Doodad Kind of Town:

At the End of the Road.... Farewell and Thank You

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 03:58:00 +0000

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all good things must come to an end.

These last eight years of writing Doodad Kind of Town have been a joy and a pleasure. I resurrected my love of writing and indulged my passion for great films. I connected with a crowd of smart, funny, challenging, supportive, and highly entertaining fellow film bloggers, some of whom I've had the privilege to meet in person. (Shout-outs to Marilyn Ferdinand, Rod Heath, Sam Juliano, Greg Ferrera, Bill Ryan, Judy Geater and Ryan Kelly.)

And while it was good, it was really good. But these days, the posts are coming ever fewer and farther between. My heart just isn't this blog anymore, and that means it's time to call it a day.

This is a year of transition for me. I'm in the process of simplifying my life on many levels: paring down my possessions, cutting unnecessary expenses, and so on. Letting go of a blog that no longer brings me so much satisfaction seems like a natural and necessary part of that process.

To be honest, I'm not giving up on film writing entirely. You can expect to see me participate in the annual genre countdown at Wonders in the Dark, as I have in past years. (This summer's countdown - the 50 Greatest Films About Childhood - promises to be another great one.) You may even see a few other articles from me at that site as time goes on.

And while I will be retiring from my regular blogging gig, I have every expectation of launching some other writing venture within the next year. The last couple of years have been time of both great sorrow and great learning for me. I feel certain that I'll be looking for a way to share some of that experience with a larger audience when the time and the venue are right.

But for now, I'll just say thank you for reading and following my work, for offering support, encouragement and constructive criticism over the years. It has been appreciated more than you can know.

Peace and light to you all.

The Oscars 2015:The Good, the Bad, the Overlooked and the Undeserving

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sat, 14 Feb 2015 02:15:00 +0000

Welcome to this year's Oscar post - that one time a year where I load you up with my incredibly important observations about who will win an Oscar, who should win an Oscar, who the Academy snubbed the worst and who shouldn't even be in the running.

While I'm excited about Neil Patrick Harris taking on the hosting gig this year, I'm also weary of the Academy's annual switcheroo as it struggles to find a consistent tone for its big night. Over the last few years, we've ping-ponged from the musical showmanship of Hugh Jackman to the ironic hipster train wreck of James Franco and Anne Hathaway to the slick old-school professionalism of Billy Crystal to the smutty irreverence of Seth McFarlane to the soft, friendly subversiveness of Ellen DeGeneres. Harris is a step back toward both Jackman's and Crystal's territories, a consummate awards-showman who's already sung, danced and joked his way through memorable Tony and Emmy ceremonies. If he's successful, I hope he'll be back every year. The Golden Globes long ago figured out that they are the smart-assed stepsibling to the more revered Oscars and have staffed the MC podium accordingly. Let's hope the Academy settles on its own identity/hosting brand this year.

As for the nominees, well, any year where Birdman and The Theory of Everything are front-runners for arms full of award booty has me depressed before the ceremony even starts. Like most awards-giving bodies this year, the Oscar slate shows a curiously retrograde reverence for conventional, prestige pictures, far less so for independent films or out-of-the-mainstream efforts. There are some happy surprises and bright spots here and there in the major categories - but far fewer than in most recent years. Here's what I have say about that:

Best Supporting Actress

Will win: Patricia Arquette for "Boyhood"

I love her, but I'm going to pose the question I'm probably not supposed to ask: how much of the awards love she's received is about her acting and how much is about her aging naturally in front of a camera? Don't we all embrace her just a little more for her drift away from a Hollywood body type to a realistically zaftig middle-aged body over the duration of Boyhood's 12-year narrative? Or was it just me feeling appreciative of (and empathetic towards) that particular detail? To be honest, aside from her oft-quoted, 11th hour "I thought there would be more" monologue, very little of Arquette's performance has stayed with me.

Should win: Laura Dern for "Wild"

Whenever I see Laura Dern's name pop up in the opening credits of a film, I get a rush of happy anticipation. I know she's going to bring something fresh and interesting to the mix and she never disappoints me. Dern's sunny, big-hearted single mom is far and away the best thing in Wild, and I wish the story had been about her character rather than the bitchy, self-obsessed incarnation of author Cheryl Strayed for which Reese Witherspoon got her own Best Actress nod. And it wouldn't be the first time an actor got an Oscar that was as much for a whole body of exceptional work as for one good performance. Emma Stone and Keira Knightley, good as they were, have plenty of time to get their Oscars and Meryl Streep certainly doesn't need any more awards. Come on, Academy voters - back me up on this!

Overlooked - Dorothy Atkinson for "Mr. Turner"

I guess it's nice that the Academy recognized Mike Leigh's sweeping, unconventionally nuanced biopic for its cinematography and costume design, but it deserved some major nominations as well. Atkinson has little dialogue but a powerful, melancholy presence as the long-suffering housemaid (and sometime sexual partner) to legendary painter J. M. W. Turner. Critics have rightfully lavished praise on her flawless work, but she's been curiously absent from all awards slates.

Best Supporting Actor

Will - and certainly should - win: J. K. Simmons for "Whiplash"

Don't you just love it when a reliably great character actor gets a breakthrough role? A few years back, it was the wonderful Richard Jenkins (nominated for The Visitor); this time, J K Simmons has a clear shot at the actual trophy. Simmons has cut an impressive swath through "Law and Order," HBO, the films of the Coen Brothers and Jason Reitman and even Farmer's Insurance commercials. In Whiplash, he plays the mercurial peaks and valleys of a music teacher's brutal temperament with the assurance of, well, a great jazz musician at work. It'll be a joy to see him come to the podium on Oscar night. Bonus info about Simmons that you might not know if you didn't see his CBS Sunday Morning profile: He holds a degree in conducting and choral music and started his career in stage musicals - his resume includes the roles of Benny Southstreet in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls (alongside the likes of Nathan Lane and Faith Prince), as well as Captain Hook opposite Cathy Rigby's Peter Pan. Who'd have guessed?

Overlooked: Umm, no one really.

I'm satisfied with this category. No egregious omissions here.

Best Actress

Will - and probably should - win: Julianne Moore for "Still Alice"

It looks like it's finally Moore's year, after a long run of superb work in a variety of films. I have no real problem with her winning for Still Alice - she's reliably and remarkably good as the linguistics professor struggling with early onset Alzheimer's. I only wish the film hadn't played like "Alzheimer's as brought to you by the stylists of the Pottery Barn catalog and Bon Appetit magazine." The meticulous set dressing - that perfect shade of apple green paint on the bedroom wall, the uniformly cut cubes of succulent butternut squash that Moore stirs into a Thanksgiving soup - are distracting and (as I've just proved) every bit as memorable as Moore's work. That's not the actress' fault, of course, nor should it be a reason for her to go home empty-handed. But it's part of the reason that Still Alice isn't getting any other awards anywhere.

But I would give the Oscar to Marion Cotillard for "Two Days One Night"

Here's what I love about Marion Cotillard: she's a high-end glamour puss who models for Dior ads and brings fashion excellence to the red carpet, but she slips into the skin of decidedly unglamourous, working class characters without the self-congratulatory fuss or overstudied physical transformations that lesser actresses affect. This humanity and emotional honesty illuminates her role as a woman who must convince her fellow factory workers to forgo their bonus in order for her to keep her much needed job. Cotillard navigates this humbling scenario with heartbreaking delicacy. And yes, I know she already has one Oscar, but this performance is even greater than her 2007 turn as Edith Piaf.

Overlooked; Scarlett Johansson for "Under the Skin"

Under the Skin is an odd, dense, sometimes nearly incomprehensible film, and that's probably why we haven't seen Johansson's performance on many award slates this year. But she truly deserves to be there, It's funny that Johansson seems to have found a remarkably effective niche playing non-human characters. Her voice-only portrayal of a computer's operating system in Her was delightfully on point, and in Under the Skin, her space alien/femme fatale who can't grasp what makes her so alluring to men is a stunning, fully inhabited tour de force.

Best Actor

Will Win: Eddie Redmayne for "The Theory of Everything"

Oh dear. I really do like Eddie Redmayne, but I really, really hate The Theory of Everything - which would have been more accurately titled Mrs. Hawking and the Handsome, Helpful Choir Director. Redmayne was very good as Stephen Hawking and he's already won most of the Best Actor trophies handed out in the run-up to the Oscars, so he's pretty likely to win that, too. His only real competition might be Michael Keaton for Birdman - another actor I really like in another movie I hate almost as much as this one.

Should win - Benedict Cumberbatch for "The Imitation Game"

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I've heard all the dismissals of Cumberbatch's work here - I've heard his conception of Alan Turing compared to both The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper and to his own BBC Sherlock. Whatever. The fact remains that Cumberbatch is electrifying in this conventionally made but very entertaining docudrama about the breaking of the Enigma code (and of Turing's subsequent prosecution for his homosexuality.) I can't speak intelligently to what other actors have done with the role of Alan Turing or how they may have been better; all I know is Cumberbatch's Turing was the most impressive of the performances I saw in this category. In the interest of full disclosure - I did not see Foxcatcher, so I can't say for sure whether Steve Carrell outperformed Cumberbatch.

Overlooked - Oh boy, where do I begin?

Ever since they expanded the Best Picture category to a maximum of ten nominees, I've been clamoring for the acting categories to be expanded as well. There are plenty of years when five nominees just doesn't cut it, and - for the second year in a row - the Best Actor category has room to grow. Among the unfairly omitted; Timothy Spall in Mr. Turner, Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Bill Murray in St. Vincent, John Lithgow in Love is Strange... and, most egregiously, David Oyelowo in Selma. His portrayal of Martin Luther King rightfully gave the film its core strength and power, generous without being overpowering, and flawlessly authentic. Selma was unfairly overlooked in a whole lot of categories, but this one omission is the worst of all.

Best Picture

Will Win: "Boyhood" (?)

Until recently, Richard Linklater's landmark, 12-years-in-the-making opus has been the favorite in the Best Picture category; now Birdman seems to be gaining steam. But I'm going to keep believing that Boyhood will win, because I cannot bear the thought of f*@!ing Birdman walking away with any major awards. Linklater's film was beautiful and moving, if a bit too long for what it delivered, and I do not entirely begrudge it an Oscar. But it was not my favorite film of the year.

Should win: Selma

A thrilling, inspiring film - and not just because of its subject matter. Ava DuVernay's historical drama is beautifully made and acted, with fluid cinematography and a powerful storytelling rhythm. DuVernay and her cast capture an important moment in American history with stunning emotional power; I was completely engrossed from the first frame, and I can't wait to see it again.

Overlooked: Two Days, One Night

There are no real surprises in this year's Best Picture slate, and there should have been at least one. If I could add one more nominee to the list, I'd immediately push for the Dardennes' brother's sensitive, profoundly humane drama. As previously mentioned, Marion Cotillard plays a woman who will lose her job and wind up on the dole if she cannot convince her co-workers to give up their bonus; she gets one weekend to make her case to them. The film is far less depressing than it sounds; though it's unavoidably sad in places, it is neither sentimental nor brutal and ends on a quietly hopeful note. I'd not seen one of the Dardennes' films before this one, but their earlier titles are going into my Netflix queue as soon as I finish this post. Seriously, this is a nearly perfect film - and that can't be said of most films that actually got nominated.

This is STILL Not a Ten Best List: 2014 Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 16:39:00 +0000

Last year I posted my first "Not a Ten Best List," a happily non-authoritative ranking of the films I'd been most touched, moved or amused by in 2013. I had absolutely no pretensions about the lasting value of my list, and it was pure pleasure to compile and write.

So I've decided that the 'Not a Ten Best List' will be an annual tradition here in the ole' Doodad Kind of Town. I saw only 77 new releases this year (that's less than half of what a professional film critic sees in any given year), so I couldn't give you a definitive 'best of 2014' list if I tried. Besides my criteria for inclusion in the list are highly personal and wildly subjective. The film that I picked as the very best of the year got that Number One spot because it's the only film I saw all year where I said "I'm definitely going to get this on DVD!" immediately after first seeing it. All of these are films that stayed in my mind and my heart for days and even weeks after the first viewing; all of them are films that I would eagerly watch again with a moment's notice. And most are films that intersect with my own life experience or state of mind in some significant way.

The objective criteria for this list are 1) that I actually saw the film (duh!); and 2) that it was first released in the Chicago area, whether in theaters or though VOD streaming, sometime between 1/1/14 and 12/31/14. That's why so many films from other critics' ten best list don't show up here. I ran out of time and opportunities (sometimes deliberately) to see all of the following: Interstellar, Whiplash, Foxcatcher, Stranger by the Lake, Only Lovers Left Alive, Calvary, Lucy, Nightcrawler, The Missing Picture, Citizenfour and The Babbadook. Many of the year's most acclaimed films have yet to open in Chicago (among them American Sniper, Selma, Still Alice, Goodbye to Language, Winter Sleep, Inherent Vice and A Most Violent Year), while others that were on critic's lists and award slates for 2013 didn't open here till this year (spoiler! - one of those made my list!)

In spite of all those overlooks, I managed to see quite a number of very good films this year, and had a tough time whittling them down to a 'top 10." Here's how the list shook out, in ascending order of preference:

10. The Lego Movie

Who would have dreamed that a toy franchise movie would be this much fun for grown-ups, even incorporating some sly social commentary into its triumph-of-the-little-man story line? Come on, admit it - you can't stop singing "Everything is Awesome!" and you'd secretly love to see a full episode of "Where Are My Pants?"

9. Pride

Every year needs its own 'feel good' movie, and this is it for 2014. It's the true story of how Britain's gay rights activists supported striking mine workers (both politically and financially) and formed an unlikely alliance with them in a fight against Margaret Thatcher's conservative government. Director Matt Warchus gets his immensely likable cast into a breezy, sympathetic groove from the very opening scenes, and hits all the right emotional beats along the way without ever seeming too predictable. Like two other British films that cover similar territory (Kinky Boots and Billy Elliott), Pride feels destined to become a musical someday.

8. The Congress

Dystopian dramas are all the rage these days, but try to name one released in the last year or so that hasn't been adapted from a YA novel for predominantly teenage audiences. The Congress, by welcome contrast, imagines a deceptively candy-colored but ultimately chilling and soulless future world whose harrowing consequences will only be meaningful to adults. Along the way, there's some moderately trenchant commentary on the way Hollywood disposes of actresses over 40 as well as the potential dangers of the ever-burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, There is also a testament to the enduring power of maternal love. And about a third of the way in, the film morphs from live action to animation, employing a dazzling, sometimes nightmarish style that recalls the work of both Ralph Bakshi and Max Fleischer. Audacious, ambitious and haunting.

7. Locke

One actor behind the wheel of a car for 84 minutes, and it's spellbinding. Tom Hardy plays the construction foreman whose personal and professional lives come completely unraveled through a series of speakerphone calls made on his drive home from a job. Hardy's performance is a quiet tour de force,

6. Love is Strange

The story concerns longtime partners (perfectly played by John Lithgow and Alfred Molina) whose lives are upended shortly after they are finally able to marry. Molina's character loses his job as a Catholic school music teacher which leads to the couple losing their home and being forced to live separately with different sets of relatives and friends. But the lasting, resonant quality of this film isn't all in the subject matter, it's also in the palpable creation of atmosphere and mood, and in the little, scene-setting cutaways that allow us to see the world as the lead characters do. Writer/director Ira Sachs doesn't just rush us through the plot developments, but takes time out for painterly shots of Manhattan bathed in various kinds of light that suggest the painter's eye of the Lithgow character, or for a montage set to a particularly lovely Chopin piece that lets us feel some of what Molina's character must love about music. These scenes underscore the film's melancholy tone and deepen its emotional impact. An odd but powerful film that plays against conventional expectations and is stronger for it.

5. We are the Best!

I'm tempted to call this a joyous celebration of "grrll power," but that almost seems trivializing, and this film is not a trivial achievement. Three junior-high girls decide to form a punk band despite the fact that punk is on the way out - and that two of them have no musical abilities whatsoever. There's such an infectious joy and energy in this film; it's more alive and more acutely observed in its depiction of early adolescence than the corresponding scenes in the more widely acclaimed Boyhood. (In fact, this Swedish film finally convinced me that Europeans do films about childhood better than Americans.) The three young actresses are perfectly cast and completely committed - you can easily imagine what these characters would be like in their 20s or their 40s. Does that sound like I'm asking for a sequel in 10 years? Bring it on!

4. Force Majeure

An unsettling comedy of marital discord, set in a tony ski resort. A couple's very different reactions to a near-catastrophe set off a series of uncomfortable, often hilarious scenes them that lay bare the cracks in the foundation of their relationship. Ruben Ostlund films his characters against vast, snowscapes or the endless polished wood walls of the resort in a way that suggests sinister forces of nature are at work beyond this family's control - and also emphasizes the ridiculousness of their puny squabbles. Although it's somewhat marred by a superfluous final scene (the scene just before that one would have made a perfect, ambiguous ending), the actors are wonderfully subtle and mostly well observed. Even their postures and fleeting facial expressions as they brush their teeth at the end of each night tells us something about the state of their union.

3. Under the Skin

It has little in the way of a conventional narrative or even intelligible dialogue, but it's seductively creepy and will more than reward your patience if you stick with it. Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who takes on the form of a low-rent femme fatale, prowling the streets of Glasgow in her big, black SUV, picking up men and leading them to ruin. There's a rote, detached quality to her seductions and it gradually becomes clear that she herself doesn't really understand the mating dance she's performing according to pre-programmed script. Eventually, she abandons the manhunt and attempts to puzzle out what it is to be human and why men are so drawn to her. Have I intrigued you yet, or have I put you completely off this one? It's available on Amazon Prime right now, so give it a shot. And know that Scarlett Johansson's performance is inexcusably absent from this year's award nomination slates: she is brilliant.

2. The Great Beauty

It was this year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film and deservedly so. Paolo Sorrentino's rambling meditation on modern-day Italy as seen through the eyes of an urbane, insouciant writer named Jep Gambardella. I could follow Toni Servillo's Jep around forever; he never runs out of interesting friends, gorgeous places to visit or profound reminisces. And it opens with what is possibly the greatest party scene in film history, a wildly exhilarating rooftop extravaganza for Jep's 65th birthday that makes you wish you were there.

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel

I've long been resistant to the charms of Wes Anderson's meticulously art-directed films, and I'll readily admit that I like this one best because it's set in early 20th century Europe, awash in the kind of Old World elegance that I'm a complete sucker for. So you can take my top ranking with a grain of salt if you like. But there's an undeniable heart and a sadness beneath its deceptively pretty surface. Set in a fictional middle European country on the brink of war, its hijinks are almost reminiscent of early Lubitsch comedies, but with elegiac undercurrents to remind us that this sort of civilized elegance will soon give way to brutality and never be seen again. It struck me as I watched this yesterday for the third time that it would make a fine companion piece for the Czech film I Served the King of England, another black comedy about punctilious hotel service and the perils of holding on to old dreams in the face of new, terrible realities. Ralph Fiennes is perfection as M. Gustave, the fussy, elegant concierge (who, I'm not the first to note, functions as a sort of stand-in for Anderson himself), but repeat viewings have only enhanced the luminosity of Soirse Ronan's charming supporting performance and brought to light the perfection of F. Murray Abraham's narration.

And a few more....

Honorable Mention ( in no particular order): Boyhood, Ida, Mr. Turner, Child's Pose, Venus in Fur, Gone Girl, The One I Love, Frank, The Immigrant, The Normal Heart, Life Itself, Into the Woods.

2014 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Birdman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Edge of Tomorrow, Snowpiercer.

Best Older Films I Saw for the First Time in 2014: The Third Man, Don't Look Now, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Klute, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Story of Adele H.

The Lesser Film Achievements of 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 05:28:00 +0000

With holiday choral commitments now behind me, I'm in frenzied, 'cramming' mode, rushing to see as many year-end, Oscar-bait films in the theater as I can, while streaming some of the films I missed earlier in my spare time. My self-assigned task is to produce a respectable "10 Best" list by January 4.

In the meantime, I have a few, tongue-in-cheek "honors" and "recognitions" for some films that are unlikely to make my list - plus a few genuine honors for work that isn't likely to be recognized elsewhere:

When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors, part one: Magic in the Moonlight

Or, as it's known at my house, 97 Minutes of My Life That I'll Never Get Back. I'm pretty sure this has the worst, laziest screenplay Woody Allen ever produced; it feels like it was made on a whim from a forgotten first draft of something he wrote around 1984. The Provencal countryside is gorgeously photographed, but the actors have their work cut out for them. Only Emma Stone and Eileen Atkins emerge unscathed. Poor Colin Firth is asked to take his deeply unlikable character through not just one - but two! - very sudden, complete changes of heart and you can almost see the sweat beads forming on his furrowed brow as he struggles to make them believable.

When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors, part two: What If

I sincerely hope this is the only film I ever see where two adorable lead actors (Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan) make flirtatious chit-chat about the amount of undigested fecal matter in Elvis' body when he died. (I did not make that up.) Elsewhere, a wildly infatuated Megan Park tells Adam Driver, "I want to grind up your bones and muscles and organs, and spread them on toast and eat them!" I get that it's meant to be a way-over-the-top declaration of love, but... ewww! When did romantic comedy become so crass? Radcliffe and Kazan play two of the sweetest, most appealing platonic friends you ever hoped would wake up and realize they were perfect for each other. Unfortunately a deranged purveyor of defecation jokes wrote their lines.

I Liked it More than I was Supposed to, part one: Neighbors

Seth Rogen struggles to accept the reality that he is a married father and therefore an adult.. Does that sound familiar? The difference here is that Rogen's screen wife, the devilishly funny Rose Byrne,is just as resistant to growing up. The two have a highly charged argument about who gets to be Kevin James in their relationship, with Byrne protesting that "I have some Kevin James in me!" They make an inspired and highly enjoyable comedy team. Nicholas Stoller's genial, goofy comedy about young parents whose lives are upturned when a college fraternity moves into the house next door hits some predictable notes, but still made me laugh out loud a few times.

I Liked it More than I was Supposed to, part two: This is Where I Leave You.

Memorably described by Rolling' Stone's Peter Travers as "your chance to sit shiva with an all-star cast!" Four siblings reunite after their father dies: old emotional wounds are re-opened and family secrets are unearthed. Yeah, we've all seen that before, and Shawn Levy's direction is strictly pedestrian. (Oh what the late, great Mike Nichols could have done with this material!) But the first-rate cast of actors works a sneaky kind of magic (especially Jason Bateman and Connie Britton)and they keep you engaged and invested to the ~~bitter~~ happy end. And Rose Byrne is in this one, too!

Best Use(s) of a "Mad Men" Star: Elizabeth Moss in Listen Up Phillip and The One I Love

Elizabeth Moss just gets better and better with every successive season of Mad Men. Her Peggy Olson may be my favorite TV character of all time; deeply flawed, struggling to reconcile her career ambitions with her emotional needs, and in Moss' hands, always fascinating to watch. Moss brought some of that same complexity, depth and nuance to two screen roles this year. In The One I Love, she went on an unorthodox marriage retreat with Mark Duplass and played every emotional shift in the relationship with stunning precision and clarity. She also brought welcome life to the airless, overrated Listen Up Phillip ; in what would typically be the underwritten role of 'the girlfriend,' she found the character's heart and soul. I can't wait to see what Moss does next.

Worst Use of a"Mad Men" star: Jon Hamm in The Congress

An animated character with Jon Hamm's voice, the Grinch's spindly fingers and big, watery haunted eyes makes passionate love to a character voiced by Robin Wright. She also appears in the live-action sections of the film; he does not. Please don't tease a girl by offering her the sight of a naked Jon Hamm, but only in cartoon form. (Incidentally, the film as a whole is terrific, and, as of now, a strong contender for my Ten Best list.)

It Was the Best of Films, It Was the Worst of Films: Nymphomaniac

Lars von Trier's eccentric, challenging, crazy-ass epic about the sexual journey of a woman called Joe is showing up on a few 'Ten Best' lists - and a few "Ten Worst" lists as well. Probably no one loves that dichotomy more than the eternal provocateur, Von Trier himself. Nymphomaniac is a wild 5 1/2 hour ride that veers crazily from the tedious to the thoughtful to the hilarious to the just plain bizarre. Let's put it this way: it's an explicit film that isn't especially titillating; the story of woman's long, prodigious sexual history that contains digressions on fly fishing, mathematics and the sociological significance of dessert fork ownership. (Yeah, go back and read that last part again. I am not making that up). It's not coming anywhere near my Ten Best list, but there's so much fevered imagination at work here and so little concern for mainstream sensibility or audience comfort that I've developed a stubborn admiration for it.. I can't dismiss it out of hand, but I'm pretty sure I'll never want to sit through it again.

True Story, Badly Told, part one: Monuments Men

In which a fantastic cast of actors are breezily introduced and then go on to make a stultifyingly boring film about saving European art treasures from the Nazis. It should have been rousing and great; instead, it's a film in which I've been unable to stay awake to the end, even after three attempts. Also, it asks the question "Was it worth it to sacrifice men's lives just to save some old art?" It asks that question a lot. It asks that question so many times, in fact, that after an hour or so, even a passionate defender of art preservation like myself starts to think that maybe these guys should have just stayed home and let that Van Eyck altar piece go to hell.

True Story, Badly Told, part two: The Theory of Everything

Surely there was a more interesting film to be made about Stephen Hawking than this treacly, golden-hued romantic drama in which his wife has the marginally larger role. If you'd rather watch Mrs. Hawking wrestle with her strong feelings for the handsome, helpful church choir director than spend time delving into a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo, this is the biopic for you! Eddie Redmayne, however, is superb.

Why Singing in Choir is the Best Part of Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 02:46:00 +0000

It’s that time of year again….

Depending on which Christmas carol you reference, we've reached either “the bleak midwinter” or the “most wonderful time of the year.” Perhaps it’s a little of both.

But for this film blogger/choral singer, it’s also time for my annual apologia in which I beg your pardon for not writing about films because I’m so overwhelmed with choir rehearsals and performances. Over the next 3 weeks, I’ll have 2 community holiday concerts, 1 benefit performance at a VA home, 3 Sunday Masses and 3 Christmas Eve masses to sing, plus the 7 or 8 intermittent rehearsals needed to pull all that off. And because that’s not nearly enough singing to get me through the holidays, I've also got a ticket for the annual “sing-along” concert of Handel’s Messiah where I’ll be working the alto part as an enthusiastic audience participant.

Can you see why I’m having trouble fitting in a matinee of Birdman or Interstellar – let alone shopping or attending to my Christmas card list? It’s not just a matter of “blockbuster fatigue” (a certain kind of malaise which keeps me out of the multiplex in the summer and sometimes during this Oscar-courting season), but just straight-up busyness and exhaustion that’s cutting into my viewing schedule. When I have a little time for entertainment, I’m make do with the occasional drive-by viewing of a Big Bang Theory rerun or falling asleep in my chair to The Lego Movie on HBO.

But I’m not here to complain.

Of all the enterprises in which I engage, none has been so rewarding to me as singing in choral groups. There is something mystical and life-affirming about a group of people coming together to make music, at any time of year, but the magic is even more potent at Christmastime. We’re in the darkest, bleakest moment in the calendar, and the lack of sunlight becomes metaphor for darkness and loneliness in our lives. It’s a darkness I've felt more acutely since the death of my partner, Marlon, in 2013, and one that everyone feels in some measure with regard to their own struggles and disappointments.

But you’re never lonely for long if you sing with other people. And music is the best non-pharmaceutical mood enhancer I know.

Many nights I go into a rehearsal feeling draggy and cranky, worn down with the petty stresses of the day. But once we start to sing, something powerful happens. All the things that have made me anxious or angry in the previous twelve hours fall to the edges of my consciousness and I become very focused on the music – and only the music. I’m so intent on getting the pitches, rhythms and dynamics exactly right that I forget to feel tired or stressed, and I inevitably leave rehearsal feeling lighter and more optimistic. Lately I've realized that while I don't meditate by sitting cross-legged on a cushion and intoning a mantra, I do meditate by going to choir practice. But that’s only part of the magic.

There’s a Facebook meme being passed around by fellow choristers with this wonderful quote by Paul McCartney: “I love to hear a choir. I love to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.”

McCartney gets it so right. Choral singing requires collaborators, not divas. A good choir demands that egos be put aside, that singers blend their voices unselfishly together to make skillfully harmonized sound which surpasses what any one of us alone could produce. It requires hard work and dedication from its members, but rewards them with the singular joy of creating something beautiful together. And very often, it forges deep bonds of lasting friendship among them as well. We choristers look out for one another, help each other, celebrate our fellow singers' joys and commiserate with them on their losses.

That little baby wasn't born in a cold, humble manger so many years ago so that we could exchange blows with fellow Wal Mart shoppers in a quest for low-priced big-screen TVs. He came to show us how to love one another as God first loved us, how to take care of one another and keep each other warm and safe in a world that is too often cold and dangerous. There are many human enterprises in which that lesson can be learned and lived every day; for me, a choir is one place where I feel closest to God’s creativity and compassion.

To all my readers – whatever your spiritual practices may or may not be – I wish you peace and light in this holiday season... and lots of good music!

Losing Mike Nichols (and Robert Altman)

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 03:04:00 +0000

Last night, I streamed Ron Mann's documentary Altman, and for a blissful hour-and-a-half, I got to remember what the world was like when Robert Altman was still in it and still making movies.

A highly entertaining mash-up of film clips, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and home movies - with narration by Altman's widow and children - it brought the iconoclastic filmmaker to life again. From Mann's lovingly curated tribute came forth a portrait of artist who was a larger-than-life force: equal parts paterfamilias and party animal, with a strong, angry moral conscience and a wholly original talent for subverting the all-too-familiar tropes of American film.

When Altman came to a sudden, sad end with the director's 2006 death, I keenly felt the loss of him all over again. There's a big empty space in the cinematic world where Altman once sat, and no one (not even his acolyte, P. T. Anderson, visionary though he is) has filled that space since. I miss those times when every year brought a new Robert Altman film, a new piece of history or society on which he would cast his unsparing eye. Some were great (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts, Gosford Park), some not so great (Pret a Porter, Popeye). Some were were seriously undervalued (The Company, which had some of the most beautiful dancing ever captured on film) and some were irresistibly fucked-up -yet-fascinating (3 Women, A Wedding, Health, Dr. T and the Women). But all were the unmistakable products of a restless, innovative intelligence and I savored every second of them.

Sitting quietly at the end of Altman, I thought about how I wanted to watch his entire oeuvre all over again, in order, from M*A*S*H to Prairie Home Companion. And then I woke up this morning and went back to living in the post-Altman world, only to turn the car radio on to NPR and hear this:

"Director Mike Nichols has died at age 83."

Shit.

Now there's another gaping void in the cinematic firmament, another great talent whose likes we'll never see again.

The loss of these two artists is, of course, inevitable; no one, not even a multiple-award-winning film and stage director - is immortal after all. But thankfully, their work is.

To understand what their work meant to me, I must take you back to a time before Netflix, before premium cable... before VCRs even.... when movies could only be seen in theaters or on local TV. If you aren't old enough to remember that world, you may not be able to appreciate what it was like when the closest thing to an art film that was available to you was Altman's Nashville at the local theater.

Or, for than matter, what it was like to see The Graduate for the first time at age 13 on its network television premiere. Though edited slightly to meet the broadcast standards of the time, the scenes between Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft carried an illicit thrill for me and my adolescent friends, a frisson of seeing their forbidden, screwed up affair presented in such a wickedly funny way. That wasn't exactly the point of The Graduate, of course, but for an unworldly young girl using films to parse the larger, more sophisticated world outside her experience, it was a fascinating window into how badly adults might behave behind closed doors.

In the years to come, Nichols would continue to be my guide to mostly bad (or at least misguided) but highly amusing human behavior. I can't pretend that I loved his films with the same unabashed fervor I carried for Robert Altman's work, but I sure as hell liked and admired them. They were cast wall-to-wall with impeccable acting talent, beautifully written (often, in part, by the likes of Nora Ephron or his former comedy partner, Elaine May), unfailingly intelligent and often very funny. I delighted in the updated screwball rom-com twists and turns of Working Girl, marveled at the perfectly calibrated dynamics of the troubled mother-daughter relationship in Postcards from the Edge, and championed the undervalued Primary Colors, one of the best films ever made about American politics.

But I carried an intimidating image of Nichols in my head - glamorous, urbane, witty, possessed of a zillion awards and accolades plus a coterie of fabulous friends and a sophistication I could never dream of attaining. The man didn't certainly need my admiration. I fancied Nichols with his shelf full of award trophies and unerring Midas touch, too much the golden boy to be as authentic an artist as my beloved, ornery, outspoken Robert Altman.

Is that unfair? Yes, probably, although I doubt I'll ever overcome my suspicion of any artist who never really has a failure. (On second thought, The Fortune may qualify as one. And What Planet Are You From? wouldn't exactly be a career highlight, either.) But Nichols' many successes are so impressive that's it hard to be churlish or stingy with praise. I can't think of another director at work today who has such a magnificent way with actors, who has coaxed so many extraordinary performances out of his admittedly gifted stars. We're going to miss that.

And though it's easy to be as intimidated as dazzled by the kind of hip, neurotic wit that Nichols dealt in, I don't really want to live in a world where that kind of articulate, challenging humor isn't available to help us make sense of life's foibles and follies. But it looks as though we may be forced to now.

I think Jon Robin Baitz said it most eloquently today on the Vanity Fair site:

"So much is now gone. New York (Manhattan mostly) really isn't New York anymore. It's mercantile, and literal, no longer a land of dreams, just another playground for the 21st century's global rich. And with Mike gone, there's one fewer person to find the glory in subtext, the code that is buried deep in American life, at that intersection where lust, nervousness, ambition, and comedy all meet. He ran that intersection for decades."

To Stream or Not to Stream: The Love Punch

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 02:21:00 +0000

There are lots of unfamiliar but promising films to stream these days. But which are the hidden gems and which are obscure for good reason? Here is the first of an occasional series, providing a guide to what's worth your time - and what isn't.

When The Love Punch first popped up in my Amazon search results for '2014 Movies', I couldn't help but be intrigued. A romantic comedy-cum-jewel heist caper set mostly in the south of France with Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan as playfully bickering ex-spouses/partners in crime? I’m down for that! True, I’d never heard of The Love Punch, but I asked myself “How bad could it be?” at about the same moment I punched the “purchase” button on my Roku remote.

Pretty damn bad, as it turns out. And it needn't have been. Both the raw material and the top-notch actors required for a sprightly, sophisticated romp were right there, but the writer/director’s ideas clearly outweighed his ability to deliver.

From the moment that the words "Written and Directed by Joel Hopkins" appeared in the opening credits, my expectations went into free-fall. Hopkins’ previous film was the rambling, lachrymose Last Chance Harvey in which Thompson and Dustin Hoffman played two of the saddest sad-sack single people in the history of film. (Thompson’s character couldn't even get through a comically bad blind date without sobbing in the loo.) Naturally they fell in love, despite having nothing in common but the miserably meaningless black holes that passed for their lives. I've always hated Mr. Hopkins a little for perpetuating the worst stereotypes about single adults, even as I admit that his actors made some mildly engrossing dramedy out of their characters’ emotional hardships.

In The Love Punch, he's once again cast actors who are significantly better than his material and who perform with a conviction and comic gusto that his lackluster work doesn't really earn. Thompson and Brosnan have a nice, Beatrice-and-Benedict kind of sparring chemistry that kicks off the film with a promising spark, but peters out over the following 90-some minutes under the weight of the jewel heist plot. Meanwhile, their co-stars, Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie, are mostly wasted in underwritten comic supporting roles that they valiantly labor to make interesting.

Much like his fellow Brit, Richard Curtis, Hopkins is a significantly better writer than a director. He comes up with a handful of good gags, but has no idea how to set up and land them; about half a beat after each one, I thought “That was a good gag,” but I never laughed on an actual punchline. Hell, he doesn't even know how to properly frame a scene that contains more than two actors. The wedding reception scene that opens the film has four actors standing in an unnaturally straight row while talking to each other, as if lined up on the lip of a proscenium stage in a first-time director's community theater play.

And some scenes - as both written and directed - are even more bizarre. I’m thinking chiefly of the one where Imrie playfully faux-threatens fellow diners at a hotel restaurant with an actual loaded gun, then tosses it on the table where it promptly goes off. Inexplicably, no one is killed, wounded, arrested or even asked to leave (perhaps there are open carry laws on the French Riviera?), but our four leads have quite a giggle over it on their way back to their rooms. I realize there’s a willing suspension of disbelief required in the kind of comedy where ordinary, middle-aged suburbanites become international jewel thieves. But this scene, among a few others, requires us to shut down far too many brain cells to maintain reasonable enjoyment.

THE LOVE PUNCH is available on Amazon Instant Video.
BOTTOM LINE: Not worth your time. Not worth your $3.99 rental fee.

Short Take: St. Vincent

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Years ago, I was talking with a friend about a movie we’d both seen. He told me how much he enjoyed it. I countered by reminding him how predictable it was, how sentimental, how clichéd, and so on. He then conceded every one of my points without altering his opinion one bit, noting that “I knew exactly where it was going, but I really enjoyed the journey.”

Maybe I’m getting soft-hearted (or soft-headed) in middle age, but I find that I’m approaching more movies with my friend’s easy-going attitude. It’s great to have my mind blown by a ground-breaking artistic achievement in cinema, and I wouldn't want to go to the movies if I couldn't have that experience at least a few times a year. But sometimes when your heart longs to be warmed and your soul longs to be soothed, there is great comfort in a familiar tale with good performances, a few laughs and an expertly jerked tear or two.

For that reason, I won’t dismiss or deride St. Vincent, even though everything you've heard about its plot is true. An adorable moppet transforms the life of a crusty, badly behaved old man who’s given up on himself. In return, the crusty old guy teaches the adorable moppet to stand up for himself against the school bully, with the result that the moppet and the bully become friends. There’s a hooker with a heart of gold in the mix, as well as a beleaguered single mom who puts her life back together. And please don’t go crying “SPOILERS!!” over any of this exposition: any of these plot points you didn't pick up from the film’s trailer are long-time staples of the Heartwarming, Life-Affirming Movie playbook.

But if those plot points seem overfamiliar and cloying, the execution of them is not. What elevates St. Vincent to the place where you completely forget you’re watching a cliché-fest? Bill Freakin’ Murray! Murray couldn't play schmaltzy if he tried; his character has just enough simmering anger and cranky integrity to keep himself and everyone around him from sinking into bathos. It’s a decidedly un-cute, straight-shooting performance that gives even the most cynical of its audience permission to laugh and cry in all the right places. Even better, it sets the no-emotional-pandering tone for the other actors, among them a blessedly subdued Melissa McCarthy as the single mom, young newcomer Jaden Lieberher as her son, Naomi Watts as the coldly funny hooker and Chris O'Dowd as a refreshingly non-sanctimonious priest.

Writer/director Theodore Melfi does an exceptionally fine job of shaping his talented cast into a cohesive ensemble and even slips in a few moments of undeniable wisdom. My favorite exchange between Lieberher and Murray goes like this (and here I must shout !SPOILER ALERT! because this will force me to reveal a plot point you really shouldn't know about going in - stop here if you plan to see St Vincent for yourself. Also, be warned that this dialogue may be slightly paraphrased; I'm working from memory because I couldn't find a transcript of these lines.)

Oliver finds Vincent sitting next to a box which contains his late wife's ashes.

Oliver: I'm sorry for your loss.
Vincent: Why do people always say that?
Oliver: They say it because they don't know what else to say.
Vincent: Why don't they say something like "Do you miss her?" or "What was she like?" or "How are you doing with that loss?"

That's a deceptively simple exchange, but it very accurately sums up some truths about how people deal with death and grief. As regular readers know, my partner, Marlon, passed away last year and I have plenty of recent experience with people,even good friends, who don't know how to talk to me about it - who freeze up and even visibly recoil if I mention him myself. I'd love to carry this scene from St. Vincent around with me to give them some pointers on how to spare us both that discomfort.

Any movie that gives me that - plus a priceless closing-credits sequence of Bill Murray singing Bob Dylan while simultaneously drinking whiskey and watering his nearly dead plants - is more than worth my time.

Short Take: Gone Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 17:11:00 +0000

It was both annoying and amusing to watch Gone Girl with an audience half-full of people who obviously didn't read Gillian Flynn's monster hit novel,

Annoying, because those people couldn't shut up: as the plot took unforeseeable hairpin turns and the characters' outer layers of artifice and respectability fell away to reveal darker impulses, they couldn't help but exclaim, groan, laugh nervously, or simply babble to their companions in shock and disbelief. But it was also amusing for all those same reasons. There's an undeniable sense of fun, and even community, in being part of a big audience reacting viscerally to a terrific thriller, and the noisiness of the Gone Girl newbies only intensified that experience.

Flynn's novel was a spellbinding look at a marriage gone spectacularly wrong, wrapped in twisty, mind-bending suspense. Two writers, a Midwestern lunk named Nick Dunne and a privileged beauty, Amy Elliott, have an idyllic courtship and early marriage in New York. When the recession takes away their jobs, their marriage begins to falter, and a move to Nick's Missouri hometown to care for his sick mother only succeeds in pushing them further apart. On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears, apparently bludgeoned and kidnapped, and Nick quickly begins to look like the guilty suspect.

The story is told in chapters that alternate from Nick's point of view to Amy's, and Flynn throws in a couple of stunning plot reversals to keep her readers off balance and keep them turning pages. I'm not about to reveal any of those details here.

Among my friends who have have read Gone Girl, the received opinion of the novel is mixed. We all agree it is superbly written, the kind of book you literally can't put down. But no one admits to loving or even enjoying it, because the two principal characters are so deeply repellent, plus the book's controversial, ambiguous ending left a distinctly sour taste in our collective mouths.

But David Fincher's film, which works from a screenplay by Flynn herself, is something else again. Contrary to early reports, it is scrupulously faithful to the source material, even keeping the controversial ending mostly intact (albeit with some subtly different shadings that, in retrospect are more significant than they first appear. I'll leave it at that.) But in Fincher's hands, the story's deeper themes on the notion of identity - which, on the page, were soft-pedaled in the service of the plot-driving mechanics - give the story a contemporary context and a resonance that elevate it beyond mere thriller. Fincher's direction sharpens and intensifies Flynn's insights into the ways in which roles and identities shift in the course of a marriage; sharper, too, is the devastating satire of a news media that shapes, packages and misrepresents its subjects, essentially distilling the complications and realities of human lives into digestible tropes for an easily manipulated audience.

There's a whole lot of plot to get through here, but Fincher and Flynn manage it with an exhilarating briskness, distilling large of amounts of exposition into breathlessly paced but entirely intelligible montages. I can't recall the last time that 149 minutes in a move theater passed with such apparent speed.

And those leads? They're indeed perfectly cast. I've long loved Rosamund Pike, a cool British beauty whose characters often submerge a sly and subversive spirit beneath a pleasing veneer of beauty and good manners. Her take on Amy is perfectly calibrated to confound the audience's shifting expectations - icy and unknowable, but always fascinating to watch.

As for Affleck : somehow without any apparent effort to do so, he transforms the Nick Dunne of the novel - a surly, mostly unlikable cad - into a sympathetically mixed-up man whose failings are forgivable. On the page both characters were equally repellent, but onscreen, Nick emerges as the better, more unfortunate of the two. That's a subtle but important shift, and in its way, a sort of meta-comment on the whole proceedings. If the book's most off-putting aspect is its failure to provide a character with which the reader can sympathize, a mainstream film needs at least one relatable character who can pull us into the story, someone we can root for (if uneasily, in this case.) Like the Nancy Grace-esque cable news harridan who appears on TV screens through Gone Girl, Fincher seems to tacitly recognize our need for a clearly delineated hero and villain.

A Month Without Cable: The Lessons I Didn't Learn

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 23:14:00 +0000

When I decided to give up cable television for the entire month of September, I believed it would be an exercise in both virtue and thrift.

Surely the enforced absence of Bravo's Real Housewives and VH1s Couples Therapy from my home screen would make me a better person - more likely to pick up a book, take a walk or, at least, watch a PBS documentary now and then. (I tried not to think too hard about what it would be like to give up my beloved Turner Classic Movies for 30 days, but I suspected I would feel more genuinely deprived than virtuous.)

There was also the seductive lure of money saved. If I stopped throwing so much hard-earned cash at Comcast (in exchange for HBO, dozens of channels I'd never even watched, and same-day-as-theaters VOD films at 8-10 bucks a pop), what might I do with those extra dollars every month? Treat myself to an annual designer handbag? Sock it away in an account earmarked for exotic vacations? The possibilities seemed far more tantalizing than yet another House Hunters International binge-a-thon.

So for 30 days, I watched TV as if I didn't have cable. I did, however, take full advantage of my Roku box and a couple of low-cost streaming service subscriptions (Netflix and Amazon Prime). And at the end of the month, did I feel smarter, richer, or better adjusted? Nope. On September 30, I was still pretty much the same extra-starchy couch potato I'd been on August 31. None of this will be news to savvy streamers out there, but there were some revelations for me.

Here's what 30 days without cable television taught me:

1. If you can get it on cable, you can probably also get it with a streaming device.

I've barely scratched the surface of my Roku channel offerings, and I've already found round-the-clock news, music channels, exercise videos, TED Talks and offbeat/indie/classic films - most of them free. (Beware, though: the free film channels are too often an unappealing mixture of obscure old films in the public domain, cheeseball straight-to-video offerings, and a few downright sleazy titles. Rule of thumb: Avoid SnagFilms like the plague!)

A Hulu Plus subscription will give you current shows from both basic cable and the networks for $7.99 a month, and there are plentiful supplies of their prior seasons on both Amazon and Netflix.

Pay-per-view versions of recent DVD releases are available on Roku's MGO service at prices comparable to those on Xfinity OnDemand. And those "Same Day as Theaters" VOD movies with which Comcast so often lures me ? They're also on ITunes and Amazon. And you'll pay Apple or Amazon just as much money to rent them for a few days as you would to Comcast. But those rental fees are still a whole lot less that it would cost me to drive to Chicago, park in a downtown garage and get a ticket at the Siskel Film Center.

2. Some of the best TV isn't even on TV.

Five words: Orange is the New Black. Arguably the best show on "TV" which isn't really on TV, only on Netflix streaming. Other critics are singing the praises of Amazon's new series, Transparent, which I have found arch and mean-spirited to the point of being near-unwatchable. But that's just me - if you stream it, you can decide for yourself.

3. If you use TV for background noise, you don't need cable for that.

Since my partner's death last year, I'm living alone again. And like many people who live alone, I have my TV on a lot, even (especially) when I'm not really watching it. It provides some welcome background noise when the house gets a little too quiet.

My friend, Bill, a single high school teacher, tells me he loads up his DVR with Law and Order reruns off basic cable and watches them every night. As he explains it, he's seen already seen almost every episode so he can put on Law and Order while he's grading papers in the evening and still follow the plot lines while his attention is mostly diverted elsewhere.

What Law and Order does for Bill, Mad Men on Netflix streaming does for me. I might occasionally get fully engrossed in a classic episode like "The Suitcase" from Season 4 or "Signal 30" from Season 5, but mostly I find Mad Men the perfect accompaniment to paying bills or doing my nails. Another good choice for background TV: Smash, the now defunct, so-bad-it's-great show about Broadway hopefuls and the shows they sell their souls to perform in; Amazon Prime members can stream it for free.

4. If you don't know it's on, you don't miss it.

Out of sight, out of mind is the best way to cut yourself off from the cable channels you fear you can't live without. I took the TCM Facebook updates out of my news feed and stopped cruising by channel 319 in the channel guide - and never thought about all the classic, historically important, not-necessarily-available-on-DVD films I might be missing. And all was well until that fateful night when I started absent-mindedly browsing the channel guide and landed on a late-night showing of Network. I was in all the way to the scene where Ned Beatty corners Peter Finch in the darkened boardroom, bellowing about "THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE!!!" before I realized I was watching Turner Classic Movies. I had broken my vow. Did I turn it off right away? Hell, no! You don't bail on the third act of a classic! But I did get right back on the 'fast' the next morning.

5. With the right streaming services, you won't miss your DVR.

Because I rent my digital video recorder from my cable company, that meant I couldn't record even network programs while I was cable-abstinent This didn't end up being a problem. When I couldn't be home to watch a couple installments of the PBS documentary series on the Roosevelts, for example, I could find them on the free PBS Roku Channel a few days later. Hulu Plus (to which I don't yet subscribe) would provide the same service to someone who spent an evening away from New Girl or Person of Interest or Gray's Anatomy... or whatever network show you couldn't bear to miss.

6. Unless you really pull the plug on your cable, everything you miss will be waiting for you when you return.

In other words, a measly month of cable abstinence doesn't amount to a fiddler's fart. I may not have been able to record the season premieres of The Big Bang Theory or Bill Maher's Real Time when they were first broadcast, but both were waiting for me on Xfinity OnDemand on October 1. So, too, was Martin Scorsese's excellent HBO documentary film on the New York Review of Books, The 50 Year Argument. I watched it last night with the greatest enjoyment; when I was done, I wanted nothing so much as to curl up with an edifying good book and a few back issues of the magazine to which the film had paid tribute.

Perhaps it is watching cable television - and not abstaining from it - that makes us smarter and more virtuous after all.

Short Takes: The Hundred Foot Journey and Begin Again

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:57:00 +0000

Right at the halfway point of The Hundred Foot Journey, there's a gorgeous montage in which Manish Dayal guides Helen Mirren through making a omelet full of Indian herbs and spices. Exquisite close-ups of exotic powders and fiery red chilies are underscored by the sweetest violin music. Whisks swirl gently through yolks in tantalizingly slow motion. When Mirren finally sits down to taste her creation, she dissolves into tears of astonished joy, so delicate and delicious is the play of flavors in those perfectly cooked eggs.

Sadly, that's not just the best part of The Hundred Foot Journey, it's the only good one. As might be expected of a film produced in part by Oprah Winfrey, this film isn't so much a good story or even a celebration of culinary pleasures as it is an earnestly assembled collection of Life Lessons on Family, Love, Tradition, Tolerance and What Really Matters. Unfortunately, the narrative wrapped around those lessons is woefully underwritten - as hollow and dopey as your average weeknight fare on the Hallmark Channel. But glorious shots of the French countryside and voluptuously colorful fruits and vegetables at least occasionally elevate the film to something that's beautiful to look at, equal parts travel porn and food porn.

And don't bother to see it just because you love Helen Mirren. She's been given nothing interesting to play here beyond the predictable "snooty lady reveals genuine heart beating beneath her crusty facade." Even Dame Helen - magnificent though she may be - can't quite make that interesting.

Instead, I'd urge you to run out and catch John Carney's immensely pleasurable Begin Again before it leaves theaters.

Carney previously made Once - one of the best films of the last decade - on the streets of Dublin with a tiny shoestring of a budget and a cast of unknowns. Now, even working with an exponentially larger budget, well-known actors (Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley in the lead roles) and New York locations, he once again captures the infectious joy of people making music together with a buoyant, resolutely un-cynical heart.

Ruffalo plays a burned-out, bottomed-out former record label exec who discovers Knightley's scruffy emo-pop singer, fresh off a devastating breakup and crooning mournfully, on an open-mike night. They go on to make an album together in a bare bones operation which literally happens on the streets of New York, and it brings them both back to life in not entirely predictable ways.

In anyone's hands but Carney's, this could easily have been the most mawkish, dreadful crap, but Carney knows how to tell the story in such a way that the emotional developments sneak up on you while you're otherwise just enjoying the songs. As in Once, he avoids rom-com cliches and honors the characters' genuine love of music over any impulse to force audience-pleasing connections. One of the sweetest sequences has Ruffalo and Knightley sharing the most private and embarrassing contents of their respective playlists while wandering the streets of Manhattan with a single IPod and two pairs of headphones attached via a splitter - a potentially very romantic situation that's diffused into a different but equally satisfying kind of heady joy.

Ultimately, in spite of the big musical names who walk in and out (Adam Levine acquitting himself admirably as Knightley's estranged pop star boyfriend, CeeLo Green and Mos Def in cameos), Begin Again is a celebration of populist music making - done not for stadiums full of fans or stacks of money, but for the sheer love and joy of it, and with everyone from Ruffalo's shy daughter to the neighborhood kids joining in. That's a thing rarely celebrated in film - or anywhere - these days. We should cherish it.

Roman Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 11:59:00 +0000

This post also appears today at Wonders in the Dark, as part of their countdown of the Top 100 Romantic Films.

What makes a film "romantic"?

Must there be a passionate attraction between the leading man and leading lady? Or can we count as romantic the lure of experiencing a foreign locale for the first time? Can there be a kind of romance in escaping a dull, regimented life for a day of simple pleasures in an enticing and unfamiliar city: champagne sipped in a sidewalk cafe, a wild ride on a Vespa scooter, a new hairdo and a new pair of sandals to replace a pair of heavy sensible shoes?

Those are questions I asked myself when debating whether to vote for Roman Holiday in this year's Romantic Film Countdown. And then I answered them all with an emphatic "yes," and went on to cast a vote for William Wyler's sprightly, well-loved 1953 comedy.

Oh, sure, there's a boy-meets-girl story in Roman Holiday - or more precisely, an opportunistic-reporter-meets-runaway-princess story that subtly conjures up memories of Frank Capra's It Happened One Night. And that princess (Audrey Hepburn) and reporter (Gregory Peck) do exchange a kiss late in the film that seems to take them both by surprise with its passion and urgency. (Until that moment, he's been carefully guiding her through a series of Roman adventures in order to get an exclusive story on her whereabouts; as soon as the kiss happens, we know that story will never get filed.) But the traditional love story has never been the film's greatest selling point, not for me anyway. Rather, it's the romance between Princess Anne and the city of Rome - her joyous discovery of its charms and her corresponding transformation from petulant young girl to confident adult woman as a result - that is its real heart.

The first Hollywood film to be shot entirely on location in Italy, Roman Holiday both confirms and transcends well-worn tourist cliches about the city. Sure there is Cinzano and gelato aplenty, as well as a fair number of excitable shopkeepers and landladies chattering away in a comical mash-up of Italian and English. But the black-and-white cinematography is evocative without quite being ravishing; it lends a feeling of Italian neo-realist cinema or newsreel footage rather than that of a glamorous, Hollywood-produced travelogue. In scenes set in the front of the Coliseum or on the Spanish Steps, for instance, we don't get distracted by the presence of famous landmarks; rather, these scenes have a 'you are there' immediacy that pulls us right into the characters' interactions. One long tracking shot of the newly-escaped princess, strolling through a busy market and interacting with the vendors and shoppers. feels very much like something that in earlier film would have been created on a minimalist set in Hollywood with faux Italian actors performing bit parts in accordance with broad stereotypes. Here, instead, it has a sweet, naturalistic feeling which could never have been reproduced on a soundstage

Wyler got the funds to film in Italy by agreeing to cast an unknown in the leading role of the Princess Anne. So although the role had first been offered to both Elizabeth Taylor and Jean Simmons (neither was available), it wound up going to the very young Audrey Hepburn, who had only a handful of small roles in mostly forgettable British films to her credit. Now it's impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. Always possessed of a natural elegance and a fine-boned aristocratic bearing, Hepburn nonetheless harbored a delicious sense of mischief in her sparkling doe eyes. She was every inch a lady and, in the same moment, a potentially naughty sprite - an inspired choice to play a bored, sheltered young royal who escapes her minders to spend one glorious, unsupervised day in a city full of seductive delights.

She's also a very good match for Gregory Peck, who - to put it kindly - isn't the most natural of light comedians. He's game and certainly attractive, but his innate gravitas would weigh the film down if not for Hepburn's balancing buoyancy. (Not to mention that of Eddie Albert, Peck's rascally photographer/sidekick who surreptitiously snaps pictures of the truant princess at play using a James Bond-worthy camera hidden inside his cigarette lighter.) Hepburn's Oscar win was well-deserved; her enchanting performance carries the entire film. It's no exaggeration to call it a star-making role.

As is the case in so many memorable romance films, the love between the European princess and the American newsman is not to be. Anne returns to her minders and her duties, but she is no longer intimated by them. Rather, in a scene particularly well-acted by Hepburn, she firmly but quietly assumes authority over the fussy crowd of keepers who attend to her. Roman Holiday concludes on a bittersweet note, with the princess granting a final press conference which Peck and Albert attend; the brief, guarded exchanges between Peck and Hepburn in that scene constitute a minor masterpiece of concealed but palpable longing. Perhaps it is a traditional love story, after all. But if it didn't take place on the actual streets of Rome, I doubt we'd cherish it so fondly.

Bringing Up Baby

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000

(This post also appears today at Wonders in the Dark, part of their countdown of the Top 100 Romantic Films.)

In 2007, Nathan Rubin memorably coined the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" to capture a familiar character/trope in romantic comedy: "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."

There is probably no earlier or better example of this archetype than the character of Susan Vance (unforgettably played by Katherine Hepburn) in the legendary screwball farce Bringing Up Baby. From the first time we glimpse her, striding purposefully onto a golf course, till her final moments in Cary Grant's rescuing grip as she dangles from a rapidly crumbling dinosaur skeleton, we know that Hepburn's Vance is a force of nature, giddily marching to the strange rhythms humming inside her own, impenetrable brain - and absolutely the right match for Grant's befuddled, deadly serious paleontologist

If "manic pixie dream girl" has come to be understood as a pejorative, it's likely because this sort of pixilated dynamic is a tricky thing to pull off - often imitated, rarely duplicated. Two outright homages to Bringing Up Baby - Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up Doc? and James Foley's Who's That Girl? have had varying degrees of success (or, in the case of Foley's film, no success whatsoever) in convincingly capturing the enchantment that a madcap, free- spirited woman can have over a shy, serious, man who's about to marry the wrong woman.

Fortunately, Baby has Howard Hawks at the directorial helm, As Terrence Rafferty, once wrote, "Screwball comedies used to give the audience ... the pleasure of appreciating the intricate machinery of farce, of following the ingenious contrivances that keep the lovers apart and then miraculously unite them." Bringing Up Baby certainly provides that sort of pleasure, largely because of Hawks' genius in creating and sustaining the seemingly free-wheeling, but masterfully and subtly controlled mechanics of classic farce. The entire film is a well-oiled, perpetual motion machine: from the rapid-fire dialogue to the parade of eccentric, seamlessly introduced, supporting characters (Barry Fitzgerald's sputtering stable hand, Charlie Ruggles' oddly mild-mannered big game hunter demonstrating leopard mating calls at the dinner table). An element of danger is introduced with the presence of not one, but two, leopards - one meek and one deadly; we can always tell them apart even when the film's characters can't. Grant, who by Hawks' direction modeled his performance on Harold Lloyd, plays his bespectacled scientist character with what writer James Harvey called a "solidity and gravity.. (a) strange seriousness of spirit", while Hepburn never enters the frame at a normal pace but always at a full-out run as if on a life-or-death mission. (Which, to her, the pursuit of Grant's David Huxley, absolutely is.)

The ensuing tangle of mistaken identities, lost dinosaur bones, missing clothes, and angry fiancees (Grant's intended, the mannish Miss Swallow, is left to cool her heels in the city while Hepburn detains him in Connecticut) keeps us giddily off-balance from beginning to end. We never doubt that David and Susan will end up together, but - as Rafferty recognized - the fun is in watching the complicated run-up to that union.

Bringing Up Baby is now generally considered one of - if not THE - greatest of screwball comedies, essential viewing for film lovers. But it was not always so esteemed. When released in 1938, it did poorly at the box office. Its failure cemented Hepburn's reputation as "box office poison" and led to the firing of Hawks from RKO, depriving him of the chance to direct Grant in Gunga Din the following year.

It's hard to imagine now that the film was anything but cherished from the get-go. My favorite experience of Bringing Up Baby was seeing it in a small, packed revival house in Paris in 1992. It was shown in English with French subtitles, and I read French just barely well enough to know that the translations were inexact at best. No matter, though: the Parisian audience laughed repeatedly and uproariously at the antics of Grant, Hepburn and crew. Maybe they understood English well enough to ignore the subtitles, but I prefer to think that the comedy was sufficiently brilliant to transcend all barriers of language and culture.

In Memoriam: Elaine Stritch

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 23:36:00 +0000

Every once in awhile, we lose a talent that is so great, so original, and so singular that it actually hurts to let them go.

Elaine Stritch was such a talent. And the news of her death today has sent me reeling.

I did have the privilege of seeing Elaine Stritch in person, just once and very recently. Last October, she made a journey from her recently relocated home in Birmingham, Michigan to the Chicago International Film Festival for a screening of Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, a documentary about her life and putative retirement from the stage. Physically frail but impeccably dressed, she rallied to answer questions from the audience after the film's end titles rolled. Suddenly, she was radiant, tart and vigorous... and more than a little ornery. Asked to comment on something Angela Lansbury had once said, she affirmed the comment graciously, but as the questioner continued to sing Lansbury's praises, Stritch pointedly cut him off from behind a frozen faux-sweet smile: "Can we please stop talking about Angela Lansbury?" Later, when she was clearly getting tired and wanted us all to get the hell out, she bellowed, "I've given you four good exit lines!" and we were not insulted. In fact, we all laughed with great affection. Not one of us in the huge sold-out audience wanted to leave, though we politely moved to exit at that point.

Such was the magnetism, the utterly overwhelming and dazzling nature of her star quality: even receiving the brunt of her anger and impatience felt like a gift.

I'm supposed to be a writer, but today I am struggling to find the right words to honor this woman's astonishing, ferocious talents. Everything I want to say sounds woefully inadequate. Let's face it, her work speaks for itself, so let me suggest a way to introduce yourself to the tornado of talent, humor, pain, hubris, vulnerability and sheer, show-biz gusto that was Elaine Stritch.

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, just recently released on DVD is a great testament to the performer's voracious need for the the love of an audience, as well as to her exhilarating ability to hold that audience under her spell. ( I am extremely proud to have made a small donation to its post-production costs through an Indiegogo fund-raising effort and extremely humbled to have my name appear in the closing credits because of that.) It is now available for Netflix streaming as well. Watch it this weekend and you'll fully understand what we've lost.

Rest in peace, Ms. Stritch.

Say Anything

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 08:00:00 +0000

This post also appears today at Wonders in the Dark as part of their countdown of the 100 Greatest Romance Films.

Diane: "Nobody thinks it will work, do they?"
Lloyd: "No. You just described every great success story."
- final lines of Say Anything

That's right - I'm starting with the final scene.

Because whenever I see that closing shot of Say Anything, I fully believe something I’ve never believed of any other teen romantic film couple: Lloyd Dobbler (John Cusack) and Diane Court (Ione Skye) are heading into a long and happy shared future.

As Lloyd protectively clutches Diane’s white-knuckled hand (to help her past her terror of flying), I can envision them still together in some alternate universe where fictional characters dwell, still holding each other’s hand through the trials and challenges of encroaching middle age. Maybe they’re raising teenagers now. Lloyd may be running a kickboxing school while Diane works as a college professor or research scientist. We can’t be sure; after all, these two really only exist in the imagination of writer/director Cameron Crowe, and their story ended on a flight to England in 1989. But sometimes I wish Crowe had done a Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight kind of thing with these characters, because I’d love to see what they’re doing now.

And isn’t that what you should feel about a couple in any romantic film with a happy ending? If you’re not invested in the lead couple’s happiness, if you can’t feel the electric spark of their chemistry crackling off the screen, if you aren’t absolutely convinced that they belong together till death does them part, … then what you’re looking at is a tepid time-waster, not a film that will stand the test of time. And while Say Anything touches on many familiar tropes and hits many of the same comic beats as other well-remembered teen romances of the 1980s, it stands above and apart from them chiefly in the unforced sweetness and naturalism of the lead characters’ relationship. While many other films of that decade - Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and so on - feel much like films of their own time, quaint and slightly dated - Say Anything has a core of emotional authenticity that continues to resonate.

Both Cusack and Skye play teen romance archetypes, but neither plays to conventional expectations. Skye’s Diane – the class valedictorian who is memorably described as “a brain in the body of a game show hostess” - is sweeter, softer-spoken and considerably more vulnerable than you average movie high school brainiac. Cusack plays the putative outsider/loser who falls in love with her, but he's obviously sensitive, bright and attractive. Their romance develops in fits and starts, but the two actors together are incredibly sweet and natural with one another. Cusack's Lloyd is such a decent and considerate guy, and Skye's Diane blooms like a flower in the glow of his solicitude. It's pure joy to watch them together.

It's been humorously suggested in some quarters that the plot of Say Anything was stolen and re-used by the writers of Titanic, and if you think about it long enough, the similarities are indeed remarkable. ( I wrote about it several years ago- read my thoughts here.) Obviously both films hit on many of the same themes - love between young people from different backgrounds, romance that tears a young woman away from a controlling parent - but Say Anything is distinguished by its lightness of touch and flourishes of gentle, goofy humor.

And it's added one great moment to the iconography of romantic comedy: Lloyd, beneath Diane's bedroom in the moonlight. In olden days, a lover might have serenaded his lady fair from that spot, but in 1989, Lloyd merely holds aloft a boombox and "serenades" Diane with their song, Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." It's an image of heartbreak, desperation and passion all at once.

The Way We Were

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 04:45:00 +0000

This post also appears today at Wonders in the Dark as part of the their countdown of the top 100 Romance Films.

The Way We Were is the story of a doomed romance between spectacularly mismatched lovers, set on wobbly political underpinnings. With its intriguing but underdeveloped subplot about the Hollywood blacklist, it is - to borrow a phrase from Roger Ebert's review - a film that seems to be about more than it actually is. But its enduring popularity and the status it has earned over the years as a romance classic can be at least partially explained by its trailer's tagline:

Streisand and Redford together!

Star power covers a multitude of sins in Sydney Pollack's romantic melodrama. Look too closely and you might be frustrated by the lovers' willful obliviousness to their own incompatibility. You might be confused by the hasty, unexplained plot developments in the film's third act. You might be distracted by Barbra Streisand's frequent slips from strident Brooklyn-esque speech into a carefully modulated and very grand mid-Atlantic accent. But you won't be able to take your eyes off her - or Redford. The two leads were both at the height of their box-office power when the film was released in 1973, and both their individual charisma and their chemistry with one another is palpable. Plus you get to hear Streisand sing the classic theme song not once, but twice - over both the opening and closing credits.

The Way We Were is what Mark Cousins would rightfully call a "bauble" - a old-fashioned sort of film, harking back in both style and substance to an earlier era when people went to the movies to see glamorous stars. The stars may have suffered in those films, but they looked damn good while they did. Or, in this case, Streisand's character might be passionate about her radical political convictions, but she's also lipsticked, lacquered and coiffed to perfection for the lion's share of the film. (You know she's really come home to her lefty roots in the final scene, not so much because she's handing out "Ban the Bomb" leaflets in Central Park, but because she's stopped straightening her hair. In The Way We Were, Streisand's hairstyles are the most reliable indicator of whether her character is being true to herself.)

Surely I don't have to give you too many plot details: Streisand's Katie Morowski and Redford's Hubbell Gardiner, have. after all, long been a part of romance film iconography. Katie, the quick-tempered, outspoken Jewish liberal, and Hubbell, the golden, gorgeous WASP athlete with no stomach for politics, are at first glance completely wrong for each other. (At second and third glance, too.) But Hubbell has hidden depths; he's a writer of some talent and insight, if a lazy one. The opening sentence of a short story he writes in college ("In a way, he was like the country he lived in. Things came too easily to him.") is evidence of an acute self-knowledge from which he constantly tries to escape. Katie sees in him a potential for greatness that she pushes, cajoles and brow beats him to develop. She also finds him incredibly attractive (because, let's face it, he's played by Robert Redford) and has a pet habit of ruffling his luxuriously thick blond bangs, something every woman in the audience was dying to do as well. For his part, Hubbell is fascinated by Katie's staunch political convictions and go-getter personality, two qualities he does not remotely possess himself.

In the first of the film's three acts, they meet in college where Katie's impassioned speech against Franco's Spanish Civil War (a particularly brilliant scene for Streisand) brings the whole campus to its feet, even the snotty, apolitical rich kids in Hubbell's crowd. Years later, during World War II (which Hubbell inexplicably spends looking devastatingly handsome in his Naval uniform while gadding around New York), Katie finds him dead-drunk on a nightclub barstool and brings him home. He gets into her bed and winds up falling asleep on top of her, halfway through making love.

From such inauspicious beginnings is an unlikely romance born. Katie is the pursuer in the relationship, essentially sublimating her innate passions for politics and social justice into a quest to make her boyfriend the next great American novelist. Hubbell is the passive, bemused object of her adoration; he puts little energy into the relationship beyond occasionally breaking through Katie's intensity and making her laugh. Katie gushes all over Hubbell's failed first novel and urges him to write more. Hubbell drags Katie to cocktail parties with his martini-swilling, upper-crust Republican pals where she behaves badly after hearing one too many FDR jokes. Despite an awkwardly inserted montage of happy moments between the couple, there's far too much evidence here that their relationship is not meant to be. Hubbell, at least recognizes it and tries to break things off, but Katie doesn't give up so easily - as demonstrated in this exchange:

Katie: I don't have the right style for you, do I?
Hubbell: No you don't' have the right style.

Katie: I'll change!
Hubbell: No, don't change! You're your own girl, you have your own style.
Katie: But then I won't have you. Why can't I have you?

And it goes on in that same vein for a while, culminating in Hubbell growling in frustration and aiming his hands - clenched as if to strangle - in the general direction of Katie's neck. "You expect too much!" he shouts at her. To which she purrs "Oh, but look at what I've got."

GAAH!! That conversation has 'Time to break up!' written all over it. Any other pair of incompatible 30-year-olds (as Katie and Hubbell are at this point in the story) would walk away singing a few bars of "We Do Not Belong Together" and never look back. Not these two. When we next see them, they're drifting together along the scenic California coastline on Hubbell's sailboat. The we cut to a scene of Katie unpacking a box from which she extracts a bride-and-groom cake topper and lovingly sets it on a bookshelf. Oh no they didn't!! That's the moment where you see the unhappy ending coming....

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let me take a moment here to assure you that I do honestly like The Way We Were. In fact, it came in at #38 on my personal ballot for the countdown. If I'm flipping around the TV channels and find it playing, I will put down the remote and immediately become engrossed. But it's a film I first saw in the swoony, tortured throes of adolescence, and the way I respond to it now is but a faint echo of how I responded to it then. When you're young, the very act of yearning after someone or something you can never attain has a power and a romance all of its own. You can feel so alive and so sad at the same moment. And The Way We Were genuinely and affectingly taps into that kind of sweet sorrow. For over forty years, it's been a cultural touchstone for young women when parsing their own complicated or failed relationships (as memorably demonstrated in this scene from Sex and the City), and for that reason alone, it earns its place on this countdown. But re-watching it in middle age, however, is a whole different story. What resonated with me and made me cry with yearning at 14 or 22 now just looks like too much drama and too much work. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Meanwhile.... In the film's third act, Hubbell and Katie are ensconced in a cozy Malibu beach cottage and working in Hollywood. Hubbell struggles to adapt his novel for the screen, and Katie just barely manages to keep her strong opinions to herself. She makes nice with Hubbell's loathsome friends. She also gets pregnant. Then come the HUAC hearings with the subsequent blacklisting of actors and writers who have been identified as Communists, and Katie finally revives her old, militantly political self in protest. In rapid succession, she goes to Washington D.C. to protest the treatment of the Hollywood 10, Hubbell cheats on her with an old flame, Hubbell gets fired, Katie has the baby, and then Hubbell and Katie divorce.

Everything happens too fast in this part of the movie, and it's always a little hard to understand why things are happening in the first place. While re-watching it recently, I kept thinking "There's another, better version of this story, whether they actually filmed it or not. There are a lot of missing pieces here."

And then I found some of those missing pieces on You Tube...

Pretty amazing, huh? Suddenly the relationship between Katie and Hubbell makes a hell of a lot more sense. Not only do we better understand their mutual attraction, we also better understand why they ultimately split up. And the whole third act suddenly makes more sense, too. When I first saw these, I thought "Wow! Why didn't they make this movie instead?"

There's a whole other post to be written, on another day, about the troubled history of The Way We Were. As originally conceived by screenwriter Arthur Laurents, it was not intended as a love story so much as it was Katie's story. Laurents envisioned a star vehicle for a Jewish actress playing a Jewish woman with strong political convictions; he based it on his college friendship with a young, passionately committed Communist named Fanny Price, as well as his own experiences in the Hollywood blacklist era. The role of Hubbell was meant to be a smaller, supporting role. Reportedly when Sydney Pollack came on board and cast his friend, Redford, in the role, Laurents was commanded to beef up Hubbell's part. He was even fired at one point, and a host of other, uncredited screenwriters (including Dalton Trumbo and Paddy Chayevsky) worked on the screenplay before he was finally reinstated. In the end, it was a much different film than its author had set out to make, and you can feel the bitterness in his comments on that YouTube clip. (I read Laurents' novelization of his own screenplay years ago, before even seeing the actual film. My recollection is the book, at least, was Katie's story all the way.)

With Laurents and Pollack now both gone, we'll sadly never see the director's cut of The Way We Were (or the screenwriter's cut for that matter.) But the film we've got is the film we've got, and it has its own distinct pleasures, including the one we haven't yet discussed: the final scene. I could tell you what happens when Hubbell and Katie meet that one last time, years after they've gone their separate ways. But it's better you experience it yourself. Excuse the not-so-great quality of this video clip - and enjoy:

The Way We Were - Ending by Flixgr

Haters Be Hatin'

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 02:01:00 +0000

Every year - you can depend on it - the Oscars will run longer than expected. The host will tell jokes and stage some elaborate or silly gags, some of which will fall flat or offend. There will be uninspired patter between some pairs or presenters. A few acceptance speeches will be rambling and dull, others will delight us or make us cry - or both!!

And you know what happens every year, on the day AFTER the Oscars? Everyone bitches about all the negative stuff in that first paragraph as if it were all an outrageous affront to the audience and to the film industry itself. Entertainment pundits moan, scold, wring their hands, and Monday-morning-quarterback the life out of the previous night's ceremony.

People, it's time to get a grip. The Oscars will ALWAYS be too long. There will always be some jokes that bomb. There will always be gaffes and misfires. There will NEVER, EVER be a perfectly entertaining, under-three-hour ceremony, and we will NEVER, EVER see a host who meets everyone's expectations and tickles everyone's funnybone equally.

Instead, let's all just lighten up and savor what was good about last night's Oscar presentation, because there was plenty to celebrate.

Ellen DeGeneres was a congenial, sometimes slyly subversive master of ceremonies. (Did anybody else almost miss that end-of-the-opening monologue zinger?: "There are two possibilities tonight. One, 12 Years a Slave wins. Two, you're all racists/") Did she spend a little too much time leisurely wandering the aisles, chatting with the nominees? Maybe, but that star-studded selfie - Meryl Streep's first tweet! - is just priceless. I even liked the extended pizza delivery gag, especially the "no pressure" appeal to Harvey Weinstein to chip in. At the Oscar party I attended, many were disappointed by the absence of a big, production number; for my money, production numbers are a undertaking best left to the Tonys. (Even so, that Pharrell Williams performance of Best Song nominee "Happy" had me dancing in my seat.) The ceremony moved along as it should, keeping the focus on the nominated films, actors and songs, and eliminating the irrelevant distractions.

There were gaffes, of course - chief among them, John Travolta's egregious mispronunciation of Idina Menzel's name in his intro to her performance of "Let it Go.' ("Adele Dazeem"? Seriously, dude - get some glasses and read that teleprompter! And, by the way, why isn't anyone dishing about your plastic surgery? Poor Kim Novak, Liza and Goldie are getting beaten to a pulp on social media today.) I wouldn't have chosen Pink to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for the the Wizard of Oz tribute myself; she's got great pipes, but lousy breath control and/or understanding of phrasing. (Anyone who's had even one voice lesson knows you never take a breath between syllables in the same word.)

And yes, the show ran well over its estimated 3-hour time slot. But that's probably because the Academy stopped its insulting practice of "playing off"' nominees midway through their impassioned acceptance speeches. (Well, the major nominees anyway.) So the winners got to cover a lot of territory. Lupito Nyong'o's not only got to eloquently remind us that "so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's," but to thank her family and encourage young people everywhere to dream. Jared Leto got to thank the single mother who sacrificed so her kids could succeed, to offer hope to the Ukraine and to honor those who lost their battle with AIDS. Matthew McConaughey gave a wildly entertaining, all-over-the-map speech which managed to invoke God, his character from Dazed and Confused, his theory of self-improvement, and a vision of his late father watching him from heaven "in his underwear, with a pot of gumbo, a lemon meringue pie and a cold Miller Lite." And Cate Blanchett got to say a lot of stuff, too, most of which escapes me, because I was too busy telling a friend why I hated Blue Jasmine.

Were these speeches indulgent? Oh, I suppose, but I don't care. Those kinds of acceptance speeches are more than half the reason I watch the Oscars. I choose to believe that the winners are sincerely grateful, humble and appreciative. Hell, I even shed tears over Leto's acceptance speech, and I really didn't want him to win.

Finally, there were the awards themselves. There were no surprises, but also few, if any, safe or sentimental choices as is so often the case in other years. (The Artist, anyone? The King's Speech? Crash? Don't get me started...) In my version of a perfect world, Nebraska would have taken home some trophies and James Gandolfini would have been awarded a posthumous Best Supporting Actor award, but -as I've already noted - the Oscars aren't reflective of a perfect world. Instead, the voters did themselves proud with a varied slate of deserving winners.

And next year? With any luck, it'll all be pretty much the same. But if I could express one wish for a better Oscar experience next year, it'd be for all actresses to fire their stylists and follow their own fashion instincts, however batshit-crazy they may be. Award-show gowns have become far too tasteful and predictable. I want to see a Cher on the red carpet again, a Bjork-inspired swan dress, something just a little nutty or eccentric to blow up Twitter just like Ellen's star-packed selfie did last night.

The Oscars 2014 - The Good, The Bad, The Overlooked and the Undeserving

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 23:23:00 +0000

Another year, another Oscar ceremony.

The Academy's scramble for a suitable master of ceremonies continues this year as they circle back to their 2007 host, Ellen DeGeneres, for a guaranteed evening of non-controversial niceness and mild, friendly laughs. Casting DeGeneres in the host role feels like a knee-jerk reaction to Seth McFarlane's smirking smuttiness on last year's Oscar broadcast, and signals that the Academy's desperation to attract younger viewers and high ratings continues to trump any need to set a consistent tone for the proceedings. (Meanwhile, the Golden Globes have found their irreverent groove with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the podium). Oh well. DeGeneres will be fine and funny. The days when popular, middle-of-the-road celebrities like Bob Hope, Johnny Carson or Billy Crystal locked into this gig for many consecutive years are gone forever. (Unless they give this to Jimmy Fallon in a couple of years - but right now, he's so overexposed and so unable to relax into his new Tonight Show role, that I can't bear to think of that.)

Meanwhile...

2013 was a great year for cinema - and, as always, we can argue endlessly about whether the slate of Oscar nominees and probable winners accurately reflects the best of that bumper crop - or merely reflects the skewed politics and preferences of an aging, mostly white and overly sentimental voting membership. Personally I found myself on the opposite side of a real world/Bizarro world divide from most critics and awards givers this past year and the second-guessing that follows here may seem downright eccentric to most readers. But I never miss a chance to weigh in what I'd have voted for, given the chance.

Here then is the 2014 edition of Oscar: The Good, the Bad, the Overlooked and the Undeserving

Best Supporting Actress

Will Win: Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave

No complaints here. Nyong'o made a spectacular, heartbreaking debut in an important film. If she wins an Oscar, she'll likely go on to more great roles, and hers is a career I'm anxious to watch unfold.

But I Would Choose... June Squibb for Nebraska

And believe me, I never would have predicted that. I came to Nebraska with very low expectations for Squibb's character, who - from the trailer and talk show clips - looked as if she'd be played for cheap, little-old-lady-talks-dirty laughs. But Squibb, while certainly funny and profane, also found unexpected layers of weariness, tenderness and righteous anger in the role, etching in the subtle details of how a long marriage to a difficult man took its toll. Yet you can see glimmers in her of the younger woman she once was and understand how why Bruce Dern's character was attracted to her. The many award nominations she's received are nice and well-deserved, but I'd love to see her get an actual statue. Full disclosure: I haven't seen Julia Roberts' work in August Osage County, but I can't imagine that she out-acts Squibb. (Update, 2/28: Having now seen August Osage County, I'm pleased to report that Roberts is damn good. But frankly, she has sufficient screen time to have been nominated in the Best Actress category.)

Overlooked: Emma Watson for The Bling Ring

My first impulse was to call out Oprah Winfrey, who's far and away the best thing in The Butler and whose omission from this category has been decried elsewhere and frequently. (I'd rather watch her living room boogie to Soul Train than Jennifer Lawrence's unhinged "Live and Let Die" singalong in American Hustle any day, anytime.) But instead I'll recognize an actress whose cause hasn't been taken up by anyone I know of. It takes considerable skill to play a completely vacuous character with passionate conviction, and Watson's larcenous, empty-headed teen fashion plate is fully inhabited, painfully funny characterization that was far too little celebrated this year.

Best Supporting Actor

Will Win: Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club

Leto's pretty much a shoo-in, having scooped up almost every Best Supporting Actor award given to date, and my reaction to that is ... whatever. It's certainly a committed performance, but I didn't find it to be especially revelatory. Nor did Leto transcend the cliched queeny-ness of the character in any significant way. I honestly don't get all the hoo-hah over this performance at all.

Which is why I would choose...Barhkad Abdi for Captain Phillips

This man literally came out of nowhere - he was a Somalian immigrant working as a chauffeur in Minneapolis and had no prior acting experience - yet he more than holds his own next to Tom Hanks. Plus he delivers one of the most iconic film lines of the year ("I am the captain now!") and it's his fearless delivery that makes it iconic. That's the kind of Cinderella story Oscar should celebrate every now and then. As far as I'm concerned, this should be Abdi's year. And since he won the BAFTA award last week, he just may be a dark horse contender for the award.

Overlooked: James Gandolfini in Enough Said

This was an egregious omission on the part of the Academy, and not just because it was the late, great actor's final role. Gandolfini brought immense tenderness and vulnerability to his role as the lonely, divorced dad who takes a chance on love. Just the subtly wounded undertone he brings to the line "I thought you actually liked me," delivered to Julia Louis-Dreyfus after a date gone wrong, is award-worthy all on its own. Yet this is essentially a romantic comedy, and Gandolfini had quietly confident comic chops as well. Stack this role next to Gandolfini's Tony Soprano and you begin to appreciate the actor's incredible range and still untapped potential. Gone too soon...

Best Actress

Will Win: Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine

Oh, dear. Here's where I get cranky and contrary again. Blue Jasmine is arguably the most overrated film of 2013, and the best I would say of Blanchett's performance in it is that she sure acts a lot. Blanchett, like Meryl Streep, is a prodigiously talented performer who now and then slips into shameless hambone territory. (See also The Talented Mr. Ripley). Her Jasmine French isn't so much a character as an overcalculated mash-up of tics, eccentricities and crazy-ass line readings. But critics and audiences have eaten it all up with a spoon and there's no way she's going home empty-handed next Sunday night. (Snarky aside on the name Jasmine French: it isn't, as the starry-eyed Peter Sarsgaard character tells her "a very exotic name." Rather it's sounds like something a truck stop waitress would invent to sound classy. Or possibly the outcome of one of those Facebook memes: "Your stripper name = your favorite Disney princess + your favorite kind of salad dressing.")

Which is why I would choose... Sandra Bullock for Gravity

In all honesty, I'm not the world's biggest fan of the much-acclaimed Gravity either, which despite its spectacular special effects and technical accomplishments, I found a bit hokey and overloaded with unlikely, happy plot coincidences. (Hey, I warned you I was cranky.) But I did very much like Sandra Bullock's understated performance in it. She's one of the most instantly likable and sympathetic actresses working inf films, and you need a performer like that if you're going to spend a lot of time alone in space with her. Again, I missed August Osage County and Meryl Streep. (Update 2/28: Caught it - Streep, like Blanchett, leaves no scrap of scenery unchewed. I'm convinced they put Julia Roberts in the Supporting Category so as not to compete with her, because Roberts gives the better performance.) But I'm only reluctantly choosing Bullock, because my heart is with the women who didn't make into this category....

Which bring us to the overlooked Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha

Sometimes I wish the acting categories had expanded along with Best Picture category a few years back to include up to ten deserving nominees. Because there are some years that five nominations just doesn't cut it, and this is one of those years. I don't think I'd pull any of the nominated actresses out of the running entirely (not even Blanchett), but Julia Louis-Dreyfus (for Enough Said), Adele Exarchopolous (for Blue is the Warmest Color), and Brie Larson (for Short Term 12) should be right there with them. And so, too, should Greta Gerwig, whose title character in Frances Ha was one of the most charming and delightful screen inventions of 2013. Frances' painful stumble to adulthood was made funny and touching in Gerwig's lovely, unself-conscious performance; her all-out run through the streets of Chinatown - set to David Bowie's "Modern Love" and punctuated by exuberant jetes and pirouettes - remains one of my very favorite film scenes of the year. And Gerwig's absence from the Best Actress nominations slate is one of my greatest disappointments.

Best Actor

Will Win: Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club

Back in 2009, I wrote: "Matthew McConaughey's shtick is getting a little old. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be a one-trick pony if you've got a good trick. But McConaughey's laid-back, good time party dude is rapidly reaching the end of its shelf life... Seriously, dude, its time to step up your game." How could I have foreseen the spectacular "McConnaisance" that began with last year's Magic Mike and kept right on growing through his roles in Killer Joe, Bernie, Mud and, ultimately, Dallas Buyers Club? The trophy he picks up next weekend will be a reward for all of that hard work and growth, plus the always Oscar-worthy feats of playing a real person and drastically altering his body and appearance to do so. Lest I sound too cynical, let me assure you - I believe he deserves it.

Even so, I would choose.... Bruce Dern for Nebraska

It's a tough, tough year to pick a Best Actor winner, because there were so many damn good lead performances (including at least five that deserved to be nominated, but weren't - we'll get to those in a minute.) Dern's Woody Grant says little and rarely belies his own long-buried hurts and heartaches, but in gesture and posture alone, Dern communicates all we need to know. This is the pinnacle of less-is-more acting, the type of which rarely allows its practitioners to take home awards. Oscar tends to like its winners big and show-offy. (And, truth be told, sometimes I do, too. It was a really tough call for me between Dern and Leonardo DiCaprio's bigger-than-life work in The Wolf of Wall Street. Hell, I think Leo deserves some sort of special award just for that Quaalude-fueled belly crawl to the driver's seat of his Lamborghini alone.) All due respect to McConaughey - who, if his career trajectory keeps climbing, is likely to be seen in this category again soon - but my heart is with Bruce Dern this year.

Overlooked: Where do I even start?

If there was ever a time to expand an acting category to ten nominees, it was the 2013 Best Actor race. I don't think I'd pull a single nominee out of the running if I had the power. (Well, OK. Under duress, I might ask Christian Bale to step down.) But it still feels ridiculous to see neither Robert Redford nor Tom Hanks on the slate (for All is Lost and Captain Phillips respectively.) You could argue that neither of those movies would amount to anything without those lead actors - an easy argument in the case of Redford, who is the entire cast of his riveting storm-tossed-boat-at-sea drama. It's a less obvious argument in the case of Hanks, but just try to imagine what Captain Phillips would have been without a performance like his; the carefully calibrated tension he brings to the part ends up driving the entire film. Put a lesser actor in the role and Captain Phillips sinks to made-for-basic-cable-movie level real fast. I can also make cases for Joaquin Phoenix in Her, Michael B. Jordan in Fruitvale Station and Mads Mikkelsen in the Best Foreign Film nominee The Hunt. But Hanks' career-best performance is the one most unfairly omitted. I don't care how many Oscars the guy already his on his mantle - he deserves to be in the running again.

Best Picture

Will Win: 12 Years a Slave

One online critic has said that if 12 Years a Slave wins the Oscar, it'll be one of the oddest Best Picture winners in history. I couldn't agree more. Director Steve McQueen is an arthouse auteur whose films do not play to conventional expectations, and his slavery drama is oppressively difficult to watch in places while observed from a cool, intellectual distance in others. I've praised its unsparing honesty, great performances and artistic achievement; as I've mentioned elsewhere, I see it as a long, long overdue corrective to the heinously racist Birth of a Nation, not to mention all the more subtly racist films that have come in between (e.g. Gone with the Wind). But in truth, I haven't thought much about the film since seeing it last fall. I admire the hell out of it, but it hasn't had a lasting emotional resonance for me - and I know I'm not alone in that reaction. For that reason, the much more palatable and popular Gravity is a strong contender to unseat 12 Years a Slave on Oscar night; however, given the film's track record on scooping up the top awards in every other major race, I'm not betting on an upset.

Actually I would choose.... Nebraska

How do I distill my thoughts and strong emotions about this film into a tiny little blurb? Nebraska is very funny and, at the same time, sad and elegiac, a perfect evocation of small-town life in the flyover states as lived by a generation that is aging into oblivion. It may play like satire to those unfamiliar with the territory, and some may dismiss it as more of Alexander Payne's condescending comedy at the expense of rubes, but they'd be wrong on both counts. Nebraska, a deceptively simple film, evinces a profound understanding of its characters - their unspoken dreams and disappointments, their hard-nosed common sense - as well as the slow, quiet decay of the American small town. Beautifully shot in black-and-white and impeccably acted by an expert cast of character actors, this film resonated with me more than any other in 2013.

Overlooked: Fruitvale Station

There was one more available slot in the Best Picture race, and it should have gone to Fruitvale Station. This small but powerful film follows Oscar Grant, a young African American man struggling to put his life in order, through the entire day of December 31, 2008 - the day which would be the last of his life. He would be shot by an Oakland policeman for no real reason while on his way home that night. It's a true story, and its told unspectacularly but movingly. Grant is no saint here - he's spent time in prison, lost a job due to chronic lateness, cheated on his live-in girlfriend. But he's also a loving father and son and Michael B. Jordan quietly shows us Grant's struggle between good intentions and old, bad habits. In other words, he's a fully developed, complex character, not a stereotype or a saint, and his death feels all the more shocking and tragic for that. I surely don't have to spell out why Fruitvale Station was especially timely and relevant in 2013. Oscar has honored at least one small, independent film like this each year for the last several years - it should have done so again.

Surprise! Surprise!

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 21:14:00 +0000

Two films, two unexpected experiences....

Let's start with the good news.

Based on its television ad campaign alone, you'd expect Philomena to be a heartwarming - potentially heartbreaking - road-trip dramedy between two mismatched travelling companions on a journey to find the woman's long-lost son. And for the first thirty minutes or so, you'd be exactly right.

Philomena starts out in comfortable, conventionally entertaining mode, with Judi Dench chatty, funny and sad in just the right proportions and Steve Coogan reliably playing her dry-witted cynical foil. Dench's character, Philomena Lee, wants to find the son she bore out of wedlock as a girl, a child taken from her by the Catholic Church and adopted by wealthy Americans. Coogan plays Martin Sixsmith, a once-celebrated, now discredited, journalist who grudgingly takes on Philomena's "human interest" story in desperate attempt to revive his career. Off they go together to the United States to find the now-fifty-year-old Anthony.

Martin and Philomena are real people and their story is true, if almost certainly heightened and fictionalized here and there for dramatic purposes. And in due course, the sweet, pious Irish Catholic lady and the snotty, big-shot atheist do indeed generate both 'odd couple' comedy and dramatic misunderstandings, with a generous helping of teachable moments along the way. But director Stephen Frears and screenwriters Coogan and Jeff Pope are both too smart and too morally outraged to confine the story within that familiar outline. Thirty minutes in, we get a stunning revelation about the fate of Philomena's son. It's the kind of news we would customarily expect to be delivered near the end, and it's the first of many unexpected turns that propel Philomena from warm-and-fuzzy crowd-pleaser into an investigative thriller with a strong, angry moral conscience. The less you know about these plot twists up front ( and I managed to avoid every spoiler in advance), the more effective and powerful the film will be.

In its way, Philomena delivers an indictment of Ireland's Catholic Church and its Magdalene Asylums every bit as damning as Peter Mullan's harrowing 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters. In these institutions, run by the Magdalene order of nuns, young 'wayward' women were not only forced into years of backbreaking labor in Dickensian laundries as penance for their sins, but endured various forms of physical and psychological abuse from the sisters. Philomena Lee was one of those young women from whom the church made money, not only by charging outside customers for the women's unpaid laundry services, but also by effectively selling their illegitimate children to affluent American Catholics. That Lee continued in her faith and forgave the sisters who abused her and took her son is remarkable, and I wish the film had delved into this in a bit more depth. But there's very little else here with which to take issue.

I've been a die-hard Coen Brothers fan for most of my adult life, but yesterday I sat in a theater, watching their latest, highly acclaimed film and found myself fidgeting like a bored kid on a long car trip. " How long till this is over?" I kept thinking. "When are we going to get there?" But the problem with Inside Llewyn Davis is that there's no there there.

Now I want to be clear about a few things right up front. First of all, I do not need my film characters to be likable. In the right hands, an unlikable character can be fascinating to watch. Nor am I necessarily put off by a filmmaker's nihilistic worldview, even though it's the polar opposite of my own beliefs. And Inside Llewyn Davis, although it is deeply unpleasant and filled with deeply unpleasant characters is not a bad film. Its justly Oscar-nominated cinematography (by Bruno Delbonnel) envelops the film in rich, moody grayness. Set in the Greenwich Village folk music scene of the early 1960s, it also features a number of memorable musical performances, particularly by Oscar Issaac as the titular, down-and-out singer and by a trio which includes Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan.

But it's the beauty of those musical numbers that underscores what's so rancid and insufferable about rest of the film. The Coens don't seem to care much about actual folk music, what drove its popularity or why it's important to their characters. Rather they've appropriated the "folk scene" as a gimmicky hook on which to hang their cynic's hat. Llewyn, despite some interesting nuances in Oscar Isaac's performance, is less a character than a construct, a guitar-strumming Job against whom the Coens stack the deck ridiculously high.

We're given to understand that Llewyn is an authentic artist while the characters played by Timberlake, Mulligan, and Stark Sands are bland, commercially acceptable, lesser performers. But the trio's performance of "500 Miles" (during which Llewyn gapes incredulously at the audience's appreciative response) is beautifully and evocatively sung - and in no way inferior to Davis' brooding work.

There isn't a single real character anywhere in the film, only cartoon caricatures. Given this is a Coen Brothers film that isn't surprising, but what did surprise me is how much it bothered me this time and how pointlessly sadistic it felt. Why is Mulligan's character, Jean, so shrill and angry and why does she keep calling Llewyn a shit and an asshole even as she watches him tend to an adorable kitty cat with what I can only describe as the tenderest solicitude? Why is the death of Llewyn's former partner - a suicide - treated with such specious flippancy? Why do the upper West Siders who sweetly refer to Llewyn as "our folk singer friend" and provide with him an occasional bed and board have to be such cheerful buffoons when they're also the only people in the film who show him any real kindness? Why is John Goodman even in this movie? Seriously - can anyone supply with a plausible reason for his character's existence?

I suppose it's too much to ask that the Coens grow a heart and a soul this late in their careers, but their act just isn't working for me anymore.

This Is Not a Ten Best List

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 00:45:00 +0000

I was fourteen years old when I was first seized with an irresistible impulse to compile a list of the ten best films I'd seen in a particular year. My first such list, the Ten Best Films of 1973, appeared only on an early page of my 1974 diary and I recall that The Poseidon Adventure took first place. Obviously my critical faculties were underdeveloped at that age.

Forty years later, I still make those lists - and thanks to the Internet, they're available to people all over the world who would never have the opportunity to snoop through my diary, a fact which puts considerably more pressure on what I do and don't select for year-end glory. It's one thing to privately cop to a fondness for Bridesmaids or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, for example, and quite another to publicly declare that you're singling them out for year-end recognition while completely omitting films like Zero Dark Thirty or Amour.

Which brings me to my dilemma over naming the Ten Best Films of 2013: I really didn't go to the movies much last year. Spending most of 2013, as I did, in the soul-deflating grip of bereavement, my filmgoing experience took on a strangely hermetic quality, largely confined to home viewing. I spent more time filling in significant gaps in my viewing experience of the classics than in watching new films, concentrating especially on silents, French New Wave masterworks and iconic noir thrillers. I totally got my money's worth from Netflix streaming and VOD, and have never in my life so greatly appreciated the availability of Turner Classic Movies and a working DVR.

The raw statistics are these: I saw 177 movies last year, only 73 of which were new releases. (Yes, I kept track. Like you've never recorded your viewing history in an Excel spreadsheet.) Out of those 73 new films, 52 were viewed at home. (And 8 of those 52 were actually HBO films, never released theatrically, but I arbitrarily decided that they count.) Those aren't particularly impressive statistics - and the numbers exclude a very long list of acclaimed films I haven't yet gotten to, among them The Spectacular Now, In a World, The Great Beauty, Fruitvale Station, Nebraska, All is Lost, Dallas Buyers Club, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Wolf of Wall Street, Her, and The Grandmaster.

Thus I'm not really in a position to publish a Ten Best Films list of any significance or relevance. But I've decided to put up a highly personal and occasionally idiosyncratic list of films that mattered to me in 2013 anyway. After all, this blog is written "at the intersection of the movies and my life," not at the nexus of received critical opinion. Maybe this unassuming kind of list is one I should continue to make every year.

In ascending order of preference:

10. White Reindeer

Not to belabor the point, but grief was the primary emotion I experienced in 2013, and White Reindeer gets every messy detail of deep grieving absolutely right and struck a powerful chord with me. An outrageous black comedy with authentic emotional resonance is no small trick to pull off. Zach Clark (who wrote and directed) and Anna Margaret Hollyman (who starred) did so with impressive, if not always flawless, results.

9. The Bling Ring

Based on the true story of the notorious "Bling Ring," a group of teenagers who burglarized the homes of celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, Sofia Coppola's film perfectly evokes the kind of nightmare world that results when impressionable young people read In Style magazine the way fundamentalists read the Bible. The characters, who are stunning in their amorality, vacuity and lack of any real ambition (they chatter about wanting to 'create a lifestyle brand' when they grow up), would be horrifying if they weren't - at least occasionally - so damn funny. Emma Watson, in particular, is a standout in the talented young cast. One of the most gorgeously photographed films of the year, too. A distant, nighttime shot of Audrina Partridge's home, lit up against the night sky and filled with scampering thieves who we see gleefully helping themselves to luxury swag, is among the most memorable film images of the year.

8. Laurence Anyways

Xavier Dolan's sprawling, beautiful film about a man's realization that he's meant to be a woman, and the sometimes joyous, often quite painful journey he takes to becoming one. The film manages to be both unsentimental and visually ravishing; it's challenging and ultimately bittersweet, but what you take away from watching it is mostly to do with its visual sumptuousness and fearless imagination. Suzanne Clement, as Laurence's volatile and understandably confused wife, plays a torrent of conflicting emotions with impressive honesty.

7. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

The first of two films on this list to present an unexpected perspective on an aging Broadway legend, Chiemi Karasawa's documentary offers only the barest bones of a Stritch biography, rather keeping its focus on how this powerhouse performer approaches her final years and the inevitable physical decline that accompanies them. It's a testament to how much she loves and needs to perform, and how much it takes out of her to continue. (Stritch, who turns 89 in February, effectively retired after this film was completed.) At one point, Karasawa cuts immediately from a tense rehearsal - in which the star is tormented by plummeting blood sugar levels and an inability to recall her lines - to footage of the actual performance where a radiant Stritch brings down the house, playing off her tendency to forget lyrics as if it were an intentional comic bit. No other film I can recall has captured so vividly the kind of life force that a ferociously talented - and ferociously needy - entertainer draws from an appreciative audience.

6. Stories We Tell

Sarah Polley exposes family secrets, uncomfortably at times, as she puts her father and various family members and friends in front of the camera to tell stories about her late mother. But their disparate narratives ultimately combine to create a full-bodied portrait of complex, vibrant woman while opening up old, potentially painful emotional wounds. There's both courage and foolhardiness in Polley's effort, but the film is redeemed as it quietly morphs into a profound meditation on the nature of memory and storytelling. Polley poses challenging questions that she doesn't neatly answer for us: Who gets to tell the story of a relationship? Are the parties to that relationship the only valid witnesses, or do we need the observations of others to create a truthful picture? Can we ever really know the truth about someone? As ponderous as those questions sound, be assured this film is every bit as riveting as the best fictional family sagas.

5. Six by Sondheim

James Lapine's brilliant documentary on Stephen Sondheim not only gives us the back story on six of his finest songs, but also seamlessly weaves in a wealth of biographical detail and a near-endless supply of interview clips. The overall effect is that of a highly entertaining seminar by a master composer - not only on the art of theatrical songwriting, but on the creative process in general. We see and hear from Sondheim in what can be divided into roughly three personas, representing different periods of his professional life. There's the clean-cut young lyricist of West Side Story and Gypsy; the bearded, professorial Sondheim in late middle-age; and in between, the glum and cranky, chain-smoking, long-haired Sondheim of the Company/Follies years. In all three guises, however, he is articulate, funny, honest, humble and generous, sharing priceless nuggets of wisdom about the joys and difficulty of artistic creation. If you love musical theater, as I do, this is essential viewing, although it may make you sad that there isn't another composer of Sondheim's caliber waiting in the wings. Bonus fun: Sondheim himself joins in on a performance of "Opening Doors" from Merrily We Roll Along, in the role of a show producer who wants "a song you can hum" from a young team of songwriters - the very kind of request that Sondheim admits "drives me up the wall."

4. Enough Said

Anyone who's been on a date in middle-age will recognize themselves in the characters portrayed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late, great James Gandolfini. Director/writer Nicole Holofcener and her actors recreate the nervous mating dance of battle-scarred-but-hopeful, forty-something singles with exhilarating accuracy, right down to the skittish, defensive comic riffs that pass for flirtation. I didn't so much care for the part of the story in which Louis-Dreyfus' character develops a sort of girl crush on Gandolfini's pretentious ex-wife (Catherine Keener) and her Soft Surroundings-styled home. But the tentative romance between the two leads was was so perfectly rendered, I could easily forgive that weakness. This is the first time I've watched one of Holofcener's films without feeling as though I were looking in from the outside at a particular, privileged stratum of society (the So Cal upper middle class), laughing all the harder because the joke wasn't on me. No, this time, the characters felt like people I knew and both their wisecracks and their screw-ups felt very close to home. It's her best film to date.

3. Frances Ha

While Lena Dunham continued to find ever more cringe-worthy ways to depict awkward early adulthood on the small screen this year, Noah Baumbach and his co-writer/star Greta Gerwig took a sweeter, sunnier tack. Frances Ha is a joyous and charming fable of deferred adulthood shot in the manner of a French New Wave film, right down to the black-and-white photography and the Georges Delerue score. Gerwig - gawky, goofy and good-hearted - is jolted into growing up when her beloved roommate moves out and her performance gig with a small dance company falls through. She gropes her way towards stability through a series of odd jobs and bruising mishaps, including a literal pratfall in the street. But through it all, Gerwig projects a charming, Mary Tyler Moore-esque comic determination: you just know that she's gonna make it after all. Her full-out run through the streets of New York's Chinatown to the accompaniment of David Bowie's "Modern Love," punctuated with the occasional ecstatic pirouette or jete, was one of my favorite film moments of the year.

2. 12 Years a Slave

I watched D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation for the first time this year, and like many before me, was so stunned and disgusted by its virulent racism that I could just barely appreciate its landmark importance in defining the language of film. It's unbelievable that it took 98 years for someone to make a fully corrective film about slavery in the American South. 12 Years a Slave is unsparing and often difficult to watch, but it would have been dishonest to make it any other way. More conventionally structured than director Steve McQueen's earlier films, it nonetheless continues his trademark propensity for powerful visual imagery. The juxtaposition of lushly beautiful plantation landscapes with acts of unspeakable violence is purposeful and properly shocking. Among a uniformly distinguished cast, the performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o, especially, give the film its terrible urgency.

1. Blancanieves

It may have been inevitable that, in a year when I spent so many hours watching and developing an awed appreciation of classic silent films, I chose a brand-new silent film as my favorite. Much like the best of the early silents, Blancanieves, a Spanish reworking of the Snow White story (she is the daughter of a famous bullfighter in this telling) deals in big emotions, stark and beautiful imagery, and characters created in near-Dickensian detail. In this post-ironic age, when the traditional art of great storytelling is undervalued and all but lost, writer-director Pablo Berger has fashioned a big, sprawling, completely engrossing narrative, by turns enchanting and terrifying. You can sense Berger trying (and succeeding) to resurrect and revitalize a long-discarded way of telling a story on film, staying wholly true to its stylistic conventions while at the same time allowing his film some contemporary flourishes. It would be lovely to see more like it.

A few more accolades (some offered with my tongue firmly in my cheek):

Honorable Mention: Europa Report, Concussion, Mud, Blue is the Warmest Color, Before Midnight.

2013 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Blue Jasmine, American Hustle, Gravity, Much Ado about Nothing

The Best Older Films I Saw for the First Time in 2013: Badlands, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Wind, Greed, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Out of the Past, Man with a Movie Camera, Breathless, Band of Outsiders

Merry Christmas from Doodad Kind of Town

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 23:00:00 +0000

I've watched White Christmas more times than I can possibly count, but this year I saw it for the first time on a big-screen HD TV.

It was terrifying.

The reds and greens in the costumes for the "Mandy" were so intensely red and green, they literally nauseated me.

But this, as always, was the best song in the movie. Rosemary Clooney's velvety contralto never gets old.

Have a Merry Christmas - white or otherwise - and enjoy....

Grieving at Christmas in "Love Actually" and "White Reindeer"

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 03:48:00 +0000

If you, like me, are having a miserable, depressing holiday season because someone you loved very much is no longer around to share it with you , may I make a suggestion? Learn from my mistake and steer far clear of Love Actually this Christmas. Because if you're being honest with yourself about your grief, Love Actually is not going to lift your spirits - it's going to piss you off.

You know I'm talking about that Liam Neeson-as-new-widower-and-befuddled-stepfather subplot right?

If you haven't watched Love Actually in awhile, let me refresh your memory. Six weeks before Christmas, we see Daniel (Neeson) at the funeral of his beloved wife, barely keeping it together while delivering the eulogy, then tearful and bereft as he helps carry her casket from the church. One week later, he breaks down again as he confesses to his friend, Karen, (Emma Thompson) that his stepson is locking himself away in his room day and night and he doesn't know how to help the boy grieve for his mother. At which point, Karen gently faux-scolds him to "stop crying so much or no one will want to shag you." Then Daniel and Karen chuckle knowingly together because no one wants to be the weepy guy who misses out on a good shag, right? And then we don't see Daniel shed so much as a single tear for the entire rest of the movie.

Once stepson Sam (Thomas Sangster) comes out of his room and starts talking, he lets Daniel know that, yeah, he's kind of bummed about Mom dying and all, but the real tragedy in his life is that he loves the coolest girl in school and she doesn't even know he's alive. Then Daniel is like "Oh thank God it's just unrequited love, because I totally know how to deal with that!" And then it's all lighthearted father-and-son banter and mildly amusing jokes about how loudly and badly Sam plays drums - until Christmas Eve, when Sam finally gets a kiss from his dream girl at a Heathrow departure gate, after he's made a heroic run through two security gates to reach her just before she boards the plane. That same Christmas Eve, Daniel meets a woman at Sam's school who looks just like his longtime fantasy crush, model Claudia Schiffer (because, in one of movie's dumber casting ploys, she's actually played by Schiffer.) By the film's last scene, Daniel and Sort-Of-Claudia-Schiffer-But-Not-Really are seen happily arm-in-arm at a Heathrow arrivals gate, looking for all the world to be headed straight for "happily ever after."

Let me just emphasize this: that final scene with Daniel and Faux-Claudia takes place two months after his wife's death.

In other words, it's an emotionally dishonest plot contrivance that writer-director Richard Curtis employs in order to make sure all his characters end up happily coupled by the time the closing credits roll. Equally dishonest is the notion that a young boy gets over his mother's death in about five minutes.

Now, I already know what some of you are thinking. "Oh, Pat, you're taking it all too seriously! Love Actually is just a "feel good" holiday movie. It's not supposed to be realistic, it's supposed to be entertaining!" To which I would first reply, "Try watching it after you've lost your romantic partner and then tell me what you think."

And then I would follow up with this observation: If Love Actually is supposed to be a feel-good movie, then why on earth did Curtis throw in that subplot with poor Sarah (Laura Linney) and the schizophrenic brother whose relentless phone calls prevent her from ever hooking up with her sweet, sexy co-worker ? Curtis' stated goal for this film was to celebrate all kinds of love - not only romantic love, but also familial love and the love between good friends. Hence the subplot about how much Sarah loves and cares for her brother and what it eventually costs her. But this particular story is badly written (how likely is it that a mental patient has unlimited access to a phone?) and very awkwardly shoe-horned into a film that's otherwise evenly divided between sugary-sweet romance and joyously randy sex farce. When Sarah's brother rears back to belt her across the face, it stops the movie cold in a shocking and horrifying way, and the scene feels as if it belongs to another movie altogether.

Wouldn't it have been a far more compelling depiction of familial love to have let Daniel and Sam work thought some of their grief together? I mean, sure let Sam go after the cute girl of his dreams, but can't we also see that he misses his Mom? (The tossed-off fact that the dream girl and his mother are both named Joanna doesn't really count for anything.) And couldn't Curtis have found a way to show us that Daniel was healing and hopeful without pairing him off right away? Lazy writing, I say. And - it bears repeating - emotionally dishonest.

In my post-Love Actually frame of mind, I was astonished and relieved to discover White Reindeer, among the current VOD offerings. Billed as a black comedy, it turned out to be a refreshingly honest and honestly moving film about a young widow's struggles to reconcile her grief with her desire to celebrate Christmas. It's not an easy film for a grieving person to watch, and it absolutely isn't for the queasy or easily offended. But it was ultimately, for me, a worthwhile, cathartic experience that validated every emotion I've been feeling over the last few weeks.

Like Love Actually, the film labels its scenes with subtitles that advise us how much time our characters have till Christmas. Just 24 days before the holiday, suburban realtor Suzanne Barrington (Anna Margaret Hollyman) comes home to find her husband, Jeff, has been bludgeoned to death by an intruder. Over the next several days, Suzanne discovers parts of her late husband's life that she hadn't known about, including his affair with a young stripper named Fantasia (Laura Lemar-Goldsborough) whom she ultimately befriends. Her grieving process is messy and desperate, comprising everything from late-night online shopping binges to attending her kinky neighbors' sex party, from shoplifting at Macy's and snorting lines of coke with Fantasia and her stripper pals to gorging on eggnog and candy canes.

And yes, this film is considered a comedy, although for my tastes, the humor is sometimes sophomoric or just oddly off-kilter. The whole story line with the bland, outwardly wholesome neighbor couple setting up their new home for kinky social gatherings feels as if it's been recycled from some low-budget, early '70s film. A post-funeral gathering at Suzanne's home promises dead-on parody of all the well-intentioned but empty or stupid things people say and do around the newly grieving; unfortunately writer-director Zach Clark pushes the actors and their laugh lines a bit too hard, and all the players come off as very broadly drawn caricatures, a tad too zany to be recognizable.

But when it isn't straining so hard to be outrageously funny, White Reindeer really nails the details of what's it's like to lose someone suddenly and violently - the disorientation, the grief, the shock, the scrambling for something - anything - to take your pain away. (Online shopping binges are real; ask me about the several pairs of still unworn shoes I ordered in the weeks after my partner died - or the five levels of Rosetta Stone French lessons that I downloaded to my laptop but have yet to actually take.) Clark has an uncanny ability to create the most moving scenes in the midst of the most ridiculous or uncomfortable circumstances There's a lovely scene between Suzanne and the hostess of the neighborhood sex party where Suzanne opens up about how she never really knew her husband and how much she wishes it would feel like Christmas again; I guarantee you it is the most authentically moving scene you will ever see that includes a character in a fishnet unitard and a strap-on.

Scenes like this may be off-putting to some viewers, but I can assure you, the shock value in which White Reindeer often trades is perfectly suggestive of Suzanne's fractured mental state in the face of an unspeakable loss. And through it all, we have Hollyman, an understated actress with an immensely sympathetic screen presence, who maintains her essentially conventional identity even as she tumbles down a very deep rabbit hole. Her Suzanne is an obviously well-behaved, well brought up young woman who doesn't make scenes, but neither is she a cold fish. Her sadness and confusion are palpably real..There is genuine warmth and strength in Hollyman's performance, and you root for her to find some hope to hold onto to get through.

Comedy or not, I actually cried for about a full third of White Reindeer's 82 minute running time. It was a good, cathartic cry - the kind you can have when you find that someone else understands the hell you've been through. It was a kind of relief to see elements of my own experience reflected here, if wildly exaggerated in many of the details. I wouldn't expect most people to want that in a holiday film, and that's fine. But it sure made my holiday week a little more bearable.

Glah-dia een Egg Shellzeese Deh-Oh

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 14:09:00 +0000

Glah-dia een Egg Shellzees Deh-Oh: If you understand this, you are a singer. You are probably also frazzled and tired and way behind on your Christmas shopping because you have spent most of your spare December time in rehearsals and performances. For sure, you have seen few - if any- of the prestige, Oscar-bait, year-end film releases.

As you may have guessed, I am a singer myself, and a member of two volunteer choirs: one at church, one in the community. As such, I spend very little time in theatres till after Christmas. I'm not complaining; I love Christmas music and I love to sing. Performing is a big and enjoyable part of my annual holiday celebrations. But it means it means I"m not much of a film blogger for most of the month.

So until I start my annual after-Christmas, high-intensity blitz of the multiplexes, expect only the briefest of posts here. Any please enjoy this clip of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing my one of my Christmas concert favorites (which is ironic since it comes from the Easter section of The Messiah:)

The Long Silence and the Quiet Return

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 16:09:00 +0000

On April 26 - about three weeks after my last post - my partner/companion/best friend/great love, Marlon, died, suddenly and shockingly. For these last several months, my grief has consumed me and left me both unable to write and uninterested in even trying. But eventually, as we move through grief, we return to ourselves. In recent weeks, I have realized that watching movies, writing and talking about them, are some of my greatest joys in life. And so, here I am, coming back to life and rejoining the conversation here. And that's all I care to say for now.

Stay tuned...

Roger Ebert: Farewell and Thank You

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Perry) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:49:00 +0000

I haven't done the actual counting, but by my best guess, at least 20 percent of my blog posts are all or partially about why I haven't been writing lately.

There are lots of long-winded explanations about work schedules and business travel and selling homes and choir rehearsals and blah, blah, blah.... But none of them get to the heart of the matter, which is this: I've never made writing a priority. It's not the first thing I do, but the last; a luxury not an essential, a pastime to be indulged only after the chores are done, the checkbook is balanced, the closets are organized..... you get the picture.

Only very recently did it occur to me that it may be time to turn this kind of thinking on its head. It is not a coincidence that this revelation has come to me at a time when the country is mourning the loss of its most popular and, arguably, most prolific film critic - Roger Ebert.

To begin at the beginning....

Ebert didn't figure largely in my early awareness of film and film criticism, despite the fact that I grew up well within the reach of Chicago media. My family was a Tribune-reading household, so it was Ebert's rival, Gene Siskel, whose writing informed my early tastes in film and my ideas of what film criticism could be. I was in my teens when Siskel joined Ebert 'in the balcony' for Sneak Previews, the PBS forerunner of the ground-breaking film review show that would later become Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, and propel the Windy City duo to national fame.

Back in those early days, I watched Sneak Previews every week with the greatest enthusiasm, and it seemed to me that Siskel was the smarter, more persuasive of the two stars, more discerning in his tastes and relentless in his badgering of Ebert whenever the latter professed to have enjoyed some unambitious, mainstream popcorn movie. Those perceptions were obviously biased, fuelled by youthful arrogance and a good deal of "Tribune snobbery" (my image of the Sun-Times, based on nothing that I can substantiate, was of a shoddier, downmarket paper - and that was years before it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch.)

But meeting Gene Siskel in person in 1993 was a turning point. I ran into him at a movie memorabilia collector's show in the Chicago suburbs. It took me a second to realize who he was; I approached him shyly and asked as politely and quietly as I could "Aren't you Gene Siskel?"

Before I could say another word, he grabbed a program out of my hand, signed his name on it in a hurried, irritated way, and moved quickly on. At no time, did he make eye contact. His behavior was all the more puzzling because I hadn't asked - or even thought to ask - for an autograph. All I wanted was to tell him what his writing had meant to me as a young film lover, and then-aspiring critic myself. But he clearly wasn't interested in hearing it.

After that day, my perceptions of Siskel and Ebert were completely turned around. I'd watch them together on At the Movies or the Letterman show and decide that Siskel was the pushier, snottier, more annoying of the two, whereas Ebert was the nice, smart 'regular guy.'

Looking back from my middle-aged perspective, of course I understand that none of my perceptions were entirely accurate or fair. Maybe Siskel was having a bad day or was seriously rushed for time when I approached him. Maybe - probably - Ebert had surly, cranky moments himself. But a bad experience with a one-time idol can be a powerful thing, and I sometimes wondered how Ebert would have responded to me if I'd encountered him at the movie memorabilia show that day. I still like to believe it would have gone down quite differently. From the many accounts I have read over the past few days, it's clear he was an approachable and congenial man,passionately interested in encouraging young people to write. (See this letter he wrote to then middle-schooler Dana Stevens who went on to write about film for Slate.)

In fact, just about everything I've read about the man - not just in the three days since his death, but for the last several years - has only increased my admiration and respect for him. His response to his long battle with cancer is particularly astonishing and humbling. At a time when most people would curl up and retreat from the world, Ebert got busy and put it all out there - first and foremost on rogerebert.com, which is one of my favorite places to hang out, so to speak. His smart, robust, deceptively conversational prose goes straight to the heart of every film he reviews. Few other critics engage so passionately and personally with every film they review. Even when I vehemently disagreed with him, I still found Ebert's work fascinating and a joy to read. I seek out his reviews of almost every film I see, not the new releases, but older films and classics that I am slowly making my way through discovering. And I cheered on every one of his entries in the weekly New Yorker cartoon caption contest. Spend much time on his site, and you'd realize you weren't just dealing with a film critic, but with an man consumed by enthusiasm and a vibrant passion for life itself.

But of all the things Roger wrote, here's the passage that has been stuck in my brain for the last few days:

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.”

That was written by a man who had lost his jaw - and with it his abilities to speak and to eat solid food - and yet was still writing prolifically and living life with passion and vibrancy. (Hell, the man even wrote a cookbook!) I have remembered these words often in the last three days - when I'm in stalled traffic and getting irritated, when I'm frustrated and tired and within an inch of letting go with a cranky remark - and they serve as both rebuke and instruction to me, a gentle but powerful reminder that no matter how bad life gets, there is no excuse for making it worse with my own anger or bad behavior. Roger Ebert didn't do that, even when his ill health would have given him every justification to do so.

I never did meet Roger Ebert, never attracted him to my blog, - although many of my blogging colleagues have rightfully received his notice and blessing; it speaks to his generosity that he was so willing to promote others' writing as well as his own. But the way he lived and the way he wrote have been a legacy to me. Part of that quote is about how making ourselves happy is the first step to bringing happiness into the larger world. Few things make me as happy as writing, and it's a joy I've denied myself for too long. It's time for me to get busy again.

Thank you, Mr. Ebert for sharing your joy and your passionate love of film. There is - was - no other critic like you.