed up as more than mere rhetoric.

The film takes place in the waning days of the grisly War Between The States. The army of Ulysses S. Grant (Jared Harris) is advancing on the Confederacy at Wilmington, threatening to force either a peace negotiation or surrender. Jefferson Davis sends three advisors, including his Vice President, northward in hopes of brokering a treaty. President Lincoln, however, has loftier ideals. He yearns to push the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, through the squabbling House of Representatives, and he requires the pretense of war to make it appear as if slavery’s abolishment is the only way to effectuate the war’s end.

"Lincoln", directed in a basic but elegant fashion by Spielberg, forgoes the trappings of the modern biopic by essentially not being a biopic – a re-telling of a whole life – but a chronicling of a key event in that life. By doing so, the essence of the man reveals itself through his decisions, interactions, and the way he goes about attaining equality. To do so he must abstain from playing fair, and willingly employs three skilled connivers (James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson) to cajole opposing Democrats of the Congress to turn coat and vote for the Amendment.

One of the film’s most telling sequences involves a dozen or more African Americans entering the U.S. Capitol Chamber as the people rise and the John Williams’ score dramatically swells, only to have Spader’s character an instant later lift his finger in impersonation of a gun at one of the representatives down below whose vote they demand. It’s a wonderful moment in which Spielberg – intentionally or not – undercuts his own typical pomp, which is sort of the movie as a whole is doing.

In a role that should, by all means, be virtually unplayable, Daniel Day Lewis gives a titanic performance by resisting the enormity of the man’s myth. You can see the coming myth taking shape in the way he commands a room in spite of his unimpressive voice with his grace and dignity, but Lewis seems to suggest that Lincoln either didn’t know or didn’t care about his stature. Frail and graying, endlessly hunched over, his eyes fixed on his shoes more often than the sky, clearly evoking the metaphorical weight of all he carried, he spends much of the film listening to others argue with a weary, amused grin. To show patience as President must require a Herculean effort. 

So too is Lincoln’s personal life mixed in with the political intrigue, the madness of his wife Mary Todd (Sally Field), her worries over how the nation will view the man they love if he pushes for something so controversial, and the anger of his son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who wishes only to join the Union army to prove his self-worth. Rather than feel forced, however, these passages demonstrate the full and tiring nature of the President’s existence, and the way his position calls for nearly eternal conflict.

“Lincoln’s” coda is the only troublesome spot. The presenting of his death, brief as it may be, is the one moment when History Channel-ness creeps into the production, an obligatory recitation of facts as opposed to re-illustrating the film’s themes. I did, on other hand, appreciate the (inevitable) placement of the snippet of the infamous Gettysburg oration. It brings it full circle from the opening, showing that the rhetoric did become reality.

And it is not even the most crucial speech in the film. No, the film’s most crucial speech is less a speech than one of the President’s many folksy parables, told to two nameless men in a telegraph room. Throughout "Lincoln", Honest Abe is sneaky and calculating in obtaining what he desires. His ideology, though, whether he was reciting it for 15,000 people or 2 people, was never in doubt.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

James Bond, Agent 007, has just advised Anya Amasova, Agent Triple X (O.T.X. – The Original Triple X), the spy who loves him, that he was responsible for the snow-slope killing of The Spy Who Loved Her. She has previously vowed revenge upon the unknown killer. Now that she knows him, and even though she has come to love him too, she intends to uphold her end of the deal and says as much – though, of course, they must conclude their mission first. This would suggest a third act of intense drama, two spies circling each other even as they circle the requisite megalomaniac they were required to defeat. Instead the whole thing felt like a lark, springtime in the park, two lovers bickering, exchanging pouty looks, all the while knowing in the backs of their minds they would wind up in one another’s arms without clothes in the helpfully labeled “Escape Chamber”. It felt……right.

I am not necessarily a Bond movie novice but I am a Roger Moore Bond movie novice. I had seen parts of “A View To Kill” (1985) and that was it. I had always contended Sean Connery was my favorite 007, but that was merely because you seem required to have a favorite Bond as a cinemaphile and, frankly, Brosnan and Dalton and Craig never seemed to play in the key I personally wanted to hear. Truth is, no Bond was my favorite just as no one Bond movie stood out that much to me.

Strangely, a few friends and family members have told me over the years they preferred Roger Moore’s version of the iconic character and still for reasons I struggle to express I never bothered to investigate these claims. Maybe it was because the other Bond movies just left me pleasantly entertained, though un-wowed. “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977), director Lewis Gilbert’s 10th entry into the series, the 3rd with Moore, did not necessarily “wow” me. It did, however, repeatedly make me laugh out loud, not necessarily because of the absurdity (though there is absurdity) but from sheer delight. I had seen 13 films in the series all the way through but by a wide margin this one I enjoyed the most.

James Bond is a lot like eggs. We all prefer our eggs cooked different ways. I have not read the Fleming novels and, thus, have no idea what he intended the character to be, nor do I care. If someone else does, God bless ‘em. They want a hard boiled egg. I want ‘em poached. (?) The latter day Bonds all seem a bit too committed to the part, and if it seems odd that I would prefer an actor not to be so committed to his part, well, I’ve always viewed 007 as not being entirely committed to his job. He DOES his job, yes, and he does it quite well, but when he’s in the midst of defying so much death I like to imagine he’s flashing back to various dalliances with various ladies over the years or whether he’s going with the prime rib or filet mignon before his game of baccarat that evening. And that is how Moore plays Bond.

All his quips sound contractually obligated by Her Majesty’s Service. When in the marvelous pre-credits sequence he abandons his temptress in the mountainside cabin because “England” needs him, we can tell he’s not really all that excited about the call of duty. When he drives his underwater car up onto a packed beach his face comes across genuinely perturbed when he tosses a wayward fish out the window. He appears to have graduated from the Captain James T. Kirk School of Kung Fu, all his hand-to-hand combat moves being slow and halting and returning again and again to the classic Grab Hold Of The Doorframe Above You And Kick Your Enemy but without acquiring much lift and/or kick. This is not a problem, though, because the fight scenes, aside from the third act climax, are really nothing more than bridges to its endlessly entertaining concepts, gadgets and tete-a-tetes. The concepts, gadgets and the tete-a-tetes are the good times. And that’s James Bond’s ultimate objective – the good times.

And when he’s done tending to all that pesky business about the requisite megalomaniacal madman (Curd Jurgens) and fighting off the repeated attacks of the steel-jawed henchman (Richard Kiel) who just refuses to die and thwarted the blowing up of one thing or another with the usual nuclear missiles and so on and so forth and sequestered himself away in the “Escape Chamber” with Anya (Barbara Bach) and a chilled bottle of Dom he looks very much like a guy happy the long work day is finally over.

Official Cinematic Crush Update: Russian Femme Fatale Edition

It was just announced that a sequel to last year's very well received "Muppets" movie will go into production with a target release date of 2013. Specific plot details are sort of mum but we know the film will involve some sort of European-set comedic caper and that Christoph Waltz will play an Interpol agent and that it will involve a Russian femme fatale still to be cast.

Still to be cast?! Hey! Allow Cinema Romantico to make a helpful suggestion! Malin Akerman for your Russian femme fatale! She's Swedish. She's Canadian. She's French (sort of).

She's Russian.

A Scene For Today

Stanley Motts: "Would you vote for that person based on that commercial?"
Fad King: "You know I don't vote."
Stanley Motts: "Why don't you vote?"
Fad King: "The only time I voted was that one time when Major League Baseball started the fan's voting thing and I voted for Boog Powell for first base and he didn't get in and it just disappointed me. It stayed with me. It's futile."
Stanley Motts: "You've never voted for President?"
Fad King: "No. (Pause.) Do you vote?"
Stanley Motts: "No. I always vote for the Academy Awards. But I never win."
Fad King: "Liz, do you vote?"
Liz Butsky: "No. I don't like the rooms. Too claustrophobic. I can't vote in small places."

- Wag the Dog (1997)

A Walk To The Theater

It's a shade less than a mile from the Fullerton train stop to the Regal Webster Place 11 Cinema. You exit the L station and turn left and then make another quick left on Sheffield right by the Dominick's.

You stroll past the DePaul campus. You make your way past the gymnasium that houses the Blue Demon women's basketball games. A few times a year you are forced to swerve around the young guy or girl in the DePaul tee shirt leading the tour group of prospective students and their parents who have no understanding whatsoever of city sidewalk etiquette and are utterly oblivious to the fact they are sharing the cement with people NOT part of the tour group.

You reach the corner of Sheffield and Webster and the Jam 'n Honey which used to be a coffee shop. To the left is McGee's which is where you watched your first Nebraska Football game as an official Chicago resident and where you met the dude claiming to be the kicker on Nebraska's 1978 team. It's not a Nebraska bar anymore but that doesn't matter. You turn right past the striking, unmissable St. Vincent de Paul Parish on the corner.

You continue west, past the brownstones and boutiques and bakeries and galleries and the State Street Barbers and the restaurant that has changed names and identities at least a half-dozen times in seven years and the Campus Gear store that never seems to have any customers and Trebes Park.

You continue past John's Place and the Local Option and the Derby Bar & Grill which used to be Charlie's Ale House.

You pass families and couples and joggers and dog-walkers and people listening to their iPods or checking their iPhones and hungover students clamoring for breakfast and dudes in Devin Hester jerseys and fetching blondes in fetching black boots.

You cross the forlorn ex-train track and glide across Southport and past the Potbelly's and the inevitable Starbucks and the Barnes & Noble bravely fighting off the death of bookstores.

You arrive at your destination. You go up the escalator. You buy your ticket. You sit down for your movie. You make the same walk back.

I have made this walk countless times. I have made this walk in the sun and in the dark. I have made this walk in the blazing orange of autumn and in the rain - light and heavy and in-between - of spring. I have made this walk in the brutal heat of summer and in raging blizzards of winter. I made it this past Fourth of July to meet friends to see "The Amazing Spider Man" and I made it on Christmas Day 2009 with my friend Dave to see "Sherlock Holmes."

Every time I tell Chicago friends how often I make this walk they seem perplexed. "That's a long walk," they say rhetorically. I suppose that to simply see a movie, yes, it is a long walk. But it doesn't feel like one. Not to me. Not anymore.

It's my favorite walk in the city.