As Little as Possible

Just your needing me won't make it come back

2009-08-11T18:11:00.006-04:00

This is my 537th post over 54 months. If my recent blog activity is any indication, it will likely be my last.

I wonder if anyone still pokes around here. An abandoned blog is kind of like a ghost town. The infrastructure stands. The people are gone. Someone may pass through -- a wrong turn via a forsaken link -- but no one stays.

Oscar nomination predictions

2009-01-20T10:02:00.003-05:00

Hi, I'm alive. And as such, I will make my usual outrageous Oscar predictions. I have a hunch that Benjamin Button is facing a major turnabout and might see snubs in high places, but I'm not confident enough to remove it from my best pic shortlist. Here are the highlights of my predix:

1. The Dark Knight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will both get 11 nominations -- including picture, director, and adapted screenplay -- although Brad Pitt will be snubbed.

2. Two of the director slots will not match up with the best picture slots. Darren Aronofsky and Gus Van Sant will be cited, while The Wrestler and Milk will be bested for best pic slots by Wall*E and Frost/Nixon.

3. Actors nominated: Leonardo DiCaprio, Melissa Leo, Richard Jenkins, Clint Eastwood, Dev Patel.

4. Actors snubbed: Sally Hawkins, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rosemarie Dewitt, Pitt, James Franco, Taraji P. Henson.

5. Slumdog Millionaire will have 10 nominations, keeping itself in underdog status (technically). Noms will include original song for "Jai Ho."

6. Only 21 films will fill 19 categories, with Slumdog, Dark Knight and Benjamin Button hogging almost all of the technical categories. Few surprises will sneak in; the surprises will come in the shuffling of films already in the mix. The only "surprise" I can foresee is a nomination for the screenplay of The Visitor and "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" from Hamlet 2 for original song.

7. Clint Eastwood, in addition to best actor, will be nominated twice more: as composer of the original score for Changeling and as co-writer for Gran Torino's titular song.

Thoughts?

FYC: Kristen Wiig in Ghost Town

2009-01-06T21:45:00.006-05:00

In Ghost Town, Kristen Wiig doesn't do anything different from her usual Saturday Night Live schtick (the same schtick she schticked in Knocked Up). The schtick is still f*cking funny and it works in this movie, which is a charming soft-shoe into the afterlife. Wiig plays a surgeon who prepares and administers a colonoscopy to Ricky Gervais. Talk about a great comic setup.

She has two scenes -- before and after anesthesia -- and in both she exploits her masterful deadpan and clipped cadence. She's delightfully flippant in both, and adds a bit of verbal slapstick that mixes nicely with Gervais' straight man routine. Actually, when the two are sparring over whether or not Gervais died briefly during the procedure, you can't really tell who is the straight man:

WIIG: Ehhhverybody dies.
GERVAIS: Yes, but at the ends of their lives, and usually just the once.
WIIG: Ehhhverybody's different.

What a curious repeat pair of line readings. What a curious comic actor. If this is the one note Wiig has in her repertoire, then at least she can take heart that it's a good one. There are those who might say her appearance in Ghost Town is too brief to elevate it from cameo to supporting, but I say who cares. Supporting is supporting, not "second lead." It's the small gems, the quicksilver laughs. Wiig delivers them here.

This post is part of StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Blogathon. What actor would you nominate in the category?

FYC: Hannah Bailey in American Teen

2009-01-04T12:51:00.009-05:00

American Teen is billed as a documentary -- about what it means to be a high schooler in the United States in the 21st century -- and that's what it is, I suppose. It is a document. I saw it several times over the summer (for professional reasons). The first time I thought it was cute. The second time I thought it was cheap. And the third time I thought the film's glossy packaging, re-staged moments, and adherence to the narrative conventions of fiction made it a document about a generation raised in front of screens. This movie is not about real-life high school as much as it is about a generation who has been raised by television, and movies, and cell phones, and technologies that keep us occupied in a fantasy land instead of engaging us in the real world. This generation (my generation) knows how to present itself on camera, and its members know what's expected of them after "action." They know how their peers act on MTV and Bravo reality shows. And with American Teen, they had a director whose vision seemed about as real as The Real World.

I'm not suggesting Hannah Bailey is a fictional character. She is a real woman who had a real high school experience during which real things happened. I'm not suggesting her triumphs and problems were manufactured. But never once in American Teen does she forget the camera is watching her. By virtue of her natural traits and her screen savvy, Hannah is the heart and soul of the movie: pretty, charismatic, hip, nerdy in an endearing way, kind of a real-life Juno. American Teen director Nanette Burstein wisely focuses on Hannah, who has the necessary charisma and self-awareness to "carry a movie." And the two collaborate to create one of the more endearing characters onscreen in 2008.

Hannah Bailey laughs, cries, drinks, rocks out on the guitar, descends into depression, yearns to get out of her podunk town, and finally hops in a car and heads West. And we do all these things with her. All of these disparate events are packaged like a coming-of-age movie, with a beginning, middle and end. Hannah must perform when monologuing to the camera, when going through the natural beats of her story, when re-living the beats of her story that the camera missed the first time around. She knows the camera is there, and she knows what lines and actions will make a good scene (she gets more laughs and votes of sympathy than any of the other "characters"). Maybe the Hannah Bailey onscreen is the same as Hannah Bailey in real life. But when you know you're on camera, and you have a director who reinforces this self-awareness, and you have been raised in a media-savvy world...

Well, when the camera starts rolling, you become a character and you give a performance. And Hannah Bailey's was a memorable one, for more reasons than one.

This post is part of StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Blogathon. What actor would you nominate in the category?

Oh Sister James...

2008-12-04T18:36:00.001-05:00

I have doubts. I have such doubts.

The Fix Is In: Election Reflection

2008-11-05T12:16:00.002-05:00

I have only one memory of the 2000 election. This may be because I was a senior in high school and the world outside of me didn’t exist. The memory is from the limbo between Election Day and the Supreme Court ruling that finally gave us a president-elect. One of my Jesuit teachers plodded around the hallways of my Buffalo school mumbling, “The fix is in.” Every day. “The fix is in.”

He was talking about the election. I didn’t really know what he meant, until “the fix” turned into the next eight years of life.

I turned 18 on Sept. 11, 2001. It was my second week at college in Washington.

I have three memories from that day. I remember seeing, from the top floor of my dorm room, a spire of black smoke on the horizon. I remember, like everyone else, a blinding blue sky. I remember, at night, watching a man walk on the giant granite world map on the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the streetlights went from green to yellow to red to green even though there were no cars. The man flicked on his lighter over New York, then did the same over the Middle East, then sat down in the south of Spain.

The next seven years, for me, were like a prolonged vacation. College was fine. I lived abroad. I spent the best summers of my life at home, with friends, doing theatre. I interned at three fabulous publications before settling at the most fabulous of them all, where I have been gainfully employed with benefits. I have friends and a family who have provided for me. I have, in essence, skipped like a stone over the muck. I have been care-free, careless, as self-involved as I was in high school.

During this time, the country got away from me, from us. I blame myself. But I also blame the political climate in which I came of age. It was fearful, muddled, cynical, backward, conducive to complacency, unresponsive to the needs of the people, predicated on vulnerabilities sprung from a cataclysm. The climate appealed to the worst in us, which made a lot of us remain on the sidelines; who wants to play a game that is rigged from the start? Among all of our breathtaking national failures, the worst is still, I think, the episode of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib. Invading another country, arresting people, depriving them of due process and humiliating them — all under the guise of spreading a democracy that we ourselves don’t wholly practice — simply invalidates the United States of America as an idea. And without that idea on which we were founded, we don’t have much. How did Abu Ghraib happen? Complacency. We do what we want, consequences be damned.

It doesn’t make sense to blame one person. Sure, George W. Bush can be faulted for allowing corruption to smother him and his country. His was a poor example. But he was not the lone actor. Everyone who stood and watched can be faulted too. The United States of America has grown rich enough to allow many of its citizens to create their own self-sufficient worlds, cut off from circumstance. Wrapped in these cocoons, we have ignored those who need our help, our power and our voice. We have ignored ourselves. We let government get away with things because we thought it wouldn’t affect our own lives.

I became an adult on Sept. 11, but almost immediately I reverted back to the pupa stage, which is where I’ve remained. Until, I think, now. A prolonged war and an imminent depression has snapped me out of it. We created a savior when we needed one, and Barack Obama has gamely played the part. There appears to be, to our great luck, a good deal of substance behind his spectacle.

If I wasn’t a pseudo-journalist, I would express the elation of witnessing the election of a new president after being slowly and systematically beaten down by the current political climate. I would express the thundering wonder of watching a nation of PEOPLE — not inherited wealth or age-old political machines — launch a candidate to the the land’s highest office. I would express the admiration for a man who, if nothing else, appeals to the best of us. And that's a great start.

When the election was called last night at 11 p.m., I was at 14th and U streets, ground zero of the 1968 race riots of Washington. Forty years after buildings were burned, an entire city took to the streets with unchecked jubilation to celebrate the election of a biracial president. A drum circle on the corner reached a fever pitch, and passersby swarmed. Inside bars and restaurants, patrons pounded against the windows at the those watching the TVs from outside. Any object available to stand on was stood on, and the blare of car horns almost drowned out the repeated shouts of "Oh my God!" as strangers high-fived each other and fell into embraces. I have never seen or felt anything like it. I will keep three memories from yesterday: the sound of the car horns, the smell of damp pavement, and the sight of “Barack Obama Elected President” first sweeping onto the TV screen and sending a giant tremor up and down the street.

After absorbing the scene, I cabbed back to the Post to write three sentences of copy that wouldn’t be used. The frantic newsroom paused to watch Obama’s midnight speech at Grant Park and then resumed the work of stilling history into words and images.

Then I went to the White House, where hundreds pressed toward the gates. The mansion was dark both inside and out. Versailles was finally surrounded. The people have acted to protect themselves. A crowd of young people sang “God Bless America” toward the White House. The last time I witnessed a similar scene, it was 2001, days after 9/11, when the city converged on the Mall to mourn. Eight years later, something is finally worth celebrating. Most of the crowd appeared college-aged. How nice to become an adult on a promising note. Let’s not squander that promise.

In spite of the stunning errors of the current government, this election was not really about the issues. A president cannot solve a problem with a scribble of his pen. This election has always been about empowerment. Barack Obama won the presidency because he recognizes that a nation operates best when entrusted to the industry, altruism and vision of its citizens. And we needed to be reminded of that.

We worked together on these past eight years. We made them miserable for ourselves. Maybe it was necessary to our evolution. Maybe the first decade of the 21st century was equal to a young person’s adolescence, when bad decisions are made from a position of intense self-involvement. Everyone is forced to grow up sooner or later.

I said before that it doesn’t make sense to blame one person for a nation’s ills. It also does not make sense to invest hope in one person. Chants of “Yes We Can” turned to “Yes We Did” last night, and that made me nervous. The reparation of the country is not over. It has barely started: California voters, led chiefly by minorities, defeated same-sex marriage yesterday. Separate-but-equal. Still. Even on this momentous day. This further proves the election of a president is, at the start, an inspirational formality. Obama may be a great leader, but the country will not meet that standard unless its citizens do.

Perhaps today is a first step toward national adulthood, but it must be a collective step. The American people have proven they can send a man to the White House against all odds. Now, we must realize our powers do not stop there. The fix is in, but the fixing is ours to accomplish.

Station identification

2008-10-27T11:47:00.003-04:00

Sometimes my professional life demands that I write about movies, so that's where I've been this past week: watching a crap-ton of apocalyptic flicks and writing down errant thoughts. Apologies for not keeping up. However! Last night friends and I watched both Ghostbusters movies back to back. We used a projector and aimed it at a big wall in the house, so it was a borderline theatrical experience. So I hope to continue with the Ghostbusters@25 series soon.

Bette without a butt

2008-10-13T14:40:00.004-04:00

Roger Ebert is flourishing as a blogger. The freedom agrees with him. Currently he has a great post on the new Bette Davis stamp, for which her ever-present cigarette was erased: (look at that pose! The erasure is laughably obvious):

Look, I hate smoking. It took my parents from me, my father with lung cancer, my mother with emphysema. [...] On the other hand, I have never objected to smoking in the movies, especially when it is necessary to establish a period or a personality. [...] If virtually all actresses smoked, Bette Davis smoked more than virtually all actresses. When she appeared on the Tonight Show the night after she co-hosted the Oscars, she walked onstage, shook Johnny's hand, sat down, pulled out her Vantages, and lit up. Tumultuous applause. I would guess it is impossible for an impressionist to do Bette Davis without using a cigarette.

Related post: The censors take on filters: Casting a pall (mall) on the alluring, noirish cool of the movies.

This weekend, vacation in Crawford

2008-10-10T13:35:00.006-04:00

Hulu is out with its first movie premiere: Crawford, a documentary about the Texas town in which Bush "lives." It's a small masterpiece -- a short, sad, clear-headed look at how the sentiments of a small town are italicized (and then eroded) by the residency of a sitting president. It starts off slow but picks up around minute 30, when Crawford reveals itself as a pressure-cooked microcosm of a divided U.S.A. It turns heartbreaking in the last 15 minutes, when we see what the withering blast of "with us or against us" does when trained on only 700 people. Bravo to director David Modigliani (his first credit) and his crew.

Via The House Next Door.

Marge Gunderson interviews Sarah Palin

2008-10-10T08:00:00.003-04:00

This mash-up needed to be done. But the scene in which Marge Gunderson sautées Jerry Lundegaard in politeness would've been a better pick. Couldn't fine the scene on the YouTubes, dammit. Someone get on that.

We're in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.

2008-10-09T23:58:00.003-04:00

New banner courtesy of Beedow, a former blogger who should blog again. He's a natural writer. But he's also a working actor, so time is short. At this point I'd name his favorite movie, just to keep in line with the mission of this blog, but I actually don't know what his favorite movie is. So I'm just going to guess Singin' in the Rain. Thanks, Beedow.

Ghostbusters @ 25: Ernie Hudson, Winston Zeddemore and the fourth wheel

2008-10-09T10:00:00.001-04:00

In Ghostbusters: Winston Zeddemore is hired a half hour into the movie, and for what? To carry the workload? He has no special skills. He doesn't seem to be compelled by the job, either, but answers an ad in the paper and is screened by Janine Melnitz simply because he needs work.

Janine: Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?

Winston: Ah, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.

Why would Stantz and Spengler hire someone who doesn't share their passion for the paranormal? Maybe it's because Winston is the only person to show up for the interview. Or the only person who is open-minded enough to believe in the work. (Wikipedia says Winston was a firefighter, which has a passing relationship with ghostbusting I guess.) When Ray first meets Winston, he treats him with a certain dismissive acceptance. The most we know about Winston is that he's a bit religious, if not superstitious. Winston loves "Jesus's style," which maybe prepares this newbie for facing a demon. Winston does get some good lines ("That's a big twinkie," "Ray, if someone asks if you're a god, you say YES," "I've seen shit that will turn you white" and the final line of the movie: "I love this town!"), but he never grabs for the movie's center. He just adds a little bit of color (excuse the pun) and flexible skepticism to the otherwise academic trifecta of ghost-obsessed white men. Notice the blocking in the screenshot at the top of this post.

The biographical rundown: The Ghostbusters series was obviously Ernie Hudson's one-and-only huge hit. He made the first when he was 39. The Yale graduate subsequently appeared in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Congo. He's often cast in roles of authority: a sergeant in both The Crow and Airheads, the warden on "Oz," FBI assistant director in Miss Congeniality, detective in "Desperate Housewives" and a doctor in several other minor movies. Today, at 62, he seems to be a regular on the comic convention circuit and is, with the other members of the original cast, lending his voice to the newest Ghostbusters video game.

What it all means: One wonders how the franchise might be different if Eddie Murphy had accepted the role. The dynamics certainly would've changed. In the '80s, no one was a bigger comic star than Murphy. Ghostbusters 2, especially, would've probably been all about Murray and Murphy battling for screen supremacy. But with an unknown like Hudson in the role, the franchise started as a buddy comedy between three white guys. The first movie's poster did not include Winston Zeddemore. The trailer didn't mention Ernie Hudson. This would be rectified when the sequel came out. Either way, Hudson and Winston always felt like the fourth wheel on a tricycle. This wasn't an entirely bad thing. It was just curious. I assume Hudson will be asked back for the third movie so the purists do not erupt with anger. Here's hoping. And to close, here's how the original movie's trailer would've looked if Hudson had been the star:

Upcoming: Bill Murray, Annie Potts, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver. Previously: Dan Aykroyd, Rick Moranis.

Marathon movie-watching, catheter optional

2008-10-08T11:16:00.006-04:00

Two people have broken a Guinness World Record by watching movies for 123 hours inside a transparent plastic box in Times Square. Apparently they could not divert their eyes from the screen (makes sense) but they could have a 10-minute break between movies, which seems like cheating until you realize 123 hours equals about five days, and when else are they going to sleep? I could not do this. I fall asleep easily, and I am virtually incapable of watching more than two or three movies in a row except when in film-festival mode (and even then it gets tiresome).

I've thought about doing a straight sit-through of the Alien franchise. I'm sure many people have watched all six Star Wars movies in a row. I myself have never engaged in a marathon of anything other than "Arrested Development." Although on Sunday I plan to watch Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 back-to-back. But that's not quite a feat.

Anyway, the news story does not say what the record-breakers watched, other than Iron Man to begin and Thelma and Louise to end. Did they have options? Or was the lineup pre-programmed? Estimating a total of 10.25 hours of breaktime leaves 112.5 hours for movie-watching. You could probably fit 56 movies in that time, figuring an average of two hours for running time. If I had to perform this feat and could choose the movies, I'd want a heart-racer or spine-tingler every third or fourth movie, just so I'd stay in the game. Here would be my 15 picks to split up the slog, in order of intensity:

Hour 8. The Innocents. Just enough silence and dread to perk me up.
Hour 16. Michael Clayton. I would not miss a frame of this delicious movie.
Hour 24. Changing Lanes. Same here. Gorgeous, suspenseful drama.
Hour 32. Wild Things. A little titillation after more than a day of watching.
Hour 40. True Lies. Lots of fun, with great pacing by John Cameron.
Hour 48. The Game. A tense mindf*ck. A clamor for relief.
Hour 56. The Fugitive. Harrison Ford carries me all the way.
Hour 64. The Shining. There's something about long, straight tracking shots.
Hour 72. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Quintessential bruised-forearm movie.
Hour 80. Open Water. You can't fall asleep while treading water.
Hour 88. The Silence of the Lambs. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Hour 96. The Blair Witch Project. This is the only terrifying movie on here.
Hour 104. Requiem for a Dream. Can't imagine what this is like to watch on no sleep.
Hour 112. Speed. A movie with three great climaxes. Bam bam bam.
Hour 120. Alien. To look away or fall asleep would be like plugging one's ears during a Beethoven symphony.

What movie always makes you perk up? What is the most intense movie you've ever seen? My answer to the latter question (right now, anyway) is Training Day, which completely gutted and drained me even though (or because) I didn't really like it.

MY MARRIAGE IS ON FIRE!

2008-10-06T12:57:00.005-04:00

I first got wind of the new Kirk Cameron marriage-in-peril Christian movie Fireproof a couple weeks ago, when I saw the trailer.

This parish-financed movie has won the praise of Mike Huckabee, the archbishop of Louisville and Bubba Cathy, the churchy senior vice president of Chick-fil-A. Now The New York Times has picked up on it, noting that it's so far made $12.5 million at the box office (set against its $500,000 budget). As much as I want to mock this movie, I will not. I haven't seen it. Maybe it's good. Religious-themed movies can be excellent. The Mission, for example, is one of my faves. But The Mission does not evangelize. Based on its trailer, I'm worried that Fireproof is doing exactly that, and only that. I'm worried that it will inspire couples to stay in failing marriages -- unions that will combust with or without God's help because sometimes, regardless of holy matrimony, people aren't meant to be together. I'm worried that a struggling couple will see this movie, and force themselves to stay miserable together rather than do what's best for both of them: divorce.

Blasphemy! I can see Bubba Cathy brandishing a chicken nugget at me and smearing her palms, feet and side with BBQ sauce and screaming "Stigmata!" Perhaps I'm being unfair. It's just that the political climate has made me frightened of religious messages, regardless of nuance. Too much badness has been waged in the name of monotheism. War, for example. Or futilely clinging to a dead relationship and doing emotional damage to oneself, one's partner and one's children.

Anyway. Might I suggest a great double-billing? Fireproof, followed by Bill Maher's Religulous. Or vice versa. Room for everyone! Except the crazies.

Monday

2008-10-06T12:10:00.003-04:00

I may continue my Ghostbusters @ 25 series today, if I finish the post on Ernie Hudson. Or I may spread the series out over this month. We'll see. In the meantime, peruse the My Best Post Blogathon at He Shot Cyrus, a new-ish blog that's a lot of fun. The proprietor certainly knows more about the realm of blogging than I do. Exhibit A: He seems to be cultivating an actual readership, and the headlining banner at the top of his homepage is pretty stunning. Anyway, my submission for the 'thon is my Triple Crowners series, which is technically seven posts, but whatever. I swear I'll get to the next series installment before the end of the year. Really.

Ghostbusters @ 25: Rick Moranis, Louis Tully and country music

2008-10-03T12:00:00.001-04:00

Rick Moranis is not dead. In 2004, a friend assured me he was. Someone started a rumor on the Internets. Maybe it was Moranis himself. Maybe he wanted to remind people he was alive (irony!) and planning to release a comedy album the following year. Either way, he retired from the movies in 1997 and hasn't been seen since. But he's been heard from. You'll see what I mean.

In Ghostbusters: Moranis plays Louis Tully, the wimpy accountant living next to Dana Barrett in an apartment building constructed as a conduit for demons. In the first film, we see him whenever he pops out of his apartment to say hello to Dana. Inevitably, he locks himself out. Eventually, Moranis gets to shine while hosting a cocktail party. He flits between guests, dropping uncouth information about new arrivals as if that's what a host is supposed to do. Soon there is a growl from his bedroom, allowing Moranis to utter a line for the ages: "Oookay, who brought the dog?"

It gets ugly from there for Louis Tully, who is posessed by the dog and becomes the Key Master. One of the movie's gags comes from the odd pairing of short, stooped Moranis and the tall, statuesque Sigourney Weaver. Seeing them make out while posessed on a pile of rubble is exceptionally funny. The whole posession thing sets up one of Louis's great little punchlines in the sequel, in which Tully defends the Ghostbusters in court:

Your Honor, ladies and gentleman of the audience, I don't think it's fair to call my clients frauds. Sure, the blackout was a big problem for everybody. I was trapped in an elevator for two hours and I had to make the whole time. But I don't blame them. Because one time I turned into a dog and they helped me. Thank you.

In the sequel, Moranis gets even more to work with. Louis gets the girl (Janine Melnitz!) and he gets credit for saving the world at the end of the movie. Moranis's performance in the court-room sequence is great comedy. He stumbles over every legal convention ("My guys are still under a judicial mistrangement order -- that blue thing I got from her!"). It's very winning. Moranis took Woody Allen's stock character from the '70s and turned up the volume and the anxiety for the '80s. It worked. It works.

The biographical rundown: After starting as a player on SCTV, Moranis spent most of the '80s and '90s as a sort-of movie star. Ghostbusters propelled him to starring roles in successful vehicles like Little Shop of Horrors, Spaceballs, Parenthood, Honey I Shrunk the Kid and its sequels. His wife died of liver cancer in 1991. He gave up the movies in 1997 to focus entirely on his kids. And then he reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter. Take a look at this. Yep, that's Louis Tully doing his best John Mellencamp pose. Moranis was nominated for a Grammy in 2006. Make sure to read this profile from The Independent, which has this nice biographical nugget midway through: How the now 53-year-old actor ended up quitting a successful movie career, writing and recording a colourful collection of country songs, and latterly penning comment pieces for The New York Times, is a tale that has its roots in tragedy.

The profile also goes on to say Moranis has an "obscenely spacious" apartment overlooking Central Park. I find this oddly comforting. I don't know why. I'm just glad he's not a washed-up actor renting a bungalow in Venice Beach. This man made a conscious decision to change his life, though he still has the spoils of his career to keep him comfortable.

What's it all mean? It means that another Ghostbusters needs Louis Tully. And maybe Rick Moranis needs another Ghostbusters. Yes, he has sworn off acting. But to be back in the improvisational arena with Murray and Aykroyd and Ramis? I hope there's a part for him in the script, and I hope it lures him out. And it's not just me who wants to see him again:

Monday: Ernie Hudson. Upcoming: Bill Murray, Annie Potts, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver.

The Ghostbusters @ 25 and the lost Dan Aykroyd interview

2008-10-02T08:00:00.007-04:00

Next June is the 25th anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters and the 20th anniversary of Ghostbusters II. Both were a big part of my movie-watching childhood. And now Ghostbusters 3 appears to really be in the works, and set for a release in 2010. Two guys from "The Office" are writing it for the original cast. As it should be. The last thing I'd want to see is Ghostbusters 3 headlined by Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, Jay Baruchel, Nick Cannon and Megan Fox. Can you imagine? Yech. Let's take a look at where the original cast is today. They're all still alive (even Alice Drummond, who played the hyperventilating librarian in the opening sequence!). We start today with:

Dan Aykroyd

In Ghostbusters: Aykroyd played Ray Stantz, the wide-eyed, child-like nerd and PhD. If Egon is the brains and Venkman the nerves, Stantz is the heart. He's an expert on paranormal psychology and metallurgy, and is responsible for unleashing the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man on Manhattan.

The biographical rundown: Now 56. Wrote and starred in Ghostbusters at the tender age of 31, four years out of SNL. After, he continued double duty on both Spies Like Us (1985) with Chevy Chase and Dragnet (1987) with an about-to-go-supernova Tom Hanks. He delivered a selfless, horrifying performance in Caddyshack II (1988), effectively canceled out with his 1990 Oscar nomination for Driving Miss Daisy, effectively canceled out by his panned sole directorial effort Nothing but Trouble (1991), effectively canceled out by his successful, sensitive starring turn nine months later in My Girl. He rode out the rest of the '90s with bit parts and a failed Coneheads adaptation. He hasn't written a movie since Blues Brothers 2000, focusing primarily on performing and building his House of Blues empire.

What's it all mean?: I spent a couple hours with Aykroyd in April 2005. He was working on a special 25th anniversary DVD of The Blues Brothers. What was supposed to be a 10-minute magazine Q&A turned into a two-hour ride around Manhattan in Aykroyd's rental car. At the time, it was the coolest thing ever. He came across exactly as he described himself to me. "I was a warrior then," he said of the SNL and Ghostbusters years, and "Now I'm a Roman general looking back at his great campaigns and saying he needs to tend the pastures." He seemed very content to live in the present and enjoy the echoes of the past. But now it seems the general is bringing the action to his pastures for old time's sake. He's not writing Ghostbusters 3, and maybe that's for the best. He can act out the success of his past with the fresh ideas from the present. And that sounds great.

Bonus: I recently discovered the entire transcript of our conversation. Since the magazine only printed three or four truncated snippets of our conversation, I thought I'd run most of it right here. There's some really great stuff in it. The conversational English is not cleaned up. Enjoy.

[We're sitting in a hotel lobby.]

JJ: I'm wondering how the trademark Blues Brothers dance came about -- the kind of having-a-fit-on-hot-coals, toes going everywhere -- is that something that happened because of the music?

Dan Aykroyd: I think you're probably right there. Just because of the music. That's just what I did at the time. Now, of course like, you know, I mean, so many great dancers -- the Nicholas brothers, Fred Astaire, Donald O'Connor, "Singin' in the Rain" -- I mean, being exposed to all these great choreographers and choreography and dancing would tend to try to, I guess, inspire us. Now we had a great choreographer on the film, Carlton Johnson. That was just what the music did to me at the time. I don't think I could get the knees up that high now. Maybe...

You were talking with the woman up there [in the hotel room, filming a DVD interview] about how to classify whether it was comedy first, or musical comedy. What I thought watching it was "epic comedy." It seemed kind of epic to me because it's a road-trip movie, it's a buddy movie, there's chase scenes, there's big musical numbers, there's Nazis -- I mean, Illinois Nazis, but still -- and this kind of vengeful love story subplot. Do you think "epic comedy" is a good term?

Epic's a good term for it. It really is. Because it had big scope and big scale and Landis is a filmmaker who loves David Lean.

It came to me kind of like a Lawrence of Arabia --

In an urban scape. Yeah, I think you can say it was an epic piece. That's a good application of that term, for sure.

From the average Joe on the street, what do you get most? Do you get "Hey, Elwood!" or "Hey, ghostbuster!" or "Hey, Bassomatic 76!" What do people seem to know you most for these days?

I don't get much. The most recognition I get are from 18- to 25- to 30-year-old young women for the father in My Girl. I have this other demographic of women: 47 through 75, who like The Blues Brothers and Driving Miss Daisy. So I got this young female demographic that recognizes me as the father in "My Girl" -- that don't know "Ghostbusters" or "Blues Brothers," it's not their type of film -- and then I've got the older female demographic that's "Driving Miss Daisy" and "The Blues Brothers." And otherwise I'm not -- most people say "Love your work" or something. Other than those specific references, it's older woman love "Driving Miss Daisy," younger women "My Girl."

That's amazing.

Oh yeah.

If I saw you on the street I would go "Ray Stantz."

Oh yeah.

Because I was a Ghostbuster for many Halloweens, not to date you.

Ah.

I just find that so strange.

You know, the recognition factor is kind of diminishing a little bit.

Is that something you welcome?

Oh that's fine. I think it's just a factor of you know, there's a whole new generation watching new people come up. And guys my age on the swing either way, older or younger, are just recognized and people say "love the work."

[At this point, we move to the front of the lobby and an older woman comes up to him and says "I love your work," and Aykroyd looks at me with a knowing "told you so" smile. She proceeds to say that she loves "That film with that woman," and Aykroyd says "Driving Miss Daisy," looking at me again, and she goes "Yeah, that's it!" We walk outside onto Park Avenue looking for the rental car.]

Do you catch any "SNL" these days?

Oh all the time. I'm a faithful, faithful fan of the show. I watch the live broadcasts when I'm not there. And nipping in and out of New York as I do, when they're doing a show here, when I have friends that want to go, I bring them over and I sit with Lorne.

What do you think of it these days?

I think that the girls are strong. The girls are strong. Rachel [Dratch] and Amy [Poehler], strong, strong. I love the new cast. I think they're great. Love the writers. Jim Downey is a master of political writing.

[The valet brings the car and we slip inside.]

What was I saying?

The women are strong.

Oh yeah, the women! And the writing! And Jim Downey -- he's the greatest political writer. You know James Downey.

Sure. [I didn't.]

He does all their political humor. Spectacular writer. Great artist, and love his work. Steve Higgins, the head writer/producer, is a great guy, he has an incredible sensibility. And so I'm a fan, a continuing fan. I went back and hosted a couple years ago, the May 17 show two years ago, and wrote with Tom David my older partner. We used to write the Coneheads together. It felt good, and that was a good show.

Is the sketch-writing something you miss a lot?

Mmm, I think I've pretty much explored the three-minute television sketch format for life, basically.

So is the newest thing continuing to perform?

It's getting the House of Blues company where we're really a meaningful brand in the concert business. We're the third biggest in the world now. So we'll stabilize and get some more venues open. There's people clamoring for it -- every city you go to, "please put one here, please put one here." So we have to make the selections properly, finance, capitalize it properly, and not spend too much like we used to. We spent too much on the early ones and now we have to be sensible and rein things in. And then it's the concerts with Jimmy [Belushi]. So that's basically where my whole thrust is right now: House of Blues, performing, music. I would say it occupies a lot of my time now. I'm on the board of the company and I'd like to see my investors get some of their money.

So how's the time divided then?

It's pretty much half-focused on opening clubs, board meetings, and half concert dates and -- well let's see. I'd say a third concert dates, a third House of Blues-related activity, publicity, board meetings and calls, and a third personal. A third trying to raise my girls.

And city-wise?

City-wise it's mostly I would say on the road, according to my calendar, it's mostly on the road. Two-thirds on the road and then we have my home in Canada where we go for the summers and then my wife has the kids in school in New York City. And when I'm not here they travel with me. And they work. When they come to a concert, they dance, they all come up onstage. Wear basic black, put the earplugs in. And I have those girls working.

Do they wear sunglasses?

They wear sunglasses, yep, they do.

How old are they?

I've got a 15-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 7-year-old. And oh no, nobody rides for free.

So where's your place in Canada? Near Ottawa?

It's near Ottawa. It's what they call the Thousand Islands up there. I have an island up there.

What's it like weather-wise this time of year?

It's, huh, beautiful. Beautiful now. Just really, just breaking. It's just cool and sunny. Of course, a month ago it was hang out the meat to freeze.

Same here.

Oh yeah, yeah. Where were you born?

Buffalo.

Oh wow. You know [he slips into a growling voice] the Canadians. You know Toronto then.

Oh yeah, I spent summers in Canada in Thunder Bay. Not [Paul] Shaffer's Thunder Bay. In Ontario.

Really, wow? Well Shaffer's from there. He's from Thunder Bay.

I think it's a different Thunder Bay. It's the one just over the border from Buffalo.

Oh, oh, I see. Ah, yeah, OK. No, he's way up there.

Right, right.

Isn't that fun in the summer, the boating?

Yeah I grew up there across the border.

Cottage country, yeah.

Yes, it's beautiful.

Cool. Where'd you go to school?

American University in Washington.

Great. You writing books yet?

Heh.

Do you like the writing?

I do. I actually just got out of college in December. And just moved here in January.

Beautiful.

So 1980 -- because I've been a fan of the first class of SNLers, and I think there're the only class worth anything --

Well, Will Ferrell, he's pretty -- you know, Old School, great film, great film. And Lovitz, the devil that Lovitz used to do.

I like the Pathological Liars Association.

Yeah.

I was looking at 1980 and I think Caddyshack came out within a month of the Blues Brothers. And those to me are the two archetypal comedies of that era.

Caddyshack was prior, it was before. I believe it was before.

It was the same year.

Because Caddyshack sort of -- it might of been. Well that's one of the greatest comedies ever written. Animal House, Caddyshack, Old School, Blues Brothers, maybe Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Uncle Buck. The Candy movies with John Hughes, I like them a lot. The Great Outdoors. I did a good picture with Candy. The Great Outdoors, if you like cottage country, that was the definitive cottage country movie.

I'm partial to Uncle Buck myself.

Uncle Buck was -- see this was John Hughes, a tremendous writer. What a vibrant, beautiful writer he is. Prolific, amazing.

So what was the mood like, because I know you've got Bill and Chevy in Caddyshack at the same time you and John were in Blues Brothers. What was the feeling? Were you guys like, "We're golden gods now, we've got it."

Oh yeah, we called ourselves "living media gods." Small "g," though. Small "g." We were bratty, ratty, little tyrants, of course, at the time. But we supported each other. We loved to see the success of our colleagues, you know. Chevy was my biggest cheerleader at SNL and we loved Murray of course. You know, who doesn't to this day? He is universally revered. He had such an influence on all of us at Second City. Just his boldness, his style. His character the Honker that he sort of does in Caddyshack -- all of us at Second City were doing the Honker onstage and off. We used to go after work and go to the Old Town Alehouse and [at this point, Aykroyd spits out unintelligible Honker phrases, reminiscent of Murray's character in Caddyshack]. And Billy would do the Honker in Times Square. And in Chicago. And everyone did the Honker. And to this day.

I admit to doing the Honker. You know, anytime the Dalai Lama comes up. "The Lama."

"Uh yes, uh, hehh." That whole announcing thing that he does where he's addressing the ball.

"About to win...the Master's Championship."

Yeah. Everyone loved it. So there was a lot of universal love around. We were riding high. But we also had a fear of the future, what's going to happen after this. And thank God that phase of my life's over.

Yeah, it's all held up. How often do you see those guys?

I see Billy and Chevy more than Jane or Laraine. I see Billy and Chevy frequently, a few times a year. Billy I seek out for little mini-adventures.

Like what?

A visit up to his house, or have him come and see me, you know, have a House of Blues music night if possible.

Do you golf?

I am not golfer, I'm a golf cart mechanic. I can fix the batteries.

So where are you off to next? You said this was a rental car?

Yeah, this is -- oh boy. I'm of the Hunter Thompson School of Rental Car Occupancy. I'm rough on them. We had this one off-roading this weekend in Martha's Vineyard. It's got the Sirius -- I love this satellite radio.

So you were in Martha's Vineyard then, over the weekend?

I was there. You know, John and I bought a house there with our first checks from Atlantic Records in 1978. And we had a home there every since. His wife, his widow, the new Mrs. Pisano, lives up there full time basically.

So you drove down here then?

I drove the car. I had to go up there. My wife and I have been thinking of tearing down a wall or two so we drove up there and drove back. This is not my regular ride. My regular ride is either the Harley in the summer. I got a police bike that Willie Davidson commissioned for me right from the factory floor. Dead stop, policeman's seats, special, beautiful. There's that, and then I have a very environmentally incorrect Ford Excursion, 10-cylinder.

Is it a good car?

Well the thing is I have a family of five and a bird and a dog and luggage. I would need two of these Lincolns, 16 cylinders, to hall what I do with the truck at 10. So that's how I rationalize that. And then my favorite ride of all, my favorite car of all, is my 1932 Pierce Arrow limousine, built in Buffalo. You know Pierce Arrow?

Absolutely. The building still stands.

It's still there. I have a 1932 factory limousine Pierce Arrow.

Do you drive it at all?

All the time. I drive it all summer. And then I have a 1941 Buick limousine, straight-A, overhead valve, dual carb, Rochester fuel carbs. So those are two old limos I bang around with in the summer.

You keep those in Canada?

Those are my favorite rides. My wife's due for a new car. I bought a Mercedes V12 for her in '94 but I'm not going to buy a V12 again. Not in the ages of $2.50 gasoline [editor's note: ha!], global warming, air pollution. If I buy her a car, I will buy her an 8-cylinder something, whatever that might be. Maybe one of those Cadillacs. I don't know. She deserves the best. She lives with me.

Must be twenty-some years.

Twenty-three married, twenty-four together I think.

So how much of the stunt driving did you do on Blues Brothers?

Blues Brothers I did...I would say...probably 30 percent of it. You know, some spins and stuff. I didn't do the jumps. But a lot of driving. And just a lot of driving behind the camera car.

That car's not in a museum anywhere, is it?

I think the original one is owned by -- well, the original one where we shot most of the interior scenes like where we're together in the car, which I think would be the one that if you'd want to own the car, it would be the one that John and I spent the most time in -- that one is owned by a police officer in Illinois. [Then, speaking to a careless driver in another lane:] This guy has gotta decide what he's doing.

You think Blues Brothers it the only SNL adaptation to a movie that's worth a damn?

Well I like The Coneheads, you know? I did. I liked The Coneheads. I thought it was a good family picture. But you know, a lot of artists and filmmakers, they say "Oh they marketed it wrong." Well in that case, they really did. It came out in the summer. It shoulda come out at Halloween like we planned. At Halloween it would've worked beautifully. So I really regret that that wasn't handled better. And I'm trying to think of the other incarnations...

Well I'm trying to think of ones that were around when Blues Brothers came out. It was all kind of a mid-'90s thing I guess, when they started come out with the later cast, with "It's Pat" and Molly Shannon's thing. I can't think of anyone in the '80s. Well, Coneheads was the '90s, wasn't it?

Coneheads was early 90s or late 80s. It was after Driving Miss Daisy. So it was early 90s. Well I don't think you can speak of the attempts that the girls made with those two movies in the same breath as Coneheads and Blues Brothers. Those were really great, you know, we had great really strong directors and great writing. The other efforts came up a little short, although the characters are very appealing. You can't take away anything from Molly at all, or the Pat character. But I just think in terms of story and execution -- Coneheads and Blues Brothers are pretty strong, if you can compare them.

I just can't get the David Lean image out of my head, just in terms of the epic. It's the opening shots that struck me.

Landis is a great, great filmmaker. No matter how you cut it or look at it, he's just a great, great filmmaker. Starting with his references to silent comedies, his knowledge of filmography, and the knowledge of the work of these directors. You know, stealing from the best. He just knew how to do that. And knows how to do that.

[We pull into Hertz, drop the car off and then walking West on E. 91st Street, talking about putting a House of Blues in Washington, D.C.]

There's a market for it there I think.

Well House of Blues, we're a house of all music. You know, who'd of thought that you go and see KC and the Sunshine Band have a full house and have an incredible night of entertainment? Incredible. We do Tom Jones, we'll do Little Richard when he's touring, Johnny Winter. We have tribute bands, Latin bands, we have all hip-hop and rap artists, anybody breaking a new record. It's a house of all music.

So are you in the midst of a tour?

I'm in the midst of the San Diego opening in the Gas Lamp District on May 15. And then our July opening of the House of Blues boutique hotel, poker room, slot room, with Harrah's -- we have a co-venture with Harrah's.

Is this in Vegas?

This is in Atlantic City at the top of the boardwalk. Incredible partners there. So I've got two big club openings coming up and about seven concerts -- some casinos, one corporate, a charity. The band's going to be pretty busy. Jimmy loves it. So don't have to convince him. And while the knees and the hips and the ankles respond well to the binding, I will continue to do it. Because it's just fun. The music is just these great American songs that we get to sing. We sing songs from 1948 right up through the '70s. We bring people up onstage to dance with us.

Does Goodman ever join you?

Goodman will join us for San Diego, yeah. But he's not on the rigorous --I wouldn't want to do that to the man. Jimmy and I could take it because we're so used to it, but it really is work.
[There is a blip in the tape.]

[...] the other daughter, and we go to the Museum of Natural History for the Young Scientists class, which she's been enrolled in the last couple of years. She loves that. It's an aerospace --

Is this the 15-year-old?

No, this is the 7. I'm meeting the 12, picking up the 7, and then the 7's birthday is today so we're going to have a little birthday dinner. I might call Downey. I have an idea for a piece we were talking about.

For SNL?

Yeah, I occasionally will come back and slip something in. So I'm going to talk to him.

Any hints?

Well it's sort of a political satire piece, I'm still fleshing it out. But we'll utilize Darrell Hammond's impeccable Rumsfeld.

So when you show up on the SNL set, do you find people distance themselves in reverence or do they flock to you for advice?

No they're too busy doing their work. It's only afterwards at the party that I can get up and tell them how much I love what they're doing. And they have to say, "Well, thanks Mr. Aykroyd." Little Rachel Dratch -- what a find. I kind of helped get her hired.

Did you?

Oh yeah.

Thank you for that.

I mentioned her name and I also underwrote her hiring by the recommendation of seeing her at Second City, "what do you think of her" and stuff. And I actually did mention her name.

So nothing planned for film, TV?

Pretty much gotta get these clubs open. I'm going to take the month of August off and then we are looking to Europe for House of Blues. London, Paris, Berlin. Maybe Moscow. Australia, they're dying for us there, we want to come down there. So I think the New Year will be focused in on-site planning, studies, approvals, financial approvals, meeting and greeting the people who are going to be supporting us in each town, lining up friendly investors and people who hold real estate who want their places to have a nice tenant like us. You know, I mean, look: If Spielberg or Reitman or one of the Scott brothers or Peter Weir, a great director, calls me, or Phil Robinson, and says "We'd like you to play the U.S. marshal who loses a leg in a train wreck," of course. I can always work as an actor. But the writing I used to do -- I think I got seven or eight scripts made. It's pretty good, considering.

Tomorrow: Rick Moranis. Next week: Bill Murray, Annie Potts, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver.

I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals

2008-09-27T10:17:00.007-04:00

That's a quote from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Doesn't make too much sense if you think about it, but you get the idea. Paul Newman saw the world with a clarity that was foreign to most in Hollywood. The best-looking, arguably-most-complete man in the movies died yesterday at 83 of cancer. I'll leave the official eulogizing to the pros. Instead, some memories of Paul from my life, apart from the fact that I always always buy his pasta sauces:

His performance in 1982's The Verdict is a rhapsody, the crown jewel of his career, and should be part of any acting school curriculum. I will never tire of watching him in that movie. With grit and grace, he pilots Frank Galvin from the depths of alcoholism to the ridge of redemption, and is smart enough to bring his character to a place of truth rather than a place of resolution. Watch him closely in the summation scene, as Sidney Lumet slowly moves the camera in on this man -- this man who started so meek but who is now towering in this moment in time, for perhaps the first and last time in his life.

Of course, like any good man, he was a sucker for and splendid practitioner of comedy. He was a vulgar marvel in 1977's Slap Shot. I'd never seen him in an out-and-out comedy, and was continually astonished by the ways he appropriated his dramatics to the business of the low-brow.

I remember the serious silliness of 1974's The Towering Inferno and the cool mugging -- long before Clooney -- in 1973's The Sting. His youthful prime was in the 1960s, with The Hustler (drool) and Hud (see clips in my appreciation of Melvyn Douglas), where he appeared to mature into the man James Dean might've been, but with less suffocating Method and more personality. I'd never accuse Newman of being a chameleon; I've never seen him in a role that required an extreme transformation; he didn't suffer for his art. I've only seen a quarter or third of his filmography, but it seems that he never went that route. His craftsmanship blended his star power with an inner fire, which burned as blue as his eyes and which he could set to simmer or boil, depending on his assignment. If I could live my life over again as a movie star, I'd want to be Paul Newman. He just makes sense to me. The way he worked...the way he lived outside of work...his unyielding self-deprecation and disregard for his looks and talents. Right now, I can hear the talking head on CNN in the background. She's saying he will be remembered for more than just his movies. Which is exactly what he wanted.

I saw him once, in person, at a show in New York. Was it at The Apple Tree? I can't remember. But I remember him, and his wife Joanne Woodward, sitting a couple rows in front of me. In real life, he was a white-haired old man, a dutiful husband, unremarkable in appearance. But I remember thinking, "I'm seeing Paul Newman in real life. I'm seeing him. Remember this." And I have. Now he is dead, but that blue fire ain't. It's forever, like the movies. Here's a nice montage to close the matter for now:

This is mass madness, you maniacs

2008-09-25T13:01:00.004-04:00

It's my favorite movie. And every year it gets less hyperbolic and more real. Except for one thing: No one is yelling yet. No one is listening to Howard Beale. Today, there are no mass protests, no swell of angry popular movement against the utter mismanagement of this country. Today, we watch the TV and the Internets as people tell us about bad stuff. But we don't get mad.

Financial institutions run everything. They can make us. They can ruin us. And they have ruined us. And now we're paying for their mistakes. But we don't get mad. We won't get mad. We will sit and watch our screens, as we have been doing for 30 years, and think, "Gee, this is bad. I hope things get better."

Case in point: I will publish this blog post, then return to work, happy to collect a paycheck while they still come to me. I will pick up some dry-cleaning, go to a show tonight, go home, watch TV or the Internets, sleep, get up and do it all again. I will pray that things stay okay, or I will ignore the distinct possibility they will not. But I won't do anything to affect the outcome. I will merely stay in bomb-drill mode, hands over my head, against a wall.

Someone grant sainthood to Cloris Leachman immediately

2008-09-23T17:12:00.006-04:00

She's on Dancing with the Stars. In one 8-minute stretch, she foxtrots, gets two standing ovations, drapes her leg on the judges' table, spills out her cleavage, and calls one of the judges a "shit" on live national television. The woman is a goddamn national treasure.

And for some contrast:

How to go from Teddy Barnes to Alex Forrest in two years

2008-09-19T10:00:00.005-04:00

As long as we've been talking about Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges: I'm having a hard time with Jagged Edge. It's a 1985 thriller starring Bridges as a newspaper editor accused of muder and Close as the attorney who defends him. Naturally, romance develops during the trial. The plot -- by B-list writing god Joe "Basic Instinct" Eszterhas -- choo-choos along as an effective whodunnit right up until the last shot. But the Close character, Teddy Barnes, gave me a lot of trouble. Is she an incredibly complex, strong character, or is she a weak pushover who just needs a man? Eszterhas and Close shows us both sides, and it's hard to reconcile one with the other. Oh, Teddy Barnes. Sweet-voiced, then steel-tongued. Indignant, then weepy.

That's humanity, right? We swing from one extreme to another, and Teddy Barnes is no different. A week after meeting an alleged matricidal maniac, she shacks up with him and gets all lovey-dovey. She's also a hard-working single mom who frosts over when a witness calls her a bitch. In the end, though, she's revealed as something different, something...more. Or less? The final scene shows us neither the soft lover nor the tough cookie. Close greets the film's climax as a woman numbed in the wake of a quiet nervous breakdown -- one that occurs offscreen, or at least inside her. She wins the day, plot-wise, but her faith in the legal system (and in herself) is shattered. See the video below (spoilers included).

I've never seen anything like the final scene of Jagged Edge. It has all the elements of a standard thriller climax, but the Teddy Barnes character is definitely not the standard heroine. She's something weaker. Or stronger? She has a gun in her hand, but it's not a show of defiance or revenge. It appears to be some sort of psychosis -- some villainy -- that we can't understand; Eszterhas hasn't given us enough to work with. But we do see, in Teddy Barnes's eye, a glimmer of Alex Forrest, whom Close would give us two years later in Fatal Attraction. Can someone please write a thesis on these two wildly confounding female characters, both of whom have male names?

Glenn Close was riding the peak of her celebrity with these two roles. Two thrillers in the mid-'80s, when she was racking up Oscar nomination after Oscar nomination. I would kill to sit her down now, watch these two movies with her and ask her where the hell she found these two fascinating, unsettling, confounding characters.

Joan & Glenn as female VPs

2008-09-18T14:00:00.003-04:00

It's a short list. Female vice presidents in the movies. Two. Joan Allen in The Contender in 2000. Glenn Close in Air Force One in 1997. Can anyone think of others? Watch this trailer for Air Force One, and revel in popcorny pre-9/11 nostalgia.

The Contender, my favorite movie ever about politics, has more serious things to say about the Woman-as-VP concept. Or does it? Watch below.

Sarah Palin has received some of the same criticisms that Gary Oldman lobs at Allen here. People just think Palin is a "groovy chick," and selfish because she wants to assume a gigantic responsibility she knows she's not ready for. Sexist? Yeah, probably...even though Allen's Laine Hanson could run circles around Palin.

Let's not discredit the subtlety of Air Force One. (Yes, I used "subtlety" and "Air Force One" in the same sentence.) The movie presents Close as VP, simply and without fanfare. She commands F-15s. While Harrison Ford is held hostage, she is the president. But no big deal is made about it. She is not a woman; she is the vice president. In The Contender, it's all a big deal. A woman is ascending to the nation's highest office and -- gasp! -- she may have had some fun sex in the past.

Which movie was, at the time, more healthy for our collective perception of a Woman in Power: a movie that agonizes over a woman's hurdles even as she clears each one, or a movie that shows a woman deftly commanding a nation without distraction or doubt?

Explaining the Holy Trinity

2008-09-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

Roger Ebert called Nuns on the Run "funny only if you find nuns funny." Which I do.

Moratorium: Titles with "Bees" or "The Secret Life of"

2008-09-16T16:33:00.003-04:00

Is it just me, or is anyone else tired of titles that start with "The Secret Life of..." or include the word "Bee" or "Bees"? An IMDb search of "The Secret Life of" or "Bee" brings up hundreds of hits, with a special concentration over the past five years:

The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002)
The Secret Life of Words (2005)
Bee Season (2005)
Akeelah and the Bee (2006)
Bee Movie (2007)
The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008)

Which leads us to the The Secret Life of Bees, opening next month. I guess we had that one coming. But can we have a moratorium on these titles, please? Thanks. This also goes for book titles that pair a possessive noun with the word "wife" or daughter." Like "The Bonesetter's Wife" or "The Alchemist's Daughter." Those are horrifyingly unimaginative titles.

Coens have their first No. 1

2008-09-15T10:49:00.005-04:00

Burn after Reading is the first Coen Bros. movie to occupy the top spot at the box office. This probably has something to do with its aggressive marketing campaign, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and the fact that it had the widest opening in the bros' careers (2,651 theaters). I'm sure fans of One Fine Day and Meet Joe Black were blindsided by what they saw, but by the time they got to their seats they had already paid for admission. The Coen Bros. beat another movie with a sterling cast: the poorly-received remake of The Women, with The Bening, Debra Messing (still?), Jada Pinkett-Smith, Meg Ryan (alive?), Eva Mendes and Candice Bergen (yum). That one came in No. 4, after Tyler Perry and the De Niro-Pacino rematch.

"Clearly, [Burn after Reading is] a smash, and it's obviously a reflection of how much more commercial the Coens have grown," said Jack Foley, distribution president for studio Focus, quoted in The Guardian. I'm sure this quotation sent Joel and Ethan into apoplexy.

So it took Clooney and Pitt to give them a distinction that's been missing from their mantle, which is lined with eight Oscars: box office champ. Here's the rundown of how their last seven movies opened. Note: Dollars/profit aren't at issue here; popularity/visibility is.

No Country for Old Men (2007). Opened 15th in 28 theaters. Reached No. 5 when it opened wider to 1,348 theaters. Its best-picture Oscar didn't raise it higher than there.
The Ladykillers (2004). The closest they'd previously gotten to No. 1. Opened 2nd in 1,583 theaters. Tom Hanks was the draw.
Intolerable Cruelty (2003). Opened 4th in 2,564 theaters, by far their widest open pre-Burn.
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). Opened 19th in 39 theaters; climbed to 13th when playing in 250 theaters.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Opened 27th in 5 theaters. Climbed to 9th when in 835 theaters.
The Big Lebowski (1998). Opened 6th in 1,207 theaters.
Fargo (1996). Opened 6th in 412 theaters. It's amazing it never climbed higher, but also keep in mind it was released in March 1996, so it was already on video by the time is got Oscar attention.

Source: Box Office Mojo. Rankings prior to 1996 aren't available, but I'm going to assume Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy didn't get anywhere near No. 1.

Why do motorcades upset me?

2008-09-09T16:08:00.004-04:00

On my way back to work from a midday walk, I found cop cars blocking each cross street of 16th Street, which is a north-south boulevard leading to the front of the White House. Auto and pedestrian traffic was halted in all directions. Sixteenth Street was eerily barren, with people tapping their feet on the sidelines. The president, you see, was returning to his house. The parade, in order of appearance:

9 motorcycles in a row, spaced 100 feet apart
3 black SUVs
1 armored conversion van
2 black limousines (one presumably carrying POTUS or his deputy)
1 ambulance
1 helicopter
3 black SUVs
3 police cars

This list does not include several police cars that zoomed down side streets, as if to flank the president in case of an attack from the side.

Whenever I see a motorcade, I'm left with the same thoughts: Is this really necessary? What does this accomplish, other than making a spectacle? If the president really wanted to be protected, wouldn't he travel in a single, quiet, nondescript, armored car rather than in a blaring Macy's Day parade? The president might as well be waving from the limo's sunroof. And shutting down a major urban thoroughfare for 10 minutes seems like an intensely irreponsible thing to do. It's very Triumph of the Will-ish, except the citizens lining the motorcade are grumpy, not ecstatic.

"We know drama"? Nope, you don't

2008-09-08T00:05:00.000-04:00

Finished watching Fox's newest game show "Hole in the Wall" (excellent), switched to the VMAs (bleh), got bored to tears (save for Russell Brand's subversive hosting behavior) so channel-surfed my way to TNT. On which was playing United 93. Which is fine. As the best movie of 2006, I think everyone should see it. TNT was playing it with "limited commercial interruption," which turned out to be an interruption every eight to 10 minutes or so.

Many movies can be interrupted by a word from the sponsors, and no one's worse off. A League of Their Own was on earlier today, and I was happy to use the commercial breaks to check on my laundry, and still was moved, as always, but that film's end. But United 93 -- sensitive topic aside -- must be viewed continuously. At least in its final stretch. TNT could've run the last 20 minutes commercial-free without detriment to their finances. They did not. They broke for commercial as the passengers readied their first and final mutiny.

It's classless. And clumsy. And it made me feel angry and cheap, like the film's engrossing craftsmanship was exploited to make me stew through commercials. Grumble.

Anyway, you should see the movie continuously and in its entirety. Don't stop and watch it if you catch it on TV. For what it's worth, here is my essay after viewing it for a second and third time on DVD.

Telluride: Wrap up

2008-09-04T16:48:00.005-04:00

This year's guest curator Slavoj Zizek -- described by a festival goer as monstrously self-centered and by a festival director as "the greatest living philosopher" -- provided a slate of movies that blew the minds of absolutely no one. Perhaps I'm applying my experience to everyone else's. But whatever. Let's not indulge the lesser aspects of the fest. Here are the five things I liked about the 35th Telluride Film Festival, in order from less to more.

5. Slumdog Millionaire. Met by ovations and cheering. It is the ultimate feel-good film, made by erstwhile feel-baddie Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later). An Indian boy goes the distance on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" His success on the game show is rooted in seemingly random experiences in his childhood. It's a kinetic, Dickensian adventure movie, flashing backward and forward but never losing its firm, steady grip on a contrived-yet-compelling story. This should be a hit.

4. The Last Command, a 1928 silent film featuring a live original score by the Alloy Orchestra. Emil Jannings won the first-ever Oscar for best actor for his larger-than-life performance as a mutinied Russian general who ends up playing a background soldier in a Hollywood war film. One of the title cards says (and I'm paraphrasing): "From the backwash of a crumbled nation comes another extra who is hungry for a bite of Hollywood." It's all very savvy and self-reflexive, even though studios themselves hadn't been around that long. Did I mention the live accompaniment rocked? The Alloy resurrects ancient movies one by one.

3. Kristin Scott Thomas in I've Loved You So Long. A tricky role, a home-run performance. It's all internal here. KST plays a woman fresh off a 15-year jail sentence. And boy, she does not want to talk about it. But the ways in which she keeps herself walled off and then lets in a little light...well, it's elegance and control and precise execution.

2. Jean Simmons. I knew next to nothing about this British actress going in to her tribute, but felt enlightened and grateful (and heretofore ignorant) coming out. Simmons got her big break as a teenaged Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations and deserves to be 100 times more famous than she is today. Maybe her looks were too much like Vivien Leigh's or her voice too much like Audrey Hepburn's, but Simmons' past stardom didn't evolve into sacred legend. It's tempting to define her by the men she has played against -- Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, Paul Newman in Until They Sail, Marlon Brando in Desiree and Guys & Dolls, Laurence Olivier in Hamlet, Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, Dick Van Dyke in Divorce American Style, Gregory Peck in The Big Country, Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum in The Grass Is Greener -- for who can match this list and still be as unfamous as she? But Simmons, with the aura of a child and the snap of a python, holds her own against each. The festival showed a medley of clips, but the most arresting was from The Happy Ending, in which she plays a bored housewife. Couldn't find a clip of it on the YouTubes, so here are some from Guys & Dolls (1955), Until They Sail (1957) and, to shake it up, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

1. Prodigal Sons. If you see it under the right circumstances, this one could be life-changing. The film's greatness comes not from the craftsmanship (it was shot and edited cheaply, as if on a whim), but from the content. Director Kimberly Reed has so, so much to work with here. She hit documentary gold. The film's site has no word on future screenings. Hopefully it'll arrive at a theater near you sometime before the world ends.

Telluride: Day 3

2008-09-01T20:07:00.003-04:00

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- The documentary Prodigal Sons is the only new film I've seen here that the Telluride Film Festival deserves. There is so much I want to tell you about it, but there are two "secrets" revealed during the movie and you should experience the shock/delight yourself. Suffice to say it is a documentary about family and the search for (or flight from) one's self. Sounds very broad, yes, but the context in which this search is conducted is truly amazing. If you want to read all about the film, do so here. Knowing some background won't sabotage the film's effectiveness, but it's still nice to go into a movie without knowing where it's taking you. And this one takes you to some pretty remarkable places.

The Telluride experience magnified the film. The doc ended, I was exhilirated, and then the emcee pointed out that the entire featured family is sitting in the audience not two rows behind me. Having just seen their lives laid bare onscreen, it was a special privilege to see and thank them in person.

As far as I can tell, Prodigal Sons has no distribution. But given the exuberant reaction here, it will no doubt continue to play at festivals to packed houses. If you get a chance to see it, drop everything and make it happen. I wish there was a way they could stream the doc online for a small fee. Everyone should see this movie.

There are other things to talk about, but I haven't the time. The festival ends in a couple hours. I'll be posting later about Jean Simmons, Mary Pickford, Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command and Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (surely the fiction crowd-pleaser of the fest).

Also, I served popcorn to Greg Kinnear and Salman Rushdie. Also, I am tired.

Telluride: Day 2

2008-08-31T11:39:00.004-04:00

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Before the world premiere of his movie Everlasting Moments at 8:30 a.m. yesterday, director Jan Troell said, "I would never voluntarily come to a film at this time. Not even my own. Try to stay awake." I did.

Everlasting Moments. Epic domestic drama from Sweden with a grounded lead performance by Maria Heiskanen, who looks and sounds like a working-class Ingrid Bergman. Spans 10 years. A quietly moving fable about seeking the perfection of life through a camera's viewfinder. How we forge everlasting moments of goodness in a fleeting second from life's boredom, unpleasantries and unfairness.

Critic and filmmaker Richard Schickel -- red-faced, purple-shirted, tweed-jacketed -- received the silver medallion of the festival at the Sheridan Opera House. Watching Schickel, who is lively but old, makes me think that the age of the esteemed critic-historian is ending. Schickel and Ebert might be the last of the breed. What is it being replaced by? Perhaps film appreciation has been institutionalized by academia, and it will live on, for better or worse, there.

Schickel: "I have had young people come up to me and say 'I've never seen a black-and-white movie and I'm like, 'Are you out of your fucking mind? It's not something to be proud of.'"

Schickel's documentary on Warner Bros., You Must Remember This, will play on PBS soon.

Happy-Go-Lucky. By Mike Leigh. How happy people make us miserable. How we make our own luck. Winning performance by Sally Hawkins as the most joyful woman alive. Great cameo by Karina Fernandez as a flamenco teacher perhaps too invested in her art. Q&A after. Leigh is slight, stooped, suspendered, bearded. Small. "For me, filmmaking is all about discovering what the film is."

Philanthropy. A dark Romanian comedy that looks and feels like Scorsese's After Hours. By turns funny and boring. From 2001.

Seen: Laura Linney, defacto mayor of Telluride during the festival, conferring with friend over the program. I also served Mike Leigh a bottle of water. Michael O'Keefe ("Noonan!"), the bad guy in American Violet.

Crowd-pleasers: Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which got a rousing ovation last night. Also, the documentary Prodigal Sons is the most-loved show at Telluride (and it doesn't even have an IMDb page). Also, Fincher didn't show up to host or introduce his director's cut of Zodiac. Bitch.

Everyone is mumbling about the lacklusterness of this year's slate of new movies. The vintage offerings are top-knotch, though I probably won't be able to make any of them. They are showing Troell's The Emigrants and The New Land back to back tomorrow. And the Alloy Orchestra is providing a live, original score for The Last Command (with Emil Jannings).

Drizzly and overcast today. I'm off to catch the gondola to the tribute to Jean Simmons.

Telluride: Day 1

2008-08-30T14:29:00.004-04:00

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Bronze sunsets. Chapped lips. What I saw yesterday:

The David Fincher tribute. Clips of Se7en, The Game, Panic Room and Zodiac (which is also playing in full in a director's cut -- with six additional minutes -- tomorrow). Regrettably, no Alien3. A very tense medley of movies -- all about people who are wrapped in an inescapable situation. Fincher talking with Todd McCarthy of Variety afterward. A poor interview. Oh well. Fincher is a San Francisco kid. Inspired to be a director after watching a making-of of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "Blow up balsam wood trains, scout locations out West and hang out with Katharine Ross? Good deal." Worked with George Lucas. Boyhood friends shaved their heads to be part of THX. Did music videos with Madonna, Michael Jackson and Iggy Pop. Fincher came off as a bit of douchebag, as my friend Tom said, but that was probably because he was annoyed with the inane, disinterested "discussion points" that Todd McCarthy dribbled out.

Flame & Citron. Introduced this movie last night at the Nugget Theater. Most expensive Danish-speaking film ever made. Budget? $9 million. Extravagant! Intricately epic 2.5-hour espionage flick, dirge-like, monotonous, incessant, featuring assassinations every scene by the title characters, two Danish operatives working against the Nazi occupation in Copenhagen. Citron is played by Mads Mikkelson, who was the villain who wept blood in Casino Royale. I introduced the director, Ole Christian Madsen, who shot the movie in Prague. Flame & Citron just got U.S. distribution on Thursday at the festival, so you'll be seeing it sometime next year I bet.

Notables in attendance: Jeff Goldblum (here with Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected) holding court on Main Street. Peter Sellars, Ken Burns, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham here with Flash of Genius. Salman Rushdie too, sans Padma.

Looking forward to: Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, which has been irking people here, as rumor has it.

Telluride: Day 0

2008-08-29T14:41:00.005-04:00

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Well, I'm here again. Fest starts today. Won't have time to compose essays or reviews, so I'm just going to spit out brief thoughts. Saw two movies last night:

American Violet. Sentimental, simplified deposition drama about racist plea-bargain tactics in Texas. Star of the show, the charismatic Nicole Behaire, makes quite an impression, but the movie feels made-for-TV/after-school-specialy. Should've been a hard-hitting documentary rather than a syrupy drama. One staffer muttered "it's social, liberal Hollywood pablum." Release date unknown.

Baraka. From 1992. Remastered, in 70mm print. In the vein of Godfrey Reggio's mindf*cks. This one strings together footage of beautiful locales and human creations, set to thumping monk music. It's mesmerizing, and builds slowly to make several large points about humanity, our ingenuity and our cruelty, our capability for greatness and depravity. Features time lapse, highspeed filming to make us see the insane operational aspect of human routine. Available via Netflix.

Also, take a look at the fancy new Telluride widget. Goes into more detail than I can about the schedule:

Scarlett, Javier, Penelope

2008-08-15T10:27:00.006-04:00

A good friend reviews Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Vicky Cristina Barcelona is beautiful because Allen is now decidedly in control of this phase of his career, which blends the sharpness of his older dramas with a newly acquired expatriate hipness.

Give Ernest Borgnine a hand

2008-08-14T16:50:00.003-04:00

The secret to staying so youthful at 91 years old? Watch the clip below.

I love it when senior citizens get squirrely (as long as they're not touching me).

Bleak chic

2008-08-12T12:20:00.002-04:00

Looking for examples of bleakness in cinema: bleak stories, bleak landscapes, pervasive hopelessness. Films that don't shy away from getting to the redemptionless heart of humanity: gangster pics, post-apocalyptic films, etc. Recent are upcoming examples are welcome, as are ones from the past. Please leave in the comments.

Obama picks Jeff Bridges

2008-08-07T17:01:00.004-04:00

I'm as dismissive of the presidential campaign as you are (at least until they actually start debating), but I have decided who I'm going to vote for. I base this not on the fact that one guy is sane and the other insane, but that one guy chose Jeff Bridges when asked for his favorite movie president. From a Q&A with Entertainment Weekly:

Who's your favorite movie or TV president?
You know who was a great movie president? Jeff Bridges in the Contender. That was a great movie president. He was charming and essentially an honorable person, but there was a rogue about him. The way he would order sandwiches — he was good at that.

That is the correct answer, senator. You have my vote. McCain picked Dennis Haysbert from "24," which is a copout on several levels.

Capturing (and detaining) the American Teen

2008-07-28T10:42:00.006-04:00

A good friend of mine wrote a long, ponderous, didactic think piece on the new documentary American Teen and its place in both fiction and non-fiction films about high school. You can read the article here or -- if you hate clicking through "pages" of an online story -- here. It's a tad term-paperish, but it's dense with ideas. Try to stick with it til the end.

The Dark Knight is damn dark

2008-07-17T00:00:00.007-04:00

For the last third of The Dark Knight, I was on the verge of tears, and at the very end, a couple squeaked their way out. Perhaps it's because my emotions have been rawer than usual lately. Perhaps it's because the film has characters I grew to care about, scenes that soaked my heart in adrenaline and sociological themes that range from the unsettling to the horrifying. This movie moves beyond good and evil and enters into our world, which is much more complicated than comic books. This is the first film-with-terrorism-metaphor that our age of terrorism deserves. And it will stop your heart. Ten items for now:

1. Everything you hear about Heath Ledger is true. And we should've expected it. He was the best actor of his generation, and his ability to mash depravity and hilarity into something compulsively watchable is aided and abetted by:

2. The script by the Nolan brothers, Christopher (the director) and Jonathan. It's a beauty, with subplots dovetailing sweetly, with grand ideas rendered in sharp, graceful dialogue. In a movie bursting with ambition on all fronts, perhaps the greatest achievement are its words. How many action films can boast that?

3. It's relentless: both in action and in drama. There is little room to breathe, for better and worse. It is a subtle film, except when it's not. And when it's not, it's over-the-top. But who the fuck cares.

4. The Joker has never made more sense than he does here. In a battle of existential villains, he would drive Anton Chigurh mad. As played by Ledger and as written by the Nolans, the Joker is walking anarchy, cackling sadism, crime for the sake of crime. He is a terrorist without a god to kill for. His actions are beyond random; they are perpetrated not in the name of something but solely for the consequences. And he is capable of understanding (and exploiting) our suppressed desires for this type of anarchy. Ledger makes you root for him, then, inexplicably, makes you feel utterly depraved for doing so.

5. The film does not have much to say about the goodness of humanity. There is an instance that demonstrates the people of Gotham are essentially good, but you won't leave the theater with your faith renewed in humanity. This is a dark movie with complex emotions. Unlike other superhero movies, The Dark Knight is almost redemptionless. It ends on a high -- not because we witness the triumph of the human spirit but because we're shown our world refracted through a damn superhero movie. It's breathtaking.

6. The supporting cast does well. As my friend Tony pointed out, it's tricky to have two villains in one movie, but The Dark Knight deftly handles the introduction of Harvey "Two Face" Dent. Aaron Eckhart spends most of the film as a noble district attorney, and his transition to a grief-stricken madman near the end is believable, for the most part. And there is a logical relationship between Dent, the Joker and Two Face. No contrivances here. And I don't know what I love about Gary Oldman, but it's all here in full view as he transitions from Lieutenant to Commissioner Gordon. Love me some Oldman. He's got this pedestrian dignity about him.

7. The first word out of my mouth, post-screening: "upsetting." The second? "Horrifying."

8. By the end of The Dark Knight, after its 15 or so climaxes, Ledger, Christian Bale and the Nolans have ennobled and redefined one of the great fictional rivalries. It is a small tragedy that this rivalry cannot be continued, even if there is a sequel.

9. Christopher Nolan has yet to make a bad film. He's still batting .1000.

10. My brother, who was a production assistant on the Chicago shoot, is in the credits. Not a bad first film to have one's name attached.

Everything's coming up Rose

2008-07-07T12:31:00.008-04:00

And now, I attempt to disengorge my foot from my mouth. I saw the revival of Gypsy on Broadway over the weekend. I've badmouthed Patti LuPone to no end (to start: her Mrs. Lovett a couple years ago was irresponsible and awful), and even called her perhaps "the greatest scam perpetrated on the American people." You know I tend toward superlatives and absolutes. But I thought she was perfect perfect perfect and fabulous as crazy stage mother, Mama Rose, in this latest incarnation of the ultimate backstage musical. The show was uneven, but when it was on it was on. I especially relished the last third of the show, and the choices made by LuPone (and Laura Benanti as Louise). I think it's a classic case of actor and role being perfect for each other.

It's a lengthy, epic musical that builds to one of the best numbers in the canon: "Rose's Turn," wherein Mama Rose barbecues her ego and snacks on her id for dessert. Few climactic solo numbers have since lived up to this (except for maybe "Lot's Wife" from 2003's "Caroline, or Change"). Since Rose is on my brain, and since we've gotten a different version of her every decade since the '50s (including two in the past five years), here is a rundown of "Rose's Turn" with video and commentary. What's your favorite, and why?

Ethel Merman, Imperial Theatre, 1959

From the vantage point of 2008, she sounds like a parody of herself ("MAAA-mah"), but you can't deny her chops and how fresh this feels, even though it is an original cast recording from almost 50 years ago. It would've been so killer to see this live. I'd like to imagine her tearing apart the stage, but something tells me she probably stuck in one place and poured everything into the vocals. Merman's voice is prototypical Rose: big, brassy, demanding, deranged.

Rosalind Russell, Warner Bros., 1962

Russell barks most of the song (except when dubber Lisa Kirk sings for her), and the tricky emotional transitions are handled clumsily by director Mervyn LeRoy. Could've used a Steadicam, and less theatricality. But film does highlight the isolation of Rose: here, there simply is no audience. No one is around to give a rousing ovation, which happens every time in live theatre.

Angela Lansbury, Winter Garden Theatre, 1974

Stiff in movement, but manic in pacing, volume and facial acting, Lansbury hits the "Everything's coming up Rose" line with more speed than anyone before or since, and because of this we get a clear sense of her pathology. Whereas some actresses treat this climax as a chance to sell Rose's true-and-buried talent, Lansbury uses it to suggest Rose is maniacally delusional.

Tyne Daly, Marquis Theatre, 1989

Yikes. The first ever no-singing, no-acting performance of "Rose's Turn."

Bette Midler, CBS, 1993

Midler was, on paper, a smart choice for the TV version. She's a diva even before she begins to act. Here, she wails and flails. She stumbles in a daze and prowls with turn-turn-kick-turns. She tries every trick in the book and none of it feels exactly right.

Bernadette Peters, Shubert Theatre, 2003

This is an abbreviated version for the Tonys, and it gives us closeups we can't get in theater, but oh well. I saw this one in person at the Shubert. It was a crisp, clean show, and Peters' Rose was different than all who came before her: more coquettish, more vulnerable and spritely, more fragile than forceful. This Rose is pleading with us to right a wrong instead of demanding our attention or crumbling in a self-destructive heap. "Rose's Turn" here means "she wants this turn right now," not "I should've gotten a shot back then."

Patti LuPone, St. James Theatre, 2008

No video here, but you can imagine (if there's one thing the iterations of Gypsy are guilty of, it's relentlessly copycatting each other's look). There's a lot going on here, and it all works (unlike Midler's). Listen to her cackle and whisper. Listen to her shriek, "My name's ROSE." Listen to her mock Louise, then the audience, then herself. There's serious muscle behind this performance (unlike Bernadette's). And unlike Merman, Russell, Daly and all the traditional Roses she borrows bits from, LuPone's interpretation of the song feels most organic, like the lyrics are coming to her on the spot (the intentional vocal imperfections help). The song is a very bitter stream of consciousness, and this is the first time I can see and hear it as it was written.

There. Foot out of mouth.

Hancock v. Hancock

2008-06-30T19:54:00.003-04:00

Which movie are they trying to sell us? And does either look appealing?

In Diana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Meth

2008-06-12T14:39:00.005-04:00

I've been gone for a bit, because I have nothing to write about. But today my friend A.L. and I killed some time re-imagining some movie titles as porn titles. Here are 10 we brainstormed. Feel free to add your own in the comments. Lurid and juvenile, yes, but fun.

2008: A Butt Odyssey
Bonked on the Fourth of July
Breast in Show
The Greatest Blow on Earth
Howard's End
The Remains of the Splayed
There Will Be Bone
The Silence of the Jambs
Terms of Enrearment
Twat Lies Beneath

I know. I'm sorry. It's Friday. (It's really Thursday, but I'm off tomorrow.)

In the key of Kahn

2008-05-29T00:37:00.005-04:00

Madeline Kahn was a kook. Every choice she made onscreen was slightly off-key. Her career was a string of strange and rich harmonic notes in chords that straddled the major-minor line (most dear to me, and many others, is Clue's Mrs. White, a performance both sharp and flat in equal turns, resulting in the most eccentric blend of comedy and severity). But I want to briefly consider two grace notes in her career, i.e. two short musical performances she gave while hosting Saturday Night Live.

She sang Kurt Weill's "Lost in the Stars" at the tail end of a 1976 episode in the first season of SNL. She crooned simply, alone on a stool on a dark stage. This was back when SNL was more variety show than sketch dumpster, and there was room for a host to try unique things. Like singing an old tune from a songbook not necessarily tailored for a primetime weekend audience.

How pretty and sad is this? Sure, her operatic training makes the delivery a bit stiff, but there's something about that voice, those eyes, and the narrowing of the light on her face as the camera backs away at the end. It's slightly off and right on. Most importantly, it's interesting. Can you imagine SNL doing this today? And this was the final bit on this episode! What a way to end an hour of comedy. Next grace note is from the third season of SNL in 1977. Kahn pops up on location in Manhattan, singing "Autumn in New York" while trying to find the right key. It's such a weird conceit -- hey, let's have Madeline putz around New York wah-wah-wah'ing -- but oddly sweet. Like her.

She hosted one more time, in 1995, and reportedly sang "Ain't Got No Home" during her monologue. That season of SNL is not available on DVD and the clip is not online. But I can imagine it might've seemed a tad out of place on the SNL of the '90s, and that's probably what made it entertaining and memorable. This post is part of StinkyLulu's Madeline Kahn Appreciation Day.

7. Liza Minnelli, the glutton for adoration

2008-05-28T01:16:00.003-04:00

LIZA MINNELLI, 1946- . Triple crown achieved in May 1973 at age 27 with an Emmy for Liza with a Z. Preceded by a leading actress in a musical Tony for "Flora the Red Menace" in 1965 and a leading actress Oscar for Cabaret in March 1973. Followed by a leading actress in a musical Tony for "The Act" in 1977.

There is an entertainer gene. We know this because Liza Minnelli inherited it. She's purebred from Judy Garland and Vincent Minnelli, whose families go back five generations in the theatre or the circus. Liza came out strange-looking: eyes too big and too far apart, body gangly, nose out of proportion, speaking voice queer, singing voice unconventional. But her essence was undeniable. She was a performer. The entertainer gene exists. She proved it. She proves it. It's not about looks. It's about a specific energy that vibrates from the core of one's being.

The first time she set foot on a Broadway stage, the Tony was hers. It would be the first of five major awards procured by interpreting material by composer-lyricist team John Kander and Fred Ebb. It was 1965. Minnelli was 19. Though her voice "is not yet distinctive," wrote Howard Taubman in The New York Times review of "Flora the Red Menace," "she is going to be a popular singer, all right." Not yet distinctive? Perhaps her vocal thickness was a little too close to her mother's at such a young age.

That would change by 1973. Garland was four years dead and Minnelli finished the Triple Crown in a two-month span. Cabaret was first. "Liza Minnelli plays Sally Bowles so well and fully that it doesn't matter how well she sings and dances, if you see what I mean," wrote Roger Ebert, implying her voice and movement aren't as impressive as her general verve."In several musical numbers ... Liza [first name only, of course] demonstrates unmistakably that she's one of the great musical performers of our time. But the heartlessness and nihilism of the character is still there, all the time, even while we're being supremely entertained."

This is the finale scene of Cabaret, and the essence of her Oscar-winning performance is minute 2:42 to around 3:08, and then on to the finish. "What good is sitting all alone in your room..." she sings, losing her smile for perhaps the only time in the movie, staring wide-eyed at the future, or down into the abyss. And then, "...come! Hear the muuusic play..." where she seems to snap a smile out of the air, and allow her head to almost float away (Fosse's camera abets this free-wheeling emotion), her searching eyes paving the way for the clarinet's trill. "Life is a -- cabaret, old chum," she says, as if this conclusion just occurs to her, and then a genius gesture follows for "Come to the cabaret," under which she thrusts her left arm out at the darkness and beckons frantically with her green fingernails. Watch her mouth. It is defiant, joyous. Watch her eyes. They are crying.

It's a perfect marriage of actor and part. The Oscar came in March '73, almost a full year after the film's release. Watch her acceptance here, in which she offers her trademark cackle-gag-sneeze-giggle before speaking graciously: "Thank you for giving me this award; you've made me very happy." It was her second nomination in four years, and the last one she'd ever get.

Two months later, she won an Emmy for Outstanding Single Program (Variety or Music) as the "star" to Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb's "producer" credit in Liza with a Z. It was not its own "individual performance" award (such a category didn't exist), but Minnelli was cited within the category for her performance. And holy shit, what a performance.

Liza with a Z -- recorded live in May '72 at the Lyceum Theatre -- is Minnelli's triumph. It's her without a character standing in the way. It's the gold standard of one-woman shows (though she is aided by a hard-working ensemble). The song "Yes" is an amazing opening. So hopeful, so grateful, so affirming. Yes, yes, yes. (It's why Stritch opens her current show with "Yes I Can".) Minnelli looks out adoringly at her audience. Her "yeses" are so gossamer, the giggles when she gets applause at the end are so coarse and lovely. "You're really terrific!" she squeals at the audience more often than once. She loves the audience. The feeling is mutual. The two feed off each other.

But this is not just reckless abandonment. Her technique and Fosse's execution are flawless. The song "Say Liza (Liza with a Z)" is a lyrical feat of diction and pacing. "Son of a Preacher Man" is sublime and a great way to mix up the showtunes.

Minnelli is a pro at interpreting songs, evidenced by the way she guides us through a fictional marriage in "You've Let Yourself Go." She combines technique, energy, precise interpretation and stunning costuming in the show-stopping "Ring Them Bells," below.

A second Tony came came in 1977 for The Act, a loosely knit star revue that didn't splash like Cabaret or Liza with a Z, but by then she had endeared herself to fans who would stick with her through every kind of public embarrassment and personal ailment. And things got pretty bad for Minnelli -- Judy Garland bad -- and her talent eroded. But what we have in Cabaret and Liza with a Z is a time capsule of raw talent mediated by a masterful director. The helix of her DNA are no doubt beaded with confetti. Almost-nuclear power bursts from her, for better or worse. She may not be the world's best singer, dancer or actor, but she lacquers each with her own brand of italics. And we, almost inexplicably, are captivated.

Ben Brantley summed it up in The New York Times when Liza took over Victor/Victoria from Julie Andrews in 1997: "She asks for love so nakedly and earnestly, it seems downright vicious not to respond."

This is the seventh part of The Triple Crowners, an 18-part series celebrating the performers who have won an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy. Coming down the stretch is No. 8, a character actor who honed his onscreen reputation as a lovable curmudgeon. Catch up on previous installments of the series here. As always, comments are most welcome: did they deserves these honors? Do the awards validate them or distract from their real talents? What does it all mean?

Sydney Pollack 1934-2008

2008-05-26T23:59:00.008-04:00

Attention must be paid to the man who holds sway over the green light. He probably hit his directorial peak in 1982 with Tootsie, but Sydney Pollack's record as a producer has always sparkled, especially during more recent years. Thanks in part to Pollack, we have, in addition to the subject of my last post (HBO's Recount), an invaluable quartet of projects from the last two decades:
Update 27 May 08, 12:28 / I should've concentrated on Pollack's cameo in Death Becomes Her, where he plays an emergency-room doctor who makes the gruesome discovery that Meryl Streep -- who is acting perfectly healthy -- has a broken neck and should probably be dead. He can't even find the heartbeat. It's a wonderful little comic turn, in which Pollack descends into utter shock, trailing breathless "uhs" as he's trying to reconcile diagnoses with facts.

"I tell you what, kids, it's, uh, odd thing here. Your wrist, uh, far as I can tell, is, uh, fractured in three places. Uh, and you've shattered, uh, two vertebrae, though I can't be certain without an X-ray. The bone protrusion through the skin -- that's not a good sign. Your body temperature is below 80, and your, your, your heart's stopped beating."

Laura Dern in Recount

2008-05-25T11:18:00.003-04:00

Recount is a gripping, articulate account of something I've never really understood: the 2000 presidential election. It's great entertainment and great reporting. You will come away from it with a deeper understanding of what exactly went wrong, and with more reason to appreciate Laura Dern, who plays Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris, the woman who delivered the election for George W. Bush. Dern's performance is something special: hilarious, deadly serious, a master class in walking the line between going for a laugh and going for the jugular. Harris in real life is a caricature, but Dern resists the temptation to turn that caricature into comic grandstanding. Rather, she plays Harris exactly how she should be: as a socialite who was gifted a tremendously important position in state government and has no business being there. Dern has only a handful of scenes, and each one is special in its own way, but this one is perhaps the most emblematic of her tragicomic turn:

Watch Recount tonight at 9 on HBO and look for re-airings. It's a marvelous, polished, nuanced movie made by the guy who did Meet the Parents (I know, right?).

The first glimmer of Corky St. Clair, eight years before "Red, White and Blaine"

2008-05-19T14:56:00.006-04:00

Wait for 1:12.

Four words for Indy 4 (spoiler)

2008-05-18T22:15:00.003-04:00

Aliens? Really? Come on.

Streep as Shaw as Clinton

2008-05-09T13:41:00.009-04:00

The comparisons were made when The Manchurian Candidate remake first came out in the summer of 2004, but Hillary Clinton and fictional entity Sen. Eleanor Shaw have become even more alike as the real-life senator continues her crusade to win the Democratic nomination for president. Shaw and Clinton are ravenously ambitious and both, in their own ways, would do anything to reach their goals. Certainly I don't think Clinton is a villain; I think she is a brilliant woman who made a mistake by marrying Bill and overstaying her welcome in the public eye before shooting for the highest office in the land. I think if she hadn't been first lady or a governor's wife, she'd still be in the same position today: running for president, and probably winning the nomination. But I do sometimes question her humanity — which seems suppressed to make way for political expediency — as well as her ability to work with others. I watch Meryl Streep in The Manchurian Candidate, and the Clintonian vibe can't be ignored.

Am I being unfair? Am I being sexist? Does a woman's power automatically make her a calculating bitch? I don't think so. I look at Eleanor Shaw and Hillary Clinton as human beings who've been so bamboozled by their own sense of worth and power that they are too out of touch with reality to be in a position of authority (this is not gender-based judgment; I also think the same of Dick Cheney). A part of me thinks that, despite the odds against her, Clinton will find a way to get the nomination. I'm sure, right now, she's hosting all kinds of Manchurian meetings, conducting all kinds of Manchurian phone calls, in order to do this. I can see her getting that nomination in Denver by totally perverting the electoral process for a cause she thinks is just: she can do this job better than anyone, and who are voters to get in the way? I can see this happening. I really can. But I don't see it ending with an assassin's bullet which simultaneously takes out her and her husband. I see eight years of improvement in the United States under the second Clinton, but at a price far higher than it's worth.

Note that the remake of The Manchurian Candidate takes place in 2008. Ho ho.

(God I wish I could find a clip of the earlier scene where Streep has to convince party leaders to put her son on the ticket. Marvelously acted, and even more approriate for a Clinton comparison. Can anyone find it online?)

Strangers in the night

2008-04-29T12:35:00.001-04:00

The most memorable thing about Baby Mama on Sunday was the trailer that preceded it. The Strangers comes out May 30. On paper it must read like every other horror film of the past five years: yuppie couple terrorized in remote cabin by three masked crazypeople. Then why do I want to see it? Well, obviously: The trailer. Beautifully paced. Artfully composed. And the "inspired by true events" tagline sweetens the scent of any horror film, even though these particular "true events" seem to be the Manson family murders (I can't find any other real-life parallels), rather than a more recent off-the-radar occurence. The movie is going to make a shit-ton of money, simply because it's going to attract both the bloodthirsty demographic (key to making every torture-porn film No. 1 at the box office) and people like me (who love suspense movies but bristle at torture porn). Anyway, that's all. Glenn and Gabe at Videogum already posted about points I planned to ponder: the marketing and the supposed "true events." In the meantime, here is the trailer.

She's not my secretary; she's what they call an executive liaison; and I'm not banging her, if that's what you're implying

2008-04-25T10:36:00.009-04:00

Wednesday was Administrative Professionals Day, so here we belatedly honor the best secretary in cinema: Floris, played by Mary Kay Place, in Being John Malkovich. Damn fine woman, Floris.

"I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're saying to me right now."

"What magic those fingers could work on the right cabinet. Maybe you should alphabetize me. And remember: 'I' comes before 'U.'"

Above is one of the best-written, funniest scenes in movies, and Place knocks it out of the park. The Floris/Dr. Lester storyline is probably the most ingenious, textured, hilarious subplot ever. It's a miracle. Do you have a favorite movie secretary? (If you need inspiration, The Film Experience flagged Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary [duh] and Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns.)

And now the latest from Villa Fontana...

2008-04-24T16:23:00.009-04:00

And here I thought she was a hermit. Joan Fontaine, who I consider my erstwhile penpal, filled out Vanity Fair's Proust questionnaire last month. Good to know the old dame remains vital -- nearly as vital as that sweater! -- and a tad randy; some germane excerpts:

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Virginity.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
D’Artagnan, from The Three Musketeers, who taught me some things were going on in Milady’s boudoir. My mother, when I questioned her at 10 years old, said, “You’ll have to ask someone else.”

She sounds exactly like my Aunt Loretto.

A year of Robert Downey

2008-04-23T10:58:00.004-04:00

This is (or will be) the year of Robert Downey Jr., and it's about time we had one of those, right? He is the sole reason I will rush to see Iron Man, which I hope is a big fat hit for him; his Iron Man character also makes an appearance in the Ed Norton Hulk sequel. He will play a homeless musician in Joe Wright's next movie, due out in November (hello, Oscar). And, most intriguingly, he plays a respected actor playing a black man in Ben Stiller's industry farce, Tropic Thunder. The trailer is delectable.

(Tom Cruise apparently has a cameo as a crazy studio executive, which is perfect, and the exact kind of role he needs at this point to start straining the radiation from the toxic fields of his career.)

Anyway...Robert Downey! We were reminded of his life force when Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang came out (you saw it, right? Why not? Asshole).

He's a natural onscreen, and I hope he continues to steadily work. We shouldn't expect any less -- the man steadily worked even while he battled a massive drug problem. I could go on and on about him, but there are things to do. I leave you with my first introduction to him: the charming, funny Heart and Souls, when he was a lad of 28.

Come on with the rain, I've a smile on my face

2008-04-22T12:05:00.001-04:00

This week a two-day rainstorm settled over the Washington area and soaked us with about four inches. Whenever I'm out in the rain, I whistle "Singin' in the Rain," of course, and twirl on lamp posts. I mean, why not. After 36 hours of raining and twirling, though, it gets tiresome. So I started thinking about effective rainstorms in movies to take my mind off the deluge. Here are ones that immediately jumped to mind. Please add yours in the comments.

Jurassic Park. The automated Jeeps break down. A rainstorm gathers, the sky darkens, drops begin to fall (the plop-plop-plop on the Jeep's roof gives way to the T-Rex's distant stomping). Vision is obscured and sounds are muffled. Terror can leap from anywhere. The rain, in addition to being nerve-wrackingly atmospheric, also saves Lex and Tim: without the quickly muddied ground, the Jeep would've been crushed under the T-Rex's foot instead of sinking slowly.
Match Point. Sure, you can argue the rain is nature's way of disapproving of adultery, but I'm pretty sure Woody Allen uses it here for its erotic qualities alone.
The Shawshank Redemption. The drama of Tim Robbins' jailbreak is amplified by the thunder and lightning, and when he finally wrests himself free of the drainpipe he is met with a purgative downpour. It's a second baptism.
Singin' in the Rain. Obviously. It's situational irony here. Guy is ecstatically happy in crappy weather. In fact, the crappy weather serves to capitalize his Ecstasy simply by contrasting it. Bring on the shit, he says. It doesn't matter 'cause I'm in love. The sun's not in the sky; it's in his heart.
The Sound of Music. Liesl revels in puberty in the gazebo with Rolfe, then whees outside as lightning cracks and her white gown gets wet. It's a low-level loss of innocence, a metaphorical deflowering. The moment wouldn't have seemed as rebellious and wild if it wasn't pouring.

Manhattaning

2008-04-18T16:38:00.003-04:00

I'm in New York for the weekend. Here's hoping it'll be an After Hours kind of time.

Celebrity Death Watch: Demi Moore

2008-04-17T11:55:00.006-04:00

My brother has edited together another Celebrity Death Watch. This one is a mite more disturbing than the first -- Demi Moore seems to be dying of childbirth in two of the four clips, and that provides a nauseating contrast with the pop execution of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. (What does it say about me that Charlie's Angels is the only clip I can identify with certainty?)

There is no person I like more than Emma Thompson

2008-04-15T14:33:00.006-04:00

With Stephen Fry in "Cambridge Footlights Revue" in 1982:

In a remix of scenes from her first movie, 1987's The Tall Guy:

As Frasier Crane's first wife in a commercial for a 1992 episode of "Cheers":

Eloquently accepting her best actress Oscar in 1993:

In The Remains of the Day that same year:

Accepting (as Jane Austen) a Golden Globe for best screenplay in 1996:

Giving the best performance cable TV has ever seen in 2001's Wit:

As the only good thing about Love Actually in 2003:

Baring her soul for an anti-human trafficking campaign in 2007:

Here's to 49 more years of peerless brilliance.

L'avventura

2008-04-14T12:41:00.002-04:00

Earlier this year, I left Blog for 40 days not to wander in the desert but to voyage the high seas as part of a crypto-cultural fellowship program thing. Since some of you have been asking (and since I promised to write about it), here are the vague highlights of what I did, with movie commentary where appropriate:

1. Sang karaoke in Tokyo. "A Whole New World" and "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," among others. It was archetypal, and cinematic. Sofia Coppola-ish. But much more high-energy than Bob Harris.
2. Bathed in a hot spring in the Zao Mountains in the north of Honshu. There is no appropriately corresponding cinema for this episode.
3. Spent 30-plus days at sea on an ocean liner. Threw up zero times. During some meals, the kitchen staff would frequently play not only "My Heart Will Go On" but also the parts of the Titanic score that accompany the sinking. The ship might as well have been vertical during those meals.
4. Had a stranger spirit me into the Gulf of Oman on his speedboat. It was very Antonioni. Shirtless, leaning against the bow of a boat with my sunglasses on, hurtling over small waves to some rocky deserted isle. I did not disappear, however.
5. Got ankle-deep in poverty in Chennai, India, the first third-world country I've visited. I'm woefully undereducated when it comes to Indian movies, but suffice to say the experience was not Bollywoodish.
6. Made it from a southern harbor in Singapore to Johor Bahru in Malaysia (and back) in four hours.
7. Memorized and performed the first half of the climactic dance in "Dirty Dancing" (up to and including Swayze's stage jump), with the movie projected behind me and my dance partner. I'm not joking about this. It was perhaps the most fun I've had on stage ever.
8. Acquired a surprising and valuable perspective on myself and my country. Can't really tell you what that is, though, other than we're like the oldest brother of the world behaving like the youngest.
9. Developed a severe affection for Finns, Costa Ricans, Brazilians, Omanis, Spaniards, Bahrainis, Kiwis and Solomon Islanders.
10. Truly realized, for the first time, how expansive the world is, humanistically, despite globalization. The world is a big-ass place. I'm hoping this is just the overture to the adventure.

Carrying a torch (no, not the Olympic one)

2008-04-11T10:30:00.017-04:00

There's another group you gotta watch your foodstamps around: the hopeless. They break down into three major categories: married, just in for the weekend...

[Awkward glances, mugging, half-laughs.]

At least I don't have to cook you breakfast.

When the only sound in the empty street/ is the heavy tread of the heavy feet/ that belong to a lonesome cop,/ I open shop.

Most people when they see me just want conversation.

David, get over here!

Kiss goodbye?

Ma, they're so different.

Harvey Fierstein, the unlikeliest of performers, is a master of faces. He would've made a great silent star. These moments come from Torch Song Trilogy (1988), which he adapted from his Broadway play. I enjoyed this movie — despite its hurried pace — because of him.

For a delicate mindf*ck, watch Petulia

2008-04-10T09:16:00.006-04:00

Hey you.
I'm drunk.
It's all that stuff Barney gave you.
I'm drunk.
I'll drive you home.
I'll get a bus.
Don't be silly.
Don't pry, Archie.
How am I prying.
I'll get a bus.
If I were prying I'd ask you how you broke your rib, right?
So you fall on a tuba and you break your rib, right?
Wrong. Your rib was broken hours before your fall.
God.

I'm into leather(heads)

2008-04-08T20:08:00.001-04:00

Crap. I was planning to properly review Leatherheads and post an essay last Friday, but life gets in the way. What I would've said, if I was disciplined enough to produce the review on time: George Clooney has been working his way to Leatherheads his whole career. We know he's a matinee idol, we know he's a talented producer and fine director and a great actor, and we know he's got great comic talent. But never has one movie shown us all these things at once. With Leatherheads, Clooney cements his status as the new (old) Warren Beatty: handsome, talented, keen on choosing and making great projects. Suave looks, suave industry acumen. Charisma of Cary Grant with the eye and ambition of Orson Welles. As I said, we've known this, but Leatherheads is visual proof.

It's a great movie: funny, charming, intelligent, sharp, easy-breezy, chugging along on nostalgia and classicism and star wattage. All the characters are named Dodge and Suds and C.C. and Curly, Clooney employs the old Universal logo at the beginning, Randy Newman's score is a fresh ragtime throwback, Zellweger recaptures a tangy '20s dameness (despite her weirdly morphed countenance). Leatherheads has every trait of a quality crowd-pleaser despite its periodness, yet it has performed poorly at the box office. Why? Go see it, dammit.

Watch Geoffrey Rush die four times at once

2008-04-02T11:27:00.006-04:00

My brother is an editor, which means he weaves reality from scraps of fantasy (or is it the other way around?). Either way, here is his latest mini project: a synchronized split-screen of Geoffrey Rush expiring in -- clockwise starting from top left -- Les Miserables (self-drowning), Quills (fatal madness), Pirates of the Caribbean (gunshot wound) and House on Haunted Hill (monster? falling ceiling tiles?). The contrast between the sequences works beautifully, as does the manipulation of sound levels to catch bits of dialogue and swells of music. Sometimes things aren't special until you put them side by side, or one after the other. Who would you want to see die four times at once? An obvious one is Meryl Streep: of cancer in One True Thing, of poison in Sophie's Choice, pushed down the stairs in Death Becomes Her, assassinated in The Manchurian Candidate. And isn't she run off the road in Silkwood, or does that happen off-screen? And I've never seen Ironweed, but I know her character overdoses in the novel. My brother thinks Demi Moore might be next on his list, but hopefully Meryl will be soon after.

Whither Rene Russo?

2008-04-01T12:29:00.005-04:00

We have forgotten about her. Or maybe she doesn't want to be remembered. Featureless for three years now, and with no projects on the horizon, Rene Russo, you think, may just be another heap of 50-something female flotsam in the unforgiving, ageist waters of Hollywood. Bullshit. Bullshit! She's married to screenwriter Dan Gilroy, who is the younger brother of recent double Oscar nominee Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton). Hey, bros, get something cooking, will you?

And why the hell is she not in the remake of The Women? And she could be popping up in cheap, good, independent movies. God knows she's already had a reliable string of quality, popcorny blockbusters in the 1990s: the Lethal Weapon movies, Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, Get Shorty, Ransom, The Thomas Crown Affair. She's terrific at comedy, compelling with drama and has a definite movie-star aura. She's a female George Clooney. Come to think of: George! Why wasn't she in the Ocean's movies (instead of that insufferable Julia Roberts)? She's one of the boys, one of the few actors who actually deserves comparison to Rosalind Russell. Russo has sparred with Mel, Travolta, Costner and Clint -- why not you? Cast Rene in one of your movies. Have her play a shrink, you play a master gardener, go to her for therapy and fall in love with her. Call it Couch Tomatoes. Done. I'm happy.

P.S. Still, though, it seems the paparazzi remember her. She says to them, justifiably, "Why aren't you with Nicole Richie?" in this YouTube clip, which seems recent. And the unofficial fan site has photos of her at recent events. But why no work?

Swan song: F for Fake

2008-03-28T20:09:00.007-04:00

F for Fake, Orson Welles's final feature, is one of the coolest movies I've ever seen, a marvelous marriage of fiction and non-fiction, a study of the value of art and the validity of the artmaker, conjured by a man totally confident and in charge of his medium. Welles, a filmmaker/charlatan, is as much a character in F for Fake as its other subjects, painter/forger Elmyr de Hory and writer/hoaxster Clifford Irving. These were men who captivated people by sleights of hand. And in case we forgot how Welles got his start, the man himself reminds us: "In my past there aren't any Picassos. My next flight in fancy was by flying saucer."

In terms of documentary-as-thesis, Orson Welles paved the way for Michael Moore. Both men, weighty in opinion and girth, are the stars of their documentaries. But while Moore traffics in contempt for his subjects, Welles is all about wonder. His fascination with truth and lies -- and art, which links them -- vibrates from the screen (this is aided in no small fashion by the editing, which is sublime and deserving of its own dissertation). Netflix F for Fake today. I leave you with a bit of Wellesian narration.

Reality is the toothbrush waiting at home for you in its glass. A bus ticket. A paycheck. And the grave. In the right mood perhaps, Elmyr has just as few regrets as I have to have been a charlatan. But we're not so proud either of us as to lay any superior claim to being very much worse than the rest of you. ... What we professional liars hope to serve is truth. I believe the pompous word for that is "art." Picasso himself said it. "Art," he said, "is a lie, a lie that makes us realize the truth."

The revolution will be televised on NBC and hosted by Bob Hope

2008-03-27T14:39:00.008-04:00

Most film bloggers love the Oscars as much as the movies they write about. It's a tricky, kind-of shameful dual love, since the Oscars are needless and distracting and not really about the art as much as the ego and the cash. Occasionally, though, constructive theses can be built around both movies and the awards for which they are nominated. So, attention guys and gals of the film blogosphere: You should buy "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood." Those five movies are the best picture nominees from 1967, and writer Mark Harris uses them and their makers as the protagonists (or anti-heros) in a story about the passing of the torch (or fight to death) between Old and New Hollywood, which was figuratively acted out on the stage of Santa Monica Civic Auditorium six days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Half of the nominees seemed to be snearing at the other half: The father-knows-best values of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner were wittily trashed by The Graduate; the hands-joined-in-brotherhood hopes expressed by In the Heat of the Night had little in common with the middle finger of insurrection extended by Bonnie and Clyde. ... What was an American film supposed to be? ... In the last year, the rule book seemed to have been tossed out. Warren Beatty, who looked like a movie star, had become a producer. Dustin Hoffman, who looked like a producer, had become a movie star. And Sidney Poitier, who looked like no other movie star had ever looked, had become the biggest box office attraction in an industry that still had no idea what to do with, or about, his popularity.

It was the year of dragons versus dragonflies, as Harris paraphrases The Los Angeles Times. In one corner: Stanley Kramer, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Rex Harrison, Darryl Zanuck. In the other: Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby, Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway. All of these players collided with each other at the '68 Oscars, a ceremony that took Hollywood's temperature just as it was getting feverish. Toward this suitable climax Harris threads his narratives: Will Bonnie and Clyde writers Robert Benton and David Newman ever bring the French New Wave to America? Will Harrison self-destruct before his picture (Doctor Dolittle) does? Will audiences recoil at the notion of Hoffman as a leading man and sexual being? Will Poitier and Rod Steiger move race relations forward or backward with their performances of an accomplished (yet sexless) black man and a bigoted (but vulnerable) white man? Will Tracy croak before completing his scenes?

The inherent drama of producing movies unites these five stories. Virtually everyone who worked on these films was yolked with crippling insecurity, Harris finds, and it's fascinating to read just how unsure Hoffman, Penn and Norman Jewison were about their tasks. Harris illustrates with bluntness and sly humor how the best picture nominees went from pie-in-the-sky dreams or commercial gambits to disasters-in-the-making to either critically immortalized triumphs (Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate), critically reviled bombs (Dolittle) or best-picture winners (In the Heat of the Night). The juiciest bits of the book are the gems from interviews with Hoffman and Nichols. A whole other book could be devoted to their manic anecdotes, and I would love to see the raw transcripts of Harris's interviews.

Much has been written about the second golden age of cinema, but most of the literature focuses on the rebellion and not the establishment. Harris gives equal play to Old Hollywood's arthritic grapplings, led symbolically by dedicated boozer Rex Harrison, who (along with wacko wife Rachel Roberts) is given the most delicious characterization and emerges from "Pictures at a Revolution" as a kind of silver-screen British Caligula. Leading the rebel forces was Nichols, a tough-as-nails maverick who perhaps was unaware of his own position and power at the center of all the change. If only he and Harrison could've worked together. (I envision a picture called Whiskey before Breakfast, wherein Harrison plays a bluegrass musician who discovers he is the second coming of Jesus Christ and tries to manage two followings, one religious and one musical. Nichols directs, of course. Ashby writes and edits. All are nominated, Harrison wins and tries to swallow his Oscar onstage, tumbler in hand.)

When Harris brings us to the Oscars, there's genuine suspense (even though we know who wins) because of what's at stake, both personally for the players and creatively for the industry. This is where Hollywood discovers what it's really thinking now, and what it's capable of next. The conferral of those stupid statuettes had not meant so much before, and has not meant as much since.

I will write about your book, sir; just you wait

2008-03-26T15:38:00.004-04:00

Every two to three hours, I develop an urge to consume chocolate. This urge often outweighs all else. If I don't get chocolate, I become sullen.

In the vending machine at work, the Snickers and the 3 Musketeers cost the same ($1), yet the 3 Musketeers is an inch longer and 3.7 grams heavier. I doubt the candies have different widths, so nougat alone must be cheaper than the combination of nougat, caramel and peanuts. Both bars are made by Mars, Incorporated. The question is: Even though 3 Musketeers has greater surface area, is the chocolate shell thinner than Snickers to keep the price the same? Or are caramel and peanuts that much more expensive? Of course, I'd prefer a Milky Way or Whatchamacallit, but these are not options at present.

Shortly after settling on 3 Musketeers, I went to the mail room. An author sent me a copy of his book today in the hopes I'd find some way to write about it. Included in the package was a Ghirardelli chocolate bar. Mint Bliss Intense Dark. 60 percent cacao. Thirty-five more grams than 3 Musketeers and the retail price is almost four times as much. But it didn't cost me a dime. Now I can put the 3 Musketeers in my desk drawer for emergency use.

6. Paul Scofield, a true man, for all seasons

2008-03-20T10:55:00.009-04:00

PAUL SCOFIELD, 1922-2008. Triple crown achieved at age 47 with an Emmy for outstanding single performance by an actor in a leading role for "Male of the Species." Preceded by a best actor Tony for "A Man for All Seasons" in 1962 and a best actor Oscar in 1966 for recreating the role onscreen.

Following Anthony Minghella and Arthur C. Clarke into the hereafter, Paul Scofield completed another celebrity death triptych yesterday. He died at 86 in the south of England, leaving only six living Triple Crowners.

This post will be massively deficient. To know and appreciate Paul Scofield is to have experienced his work onstage and I, of course, was not privileged to have seen his portrayals of Hamlet, Lear and Salieri and his interpretations of Ibsen, Shaw and Marlowe. I have seen him in two movies: 1994's Quiz Show, for which he nominated for an Oscar, and 1966's A Man for All Seasons, for which he won. In both movies he plays men of principle who do not waver under extreme circumstances.

"Your name is mine!" he growls at Ralph Fiennes, who plays his cheating son in Quiz Show.

"I am commanded by the king to be brief, and since I am the king's obedient subject, brief I will be," he says before his execution in A Man for All Seasons. "I die His Majesty's good servant, but God's first."

Two thirds of his Triple Crown he owes to Robert Bolt, who wrote the stage play and screenplay for "A Man for All Seasons," in which Scofield plays Sir Thomas More, the English statesman who stood up to Henry VIII. The film, for me, is a bore. Scofield's character seems to exist in spite of it. It's a humble performance, befitting both More and Scofield himself, who refused a knighthood in the '60s and eschewed all manner of limelight. He never went to the Oscars or gave a TV interview, never engaged in self-promotion and always returned to his family when the work was done. He was impervious to any kind of corruption, small or large, however inconsequential. View the clip below to see how he invests More with his gracefully adamantine spirit.

"Male of the Species," a Hallmark movie that won him his Emmy, seems interesting but remains unavailable for rental. He, Sean Connery and Michael Caine play three iterations of malehood and, of course, Scofield represents the principled and fatherly. A man so disciplined and pure in his personal life was able to approach each role as a blank slate, to sublimate his imposing physical features depending on his task. This was a man with an utter lack of vanity.

What I still would love to see: He and Katharine Hepburn in A Delicate Balance, in John Frankenheimer's The Train and, of course, in Zeffirelli's Hamlet and Branagh's Henry V. If anyone out there has more personal or qualitative thoughts on Scofield, please leave them in the comments.

This is part six of The Triple Crowners, an 18-part series celebrating the actors who have won an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy. Check back soon for part seven, featuring one of the most terrific (truly terrific) performers of all time. Or catch up with previous installments here.

The Cutting Edge 3: Chasing the Dream

2008-03-17T18:06:00.004-04:00

The Cutting Edge 3 has pulled the ice-romance genre out of the shadows of the Cold War and into modern-day America — where wealthy, white, Botticelli-bodied men flirt without reservation with middle-class, Hispanic, Botticelli-bodied women. And in 2008 (a far cry from 1992), chasing an ice-skating dream is not just about gold medals and beating the Soviets; it's about family, and loyalty, and betrayal, and empañadas and how the insidious creep of gentrified construction can hamstring an entire ethnic neighborhood, and how none of that matters as long as there's love.

Succeeding spandex'd forefathers D.B. Sweeney and Ross Thomas is Matt Lanter as Zach Conroy, a hottie somewhere between the ages of 18 and 26 who practices pair-skating at the swanky new sports center his grandfather built in downtown Wherever (Seattle? Toronto? Either way, there's some kind of space needle on the skyline). He's perhaps the country's only dangerous figure skater. His reputation for risk-taking precedes him, and the only woman who dares skate with him is Celeste Mercier, a pale blonde. Unfortunately, within the first 10 minutes of the film, Zach throws Celeste wildly and she fractures her ankle. Three months of rehab. No nationals for her.

Zach is charged with finding a replacement partner who can match his graceful recklessness. He finds her after challenging her brother to a game of 6-on-1 ice hockey, during which Zach scores goal after goal using his stick as a partner — think Fred Astaire with a Dirt Devil beating Sampras on grass — until Alejandra "Alex" (easier to pronounce) Delgado enters the ice and soundly schools him. Alex, you see, is a hockey player. It took two Cutting Edge movies to finally get to the inverse of the first. Hockey and figure-skating, you see, are enormously similar. It's easy for a figure skater to pick up hockey, and vice versa. Body-checking and triple toe loops, for example, both require the skillful manipulation of momentum.

Anyway, look how far we've come: a woman hockey player who quips, "I don't go for guys in leotards." This says a lot for both the brownish people movement and the heterosexual gymnast movement. In 2008, women can be tough and men can be graceful. Women can also be Puerto Rican (or Mexican...or...Colombian?), though men are still generally white and muscular and look good in any kind of T-shirt.

Alex (played by Francia Raisa, of Honduran descent, although, inexplicably, her sister's name is Italia, according to IMDb) practices under the exacting eye of coach Jackie Dorsey (played by Christy Carlson Romano, returning to the franchise after her cheek-soaked triumph in Cutting Edge 2: Going for Gold) and Zach does his best not to fall in love. But love finds a way. Zach tackles Aleja—Alejarno—Alex into a pool at his mansion in the 'burbs; she watches him sleep at her dim, reddish apartment in the city. Amidst all this courtship are villainous rivals and a protective Hispanic brother and a bosomy Russian (the Soviets never really go away) and the race for nationals. Then there's the botched routine where Zach slices Alex's head with his skate and, miraculously, no blood is drawn. But everyone knows he's a risk-taker, so it's really no one's fault but hers.

But the important question raised by The Cutting Edge 3 is this: Can we, as humans, achieve both true love and a gold medal at the same moment in time?

The previous installments of the trilogy both concluded that yes, we can, but I never believed it until this time around. Here's why:

To win nationals, Alex and Zach must complete the Pamchenko jump. When their coach suggests this, Zach (heretofore a risk-taker!) retreats. The move might cause career-ending or life-threatening injuries, he says. The move involves the man picking the woman up by an ankle, swinging her up and down and around at greater speeds and parabolic angles and throwing her up into the air, after which the pair spins identically but at different heights. It ends with the man catching the woman on her way down as they both come out of their spins. Alex, who has negotiated similar moves while trying to score short-handed goals in hockey, says they should go for it. In 2008, a Puerto Rican can be a risk-taker and a woman and a hockey player.

Simply put, the Pamchenko jump is a metaphor for entering into an interracial courtship or, at the very least, a courtship that will anger your pale ex-girlfriend and/or your new girlfriend's hotheaded Hispanic brother. [SPOILER ALERT.] When Alex and Zach execute the jump and, seconds later, profess their love for each other, the full weight of the film washed over me, like a zamboni over ice. The Cutting Edge 3 says it's possible to achieve love, even if your WASPy grandfather bulldozed your girlfriend's kin's casa (Cuban for "house"), but the genius of the film comes right after. The story ends right after the kiss. We never know if they won the physical gold medal because it doesn't matter: Alex and Zach have won the gold medal of each other's hearts, and that's something that can never be taken away, even if they are accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, which, to be honest, they probably were, because who could execute the Pamchenko move without some mid-level steroids, at the very least?

I really have to see this movie again.

Panic

2008-03-16T21:25:00.003-04:00

Channel-surfing yesterday on the waves of our pirated cable, I passed my favorite, channel 49, and saw nothing but static. I doubled back. Static again. No. Static on every TV in the house. No. Channel 49, you see, is Turner Classic Movies. And it's gone.

I do not think that they will sing to me

2008-03-14T17:16:00.000-04:00

"Isn't life the strangest thing you've ever seen?"

Walking to lunch on Vermont Avenue today, I saw a driver shaking two maracas to the salsa music blaring from his blue Volvo, all of its windows rolled down. He shook the maracas as he steered with his knees.

Wherein I talk about the state of things, and what comes next

2008-03-12T13:04:00.002-04:00

Blog was tottering toward an identity crisis before I went on my recent Adventure. I had moved out of my seven-movies-a-week phase, had barely a lick of anything to write about, was going to miss the Oscar season (the only aspect of reality on which I feel cognitively qualified to comment) and didn't have the time or wherewithal to steer Blog toward providing insight, amusement or self-satisfaction — the only goals I had for it when I started it three years ago, on the 32nd floor of a 'scraper at 52nd and Broadway. Blog was founded on the principle of No One Cares about the Personal Lives of Errant Websurfers; I commissioned myself to write solely about movies; if I was to talk about my personal life, it would be refracted through movies; in short, this Blog would not be about me; over these same three years I also developed a strange lust for semi-colons, even though Kurt Vonnegut said not to use them, that they are "transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."

I have been to college, and I regret going. I was too young, too stupid and could've benefited from some real-world experience before hitting the books. Also, Vonnegut is overrated.

Anyway, my point: Blog will continue, but it must evolve. Into what? Maybe something more personal, even though I've put dual restraints on myself by maintaining relative anonymity while still revealing Blog to people I know and love. Censorship on both fronts. Whatever. Blog will continue. Please, if you care to, leave something in the comments: a recommendation, a suggestion, an explanation of why you come here to read, or simply a "hi there how are ya."

Upcoming topics as I get back into the swing of things: a quick recap of the Adventure, thoughts on what it means to live 42 days without Internet and TV and news, an outsider's view of a missed Oscar season, belated reactions to the deaths of Heath Ledger and Roy Scheider, and thoughts on the movies I saw on the ship (which I never would've seen anywhere else).

I'm back (from outer space)

2008-03-07T12:47:00.001-05:00

Hopefully I'll have something to say within the next week. Stay tuned.

Notice

2008-01-14T00:59:00.000-05:00

I'm abroad through March 5. See you then.

FYC: Kristen Thomson in Away from Her

2008-01-06T10:27:00.000-05:00

By her very nature, Julie Christie is luminous. But Away from Her, in which she plays a woman succumbed to Alzheimer's, boasts two more intricate and moving performances: Gordon Pinsent's (her stoic, crumbling husband) and Kristen Thomson's (the kindly nurse at the rest home). Quibble: The Oscars tend to reserve the supporting actor categories for big stars or second-tier leading performances; the Academy appears reluctant to nominate and award "small" work, especially work that confines itself to the background in order to be most effective. After all, the Oscar is gold, and heavy, and shouldn't it go to something substantial and showy?

Hear this, AMPAS: Thomson's performance is supporting work at its finest, though we first see her only as part of the narrative's furniture. She's Kristy, the cute nurse who always seems to be on duty at the rest home, who always has a smile for Pinsent. She's texture. She's one facet of the scenery. She's the dose of humanity in an environment full of distant people. Then slowly she becomes Pinsent's confidante, telling him what he can expect from his wife, buffering him against the indignities wrought by the disease. Pinsent visits the rest home to see his wife but he goes to talk to Kristy. She appears young and wise, a sage ferrywoman on this emotional River Styx. Like a priest, she also hears his confessions.

And then one day she and Pinsent have a conversation over a smoke outside the nursing home. Without giving too much away, Pinsent makes some assumptions about Kristy's personal and professional life and she sets him straight. We see a sad, bitter side of her. After so much pleasantry, we see the fullness of Kristy. We see Kristy the human, the mortal. Thomson looks so much older in this scene. She lets her professional spriteliness melt away and we see someone in as much (if not more) emotional turmoil than the grieving husband. It's here we realize Kristy goes through what Pinsent does -- but doubled, and a hundred times over, every day.

Thomson strikes chords that are low in volume but resonant. They echo through every scene of Away from Her. Kristy even delivers the movie's tagline. "It's never too late to become what you might have been," she tells Pinsent, and we sense through some deep and subtle acting that she, too, needs to believe this or she'll be lost.

This is post is part of StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Blogathon, which is a great service to the film blogosphere and will hopefully one day be established enough to sway the unimaginative members of AMPAS. What actor would you nominate in this category this year? View last year's contribution here.

Happy new year, Fran. Fran?

2007-12-31T17:39:00.001-05:00

"I'm not colorblind either"

2007-12-25T23:06:00.000-05:00

Melinda Dillon is the MVP of A Christmas Story for many reasons, but the one line that always gets me laughing is her reading of that one.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?

2007-12-23T14:43:00.002-05:00

Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight (now on DVD) shames us. The film starts with two-second shots of talking heads whom we will grow to know over its running time -- Pentagon officials, journalists, military, diplomats. The talking heads aren't talking yet, though. They are staring with a range of emotions: contempt, guilt, grief, helplessness. It is an extremely powerful sequence. Self-examination is something we as a nation need to do, Ferguson implies. Regardless of our position or status in society, we are all responsible for what this country has done to another. The film's last line? "That makes me angry." We aren't -- and have never been -- angry enough.

Who gets eaten and who gets to eat?

2007-12-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

Had Baz Luhrmann directed, we might've had something sensational. Instead, with fauxteur Tim Burton at the helm, Sweeney Todd is a makeup-caked dirge, an Edward Gorey strip come to life, the type of musical a depressed and/or homicidal high-schooler might enjoy. Critics are reacting favorably not because of Burton's interpretation, but because of the baseline strength of the material. The story and score are magnificent even when communicated without a sense of fun or humor. The film occasionally flirts with fun, but in the end it's a drag instead of a thrill, a downer instead of a throttled, heart-pounding ascent to madness.

Yet it's neither disaster nor sacrilege, even though I was expecting both as soon as the opening credits played (they mimic those of Burton's Willy Wonka, with blood substituting for liquid chocolate). Sondheim's score — arranged faithfully by the man himself and not Danny Elfman, thank goodness — sounds fantastic in a surround-sound setting. And screenwriter John Logan did not try to sweeten the ending nor dial down the volume of bloodletting. This is a far grislier Sweeney than you'd ever see onstage, and I applaud Burton's attempt to fully realize the Grand Guignol-ish aspect of the story.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: No one in this film can sing, and much of Sondheim's notes and words are either thinned (in Johnny Depp's case), swallowed (in Helena Bonham Carter's) or raped (in the case of a timid Sacha Baron Cohen, who has no idea what to do with the work's most patently entertaining role).

Given his youthfulness and the fact that he refined his generic English accent by playing a pirate, Depp's performance was sabotaged from the start. Sweeney is supposed to be an older, grizzled, angry man, not a depressed dullard suffering from an acute case of ennui. Anthony Lane hits the nail on the head: "Depp’s Sweeney comes across as one more mournful Burton wacko. His singing gives off the Cockney yowl of someone who has listened to too much early Bowie, and his ivory-pale face is crowned by a stiff black mane with a white blaze in it. If you had sat Susan Sontag down and broken the news that not everyone in New York reads Hegel, you would have got the same effect."

That's some funny shit, and correct. "Early Bowie" is a good description. Depp sounds like the frontman of an indie band that needs louder music to mask his lack of vocal refinement. There's a fine line between re-imagination and confusion, although Depp's Sweeney is 1,000 times better than his Willy Wonka. As for Carter, she seems to have a passing interest in the material. This lackluster comes to a head during the "A Little Priest" number, which is a showstopping climax onstage but here plays like a half-baked segue. I've said it once and I'll say it again: I would've killed to have had Russell Crowe and Emma Thompson in these roles, with Luhrmann directing. Watch the clip below. I can't even listen to Carter sing. It's like she's sucking in air instead of expelling it.

Why Luhrmann? For his energy. For his flair for the dramatic. For his understanding of how a movie musical needs to move and look in order to be successful. Watch this and imagine how his vision might've transformed and elevated Sweeney:

Burton and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski create a rhythm that is unimaginative and often static — as if they were too preoccupied by the set decoration, costuming, makeup and performances to worry about the film's pacing. A musical needs to sing out. This one whistles a bit. "A Little Priest" is evidence of this, as is the staging of "Not While I'm Around," which, ironically, is much too staged and inert. And "Pretty Women" should've turned into the most suspenseful movie scene of the year. The suspense is built in musically (God, those strings), but Burton isn't savvy enough to harvest it on celluloid. The result is rote, satisfactory, even elementary.

There are things to admire (love Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford), but they are canceled and trumped by what is lazy or uninspired. Suffice to say: The uninitiated will revel in Burton's Sweeney Todd. They will be exposed to Sondheim's virtuosity and its marriage to stylized gore and they will react gleefully. The film is a breath of fresh air if you're aware of it only as a new and original creation rather than a variation on a theme. But for the Sondheim superfan, I think perhaps we were hoping for more than a breath of fresh air. I wanted my breath taken away.

One of my favorite moments of the year

2007-12-20T21:46:00.001-05:00

"Can I help you?"
"No."
And then we get these two beautiful reaction shots, so very pregnant with meaning. Each of Zodiac's 180 minutes is fascinating for one reason or another -- a palatable Jake Gyllenhaal, a matured Mark Ruffalo, a virtuosic attention to detail by director David Fincher -- and this end is no different. As Roger Ebert aptly said, Zodiac is the All the President's Men of serial killer movies.

Upcoming, plus DDT: The Third Man

2007-12-18T14:20:00.000-05:00

Hey-nonny ho-honny
dilute some insulin;
then stage your death so
you never do time.
Stay out of doorways or
tragic-ironically
find yourself sewer-bound
like Harry Lime.

The Third Man is playing on the big screen tonight at the AFI and I can't go. Boo hoo. Also, all I do is make promises, so here are some more: Within the week, expect a review of Sweeney Todd, the latest installment of The Triple Crowners series and a "still life" rumination on one of the funniest, sweetest performances in one of the funniest, sweetest holiday movies.

See Juno this weekend...

2007-12-14T15:34:00.000-05:00

...if only to see Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons cement their statuses as two of the best character actors around.

...if only to see Jennifer Garner in a whole new, lovely light.

...if only to have a steady stream of quality belly laughs.

...if only to remind yourself that sometimes there's nothing like a good movie. Yes, the hype, like Juno's tummy, has probably grown too large, but just go into it openly. It's no masterpiece, but it's exactly the caliber we should expect all movies to attain or exceed.

First blush: Sweeney Todd

2007-12-13T10:06:00.000-05:00

Johnny 'n' Helena sound like narcotized, poor-man's versions of Ewan 'n' Nicole, which, if you think about it, is doubly troubling in a Sondheim setting. A full review comes later.

(Excuse me one f*cking second)

2007-12-12T14:13:00.000-05:00

Same-sex relationships — like nuclear arms proliferation and environmental pollution — constitute "an objective obstacle on the road to peace," wrote Pope Benedict XVI in a statement released by the Vatican yesterday.

This from the man who wears Gucci sunglasses and red Prada loafers. Did I mention he's also calling for an "equitable distribution of wealth" throughout the world?

Your Holiness:

Surely you've already sold your couture wardrobe and given the proceeds to the poor, so let's not waste time on that. As someone who was raised Catholic, I must politely register my displeasure over the first part of your statement. You are in a remarkable position; a great number of people listen closely to and follow what you say. You advocate peace, but you do so at the expense of a vast sector of society that includes not only the GLBT community but also the straight people who stand with it. You, as the leader of a religion that calls for loving one's neighbor as one's self, have the power to very bravely say, "Love manifests itself in many forms, and its power or worth does not diminish as it shape-shifts. We are finished with senseless discrimination and effrontery. It is beneath us. We welcome all people who choose to believe that life is better lived with and for others rather than above and apart. A love for God and the espousal of the altruistic tenets of Jesus Christ are all we ask for — we do not care about your race, sexual orientation or any other personal aspect over which you have no control. We only care about the part you can control: the manner in which you conduct your life. Conduct it peacefully, with an open heart."

Instead of leading us into the future, Your Holiness, you have chosen to remain rigidly anchored to dusty, antiquated prejudice. You have chosen to inculcate intolerance. You are tilling the soil of society so it remains fertile for the seeds of hate. I look forward to the day when you realize your mistake — your sin — and I pray that time comes soon, on this Earth, rather than in the afterlife, when your god will no doubt purse his lips, shake his head and break the news that you were very, very wrong.

With love and in hope,
J.J.

Lift your razor high

2007-12-12T09:30:00.000-05:00

Tonight I attend the tale of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which, thank the Lord Almighty, was not renamed Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd during its first transfer from stage to silver screen. For the uninitiated, "Sweeney Todd" is a 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical based on a penny dreadful about a barber who avenges the death of his wife and kidnapping of his daughter by slitting the "less honorable throats" of his customers. It's a grand guignol masterpiece about how the meek and wronged rise up to devour (literally) the arrogant and rich. It's thrilling, gruesome, hysterical and utterly moving.

Suffice to say: I am nervous about this adaptation. Right off the bat, Depp is too young and, from leaked footage, appears to be doing his Captain Jack Sparrow accent. Said footage also hints at the disinterested and waif-like performance of Helen Bonham Carter, who should be playing Todd's accomplice Mrs. Lovett with muscular, caterwauling brio (I love HBC, but this was a part for Emma Thompson or Toni Collette). However, based on the trailer, Sondheim's score -- perhaps the grandest and most accomplished of the entire musical theatre canon -- seems largely unaltered or diluted by its blockbusterization. This gives me hope.

I will report back with a review tonight or tomorrow. Til then, do yourself a favor and sit down with the original Broadway recording of Sweeney Todd, starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury (who I would've cast in a second, despite her age). Or watch these clips of Lansbury and George Hearn (who surpasses Cariou) in this filmed-for-television production. The first scene is when Sweeney misses an opportunity to kill his nemesis; the second is the first-act finale, in which Mrs. Lovett comes up with the brilliant idea to grind and bake their victims into meat pies. It's a triumph of punnery.

Double Dactyl Tuesdays: Thank God It's Friday

2007-12-11T13:26:00.000-05:00

Night fever night fever
Goldblum and Winger both
started careers without
tongues in their cheeks.
Disco queen Donna S.
diva-maniacally
ruins a decade with
each word she speaks.

Double Dactyl Tuesdays: House of Games

2007-12-04T08:38:00.001-05:00

Higgledy piggledy
"Glengarry" play-writer
first wrote and directed
with con on his mind.
Drama queen Lindsay Crouse
Mametologically
proves with her pantsuit that
love is not blind.

On my third and most recent viewing of House of Games, David Mamet's directorial debut, it was plain to see why we could easily dislike and mock it. The dialogue? Stilted. The performances? Affected. The plot points? Contrived and improbable. Yet, for some reason, I love the wooden way Mamet wrote and directed the leads: Crouse as a repressed psychiatrist and best-selling author, Joe Mantegna as a classy con artist. I love the way Mamet puts all the focus on the words, the characters' cadence, to create a chord-like progression over the steady bassline of visuals. What results is a strange rhythmic precision. The movie sounds like Bach, looks like Edward Hopper and feels like nothing I've seen before or since.

Ethan Hawke: Love in the time of claptrap

2007-12-03T14:34:00.000-05:00

A good friend of mine reviews Hawke's The Hottest State, unfortunately now out on DVD.

To Oscar: You don't own me

2007-11-30T18:13:00.000-05:00

I'm not rushing to screenings. I'm not stocking my Netflix queue with new releases. I gloss over blogs that are posting about the Oscar race. I don't care, because I will be out of the country Jan. 15 to March 5 — effectively missing my first Oscar season in 13 years. You have no idea how liberating this feels. We Oscarphiles drag ourselves through ecstatic highs and depressive lows every year, and for what? A little golden man and some rich, misguided people? It's nice to be apart from the slog.

Yes, I must sacrifice certain pleasures by missing this season. The 10th anniversary year of my Oscar pool (which has become a global institution, thank you) will have to happen in 2009. I might've had the chance to liveblog the ceremony for the greatest newspaper in the country (not to mention take over for a movie critic for three months while he's away on book leave; oops). But such is real life, which is infinitely more varied and unusual than what passes for living during an Oscar season.

To end the workweek, a little First Wives Club. This is for Oscar:

How do you top that?

2007-11-22T13:14:00.002-05:00

Ain't nothin' like getting together with family and having a good meal

2007-11-19T10:14:00.000-05:00

In honor of Thanksgiving week, and to gird ourselves for an onslaught of family, let us re-watch the funniest single scene in movie history: the first dinner scene in The Nutty Professor remake. Eddie Murphy plays five out of the six characters at the table. He deserved to be nominated for an Oscar for these performances (only the National Society of Film Critics saw him fit for a best actor commendation, an award he received opposite Emily Watson's slightly less flatulent performance in Breaking the Waves). Murphy -- guided, or perhaps loosed, by director Tom Shadyac -- creates seamless, exuberant, masterful comedy work in this scene. The pacing, the gleeful scatology, the precise and hilarious family dynamic created by just one man (and one fat little kid) exceeds brilliance. To sum it up in one word: fab-iluss.

All right, I love Dick!

2007-11-15T14:38:00.000-05:00

Richard M. Nixon: Arlene. Come away with me.
Arlene Lorenzo: But what about Pat?
Richard M. Nixon: She understands.

Stephen King should be fired

2007-11-14T10:24:00.000-05:00

Here's how I imagine Stephen King composes his monthly column for Entertainment Weekly: He sits at his desk in Maine, thinks for a moment, opens the window and farts in the direction of Manhattan, where EW's editors inhale each fart with open nostrils, exhale them in mason jars without protest, somehow convert them to the page, and distribute them to us.

Stephen: You stink. Kindly resign your post. Your columns are uninspired, meandering, dull -- everything your longer prose is not.

It's worth noting that King is a kind man, a dutiful philanthropist, a wonderful fiction writer, the author of one of my favorite books ("The Green Mile") and progenitor of a couple good movies (The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption). But he has no business being a columnist, a role he's played for EW since 2003. King has run out of things to say on the magazine's back page although, really, I'm not sure he had anything to say in the first place.

What broke me was his latest column, irresistably headlined "Cool and the Gang." It consists of his normal blah-blah stream of consciousness directed at a truly, deeply asinine topic: What Is Cool and What Is Not (and it doesn't help that he's mostly wrong in making the distinction). I'm sure the editors at EW are thinking this stuff is valuable because it provides readers with a neat little window into King's thoughts on pop culture ("Look, a marquee name ruminating on the excruciating minutiae of our times!") and, yes, if written with some wit and vigor, even the most banal topics can be alchemized into gold. But King doesn't do that. His writing level (in column format) is on par with a semi-talented high school newspaper writer. He is squandering the privilege of having a primo spot in a well-read entertainment magazine. It's irresponsible.

I was an intern at EW almost three years ago and had a grand time (swag! free food! corner cubicle overlooking Time Square!), even though it introduced me to some truly baffling egos and convinced me that working for a corporate entertainment mag was not my dream job (I'll never forget being admonished after I voiced my opinions during a story brainstorming session -- a session I was invited to but, apparently, was not supposed to participate in, given the strict system of hierarchy at Broadway and 52nd). I even tied Stephen King in the office Oscar pool. But that's where our agreement ended, as did my intractable love for the magazine. I am actually considering cancelling my subscription after eight years, if only because the one good thing about the magazine (see next paragraph) is something I can just get online.

It's some consolation that King must share the back page with Mark Harris, one of the founders of EW, its former editor-at-large and, before he left to work on books, the office's sole voice of reason and true wit (at least from what I observed during my five months there). Harris recently started a column called The Final Cut, which eloquently and urgently places current entertainment into a contextual perspective that the rest of the magazine (and the industry) lacks.

Then again, both King and Harris also share the back page with EW senior writer Dalton Ross, whose faux-goofball writing style annoys the living f*ck out of me. I'll gladly read King's drivel before I subject myself to Dalton's dreck, but I'd rather just read Harris every week.

Can I convince you of the greatness of Nicole Kidman and Birth in seven frames?

2007-11-10T14:47:00.000-05:00

It's November, so I had to watch it again and, again, I was ravished. Birth is the most misunderstood movie of the past five or 10 years. [If you haven't seen it, read no farther. Watch it first.] It's a masterpiece about a widow's encounters with a 10-year-old boy who claims to be the reincarnation of her dead husband.

Anna -- played by Nicole Kidman, in a career-best performance -- is on the cusp of re-marrying when the boy shows up, begins "courting" her anew and tries to discourage her from marrying Joseph (a slick, perfect Danny Huston). The boy knows too much. It's eerie. And Anna begins to fall in love again with the memory of her husband. Are our bodies simply carriers of an energy that survives biological death?

There is so much to praise about Birth: Alexandre Desplat's score, director Jonathan Glazer's sure hand, the exquisite screenwriting (and a most elegant plot twist), Anne Heche's insanely brilliant supporting performance, the small choices made by Lauren Bacall and Alison Elliott as Anna's mother and sister -- who meet the boy with a delicious blend of haughtiness, amused skepticism and contempt.

The most compelling shot in Birth comes 25 minutes in. Glazer holds Kidman in close-up for a full 122 seconds and, without any theatrics or even moving her face, she conveys a whole narrative arc simply by throbbing with emotion: Anna has believably moved from dismissing the boy to "realizing" the truth. Kidman is such a gifted actor that she trusts the camera to pick up everything she's giving off.

I also love the way Heche's eyes search furiously when she confronts the boy, the way Glazer slows the camera speed ever so slightly when following Heche on her secret mission, the way Kidman utters a cute scoff when the boy persists in front of his father and Joseph, the way Bacall says "Laura move" (and not "Laura, move") during a confrontation in the kitchen, the way the boy is able to expose Joseph as a gutless fraud, and the way Elliott's face says everything at the wedding reception in May -- after the boy has admitted he is the fraud and Anna recommits herself to Joseph.

Oh the wedding reception. The final scene. It's rapturous and it destroys me. Anna puts on a smile for a little bit, but then Joseph finds her distraught on the nearby beach. She looks ready to fling herself into the surf. The only sound is Desplat's score. Those aching violins. Joseph approaches Anna, who reacts at first like a stunned, wild animal. Then he catches her in an embrace and speaks into her ear. What is he saying? Is she even hearing him? When he leads her away from the water, she walks stiffly, like she's just surrendered her soul at the waterline and all that's left is a beautiful husk.

Dear Sidney (Lumet):

2007-11-08T17:40:00.001-05:00

I was very excited for your new movie, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. "Enthralling," said Edelstein. "Furious and entertaining," said Denby. A "superb crime melodrama," said Ebert. "This is a movie, I promise you, that grabs you and won't let you think of anything else."

I don't really agree with any of these snippets, and it's killing me. It couldn't have been the subject matter; no good movie is ever depressing. Then why did I walk away from it so deflated? I feel like you let me down. I think it's because for the first time, I didn't feel anything for your characters, who, as written by Kelly Masterson, make illogical choices. I never realized how much empathy or sympathy mattered until the credits started to roll and I felt only an absence of feeling. It felt like indifference. Like a vacuum. I hated that feeling.

I'll grant you this: you've coached the men to perform admirably. Hoffman, Hawke and Finney (with whom you worked 33 years ago on Murder on the Orient Express) are dynamos. But your movie doesn't buttress their performances with any real heart or brains. I guess I was longing for something to cling to -- like I did to Paul Newman in The Verdict, Treat Williams in Prince of the City, William Holden in Network, Al Pacino in Serpico or Dog Day Afternoon, Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker and Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men.

The critics are praising your "return to form." You're 83 years old, and they're saying you've directed with the vigor of a man a third of your age. And maybe you have. The movie is slick, focused, violent, aloof. But it seems that you've also made some of the fundamental mistakes of a man a third of your age -- sacrificing nuance for bizarre plot economy, for example. My first thought was there is simply too much subtext in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. But then I started thinking there wasn't any subtext. There was just a vacuum. A radical departure.

I'm sorry, Sidney. I'm so glad people have received your movie with open arms. Lord knows you've needed an unqualified hit. Maybe one day I'll see it again and realize I've missed something. Until then: Stay alive, stay true to yourself, and see you next time.

With love,
J.J.

5. Melvyn Douglas, the renaissance man

2007-11-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

MELVYN DOUGLAS, 1901-1981. Triple crown achieved at age 67 in 1968 with an Emmy for outstanding single performance by an actor in a leading role in a drama for "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." Preceding it were a Tony for best actor (dramatic) for "The Best Man" in 1960 and an Oscar for best supporting actor for Hud in 1963. Following it was another Oscar for best supporting actor in 1979, for Being There.

Melyvn Douglas -- born in Macon, Ga., to a concert pianist, and grandfather to Illeana Douglas -- never graduated from high school. Didn't need to; he honed his acting in Shakespearean repertory in the Midwest. He served in both world wars, was a staunch liberal activist (his wife of 50 years was a three-term Congresswoman from California) and made four films a year from 1931 to 1942 -- the first era of his career.

His career can, in fact, be divided into two such eras: the years in which he supported his leading ladies and the years in which he supported the quality of his projects. Douglas, a stage actor by training, spent the first part of his Hollywood career in the '30s playing opposite Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, Marlene Dietrich and Loretta Young. He three times supported Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo (they're pictured in Ninotchka above). As David Thomson writes in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, Douglas normally played the "escort, husband, lover, or good friend to every love queen of the 1930s and 1940s."

He went into World War II with the U.S. Army and returned to the states in roles that were less romantic and more focused on his advancing years. He was, in essence, a man who reinvented himself by playing principled characters confronting age (renaissance by way of mortality!). Douglas found his rhythm in the '50s ("For years he has been giving pleasant, facile performances in superficial parts. It is always exciting to see an accomplished actor suddenly take on stature,'' wrote the critic Brooks Atkinson of Douglas' performance as Clarence Darrow in "Inherit the Wind" on Broadway in 1955) -- culminating in the 1959-1960 season, when he starred in two plays and won his first major acting award by playing a "principled presidential aspirant" (according to The New York Times) in Gore Vidal's "The Best Man" on Broadway. (Couldn't find a review of this one.)

His next major award came in 1963 with Hud, in which he played Homer Bannon, the inflexibly stern father to Paul Newman's jackass ranch hand (see the above clip for an illustration of their ruined relationship). Here is what Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times: "Melvyn Douglas is magnificent as the aging cattleman who finds his own son an abomination and disgrace to his country and home. It is Mr. Douglas's performance in the great key scene of the film, a scene in which his entire herd of cattle is deliberately and dutifully destroyed at the order of government agents because it is infected with foot-and-mouth disease, that helps fill the screen with an emotion that I've seldom felt from any film.''

What is the emotion? It's grief harnessed and restrained by his character's steely will. Homer Bannon grieves his sons -- the responsible one who died and the reckless one who got him killed. He now grieves the calculated extermination of his infected cattle -- the only legacy that matters to him. Douglas plays the scene with brutal simplicity. "Don't take long to kill things," he mutters. "Not like it does to grow." After he himself shoots his last two bulls (no doubt symbols for his spoiled progeny), he growls to his nephew, "Drag 'em away and bury 'em. Bury 'em quick. Go on." He's talking about his hurt, too, and his grief.

In an earlier scene, Homer admonishes Hud because he "doesn't care about nothin'." It's the scolding we've been waiting for, but the payoff is bitter. Homer backs Hud into a doorframe (and into the camera) and spits gravel at him after Hud suggests they drill for oil to make ends meet. "I'd rather herd cattle than drill for oil," Homer growls. "Stuff that keeps a man doin' for himself." And Douglas plays Homer like a man who's had to do everything for himself.

Douglas was not present at the Oscars to accept the trophy -- not sure why -- so his costar Brandon de Wilde did the honors.

His Emmy came for his performance as a retired cabinetmaker (replacing Fredric March at the last minute) who rages against old age in the aptly titled "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," a CBS Playhouse movie also starring Shirley Booth, who was (until then) the most recent attainer of the Triple Crown. Douglas plays Peter Schermann, who tries out nursing homes at the urging of his children. The movie is not available anywhere, so it remains unseen by me. I'd love to see Douglas and Booth together, though. They were masters of the stage who trumped their unglamorous looks with charisma, and snagged leading film roles. (Pictured in the photo above is director George Schaefer, with Douglas to the left and Booth to the right. A young Lois Smith is all the way to the left.)

The second Oscar came at age 78 for Hal Ashby's existential dada anti-farce Being There, in which Douglas plays a billionaire at death's door. Benjamin Rand, couched in his giant mansion, is a much warmer man than Homer Bannon, and Douglas' voice, by this point in his life, had gone from gravelly to paper-thin. There's a sweetness in his eyes, as Douglas allows Rand to be seduced by the utter nothingness of the Peter Sellers character. In this way, he elicits great pity for Rand, who, like Homer Bannon, is a decent man rendered impotent by circumstance.

Douglas didn't attend the ceremony this year either. "The whole thing is absurd," he was quoted as saying. "Me competing with an 8-year-old!" He was referring to his fellow nominee, Justin Henry, the boy from Kramer vs. Kramer. It was not reported whether Douglas was being principled or egotistical. Liza Minnelli accepted for him.

So Douglas won his Oscars for two wildly different roles: a man of privilege and status, and a lowly farmer with a gruff sensibility. But both are on the verge of death (as was his Emmy-winning character), even though he played the roles almost 25 years apart. Neither have big scenes or speeches or even particularly theatrical deaths (and both men do die onscreen); these performances do not fit the textbook definition of Oscar-worthy. Yet, ultimately, Douglas received film acting's highest honor by playing them not just as men on the verge of death, but as men at the end of something -- whether it be end of faith, in Homer's case, or, in Benjamin's, the end of idealism.

This is part five of The Triple Crowners, an 18-part series celebrating the actors who have won an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy. Check back soon for part six, featuring a paragon of British urbanity. To catch, read posts on previously profiled triple crowners Thomas Mitchell, Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman and Shirley Booth.

Saw IV: Please help me

2007-10-29T13:46:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: I have not seen any of the Saw movies. The fourth one came out Friday and, like the first three, topped the Halloween weekend box office. Based on the trailers, reviews and film posters (which illustrate acts of torture), I will never see any of them. Yet I feel permitted to judge them, or at least judge society's appetite for them.

You are all sickos.

Look at this bewildering trend below. After each film's title is the opening date, the film's opening-weekend domestic gross and its all-time worldwide gross.

Saw. Oct. 29, 2004. $18.3 million. $103.1 million.
Saw II. Oct. 28, 2005. $31.7 million. $147.7 million.
Saw III. Oct. 27, 2006. $33.6 million. $164.9 million.

Saw IV made $32.1 million this weekend, almost triple the haul of the second-place finisher, Carell Keeps Trying to Be a Movie Star. It is the fourth consecutive Halloween weekend dominated -- nay, raped and flayed -- by a Saw movie.

There is a mass contingent of faithful followers of torture porn. They have made the genre the most reliably profitable in current cinema (given each film costs less than $10 million to produce). So please, I'd like a Saw devotee to explain why he or she makes a point to see these movies on opening weekend (or at all). If you're reading and you're a Saw fan, articulate this. I want to understand. Please. Someone convince me of their artistic or entertainment value. Please. Having not seen any of them, I'm willing to admit that there is underlying value in these movies. But the marketing inspires nothing in me but revulsion. And I can't believe that's enough to lure all these people into the theaters. Please defend these movies. Someone.

I am reminded of Viennese actionism -- a mode of art in which people reacted to horrific situations (like the Holocaust) by making horrific art. I saw an actionist exhibit in Vienna in 2003 and it was one of the most disturbing rooms I've ever been in. I can't even describe what I saw, for fear of throwing up my lunch. But if one had to assign a purpose to this awful art, it would be "psychological bloodletting." The only way these artists knew how to exorcise their own personal horror was to spew it out using some kind of artistic medium.

Do the Saw movies serve this type of purpose? Or do people like to go to be reminded of how good and stable their own lives are? Or are the movies some kind of twisted statement on the employment of torture in the political and military spheres? Something tells me, though, that the movies are nothing but a slick Hollywood product catering to the basest urges of humanity. Someone. Please. Explain.

Happy Halloween, you filthy animals.

A thank you note

2007-10-27T18:54:00.000-04:00

Dear George, Tilda and Tony:

Thanks for restoring my faith in movies. You have directed and performed the sh*t out of a brilliant original screenplay (fancy that! An original screenplay). It's such a basic concept, but few get it right (or even try to). How wonderful it was to pay $10 and actually have oxygen instead of noise pumped into my brain.

Love, JJ

Speaking of obsession...

2007-10-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

My great aunt Loretto (aforementioned for her correspondence with Joan Fontaine) lives at a "retirement" home in Clarence, N.Y., outside of Buffalo. Recently the residents received pumpkins to decorate. Instead of carving or drawing a face on hers, Loretto simply wrote on it in marker: I LOVE CLARK GABLE.

Laces out, Dan; or, I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan

2007-10-23T12:44:00.000-04:00

Garrison Keillor — of the strained bulldog voice, of Prairie Home Companion both on radio and film, of this sensationally botched satire — now has a restraining order against a woman who allegedly mailed him an alligator foot, stalked outside his house and sent an e-mail in which she graphically described performing the sex act with him. The woman denied the allegations, but said she harbors the "transcendental love between a writer and a reader."

Wow. Now I'm trying to think if I'd ever have the capacity for that kind of love — the love that appears transcendent to the lover and obsessive to the lovee. I don't think I've ever truly obsessed over a writer, actor or other kind of artist. Have you? I have a giant poster of Julianne Moore above my bed, but it's for aesthetics, not worship. After their latest redesign, Entertainment Weekly started a feature called Obsessive Fan of the Week. Seems like there's at least one obsessive in the world for every artist.

The Keillor news item also got me thinking about person-to-person obsession in the movies. I can only think of five examples of true film obsession (meaning the obsessive is captivated to the point of relative insanity and ends up exacting some kind of pain on the obsessee), but I'm sure there are a ton I'm forgetting.

1. Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (above). Glenn Close has a tryst with married man Michael Douglas and ropes him in for some serious psychological lashings. Still via Movie Screenshots.
2. Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo. Jimmy Stewart gets wrapped up in Kim Novak.
3. Finkel/Einhorn in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The inimitable Sean Young plays a transsexual cop who used to be the place kicker for the Miami Dolphins. All she wants is to get back at Dan Marino for a botched snap.
4. Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Matt Damon tries to become Jude Law, or at least become those who are closest to him.
5. Sy Parrish in One Hour Photo. Robin Williams ambushes an all-American family.

Happy birthday, Joan Fontaine

2007-10-22T10:29:00.000-04:00

In her more sentient days, my great aunt Loretto was penpals with Joan Fontaine, one of Hitchcock's earliest blondes, still one half of the feuding de Havilland sisters (Olivia is also still alive, if not kicking) and living in semi-seclusion in Carmel. That penpalship was passed along to me, and for a brief time in college Joan and I sent short, polite cards to one another -- in one exchange she admitted that the ending to Hitchcock's Suspicion (for which she won her Oscar in 1942) was a severe compromise in order to satisfy studio suits and lazy audiences. Boy how times have changed. (Not.) If you've got the day off, TCM has over 12 hours of Joan today, her 90th birthday, with showings of Born to Be Bad, Gunga Din and The Women (currently being remade by Diane English). And for giggles, watch her above on What's My Line? in 1972 after she'd given up movies.

Update / 10.24.07, 11:34 / Check out the Self-Styled Siren's knowledgeable posts on Joan here and here.

Terror's Advocate: A Fiend of the Court

2007-10-21T09:58:00.001-04:00

An article from Telluride on Barbet Schroeder's tough new documentary.