Doodad Kind of Town

"A Serious Man" and "The Invention of Lying"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:13:00 +0000

For the second time this year, I've turned to a friend during the closing credits of a film and said "I've got to see this again in order to get my mind around it."

The first time I said this was just after the closing scene of "Inglorious Basterds,"and the repeat viewing felt necessary in order to determine whether it was truly great or just overrated fanboy crap. The jury's still out here on "Basterds;" that second viewing has yet to take place.

With the Coen Brother's "A Serious Man," however, I suspect the repeat viewing may take place as soon as next weekend, so anxious am I to revisit its pleasures and puzzle out the density of its layers of meaning.

If indeed there is anything there to puzzle out.

"A Serious Man," while in many ways a radical departure and an uncharacteristically personal work for the Coens, is of a piece with the nihilistic tomfoolery in their most recent outing "Burn After Reading." And it resoundingly reaffirms that film's closing line: "What have we learned from this? Not a thing." It's many things all at once - a take-off on the Book of Job; an unsettling, absurdist meditation on human suffering and the limited efficacy of religion to help us make sense of it; and a meticulously detailed remembrance of growing up Jewish in the suburban Midwest of the 1960s. Ultimately it's the kind of film in which the words to Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" prove to contain more wisdom than those of three revered rabbis put together. But its final shot is every bit as ambiguously ominous as the conclusion of "No Country for Old Men."

It opens in a Polish shtetl where a couple is visited by what may be either a kindly, elderly neighbor, or a dybbuk (demon) - if it's the latter, they've been cursed by God. We never find out who the visitor really is; all too soon, we're whisked into the opening credits and then to 1967 Minneapolis where we're introduced to Lawrence Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). His doctor proclaims him a healthy man, and his college physics class stares glassy-eyed as he enthusiastically fills blackboards with convoluted equations that apparently describe how everything in the world works. When a character is introduced with such an assurance of his well-being and understanding, you can bet he's in for a spectacular run of bad luck. And the bad stuff starts almost immediately.

First, his wife asks for a divorce so she can marry their widower friend, an unctuous, dulcet-voiced aging hipster named Sy Ableman (the wonderful Fred Melamed). Then his bid for tenure is threatened when an unnamed party begins writing letters to the tenure board describing Gopnik's "moral turpitude." The ne'er -do-well bachelor brother (Richard Kind, funny and poignant) who sleeps on his couch lives a secret life that finally and embarrassingly catches up with him. Cars crash. Legal bills mount. Lawrence suffers nightmares, considers taking a bribe from a student who would like a higher grade. He consults rabbis, searching for meaning and solace; in return, he gets an exhortation to find evidence of God in the beauty of the synagogue parking lot and a hilarious, but ultimately meaningless, tale about a plea for help carved into the inside's of a goy's teeth. (I can't do it justice, I can't. Just trust me.) And all the while, his son Danny is spending his days getting high in the boy's room at Hebrew school, his daughter is forever trying to get in the bathroom to wash her hair, and the Gentile father-and-son next door glower at him between their vigorous backyard games of catch and hunting trips from which they return with a freshly killed elk strapped to the top of their station wagon.

Stuhlbarg, an acclaimed stage actor, was seemingly born to play stunned, comic incomprehension; he's the perfect, beleaguered straight man to the coterie of lunatic characters that surround and bedevil him. Among a universally superb supporting cast, the standouts are Kind, Melamed and Amy Landecker (daughter of legendary Chicago DJ John "Records" Landecker, BTW) as the smoldering Mrs. Samsky, the Gopnik's nude-sunbathing neighbor. And the Coens, as ever, have the greatest gift this side of Fellini for casting memorably funny/grotesque faces in minor roles. except this time, even the funny minor characters feel more authentic, as if they're people the Coens remembered from their own early lives.

If you don't already love the Coens, I suspect "A Serious Man" is not going to win you over. Those of us who delight in their particular brand of absurdity will find much here to love and be challenged by. And if you're old enough to remember the 1960s, you may find nostalgic pleasures here as well. The wood panelled rec room walls, the hi-fis, the pictures on the walls, and the antenna on the roof that must be endlessly fussed with in order to get a clear picture on Channel 4 will all bring on a knowing smile. I've seen lots of movies set in the 60s, but can't recall one that has so recognizably and authentically captured the domestic details of that era. They're the kind of details that make "A Serious Man" feel so personal and specific and sets it apart from the Coens' other work, even as its cynical, frequently cartoonish humor unmmistakably brand it as theirs.

In "The Invention of Lying," a modest yet charming new comedy from British comic Ricky Gervais (he co-wrote and co-directed with Matthew Robinson in addition to starring), we're transported to a world where human beings "have not evolved the ability to lie." Actually it's worse than that - they haven't evolved the ability to withhold information. So not only does Jennifer Garner blurt out to Gervais at the outset of their blind date how unattractive she finds him, but the waiter at the restaurant greets them both with the revelation that "I'm embarrassed I still work here." Strangers routinely confess to one another their deepest personal insecurities and miseries, all the while displaying a highly evolved ability to articulate their own emotional complexity. "I'm threatened by you because there are things about you I don't understand," Gervais slimy co-worker tells him. "And I don't like things I can't understand."

Gervais plays a sad, schlubby loser who can't score with his dream girl (Garner) and can't hold on to his job, but he develops a miraculous talent. He discovers how to "say what isn't" - to lie - and because he lives in a world where no lie has been told before, everyone believes him. His first trick is to withdraw more money from his bank account than it actually contains ("Our computer must be wrong!" the teller apologizes cheerfully as she hands him a hefty stack of bills), but soon he's using his newfound ability to soothe the misery of those around him, assuring everyone from his suicidal neighbor (Jonah Hill) to the bickering couple at the coffee shop that everything is going to be ok.

"Invention" takes a particularly sly, subversive turn when Gervais tell his biggest lie. Undone by his dying mother's fear that she'll pass into eternal nothingness, Gervais assures her she's going to a better place where she'll be reunited with everyone she loves and she'll have her own mansion. The credulous medical staff at his mother's bedside are enthralled - soon word has spread that Gervais knows all about the afterlife. A mob appears at his door, and to appease them, Gervais delivers a list of informational tidbits about "the man in the sky" and the afterlife - it rapidly devolves into a fitfully funny Q&A about sin, God, Heaven and Hell. The scene feels as if it were lifted straight from "Life of Brian," and it's every bit as funny. Suffice it to say Gervais apparently feels very much the same about religion as does Bill Maher; unlike Maher, however, he's not an asshole about it.

"Invention" is most satisfying when it pokes gentle fun at the kind of lies we sometimes have to tell ourselves and each other just to get through the day without slitting our wrists. It's somewhat less successful as a romantic comedy. How is it that Gervais has managed to star in two of the smartest and sweetest rom coms of the past year ("Ghost Town" in addition to this), yet has never once been shown actually kissing the girl? "Invention" is tiresomely full of references to Gervais as a "little fat, snub-nosed" man; Garner dithers endlessly about whether to commit to him because she can't face the prospect of bearing "little fat, snub-nosed" children. I guess I wouldn't like Gervais as much if he weren't so self-deprecating, but, jeez, he needs to give himself a break. Tall and chiseled is nice, Ricky, but smart and funny is a pretty sexy combo, too.

Diary of a Weekend Movie Marathon

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:15:00 +0000

Saturday, 10/10: Has anyone who's ever seen Woody Allen's "Alice" been even remotely shocked by the way it ends? From the first frame, Mia Farrow's Alice Tate looks so uncomfortable in her big, rambling Upper East Side apartment and matronly sweaters with pearls - her slight frame so overwhelmed by her enormous fur coat - that there's no doubt she's going to chuck it all by the time the signature black-and-white credits roll. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Mia we all know and love showed up in the final scenes, wearing schlumpy jeans and an army fatigue coat, happily heading to her job at the homeless shelter.

I'd seen "Alice" before, years ago; it didn't improve on the second visit. Allen's 1990 film feels like a love letter to his then-girlfriend's benevolent spirit on some levels, but sadly he didn't write her much of a part. Allen is at a loss when it comes to putting genuine depth behind Alice's impulses to do good and live a more meaningful life. The character is just one more of the mousy earth-mother types he's written for Farrow in the past(as in "Hannah and Her Sisters," "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "New York Stories"). Only much whinier.

By this time, I pretty much know what's going to happen when I see a new Michael Moore movie. First of all, my friends will be all excited to see it, and we'll go together in a big, fired-up group. And we'll be joined by a whole auditorium full of similarly left-leaning moviegoers who will express their solidarity with Moore through hearty laughter , cries of outrage and occasional bursts of applause.

And the film itself? You can expect sequences of cleverly edited commercials, educational films, home movies and news footage - sometimes accompanied by jocular pop tunes, and sometimes by ominous or heart-wrenching music, according to the tone of whatever message Moore hopes to hammer home at that moment. At some point, Moore will show up at a corporate headquarters building to ask for an interview with the CEO; he'll inevitably be greeted by a phalanx of security guards rushing to shoo him and his camera crew away. And, there will be heartbreaking interviews with ordinary people who have been deeply hurt by government or corporate policy.

My experience of "Capitalism: A Love Story" played out exactly I had anticipated, with one happy exception. There was no WTF moment in this film where I groaned, rolled my eyes and thought "Mike, you've gone too far!" (as in the"Why does everyone say Cuba is bad?" section of "Sicko," or in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when Moore observes that, on the night before the attacks "the president went to sleep on a bed made with fine French linens." Wanna bet that Michael Moore himself dozed off between some nice, high-thread-count sheets on the night of September 10, 2001?)

Moore still knows how to rile up an audience; he's more propagandist/entertainer than documentarian, and like all his films, "Capitalism: A Love Story" is tailor-made for an audience of registered Democrats and rancorous Bush bashers. (The man next to me kept blurting out "Monkey Boy!" in an almost Tourette's-like manner every time W's face showed up onscreen, and the whole audience broke into sustained applause during a clip of Dennis Kucinich's impassioned speech to Congress against the federal bailout.) But even so, this time out, Moore's film is notably less smart-alecky, and more deeply suffused with a sense of his own heartbreak and fatigue. And though his most pointed attacks are directed at Reagan, Bush and bank CEOs, he doesn't shy away from exposing the roles of Clinton and other Democratic leaders in bringing about the country's devastating economic conditions.

The film concludes with a scene of Moore putting yellow Crime Scene tape around the headquarters of AIG; in voiceover, he tells us "After 20 years, I'm tired of doing this. Why don't you help me?" I have to admit, having seen what Moore had to show me about the death of the once-great American dream, I was more than ready to pitch in.

Sunday, 10/11: I love Fellini, but after seeing "La Strada" for the first time, I had the distinct feeling that a little bit of Giulietta Masina goes a long, long way. She was cute and everything, but God!!! All that mugging! I couldn't take it after awhile.

So it took me several more years to get around to "Night of Cabiria," fearing as I did that Masina would "cute" it to death. No worries, Masina is wonderful - tough, tender and funny all at once. I love that little, perky ponytail she wears. My heart absolutely broke for her all the way through.

I was in such an expansive frame of mind regarding Masina that I decided right after watching "Cabiria" to finally watch "Juliet of the Spirits" - a film I slept almost entirely through in my college Introduction to Film class, buried under my winter coat on a Monday night in drafty old Woodburn Hall.

Turns out, I've should have watched this one before seeing "Alice," since "Alice" is at least partially based on/inspired by it. Another upper-crust housewife in an empty marriage, searching for meaning and fulfillment, more fantasy sequences and mystical stuff. (Except with Fellini, the fantasy sequences really are fantastical - strange, beautiful and way, way over the top. And the costumes are so yummy and crazy. Even if it's' not top-drawer Fellini, you gotta kinda love it, right?)

And yet....

By about the one-hour point, it was all all too weird for me. I think it was the "Exorcist"-like moment with that wizened little guru-lady being taken over by some other personality while she's in the midst of giving Juliet sexual advice. - that's the moment that sent me over the edge. I hit the Stop button, I couldn't go on. Maybe I was just weary from cramming too many movies into a 48-hour period. (I haven't even gotten to the documentary film "Chris and Don" that I watched early on Saturday morning.)

The remaining 90 minutes of "Juliet..." are waiting for me on the DVR. Perhaps I'll get to them on Tuesday.

Lazy Post on "Nine"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:02:00 +0000

All the buzz over the upcoming release of Rob Marshall's "Nine" (which is, of course, the musical version of Fellini's "8 1/2") has made me nostalgic. As I've mentioned, I was in a 1993 Indianapolis production of "Nine" - what I may not have mentioned is that the show was the best stage experience I ever had.

Inspired by those happy memories - as well as Ryan Kelly's recent post on some of his own acting experiences, I offer a few photos:

First, here's a look at the set and most of the cast. Not the best quality picture, but looks fairly Felliniesque, huh? I loved our all-white set and all-black costumes. Not to land a spoiler on you (and God only knows what Marshall is going to do with the film), but in the finale, the entire cast appear in all-white costumes to allow them to blend into the background and out of Guido's mind - all except Guido and Luisa, who remain clothed in black. In case you can't tell, these are all women. The Guidos - adult and nine-year-old versions - are the only males in the cast.

That's me on the right. The actress on my left (the wonderful Wendy Haydock) and I were two of the show's four cartoonish German women - roles which you can be pretty sure will be eliminated in the film version. They were already cut from the show in the 2004 Broadway revival, and as we all know, they aren't based on any of the characters from "8 1/2."

Here are all four Germans (to my right are my very dear friend Cindy and the delightful Tam DeBolt). These are really just glorified chorus parts, but we each got some fun bits to do, plus we were featured in our own big production number, "The Germans at the Spa."

More production number fun:

And finally, here we are with Guido,being taught how to dance the tarantella, which we're meant to perform in his musical biopic on Casanova. Have I mentioned that "Nine" takes some huge liberties with Fellini's original script? I can't tell from the trailer if Marshall is keeping the Casanova production numbers, but I hope he does. They're a whole lot of fun, even if their connection to "8 1/2" is a little tenuous.

Where I've Been, What I've Seen

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:28:00 +0000

I hate to start yet another post with an explanation for a prolonged absence from the blogosphere, but here goes...

My job continue to entail long hours and high stress, and there is no end in sight. After working a 10 or 11 hour day, I can't bring myself to come home and get on a computer again, much as I might like to write something. And, you know, every once in a while you have to pay bills or do some laundry.

Even so, I was able to get away to New York for a couple of days last week, and it was a much needed - and truly refreshing - break with the routine. Not only did I have the pleasure of meeting a fellow film blogger face-to-face (the very genial Sam Juliano of Wonders in the Dark), but I also got to see some great stuff, cinematic and otherwise.

If a gal's gonna go to New York, she's gotta take in a Broadway show, right? I was fortunate to see the impeccably acted and directed comedy "God of Carnage." Two couples meet to determine how they'll handle the aftermath of their respective sons' playground fight. In just 90 minutes, their strained but cordial evening descends into heavy drinking, hysterics and the kind of unhinged bad behavior that suggests the parents have far worse problems than their squabbling sons. Confessions are made, large quantities of rum are consumed, and - in one particularly shocking moment - copious quantities are vomit are spewed. It's sort of like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on laughing gas.

And make no mistake, it is very, very funny.

Which is particularly miraculous, because "God of Carnage" is the kind of over-the-top play that could easily become unbearably goofy and shrill in the wrong hands. Thankfully, the actors (a dream cast consisting of Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini) and the director (Matthew Warchus, who won the Tony) are all dazzlingly on top of their games. The quartet of performers have been in these roles for a while, and their comfort with their own characters and with one another is apparent; the roles feel lived-in and the comic timing and interactions are dead-on.

I have no formal education in art; everything I've learned about painting and sculpture, I've gleaned from museum placards and audio tours. I'd be hard pressed to tell you why or how I fell in love with Vasilly Kandinsky's paintings on a visit to the MoMA three years ago, only that something about the purity and immediacy of his abstract images really spoke to my soul. I purchased a copy of the artist's treatise "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" at the museum gift store, skimmed it, brought it home and relegated to the growing pile of Books I'm Going to Get Around to Reading Someday.

Yet I was thrilled when I discovered I'd hit town just in time to catch the opening day of a major Kandinsky retrospective at the Guggenheim. And the exhibit did not disappoint me. As I wandered through, reading and listening to the story of the artist's life, I couldn't help but think "Someone ought to make a movie about this guy." He lived through the Russian Revolution and two World Wars, endured long years in exile from his native Russia, worked with and loved his muse/partner for many years (though they ultimately parted), then fell in love with another woman just from hearing her voice on the phone. That's a lot of drama before you even get around to his paitings and his role in major artistic movements. Who would we trust to make the film of Kandinsky's life? Julie Taymor did a pretty great job with "Frida," Julian Schnabel's film on "Basquiat" was pretty good, Ed Harris directed himself pretty capably playing Jackson Pollock.... Hmmmm.

The opening images of Jane Campion's "Bright Star" are instructive: close-up shots of a needle making painstakingly even stitches in coarse fabric, a reminder that creating things of beauty - whether they be ruffled collars, poems or deep, loving relationships - takes time and patience.

Such is the leisurely pace of "Bright Star," a film about the doomed love between the young poet, John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his darling Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Fanny is the seamstress of the opening shots; she's also sharp-witted and slow to fall for Keats. She acknowledges the perfection of the opening lines of his "Endymion"("A thing of beauty is a joy forever...") but isn't afraid to tell him that the rest of it isn't up to snuff. Yet their mutual attraction builds as Keats becomes a friend to Fanny's family, and ultimately to her.

Campion's film may be slow, but slow does not equal dull in this case. It's no surprise to encounter the director's painstaking attention to period details or her talent for creating charming scenes of early 19th century families at leisure. What is remarkable, however, is how she presents a compelling, tragic love story in a manner that does not play to conventional expectations. Rather she finds and depicts the rhythms of a life too often lived in interminable waiting - for the post to arrive, for a lover to appear. "Bright Star" is the stuff of which tearjerkers are made; I left the theatre dry-eyed, but no less moved for that fact.

Fall marks the start of "serious" movie (i.e. Oscar-bait) season, and with it generally comes at least one corporate malfeasance/whistle-blower drama. I guess we can give Steven Soderbergh points for originality for delivering his true-life film "The Informant!" as a zany comedy, although I'm not sure what the point was. Matt Damon, chunked up and badly toupeed in the title role does a nice job, but the most indelible part of the film is not his performance, but rather Marvin Hamlisch's annoying, intrusive score - a sixties-style pastiche that sounds like a mash-up of leftover incidental music from "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Mannix," and "Love American Style." The point of such a score is also lost on me - as are the retro-groovy titles (reminiscent of that from the egregious Hugo Stiglitz moment in "Inglourious Basterds") - since "The Informant!" takes place in the 199os.

I wanted to like this, but it mostly just annoyed and confused me. Was the agri-business firm of Archer Daniels Midland seriously corrupt - or just Damon's character? Was Damon meant to be a sociopath or a goofball or a little of both? And why is he shown walking into ADM headquarters in Decatur, Illinois on March 17, 1993 wearing no topcoat or gloves and walking past trees that are abundantly full of green leaves? (Note to Mr. Soderbergh - you might catch a balmy St. Patrick's Day once every few years in Illinois, but you'll NEVER see leaves on the trees in March! )

And seeing Melanie Lynskey as Damon's prim, sprayed-and-coiffed wifey made me wonder again: Why can't someone give this woman a role worthy of her talents? Despite some mildly interesting but disappointingly brief turns in "Shattered Glass" and this year's "Away We Go," the ferociously talented Lynskey seems doomed to an endless procession of baby-voiced dingbat roles. Does anyone else remember her stunning debut in"Heavenly Creatures" - frizzy-haired, baby-fatted, husky-voiced and almost demonically sulky, she unabashedly embraced her character's awkwardness and darkness. Her performance blew me away, and was at least the equal of her co-star, Kate Winslet. Where's that Melanie now? There's got to be a whole lot more to her than what she's showing us on "Two and Half Men." Or here.

I'ts TOERIFC Time!

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Come join the discussion on Lindsay Anderson's 1969 classic "if....." led by the other Pat -that'd be Mr. Pat Piper - at Lazy Eye Theatre. It all starts Monday morning around 10 am EST.

And BTW, the Criterion disc is 10% off at Barnes and Noble this week; if you're a Reader's Advantage member, you'll get an additional 10% off.

(Not that I'm shillin' for B&N mind you, but they have had some great Criterion Collection sales this year.)

The LIttle Details that Make a Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:19:00 +0000

This blog has been a pretty quiet place for most of the summer. I've let long hours at work and other stresses keep me from doing much writing. I've seen movies, I just haven't felt particularly motivated to write about most of them.

Over the recent holiday weekend, I saw no less than three movies, all of which I liked: "Cold Souls," "Away We Go," and "World's Greatest Dad." Two days later the only one I'm still thinking about is "World's Greatest Dad." And I'm pretty fixated on one scene in particular.

In "World's Greatest Dad," the usually insufferable Robin Williams turns in a painfully brilliant performance as the father of a deviant, dimwitted and thoroughly reprehensible teenage son. His character, Lance Clayton, is a guy who can't catch a break: a unpopular high school English teacher and would-be writer with a stack of rejected manuscripts on his desk, a sort-of girlfriend who manages to make him feel cared for without ever quite managing to go on a date with him, and a son who routinely calls him a 'fag' and a 'dumb ass.' There isn't a bright spot in Lance's life (except for maybe the secret stash of pot in his kitchen cabinet), and Williams shows us the character's loneliness and pain without ever once being cloying, cuddly or obvious.

And nowhere more devastatingly than in a scene set in the teacher's lunch room, early in the film. Allow me to set the scene.

In the course of one morning, Lance has discovered his son engaging in auto erotic asphyxiation, learned that his poetry class in being dropped from the school curriculum and been asked by the principal to consider enrolling his son in special education. And then at lunch period comes the worst blow of all: the school's much more popular creative writing instructor has had an article published. In the New Yorker. On his very first try.

Poor, unpublished Lance learns this from his sometime girlfriend, as she bounces and squeals and gets all touchy-feely with the successful author, a handsome, athletic type named Mike. She's soon joined by other teachers who insist that he read the article at the next student assembly. Lance makes a great show of congratulatory support for his colleague but the pain behind Williams' eyes is almost unbearable to watch. He reacts to each revelation ("The New Yorker!" "His first try!") as if he's being stabbed and pretending to really enjoy it.

And through it all, he keeps fiddling with his "Fresh and Fit" lunch kit, folding and refolding his paper napkin, endlessly arranging and re-arranging little plastic containers of unidentifiable food on the lunch table. There's something about that lunch kit and the way Williams can't stop fussing with it, the way he fixates on the lunch kit whenever there's an new outpouring of praise for Mike, that makes the scene even sadder to me. It's a deceptively simple little bit of business that deepens the pathos of the scene.

Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait (yes, the helium-voiced, lunatic comedian) adds a lot of telling little details like these throughout "World's Greatest Dad." I especially like the stack of Lance's rejected novels with titles like "Darwin's Pool" and"The Narcissist's Life Vest." Wouldn't you love to know what those books were about? I know I would.

The (Ten or) Fifteen Favorite Dancers Meme

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:10:00 +0000

Marilyn has tagged me in a new meme. The mission? Name my fifteen favorite dancers.

Much as I love musicals, naming 15 favorite hoofers may be more than I can manage. But I can for sure come up with at least 10. (The fact that most of them are also on Marilyn's original list is kind of unavoidable, because we all know who the greats are, right? Besides even if I name the same dancers, I'm sure I can come up with a whole different set of clips.)

Here goes....

1. Fred Astaire
2. Elanor Powell

Two great dancers who belong on everyone's lists. As far as I know, they only made one film together, Broadway Melody of 1940. And the highlight of that film is their spirited "tap off" to Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine.

3. Vera Ellen
4. Danny Kaye

Christmas just isn't Christmas if I don't get to see this production number. Vera Ellen's high kicks just blow my mind (especially the backwards ones!) And while Danny Kaye isn't a dancer per se, I love watching his moves in "White Christmas." (Bing Crosby, meanwhile, just barely manages to hold his own.)

5. Gene Kelly

What list of dancers would be complete without him? I love this dance on roller skates from "It's Always Fair Weather." (And the French subtitles just make it that much more fun.)

6. Chita Rivera
7. Gwen Verdon

Move over Zellwegger and Zeta-Jones. They were the first Velma and Roxie, they're dance legends, and in this clip (from "The Mike Douglas Show"!) they tear up the joint with The Hot Honey Rag from the finale of Chicago. The really good part starts about four minutes into the clip -watch for a cameo appearance by Hal Linden.

8. Cyd Charisse

Another essential to any list of great dancers, and another clip from It's Always Fair Weather.

9. Kay Thompson

She's not especially known for her dancing, but OMG - just look at this number from Funny Face! Did you even notice that Fred Astaire was there? There just isn't enough of Kay Thompson in the movies, if you ask me.

10. Mikhail Baryshnikov
11. Gregory Hines

I'd almost forgotten about this movie - and this dance scene. But then I went looking for Baryshnikov clips and it all came back to me. I haven't seen White Nights in years and years, but I clearly recall this scene.

And now comes the part where I get to ask others to play!

I tag: Miranda Wilding at Cinematic Passions
Fox at Tractor Facts
Daniel at Getafilm
Sam Juliano at Wonders in the Dark

Have fun!

Random, Rambling Thoughts on "Inglourious Basterds"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:37:00 +0000

Warning: there are spoilers!

I don't see many summer blockbusters; I'm just not that kind of moviegoer. One the rare occasion that I do haul my weary behind to the multiplex for a big, wildly anticipated film event, it's likely to be several weeks after the initial box office brouhaha has simmered down.

So it was a unusual - and surprisingly exhilarating- experience for me to be in a nearly-sold-out audience in the largest auditorium at my local multiplex on the opening weekend of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds." A frisson of excitement ran through the crowd from the time my fellow audience members took their seats that didn't subside until the closing credits began to roll, accompanied by their wild, spontaneous applause. They laughed at the ridiculous moments, they cheered for the deaths of particularly specious Nazi characters, they groaned or hollered "Whoa!" in exclamations of "oh-no-they-didn't!" disbelief at bursts of graphic violence. Whatever my personal opinions of "Inglourious Basterds" may be, the almost pale in comparison with my rediscovered joy in the power and pleasure of communal movie love.

"Inglourious Basterds" is the first and only Quentin Tarantino film I've seen in its entirety since "Pulp Fiction." Having admitted that, you are welcome to take the rest of this post with a very large grain of salt. But trust me, I have my reasons.

First of all, most of Tarantino's film references are not mine. I have little experience of or interest in martial arts films,'70s blaxploitation flicks, spaghetti westerns, or action films in general. (Which is not meant to suggest I consider my tastes in film superior to or more sophisticated than Tarantino's - if anything, I think my film tastes are a bit too narrow.) Secondly, I'm hypersensitive to violence and tend to avoid anything that threatens to be graphic or bloody.

Finally, I liked "Pulp Fiction" well enough, but if felt to me like the work of an immature filmmaker. Tarantino could obviously create quirky characters and dialogue and toss together an entertaining pop culture pastiche, but he seemed like a show-offy, smart ass kid cruising on his hipster cred who hadn't quite grown into his potential directorial chops. (In other words, I viewed Tarantino the way many critics now view Diablo Cody.) Nothing he's produced since has sounded to me like the grown-up's film I was waiting for.

And "Inglourious Basterds" isn't quite it either. It's big and gorgeous and ambitious, but it also feels very much like an overgrown adolescent's totally way cool World War II revenge fantasy/adventure film. The distancing, show-offy crap is still there ("Hey look, I have a soldier character named Hugo Stiglitz! And when I introduce him, I'm going to superimpose this totally retro title right over his face and play some cheesy music!") From the outbursts of graphic violence to the incongruous use of spaghetti western theme music, from the obscure, tossed-off movie references (the more you know about Third Reich cinema, the better off you'll be) to the long, long stretches of exquisitely turned - but sometimes wearying - dialogue, Tarantino never lets you forget that the film is his personal, souped-up, pimped-out vehicle, baby, and he's taking you on the ride of your life.

That's the weird thing about "Inglorious Basterds": at various points, it disgusted me, sickened me or just plain pissed me off. And yet, it was the best time I've had in a movie theatre all year and then some. Even now, two days after seeing it, I'm still jazzed by its audacity and nerve, while at the same time harboring more than a few reservations about just how good it really is.

Here's the question I haven't yet been able to answer for myself: how reverential does a film about World War II and the Holocaust have to be? Or, more to the point, how truthful? Because "Inglourious Basterds" isn't even remotely rooted in reality. It's not so much to do with the cartoon-villain nature of the Nazis (Mel Brooks, Charlie Chaplin, and the aforementioned "Hogan's Heroes" have all gone there before). It's Tarantino's completely 'new and improved' ending to the War that bugs me most, but then that's of a piece with the "Fuck history, I'm making a movie here!" mentality that permeates the entire film. Where does that kind of attitude lead? Well, Hitler is machine-gunned to death by a Jewish-American soldier, while the entire Nazi high command - including Goebbels, Goering and Borman - perish inside a burning movie theatre. Cause of the fire? A match thrown into a pile of nitrate film prints. Only in Tarantino's cartoony cinephile fantasy world can movies actually save the world. The New York times reviewer bemoaned the scene's parallels to the concentration camp crematoriums; I highly doubt that association ever crossed Tarantino's movie-crazed mind.

Then, of course, there are those titular (and winkingly misspelled) Inglourious Basterds. They're a squadron of Jewish-American soldiers under the command of a Tennessean named Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, his character name yet another of Taratntino's "in" references to character actor Aldo Ray.) Ordered to bring back "one hunnert Gnatzi scalps" each, they carry out their mission in horrifically violent scenes that I was frankly unable to watch. It's not just the scalpings. One Nazi gets his skull bashed in with a Louisville slugger by the infamous "Bear Jew," a Jewish American soldier stolidly played by torture porn director Eli Roth. Two have Swastikas mercilessly carved into their foreheads. To be honest, I believe all these assaults are depicted graphically in the film, but I couldn't really tell you for sure. I endured those scenes by burying my face in my hands and waiting in agony for the baseball-bat-whacking or knife-cutting-through-skin sounds to stop before peeking out tentatively between my latticed fingers.

Pitt did little to impress me here, though God knows he's gotten enough publicity. Putting on a funny Tennessee accent doesn't constitute creating a character to me, and that's about as much as Pitt commits to. The actor who should be getting all the attention is Christophe Waltz, an Austrian whose portrayal of "Jew hunter" Colonel Hans Landa is the smoothest, smartest, and most ingeniously unnerving thing in the entire film.

I'd normally come up with a conclusion here that ties up all my thoughts about "Inglourious Basterds" but I can't. I'm still not entirely sure what they are. Most likely, I'll need to see it again, and I'm dying to know what I'll think of out the second time around.

Counting Down the Naughties: 2004 - "Sideways"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:56:00 +0000

(I'm back baby!!! After a few weeks of much-needed hiatus, I've returned with this submission to Ric Burke's "Counting Down the Naughties" series at Film for the Soul . The year is 2004; the film is "Sideways.")

There are some films you love the first time you see them; you come back to revisit them a few years later and are delighted to find fresh nuances, deeper insights, moments that touch your heart or your funny bone more deeply than you'd been able to appreciate in the first viewing.

There are some films you love the first time you see them; you revisit them a few years later and are dismayed to find that they don't live up to your happy memories. The moments you cherished on the first viewing seem curiously flat and disappointing the second time through.

And then there are movies like "Sideways."

I loved this film to pieces when I first saw it in 2004. After re-watching it for the first time in five years, I still enjoyed it tremendously, but can't say I found anything new or surprising within. It remains a solidly entertaining, well-acted, character-driven comedy that strikes all the right notes from pathos to raunchy humor. But it's not a classic for the ages.

All of which is not intended as damnation by faint praise. There's something immensely joyful and comforting in revisiting characters you've enjoyed spending time with before and finding them just as maddening and interesting and lovable when you re-encounter them again years later. "Sideways" achieved that for me, and that's not an achievement to be dismissed lightly.

For the uninitiated, "Sideways" is the tale of two longtime friends. Miles and Jack, making a last "bachelor's" trip together to California's wine country before Jack's wedding. In standard fashion, that trip will ultimately test their friendship and push them both to become a little better men by the time the closing credits roll. It's also a whole lot of fun to be along for that ride, not least because what constitutes a successful trip varies so wildly according to the two men's points of view.

Miles (Paul Giamatti) is a perpetually morose and miserable would-be writer and oenophile, still pining for his ex-wife. His agenda for the trip is to "drink some good wines, play some golf and relax" while teaching his buddy the finer points of wine appreciation. Jack (Thomas Hayden Church) on the other hand, is an affable, nearly washed-up actor and unrepentant ladies man who can't tell a pinot from a zinfandel and wants little more from the trip to get both Miles and himself laid.

There's an undeniably by-the-numbers yin and yang to these characters. (Miles is the pessimist, Jack is the optimist. Miles is the intellectual whose idea of good time is doing the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink, Jack is incapable of thought deeper than "Let's party!" Miles is the moralistic buzzkill, Jack is just wants everybody to have good time and deal with the consequences later.) It's to the credit of both Giamatti and Hayden Church (as well as writer/director Alexander Payne) then that these characters and their story arc never get stale or entirely predictable; their friendship feels real and lived-in. I like that we aren't given much back story on how these two became and remained friends, other than that they were freshman-year roommates at San Diego State. The actors, under Payne's skillful direction, fill in those blanks for us through the nuances of their performances.

Giamatti, with his sloping shoulders and basset hound eyes, is a perfect embodiment of the sad and beaten down Miles. He finds the subtle layers in Miles' arrogance, desperation and emotional pain and plays them so nakedly and honestly that his misery is sometimes painful to witness. (As in the scenes where Miles wrestles with his own self-loathing before getting up the nerve to kiss the woman of his dreams or drunk-dials his ex-wife. Or especially in the late scene where Miles, having learned that his ex-wife is not only happily remarried but pregnant, grabs his prized bottle of 1961 Chateau Cheval Blanc and sneaks it into a fast-food restaurant, swigging it between bites of a burger and onion rings; it's heartbreaking and squirm-inducing at the same time, and Giamatti doesn't back off from awfulness of it at all.)

For his part, Hayden Church brings to Jack both a breezy spontaneity and a lovable dufus quality that keeps you laughing out loud. Jack is loathsome and lovable in equal measures; he can charms the pants off you, but he's not to be trusted. And at the same time, we can't help but like him because -whatever deceptions he tries to pull over on the women in his life - he never gives up on Miles. It's the only evidence of depth and a capacity for commitment that the character evinces; thankfully, Hayden Church plays this unflagging loyalty lightly and unself-consciously.

The flaws in Jack, however, point to what could be considered the flaw in "Sideways": the female characters are a tad one-dimensional, and to my mind, not nearly as well-served by the film's script as as the travelling buddies. Virginia's Madsen's Maya, the waitress/graduate student with whom Miles briefly and tentatively finds affection, has a nice warmth and wariness. Yet for all the sweet soulfulness Madsen brings to it, Maya still feels like an undercooked Dream Girl role. It's never really clear why someone as beautiful and seemingly well-balanced as Maya would be drawn to such an unquestionably complicated and unhappy man such as Miles, although there's never a question as to what Miles sees in Maya.

The two characters connect most memorably in the scene where they share what they most love about good wine. Miles has an affinity for pinots, as he explains to Maya, because the grapes are so sensitive, requiring special, tender care and cultivation in order to produce good flavor (not unlike Miles himself). Maya talks glowingly about how when she drinks wine, she imagines all the people who have been involved in making it, and concludes by declaring "And it tastes so fucking good." Madsen, the blond curls framing her face subtly backlit as if a halo, is radiant as she delivers this monologue in a hushed and honeyed tone of voice, and we can see why Miles falls in love with her at that moment. And there's enough intelligence in Madsen's performance that we get a hint of why Miles erudition and articulateness might interest her. But even in this scene, the purported mutual attraction feels unbalanced.

Sandra Oh, the sassy wine pourer for whom Jack very nearly derails his engagement has a nice, peppery screen presence - but her character is even less dimensional than Madsen's. She's little more than a standard-issue Sexy Spitfire, an excellent foil for Jack but not around enough for us to see beyond that. I'd have loved for her to have more to do than just beat Hayden Church's face to a pulp with her motorcycle helmet after she learns he's getting married, bracing as that beatdown is to watch.

Beyond my affection for these characters, "Sideways" is a treat from me - someone who knows little about wine - just to be drawn into the esoteric, slightly exotic world of wine appreciation. There's an early scene in while Miles teaches Jack how to taste wine: how to swirl it in the glass to "open it up," how to sniff the bouquet. Miles finds all sorts of notes in his glass of pinot: "citrus, strawberries, oak, a soupcon of a nutty Edam cheese," where Jack just looks confused and keeps sniffing earnestly until he can at least detect "Strawberries, yeah." This scene and others like it tickle me silly. Many have tried to educate me about wine, but I have no nose whatsoever. I'm just as likely to be satisfied with a bottle of Three Buck Chuck as a fine pinot, but I'm always fascinated by the people who can make the distinction. Thankfully, you don't need an appreciation of wine to have an appreciation of "Sideways;" its tart humor and bruised heart are accessible to all.

There Used to be a Blog Here....

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:43:00 +0000

... and there will be again, someday, soon.

The day job has gone from just plain stressful to completely overwhelming. I'm working lots of extra hours right now and have a little trouble unscrambling my brains to write in the evenings.

I expect this to let up in a few weeks, and when it does, I'll be back to regular reviewing. In the meantime, I will be be contributing a couple of posts to Ric Burke's continuing "Counting Down the Naughties" series for 2004.

Meantime, I'll be popping up on my friends' comments threads as time permits.

Don't Forget - Tomorrow is "TOERIFIC" at Only the Cinema

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:29:00 +0000

It's TOERIFC time again!

(That's The Oldest Established, Really Important Film Club, of course).

The discussion on Paul Verhoeven's "Zwartboek (Black Book)" starts at 10 am EST tomorrow, Monday, July 20, hosted by the prolific and unfailingly insightful Ed Howard of Only the Cinema.

Ed's choice is another great one for the club, and I expect the discussion to be lively and challenging as always. (Although I'll likely be showing up later in the day, due to a hellacious schedule of meetings at work tomorrow, I wouldn't miss this for the world.)

Anyone who's seen this film recently is welcome to join the conversation, new voices always welcomed and encouraged. Hope to see you there!

New Rom Coms: There's Good News and Bad News

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:43:00 +0000

First the bad news. We might as well get it out of the way.

We're now seven years past the summer of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and Nia Vardalos is still managing, if just barely, to cruise along on the enormous goodwill generated by that monster hit. But if her latest film is anything to go by, Vardalos' days as a rom-com darling may be numbered.

I find it odd that a film titled "I Hate Valentine's Day" is being released in July, even odder that it's playing the arthouse/IFC In Theaters On Demand circuit (a distribution pattern usually reserved for foreign films and offbeat indies rather than crappy mainstream comedies). But those are the least of its problems.

"... Valentine's Day" starts promisingly enough, with a peppy opening credit sequence of Vardalos greeting other merchants in her neighborhood as she heads out to open her flower shop on the day before Valentine's day. It's atmospheric and set to a lively pop tune, and it's kind of fun. But then we see John Corbett stepping out into that neighborhood street, and from there, the entire plot of the film becomes a foregone conclusion.

Because John Corbett doesn't have to act anymore, he doesn't even have to try! All he has to do is show up. In the lingering afterglow of his roles in "Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Sex and the City," Corbett's mere presence is shorthand for "This is the decent, honest, sex-on-a-stick kind of guy who will teach the leading lady the meaning of true love." (It's about time Corbett switched it up and played an arrogant prick or two, don'tcha think?)

But if Corbett barely makes an effort to distinguish this character from the others he's played, Vardalos is guilty of trying way too hard. She wrote and directed "... Valentine's Day" in addition to starring; that's at least two more jobs than she was equipped to handle. More on than a bit later.

Vardalos' character, Genevieve, loves romance and dodges commitment. She gathers her adoring, love-starved friends for lunches at the local sandwich shop where she delivers canned lectures on her dating wisdom: meet someone, have five great, romantic dates with them, then dump them and move on before the romance dies. Her half-wit friends hang on her every word, but Corbett's hunky restaurateur isn't having it. He dumps her after date four (or date five, depending on whose side you take in a very tiresome running argument.) The rest of the film devotes itself to a long, contrived, not terribly interesting run of misunderstandings and miscommunications, with some side trips to Genevieve's dysfunctional family history. By the time it all gets resolved, you'll be so tired of both of them that you won't really care.

How can I put this kindly? Nia Vardalos isn't the best person to direct herself. I still contend that Vardalos is more of reliable straight woman than a gifted comedienne; her likability is considerably enhanced when she's surrounded by a cast of eccentric goofballs to play off. No such ensemble feeling is apparent in "I Hate Valentine's Day." The lovable goofballs are there, but they're definitively second or third bananas. Vardalos holds center stage all to herself.

Or should I say center frame? Because that's where she usually is - feet planted firmly, a too-wide predatory smile plastered across her face, as she favors Corbett with non-stop pearls of wisdom on matters of both commerce and the heart. Flirtation is the obvious intention here, but Vardalos' stilted, overemphatic line readings are more reminiscent of a mediocre community theatre actress performing her tried-and-true audition monologue. We get just enough cuts to Corbett looking on, quizzical and mildly enchanted, so that we understand how irresistible Genevieve is when she can't stop talking bullshit. And should Corbett ever fail to summon sufficient enchantment, there'll be tinkling, romantic music on the soundtrack to hammer home the message that these two crazy kids belong together, damn it!

It never seems to occur to Vardalos that the best way to show us how much these two are attracted to each other might be to - at least occasionally - shoot them in the same frame! There's one brief, sweet scene with them sitting side by side on a park bench that ends with Corbett leaning his head gingerly into Vardalos', and it feels so utterly real and fresh that it seems to have been spliced in from another director's movie entirely. It's the only minute of genuine chemistry between the two stars in the entire 94.

Otherwise, when Corbett isn't around, we're treated to Genevieve's relentless tendency to make, goofy, sputtering, slow-leak kinds of noises when she's frustrated or depressed. All in all, this film is the most horrific example of a director celebrating her own, self-perceived adorableness since Barbra Streisand's "The Mirror Has Two Faces."

And would it be churlish of me to suggest that, at 46, Vardalos is getting a bit long in the tooth for this kind of nonsense? In "I Hate Valentine's Day," she's written herself a role that might have been great for Kate Hudson. Five years ago. You can feel both sympathy and empathy for a 25-year-old with Genevieve's hang-ups, but when you encounter them in a 46-year-old, you pretty much just want to slap her upside the head.

Now for some good news. Well, better news anyway.

"The Proposal" feels fresher and sweeter than it has any right to be, given that's it's yet another retread of the very tired, "Busy Business Lady" rom com formula. Large credit for that must be given to its leads.

Sandra Bullock hasn't made a romantic comedy in years, and more's the pity. Unlike many actresses who've essayed the genre of late (Renee Zellwegger and Katherine Heigl spring right to mind), Bullock actually is a gifted comedienne. She has a nice flair for physical comedy and a way of putting an unexpected, ticklish spin on her line readings that generates laughs where lesser comic talents would never know to find them. Above all, she's reliably likable and sympathetic, even when the characters she plays aren't.

Those qualities pay off in "The Proposal" where Bullock plays a tough-as-nails, bitch-on-wheels, Canadian-born publishing executive. The "Canadian-born" part is important, because she's ignored restrictions on her green card and is about to be deported. To keep her Manhattan publishing gig, she pretends to be engaged to her assistant (Ryan Reynolds). Soon she and Reynolds are winging their way to his hometown to celebrate the 80th birthday of his Grammy Annie (a peppery and fitfully funny Betty White - think Sue Ann Nivens, not Rose Nylund).

Aside from Bullock, what gives "The Proposal" its unique appeal is that, for most of the movie, you can't tell how it's going to end. Whether the icy relationship between Bullock and Reynolds will thaw sufficiently to become a romance is never a foregone conclusion; in fact, it doesn't feel terribly romantic, at all. For one thing, Reynolds is twelve years Bullock's junior, an obvious fact which is never directly addressed. For another, the warmth and understanding that eventually develops between the two is unforced and un-formulaic, and doesn't involve much passion. You really do keep guessing up until the last minute. No rom com in recent memory has been this subtle and evasive about where it was heading.

Reynolds proves a good foil for Bullock. I've been slow to warm to his charms as a leading man, but his performance here is subtle, confident and generous. He complements, but doesn't outshine, his leading lady - as is appropriate for the solid, decent, prinicipled guy his character is meant to be.

"The Proposal" isn't perfect. There are some woefully misguided moments (chief among them a very strange scene where Bullock discovers White out in the woods, wearing Native American garb and chanting prayers to Mother Nature; it's a WTF moment out of nowhere that's never brought into the larger context of the story.) But it's suffused with such a glow of good will and charm that you'll likely forgive the rough spots.

Saluting the "Spirit of Ed Wood" Blogathon on its Final Day

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:13:00 +0000

It's been a lively week in the blogosphere with the "Spirit of Ed Wood" blogathon - hosted by Greg at Cinema Styles - in full swing.

Sadly, on this the final day of the blogathon, I'm only just starting to catch up with the many fine posts. I was unexpectedly slammed with a mountain of extra work and overtime this week, so my post on exploitation-filmmaker-turned-born-again-Christian Ron Ormond and his cheesy Cold War cautionary tale "If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?" will have to wait for a quieter time.

As I noted on someone's comment thread this week, everything I know about Ed Wood I learned from Tim Burton. In that spirit, I offer this clip; Ed's state of mind in this scene pretty much mirrors my own for the past week, given the slate of near-impossible tasks I've been asked to take on at work. Fortunately I've stopped short of donning an angora sweater and running out to the nearest bar. Enjoy.

The Founding Fathers Sing!

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:23:00 +0000

While I love the stage musical of "1776," I'm not a huge fan of the movie. Let's just say it didn't translate well to film.

Even so, this number - in which Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and others - argue about who's gonna get stuck with writing the Declaration of Independence - is a real favorite of mine. The lyrics are irresistibly witty, even if the choreography is a bit uninspired.

Should you be curious to see the rest, "1776" will be aired on TCM this Independence Day at 10:15 pm EST (just in time to watch after the fireworks).

Happy Fourth of July everyone!!!!

"Whatever Works" and "Tetro" (Or What I Saw on my Summer Stay-cation)

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:31:00 +0000

When it comes to Woody Allen's films, I think I've finally learned to keep my expectations in check. He may not have another "Annie Hall" or "Crimes and Misdemeanors" in him, but I'll grudgingly admit that many of Allen's recent films have their own charms, modest though those charms may be.

Even so, I couldn't help feeling a nostalgic thrill of anticipation as the opening credits of "Whatever Works" began to roll - accompanied by the dulcet tones of Groucho Marx and Margarent Dumont singing "Hello, I Must be Going." With Groucho on the soundtrack and Manhattan as the setting, I couldn't help but hope that some of Woody's former brilliance was about to resurface.

Well, "Whatever Works" isn't brilliant. It's sweet but a little thin, and the acting is notably uneven. But its punchlines land with delightful delicacy, and its depiction of New York City as magical place where its transplanted characters discover their truest selves is silly and seductive all at once.

Larry David plays Boris Yellnikoff, who clues us in right at the get-go "I'm not a likable guy." Give the man points for self-knowledge; he's got himself perfectly pegged. Boris is an angry, cranky mess of a human being. An expert in quantum mechanics and a self-proclaimed genius ("I was almost nominated for a Nobel Prize"), Boris has given up on his marriage and academic career, opting instead to spend his days giving chess lessons or raging at the follies of mankind to the few loyal friends who will still listen. He's hardly a match for the sweet, dim Southern runaway, Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood), barely out of her teens, who shows up on his back steps looking for a meal and a handout. But, improbably, he takes her in, gives her a meal and a couch to sleep on. And - even more improbably, but as is the way in Woody Allen films - the two stumble into a romance. Soon Melodie's proper Southern Baptist mother (Patricia Clarkson) shows up at the door, Bible in hand, to bring her daughter home, but she, too, succumbs to the charms of the pagan city. By the time Melodie's dad (Ed Begley, Jr.) shows up, everyone's too far gone to ever make it back to the farm.

David's performance is a curiously mixed bag. He's deliriously funny when he needs to be, deftly underplaying the best of the gags and one-liners Allen bestows on him. And he's surprisingly touching in the scenes where Boris' curmudgeonly emotional armor falls away. But he doesn't bring anything like the same level of conviction to the character's nighttime panic attacks; those scenes call for a real sense that Boris is terrified and overwhelmed, but David seems no more rattled than a guy who's misplaced his keys. Worse, he lacks the kind of Allenesque cuddliness that would take the edge off Boris' worst behavior, namely a tendency to refer to virtually everyone as a "cretin," "inchworm" or "moron." (When he refers to Melody as a "sub-mental baton twirler," it's positively painful to hear.)

Wood is a sweet and soulful foil for David, but when he's offscreen, her performance becomes unfocused and, frankly, uninteresting. A scene between her and a would-be suitor (Henry Cavill) was so boring that I temporarily "checked out" and planned a shopping list in my head until the film got back to Boris. Wood also has a disconcerting habit of constantly bobbing her head in any scene where Melodie must be especially earnest - it sent me straight up the wall after about 10 seconds.

But the ever-reliable Clarkson is a dizzy delight as the buttoned-up Southern matron who discovers her true passions - artistic and otherwise - under the spell of the city.

There's stuff to quibble with here, if you're so inclined. Allen makes easy fun of bible-thumping Christians but shows that he doesn't really know much about them. (They don't tend to ask for a big glass of bourbon immediately after they cross your threshold, as Clarkson does here.) And Boris' "whatever works" philosophy is not much of a stretch from that of Allen's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters" some 23 years ago. ("What if the worst is true? What if there is no God and you only go around once? Don't you want to be part of the experience? Hell, it's not all a drag." is not very far removed from Boris' exhortation to us to grab "whatever love you can get or give, whatever happiness you can provide, every temporary measure of grace...").

But "Whatever Works" also invokes "Hannah..." in the best ways, not least in its (minor spoiler coming up) unforeseeable and blissfully redemptive happy ending.

Boris is a smart guy, but he gets one thing absolutely wrong in that opening monologue. "This isn't the feel good movie of the year," he warns us. "If you're one of those idiots who needs to feel good, go get yourself a foot massage."

Yes, a foot massage is nice. But "Whatever Works" may actually be the feel good movie of the year.

As for Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro"....

... my friend, Bill, said it best. "There's a whole lot going on in that movie."

That's an understatement. "Tetro" is a grand, gorgeous drama built around the gradual unearthing of dark family secrets. It is a visual stunner, managing to both subtly reference Fellini's black-and-white master works and and overtly reference the Technicolor glories of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's best work.

The film opens as a very young man (Alden Ehrenreich), wearing what appears to be a naval uniform, steps off a night bus in a run-down Beunos Aires neighborhood and find his way through the streets, occasionally stopping to get directions from passers-by. These nighttime scenes are beautifully lit and photographed - in one, an almost unearthly light emanates into the darkness from inside a dilapidated newsstand.

The young man, Bennie, is coming to visit his older brother, Angelo (Vincent Gallo). Angelo's girlfriend (Maribel Verdu) happily lets him into their apartment, but his brother refuses to come out to greet him or even acknowledge him. As Bennie settles in to sleep on the couch, he tearfully reads an old letter in which his older brother promised to "come back and get (him.)"

Angelo, who now insists on being called Tetro, will gradually come around, of course, but not without dragging some old family skeletons out of their closets. Revelations pile up, with each newly unearthed family secret more painful and fantastical than the last.

Mixed in with the family drama are some amusing and nicely observed side trips to the struggling theatre group for which Angelo runs lights. There's a surfeit of good ideas and good intentions at work here, but Coppola never finds a way to make them all coalesce. "Tetro" is a wildly uneven ride, swerving unpredictably between near-brilliance and tedium. There are times you can barely stay with it, and other times you never want it to end.

But ultimately, for all its overcooked visual granduer, "Tetro" is a decidedly anemic affair. The actors - every one of them - lack the passion and intensity that the film's visual style seems to require. Think of Anton Wolbrook, almost over the top in Powell and Pressburger's "The Red Shoes." Didn't his artfully overstated emotion as he introduced the final ballet sort of live up to the vibrancy and intensity of the film's palette? Well, "Tetro" needs a Anton Wolbrook; unfortunately, the best it's got is Vincent Gallo - and he reminded Bill and I of Denis Leary on a particularly cranky day far more than the tortured artist/genius he's purported to be.

Hell Frozen Over: Stuck on a Plane with "New in Town"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:46:00 +0000

Yesterday was a travel day from hell.

I was returning from a business trip to Houston. My flight was supposed to leave Bush Intercontinental at 1:45. It actually left around 9:30. The Chicago area was covered with a series of very severe thunderstorms all day until late at night. By the time the plane touched down at O'Hare - around midnight - I was ready to get out and kiss the ground.

Anyone who's ever endured a lengthy flight delay knows the hell that is hanging out in an airport with no idea of if or when you'll get home. The uncertainty. The weather horror stories swapped among travellers after cell phone calls to the folks at home. The temporary relief of cocktails in the bar and/or bad carb consumption from the myriad offerings in the food court. (Shout out to the Nestle's Cookie stand and their caramel-walnut-toll house bars!)

Only in this stress-filled milieu could it have seemed a good idea to watch the in-flight movie: "New in Town," a crappy, formulaic romantic comedy, which manages to be neither very romantic nor particularly comic.

Remember the video clip in my previous post? If not, you should go take a look at it right now. Because that "Family Guy" sketch nails "New in Town." It is the quintessential, by-the-book "Busy Business Lady" rom com. Renee Zellwegger is the sleek, soulless corporate automaton in designer suits and chic stilettos, Harry Connick Jr. is the hunky, pickup-truck driving guy in the flannel shirt. They're tossed together when Zellwegger becomes the new "Boss Lady" in the Minnesota food products plant where Connick is the workers' union rep. They hate each other on sight, which means they'll be making passionate whoopee by the three-quarter point. That's about all you need to know - and, if you've seen the trailer at any point, you probably already figured that much out.

We could puzzle over how a Busy Business Lady like Zellwegger's character ever got so far up the corporate ladder without the brains to know that if she's going to Minnesota in November, she ought to bring a winter coat. But then, that'd deprive us of the high-larious opening scene in which she struggles to push her overloaded cart of expensive luggage through wind and snowdrifts while wearing only a lightweight jacket and high heels.

And that's only - forgive the awkward pun - the tip of the iceberg. Can I just heave a heavy sigh here and ask why we keep perpetuating this idiotic stereotype of the woman who's a star performer in the business world but completely inept in every other aspect of her life? Is the idea that a woman can be both good at her job and a contented, fulfilled person away from the office so terribly threatening to us? I work in the corporate world; I am surrounded by very successful Busy Business Ladies all the time, and I can guarantee you that the vast majority of them have a pretty full life outside of the office. Most have families, and even the ones who don't aren't likely to come unglued at the propsect of cooking dinner or changing a diaper. (I certainly don't.) At the very least, they know how to turn off the Blackberry and lose themselves in good book once in awhile. We've been going down this same silly road for at least 22 years now, every since "Baby Boom's" Diane Keaton picked up her briefcase with one hand and tucked her baby niece under her other arm like a football. And this trip is heading nowhere.

Something else we can lose now: the notion that heavy Minnesota accent = Instant Laughs. It's been 13 years since "Fargo"; it's time to move on.

Is is just me, or was Renee Zellwegger a better actress before she got Botox? I loved her as Bridget Jones, but these days, whenever I see her on screen, I pretty much just want to kill her. Her horrendous attempt at a Barbara Stanwyck turn in "Leatherheads" took me completely out of the movie, and the current lack of movement in her forehead only makes her that much harder to watch. (I know those airplane movie screens are a little small and hard to see, but at times I wasn't sure whether I was watching Zellwegger or Nicole Kidman - whose forehead has also seen a great decline in mobility as of late.)

The one good thing in "New in Town"? Siobhan Fallon-Hogan. I saw her most recently as the sympathetic prison guard watching over Bjork in "Dancer in the Dark." Here, even when saddled with a wardrobe of goofy holiday sweaters and a bad perm, she brings a genuine heart and soul to her chipper, scrapbooking, cookie-baking Minnesota secretary role. Would that the same heart-and-soul had made its way into Zellwegger's performance.

"My Life in Ruins": A Meme Response, A Review, and a Travel Memoir All in One

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:55:00 +0000

I have two abiding passions in life. One is film. The other is travel. And over the years, my cinephilia has done a lot to feed my continual wanderlust.

Many of the places I've been fortunate enough to visit were chosen based on how amazing they'd looked to me in films.

My excitement over last summer's trip to China was fueled at least as much by "The Last Emperor" and "Farewell My Concubine" as it was by the opportunity to sing with a North American choir performing inside the Forbidden City.

On the one day I spent in Venice, nine years ago, I was as consumed with thoughts of "Summertime," "Room with a View," and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" as I was with experiencing the actual place itself. Just being there - seeing those 14th century buildings, walking those narrow cobblestoned streets, riding in a gondola on the Grand Canal - felt like I was stepping into a movie I'd already seen many times. It was otherwordly and magical. And five years later, when I saw Lasse Hallstrom's "Casanova," I was just about beside myself with the joys of seeing it all again.

A couple of weeks back, Daniel Getahun at Getafilm challenged me to the Movie Period/Place meme in which I'm to answer the questions: "What's my favorite cinematic period, and what movies portray a place that I would love to visit in real life? Essentially, during which movies have I thought, "Wow, I would really love to be there and experience that place at that time"?

I must admit, I have struggled with my response to this one. How to choose just one period, just one place? My interests are all over the place and change from day to day. Wouldn't it have been cool to be at the opening night of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" in 18th century Vienna as in "Amadeus"? To have had a seat at the legendary Round Table in New York's Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s, as do the characters in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle"? To have frolicked at the Carnival in Venice as in "Wings of the Dove" or "Casanova" (two completely different periods there.) As Daniel himself notes, "You almost become paralyzed with the possibilities."

So I've decided to break through my paralysis by cheating a little. I may not be able to settle on a time period other than the present,but I know where I'd go if could pack my suitcase and take off today: Greece. And I was able to experience that country vicariously/cinematically last weekend at the multiplex with "My Life in Ruins."

I'm not going to pretend it was a good movie. I won't even try to defend it artistically. As movies about Greece go, I'm sure it's no "Zorba"or "Never on Sunday" (two films I've never managed to see, although both are referenced in "Ruins.") And, with only the slightest variation, it fits neatly into the overworked rom-com template that is brilliantly pegged in this clip from "Family Guy"

Busy Business Lady - Click here for more amazing videos

That's pretty much the plot - except that Nia Vardalos isn't a Busy Business Lady exactly, but rather an out-of-work professor of Classical Studies named Georgia who is reduced to a tour guide job at a broken-down, Athens-based touring company. Georgia, who admits she hasn't had sex 'since forever' is predictably uptight, rigid and perpetually pissed off. She subjects her tour members to dry, school-teacherly lectures and drags them to temples and museums, when all they really want is to eat ice cream, buy tacky souvenirs and lounge on the beach. For Georgia, it's all that "busy business" of ancient Greece (builidng the Parthenon, starting the Olympics, creating democracy) that makes the country great, not its modern propensity for relaxation and sipping coffee frappe drinks. She's just begging to be set straight.

Fortunately for Georgia and her long-lost "kefi" (Greek for 'mojo' or 'joie de vivre'), the shaggy and taciturn bus driver isn't put off by her knee jerk crankiness. In due course - with a shave and haircut, and monosyllabic grunts that gradually progress into extended, soulful conversations - he reveals himself to be a handsome hunk with the heart of a poet. Soon Georgia is ditching her stiff, blazer-and-shirt tour-guide ensemble for a floaty white summer dress and abandoning her academic diatribes to undulate through the tour bus while delivering sexed-up embellishments to boring old Greek myths.

Any surprises yet? Probably not, and I don't think you'll be any more shocked to learn that every person on that tour bus is a living, breathing Tourist Cliche from the materialistic Americans in their sneakers and fanny packs to the lager-swilling, unintelligible Australians to the snooty Brits. And Richard Dreyfuss is along as the Wise Old Guy who encourages Georgia to "get in touch with your wild thing."

Vardolos had a big hit a few years back with "My Big, Fat Greek Wedding," a film not much fresher or more sophisticated than this one. And from the looks of the sold-out audience at the multiplex last weekend, she's (initially, anyway) going to bring in the same audience. But I'm not sure Vardalos herself has sufficient charms to keep those audiences coming back. She's likable enough, but she's not so much a skillful comic actress as a competent straight woman with a limited range of slow-burn reactions to her co-stars' eccentricities. She's destined to succeed or fail based on how funny her supporting cast manages to be. And despite the presence of normally reliable performers like Dreyfuss, Rachel Dratch, and Harland Williams, the "Ruins" cast doesn't hold a candle to the lovable, nutty MBFGW family.

And yet...

Despite the fact that "Ruins" leaves no travel film or rom-com cliche unturned, I had a pleasant, good time. Not one eye-roll in the entire 95 minutes. And that's because it allowed me to relive memories of my own 2005 trip to Athens and Santorini - and made me positively hungry for a return trip. Everything in this film made me nostalgic for Europe in general and Greece in particular.

There's a shot early in the film that captures what I liked most about Athens - the juxtaposition of the ancient with the contemporary, the otherwordly feeling you get when you look up from just about any modern street in Athens, and glimpse the timeless majesty of the Parthenon looming above you.

When the film characters wander through the Agora, bitching and moaning about the heat and asking when they could get ice cream, I sort of felt their pain. But I also wanted to point them not to the nearest ice cream vendor, but to the friendly taverna where we sat sipping cold, crisp moschofilero and nibbling on bowls of almonds after our own sweltering walk through those ruins. In fact, the one thing these characters maddeningly don't do - which they really should - is have lovely, leisurely meals at open-air tavernas, passing platters of dolmades, lamb shanks, tzatziki with bread for dipping, burgers stuffed with feta and tomato and horiatiki salads. Yum! The food was one of my favorite parts of Greece, and eating out-of-doors only made it more enjoyable.

And I don't buy the "Ruins" premise that the people with "kefi" come to Greece for ice cream and tacky souvenirs while only the dull, stick-in-the-mud types come there actually wanting to learn something. Puh-lease! If you aren't thrilled by the Parthenon, fascinated by the ancient ampitheatres and temples or intensely interested in the museums, you really shouldn't go to Greece. You just stay home and go to a diner for a gyro sandwich. That'll be enough for you.

Another missed opportunity for all kinds of tourist-comedy hilarity: no one rides a donkey in this movie. I'm really surprised this was left out. I rode a donkey up the steep cliff to Oia on Santorini and I can promise you, it's an experience that pretty much writes its own comedy script. 'Cause your average tourist gets pretty freaked out. I'd gotten slightly separated from my friend and so ended up on a donkey between a screaming Englishwoman ("Oooh, I'm terr-ee-fied!") and a screaming Italian woman (unintelligible shrieks of Italian terror); immediately I made the decision to be the calm, rational woman in the middle. (After all, as I tried to explain to the screaming Englishwoman, the donkeys do this every day and they don't want to go over the side any more than you do.) I suspect there are scenes like this at the Grand Canyon,too, although I've never ridden a donkey there. But, trust me, the view is worth every second of anxiety and then some. In fact, it's just a shame that "Ruins" never makes it to any of the Greek island,because that's where the truly beautiful scenery is found.

It's probably a sign of how badly I need a vacation that even the hotel-from-hell scenes got me all nostalgic for past trips and the clean-but-just-barely-serviceable hotels in which my friends and I have occasionally stayed while travelling on a budget. We've tried in vain to watch CNN on a snow-filled, 6-inch TV screen in the Czech Republic, dragged heavy bags up four flight of stairs in crumbling old bed-and-breakfasts in England and Ireland, struggled to get water pressure - or just some hot water at any pressure level - at least once in about every country we've visited. But even the sub-par experiences are all bathed in a post-vacation glow of shared memories and uproarious laughter now.

The final shot of "My Life in Ruins" is my favorite. It's the Acropolis at night, all lit up against a blue-black sky. I have very fond memories of sitting at (yet another) open-air taverna at the foot of the Acropolis about 10:00 at night, gazing up at the illuminated Parthenon while sipping wine and laughing with a table full of friends. I would love to be at that table again soon.

Perhaps I'll just slip over to Expedia now and see if I can find a cheap flight to Athens...

I'll Be Gone for a Few Days....

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:15:00 +0000

Folks, I'll be away from here for a few days. One of my favorite aunts passed away yesterday, unexpectedly, and I've been feeling too sad to finish my latest post. I'm also struggling to finish about four days worth of work in the next two before I take off for the wake and funeral.

I should be back here by Sunday, and hopefully will be able to finish my Movie Time Period and Place meme post for Daniel's challenge then.

Carry on.

What I've Learned by Being a Movie Blogger: A Meme

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:14:00 +0000

This week over at Cinema Styles, our good bloggin' buddy, Greg, posted some highly relatable thoughts under the title "Why Being a Cinephile Matters."

I always enjoy what Greg writes, but this time especially, I felt like he took the words right out of my mouth.

Take this for example:

"There are times when I think I might as well throw in the towel myself as I wonder what in the hell is there left to write about. But then I remember how much I've learned about movies since I started blogging."

Has anyone among us not felt that way? Especially on one of those days when we post what we think is a brilliant piece of analysis - and almost no readers show up to affirm our genius? (Or at least none that leave a comment anyway.) But we all do keep coming back.

Or this piece of wisdom from his comment thread:

"Once I got into blogging I realized I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did."

Boy, that hits the nail on the head. Prior to starting a movie blog, I was known among my friends at "the savant" - the ultimate movie geek with a head full of movie trivia who'd seen just about everything. Actually I'm still perceived that way within my own circle of friends, but I've spent too much time in the blogosphere over the last couple of years to be under any delusion that I'm something special. I am regularly humbled by the knowledge and erudition of so many fellow film bloggers -and always eager and happy to learn from them.

Greg has challenged us to post our own list of what we've learned from movie blogging. I'm happy to share some of mine:

1. I am not alone

I know very few people who are as geeky about film as I am. I often find it difficult to drum up a companion for trips to the arthouse theatres around the city. But in the blogosphere, there's always someone there who knows who Mathieu Almaric is, who's seen the latest Guy Maddin or Hsiao-hsien Hou film. Self-help writer Barbara Sher once wrote, without a trace of irony, "The Internet is where you find your tribe." She was right.

2. On a related note, there are lots of other people in the world who as obsessive about Woody Allen's films as I am, and they're all ready to talk about them at the drop of a hat.
Most of my longest comment threads have come about as responses to my posts on Allen. If I post a bad review of his work, I'm likely to get the most vociferous responses.

3. I don't have to rush out to see the latest blockbuster - or even review it at all - if I don't want to.
Every blogger has his or her own niche, and some of my favorite writers hardly ever make it to the multiplex at all. Following their example has set me free.

4. If you're a movie blogger, your friends will perceive you to have an unfair advantage in their annual Oscar party, "predict the winners" contest.
Especially when you take home the Oscar-replica trophy for four consecutive years. Never mind that I claimed that trophy many times in the years before I even knew what a blog was, let alone wrote one. Somehow I've become labeled as an "industry insider" in my friends' eyes. I don't think they're going to let me compete next year.

5. No matter how much I think I hate movie talkers, there's always someone out there who hates them even more!
I've only contemplated assaulting those multiplex chatterboxes - Marilyn's actually swatted one. For this reason, and so many others, Marilyn is one of my role models!

6. There are more great movies out there than I'll ever be able to see, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

7. Netflix is an amazing service that allows my cinephiliac obsessions to flourish.
I'm old enough to remember the days when the only place you could see movies was in a theatre or on TV; I will never, ever become jaded about the abundance of Netflix titles that are mine to watch with just a few mouse clicks and a couple days of waiting for the mail. I didn't take advantage of Netflix till I started blogging, and now I can't imagine how I lived without it. Back in 1975, I never could have dreamed that one day, I'd be able to watch "La Notte" on Monday night, pop it in a mailbox on Tuesday morning, and by Thursday afternoon, have a copy of "Ordet" in my mailbox in its place. (That's my plan for the coming week, by the way.) It's miraculous!

8. Next to Netflix, the best thing in the world to have is IFC in Theatres On Demand.
I don't think I'll ever part ways with Comcast Digital Cable so long as this service is available. Thanks to On Demand, I get to watch first-run foreign and independent films in the comfort and privacy of my own living room. The most recent title I took advantage of: "Hunger." Next up: "The Girlfriend Experience." And coming soon: Lars Von Trier's "Anti Christ," a film I'm particularly happy I'll have the opportunity to watch with access to a fast-forward button.

9. Balancing blogging with the other parts of my life is a delicate balancing act that I'll never perfectly master.
And I've learned to accept that. There's a very geeky part of me that would love to hibernate for days on end with just Turner Classic Movies, some DVDs, and my laptop -but what kind of life would that be? Sometimes you have to put down the blog and connect with loved ones, make a living, stretch out on a yoga mat or just sit in the sun with a big glass of lemonade. The movies and the blog will still be waiting when you get back.

And most important of all:

10. Respectful disagreements among bloggers are a beautiful thing.
When I first started blogging, I was slightly terrified of starting a controversy or pissing someone off, so I couched a lot of my writing in qualifications and rationalizations. I'm doing that less and less as time goes on. I've learned that disagreements - even vehement ones - are healthy and valuable, so long as everyone stays civil. Every time another blogger comes back at one of my posts with a difference of opinion, it forces me to dig deeper and think harder in order to defend my own point of view. It makes my writing sharper and more precise, and challenges me to push past flippancy and hyperbole to make a cogent and well-reasoned case. And isn't that a great challenge for anyone to receive? If I learned nothing else from movie blogging, just learning to sharpen my critical thinking skills like this should be evidence enough that being a cinephile does indeed matter.

Couting down the Zeroes - 2002: The Magdalene Sisters

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:30:00 +0000

(This post also appears today at Film for the Soul, where my fellow cinephile, Ric Burke is hosting a terrfic series called "Counting Down the Zeroes," a comprehensive look back at the last decade in film. He's currently up to 2002. Be sure to visit his lively and incisive blog regularly in the weeks to come as this ambitious series continues.)

My reaction to Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters" is complicated, at best.

On the one hand: as a former Catholic with strong opinions on the patriarchal repressiveness of the Church, I'm all in favor of exposing the worst abuses that have been committed in its name. And this harrowing drama about the forced incarceration of "fallen girls"in 1960s Dublin is an expose, and then some. After seeing it the first time, I literally had nightmares for a week.

On the other hand: as an artistic achievement, the film leaves something to be desired. The subject matter is sufficiently sensational that even a workmanlike writer-director such as Mullan can easily mine it for appropriate shock value. But one wonders how much more resonant the film might have been if Mullan had troubled himself to go deeper than merely depicting abuses and had investigated the pathologies that enabled such abuse to occur in the first place.

"The Magdalene Sisters" follows the stories of three young women in early 1960s Dublin who are sent to a institution known as a 'Magdalene asylum' where "by prayer, hard work, and cleanliness,"they can hope to earn absolution for their sexual sins, real or perceived as those sins may be. The wan and wide-eyed Margaret (Anne Marie Duff) is sent away by her family after she is raped by a cousin during a wedding celebration; her rapist apparently walks away unpunished. Another, Rose (Dorothy Duff), is taken there after giving birth to a baby boy out of wedlock. The third, Bernadette (Nora Jane Noone) is a saucy and spirited orphanage girl, given to flirting with the boys on the other side of the playground fence, even though she has yet to so much as kiss one of them. Nevertheless, her good looks and friendliness are deemed to be such a provocation to men that she must be taken out of the greater world before she succumbs to temptation.

In the Magdalene asylums found throughout Ireland at the time, young women such as these were forced to work in Dickensian laundries run by the (so-called) Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters filled their coffers with cash for their laundry services, while the women who performed them received nothing but a coarse, shapeless uniform, a meagre portion of food and a hard bed to sleep on. Some were forced to remain in the asylums for years until a family member would come to fetch them, some even stayed for life. Many tried to escape - if caught, the Sisters would beat them savagely and forcibly shave their heads. Those who stayed were forced to endure hours of daily hard labor in the laundries, plus ritual humiliation at the hands of the nuns. One scene in the film depicts the girls being forced to strip naked and run in place while two sisters humiliate them by laughing uproariously over which one has the biggest bottom, the biggest bush, and so on.

All of this is true, and all of it is horrifying. In fact, the somber mood of "The Magdalene Sisters" is established right from the appearance of the title card. The screen is filled with rows and rows of names - names of women who were incarcerated in the Magdalene asylums. The shot gives the distinct feeling of a war memorial, where you're staggered by the seeming endless list of the fallen.

And while it'd be hard to overstate the heinousness of this abusive system, Mullan gives it a fair shot. To his credit, he creates an oppressive atmosphere in which we truly do feel that we've entered a living hell. The girls' hopelessness is palpable. When Noone tries to escape one night, you feel yourself wanting to get out of there with her.

But there are a few too many shots of the girls sleeping on their dormitory beds just beneath large signs proclaiming "God is Good" or "God is Just" - ironic juxtaposition such as this only really works the first time. And true though it may be, the contrast of the girls slurping their thin breakfast gruel with scenes of the nuns tucking into platters of bacon and thickly sliced bread with jam would be more effective if it didn't feel borrowed from every film version of a Dickens novel that you've already seen. When one inmate turns on the priest who sexually abused her, she screams "You're not a man of God!" so many times in the exact same voice that I found myself talking back to the TV: "You're right! He's not a man of God! We get it! Move on!"

Geraldine McEwan's Sister Bridget comes perilously close to being a stereotypical cartoon of a mean-and-evil nun." Even as she wields her strap or her razor, she's not nearly as frightening as she is predictable. And in the Christmas scene, as McEwan weeps huge, wet, hypocritical tears over "The Bells of St. Marys", it's hard not to think "I saw that coming."

What Mullan lacks in subtlety as a filmmaker, he makes up for in graceful efficiency and some well-chosen visual images. The montage which accompanies Sister Bridget's introductory speech to the new inmates deftly lays out all facets of the injustice visited on the Magdalene inmates in a few brief minutes. We see their personal belongings taken away (stripping them of their identity), women at work in the laundries using archaic irons and wringers (some of whom are grey-haired, indicating they've been at this work for many years) and finally, the Sisters' account book and biscuit tins being stuffed with cash (indicating that the Sisters are profiting from the inmates' forced labor.) Another masterful montage depicts a desolate Christmas in the asylum, where only a tattered paper chain decorates the dormitory, and the gift of a single orange is left on each girl's empty bed.

There's also a quietly rendered but powerful scene in which Margaret almost escapes, but reconsiders. Finding the garden gate unlocked, she slips outside and stops a passing car. But when the young man behind the wheel offers a ride, she demurs. As she hesitates momentarily in the gateway, we can see her weighing her choices - there's oppression of one kind within the asylum, but oppression of another kind outside, where like all Irish Catholic women, she'll be forever subordinate to men. Margaret chooses the asylum in a scene that delicately prefigures her ultimate fate: a brother will bring her home later that year, and according to the closing titles, she will never marry.

The actresses who play the young inmates are fine, especially Noone whose Bernadette is at once fiery and frightened, cunning and preternaturally sensual. You can see why the nuns are dead-set on breaking her spirit, and at the same time, you know they won't succeed.

Mullan based "The Magdalene Sisters" on a 1998 British documentary, "Sex in a Cold Climate," which you can watch in its entirety here. It's clear he invented very little in his own screenplay; virtually every scene of abuse in his film is based on a specific remembrance of the women interviewed in the documentary. Even the stories of the main characters in "The Magdalene Sisters" seem directly inspired by those of the women in "Sex in a Cold Climate,"with the notable exception that the women in the documentary are about a generation older than those in Mullan's film.

That "The Magdalene Sisters" starts in 1964 cannot have been without significance. At a time when women were just beginning to experience previously unknown sexual freedom, time stood still for the alleged "fallen women" of the Magdalene asylums. The arrival of automatic dryers in the laundry is the only sign of progress or change that these women see. But Mullan doesn't address that irony directly, nor does he give us any indication of how or why Ireland's moral authority came to rest with the church rather than the government, or how the patriarchy which punished these women has been allowed to flourish for so long. And maybe that's too much to ask of one film. But "Sex in a Cold Climate" had already told us what happened in those asylums for all those years. It would have been even more enlightening if "The Magdalene Sisters" had told us how it happened. And why.

Playin' Catch Up

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:31:00 +0000

I've been back from Houston since Friday night, but I haven't been able to make myself blog. It was too beautiful a weekend, too sunny and glorious, to spend much time inside with the laptop. So I wandered though the neighborhood art festival with a friend, got in a yoga class, and finished out the weekend by finally watching "What Price Hollywood?"- the 1932 George Cukor film that's been languishing at the bottom of my DVR queue for months.

"What Price Hollywood?" is generally considered the original version of "A Star is Born," although the story got significantly reworked before the 1937 Janet Gaynor/Frederic March version hit the screen. Constance Bennett plays a spunky Brown Derby waitress who is launched to stardom by a perpetually sozzled producer (Lowell Sherman). His career plummets while hers soars - in that respect, it's definitely the prototype for "A Star is Born." But, in this film, there's no romance between the main players, only a warm and close friendship.

With the exception of "Topper," I have little experience of Constance Bennett, so I was pleasantly surprised by how good she was in this film. Ditto for Sherman, who I don't recall ever seeing before. (Per IMDB, this was apparently his last film as an actor - he died in 1934 - but he also had a string of impressive directing credits, including "Morning Glory" and "She Done Him Wrong." ) Also in the cast: Neil Hamilton, who famously went on to play Commissioner Gordon in the "Batman" TV series, as Bennett's uptight husband. All in all, a pleasant way to wind up a pleasant weekend.

And now, I'm gettin' back to the blogging business. This week, I'll be participating in the "Counting Down the Zeroes" series over at Film for the Soul, reviewing Peter Mullan's 2002 docudrama "The Magdalene Sisters." (HINT: If you like excruciatingly depressing true-life stories about sadistic Irish nuns, this is the film for you. But I don't want to give too much away.)

I also plan to get up a post in response to this meme challenge from Daniel at Getafilm. I'm still working on my response. Turns out, all the places and times I've ever wanted to visit have been inspired by books rather than movies - who would have thought?

Diary of a Holiday Weekend at the Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:58:00 +0000

Friday, May 22: I head to the multiplex to meet friends for "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." My friend, Susan, asks "Are you going to admit on your blog that you actually came to see this?"

Well, I guess this post is your answer, Susan.

It's every bit as bad as we expected, and in no way enhanced by the constant chatter of the two tanning parlor habitues seated behind us who laugh uproariously as the lamest gags - that is, when they aren't digging their stiletto heels into the back of our seats, chattering together loud enough to disturb every one within three rows, or taking turns leaving the theatre to make cell phone calls.

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 McCounaughey's laid-back, good-time, party dude is rapidly reaching the end of its shelf life. With the exception of the fine 2001 indie, "Thirteen Conversations about One Thing," this guy hasn't stretched himself as an actor since Bill Clinton was in the White House. Seriously, dude, it's time to step up your game a little.

For her part, Jennifer Garner comes off as too nice and too sensible to be so hung up on a dufus like McConaughey's character. Also, Garner should never wear her hair tucked behind her ears; it's not a good look for her.

Saturday, May 23: I was sore yesterday from a Kundalini yoga workshop I attended on Thursday night, and today, it's even worse. (Warning kids: do not try Kundalini at home. Just 'cause it's got Yoga in the title does not mean it's relaxing.) After a day of shopping, sunshine and a little socializing, I'm home in the evening with Advil, the heating pad, and Isabel Croixet's 2008 film "Elegy" from On Demand. Lots of people I know are dismissive of Penelope Cruz, but I say: don't hate her because she's beautiful. Cruz is a richly talented actress, and her performance here as the university student who teaches professor Ben Kingsley the meaning of true love almost too late in his life, is stunning. It goes without saying that Kingsley is pretty great, too.

Sunday, May 24: On a hazy, lazy Sunday afternoon, I finally have the opportunity to watch "Synecdoche, NY." I'm a Charlie Kaufman fan; I've been looking forward to this forever. But something about this film doesn't catch fire for me. I admire its audacity, its imagination and the way it plays with our notions of time, space and identity. I even suspect there is something beautiful and profound hidden within its layers and layers of plot and meaning. But I grow too weary to puzzle it out. My eyes get heavy, I take a little mid-movie nap, and when I wake up, Emily Watson is playing Samantha Morton. Which seems perfectly logical, since I have a tendency to think of them as one and the same person anyway.

Perhaps I will revisit "Synecdoche, NY" one day when my synapses are firing on all burners, but now it is time to prepare for another trip to the multiplex. Tonight's selection: "Angels and Demons."

The highlight of the evening, by far, is seeing the "Nine" trailer on the big screen, an experience which has so me so beside myself that I start flailing my arms around to alert my friend, Mary Anne that "This is it!!! This is the trailer I was telling you about!!!".... and very nearly knocking her popcorn out of her hands in the process. That was the start of the evening, and it's downhill from there. It used to be that movie trailers were limited to upcoming features of the same genre as the film you came to see, but tonight - for no discernible reason- we get trailers not only for the musical, "Nine," but for the upcoming Tyler Perry/Medea comedy and the new Nia Vardalos feature "My Life in Ruins."

As for "Angels and Demons," it's a comic book played out against a sumptuous Vatican backdrop. There's lots and lots and lots of dialogue - only it isn't' really dialogue, just clunky, faux-scholarly exposition about the evil Illuminati, the meanings of pyramids, obelisks and obscure verse, and what happens when matter meets anti-matter. Even if you can't quite keep up with all this (I couldn't), it still hums efficiently along with just enough suspense and visceral thrills to keep us interested, if not quite on the edge of our seats. As Mary Anne warned me, Tom Hanks seems to be phoning it in at this point. I realize that Hanks and his pal, Ron Howard, are making ginormous buckets of money from this franchise, but surely Hanks is ready to do something a bit more challenging next time around.

Monday, May 25 - No movie today. I'm busy packing for a business trip, which will keep me mostly out of the blogosphere until next weekend. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend, and I'll catch up with all of you later.

Looking Forward to: "Nine"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:06:00 +0000

Up to now, I've been anticipating Rob Marshall's "Nine" with more trepidation than eagerness.

For starters, "Nine" is based on a stage homage to "8 1/2." (Please note that I said "homage to" not "adaptation of." The stage musical takes considerable liberties the with plot and structure of the film which inspired it.) It's one thing to base a stage musical on Fellini's masterpiece, quite another to make a film of that musical and invite direct comparisons to the original - comparisons that aren't likely to be favorable. I actually like Marshall as a director, but he ain't no Fellini.

Secondly, I have a strong personal attachment to the stage version of "Nine," having been in the cast of a 1993 Indianapolis production that was the peak experience of my acting days. So I have all kinds of expectations and preconceived notions that threaten to limit my enjoyment of the upcoming film. I certainly found that true of 2007's "Sweeney Todd," another musical in which I had once happily performed and to whose source material I was strongly attached.

But then I saw this --

Oh, my freakin' God!!! That trailer (which was shown at Cannes this week) has me absolutely panting for "Nine" to appear onscreen this fall. I've watched it three times already today. I can't wait to watch it again.

Those two minutes manage to evoke not only "8 1/2," and "La Dolce Vita," but the stage musical itself, plus Marshall's own "Cell Block Tango" and "Razzle Dazzle" numbers from "Chicago." Maybe I haven't been giving Mr. Marshall enough credit. Based on what I'm seeing here, "Nine" could be one helluva movie.

Time will tell. Come November, we'll all get to decide for ourselves.

Reelin' in the Years: "Carrie"

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:42:00 +0000

This one is recycled from the archives. It originally appeared in November 2007, and by resurrecting it and posting it today, I am re-launching a series I started - then abandoned - back in the days when this blog was new and still in search of a regular audience and a topic to focus on. In "Reelin' in the Years," I rediscover films I once liked, but haven't seen in many years.)

I spent Halloween night this year watching "Carrie" for the first time since its original release in 1976, shortly after the start of my senior year in high school. At that time, I had only recently read the novel on which it was based. (I spent a lot of my teen years reading thrillers about demonic possession, reincarnation, and various occult phenomena. It all started in ninth grade with "The Exorcist" and went straight through the early career of Stephen King, right up to about the time of "The Shining." Oddly, I haven't touched that kind of book since. ) Anyway, I was just about dying for the movie version of "Carrie" to be released. When I finally saw it (accompanied by my less-than-enthusiastic cousin), I thought I'd died and gone to Stephen King heaven. It was an almost perfect adaptation of his novel.

Well, anyway, that's what I thought at 16.

At 47, of course, the movie looks a bit different. From my infinitely more jaded, middle-aged perspective, I can see that director Brian De Palma created some movie magic out of King's middling popular fiction, but the magic isn't universally distributed throughout the film. Some scenes are just clunky or silly. And some surprised me for reasons having more to do with the changes in popular culture over the last 30 years than with the film itself. To wit:

* That locker room shower sequence that plays over the opening credits? Ewwwwwww!!! It's just creepy! In what twisted male fantasy world does a shy, socially awkward teenager stand in a communal gym shower, soaping herself up like a porn star? In slow motion yet? A girl like Carrie would be profoundly uncomfortable being naked anywhere in the vicinity of other people. I'm pretty sure that DePalma deliberately created this initial, soft-core feeling so we'd be completely caught off guard when Carrie discovers she's menstruating, and the infamous "Plug it up!" scene follows. But to a grown woman like me, that transition plays like a sick, snarky adolescent joke.

* I got quite a jolt a couple of scenes later when Betty Buckley, the kindly gym teacher, was shown in the principal's office smoking a cigarette. And the principal even had an ashtray on his desk. I'd totally forgotten how pervasive and acceptable cigarette smoking used to be.

* All the stuff with Carrie's religious fanatic mother is so campy and over-the-top. I think we could get that Carrie's mom is abusive and crazy without quite so much crucifixion-themed set dressing, but I guess that'd take some of the fun out of it. Piper Laurie, all angel-faced and frizzy-maned, seems to be in her own little, twisted world. I appreciate the logic of playing Carrie's mom as if you were listening to the voices inside your head rather than to your daughter, but Laurie never convinced me she was doing anything but camping it up and chewing the scenery. She got an Oscar nomination, though, so someone must have been impressed.

(When I first saw her performance at 16, all I remember thinking was that she seemed too young and too pretty to be Carrie's pathologically pious Mom. I think I has someone more like Margaret Hamilton's Elvira Gulch in mind.)

* Somehow I completely forgot that John Travolta was in this movie. It was before "Saturday Night Fever," of course, so he had only about five minutes of screen time, basically playing a variation on his Vinnie Barbarino character from "Welcome Back, Kotter." Quite a shock, too, when, in the scene where he and Nancy Allen slaughter the pig, he starts growling "Git 'er done! Git 'er done!" I thought Larry the Cable Guy made that up all by himself.

* Nothing DePalma did her really thrilled me until Carrie got to the prom. Then it finally became a really good movie, with DePalma's style and technique suddenly more assured and affecting. Sissy Spacek's first slow dance with William Katt is still every bit as dizzying and romantic as I remembered it, with the camera whirling around the couple in every more ecstatic spirals, mirroring Carrie being swept away by Katt's attention and affection. The slow motion build-up to the dumping of the pig blood is an almost unbearable masterpiece of mounting tension. And - oh boy! - De Palma's famous split-screen technique still works like gangbusters when Carrie unleashes her wrath. With Spacek's wide-eyed, haunted, blood drenched face on one side of the screen, and horrific endings for the other characters on the other, you're thrillingly enveloped in multiple perspectives on the same carnage. Yet not one shot is graphic or prolonged for added shock value. Given the "torture porn" mentality of 21st century horror flicks, it's a real testament to "Carrie's" durability that the relatively very mild violence in these scenes seems just as brutal and shocking now as it did 31 years ago.

* Then there's that final "surprise" scene with Amy Irving bringing flowers to Carrie's grave. In 1976, I screamed and jumped out of my seat (and so did everyone else.) This time, I only shuddered a little and smiled to myself. A scene like that only works once.

* Oh, and a "bonus surprise": Edie McClurg in a small role as one of the mean girls who taunts Carrie and pelts her with tampons in the opening shower room scene. This is probably the last time (maybe the only time) she didn't play a matronly, middle-aged goofball. Though she already seems more like Ed Rooney's secretary here than a convincing member of the "popular crowd."

May TOERIFC: Dancer in the Dark

noreply@blogger.com (Pat) — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:54:00 +0000

To do justice to Lars Von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark" is a daunting task. It's so dense and rich, so inconsistent - brilliant in some places and deeply unsatisfying in others -- that just getting my thoughts into a manageable post has proved quite a trial.

Lars Von Trier is, all by himself, a complex subject. A self-described provocateur, he was raised by Communist/nudist/atheists (you read that right) but converted to Catholicism as an adult. His films are typically stuffed with controversial ideas, often including a strident antipathy towards all things American. His frequently female protagonists suffer miserable and terrible fates, to the point that he is considered misogynistic, perhaps even a bit sadistic. But at the same time, he's original and daring, and his films give audiences plenty of intellectually and emotionally challenging fodder to chew on.

"Dancer in the Dark" has a little bit of everything for which Von Trier has come to be both revered and reviled. I doubt anyone comes away from it feeling lukewarm.

It begins with a three-minute prologue in which a screen filled with continually morphing abstract images is accompanied by soaring orchestral music. We wait for the images to morph into something real and identifiable - flowers, or a mountain range perhaps. But they never become anything recognizable. This beginning may seem odd, but it soon proves to be a fitting commencement.

To start a film with an overture is to impart it with it a heightened sense of importance, even grandeur. Such a sense of occasion was characteristic of big-budget film adaptations of Broadway musicals in the 1960s ("West Side Story," "My Fair Lady," "The Sound of Music" and so on) where the overture was played over the opening credits. And "Dancer in the Dark" is, indeed, set in the 1960s with a central character who is obsessed with musical films.

Then too, these images that threaten to become recognizable objects - but never do - simulate for us the experience of striving to see something, but being unable to. And this allows us, however briefly, to experience the point of view of "Dancer's heroine, Selma Jezkova, a woman who is quickly going blind and struggling to prevent her young son from experiencing the same plight.

From the overture,we are taken to "Washington State, 1964" and a rehearsal of what looks to be a particularly bad amateur production of "The Sound of Music." Selma (Bjork) is happily singing "My Favorite Things" as her friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) hands her, from the wings, the actual items she sings about (bright copper kettle, warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with string and so on.) It's awkward and silly, as we can see from Kathy's exasperated expressions, but Selma remains joyful throughout, even adding an impromptu tap step as a closing flourish. Thus the nature of the relationship between the two women - Kathy as the long-suffering, but nurturing, pragmatist and Selma as the childlike dreamer in need of guidance - is established at the outset.

You may also notice that Selma sports an ungainly pair of heavy, thick, black-rimmed glasses, and in the ensuing scene, she's shown in the ladies' room at her optometrist's office, reading and quickly memorizing the letters written on a sheet of paper that she holds close to her face. She's clearly cramming to fake her way through a vision test, and in the next scene, she convincingly passes that test and convinces her doctor that it's safe for her to continue her factory job.

Selma spends days working alongside Kathy at a foundry where she runs a heavy, potentially dangerous machine that stamps sheets of metal into basins. At nights, in the small trailer she shares with 12-year-old son Gene (Vladica Kostic), she assembles packages of hairpins in order to make extra money.

Childlike and bubbly. Selma seems to invoke the protective indulgence of everyone around her. The "Sound of Music" director privately tells others that she "sings funny and can't really dance," but dotes on her during rehearsals. Her factory foreman (Jean Marc Barr) scolds her gently but cheerfully about bringing her script to work and practicing her dance steps on company time. A would-be suitor, Jeff (Peter Stormare), waits loyally for her in his pick-up truck everyday at quitting time, although she brushes off his offers of a ride and tells him she has no time for a boyfriend.

And she unabashedly loves musicals, freely admitting that when times are bad, she escapes into them to feel better. Kathy accompanies her to the local cinema, where they watch '30s classics like "42nd Street" and "Gold Diggers of 1933," with Kathy narrating or even recreating dance steps with her fingertips on Selma's palm when Selma can't clearly see the screen. But Selma's musical obsession goes beyond the films themselves. She hears musical rhythms in all the sounds around her - is perhaps, though it isn't clearly suggested, even more sensitive to these rhythms as a result of losing her sense of sight. In the clack-clatter-bang of factory machines, the rumble of a train on the tracks, even the banging of a chain on a flagpole, Selma hears music, and out of that music, she creates full-blown production numbers in her head, numbers which we get to see as well. Those imagined production numbers will turn out to be both her salvation and her downfall.

Apart from Kathy, Selma's most significant friendship proves to be with Bill Houston (David Morse), the man on whose property her trailer is parked. Bill and his wife, Linda (Cara Seymour) watch Gene when Selma is at work, and invite her and Gene over to listen to music and eat fancy, foil-wrapped chocolates in the evenings while they help with the hairpins. "Bill gives me a lot of money," Linda brags, and Selma feigns being impressed because she believes this makes Bill happy. The Houstons even buy Gene a bicycle for his birthday, a gift Selma can't provide because, as she tells them all, "I'm not that kind of mum." (i.e. one with money).

The scenes between Selma and Bill are pivotal moments in "Dancer in the Dark," each instrumental in propelling Selma towards a tragic fate. In the first, Bill stops by the trailer one night to share a secret with Selma: he's broke. His once huge inheritance is gone and he's terrified to tell Linda there's no more money for the nice things she's become accustomed to. Selma trustfully shares her own secret in return : she's going blind due to a genetic defect which has been passed on to her son. He'll begin going blind soon, too, unless he has an operation - in fact, she emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the U.S. solely to get him that operation, and she's saved $2026.10 to pay for it, nearly but not quite enough. Then the two talk happily about their mutual love of musicals. It's a warm scene and it feels as though a bond has been forged between the two friends, but in reality, Selma's been set up for disaster. And we get our first sense of that at the end of the scene when the camera pans from Bill leaving Selma's trailer to Linda watching anxiously from the window of their house. If you've seen any other of Von Trier's films, you will rightly suspect that all hell is about to break loose.

With Selma's eyesight rapidly fading, she's forced to scramble for the last of the money needed for Gene's operation. She volunteers for an extra, nighttime shift at the factory, and when she arrives, asking the forewoman, "Is it always so dark in here?" we know her time is running out. While lost in one of her musical fantasies, Selma jams her machine badly, stopping production and barely escaping injury herself. When she gets home that night, Bill carries a sleeping Gene from his house to the trailer, and starts to tell her that he plans to confess his situation to Linda. But he stops momentarily to watch Selma pour herself a glass of water and use her finger to judge the water level in the glass while staring straight ahead. Realizing that Selma is now blind, he pretends to leave by shutting the trailer door, then stands perfectly still and watches intently as Selma puts some cash into a candy tin she's hidden behind a fold-down ironing board. Her entire savings are in that candy tin, and we have no doubt that Bill is going to take them as soon as she leaves the room. I've only ever seen Morse play decent, earnest, good-guy characters, and to this point, Bill has appeared to be just one more of those good guys. The way Morse subtly plays this sudden shift from good guy to venal thief is electrifying.

A unstoppable chain of events has been launched. Selma is fired from her factory job, and upon returning home discovers the theft of her money. She confronts Bill at his desk where he has her cash laid out before him. Selma almost gets away with her money, but Bill pulls a gun on her, and the scene rapidly deteriorates from there.

Honestly, I've seen "Dancer in the Dark" four times now (three times in just the last two weeks), and this scene - which ought to have a harrowing, life-and-death urgency - gets more laughable and ridiculous every time I watch it. What goes wrong exactly? Maybe it's that Bill doesn't make any real effort to hold onto the money until Selma's almost out the door with it. Maybe it's that, even after Bill informs her he's pulled a gun, Selma dilly-dallies around instead of taking the money and running. Maybe it's that once Bill gives her the gun to kill him, she puts as many holes in his carpet as she puts in him (she's blind, after all.) Maybe it's that Morse never once convinces me that Bill is in any real pain or that he has enough of a grip on the bag of money that Selma couldn't easily wrest it from him without resorting to more violence. Or maybe it's the loony way Seymour pops in and out the scene, without registering any plausible fear or concern, delivering her lines as she's just arrived from another movie altogether - one directed by Ed Wood. Probably it's all of that. But the scene doesn't work, and I blame Von Trier. He's got at least two really fine actors in that scene, and if they couldn't make the characters' actions plausible, then the scene should have been rewritten or reworked. Anyway, Selma finally resorts to bludgeoning Bill with a metal cash box and killing him.

Overcome with the terrible reality of what she's done, but soon distracted by the rhythmic scratching of a phonograph needle at the end of a record playing on Bill's hi-fi, Selma enters into yet another fantasy musical number. She has just enough time to give the cash to the doctor who will perform Gene's operation. At her "Sound of Music" rehearsal that night, Selma is arrested.

At her murder trial, many of Selma's formerly supportive friends testify against her. Hey eye doctor testifies that she is nearsighted, but not blind. The factory foreman testifies that she said Communism was better for human beings than democracy (a gross misinterpretation of her casual comment that the "sharing" done in Czechoslovakia was "a good thing.") Linda reviles her for showing Bill "no mercy." When Selma finally takes the stand, she maddeningly does not defend herself. She says she was saving money to send to her father, Oldrich Novy, in Czechoslovakia, and that Bill asked her to kill him (which is true) but that she "promised not to tell" why. When the real Novy (Joel Grey), a Czech musical star is called to the stand, he professes never to have seen or heard of Selma before. For her part, Selma is thrilled that her idol and fantasy father figure has shown up, and soon she's concocting yet another musical fantasy, this one in which she dances on the judge's desk with Novy. Lovely as the number is, it is only a brief respite in Selma's march towards tragedy. The court finds her guilty and sentences her to be hanged.

No one familiar with Von Trier's work will be surprised to see that his heroine is persecuted, betrayed and made to suffer horribly. The most obvious parallel is to "Breaking the Waves" and its heroine, Bess: both characters are innocent; both are driven by an illogical, self-destructive code of personal integrity; and both meet tragic ends. But the way that the townspeople suddenly turn on Selma after Bill's death, recasting actions and words which once seemed innocuous (wonder that Bill kept his gun at home, an apparent interest in Bill's money) as sinister, "Dancer in the Dark" also prefigures the gang rape and shackling of Grace in "Dogville": the natives turn on the outsider. (It's notable that only the European-born characters, Kathy and Jeff, stand by Selma until the bitter end, and neither of them are called to testify at her trial. This would seem to be one of Von Trier's trademark swipes at America, albeit a feeble one. Selma's own refusal to defend herself is as much the cause of her downfall as the accusations of her fellow townspeople.)

Unlike "Dogville's" Grace, however, Selma doesn't seek revenge, but rather goes to the gallows with little resistance. An attempt by Kathy to obtain a retrial for her is scuttled because it would require paying a new lawyer with the money intended for Gene's operation. Selma is ferociously clear on this; she rails at Kathy about the foolishness of "spending that kind of money on a blind woman who's going to spend the rest of her life in jail." Kathy's protests that Gene needs his mother fall on deaf ears, Selma insists "He needs his eyes!"

Selma assuages her fears in prison with more musical reveries, comforting herself with a strange rendition of "My Favorite Things" (possibly the most annoying cover of that song since Barbra Streisand's first Christmas album) and even steeling herself for the final walk to the gallows with fantasies of singing to and consoling male inmates on Death Row. The hanging scene goes on forever, and is almost unbearable to watch, with Selma screaming in fear. Kathy rushes to her, presses Gene's eyeglasses into her hands, and assures her that Gene has received the operation, and "he'll see his grandchildren." In this news, Selma finds needed peace. She begins to sing "this is the next to last song/there are no violins/the choir is so quiet/and no one takes a spin." In happier times, Selma admitted to Bill that she could never stand to see a musical end and so used to leave the cinema during "the next to last song." And once again, she'll make an early exit. In mid-song, the hangman trips the lever and Selma falls to her death. A curtain is drawn closed in front of the scene, and the film ends.

"Dancer in the Dark" is not the first or only musical in which a character escapes a bleak existence by escaping into musical fantasy. It's not even the first film musical to end with a hanging. (That would be the film adaptation of Dennis Potter's "Pennies from Heaven" in 1981, although that hanging was suggested rather than depicted.) But it is unique in that the musical fantasy scenes are set not to well-known popular songs, but to original music written and orchestrated by the film's star. Icelandic singer Bjork is famously eccentric and not to everyone's taste. (I sampled a couple of her other music videos and couldn't get past the first fifteen seconds of either.) Her singing is a bit eccentric, too. Too often she affects an odd, crackle-y quality that I can only describe as somewhere between a cartoon leprechaun and a badly played violin. It IS an affectation, though; her voice is clear-throated and thrilling when it needs to be. And no matter how I feel about Bjork's other music, I pretty much love all her songs in "Dancer in the Dark." In particular, "I've Seen it All" and "Smith and Wesson" serve important dramatic functions in the story.

Selma sings "I've Seen it All" to Jeff just after she's been fired from the foundry but before she learns her money has been taken - significantly, the last moment in which she can be under any illusion that she is in control of her own circumstances. The lyrics profess apathy about her encroaching blindness: Jeff sings to her about all the things she will never see like "your grandchild's hand as he strokes you hair" and Selma shrugs them off with "to be honest, I really don't care." But if the words are dismissive, the melody - fueled by the rumbling of a train on the tracks - is mournful and elegiac, and suggests that Selma may be in more pain than she's admitting.

Equally powerful is "Smith and Wesson" a fragmented and not terribly melodic reverie that Selma enters into just after killing Bill. This particular fantasy might be considered a full-blown dissociative state, a radical reaction to a reality that is too terrible for Selma to face. But it also represents her way of granting herself absolution through music, with a resurrected Bill telling her "You are forgiven," Linda sending her off before the police come, and even her son consoling her in a clear, boy's soprano that "you just did what you had to do" All before Selma walks into the lake at the song's conclusion, the water surrounding her clearly a symbol of purification and renewal. And it's significant that from this point on, all Selma's musical imaginings will likewise function to dissociate her from traumatic events such as her arrest, sentencing and hanging.

What I don't like about the musical numbers is the herky-jerky "Moulin Rouge"-esque way they're edited. (Jerky editing is, of course, a hallmark of Von Trier's filmmaking style, but it's far less tolerable in a musical production number than in an emotionally intimate scene of dialogue.) Von Trier used an ambitious filming process with as many as 100 digital video cameras simultaneously filming each dance number from 100 different angles. That sounds great, but it's probably at least 90 more cameras than were needed. Because we really don't need that many perspectives on a dance number; all we need is a way to see everyone in the scene and then a way to focus on one or more specific dancers at climactic moments. The cutting especially bugged me in the courtroom musical fantasy, 'cause if Joel Grey is going to dance, I want to see that. Without interruptions. And what I really wanted was a good, long two-shot of Bjork and Grey dancing together, because watching Selma dance with her beloved Novy would carry a lot more emotional reasonance than just getting a quick shot of Selma's face, a quick one of Novy's and then cutting away to a group of jurors snapping their fingers. The dance rehearsal master videos that were included in the DVD's special features were actually more satisfying to me than most of the finished, filmed dances.

Some films improve upon repeated viewings. Your experience of them deepens as you discover fresh nuances and layers of meaning with each viewing. And some only get less satistfying the more you see them. Oddly, for me "Dancer in the Dark" became both more and less in each of the three times I watched it over the last two weeks. On my second, third and fourth viewings, the lapses in logic and the enormous holes in the plot became almost risible. (Why doesn't Selma have a bank account instead of a damn candy box? How can Selma not know Bill is still in the room when she hides the money? How likely is it that Gene's eyes will deteriorate more rapidly if he finds out he's going blind, and why doesn't anyone challenge Selma on that crazy notion? Where is Gene's father? Why do people ask Selma why she had Gene if he was going to have a disease - abortions certainly weren't easily available in 1964. And I've already talked about the murder scene.) I'm willing to suspend my disbelief once in awhile if the payoff is worth it. But by the fourth viewing, I was convinced that Selma herself wrote the screenplay, so much are we asked to take on faith.

But the significance of the musical fantasies (in particular, the aforementioned "I've Seen it All") only became more apparent to me the more times I watched. And each time, I appreciated Bjork's performance more and more. If we believe anything that happens here, it's because Selma believes - and by extension, because Bjork believes. With her tiny brown eyes, upturned nose and round, lightly freckled cheeks, she's more elfin than womanly, equal parts innocence and foolishness. (There are moments in "I've Seen it All" where her facial expressions actually suggest not a grown woman, but an earnest toddler singing her heart out.) And there's an emotional immediacy in her performance that perfectly suits the trusting and innocent Selma. Her rapturous expressions when she hears a rhythm that speaks to her are something akin to religious ecstasy. Her joy in musical expression is something which literally inhabits and defines her, it bursts out of her from somewhere very true and deep. It's impossible to tell where Bjork begins and Selma ends.

Bjork famously battled with Von Trier on the "Dancer in the Dark" set and hasn't acted in a film since, which is understandable given the emotional toll this role must have taken on her. But more's the pity. Her screen presence is undeniably powerful. And her music certainly lends layers of meaning and emotional reasonance to what otherwise might have been just a dreary and pointless Von Trier tale of female self-sacrifice.

(For the record, I don't think that having a suffering female heroine in your film - or even several of your films - necessarily translates to misogyny, but Selma's suffering in this film seems particularly pointless to me. I don't see her as an allegorical character like Grace in "Dogville" or "Manderlay," and I'm not sure what we're meant to feel about her apparent martyrdom for the cause of saving her son's eyesight. We're don't close enough to Gene for that outcome to mean much.)

This much I am sure of: Lars Von Trier might be the name in big, bold letters on the title card, but for me, "Dancer in the Dark" is Bjork's movie from start to finish.