Posts
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Uhura Goes Colombiana
In today's installment of J.J. Abrams Is Apparently Trying To Turn The Next "Star Trek" Picture Into A Straight-Up ACTION!!! Movie, Y'all..... (see: Previous Installment Here.)
Monday, April 29, 2013
The April 29th Birthday Vortex
"Sedona is famous for its so-called vortex sites, spots where the earth's energy is supposedly increased, leading to self-awareness and various kinds of healing. (Think of them as spiritual hot tubs without the water.)" - Dwight Garner, New York Times
I have been to Sedona. When I lived in Phoenix what seems like 1200 years ago my friends/roommates and I took my Mom when she visited up to the site of the vortexes. I felt nothing. It was beautiful, sure, all the wide-ranging vistas and the immaculate Chapel of Holy Cross, but I will confess that I never felt the spirit stirring within me. And I think I know the reason - it is because April 29 is my own spiritual hot tub without the water.
The first real memory I have of watching “Seinfeld” is Jerry and George deciding to masquerade, respectively, as Murphy and O’Brien in order to score a free limo ride that, as it must, goes haywire when it turns out O’Brien is “the leader of the Aryan union.” While I confess it’s entirely possible that I am mis-remembering this moment – that the first time I ever watched “Seinfeld” may have been earlier (my mother was watching “Seinfeld” in those days when no one knew about it) or later – this would have placed my seismic “Seinfeld” moment in the winter of 1992.
It was the summer of 1993, of course, when I encountered Daniel Day Lewis as the heroic Hawkeye in “Last of the Mohicans” on the same TV in that same basement and felt my life change for better or worse (probably worse).
It was the spring of 1995 when I finally decided to go and see this “Pulp Fiction” everyone was talking about and became entranced with this Mia Wallace – the character, of course, and the actress, sure, but mostly the………performance.
These were the three most vital elements of my indoctrination to the visual arts. “Seinfeld” showed me what was funny – or, more accurately, what I considered to be funny. Episode after episode there were lines and reactions and situations that made me laugh so hard I would be laying on the floor (literally!) with tears streaming down my face (literally!). I had seen and heard funny things before and I have heard and seen funny things since but “Seinfeld” is my comedy summit, forever and always.
“Last of the Mohicans” made me a devout patron of the cinema even if I did not realize right away that this is what it had done. I had been moved and amazed and overjoyed by other movies and by books and by music but it was “Last of the Mohicans” that made me realize what art was truly capable of and gave me the strongest and most critical push toward the movie zealousness I now inhabit.
Uma Thurman in “Pulp Fiction” made me realize what a performance in a movie could be. As a child raised on certain old-fashioned films of the late 30’s and early 40’s and on 80’s ridiculousness I had never seen an actress/actor doing quite what she was doing – existing in both eras at once. It was never that I was aware that Uma was Mia or that Mia was Uma but up until that point actors and performances were, in my mind, a fusion – I simply could not separate one from the other. Uma as Mia made me realize what could be accomplished by a performer. (“You can get a steak here, daddy-o.” The line is retro but the delivery isn’t retro. That’s what Uma did with Mia.)
So what do these three bits of historical personal business have to do with April 29th being my spiritual hot tub? Simple.
Today is the birthday of Jerry Seinfeld and Daniel Day-Lewis and Uma Thurman.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go meditate.
I have been to Sedona. When I lived in Phoenix what seems like 1200 years ago my friends/roommates and I took my Mom when she visited up to the site of the vortexes. I felt nothing. It was beautiful, sure, all the wide-ranging vistas and the immaculate Chapel of Holy Cross, but I will confess that I never felt the spirit stirring within me. And I think I know the reason - it is because April 29 is my own spiritual hot tub without the water.
It was the summer of 1993, of course, when I encountered Daniel Day Lewis as the heroic Hawkeye in “Last of the Mohicans” on the same TV in that same basement and felt my life change for better or worse (probably worse).
It was the spring of 1995 when I finally decided to go and see this “Pulp Fiction” everyone was talking about and became entranced with this Mia Wallace – the character, of course, and the actress, sure, but mostly the………performance.
These were the three most vital elements of my indoctrination to the visual arts. “Seinfeld” showed me what was funny – or, more accurately, what I considered to be funny. Episode after episode there were lines and reactions and situations that made me laugh so hard I would be laying on the floor (literally!) with tears streaming down my face (literally!). I had seen and heard funny things before and I have heard and seen funny things since but “Seinfeld” is my comedy summit, forever and always.
“Last of the Mohicans” made me a devout patron of the cinema even if I did not realize right away that this is what it had done. I had been moved and amazed and overjoyed by other movies and by books and by music but it was “Last of the Mohicans” that made me realize what art was truly capable of and gave me the strongest and most critical push toward the movie zealousness I now inhabit.
Uma Thurman in “Pulp Fiction” made me realize what a performance in a movie could be. As a child raised on certain old-fashioned films of the late 30’s and early 40’s and on 80’s ridiculousness I had never seen an actress/actor doing quite what she was doing – existing in both eras at once. It was never that I was aware that Uma was Mia or that Mia was Uma but up until that point actors and performances were, in my mind, a fusion – I simply could not separate one from the other. Uma as Mia made me realize what could be accomplished by a performer. (“You can get a steak here, daddy-o.” The line is retro but the delivery isn’t retro. That’s what Uma did with Mia.)
So what do these three bits of historical personal business have to do with April 29th being my spiritual hot tub? Simple.
Today is the birthday of Jerry Seinfeld and Daniel Day-Lewis and Uma Thurman.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go meditate.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Mud
In the dark of the morning two young boys in rural Arkansas, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and the colorfully named Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), hop aboard a rusty motorboat and light out, and if it wasn’t for that motor and the walkie-talkies with which they have been communicating it might be easy to mistake this brewing adventure as being straight out of Mark Twain’s days. They motor up the tributary alongside which Ellis’s houseboat home rests and pause at that point where the water spills into the mighty Mississippi River. Neckbone notes the trouble that awaits them for venturing further. This is an exemplary illustration of two fourteen year old boys standing on the very cusp of leaving adolescence behind for the rigors of young adulthood. Into the river they go.
Their destination is an uninhabited island where schoolboy tall tales tell of a boat lodged high in the trees. Sure enough, they make this discovery for themselves, only to discover that someone else has beaten them to their dream treehouse and called dibs. This is the man named Mud, played by Matthew McConaughey in a linen shirt he wears for luck and a pistol tucked away for protection. He comes covered in grime and sweat and speaks in a drawl suggesting someone who has done his fair share of hard living. Every actor here is good but the recently resurrected McConaughey is stellar, playing a role that easily could have given way to a showy caricature. Instead he conveys both a temperamental man with secrets lurking and a charismatic man with the noblest intentions.
He is waiting on Juniper, the woman for whom he will and has gone to the ends of earth. She is played by Reese Witherspoon, an angel with a halo of cigarette smoke and sorrow. At first glance she may appear to be another in a long line of underwritten female characters but look again and what you find is a character whose depth and shading is almost entirely provided when she is off screen. It is other characters who tell us who and what they think she is and what motivates her. That we never know precisely is sort of the point because, above all, she is a beacon to our man Mud. He hopes to rendezvous with her and squire her to a metaphorical bed of roses. 
Alas, the requisite men in suits with slicked-back hair and guns wait to foil this plan for reasons not to be revealed. So Mud enlists the help of Ellis and Neckbone to bring the sacred boat down from the tree and patch it up in order to hatch a rescue mission. But before they do Ellis has a lone question: “Do you love her?”
There are themes aplenty in "Mud" but at the forefront is love – first love, true love, everlasting love, phony love, the way you can be in love and in hate with the same person at the same time. It is not merely about the long distance, time-tested love of Mud and Juniper but about Ellis’s infatuation for an older, taller girl (Bonnie Sturdivant) for whom he stands up and about the marriage of Ellis’s mother (Sarah Paulson) and father (Ray McKinnon) disintegrating. Even Neckbone’s Uncle (Michael Shannon) is introduced running afoul of a pretty lady who probably deserves better.
This is an awful lot of material to juggle in conjunction with the bad guys and boat repair but Jeff Nichols, a native of Arkansas and working as both writer and director, is in supreme control of nearly every facet of this superb film. The pace is perfect, never rushed and never slack, and, demonstrating the hallmark of genuinely great filmmaker, he possesses implicit faith in the story, never resorting to cheap camera tricks to tell it or punch it up.
His pen would do a playwrite – like, say, Sam Shepard, who appears here in a small role on the outer edges of the tale who has secrets of his own and will ultimately factor in mightily – proud. He tells us all we need to know in a few lines, several words. “You’re married. You’re supposed to love each other.” “Yeah, I don’t know about that.” Also, notice the scene in which Shannon’s Uncle makes clear to Ellis that he is aware he and his nephew are up to something but that he has trust in Ellis to make the right decision.  And he knows that in one of the most critical moments of all its build-up has been so monumental no words would do it right. Thus, he settles for a series of brief shots and a couple subtle waves of the hand that might very well have made this reviewer well up.
The only time "Mud" really steps wrong is in the climax when things not only are a bit too neatly aligned but become too overheated. There is the old notion of Chekhov’s Gun – stipulating that if you show a gun in the first act then it has to be fired later. If not, don’t show it. But not all rules are hard and fast and I suspect even Chekhov himself would acknowledge the need to occasionally tell rules what to go do with themselves. The film rebounds, however, in time for a few closing shots of clarifying grace. Boys have taken their first tentative steps toward manhood and men have re-proved that lessons never cease to be learned, but that as cruel as the world is some sense of ideals must and will be maintained.
Early on Mud sits beneath the trees with his two new best pals, glances up at the boat and remarks: “It’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it?” It sure is.
Their destination is an uninhabited island where schoolboy tall tales tell of a boat lodged high in the trees. Sure enough, they make this discovery for themselves, only to discover that someone else has beaten them to their dream treehouse and called dibs. This is the man named Mud, played by Matthew McConaughey in a linen shirt he wears for luck and a pistol tucked away for protection. He comes covered in grime and sweat and speaks in a drawl suggesting someone who has done his fair share of hard living. Every actor here is good but the recently resurrected McConaughey is stellar, playing a role that easily could have given way to a showy caricature. Instead he conveys both a temperamental man with secrets lurking and a charismatic man with the noblest intentions.
He is waiting on Juniper, the woman for whom he will and has gone to the ends of earth. She is played by Reese Witherspoon, an angel with a halo of cigarette smoke and sorrow. At first glance she may appear to be another in a long line of underwritten female characters but look again and what you find is a character whose depth and shading is almost entirely provided when she is off screen. It is other characters who tell us who and what they think she is and what motivates her. That we never know precisely is sort of the point because, above all, she is a beacon to our man Mud. He hopes to rendezvous with her and squire her to a metaphorical bed of roses. 
Alas, the requisite men in suits with slicked-back hair and guns wait to foil this plan for reasons not to be revealed. So Mud enlists the help of Ellis and Neckbone to bring the sacred boat down from the tree and patch it up in order to hatch a rescue mission. But before they do Ellis has a lone question: “Do you love her?”
There are themes aplenty in "Mud" but at the forefront is love – first love, true love, everlasting love, phony love, the way you can be in love and in hate with the same person at the same time. It is not merely about the long distance, time-tested love of Mud and Juniper but about Ellis’s infatuation for an older, taller girl (Bonnie Sturdivant) for whom he stands up and about the marriage of Ellis’s mother (Sarah Paulson) and father (Ray McKinnon) disintegrating. Even Neckbone’s Uncle (Michael Shannon) is introduced running afoul of a pretty lady who probably deserves better.
This is an awful lot of material to juggle in conjunction with the bad guys and boat repair but Jeff Nichols, a native of Arkansas and working as both writer and director, is in supreme control of nearly every facet of this superb film. The pace is perfect, never rushed and never slack, and, demonstrating the hallmark of genuinely great filmmaker, he possesses implicit faith in the story, never resorting to cheap camera tricks to tell it or punch it up.
His pen would do a playwrite – like, say, Sam Shepard, who appears here in a small role on the outer edges of the tale who has secrets of his own and will ultimately factor in mightily – proud. He tells us all we need to know in a few lines, several words. “You’re married. You’re supposed to love each other.” “Yeah, I don’t know about that.” Also, notice the scene in which Shannon’s Uncle makes clear to Ellis that he is aware he and his nephew are up to something but that he has trust in Ellis to make the right decision.  And he knows that in one of the most critical moments of all its build-up has been so monumental no words would do it right. Thus, he settles for a series of brief shots and a couple subtle waves of the hand that might very well have made this reviewer well up.
The only time "Mud" really steps wrong is in the climax when things not only are a bit too neatly aligned but become too overheated. There is the old notion of Chekhov’s Gun – stipulating that if you show a gun in the first act then it has to be fired later. If not, don’t show it. But not all rules are hard and fast and I suspect even Chekhov himself would acknowledge the need to occasionally tell rules what to go do with themselves. The film rebounds, however, in time for a few closing shots of clarifying grace. Boys have taken their first tentative steps toward manhood and men have re-proved that lessons never cease to be learned, but that as cruel as the world is some sense of ideals must and will be maintained.
Early on Mud sits beneath the trees with his two new best pals, glances up at the boat and remarks: “It’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it?” It sure is.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Friday's Old Fashioned: The Set-Up (1949)
Movies about boxers and/or boxing are so durable, I suspect, because the most durable clichés of life are so easily transferrable to the ring. “The Set-Up”, a rough & tumble real time account of a fixed (kind of) boxing match – its lead-up, its aftermath, and the match itself – offers its own mantra: “Just one punch away.” Well, one punch can end a boxing match, of course, but the brawl at the center of “The Set-Up” is about a multitude of punches – the punches in the ring itself and in the punches in all the rings in all the fights leading up to it. It’s the cumulative effect of all those punches that opens and closes this story.
Directed by Robert Wise and written by Art Cohn, “The Set-Up” is based on a long form 1928 poem by Joseph Moncure March, which is less Emily Dickinson and more Scrap Dupris. “All youth becomes old age at last. All fighters weaken. All fighters crack. All fighters go – And they never come back. Well, So it goes: Time hits the hardest blows.” The film’s story is relayed, essentially, in real time, cutting across an expansive old school set that re-creates a nowhere town with a name – Paradise City – packed with symbolism like a thundercloud is packed with rain.
First, we are introduced to the grungy boxing arena where patrons file in for the night’s lengthy card of fights. Then the camera drifts across the street to the dingy bar where you can almost smell the down-and-out sweat emanating from the screen as the rotund Tiny (George Tobias), manager to bedraggled palooka Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan), pockets a wad of cash from gangster Little Boy (Alan Baxter) to ensure Stoker takes a dive at the gloves of Tiger Nelson (Hal Fieberling). Never mind that Tiny, so confident in his own boxer’s inability, decides not to actively tell Stoker to take a dive, assuming he will be knocked out by natural means.
The camera moves back out into the street and down to Hotel Cozy where we finally find Stoker himself, going on and on to his blonde better half Judy (Audrey Totter) that if he can just win this fight he can get the cash they don’t have to begin anew. Even if the tone in his voice didn’t bely the nature of a promise he must have made dozens of times before, Judy’s reaction would tell us all we need to know. We return to March’s poem: “Pansy was through – They knew. Why didn’t he know it too? Christ Almighty, He ought to have quit Long ago And been done with it.”
Finally we re-enter the boxing arena. We hardly leave. And it is here, in this portion of the film, building to Stoker’s match, as the various pugilists congregate before their fights and after their fights on the lengthy card that the film truly seems to sing. The setting evokes Edward Hopper’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a locker room substituting for a diner. The beginners are less weary, filled with more optimism, but the mere presence of the old-timers lets us know what fate awaits. Stoker watches it all unfold with a face that seems to register what promise he once had At least he made out better than ol’ Gunboat Johnson (David Clarke), a victim of one too many uppercuts, whose match concludes with him being carted off to the hospital. We never learn what becomes of him and this nicely underscores the chasm into which boxers can plunge post-career.
Stoker’s inevitable showdown with Tiger is not really a showdown at all. It’s not the glory-seeking of Rocky Balboa or the self-punishment of Jake LaMotta. Instead it’s more like a tragic farce. Remember, Tiger thinks Stoker is throwing the match and, thus, boxes accordingly. Stoker has no idea he’s supposed to be throwing the match and, thus, boxes accordingly. Yet even though his opponent thinks he’s specifically out to lose, Stoker gets bloody and bruised and knocked to the canvas and only makes inroads after a long while.
Boxing movies or movies revolving around sports in general so often are about winning or losing. And yes, someone in “The Set-Up” wins and someone loses but the film’s final fight does not even happen inside the ring. “The Set-Up”, in the end, like so many other boxing movies, mirrors life in its own way. Sometimes life isn’t as much about winning and losing as it is just trying to hang on.
Directed by Robert Wise and written by Art Cohn, “The Set-Up” is based on a long form 1928 poem by Joseph Moncure March, which is less Emily Dickinson and more Scrap Dupris. “All youth becomes old age at last. All fighters weaken. All fighters crack. All fighters go – And they never come back. Well, So it goes: Time hits the hardest blows.” The film’s story is relayed, essentially, in real time, cutting across an expansive old school set that re-creates a nowhere town with a name – Paradise City – packed with symbolism like a thundercloud is packed with rain.
First, we are introduced to the grungy boxing arena where patrons file in for the night’s lengthy card of fights. Then the camera drifts across the street to the dingy bar where you can almost smell the down-and-out sweat emanating from the screen as the rotund Tiny (George Tobias), manager to bedraggled palooka Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan), pockets a wad of cash from gangster Little Boy (Alan Baxter) to ensure Stoker takes a dive at the gloves of Tiger Nelson (Hal Fieberling). Never mind that Tiny, so confident in his own boxer’s inability, decides not to actively tell Stoker to take a dive, assuming he will be knocked out by natural means.
The camera moves back out into the street and down to Hotel Cozy where we finally find Stoker himself, going on and on to his blonde better half Judy (Audrey Totter) that if he can just win this fight he can get the cash they don’t have to begin anew. Even if the tone in his voice didn’t bely the nature of a promise he must have made dozens of times before, Judy’s reaction would tell us all we need to know. We return to March’s poem: “Pansy was through – They knew. Why didn’t he know it too? Christ Almighty, He ought to have quit Long ago And been done with it.”
Finally we re-enter the boxing arena. We hardly leave. And it is here, in this portion of the film, building to Stoker’s match, as the various pugilists congregate before their fights and after their fights on the lengthy card that the film truly seems to sing. The setting evokes Edward Hopper’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a locker room substituting for a diner. The beginners are less weary, filled with more optimism, but the mere presence of the old-timers lets us know what fate awaits. Stoker watches it all unfold with a face that seems to register what promise he once had At least he made out better than ol’ Gunboat Johnson (David Clarke), a victim of one too many uppercuts, whose match concludes with him being carted off to the hospital. We never learn what becomes of him and this nicely underscores the chasm into which boxers can plunge post-career.
Stoker’s inevitable showdown with Tiger is not really a showdown at all. It’s not the glory-seeking of Rocky Balboa or the self-punishment of Jake LaMotta. Instead it’s more like a tragic farce. Remember, Tiger thinks Stoker is throwing the match and, thus, boxes accordingly. Stoker has no idea he’s supposed to be throwing the match and, thus, boxes accordingly. Yet even though his opponent thinks he’s specifically out to lose, Stoker gets bloody and bruised and knocked to the canvas and only makes inroads after a long while.
Boxing movies or movies revolving around sports in general so often are about winning or losing. And yes, someone in “The Set-Up” wins and someone loses but the film’s final fight does not even happen inside the ring. “The Set-Up”, in the end, like so many other boxing movies, mirrors life in its own way. Sometimes life isn’t as much about winning and losing as it is just trying to hang on.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
5 Favorite Parker Posey Performances
If you came of age in the 90’s then that means you came of age with Parker Posey. In the era when Sundance became a “thing”, Posey was bestowed the title “Queen of the Indies.” And yeah, she made a lot of (quality) indies. That title, though, may not have lasted as long as some realize.
In '93 she was part of the ensemble of Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” but already by '98 she was the female companion of Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail” standing in the way of Meg Ryan. She had grown up. She had moved on. She still appears regularly in smaller films, to be sure, and still routinely wields a wicked bat, but I often encounter movie viewers younger than myself who don’t seem to possess the same reverent awe for her.
A few years ago my friend Brad asked myself and a few of my friends and I for our Top 5 Actors We’re Always Happy To See. Posey was on my list and, if I recollect correctly, was in the Top 2. Thus, in that spirit...
Kitty Kowalski, Superman Returns. There have been better Posey parts and performances but I can still recall the way in which she, as villain Lex Luthor's right-hand woman, seemed to lift – for me, anyway – the air of this most recent cinematic Man of Steel venture every time she appeared. The scene in which she loudly stomps around solely in order for Lex to hear her stomping around is my favorite moment ever in a “Superman” movie (and if your favorite moment in a “Superman” movie involves the “Queen of the Indies”, well, obviously).
Miami, Kicking and Screaming. In Noah Baumbach’s acidic coming-of-age opus Posey is a little Elaine Benes-ish, but different. Her attitude allows her to fit right in with the guys, yet she is also able to stand outside their circle and recognize their shortcomings. There is no better demonstration of this than when the lothario Frederic is lecturing surly Max and Posey assumes a glint that both understands the ridiculousness of Frederic and embraces the hilarity she feels for Max’s epic disdain. It’s like she’s thinking three levels past the whole lot of ‘em.
Jackie O., The House of Yes. If there was ever a part that only one person could have played I dare say it was Posey assuming the role of a spoiled if mentally unbalanced young woman convinced she is Jackie Onassis Kennedy reincarnated. It’s absurd, of course, but Posey never comes across absurd even as her character’s plight devolves deeper and deeper into absurdity. She walks the line.
Meg Swan, Best In Show. In Christopher Guest’s mockumentary revolving around the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show, Posey is one-half of a severely uptight yuppie couple who treat their beloved Weimaraner like Little Miss Sunshine. She puts the pedal to the metal, willingly playing harried and unlikable. Her freak-out when she is unable to locate her dog’s busy bee remains one of the absolute funniest things I have ever seen in a movie. “This? This is a fish.”
Mary, Party Girl. I would contend this is the ultimate Posey role. As a twenty-something librarian caught up in the bright lights of the big city she becomes the silver screen embodiment of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"......but with a trickily tragic bent. (90's 4ever.)
---Please. My fellow Posey-ites (I know you're out there!), share your favorites below.
In '93 she was part of the ensemble of Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” but already by '98 she was the female companion of Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail” standing in the way of Meg Ryan. She had grown up. She had moved on. She still appears regularly in smaller films, to be sure, and still routinely wields a wicked bat, but I often encounter movie viewers younger than myself who don’t seem to possess the same reverent awe for her.
A few years ago my friend Brad asked myself and a few of my friends and I for our Top 5 Actors We’re Always Happy To See. Posey was on my list and, if I recollect correctly, was in the Top 2. Thus, in that spirit...
My 5 Favorite Parker Posey Performances
Kitty Kowalski, Superman Returns. There have been better Posey parts and performances but I can still recall the way in which she, as villain Lex Luthor's right-hand woman, seemed to lift – for me, anyway – the air of this most recent cinematic Man of Steel venture every time she appeared. The scene in which she loudly stomps around solely in order for Lex to hear her stomping around is my favorite moment ever in a “Superman” movie (and if your favorite moment in a “Superman” movie involves the “Queen of the Indies”, well, obviously).
Miami, Kicking and Screaming. In Noah Baumbach’s acidic coming-of-age opus Posey is a little Elaine Benes-ish, but different. Her attitude allows her to fit right in with the guys, yet she is also able to stand outside their circle and recognize their shortcomings. There is no better demonstration of this than when the lothario Frederic is lecturing surly Max and Posey assumes a glint that both understands the ridiculousness of Frederic and embraces the hilarity she feels for Max’s epic disdain. It’s like she’s thinking three levels past the whole lot of ‘em.
Jackie O., The House of Yes. If there was ever a part that only one person could have played I dare say it was Posey assuming the role of a spoiled if mentally unbalanced young woman convinced she is Jackie Onassis Kennedy reincarnated. It’s absurd, of course, but Posey never comes across absurd even as her character’s plight devolves deeper and deeper into absurdity. She walks the line.
Meg Swan, Best In Show. In Christopher Guest’s mockumentary revolving around the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show, Posey is one-half of a severely uptight yuppie couple who treat their beloved Weimaraner like Little Miss Sunshine. She puts the pedal to the metal, willingly playing harried and unlikable. Her freak-out when she is unable to locate her dog’s busy bee remains one of the absolute funniest things I have ever seen in a movie. “This? This is a fish.”
Mary, Party Girl. I would contend this is the ultimate Posey role. As a twenty-something librarian caught up in the bright lights of the big city she becomes the silver screen embodiment of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"......but with a trickily tragic bent. (90's 4ever.)
---Please. My fellow Posey-ites (I know you're out there!), share your favorites below.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Unfortunately, Michael Bay Remains Very Proud Of Armageddon
Since the inception of Cinema Romantico it is no secret that Michael Bay has been its official Public Enemy #1. This is because he made “Pearl Harbor”, a travesty that was the cinematic equivalent of slogging up a muddy hill in leg irons while doped up on nighttime Tylenol. This is because he is the only director living or dead who could have made a film that segued straight from a car chase to a car chase even when the theater projectionist had mixed up reels. This is because he claimed both Nicolas Cage and Ben Affleck were not “big actor(s)” until he cast them in, respectively, "The Rock" and "Armageddon" despite the fact they had BOTH WON OSCARS BEFORE HE CAST THEM. But mostly he is Cinema Romantico’s Public Enemy #1 because he made “Armageddon.”
“Armageddon” is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and when I say it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen what I mean is that I believe “Armageddon” signifies every single thing that is so terribly wrong about the current entity that we call Hollywood. I hate “Armageddon.” I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I hate it because it is incoherently edited, cluelessly structured, shot in Bay's patented Airplane Vomit Bag Vérité and filled with dialogue that counts as dialogue the way a sponge counts as an organism. I hate it because people who attempt to defend its merit to me do so on the grounds that “at least it knows what it is.” I hate this argument because “Armageddon” HAS NO IDEA WHAT IT IS!!! It’s so desperate to appease everyone in a shameless grab for box office that it tries to be EVERYTHING at once and fails at ALL of it! Mindless escapism is not the same as god awful. To quote the late, great Roger Ebert: “The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained."
Well, on Monday it was reported that Hollywood's Grand Chancellor Of Explosions Michael Bay was actually APOLOGIZING for "Armageddon." He said: “I will apologize for Armageddon, because we had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. ... That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked ‘What do you do when you’re doing all the effects yourself?’ But the movie did fine.”
Never mind that in his apology Michael Bay tossed off a backdoor brag (he did all the effects himself), publicized his apparent visual effects supervisor's nervous breakdown (cuz Michael Bay's classy, yo) and that by only saying he would redo the third act conveniently seemed to ignore his movie's other fatal issues (for instance, the first and second acts). No, he had least said the words "I will apologize for Armageddon." It was a start.
It wasn't. Yesterday Hollywood's Grand Chancellor Of Explosions Michael Bay took to his own website to clarify the matter. I reprint his statement below verbatim.
"One press writer has gone too far in reporting false information. He has printed the bare minimum of my statement which in effect have twisted my words and meaning. I’m not in the slightest going to apologize for the third movie in my movie career, a film called Armageddon. On the red carpet for Pain & Gain some reporters asked me what are you apologizing for, and I said what on earth are you talking about?
What I clearly said to the reporter, is I wish I had more time to edit the film, specifcally the the third act. He asked me in effect what would you change if you could in your movies if you could go back. I said, I wish we had a few more weeks in the edit room on Armageddon. And still today Armageddon, is still one of the most shown movies on cable TV. And yes, I’m proud of the movie. Enough said.
Michael"
Oh, Mike. We were so close to being friends. (We weren't.)
Monday, April 22, 2013
Price Check
I have a few rules in life. If Sierra Nevada is on tap, I drink it. If A Tribe Called Quest and/or Kylie Minogue is on the jukebox, I play it. If a person says to me “I love talking shop”, I gather my things and immediately flee the premises.
Susan Felders (Parker Posey), the character at the core of writer/director Michael Walker’s “Price Check”, actually says, “I love talking shop.” It made me shiver. It also clearly defined her character. She is the brand new boss of a division of a mom and pop supermarket store in charge of setting prices. A brazen taskmaster, she roars into her first meeting with the new charges, hands out copies of her own resume and promptly announces she will throwing a Halloween party at which a costume is mandatory. The Halloween party is telling – despite her claims it’s about fun, it’s a covert way of showing who’s in control (“No one leaves until they’ve sung karaoke!”).
Susan singles out Pete Cozy (Eric Mabius), happily married to Sara who is taking care of their young son, as her right-hand man. Straight away he indicates his contentment with remaining middle-of-the-pack at work, leaving him to spend more time at home and less time stressed out about an industry for which he has little interest aside from the paycheck. Once he worked in the music industry but, as we are constantly reminded in the film and outside of it every single day, that industry is dying. But with Susan at the helm, Pete climbs the ladder, becoming VP, earning a massive pay increase, masterminding new strategies, flying to L.A. to meet the company bigwigs to help pitch those strategies, and all simply because he was once a Dartmouth man. That, or Susan knows she can wield him as a puppet.
Posey is a gas, like a corporate snake charmer, not a character for whom we root, per se, but whom we watch with alternate dread and fascination. She may crack the whip with way too much gusto but she is good at her job, which she claims to love even as she lets us glimpse cracks in her stylized dam. She outfits the character with subtle dimension, particularly in the way she glops on to Pete and his family which, we realize, is less about further manipulation than desperation for......something.
Mabius, on the other hand, is a problem, though admittedly the script puts him in a no-win position. It is made clear at the outset that even if he is unhappy (or perhaps reluctantly content) at work, he is happy at home. Slowly, though, he becomes more happy at work before the story takes a different turn in L.A. Can you “see it coming”? Yes, you can, but only because these sorts of stories often slant in this direction. If instead you are simply observing Pete’s behavior then no, you can’t see it coming. As acted and written the character would not make this decision. Open and shut. Another Reveal later in the movie sort of works to cover this glaring flaw, but not really because 1.) It sort of tries to let him off the hook at the same time the Reveal is made and 2.) the Reveal simply reveals itself as further proof of the film’s second half over-reliance on needless melodrama to form its resolution.
There are interesting ideas at the core of “Price Check.” All the corporate jargon is just window dressing for the very real concept of what constitutes a necessary sacrifice for family and what we are willing to do and/or tell ourselves in order to have some semblance of peace when going to sleep at night. The conclusion, even after all the unfortunate mechanics of the second half, has a chance for either high satire or realistic resignation and instead it opts for middle of the road mawkishness. All the sins of the preceding scene have apparently been cleansed off camera.
If Susan Felders had read the screenplay she would have whined, flopped around on the floor and demanded a re-write.
Susan Felders (Parker Posey), the character at the core of writer/director Michael Walker’s “Price Check”, actually says, “I love talking shop.” It made me shiver. It also clearly defined her character. She is the brand new boss of a division of a mom and pop supermarket store in charge of setting prices. A brazen taskmaster, she roars into her first meeting with the new charges, hands out copies of her own resume and promptly announces she will throwing a Halloween party at which a costume is mandatory. The Halloween party is telling – despite her claims it’s about fun, it’s a covert way of showing who’s in control (“No one leaves until they’ve sung karaoke!”).
Susan singles out Pete Cozy (Eric Mabius), happily married to Sara who is taking care of their young son, as her right-hand man. Straight away he indicates his contentment with remaining middle-of-the-pack at work, leaving him to spend more time at home and less time stressed out about an industry for which he has little interest aside from the paycheck. Once he worked in the music industry but, as we are constantly reminded in the film and outside of it every single day, that industry is dying. But with Susan at the helm, Pete climbs the ladder, becoming VP, earning a massive pay increase, masterminding new strategies, flying to L.A. to meet the company bigwigs to help pitch those strategies, and all simply because he was once a Dartmouth man. That, or Susan knows she can wield him as a puppet.
Posey is a gas, like a corporate snake charmer, not a character for whom we root, per se, but whom we watch with alternate dread and fascination. She may crack the whip with way too much gusto but she is good at her job, which she claims to love even as she lets us glimpse cracks in her stylized dam. She outfits the character with subtle dimension, particularly in the way she glops on to Pete and his family which, we realize, is less about further manipulation than desperation for......something.
Mabius, on the other hand, is a problem, though admittedly the script puts him in a no-win position. It is made clear at the outset that even if he is unhappy (or perhaps reluctantly content) at work, he is happy at home. Slowly, though, he becomes more happy at work before the story takes a different turn in L.A. Can you “see it coming”? Yes, you can, but only because these sorts of stories often slant in this direction. If instead you are simply observing Pete’s behavior then no, you can’t see it coming. As acted and written the character would not make this decision. Open and shut. Another Reveal later in the movie sort of works to cover this glaring flaw, but not really because 1.) It sort of tries to let him off the hook at the same time the Reveal is made and 2.) the Reveal simply reveals itself as further proof of the film’s second half over-reliance on needless melodrama to form its resolution.
There are interesting ideas at the core of “Price Check.” All the corporate jargon is just window dressing for the very real concept of what constitutes a necessary sacrifice for family and what we are willing to do and/or tell ourselves in order to have some semblance of peace when going to sleep at night. The conclusion, even after all the unfortunate mechanics of the second half, has a chance for either high satire or realistic resignation and instead it opts for middle of the road mawkishness. All the sins of the preceding scene have apparently been cleansed off camera.
If Susan Felders had read the screenplay she would have whined, flopped around on the floor and demanded a re-write.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
To the Wonder
“Where are we when we’re there? Why not always?”
There is a remarkable shot in the early going of legendary recluse and suddenly (by his standards) prolific auteur Terrence Malick’s latest film "To the Wonder" when Marina (Olga Kurylenko) appears to walk on water. She is not walking on water, of course, and the film does not try to trick us into thinking she is walking on water, instead making it quite clear she is tiptoeing along stones on the edge of the sea. But then the sea gently laps in, momentarily erasing the stones from view, and there is Marina…..gliding. It is not Christ-like, it is something else. It is saying: to experience love, true, uninhibited, overwhelming love, even if it is fleeting, is to feel, but for an instant, as if you are walking on water.
The breathless first fifteen minutes of "To the Wonder" mix swooping images of astonishing beauty in both nature and physical human contact with whispered voiceovers that tell us everything and nothing. The cleansing rush we feel is the cleansing rush they feel – that is, Marina and Neil (Ben Affleck), an American on vacation in France, who meets the beguiling Ukrainian divorcee, living in Paris, which results in a whirlwind if spellbinding courtship. Generally all we receive here are impressions of what is happening but their affection for one another is unmistakable. We do not need to be told what is happening because Malick lets us feel it. This is cinema of almost inexpressible grace and power, it is a sacrament To the Wonder of love.
Neil invites Marina and her ten year old daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline) to return with him to the United States, to his home in Oklahoma, and they accept. The contrasts on display from Europe to America are stark but, of course, Malick being Malick, still ring with the same rarefied beauty. Whether it is the Seine or a Sonic Drive In, he renders each image as if it belongs on a canvas.  Life, as it must, grows more complicated. Marina and Tatiana in their dress and mannerisms, their constant pirouetting in the tall Oklahoma weeds or in the fluorescent aisles of colossal supermarket stores, often seem far from their own shore, unhappy pilgrims yearning to re-cross the Atlantic. Neil, we sense, is less than an ideal mate beyond a romantic getaway. Notice how Malick continually frames Affleck with his back to the camera, as if long ago he turned his back on the world, as if he harbors personal demons for which he has yet to offer penance.
This might be enough to sustain a film for a mere mortal but, again, Malick being Malick, he adds an alluring friend from Neil’s youth, Jane (Rachel McAdams), who comes and goes almost like a windswept apparition (even now I wonder, did I dream that Rachel McAdams was in this film?) as well as a Catholic priest, Father Quintana, played by Javier Bardem in what is no doubt the Sean Penn Memorial "Tree Of Life" Award (given to the character in a Malick movie whose part was clearly pared down in editing). He could have wandered across the Atlantic with Neil and Marina from an Ingmar Bergman movie, suffering from and internally raging against a perceived absence of God. Jane factors into the main story prominently in her own less-than-prominent way but Father Quintana merely tangentially interacts with our primary characters, seeming to exist in a narration entire separate from the one in which we have become invested. It is odd, no doubt, but then Malick has always crafted his films with his heart as opposed to his head and while at its most elementary level it might seem unnecessary consider that Father Quintana, mirroring Neil and Marina’s splintering relationship, has lost all sense of wonder, that intangible mysticism beyond our earthly grasp. 
This is the question Malick abstractly poses again and again as the movie progresses: “Where are we when we’re there? Why not always?” Perhaps this is simplistic, but then I have always admired Malick’s ability and, more crucially, want to not shy away from the most broad and, in turn, grand mysteries of life. And what makes "To the Wonder" such a vexing if celestial conundrum is that rather than building to the wonder itself he positions it upfront at the start, making the remainder of the film a spiritual slog, a confusing struggle to re-connect with a sensation that is hardly possible to understand. You might even check the time. This experience that only a short time ago was so transcendent has turned you into a tragic clockwatcher.
A patron next to me at theater remarked to his companion during the closing credits: “I was with it for that first act and then in the second and third acts it lost me.” Well, exactly! That’s life! You’re in tune with it and then, suddenly, you’re not. What happened? Where did it go? You grapple with it. You try to get it back. Can you get it back? How do you get it back?
I left the theater wrestling with these questions in my mind. I noticed the sky. It was filled with those sorts of stratocumulus clouds that cause the sun to play peek-a-boo. I could not stop looking. I kind of never wanted to stop looking.
There is a remarkable shot in the early going of legendary recluse and suddenly (by his standards) prolific auteur Terrence Malick’s latest film "To the Wonder" when Marina (Olga Kurylenko) appears to walk on water. She is not walking on water, of course, and the film does not try to trick us into thinking she is walking on water, instead making it quite clear she is tiptoeing along stones on the edge of the sea. But then the sea gently laps in, momentarily erasing the stones from view, and there is Marina…..gliding. It is not Christ-like, it is something else. It is saying: to experience love, true, uninhibited, overwhelming love, even if it is fleeting, is to feel, but for an instant, as if you are walking on water.
The breathless first fifteen minutes of "To the Wonder" mix swooping images of astonishing beauty in both nature and physical human contact with whispered voiceovers that tell us everything and nothing. The cleansing rush we feel is the cleansing rush they feel – that is, Marina and Neil (Ben Affleck), an American on vacation in France, who meets the beguiling Ukrainian divorcee, living in Paris, which results in a whirlwind if spellbinding courtship. Generally all we receive here are impressions of what is happening but their affection for one another is unmistakable. We do not need to be told what is happening because Malick lets us feel it. This is cinema of almost inexpressible grace and power, it is a sacrament To the Wonder of love.
Neil invites Marina and her ten year old daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline) to return with him to the United States, to his home in Oklahoma, and they accept. The contrasts on display from Europe to America are stark but, of course, Malick being Malick, still ring with the same rarefied beauty. Whether it is the Seine or a Sonic Drive In, he renders each image as if it belongs on a canvas.  Life, as it must, grows more complicated. Marina and Tatiana in their dress and mannerisms, their constant pirouetting in the tall Oklahoma weeds or in the fluorescent aisles of colossal supermarket stores, often seem far from their own shore, unhappy pilgrims yearning to re-cross the Atlantic. Neil, we sense, is less than an ideal mate beyond a romantic getaway. Notice how Malick continually frames Affleck with his back to the camera, as if long ago he turned his back on the world, as if he harbors personal demons for which he has yet to offer penance.
This might be enough to sustain a film for a mere mortal but, again, Malick being Malick, he adds an alluring friend from Neil’s youth, Jane (Rachel McAdams), who comes and goes almost like a windswept apparition (even now I wonder, did I dream that Rachel McAdams was in this film?) as well as a Catholic priest, Father Quintana, played by Javier Bardem in what is no doubt the Sean Penn Memorial "Tree Of Life" Award (given to the character in a Malick movie whose part was clearly pared down in editing). He could have wandered across the Atlantic with Neil and Marina from an Ingmar Bergman movie, suffering from and internally raging against a perceived absence of God. Jane factors into the main story prominently in her own less-than-prominent way but Father Quintana merely tangentially interacts with our primary characters, seeming to exist in a narration entire separate from the one in which we have become invested. It is odd, no doubt, but then Malick has always crafted his films with his heart as opposed to his head and while at its most elementary level it might seem unnecessary consider that Father Quintana, mirroring Neil and Marina’s splintering relationship, has lost all sense of wonder, that intangible mysticism beyond our earthly grasp. 
This is the question Malick abstractly poses again and again as the movie progresses: “Where are we when we’re there? Why not always?” Perhaps this is simplistic, but then I have always admired Malick’s ability and, more crucially, want to not shy away from the most broad and, in turn, grand mysteries of life. And what makes "To the Wonder" such a vexing if celestial conundrum is that rather than building to the wonder itself he positions it upfront at the start, making the remainder of the film a spiritual slog, a confusing struggle to re-connect with a sensation that is hardly possible to understand. You might even check the time. This experience that only a short time ago was so transcendent has turned you into a tragic clockwatcher.
A patron next to me at theater remarked to his companion during the closing credits: “I was with it for that first act and then in the second and third acts it lost me.” Well, exactly! That’s life! You’re in tune with it and then, suddenly, you’re not. What happened? Where did it go? You grapple with it. You try to get it back. Can you get it back? How do you get it back?
I left the theater wrestling with these questions in my mind. I noticed the sky. It was filled with those sorts of stratocumulus clouds that cause the sun to play peek-a-boo. I could not stop looking. I kind of never wanted to stop looking.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Friday's Old Fashioned: Uptown Saturday Night (1974)
During the Q&A session following the screening of his "Gimme the Loot", my #5 film of 2012, at last year's Chicago Film Festival, writer/director Adam Leon mentioned that for preparation and inspiration prior to filming he had watched the 1974 streetwise comedy "Uptown Saturday Night." I immediately made a mental note to watch it. And if "Uptown Saturday Night" was responsible in any way for the funny, romantic, all-around marvelous "Gimme the Loot" then I am grateful for its existence. Otherwise...
Look, I don't think "Uptown Saturday Night" is bad, per se, but it’s all so passive for a film that seems intent on being about good times in the face of bad times. It’s intended as a buddy movie crossed with a caper but looks and feels like a socio-docudrama straining to be funny. Then again, I am of a different time, a different culture, and perhaps the hands of time have left me immune to the charm it possessed to audiences in 1974. But I am who I am, I watched it when I watched it, film, as life, goes on.
The buddies are Steve Jackson (Sidney Poitier) and Wardell Franklin (Bill Cosby). The latter is a cabbie, the former is a factory worker who has just kicked off a stay-cation. Thus, Wardell prods him to head uptown on Saturday night to Madam Zenobia’s. Once you’re in you won’t want to leave, says a pal, except that once they’re in they can’t leave – at least not right away – on the count of a few crooks sticking up the place and making off with all the money and all the wallets and all the jewels of all the patrons. This includes Steve’s wallet which contains a lottery ticket which he learns the following day contains the winning numbers. So off go Steven and Frank, off into the urban wild, in a desperate attempt to track down that lottery ticket. HIJINKS!!!
Except the hijinks are just so……un-hijinksish. Well, that’s not necessarily right. They have the ethos of hijinks, I suppose, in the form of a fidgety private eye (played by Richard Pryor) who hides under his desk and goes out the window to avoid the people after him and an encounter with a couple hoodlums named Big Percy (because he’s REALLY big!!!) and Little Seymour (because he’s REALLY little!!!), who, of course, also excels at karate which, of course, means a karate kick will inevitably send him crashing through (not merely into) the bar. Am I being snobbish when I say such things make me role my eyes as opposed to guffaw? Perhaps, but then Detective Nordberg rolling down the ramp at the baseball stadium in his wheelchair, hitting the rail and hurtling into the air does make me guffaw. It’s all about how a scene is put together.
“Uptown Saturday Night” was directed by Poitier himself. It was third directorial outing but it was his first foray into comedy and it shows, suffering significantly from pacing issues – both as a whole and within scenes themselves. It takes the film a whole 30 minutes to even get to the true thrust of the narrative – that being the lottery ticket escapade – and while it is understandable that the film wishes to establish setting and tone, well, this is simply far too long for a film yearning to exist in the realm of the zany. But the zany itself is short on zaniness – relying on performers to elevate situations that have no juice to begin with and falling back on jokes as obvious as Kevin James falling down. For example, our intrepid duo goes to visit a congressman who makes a big to-do about being upstanding at which point…..a lady of the night walks through the door. That’s really the best the movie’s got.
At least until the obligatory car chase to wrap things up (head in hands) which is filmed with as much know-how as those teenagers that re-did “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Cosby livens up the situation here and there and I always enjoy Poitier being able to cut loose rather than assume the archetype of Statesman but, that said, Poitier’s best moment here is the beginning when he banters with his wife while simultaneously conveying with body language the physical toll his job at the factory takes. This is exemplary acting – exemplary acting that has no place in this kind of movie.
No comedy caper has been less madcap and so drawn out. The material demands bebop and instead we get cool jazz.
Look, I don't think "Uptown Saturday Night" is bad, per se, but it’s all so passive for a film that seems intent on being about good times in the face of bad times. It’s intended as a buddy movie crossed with a caper but looks and feels like a socio-docudrama straining to be funny. Then again, I am of a different time, a different culture, and perhaps the hands of time have left me immune to the charm it possessed to audiences in 1974. But I am who I am, I watched it when I watched it, film, as life, goes on.
The buddies are Steve Jackson (Sidney Poitier) and Wardell Franklin (Bill Cosby). The latter is a cabbie, the former is a factory worker who has just kicked off a stay-cation. Thus, Wardell prods him to head uptown on Saturday night to Madam Zenobia’s. Once you’re in you won’t want to leave, says a pal, except that once they’re in they can’t leave – at least not right away – on the count of a few crooks sticking up the place and making off with all the money and all the wallets and all the jewels of all the patrons. This includes Steve’s wallet which contains a lottery ticket which he learns the following day contains the winning numbers. So off go Steven and Frank, off into the urban wild, in a desperate attempt to track down that lottery ticket. HIJINKS!!!
Except the hijinks are just so……un-hijinksish. Well, that’s not necessarily right. They have the ethos of hijinks, I suppose, in the form of a fidgety private eye (played by Richard Pryor) who hides under his desk and goes out the window to avoid the people after him and an encounter with a couple hoodlums named Big Percy (because he’s REALLY big!!!) and Little Seymour (because he’s REALLY little!!!), who, of course, also excels at karate which, of course, means a karate kick will inevitably send him crashing through (not merely into) the bar. Am I being snobbish when I say such things make me role my eyes as opposed to guffaw? Perhaps, but then Detective Nordberg rolling down the ramp at the baseball stadium in his wheelchair, hitting the rail and hurtling into the air does make me guffaw. It’s all about how a scene is put together.
“Uptown Saturday Night” was directed by Poitier himself. It was third directorial outing but it was his first foray into comedy and it shows, suffering significantly from pacing issues – both as a whole and within scenes themselves. It takes the film a whole 30 minutes to even get to the true thrust of the narrative – that being the lottery ticket escapade – and while it is understandable that the film wishes to establish setting and tone, well, this is simply far too long for a film yearning to exist in the realm of the zany. But the zany itself is short on zaniness – relying on performers to elevate situations that have no juice to begin with and falling back on jokes as obvious as Kevin James falling down. For example, our intrepid duo goes to visit a congressman who makes a big to-do about being upstanding at which point…..a lady of the night walks through the door. That’s really the best the movie’s got.
At least until the obligatory car chase to wrap things up (head in hands) which is filmed with as much know-how as those teenagers that re-did “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Cosby livens up the situation here and there and I always enjoy Poitier being able to cut loose rather than assume the archetype of Statesman but, that said, Poitier’s best moment here is the beginning when he banters with his wife while simultaneously conveying with body language the physical toll his job at the factory takes. This is exemplary acting – exemplary acting that has no place in this kind of movie.
No comedy caper has been less madcap and so drawn out. The material demands bebop and instead we get cool jazz.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
5 Athletes Who Need A Biopic
Currently “42”, the film telling the story of Jackie Robinson, the legendary figure who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, is in theaters. I’ll be honest – while I have the utmost respect for Robinson and his legacy, I have no desire to see the film. None at all. Middlebrow biopics don’t necessarily just drive me to sleepy-time, they can also drive me to outright anger. It’s like Wesley Morris says in writing about “42”: “Whenever it is that an icon passes from being human to being a saint is the point at which it's probably too late for a good movie. All you get is the lessons learned and very little of the naturalism or idiosyncrasy or personality that made the person iconic in the first place.” (“Lincoln” is the exception to this rule, but then “Lincoln” was as much about a single event as its title character.)
Joe Posnanski, a sportswriter I greatly admire, sort of disagreed with that take, writing: “If you are looking for shades of gray storytelling about the most consequential sports story in American history, this isn’t your movie. And, in so many ways, that was the right way to make this movie.” With all due respect to Mr. Posnanski, that is just such a cop out. It is. What was it Lester Bangs said in “Almost Famous”? Ah yes. “If you want to be a true friend to them, be honest and unmerciful.” If we wanted to be a true friend to Jackie Robinson and what he did, we should have been honest and unmerciful.
In any event, “42” got me to thinking. There are five sports biopics that I strongly believe should be made even though I simultaneously believe – and I want to stress this part – that they should NEVER EVER be made for the simple fact that Hollywood, in all its infinite wisdom, would TOTALLY f--- them up. On second thought, perhaps NEVER EVER is too strong a statement. Perhaps I should leave a little wiggle room. Perhaps I should have said, Never Ever. Better? I say Never Ever instead of NEVER EVER because if you got the proper filmmaker to make them they might have a puncher’s chance. Who should make them? I have a strong feeling in one case but not so much in the others.
All I know is that if these five sports biopics were made the right way – “honest and unmerciful” (although one might actually not be honest at all, but never mind) – they would tear the roof off the sucker.
Arvydas Sabonis. The real Sabonis, the supremely skilled Lithuanian basketball player whose greatest years were hidden to Americans on account of Soviet oppression, was interviewed in last year’s mostly ok doc “The Other Dream Team.” It chronicles, amongst other details, the infamous bronze medal game of the 1992 Olympics between the freed Lithuanian basketball team and Russia’s Unified Team. What it does not chronicle, however, is that game’s immediate aftermath. Let Jonathan Abrams tell it: “Sabonis and his teammates ventured back to the Olympic dormitory, where Sabonis challenged fellow Olympians in arm wrestling for shots. One by one, wrestlers and shot putters among them, Sabonis beat them. By the time of the award ceremony, three Lithuanians did not make it to the podium. Sabonis was one of them. … Sabonis was located a couple of days later in one of the women's Olympic dormitories.” Please tell me why that isn’t a movie.
Max Baer. You probably remember Baer from Ron Howard’s operatic “Cinderella Man” in which he was portrayed as the humongous, man-killing, immoral, heavyweight champion foil to Russell Crowe’s James J. Braddock. He was portrayed this way specifically to be the Villain since everything in Ron Howard’s world is BLACK!!! and WHITE!!! The real Baer, however, was cut from more complex cloth, a “clown”, a playboy, a sometimes actor who boxed as a means to make (a lot of) money and who suffered great guilt and drama from the death he caused in the ring. After losing to the “Cinderella Man” he would lose to Joe Louis when he took a punch and went down and stayed down. He was vilified and of that decision to stay down he said this: "Sure I quit. I got a family to think about, and if anybody wants to see the execution of Max Baer, he's got to pay more than $25 for a ringside seat. I never did like the fighting game, and this proves it." That’s the boxing movie climax I want to see.
Moe Berg. Let's just say this: “Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind” For Sports Fans.
Josh Gibson. Director Spike Lee had long wanted to do a Jackie Robinson biopic but for a myriad of reasons it never came into being and, thus, we have “42.” But I always felt Lee, a tough and unsentimental outsider while simultaneously a mythologizing romantic, was more suited to the telling of the (sort of) forgotten Josh Gibson, someone who has been romantically mythologized even though he was very much a tough and unsentimental outsider. He was the slugging catcher whose entire career was tragically relegated to the Negro Leagues, the slugging catcher who supposedly belted more home runs (in a season and in a career) than any Major League hitter (‘roided up or not) and once hit (do not adjust your TV screens) .517 for a season, the slugging catcher who lived a tortured life off the field and died too young. He is commonly referred to as "the black Babe Ruth" and that is a disservice. Someone needs to stand up, make a movie that doesn't compromise one damn thing and show everyone Josh Gibson was Josh Gibson.
Bo McMillian. The QB of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky who engineered arguably the greatest upset in college football history in 1921 (6-0 over Harvard, the modern day equivalent of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa defeating Alabama) would truly be a character worth an entire screenplay. Heartily religious, he never drank and never swore but also never went to class (he – and does this remind you of athletes of today? – openly admitted he went to school to play football) and – this is my favorite – sent teammates to Massachusetts ahead of their game with Harvard to both purposely talk down and, by extension, place bets on Centre. I repeat: the captain and star player GAMBLED ON HIS OWN TEAM in arguably the greatest upset in college football history. It would romanticize the sport while at the very same time acting as a sort of renunciation of its current incarnation. It could be epic. It could be perfect. And as terribly I wish I could one day see this movie...please, Hollywood, for the love of God, never try to make it.
Joe Posnanski, a sportswriter I greatly admire, sort of disagreed with that take, writing: “If you are looking for shades of gray storytelling about the most consequential sports story in American history, this isn’t your movie. And, in so many ways, that was the right way to make this movie.” With all due respect to Mr. Posnanski, that is just such a cop out. It is. What was it Lester Bangs said in “Almost Famous”? Ah yes. “If you want to be a true friend to them, be honest and unmerciful.” If we wanted to be a true friend to Jackie Robinson and what he did, we should have been honest and unmerciful.
In any event, “42” got me to thinking. There are five sports biopics that I strongly believe should be made even though I simultaneously believe – and I want to stress this part – that they should NEVER EVER be made for the simple fact that Hollywood, in all its infinite wisdom, would TOTALLY f--- them up. On second thought, perhaps NEVER EVER is too strong a statement. Perhaps I should leave a little wiggle room. Perhaps I should have said, Never Ever. Better? I say Never Ever instead of NEVER EVER because if you got the proper filmmaker to make them they might have a puncher’s chance. Who should make them? I have a strong feeling in one case but not so much in the others.
All I know is that if these five sports biopics were made the right way – “honest and unmerciful” (although one might actually not be honest at all, but never mind) – they would tear the roof off the sucker.
5 Athletes Who Need A Biopic
Arvydas Sabonis. The real Sabonis, the supremely skilled Lithuanian basketball player whose greatest years were hidden to Americans on account of Soviet oppression, was interviewed in last year’s mostly ok doc “The Other Dream Team.” It chronicles, amongst other details, the infamous bronze medal game of the 1992 Olympics between the freed Lithuanian basketball team and Russia’s Unified Team. What it does not chronicle, however, is that game’s immediate aftermath. Let Jonathan Abrams tell it: “Sabonis and his teammates ventured back to the Olympic dormitory, where Sabonis challenged fellow Olympians in arm wrestling for shots. One by one, wrestlers and shot putters among them, Sabonis beat them. By the time of the award ceremony, three Lithuanians did not make it to the podium. Sabonis was one of them. … Sabonis was located a couple of days later in one of the women's Olympic dormitories.” Please tell me why that isn’t a movie.
Max Baer. You probably remember Baer from Ron Howard’s operatic “Cinderella Man” in which he was portrayed as the humongous, man-killing, immoral, heavyweight champion foil to Russell Crowe’s James J. Braddock. He was portrayed this way specifically to be the Villain since everything in Ron Howard’s world is BLACK!!! and WHITE!!! The real Baer, however, was cut from more complex cloth, a “clown”, a playboy, a sometimes actor who boxed as a means to make (a lot of) money and who suffered great guilt and drama from the death he caused in the ring. After losing to the “Cinderella Man” he would lose to Joe Louis when he took a punch and went down and stayed down. He was vilified and of that decision to stay down he said this: "Sure I quit. I got a family to think about, and if anybody wants to see the execution of Max Baer, he's got to pay more than $25 for a ringside seat. I never did like the fighting game, and this proves it." That’s the boxing movie climax I want to see.
Moe Berg. Let's just say this: “Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind” For Sports Fans.
Josh Gibson. Director Spike Lee had long wanted to do a Jackie Robinson biopic but for a myriad of reasons it never came into being and, thus, we have “42.” But I always felt Lee, a tough and unsentimental outsider while simultaneously a mythologizing romantic, was more suited to the telling of the (sort of) forgotten Josh Gibson, someone who has been romantically mythologized even though he was very much a tough and unsentimental outsider. He was the slugging catcher whose entire career was tragically relegated to the Negro Leagues, the slugging catcher who supposedly belted more home runs (in a season and in a career) than any Major League hitter (‘roided up or not) and once hit (do not adjust your TV screens) .517 for a season, the slugging catcher who lived a tortured life off the field and died too young. He is commonly referred to as "the black Babe Ruth" and that is a disservice. Someone needs to stand up, make a movie that doesn't compromise one damn thing and show everyone Josh Gibson was Josh Gibson.
Bo McMillian. The QB of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky who engineered arguably the greatest upset in college football history in 1921 (6-0 over Harvard, the modern day equivalent of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa defeating Alabama) would truly be a character worth an entire screenplay. Heartily religious, he never drank and never swore but also never went to class (he – and does this remind you of athletes of today? – openly admitted he went to school to play football) and – this is my favorite – sent teammates to Massachusetts ahead of their game with Harvard to both purposely talk down and, by extension, place bets on Centre. I repeat: the captain and star player GAMBLED ON HIS OWN TEAM in arguably the greatest upset in college football history. It would romanticize the sport while at the very same time acting as a sort of renunciation of its current incarnation. It could be epic. It could be perfect. And as terribly I wish I could one day see this movie...please, Hollywood, for the love of God, never try to make it.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Ferris Wheel Of Movies
For reasons I will not delve into a few years ago I caught a re-run of “Sex and the City” in which our gal Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) found herself in a sex buddy relationship with a guy played by Dean Winters. Dean Winters had a name in this episode – I think – but that name is unimportant, and it is unimportant because, of course, we all know Dean Winters best as Dennis Duffy, the beeper selling beau of "30 Rock" protagonist Liz Lemon. As plot dictates, Carrie eventually wants to expand her relationship with Dean Winters into more than just sex buddy status but as soon as she does she discovers that Dean Winters is loud, uncouth, clueless – kind of a irredeemable moron, basically. In other words, he is an awful lot like……Dennis Duffy.
Well, this blew my mind. What if he WAS Dennis Duffy? “30 Rock” was set in Manhattan. “Sex and the City” was set in Manhattan. Wasn’t it conceivable that Dennis Duffy could have found himself as sex buddy to Carrie Bradshaw before moving on several years later to being Liz Lemon’s paramour-in-arms? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But on ‘Sex and the City’ he was dressed in a suit, like a wolf of Wall St. That’s so un-Dennis Duffy.” To which I reply, if you think for one second that Dennis Duffy – owner of the coffee machine at 38th and 6th in the basement of the K-Mart – wouldn’t get himself into a suit solely to be someone’s sex buddy, you’re outta your mind.
I thought about this again when I recently re-watched Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” for the umpteenth time and once again inhaled the savory aroma of the sequence between dime novelist drunkard Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) and notorious racketeer Harry Lime (Orson Welles) aboard the Wiener Riesenrad – that is, the famed ferris wheel in Vienna’s Prater Amusement Park. It’s an ominous conversation despite Lime’s pretense of goodwill, and it’s partially ominous because these are old boyhood pals whose relationship has been suddenly, tragically altered. Just as Vienna was so different “before the war”, so were these two men, and now their hearts have been made dark – Holly no longer has his friend, Harry merely acts as if that’s what he still is. It is the human psyche plunging into the pit of despair.
It rises back up 46 years later when Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), college-age kids from America and France, respectively, who meet on a train and get off together at Vienna to experience a single night of bliss, living life as it should be lived, and eventually riding that very same ferris wheel where they share a first kiss. It is, in a way, a quiet if forceful rebuttal of the insignificance of human existence Harry Lime argued for all those years ago in the exact same place. That would suggest the makers of “Before Sunrise” were acting on the knowledge of “The Third Man”……but where they? I suppose it depends on how we view the movies.
The ancient phrase goes, Does a tree that falls in the forest make a sound if no one is there to hear it? But I ask a different variation on the question. I ask, do Rick Blaine & Ilsa Lund watch Bridget von Hammersmark movies? This is to say, did the Rick & Ilsa of “Casablanca” exist in the same universe as the German movie star of “Inglorious Basterds”? Are the movies a whole universe unto themselves where everything that happens just as it does here in our own world? Or are they make-believe, each one influenced by all the others?
Well, if you know me you know damn well what I believe, and I believe that Rick & Ilsa watched Bridget von Hammersmark movies and that when Jesse & Celine boarded that ferris wheel they had no idea that 46 years earlier a dime store novelist and a racketeer rode it too because what history text teaches about a dime store novelist and a racketeer? No, they were just like any Chicago tourist that takes in a game at Wrigley field without knowing who may have inhabited that rickety seat before them, or Chris Parker leading her charges through downtown without knowing some guy named Ferris did the same thing a year earlier.
Of course, Jesse and Celine probably knew about the mysterious death of that one guy in the park about eight years earlier. That was probably in all the papers.
Well, this blew my mind. What if he WAS Dennis Duffy? “30 Rock” was set in Manhattan. “Sex and the City” was set in Manhattan. Wasn’t it conceivable that Dennis Duffy could have found himself as sex buddy to Carrie Bradshaw before moving on several years later to being Liz Lemon’s paramour-in-arms? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But on ‘Sex and the City’ he was dressed in a suit, like a wolf of Wall St. That’s so un-Dennis Duffy.” To which I reply, if you think for one second that Dennis Duffy – owner of the coffee machine at 38th and 6th in the basement of the K-Mart – wouldn’t get himself into a suit solely to be someone’s sex buddy, you’re outta your mind.
I thought about this again when I recently re-watched Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” for the umpteenth time and once again inhaled the savory aroma of the sequence between dime novelist drunkard Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) and notorious racketeer Harry Lime (Orson Welles) aboard the Wiener Riesenrad – that is, the famed ferris wheel in Vienna’s Prater Amusement Park. It’s an ominous conversation despite Lime’s pretense of goodwill, and it’s partially ominous because these are old boyhood pals whose relationship has been suddenly, tragically altered. Just as Vienna was so different “before the war”, so were these two men, and now their hearts have been made dark – Holly no longer has his friend, Harry merely acts as if that’s what he still is. It is the human psyche plunging into the pit of despair.
It rises back up 46 years later when Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), college-age kids from America and France, respectively, who meet on a train and get off together at Vienna to experience a single night of bliss, living life as it should be lived, and eventually riding that very same ferris wheel where they share a first kiss. It is, in a way, a quiet if forceful rebuttal of the insignificance of human existence Harry Lime argued for all those years ago in the exact same place. That would suggest the makers of “Before Sunrise” were acting on the knowledge of “The Third Man”……but where they? I suppose it depends on how we view the movies.
The ancient phrase goes, Does a tree that falls in the forest make a sound if no one is there to hear it? But I ask a different variation on the question. I ask, do Rick Blaine & Ilsa Lund watch Bridget von Hammersmark movies? This is to say, did the Rick & Ilsa of “Casablanca” exist in the same universe as the German movie star of “Inglorious Basterds”? Are the movies a whole universe unto themselves where everything that happens just as it does here in our own world? Or are they make-believe, each one influenced by all the others?
Well, if you know me you know damn well what I believe, and I believe that Rick & Ilsa watched Bridget von Hammersmark movies and that when Jesse & Celine boarded that ferris wheel they had no idea that 46 years earlier a dime store novelist and a racketeer rode it too because what history text teaches about a dime store novelist and a racketeer? No, they were just like any Chicago tourist that takes in a game at Wrigley field without knowing who may have inhabited that rickety seat before them, or Chris Parker leading her charges through downtown without knowing some guy named Ferris did the same thing a year earlier.
Of course, Jesse and Celine probably knew about the mysterious death of that one guy in the park about eight years earlier. That was probably in all the papers.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Union Square
In the opening stanza of “Union Square”, Mira Sorvino, once upon a time an Oscar-winner who has since gone missing-in-action-in-plain-sight by starring in films you’ve never heard of like “Angels Crest” and “Attack on Leningrad” the last few years, will make you so anxious and uncomfortable as to leave you twitching. I mean this as a high compliment. This first fifteen minutes is extraordinary cinema, not necessarily because it revolutionizes but because what it is doing it does as well as can possibly be done. Sorvino's Lucy thunders into her sister’s pristine Manhattan loft, clamors in a voice that is pure screech about god-knows-what, gulps organic vodka gimlets and crashes right there on the prettified couch her sister wants to keep in mint condition. That Lucy is a train wreck is clear and this is her rumbling right off the tracks.
To heighten its effect, for most of this fifteen minutes we don’t even know that Lucy is related to Jenny (Tammy Blanchard). Lucy more or less forces her way in, employing the apartment as a sort of stage to unleash a torrent of discombobulation as poor Jenny is left cowering off to the side. Throughout we can sense her wanting to scream “What the hell are you doing here?!” but her nature clearly is to withdraw and, besides, she could never get in a word in edgewise. She feels trapped, but I felt liberated – it’s the movie huffing and puffing and trying to blow you down. It succeeds.
Eventually it picks you back up and background information is parceled out according to the characters rather than script dictums. The sisters hail from the Bronx but have long been estranged for reasons never specifically addressed. If they hail from the Bronx, we wonder, why is Lucy’s accent so obvious and Jenny’s tucked away? Because Jenny has purposely tucked it away, revealing that she has told her fiancé Bill (Mike Doyle), kind if dull and hyper-focused, with whom she runs some sort of vegetarian food company, that she is from Maine. Jenny, in fact, has gone longer not seeing her mother than her sister and Lucy is partly here to explain their mother has died.
Yes, yes, that sounds like gasp-inducing, “whaaaaaaa?” story pivot but that’s not how “Union Square”, written and directed by Nancy Savoca, her first feature in nearly 10 years, treats it. The moment is not built to, it is just dropped in all at once and without warning – as organic as that tofu Jenny makes Lucy eat.
There are further secrets, of course, waiting in the wings which will not be revealed in this review. And because the film is set around and then on Thanksgiving this means these secrets must be spilled around the table while eating turkey – or, vegetarian lasagna – which is a melodramatic story device which is excused because of The Moonstruck Principle (which stipulates that Italian families are allowed to spill secrets at the dinner table). More problematic is that the film, which is brief to begin with, seems in need of a stronger bridge from its first two acts to the confessional portion.
This is far from a fatal issue, however, and by then the film had won me over anyway, mostly on the strength of its dueling lead performances. Sorvino is exemplary, repulsing us even as she draws us in, a loudmouthed tornado of selfishness, self-doubt and girlish enthusiasm, but Blanchard, who does not steal the film so much as share it, is a perfect counterpoint. She positively exudes someone whose lid is screwed on far too tight and as much as we desperately wish for Lucy to reign herself in we wish Jenny would open herself up. Outwardly they so often don’t seem like sisters because Jenny has distanced herself so much from the family brand. But look more closely and you can see the exact same insecurity lurking at each woman’s core. They are so much alike they have gone to the extreme in opposite directions.
Jenny, to quote Neil McCauley, is a needle starting at zero going the other way and as “Union Square” opens that is precisely what Lucy is doing too. But ultimately the eternal truth is upheld – you can lie, deny, change, and run away but you are who you are.
To heighten its effect, for most of this fifteen minutes we don’t even know that Lucy is related to Jenny (Tammy Blanchard). Lucy more or less forces her way in, employing the apartment as a sort of stage to unleash a torrent of discombobulation as poor Jenny is left cowering off to the side. Throughout we can sense her wanting to scream “What the hell are you doing here?!” but her nature clearly is to withdraw and, besides, she could never get in a word in edgewise. She feels trapped, but I felt liberated – it’s the movie huffing and puffing and trying to blow you down. It succeeds.
Eventually it picks you back up and background information is parceled out according to the characters rather than script dictums. The sisters hail from the Bronx but have long been estranged for reasons never specifically addressed. If they hail from the Bronx, we wonder, why is Lucy’s accent so obvious and Jenny’s tucked away? Because Jenny has purposely tucked it away, revealing that she has told her fiancé Bill (Mike Doyle), kind if dull and hyper-focused, with whom she runs some sort of vegetarian food company, that she is from Maine. Jenny, in fact, has gone longer not seeing her mother than her sister and Lucy is partly here to explain their mother has died.
Yes, yes, that sounds like gasp-inducing, “whaaaaaaa?” story pivot but that’s not how “Union Square”, written and directed by Nancy Savoca, her first feature in nearly 10 years, treats it. The moment is not built to, it is just dropped in all at once and without warning – as organic as that tofu Jenny makes Lucy eat.
There are further secrets, of course, waiting in the wings which will not be revealed in this review. And because the film is set around and then on Thanksgiving this means these secrets must be spilled around the table while eating turkey – or, vegetarian lasagna – which is a melodramatic story device which is excused because of The Moonstruck Principle (which stipulates that Italian families are allowed to spill secrets at the dinner table). More problematic is that the film, which is brief to begin with, seems in need of a stronger bridge from its first two acts to the confessional portion.
This is far from a fatal issue, however, and by then the film had won me over anyway, mostly on the strength of its dueling lead performances. Sorvino is exemplary, repulsing us even as she draws us in, a loudmouthed tornado of selfishness, self-doubt and girlish enthusiasm, but Blanchard, who does not steal the film so much as share it, is a perfect counterpoint. She positively exudes someone whose lid is screwed on far too tight and as much as we desperately wish for Lucy to reign herself in we wish Jenny would open herself up. Outwardly they so often don’t seem like sisters because Jenny has distanced herself so much from the family brand. But look more closely and you can see the exact same insecurity lurking at each woman’s core. They are so much alike they have gone to the extreme in opposite directions.
Jenny, to quote Neil McCauley, is a needle starting at zero going the other way and as “Union Square” opens that is precisely what Lucy is doing too. But ultimately the eternal truth is upheld – you can lie, deny, change, and run away but you are who you are.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Friday's Old Fashioned: Red-Headed Woman (1932)
Lil (Jean Harlow) is in the midst of of attempting to entice married Bill Legendre Jr. (Chester Morris, who, like so many male actors of the early eras, is outfitted with too much makeup). He ain't having it. He smacks her. Woah. But...she smiles. She asks him to do it again. She tries to get him to do it again. Wowza. Meanwhile Lil's friend and confidante Sally (Una Merkel) listens to the action with her ear pressed up against a door in another room. At first, she seems aghast. But then...she smiles. She speaks, I suspect, for the entire audience for the duration of the brief but kicky run time of "Red-Headed Woman" - the experience is more than a little unsettling but we remain enraptured anyway.
"Red-Headed Woman" was released in 1932, two years after the dastardly Will Hays put into effect his nicey-nice Production Code but two years before it really began being enforced with an America & Apple Pie-scented fist. This is why you can hear the word "Sex" said at least twice in "Red-Headed Woman"! No! Really! "S.e.x." Ai-yeeeeeeee! Heck, there's a sequence where we see Harlow undress......well, sorta. In a single take the camera focuses on her bare feet and then her face as it is made insistently clear she is briefly going pantsless and then topless to slip into evening wear. That sounds passé but back in the day there were probably upstanding women who saw this in the theater and fainted.
The film opens with Lil as but a poor stenographer with designs on glitz and glamour and high fashion and society. This is why she targets Bill Legendre with such insistence. She will not be denied. And she isn't, not even when it appears Bill's wife Irene (Leila Hyams) adores him so much and seems so convinced that his one-time foul-up is anomaly. No, instead Bill ends up divorced from Irene and married to Lil who indulges in her newfound upper crust status for all its worth until she realizes the rest of the upper crust will forever shun her for her adulterous dalliance.
Ha! says Lil. With the rich and famous Charles Gaerste (Henry Stephenson) in town to meet with the Legendre family, Lil merely re-sets her plan. A seduction of Gaerste, higher up the social ladder and with even more prominent moneybags than her current husband, would engender the societal reciprocation that Lil cannot get on the arm of Legendre.
Eventually she finds herself separating from her husband to move in with Gaerste while having an affair with Gaerste's French chauffeur (Charles Boyer) on the side.
Per TMC, a certain dude named F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a draft that legendary producer Irving Thalberg deemed too serious and which was completely re-written by Anita Loos to be more whimsical. Remnants of this screenwriting war are littered throughout the film, particularly in the way Lil's incessant blackmailing and cold, cold heart are so often presented in the manner of simple rom com propellents. Truly, you are often left to wonder if director Jack Conway has any idea just how dark the underlying nature of his film is, and this is made more apparent by a "happy ending" that looks and sounds happy but isn't really happy at all if you give it a half-second of thought.
Perhaps the trickiest element of the whole film is Harlow's performance. This is not to suggest she overwhelms the screen with complexity but that she kind of plays the part of this home wrecking status seeker as if to appease Thalberg's desire for a more breezy escapade. Yet, by playing the part this way her character (unwittingly?) is made even more sinister.
Her Lil shares much in common with later era "Fatal Attraction" Glenn Close and "Body of Evidence" Madonna but in a non-Will Hays world those actresses very much played up the psychotic. Harlow, however, by maintaining such a bubbly air even as she screws (literally and figuratively) every guy around her to get what she wants just seems.......crazy. Like, super crazy. It's a less realistic performance which is precisely what makes it seem so much more realistic than the unhinged red-headed woman of the modern day.
In a movie today if Lil pulled a gun when she pulls a gun you think, "Oh. Plot mechanics." But in 1932 when Lil pulls the gun when she pulls the gun you think, "Yup. That red-headed woman's done lost her mind."
"Red-Headed Woman" was released in 1932, two years after the dastardly Will Hays put into effect his nicey-nice Production Code but two years before it really began being enforced with an America & Apple Pie-scented fist. This is why you can hear the word "Sex" said at least twice in "Red-Headed Woman"! No! Really! "S.e.x." Ai-yeeeeeeee! Heck, there's a sequence where we see Harlow undress......well, sorta. In a single take the camera focuses on her bare feet and then her face as it is made insistently clear she is briefly going pantsless and then topless to slip into evening wear. That sounds passé but back in the day there were probably upstanding women who saw this in the theater and fainted.
The film opens with Lil as but a poor stenographer with designs on glitz and glamour and high fashion and society. This is why she targets Bill Legendre with such insistence. She will not be denied. And she isn't, not even when it appears Bill's wife Irene (Leila Hyams) adores him so much and seems so convinced that his one-time foul-up is anomaly. No, instead Bill ends up divorced from Irene and married to Lil who indulges in her newfound upper crust status for all its worth until she realizes the rest of the upper crust will forever shun her for her adulterous dalliance.
Ha! says Lil. With the rich and famous Charles Gaerste (Henry Stephenson) in town to meet with the Legendre family, Lil merely re-sets her plan. A seduction of Gaerste, higher up the social ladder and with even more prominent moneybags than her current husband, would engender the societal reciprocation that Lil cannot get on the arm of Legendre.
Eventually she finds herself separating from her husband to move in with Gaerste while having an affair with Gaerste's French chauffeur (Charles Boyer) on the side.
Per TMC, a certain dude named F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a draft that legendary producer Irving Thalberg deemed too serious and which was completely re-written by Anita Loos to be more whimsical. Remnants of this screenwriting war are littered throughout the film, particularly in the way Lil's incessant blackmailing and cold, cold heart are so often presented in the manner of simple rom com propellents. Truly, you are often left to wonder if director Jack Conway has any idea just how dark the underlying nature of his film is, and this is made more apparent by a "happy ending" that looks and sounds happy but isn't really happy at all if you give it a half-second of thought.
Perhaps the trickiest element of the whole film is Harlow's performance. This is not to suggest she overwhelms the screen with complexity but that she kind of plays the part of this home wrecking status seeker as if to appease Thalberg's desire for a more breezy escapade. Yet, by playing the part this way her character (unwittingly?) is made even more sinister.
Her Lil shares much in common with later era "Fatal Attraction" Glenn Close and "Body of Evidence" Madonna but in a non-Will Hays world those actresses very much played up the psychotic. Harlow, however, by maintaining such a bubbly air even as she screws (literally and figuratively) every guy around her to get what she wants just seems.......crazy. Like, super crazy. It's a less realistic performance which is precisely what makes it seem so much more realistic than the unhinged red-headed woman of the modern day.
In a movie today if Lil pulled a gun when she pulls a gun you think, "Oh. Plot mechanics." But in 1932 when Lil pulls the gun when she pulls the gun you think, "Yup. That red-headed woman's done lost her mind."
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Forgotten Character: Molly, A Prairie Home Companion
My friend Andrew has an ongoing series he calls Forgotten Characters, which, just as the title implies, pays homage to film characters that are generally forgotten, mysteriously passing by unknown to most. Today I pay homage to/rip off his creation.
Robert Altman's 2006 stone cold classic "A Prairie Home Companion" is stacked to the rafters of St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater (where essentially the entire film is set) with ingenious actors. Kevin Kline is easygoingly hilarious and John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson develop a fine rapport that feels properly worn in and Lily Tomlin is wondrously acerbic and Meryl Streep blasts yet another titanic home run and Tommy Lee Jones is solidly gruff years before the GG's and Virginia Madsen truly conveys a neurotic yet poetic celestial bliss and Garrison Keillor is, well, Garrison Keillor and Lindsay Lohan, believe it or not, is a righteous youthful foil to the gaggle of adults.
Maneuvering amidst the ceaseless shenanigans of the film is a pregnant (for realsies) Maya Rudolph as Molly, functioning as an assistant stage manager and, more or less, the personal wrangler of Garrison Keillor. We first see her less than 10 minutes into the film. She strides into Garrison Keillor's dressing room to summon him to the stage since the radio show around which the film is based is set to start in, like, five minutes. Garrison is, as Garrison often is, in the middle of some "is-this-ever-going-to-end?" story about a pontoon boat (sorta). Rudolph's face as she enters is monumental. Chewing gum, we immediately can tell that she can tell, "Oh God, he's in the middle of one of his 'is-this-ever-going-to-end?' stories." Displaying an impatient patience she waits until he hits the end of a sentence and then interjects: "Mr. Keillor. We need you onstage."
The movie briefly moves on to a few other characters and then returns to Keillor's dressing room where he is still telling the same "is-this-ever-going-to-end?" story. But now Reilly and Harrelson’s singing cowboys, Dusty and Lefty, are adding to the story with their own flights of fancy. The camera finds Rudolph, standing in the exact same spot we last saw her, furiously chewing that gum. She looks down, breathes in deeply - she's pregnant and she's trying to get this storytelling dufus to the stage - and looks back up, wanting to interject but cut off at the pass. The camera focuses on Keillor droning on and then re-finds Rudolph and she looks down again and wipes at her nose......you can literally see her inwardly coming unglued and outwardly maintaining the false brave face. That is Rudolph’s go-to expression throughout, and understandably so.
Her character is so often placed on the edge of loaded-up frames (so many characters), standing silently, chewing that gum, holding that clipboard, trying to navigate this backstage sea of eccentric and distracted talents, a preschool teacher desperately hoping she can get her overgrown kids to hit their marks on time.
Molly’s one real moment in the spotlight is the one that both does not work for me at all and works like gangbusters. In the midst of the show Molly approaches Keillor at his stage pulpit with a stack of folders – show notes, we presume – and then cannot find the one she requires and rifles through them and drops them and so on and so forth and hardy har. Her antics are meant to be funny on their own, sure, and they are also meant as set-up for the show’s sound effects specialist, the late Tom Keith, to work his magic, yes, but it is also a flub I doubt this thick-skinned Molly would ever make. It kinda makes her the butt of the joke and that’s unfair, and it’s unfair because this scene also works to show how you never notice the behind-the-scenes folks making the engine run until there is a mishap. Ah, and so it is.
Her final sequence involves Kline’s security guard asking for her assistance in removing Jones’ Axeman – there to bring close the curtain on the show forevermore – from the premises and/or equation. He asks her to a deliver note to another character in a plea for assistance and off Molly goes. That is the last time we see her. The note, presumably, gets delivered because the required assistance arrives, but we never actually see the delivery made. This, especially in conjunction with the previously mentioned scene, seems spectacularly right. We notice her when something goes wrong, we don’t even see her when things go right.
In the moment before she is tasked to deliver the message Kline pops a bottle of bubbly and pours a glass for himself and her. So what if she’s pregnant? One glass is okay, and for but a brief second she removes her gum and downs that champagne in one shot. Well, movie characters are always drinking champagne, from Rick & Ilsa to that Sausalito front woman that sleeps with Bob Harris. But none of them have deserved their champagne more than Molly.
Maya Rudolph in A Prairie Home Companion
as Molly
Robert Altman's 2006 stone cold classic "A Prairie Home Companion" is stacked to the rafters of St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater (where essentially the entire film is set) with ingenious actors. Kevin Kline is easygoingly hilarious and John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson develop a fine rapport that feels properly worn in and Lily Tomlin is wondrously acerbic and Meryl Streep blasts yet another titanic home run and Tommy Lee Jones is solidly gruff years before the GG's and Virginia Madsen truly conveys a neurotic yet poetic celestial bliss and Garrison Keillor is, well, Garrison Keillor and Lindsay Lohan, believe it or not, is a righteous youthful foil to the gaggle of adults.
Maneuvering amidst the ceaseless shenanigans of the film is a pregnant (for realsies) Maya Rudolph as Molly, functioning as an assistant stage manager and, more or less, the personal wrangler of Garrison Keillor. We first see her less than 10 minutes into the film. She strides into Garrison Keillor's dressing room to summon him to the stage since the radio show around which the film is based is set to start in, like, five minutes. Garrison is, as Garrison often is, in the middle of some "is-this-ever-going-to-end?" story about a pontoon boat (sorta). Rudolph's face as she enters is monumental. Chewing gum, we immediately can tell that she can tell, "Oh God, he's in the middle of one of his 'is-this-ever-going-to-end?' stories." Displaying an impatient patience she waits until he hits the end of a sentence and then interjects: "Mr. Keillor. We need you onstage."
The movie briefly moves on to a few other characters and then returns to Keillor's dressing room where he is still telling the same "is-this-ever-going-to-end?" story. But now Reilly and Harrelson’s singing cowboys, Dusty and Lefty, are adding to the story with their own flights of fancy. The camera finds Rudolph, standing in the exact same spot we last saw her, furiously chewing that gum. She looks down, breathes in deeply - she's pregnant and she's trying to get this storytelling dufus to the stage - and looks back up, wanting to interject but cut off at the pass. The camera focuses on Keillor droning on and then re-finds Rudolph and she looks down again and wipes at her nose......you can literally see her inwardly coming unglued and outwardly maintaining the false brave face. That is Rudolph’s go-to expression throughout, and understandably so.
Her character is so often placed on the edge of loaded-up frames (so many characters), standing silently, chewing that gum, holding that clipboard, trying to navigate this backstage sea of eccentric and distracted talents, a preschool teacher desperately hoping she can get her overgrown kids to hit their marks on time.
Molly’s one real moment in the spotlight is the one that both does not work for me at all and works like gangbusters. In the midst of the show Molly approaches Keillor at his stage pulpit with a stack of folders – show notes, we presume – and then cannot find the one she requires and rifles through them and drops them and so on and so forth and hardy har. Her antics are meant to be funny on their own, sure, and they are also meant as set-up for the show’s sound effects specialist, the late Tom Keith, to work his magic, yes, but it is also a flub I doubt this thick-skinned Molly would ever make. It kinda makes her the butt of the joke and that’s unfair, and it’s unfair because this scene also works to show how you never notice the behind-the-scenes folks making the engine run until there is a mishap. Ah, and so it is.
Her final sequence involves Kline’s security guard asking for her assistance in removing Jones’ Axeman – there to bring close the curtain on the show forevermore – from the premises and/or equation. He asks her to a deliver note to another character in a plea for assistance and off Molly goes. That is the last time we see her. The note, presumably, gets delivered because the required assistance arrives, but we never actually see the delivery made. This, especially in conjunction with the previously mentioned scene, seems spectacularly right. We notice her when something goes wrong, we don’t even see her when things go right.
In the moment before she is tasked to deliver the message Kline pops a bottle of bubbly and pours a glass for himself and her. So what if she’s pregnant? One glass is okay, and for but a brief second she removes her gum and downs that champagne in one shot. Well, movie characters are always drinking champagne, from Rick & Ilsa to that Sausalito front woman that sleeps with Bob Harris. But none of them have deserved their champagne more than Molly.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Official Cinematic Crush Update: Union City Blue Edition
Q: Is that Malin Akerman, your Official Cinematic Crush, as the original punk rock disco queen Debbie Harry in the forthcoming "CBGB"?
A: Yes! Yes, it is Malin Akerman, my Official Cinematic Crush, as the original punk rock disco queen Debbie Harry in the forthcoming "CBGB"! Thanks for asking! (Oh, she's also with some dude playing some dude.)
A: Yes! Yes, it is Malin Akerman, my Official Cinematic Crush, as the original punk rock disco queen Debbie Harry in the forthcoming "CBGB"! Thanks for asking! (Oh, she's also with some dude playing some dude.)
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
13 Personal Favorite Roger Ebert Review Quotes
Believe me, I understand the danger of reducing any film review to a mere quote (call it, The Peter Travers School Of Film Criticism). To truly understand the breadth of the way the esteemed and late Roger Ebert could write about a film, one must read the entire review (for an example I direct you to his original "Apocalypse Now" piece which remains utterly astonishing). But...Ebert, like any writer worth his word processor, could slash the page and draw blood with but a few words.
Each of these quotes has stayed with me from the very moment I first read it. I remembered them all verbatim - well, not really. Well, a few of them I remembered verbatim and the impression of the other few I remembered verbatim. A few of these quotes I often reference in my own film reviews and a few of these I think of when I sit down to compose a film review and a few of these I think of when I adore a film and a few of these I think of when I simply sit down to watch a film.
An exhilarating, fulfilling sentence - or set of sentences - is not easy to come by and it must be respected. That is why today we pay homage to a master.
13 Personal Favorite Roger Ebert Review Quotes
- "As a general principle, I believe films are the wrong medium for fact. Fact belongs in print. Films are about emotions." ... from "JFK"
- "If you also want it to all be plausible in hindsight, you're probably disappointed when a magician doesn't saw a real person in half and leave the severed corpse on the stage." ... from the Movie Answer Man column Oct. 2005
- "But how, and why, would her husband, and her shrink, and her neighbor, and her other neighbor, and even the New York Times, completely forget about Sam and the crash and all those little kids? The most likely hypothesis is that Telly is crazy and everybody else is right. But who would make a movie about a mother discovering her beloved child was imaginary? That would be too sad, too tragic, and, for that matter, too thought-provoking and artistically challenging, and might even make a good movie." ... from "The Forgotten"
- "Movies are really about the human body more than anything else. I was recently faulted for lingering overmuch on Ingrid Bergman's lips in 'Casablanca.' Anyone, man or woman, who doesn't want to linger on Ingrid Bergman's lips is telling us something about themselves we'd rather not know." ... from "Broken Embraces"
- "The bedrock of the plot is the dogged determination of the Bruce Willis character. Jack may be middle-aged, he may be tired, he may be balding, he may be a drunk, but if he's played by Bruce Willis you don't want to bet against him. He gets that look in his eye that says: It's going to be a pain in the ass for me to do this, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. I always I believe that more easily than the look that merely says: I will prevail because this is an action picture and I play the hero." ... from "16 Blocks"
- "'Armageddon' reportedly used the services of nine writers. Why did it need any? The dialogue is either shouted one-liners or romantic drivel. 'It's gonna blow!' is used so many times, I wonder if every single writer used it once, and then sat back from his word processor with a contented smile on his face, another day's work done." ... from "Armageddon"
-"Empathy has been in short supply in our nation recently. Our leaders are quick to congratulate us on our own feelings, slow to ask us to wonder how others feel. But maybe times are changing. Every Lee film is an exercise in empathy. He is not interested in congratulating the black people in his audience, or condemning the white ones. He puts human beings on the screen, and asks his audience to walk a little while in their shoes." ... from "Malcolm X"
- "We all need to talk about metaphysics, but those who know us well want details and specifics; strangers allow us to operate more vaguely on a cosmic scale. When the talk occurs between two people who could plausibly have sex together, it gathers a special charge: you can only say 'I feel like I've known you for years' to someone you have not known for years. Funny, how your spouse doesn't understand the bittersweet transience of life as well as a stranger encountered in a hotel bar. Especially if drinking is involved." ... from "Lost In Translation"
"Coppola has been criticized in some circles for her use of a contemporary pop overlay -- hit songs, incongruous dialogue, jarring intrusions of the Now upon the Then. But no one ever lives as Then; it is always Now. Many characters in historical films seem somehow aware that they are living in the past. Marie seems to think she is a teenager living in the present, which of course she is -- and the contemporary pop references invite the audience to share her present with ours." ... from "Marie Antoinette"
- "When she’s stalking a terrorist with a hockey stick, she seems like a real woman stalking a real terrorist with a real hockey stick. It’s not as easy as it sounds." ... from "Red Eye"
- "Like all truly great movies, 'Drugstore Cowboy' is a joyous piece of work. I believe the subject of a film does not determine whether it makes us feel happy or sad. I am inutterably depressed after seeing stupid comedies that insult my intelligence, but I felt exhilarated after seeing 'Drugstore Cowboy,' because every person connected with this project is working at top form. It's a high-wire act of daring, in which this unlikely subject matter becomes the occasion for a film about sad people we come to care very deeply about." ... from "Drugstore Cowboy"
- "That such a film gets made is a miracle: One can see how this material could have been softened and compromised, and that would have been wrong. It is a pure, grand gesture. That he is an alcoholic and she works the streets are simply the turnings they have taken. Beneath their occupations are their souls. And because Ben essentially has given up on his, the film becomes Sera's story, about how even in the face of certain defeat we can, at least, insist on loving, and trying." ... from "Leaving Las Vegas"
- "Movies are so often made of effects and sensation these days. This one is made of three people and how their actions grow out of who they are and why. Nothing else. But isn't that everything?" ... from "Millon Dollar Baby"
Monday, April 08, 2013
The Loneliest Planet
"Travel, like much else in life, can be more fun to read about than to do. When I'm reading a travel book and the protagonist sets out on a journey and the harbor lights drop behind, I imagine enviously what a grand feeling that must have been. In actual travel situations, however, I've noticed that moments of soaring consciousness are rare." - Ian Frazier, "Travels In Siberia"
Running seven minutes shy of two hours, “The Loneliest Planet”, written and directed by Julia Loktev, is unafraid to evoke the previous sentences of noted travel author Frazier. It is a film set in the scenic back country of Georgia, the former Soviet republic and now its own country in eastern Europe, and while her camera routinely lingers on sweeping mountainous vistas it also takes time - often a lot of time (too much time?) – to simply present our principal trio trudging across rock, heads down, tired and uninterested. You might find yourself looking at the clock but, rest assured, you will get the point.
"The Loneliest Planet" centers around a young couple, Nica (Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael Garcia Bernal), on some sort of backpackers holiday in Georgia. Reading a synopsis or two post-film I realize Nica and Alex were meant to be portrayed as "engaged" but I struggle to recall when this information was actually presented in the film. No doubt it was and I missed it but that is part of the movie's charm - uh, if charm is actually the right word.
Loktev's script is stingy with the details. Little background info is revealed. No real reason is established for Nica and Alex's desire to be in Georgia except that as the film plays itself out in long takes and unhurried rhythms we sense that they are routinely lighting out for trips deep into the heart of foreign countries. They hire a local guide named Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze) to take them on a hiking excursion into the mountains. All three speak English but Dato's is very rough and so the film is often a confusing mishmash of English jumbles, Dato's un-subtitled Georgian and even the Spanish that Alex is trying to teach Nico. It leaves us confused but then that is Loktev's desired effect. The audience is taking a journey into a place they do not know with people they cannot understand. It is at once frustrating and enthralling, perhaps leaning a more toward the former.
To be sure, "The Loneliest Planet" is not merely a lifelike creation of the vacation from hell. It is also going for something acutely psychological, hinted at in early passages - such as Nica and Alex's night out at a club where a drunk local asks her to dance. She accepts. Is Alex upset? It is difficult to tell, partially because we have a hard time reading Alex and partially because the way Loktev frames and lights makes it difficult for us to read Alex. Eventually the camera finds the couple cuddled close on the dance floor as the local boogies to and fro, right up to Nica before backing away, and we sense things might explode. They do not.
Later, they do. It is a moment of sudden drama painstakingly built to and so it will not be revealed, but suffice it to say that in a flash we and Nica receive a glimpse into Alex's character that is destructively honest. Really? Was that really his first thought? Apparently, and so the remainder of the film, the long slog back the way they have come, is a slow burn as we watch these would-be newlyweds retreat within themselves.
Their unease is then drawn out as they fail for the remainder of the film to truly confront it, leaving us without a real resolution – dramatic, pat, or otherwise. It just sort of……ends. We wonder, what do they think about all this? We wonder, did they ever really know what they thought about any of it?
Running seven minutes shy of two hours, “The Loneliest Planet”, written and directed by Julia Loktev, is unafraid to evoke the previous sentences of noted travel author Frazier. It is a film set in the scenic back country of Georgia, the former Soviet republic and now its own country in eastern Europe, and while her camera routinely lingers on sweeping mountainous vistas it also takes time - often a lot of time (too much time?) – to simply present our principal trio trudging across rock, heads down, tired and uninterested. You might find yourself looking at the clock but, rest assured, you will get the point.
"The Loneliest Planet" centers around a young couple, Nica (Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael Garcia Bernal), on some sort of backpackers holiday in Georgia. Reading a synopsis or two post-film I realize Nica and Alex were meant to be portrayed as "engaged" but I struggle to recall when this information was actually presented in the film. No doubt it was and I missed it but that is part of the movie's charm - uh, if charm is actually the right word.
Loktev's script is stingy with the details. Little background info is revealed. No real reason is established for Nica and Alex's desire to be in Georgia except that as the film plays itself out in long takes and unhurried rhythms we sense that they are routinely lighting out for trips deep into the heart of foreign countries. They hire a local guide named Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze) to take them on a hiking excursion into the mountains. All three speak English but Dato's is very rough and so the film is often a confusing mishmash of English jumbles, Dato's un-subtitled Georgian and even the Spanish that Alex is trying to teach Nico. It leaves us confused but then that is Loktev's desired effect. The audience is taking a journey into a place they do not know with people they cannot understand. It is at once frustrating and enthralling, perhaps leaning a more toward the former.
To be sure, "The Loneliest Planet" is not merely a lifelike creation of the vacation from hell. It is also going for something acutely psychological, hinted at in early passages - such as Nica and Alex's night out at a club where a drunk local asks her to dance. She accepts. Is Alex upset? It is difficult to tell, partially because we have a hard time reading Alex and partially because the way Loktev frames and lights makes it difficult for us to read Alex. Eventually the camera finds the couple cuddled close on the dance floor as the local boogies to and fro, right up to Nica before backing away, and we sense things might explode. They do not.
Later, they do. It is a moment of sudden drama painstakingly built to and so it will not be revealed, but suffice it to say that in a flash we and Nica receive a glimpse into Alex's character that is destructively honest. Really? Was that really his first thought? Apparently, and so the remainder of the film, the long slog back the way they have come, is a slow burn as we watch these would-be newlyweds retreat within themselves.
Their unease is then drawn out as they fail for the remainder of the film to truly confront it, leaving us without a real resolution – dramatic, pat, or otherwise. It just sort of……ends. We wonder, what do they think about all this? We wonder, did they ever really know what they thought about any of it?
Friday, April 05, 2013
In Memoriam: Roger Ebert
Today Cinema Romantico flies its flag at half mast in honor of Roger Ebert, perhaps our greatest film critic, who passed away yesterday at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer. You may read my memorial at Anomalous Material as the whole lot of us film zealots who hung on Roger's words attempt to cope.
Thursday, April 04, 2013
Official Cinematic Crush Update
"The Numbers Station", the latest Malin Akerman starring thriller (co-starring some other dude), is set to drop in theaters at the end of this month on April 26th. Until then we have a simple still from said film to tide you over and of it we ask one question:
Has anyone ever fled an explosion with such riveting fashion sense?
Has anyone ever fled an explosion with such riveting fashion sense?
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
5 Actors Who Should Be In Everything
I was listening to the most recent episode of Ryan McNeil’s superb Matineecast and while there was much enjoyment and much information to be gleaned within its hour-plus, one sort of offhand remark, as is so often the case, struck my fancy. In discussing the Steve Carrell-starring magician opus “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone”, Ryan made mention of co-star Alan Arkin and remarked that Arkin should be in everything.
That, as it had to, totally got me to thinking: what actors/actresses should be in everything? Today I crack the case.
Bruce McGill. Most recently glimpsed as Edwin Stanton, “Lincoln’s” Secretary of War, McGill has been acting since the year I was born. Mostly (always?) seen in supporting parts, he is not so much a chameleon as a utility man, willing to lend wherever and do whatever is necessary to make a finished film crackle. I don't necessarily go into a movie thinking "Gee, I hope Bruce McGill is in this" but every time I leave a movie featuring Bruce McGill I think "Why isn't he in everything?"
Mark Ruffalo. You know how back in your party-going days (apologies to those still in their party-going days) there was always that one dude who was at EVERY party? Like, even if you saw him, said goodbye, left the party and cut across town to this other party, he would somehow have already materialized at this other party? Mark Ruffalo is that guy but for actors. If you bought a ticket for a heavy-handed drama but then theater jumped the rest of the day and saw a rom com and an action adventure on the high seas of yore, he would somehow be in all three movies. Make that, he should be in all three movies, because he should be in everything.
Hope Davis. Adept, beautiful, charming and quirkily charismatic, it makes absolutely no sense to me why Hope Davis is not a Star's Star (which, of course, is precisely why it makes complete sense to me). If I ran Hollywood, Hope Davis would be Julia Roberts. And I would decree that Hope Davis should be in everything.
Kevin Corrigan. I confess I am possibly blurring the line between Actors Who Should Be In Everything and Actors I’m Always Happy To See. But then doesn't every film need that ne'er-do-well miscreant lurking in the shadows and off to the side? Or, at the very least, a shady copier repairman or a Proust-loving garbageman or an off-kilter bartender or the unemployed dude just sitting on the stoop? Of course it does. And that's why Kevin Corrigan should be in everything.
Marisa Tomei. Plain and simple and without discussion, Marisa Tomei should be in everything. No, no, no. You clearly don’t understand. Marisa Tomei should be in E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
My work here is done.
That, as it had to, totally got me to thinking: what actors/actresses should be in everything? Today I crack the case.
5 Actors Who Should Be In Everything
Bruce McGill. Most recently glimpsed as Edwin Stanton, “Lincoln’s” Secretary of War, McGill has been acting since the year I was born. Mostly (always?) seen in supporting parts, he is not so much a chameleon as a utility man, willing to lend wherever and do whatever is necessary to make a finished film crackle. I don't necessarily go into a movie thinking "Gee, I hope Bruce McGill is in this" but every time I leave a movie featuring Bruce McGill I think "Why isn't he in everything?"
Mark Ruffalo. You know how back in your party-going days (apologies to those still in their party-going days) there was always that one dude who was at EVERY party? Like, even if you saw him, said goodbye, left the party and cut across town to this other party, he would somehow have already materialized at this other party? Mark Ruffalo is that guy but for actors. If you bought a ticket for a heavy-handed drama but then theater jumped the rest of the day and saw a rom com and an action adventure on the high seas of yore, he would somehow be in all three movies. Make that, he should be in all three movies, because he should be in everything.
Hope Davis. Adept, beautiful, charming and quirkily charismatic, it makes absolutely no sense to me why Hope Davis is not a Star's Star (which, of course, is precisely why it makes complete sense to me). If I ran Hollywood, Hope Davis would be Julia Roberts. And I would decree that Hope Davis should be in everything.
Kevin Corrigan. I confess I am possibly blurring the line between Actors Who Should Be In Everything and Actors I’m Always Happy To See. But then doesn't every film need that ne'er-do-well miscreant lurking in the shadows and off to the side? Or, at the very least, a shady copier repairman or a Proust-loving garbageman or an off-kilter bartender or the unemployed dude just sitting on the stoop? Of course it does. And that's why Kevin Corrigan should be in everything.
Marisa Tomei. Plain and simple and without discussion, Marisa Tomei should be in everything. No, no, no. You clearly don’t understand. Marisa Tomei should be in E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
My work here is done.
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