' ' Cinema Romantico: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Back To School (Flashback To The 80's, Part 1)

Rodney Dangerfield was a little like Will Ferrell, wasn't he? You hired him and you knew pretty much straight away what you were getting. The aw-shucks delivery. The halting gait. The incessant one liners. Goodness, the incessant one liners. The story for "Back To School" is credited to three people (including Dangerfield) and the screenplay is credited to four writers but most every line spoken by anyone feels like a set-up for a Dangerfield one-liner. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Consider the initial scene with Dangerfield, playing Thornton Melon, a self-made millionaire of big and tall clothing, filming a commercial for his business, a commercial which consists entirely of one-liners. It establishes the character and lets him be who he is. Unfortunately, despite his success in business Thornton's second wife (80's vixen Adrienne Barbeau) is up to no good and, thus, in the face of divorce he takes his limousine and lights out for Grand Lakes College where his son Jason (Keith Gordon) is in a fraternity and on the diving team. Well....not quite. It seems Jason was lying about that. He is not in a frat and he is the towel boy for the diving team. He pines for lovely Valerie (Terry Farrell) but she is with his ne'er-do-well diving rival Chas (William Zabka, the go-to 80's movie bully). He only has one friend, Derek Lutz, a Billy Idol-channeling Robert Downey Jr.

Jason is thinking about dropping out but Thornton, despite not having received a university diploma himself, councils that if someone doesn't attend and finish college they're nothin'. (This nugget of wisdom apparently means people like, say, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Lucinda Williams, Clint Eastwood, and Hollywood's current best screenwriter Tony Gilroy are nothin' but, you know, never mind.) Jason points out his dad never finished college at which point Thornton decides to enroll and bam! We've got our title!

Thornton will bribe Ned Beatty's Dean Martin (ha! ha!) to get in and butt heads with the smarmy professor Philip Barbay (Paxton Whithead, whose own name is better than his character's) who is "going with" English Professor Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman) who in no time will blossom into Thornton's love interest and in the penultimate scene he is called upon to perform an "impossible" dive called The Triple Lindy that all us pre-teens in the 80's acted out using couch cushions afterwards. He will teach his son to be a man and his son will teach him to grow up and take responsibility for himself. In fact, the relationship here between Thornton and Jason, amidst some suspect material, is actually quite graceful. The son is not trying to act out against his father and the father is not trying to browbeat his son. They clearly just want the best for one another.

Keith Gordon never did much acting after "Back To School", turning instead to directing which he has only done sporadically, though with honorable intentions - "A Midnight Clear" (1992), "The Singing Detective" (2003, re-teaming him years later with Downey Jr.) and "Waking The Dead" (2000), an underseen Billy Crudup/Jennifer Connelly ghost story that is flawed but genuine. I liked Gordon in this. He has a certain loopy charm and was not lifted from the same cookie cutter as so many other 80's actors. In fact, as the love interest Farrell is taller than Gordon but rather than resort to having Gordon stand on a box - a la Tom Cruise & Kelly McGillis in "Top Gun" - they just let the height discrepancy be. Refreshing.

The best moment in the film belongs to Sam Kinison as an unhinged history professor and the film's most curious moment is a "Twist and Shout" sing-along which I was ready to decry as a "Ferris Bueller" rip-off until I realized that, according to IMDB, "Back To School" was officially released a whole 2 days after "Ferris Bueller". Were "Twist and Shout" sing-alongs all the rage back in the 80's and I have forgotten?

Of course the critical question is what modern day viewers might glean from 1986's #6 film at the box office? Is there any unique insight into this long ago decade? Consider, perhaps, the sequence in which Thornton wants the colossal university hall hosting class sign-ups cleared so he can get the courses he wants when he wants and so his driver (Burt Young, not looking all that different from his recent "Rocky Balboa" appearance) retreats to the limo and holds aloft a sign with the name of the most famous celebrity possible to draw every student away from the sign-up and easily succeeds. The celebrity's name? Bruce Springsteen. That's right, kids, there once was a time when The Boss could send every 18-22 year old in a 50 mile radius into a frenzy. No, really, I'm not lying. He could. I said, he could, damn it! Why don't you believe me?! God, I'm old.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Flashback To The 80's

"If you want the good old days just put on a jean jacket and crank Cyndi Lauper." - Author Unknown

That's right, loyal readers, for the next three days Cinema Romantico is steeping itself in nostalgia, time traveling to the era of my youth. We're going aaaaaaaaaaaaall the way back to the decade when Tommy worked on the docks (before the union went on strike, of course), Will Smith was The Fresh Prince, Jerry Brown and George Deukmejian governed California because Schwarzenegger was too busy blowing things up, basketball players still wore shorts like this and we all thought "ALF" was hilarious (until we watched it 15 years later and said, "Oh, sweet Jesus, this is terrible").

(You're damn right, they are.)

Three days. Three stars. Three "cornerstone" films of 80's cinema. It'll be a little bit wistful, a little bit terrifying. So settle in and grab yourself a Capri Sun six pack. This trip down memory lane could get intense and so I'm warning you now. Okay? Are we cowabunga on this? And for anyone who might not grasp the critical differences between Whitesnake and White Lion and think these movies have no place in the modern world, well, you may be right. But know this....you weren't there.

Friday, August 27, 2010

2010 Fall/Winter Movie Spectacular

Cinema Romantico's interview with the Hollywood e-zine "Film de Cinema" regarding the summer movie season was such a hit that they decided to sit down with me once more to preview the fall and winter movie offerings for this year! This is the full transcript:

Film de Cinema: How many truly great movies have you seen thus far in 2010?
Cinema Romantico: Two. "Winter's Bone" and "Salt." That's the list.
FdC: Do you think "Winter's Bone" can score a Best Picture nod? Wait....why are you laughing?
CR: Doesn't matter. Next question.
FdC: What else have you enjoyed at the movies this year?
CR: James Franco and Mila Kunis as a couple on the run in the otherwise average "Date Night" were amazing. They deserve their own movie. In fact, why can't they just take a couple million from "The Green Lantern" budget and make it? Wait....why are you laughing?
FdC: Doesn't matter. Next question. What movie are you most excited for this fall?
CR: "London Boulevard." Oh, man, I know where I'll be October 15th.
FdC: Uh....October 15th is the release date in the UK. I'm afraid there is no release date yet for "London Boulevard" in the US.
CR: You have GOT to be kidding me.
FdC: "Jackass 3D" comes out in America on October 15th.
CR: They get Sienna Miller and "London Boulevard" and we get Jessica Simpson and "Jackass 3D". GET YOUR HEADS IN THE GAME, AMERICA!!!
FdC: How excited are you for "Red Dawn"?
CR: Oh my God! I'm a kid of the 80's! I can't wait! C. Thomas Howell drinking deer blood on the big screen! Harry Dean Stanton screaming "avenge me!" Jennifer Grey before the nose job! I'm practically bursting with-
FdC: Wait, wait, wait, you understand this isn't a re-release. It's a remake.
CR: That's it. I've had enough. GET SOME ORIGINAL IDEAS, SCREENWRITERS!


FdC: Okay. Calm down. How about "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps."
CR: Let me guess, a remake starring, oh, how about...Shia LaBeouf as Gordon Gekko?
FdC: Close. It's a sequel with Shia LaBeouf as the young protege to Michael Douglas's Gordon Gekko.
CR: My head hurts.
FdC: Of course I have to assume you think that new Hilary Swank tear jerker "Conviction" looks terrible?
CR: Uh, actually...
FdC: Seriously?
CR: It's been six years since "Million Dollar Baby". She's due.
FdC: Then I hope you think Eastwood's latest, "Hereafter", appears intriguing?
CR: Maybe. It all depends on the material with him.
FdC: No doubt "The Fighter" will be right up your alley, considering your eternal devotion to "Million Dollar Baby."
CR: Eh....I'll see it but I gotta be honest....I'm not a big David O. Russell fan.
FdC: Wow. I've got to find something we can agree on. Let's see....(checking notes)....how about "Somewhere", the latest from Sofia Coppola?


CR: I'll be there opening night.
FdC: The Coen Brothers' "True Grit?"
CR: Ditto.
FdC: You, of course, wrote a 6300 word hyperbolic op-ed essay for our publication entitled: Rachel McAdams, The Next Great Actress. You also punched one of our staff members in the face for disagreeing with your viewpoint. Do you think her "Morning Glory" will take her to the next level?
CR: I've got my fingers crossed.
FdC: How about that facebook movie from David Fincher?
CR: I'm intrigued. But who knows? What I do know is I love this song.
FdC: That is a great song!
CR: But not as great as this!
FdC: How the hell did you manage to work in Lady Gaga?
CR: I can work her into any conversation. It's quite possibly my greatest talent.
FdC: Now that there have been movies about Secretariat and Seabiscuit what horse will be next for the silver screen treatment?
CR: That's easy. Dance Floor: The MC Hammer Story.
FdC: Speaking of dancing, what are your thoughts on the next Darren Aronofsky film, "Black Swan", focusing on a ballet dancer and her rival?
CR: (Mouth watering.)
FdC: In closing, how excited are you for "Tron: Legacy"?
CR: I don't even know what "Tron" is.
FdC: You don't know what "Tron" is? I thought you said you were a kid of the 80's?
CR: Is it like "War Games"?
FdC: (head in hands) Oh my God.
CR: Look, I'm sorry, there's a certain section of pop culture I just don't get and don't know anything about. It's like when I could have got Tony Hawk's autograph in California except that I had no idea who Tony Hawk was.
FdC: You don't know who Tony Hawk is?
CR: Well, I do now. I still don't want his autograph.
FdC: I think you should see "Tron".
CR: Not gonna happen. It's like me trying to persuade people that "Titanic" was wholly awesome.
FdC: You know the guy who played Lovejoy was in "Tron"?
CR: He was? Hmmmmm. Good, but not good enough. Maybe if "Tron" had Kate Winslet.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Your (Final) Summer Movie Moment Of Zen

I have no idea if anyone else has actually even enjoyed this but I certainly enjoyed wasting a few minutes of my life each week to complete this post. And if anyone thinks there is a better Arnold one-liner than this, well, I see your point, but you're just wrong.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Smoking In Movies Is A Right

With the fancy-pants, well-to-do Centers For Disease Control And Prevention trumpeting a study that smoking has decreased radically in cinema since 2005, Cinema Romantico, a lifelong non-smoker, felt it was time to resolutely re-affirm that we unconditionally support smoking in the movies.

In keeping with that theme here are a few visual aids to brighten your day.















(Note: This is not actually a scene from a movie of Sienna Miller smoking. It's just Sienna Miller smoking. Sigh....)

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Get Low

Centered around a man of a certain age facing his impending great gettin' up morning, the rhythm and tone of "Get Low" is very much identical, one would imagine, to a person who knows the end is near and has settled in for the wait.

That man is Felix Bush (Robert Duvall), based on a real life man, an eccentric old codger in 1930's Tennessee who still gets around via horse and cart and lives alone way out there in the woods, uses a shotgun to threaten kids who come around to hurl rocks at his cabin and has generated a lifetime of rumor and talk amongst the leery townfolk. But an old friend has died and the local pastor arrives to inform Felix. "What got him?" asks Felix. "He just got old," explains the pastor, information which does not sit well with our heavily bearded protagonist.

Snapped into the reality of his own inevitable demise Felix makes a rare appearance in town to request a funeral. Not his own funeral, per se, but a funeral party, an event wherein he wants everyone who has a story to tell about him to come and tell it. There will be music. He will raffle off his property. Enter Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) of Quinn Funeral Home, a man the audience is conditioned to expect to be a huckster, though he turns out to be far from it, as he and his assistant Buddy (Lucas Black) go to great lengths to arrange this unorthodox hootenanny.

Eventually Felix will decide he he doesn't want anyone to tell stories since he assumes all these stories will be tall tales and instead decides to have an old might-have-been-at-one-time friend Reverend Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs) say a few words instead, though Rev. Jackson is reluctant. Meanwhile an old might-have-been-at-one-time flame Mattie (Sissy Spacek) has returned to town. These relationships suggest long buried secrets, all of which the film, directed by Aaron Schneider, unspools at a most leisurely pace. Felix may not be long for this world but this movie about him is in no hurry. Bluegrass music is played but this is not Rhonda Vincent and The Rage. It's "Coat Of Many Colors."

Movies in no hurry tend to rely on the ability of their actors and Duvall and Murray are experienced veterans who refrain from grandstanding in roles where such showmanship would have been the easy play. Duvall is intelligent enough to know that the backwoods recluse background is peculiar enough on its own without having to accentuate it. Felix is clearly a man who goes long stretches without human contact and he never overdoes the unease. It is so effortless, so natural it might appear as if he is doing little to nothing when, in fact, he perfectly captures the less is more mantra. Murray meanwhile is the consummate businessman, professional, occasionally exasperated but never blowing his top, while also appearing to shade the character with a bit of personal history - an old life in Chicago and references of bitterness toward an, ahem, ex wife. Spacek hardly has anything to do but is present and alive whenever called upon.

It all builds to an extended third act monlogue that in lesser hands than Duvall's might have felt like nothing but a play for Oscar. But here it sounds precisely like something someone needs to say and has needed to say for a very long time and he doesn't care so much what you think about it because he just needs to get it off his chest and, by God, against all odds, it works. It does. We all have any number and any manner of sins and we all have to ask for forgiveness or fess up to someone and tell someone we're sorry or just in our own way, whatever that may be, make peace with them and if we don't want to live the majority of our lives in what feel like manmade prisons than it is probably best to do this long before it's time to get low.

Monday, August 23, 2010

The Other Guys

There comes a point when our protagonists, Detectives Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), are sitting in the New York night, along the water, gazing at the illuminated Manhattan skyline, having a serious talk, the whole situation soothed by saxophone, and the audience realizes Mel Gibson's Riggs and Danny Glover's Murtaugh could be inserted and this scene would be exactly the same. And this is what makes it hilarious. Except then these bums, these bums who have been referenced earlier, these bums who stole Gamble's car and performed, uh, unpleasant misdeeds in it turn up and express their desire to once again perform unpleasant misdeeds in Gamble's car and the whole scene blunders to a groaning halt. It is "The Other Guys", written and directed by Adam McKay, in capsule. A movie waging war with itself. A spot-on spoof of a police procedural and a spotty sketch comedy.

The film opens as a spot-on spoof with the requisite car chase scene as the traditional bad ass, one liner spewing movie cops Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Danson (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) thwart some bad guys, complete with all kinds of shaky-cam, by, amongst other things, uniquely employing the service of a bus and brushing off the exorbitant property damage. But "The Other Guys", as its title implies, is not about them, it is about Gamble and Hoitz, who do Highsmith and Danson's paperwork, and have both ended up as laughed-at desk jockeys on account of sordid Events In The Past (one of which is funny, one of which is funny in theory).

Ferrell makes like Charles Martin Smith in "The Untouchables" by using scaffolding permits as the launch pad to uncovering the nefarious Wall Street scheme of high roller David Ershon (Steve Coogan, underwhelming), though the logistics and intricacies of this dastardly plot are never the point so much as making room for Ferrell - especially Ferrell - and Wahlberg to riff.

Ferrell's Gamble is given an impossibly gorgeous wife named Sheila (Eva Mendes) and an impossibly gorgeous, unhinged ex (Natalie Zea, who, by the way, tore it up last spring on FX's "Justified" in an Emmy worthy performance that will, of course, go un-Emmyed) and Wahlberg's Hoitz is mystified by all this, understandably, while he also finds himself pining for the wife that got away and this wealth of underdeveloped side material keeps snagging the movie and preventing it from really being a sly, hard-hitting send-up.

Wahlberg does, however, zealously throw himself into his role - "I'm a peacock! You gotta let me fly!" - and Michael Keaton as the pair's beleaugered boss who works a side job and unwittingly quotes T-Boz, Chilli and Left Eye is such a terrific actor that he makes duck confit with rotten goose but Ferrell, on the other hand, is, well, Will Ferrell. There are certainly times when he truly inhabits Detective Allen Gamble but then in almost every sequence something happens and you can sense the improvisation taking over and the camera rolling and rolling and Ferrell firing off assorted one-liners and can't the editor see what is happening here? Who else remembers when Javier Bardem won his SAG Award and thanked the Coen Brothers for "choosing the good takes instead of the ones where I really sucked"? One cannot help but wonder if somewhere on the cutting room floor is a more streamlined film, an 80's cop flick about The Other Guys, a more restrained Detective Allen Gamble, a paperwork maestro as played by Will Ferrell rather than Will Ferrell playing a paperwork maestro.

In the Entertainment Weekly summer movie preview issue Adam McKay said this: "When you do a comedy, it does no good to reference comedies. You want to treat it like a drama 80 percent of the way. Then, at the last 20 percent, you f--- it up." You can say it, Adam, but you have to understand it, as in why does "The Other Guys" keep referencing other Will Ferrell comedies?

Friday, August 20, 2010

My Favorite Movie Scene In The Rain

Andrew, the writer of most marvelous prose, over at Encore Entertainment recently hit on an incredible idea for blog-a-thon regarding our favorite movie scenes in the rain since scenes in the rain really are a significant staple of the cinema. Why is this? (I should note before I go any further that my native state of Iowa is currently in the midst of approximately its 17th 100 year flood in the last 5 years and so I know that rain can also symbolize direness and the wrath of that "happy-go-lucky" God of ours and so on and so forth and so please know, fellow Iowans, that I do not mean to belittle your plight. My heart is with you. You know it is.)

Viewers lost it at many different points during James Cameron's landmark 1997 opus "Titanic" (at least the viewers who enjoyed that film which is to say the viewers who actually have souls) since it is not an easy movie to watch when considering its primary topic is, you know, the sinking of the Titanic. But the scene that most got me....

It's after the ship has sunk and after Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate) has let go of Jack Dawson (Leo) by promising that she'll never let go and she hitches the ride on the Carpathia and the Carpathia is coming through New York Harbor and she's looking up at the Statue Of Liberty-

(Note: If you're one of those people who now wants to point out that the Statue Of Liberty would not have been lit up in 1912 or that Rose would not have been able to see it from that vantage point because the ship could not get that close to the island or whatever other inaccuracies you want to point out, well, I don't want to hear it. Okay? I DON'T EFFING WANT TO HEAR IT. Go back to reading your book about the invention of the cotton gin or whatever it is you un-romantics do.)

-and that soft rain is falling on her, cleansing her, washing away the atrocities her young eyes have been made to witness and her suffocating personal history, all of it, all these sins getting rinsed away by this divine drizzle, and then that guy comes up to her and asks "Can I take your name please, love?" and she looks at him and Kate - as only Kate Winslet can - doesn't go for any over-affections, she doesn't put any spin on her face or on her words, she doesn't try to sell it because she's smart enough to know she doesn't have to because the moment itself is bigger than any of that and she just replies "Dawson - Rose Dawson" and that's when I lost it. I had to burrow down in my seat in the pitiful hope that no one around me would hear my sniffles.

There have been many film "scholars" who have compared Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything" to "Titanic" for, oddly, having many of the same plot points, if you look closely. But those "scholars" actually fail to grasp the most apt and critical likeness. "The rain on the car is a baptism," John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler said into his trusty tape recorder. "The new me. Ice Man. Power Lloyd. My assault on the world begins now."

The rain on Rose DeWitt Bukater in New York Harbor is a baptism. The new her. Rocket Queen. Rose Dawson. Her assault on the world began right then.

Your Summer Movie Moment Of Zen

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

My Great Movies: Sunshine State

John Sayles, often referred to as the Godfather of American Independent Cinema, a man who did not graduate from film school, writes, directs and edits his own films while earning the financing for them by working as a hired hand on mainstream motion pictures (he did a complete uncredited rewrite on the Oscar nominated script for "Apollo 13"), is among the most politically and civically minded filmmakers working in our country today. His films are often intricately woven tapestries of very specific communities contained within - or around - our borders with significant casts that conjure up distinct sensations of place and time. I believe 2002's "Sunshine State", set on fictional Plantation Island, divided between the mostly white town of Delrona Beach and the mostly black town of Lincoln Beach, detailing property developers attempts to snag up these areas for commercial purposes, that is the resolute highlight of his canon.

"Sunshine State", most refreshingly, does not present us with an idealized view of the state of its title. "There were palm trees in the postcards," says one character. But not in the movie. The Florida of the film has windswept beaches sans sunbathers, rundown establishments called the Sea-Vue Motel with outdated nautical-themed decor and it all coincides with a local pageant called Buccaneer Days, the staple of which - a wooden pirate - has been set afire by a wayward 13 year old named Terrell (Alexander Lewis) in the movie's opening scene. Later, at his hearing, Terrell's court appointed defender sighs "It's a wooden pirate, your honor" to which the Judge harshly, and comedically, replies "An icon in this community, nontheless." It shows both a casual disregard for the community's history and, yet, how the community desperately clings to that same history.

There is that ancient quote about how if we don't consider the past we are condemned to relive it. Well, what if you have no choice but to relive it? What if you're, say, Marly Temple (Edie Falco), a sixth generation Floridian tasked with running the Sea-Vue Motel and it's accompanying restaurant because it's what her father did, her father who may be legally blind but is not about to cave in to these greedy developers running amock who want to make a "full frontal assualt" and establish the Sea-Vue location as their "beachhead"?

It seems pretty obvious this isn't the life Marly wants. Her mother (Jane Alexander) didn't want it, and didn't want it so bad she will drive six blocks out of her way not to see the motel. But there Marly is anyway. "I used to hate working there when I was a kid and now I got three girls who hate working there as much as I do." Thus, another character wonders why she keeps doing it. Her reply: "Poetic justice."

The counterpoint to Marly is Desiree Stokes (Angela Bassett) who has just returned to Lincoln Beach for the first time in ages with her husband (James McDaniel). Desiree had longed to be an actress and now - resignation coating her voice - explains she does infomercials. (One character describes this as "A temporary engagement in the world of commerce," which is just classic Sayles.) Slowly, wonderfully, piece by piece, Sayles unravels Desiree's story. At the age of 15 she became pregnant with the local football hero, Flash Phillips (Tom Wright), and left town. But did she really leave town of her own accord or was it at the insistence of her mother Eunice (Mary Alice) who feared the scandal and backlash? Each scene with Desiree dredges up something else and deepens her plight in this place she does not particularly want to be.

Francine (Mary Steenburgen), meanwhile, of the chamber of commerce, is trying desperately to "Disney-fy" and drum up interest in Buccaneer Days. She is so obsessed with this mission, in fact, that she remains completely oblivious to her husband's (Gordon Clapp) grab-bag of issues as he unsuccessfully, and rather pathetically, tries to off himself a couple times. When she sincerely calls him her "rock" it is downright laughable.

There were obvious possibilities for this story. Two communities - one white, one black, and you can see where this might be headed, but Sayles avoids that trap. So too could it easily have slipped into a Capra-esque tale of heroic small business owners valiantly battling back against the bourgeois businessmen, closing shots of Marly and her family standing defiantly before approaching bulldozers. But as the esteemed Roger Ebert noted, the film is not the "progressive line about the little guy against big capital" but an "observant, elegiac, sad movie, about how the dreams of the parents are not the dreams of the children."

I am not the most politicized person and I have no interest in films that contain message-deliverers masquerading as people. No question Sayles has something to say and deploys people and dialogue for his means at times but what sets it apart - what sets most of Sayles' work apart - is his extrordinary ability to dramatize whatever message may be lurking. His scenes in "Sunshine State" are all interesting on their own terms and focus primarily on the wide range of characters for who they are and what they want.

Consider the sequence introducing us to Marly's father (Ralph Waite). It begins in extreme close-up as he rants about how man has lost his way - "They've got us so zoned and regulated and politically corrected" - and slowly pulls back to a wide shot as eventually we realize he is waiting for his insulin shot, the nurse set to deliver it not even paying attention, the ravings of an old man. (This will be underscored later when he rants and raves about how football was better in the old days.)

Or consider Jack Meadows (Timothy Hutton), the landscape architect hired by the real estate mavens to perform a feasibility study. He could have easily been representative of evil intentions, seducing Marly - mention is made of someone for the developers to be on the "inside" - when they begin a casual relationship. Or he could just as easily have met Marly, become enamored with her plight and chosen to fought back, heroically, against his employers. Instead he is presented, simply, as a person with a job to do. He is divorced, with kids, and now goes across the country to wherever the work takes him. That's it. No ulterior motives.

He is one of many rich characters in Sayles' extensive gallery which makes Falco's turn that much more impressive. Her work here rates as one of the most underseen, undervalued performances of the 00's. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon bemoaned the fact Falco "is saddled with a bad bleach job and perennially faded summer tops", a criticism containing so little sense it baffles. What, should she have a personal stylist and designer clothes? Uh....that's not who she is. A bad bleach job and perennially faded summer tops is the character. Dressing up for Marly is a pair of jeans rather than jean shorts.

The entire film she projects a wide eyed gazed that seems to be looking past anyone and anything around her, as if yearning to be anywhere else than where she is. She talks with an accent equal parts hurried and weary, especially when dealing with her parents and loutish ex-husband (his employment of the oft-used line "You can't live in the past" is the greatest in cinematic history because of the context, which I will not give away), and when her dad begins a story by saying "Remember Clarence Green?" the nod she gives lets the audience know that, oh yeah, she remembers Clarence Green and she remembers because the story he's about to tell he's already told two dozen times. Why she even gets the Poignant Look Yourself In The Mirror Scene in which she cleverly strips it of any poignancy by merely dismissing herself as an "Idiot." Two words: Exasperated Patience. And that patience is giving out.

The first two acts begin with and the film is punctuated by scenes of four men, headed up by Murray Silver (Alan King), on a golf course, swinging their clubs and pontificating on the state of just about everything in dialogue that certainly will not strike the viewer as realistic. In the director's commentary Sayles says he wanted this quartet to be less a "greek chorus" than reminiscent of "the Mount Olympus gods", showing how these sorts of people - people in "the back room" - make the decisions. They work, I think, to show how people so often choose to bury the past rather than reflect on it. Ah, but then sometimes you have to bury the past or risk having it pull you under.

A key scene occurs when Marly and Jack get drunk together and explains she is a former "Weeki Wachee Girl", an underwater performer dressed as a mermaid, and that the most important part was maintaining a smile while holding your breath. Later, laying on a darkened golf course, looking up at the stars, she returns to the thought: "The important thing is to keep that smile on your face. Even if you're drowning."

"Sunshine State" is all about people trying to keep that smile on their face.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Rocky Balboa

(Important Note: I watched this movie because I was sick, both my Netflix discs were in transit and nothing else was on.)

The sixth entry in the never-ending series from the mind of Sylvester Stallone about Philly's most legendary pugilist is either an apology or the deseperation of a man who cannot let go. Or it might be both.

"Rocky Balboa" (2006), though, is not merely an apology for the grotesque 1990 "Rocky V" but an apology for every sequel that followed the low budget, raw but still fairytale-like Oscar-winning original from 1976. Consider: "Rocky Balboa", which was written and directed by Sly, opens with the same music as the original and features Rocky, pushing 60, climbing out of bed in the morning and feeding a few turtles. Rocky has essentially returned to the loan shark business in so much as he runs a restaurant where he lets Spider Rico (the guy he fought at the start of the original) eat for free. He and Paulie (Burt Young) return to the site where the ice rink he and Adrian, since deceased from cancer, had their memorable first date once stood and then Rocky returns to the rundown bar he used to frequent in the original and then Rocky encounters the young girl who yelled a few not-so-nice things at him in the orginal who is now all grown up and then Rocky performs a séance to communicate with Burgess Meredith's Mickey Goldmill to ask him if....okay, okay. That last one did not happen. But the rest?

This is a road trip through "Rocky" memories, a travelogue of everything that made the first one so wonderous and left the sequels sorely lacking. It's kinda neat, sure, but neat in the way that the only neat part of "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" was the part at the end when Jimmy Smits' Bail Organa was walking around in the white hallwayed spaceship and the audience realizes, Oh! Hey! That's Princess Leia's ship from the real first movie! It's cool only because it makes you wistfully pine to be watching the genuine product. Sylvester Stallone wants us to see all this and understand that he remembers what made the original tick and that's nice and good but seriously, Sly, couldn't you have just gone for a re-release instead?

But then Stallone could not have re-entered the ring to re-introduce us to his pecs and to show us he can still give as good as he gets and that "the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward." Enter: Mason "The Line" Dixon (real life boxer Antonio Tarver), the heavyweight champion of the world who resembles the current heavyweight champion of the world in so much as....uh....who's the current heavyweight champion of the world?

A computer simulation has determined that if the Rocky Balboa of his prime had squared off with the Mason "The Line" Dixon of his prime that Rocky would have won. "The Line" thinks this is absurd, but it's not as absurd as the current Rocky Balboa, after the requisite passionate Courtroom Speech, re-attaining his boxing license with the intention of entering the ring in a few "local" fights although immediately "The Line's" peeps turn up to offer Rocky the chance at an "exhibition" against the champ.

Hey, everyone loves a good computer simulation but a computer simulation in 2007 had the Nebraska Football Team going 11-1 and playing for the national title. That team actually went 5-7 and lost to Kansas(!) 76-39. Oops!!!

One can assume how the final act of "Rocky Balboa" plays out but if we are playing the what if? game how about what if the final act had instead played out like the real life Muhammad Ali/Larry Holmes heavyweigh tilt of 1980 which showed the former, formerly "the greatest", desperately clinging to the past and getting pummeled all because he could not let go. Oh, would that have been bold. But then Stallone isn't Tony Bourdain. He's Colonel Sanders. It tastes the same today as it did in 1976.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Summer Rental

Kate at the movie blog Silents and Talkies is spearheading a festive summer blog-a-thon at the LAMB in which bloggers are asked to discuss "our favorite summer childhood movies and memories." As a kid of the 80's I often reminisce about how my family would gather together to watch John Candy comedies. There was just something about them on which we could all agree. Who amongst us could harbor ill will toward John Candy? "Summer Rental" (1985) is the one I remember watching most, probably half a dozen times before 1990, and yet in thinking about it I realized I probably had not seen it since fifth grade and that I hardly even remembered it and, well, you knew what that meant....to the Netflix queue! And much me to my surprise "Summer Rental" possesses one moment of unfathomable spastic brilliance. I think. It's hard to know. But that moment comes quite a ways into the film. You, the reader, need context.

Candy is Jack Chester, an air traffic controller in Atlanta who is so burnt out his boss forces him to take a paid vacation and so Jack and his wife and his son and his two daughters trek out for sunny Citrus Cove, Florida. All of this, amazingly enough, only takes five minutes. Say what you want but movies of today could learn a thing or two about that starting pace. ("Couples Retreat", I'm looking at you.) Once there they find themselves shantied up in a gorgeous vista on Beach Lane only to find out in the dead of the first night that this home, in fact, belongs to someone else and their home, a not so gorgeous vista, actually resides on Beach Road. Whoops! From there Jack finds himself locked in a macho duel with local arrogant yachtsman Al Pellet (Richard Crenna) who has won the annual regatta 7 years running. Jack turns to the owner of a dining establishment situated on a broken down vessel called the Barnacle, pirate-esque Scully (Rip Torn, who does a nifty job of seeming genuine in such a garish costume), who either is always in character or a former extra on all the old Warner Brothers buccaneer B movies, to become skilled in the ways of sailing and, after learning Pellet owns his vacation home on Beach Road and plans to kick Jack and his family out as an act of vengeance, attempt to win the regatta.

Directed farily gracelessly by Carl Reiner, "Summer Rental" has perhaps the oddest tone of any movie I've ever seen. It begins as a rather generic slapsticky comedy wherein, say, Jack accidentally falls asleep outdoors and winds up with a horrific sunburn or gets belted in the crotch by a frisbee or gets locked outside in a rainstorm courtesy of his own dog or blunders around the beach stepping on people's hands and smacking them in the head with his cooler. On and on and on. But suddenly in the second half the slapsticky stuff almost completely cuts off and it morphs into a much more earnest tale of a father trying to live up to the image his kids have of him and earn triumph as a lowly underdog in the regatta as the most motely of crews combining Jack's family and Scully's clan will work to get the Barnacle into tip top shape.


John Candy had something here in the latter forty-five minutes. There is the famous and sad story where Roger Ebert once found the late Candy drinking by himself in a bar and how much Candy said he hated himself for trying so hard to make people laugh at his movies. I think that vulnerability assisted - at least in this movie - to convincingly portray a family man just trying to give it his all and not let anyone, least of all himself, down. There is an amazingly sweet scene where he sits down on the beach with his sulking oldest daughter (Kerri Green, who illuminated The Me Decade and then was heard from no more) and really listens to what she has to say. It's a crying shame then that the screenplay of Jeremy Stevens and Mark Reisman (who?) spends half the film having him crack eggs on the car dashboard.

Then again perhaps the genius of Stevens and Reisman is beyond all of us. Back to that spastic moment of might-have-been brilliance. As the gang spiffs up the Barnacle Jack rises through a hatch to find his wife, Sandy (Karen Austin), sitting on the stern with a paintbrush and she says, forlornly, "I painted myself into a corner." Jack replies, "I did too." And then....the movie cuts to the next scene. This is to say the scene literally paints itself into a corner and then presents itself with no solution. I mean....I mean....I want to see the original screenplay to know if they had written dialogue or hijinks of some sort immediately after this exchange that got cut or if this was intended all along. If it was intentional it might have been as good as Christopher Nolan literally leaving The Joker hanging in "The Dark Knight."

If they did this on purpose then such an explosive game of Twister with the mind deserves to be recognized.

Friday, August 13, 2010

The Films That Define Me

Marc from Go, See, Talk is spearheading a multi-blog event today entitled "The Films That Defined Us." The post is intended to be about "the movies," he writes, "we were raised on which (probably) forever defined our tastes." And for me this statement is essentially critical. As most of you know "The Last of the Mohicans" is truly the movie that defines me. But I saw that in the summer of 1993, long after I had begun watching movies. So how did I get there? How did I become what I am? How did I turn into a maniac for Michael Mann, a Kate Winslet worshiper, the only person on the face of the earth who believes "Oceans Twelve" is far better than the original (and it is), and a man who will fight anyone to the death who dares diss "Titanic"? Let's get to it, shall we? The Films That Define Me...


Captain Blood (1935) & The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Much like the child I may or may not have will be raised on the music of Bruce Springsteen whether he or she likes it or not, my mother raised me on the swashbucklers of Errol Flynn and gave me absolutely no choice in the matter whatsoever. My hopeless romanticism, my eternal love of melodramatic epics, my hatred of all who bring the "real world" into the movies can be traced directly here. These two movies, all these years later, still rock.


"Stars Wars" (1977). What guy my age could make a list like this and not include "Stars Wars"? And I specifically say the (real) first "Star Wars". None of the rest. And it has nothing to do with sci fi or the cool special effects or the whatever but something much, much simpler. It's so old fashioned. Seeing Luke stare out at the twin suns longingly....damn, man, my heart cracked. I may as well have been staring out at the Des Moines Weather Beacon longingly.


"Ghostbusters" (1984). My cinematic comedic tastes were settled forevermore upon seeing this movie as a wee lad at the Valley 3 Theater in West Des Moines, Iowa in the glorious summer of '84. I didn't get all the jokes then, but I got enough of them, and over time I realized irreverent dryness was my funny movie métier. The effects have aged but the jokes have only become better. ("Maybe now you'll never slime a guy with a positron glider.")


"Glory" (1989). It's always a chore to find movie characters with whom you can truly identify but then suddenly there was Matthew Broderick's Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Now this isn't to say that I could ever ably lead a charge on a Confederate redoubt, never mind properly unsheathe a sabre, because I couldn't. It wasn't what Shaw did, it's who he was. An idealist, a romantic, a guy who never used foul language beyond "rat filth" and "nasty little cuss", and, in one of my favorite passages ever of movie dialogue, requests the honor of leading the fateful attack on South Carolina's Fort Wagner by declaring, "There's more to fighting than rest, sir. There's character. There's strength of heart." I'm fairly certain that was how I scored my date to the junior prom: There's more to dating than having your own car, Michelle. There's character. There's strength of heart.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Brooklyn's Finest

Stop me if you've heard any of this before: A cop is seven days short of retirement but then is enlisted to show a couple rookies the ropes. A cop undercover in the local drug ring has gone in so deep that he is beginning to forget which way is up. A cop with a perilous family situation - seven kids and a wife pregnant with twins and all living in a rundown house replete with mold - begins to wonder what might happen if maybe, just maybe, he took a little bit of that drug money for himself.

Typically a film takes one of the above plot developments and runs with it but what makes "Brooklyn's Finest", released earlier this year and now out on DVD, different is that it takes all three of the above plot developments and runs with them. You've never seen such ambition with such an unambitious foundation.

The director is Antoine Fuqua, the auteur who helped win Denzel Washington an Oscar for "Training Day", and went all Ridley Scott in attempting to legitimatize the "King Arthur" myth, and in his latest, with plenty of style to burn, he is unremorsefully aiming for the fences. These storylines are three hearty swings.

The film stars, amongst others, Wesley Snipes as a man fresh outta prison (hmmmmmm) and way back in the early 90's Snipes starred in "Sugar Hill", a wannabe gritty operatic opus that would be the drug trade's "Godfather" and was crushed by the weight of its desperation to be an American epic. Now epic films can be fantastic, of course, whether or not the storylines are familiar. You can tell stories that are nothing new but you have to make them matter. Your mechanics can be foregone if we still feel the weight of the ramifications and if that weight is countered with just a little levity. But "Brooklyn's Finest" is grimy and grimier and for as much as the script packs it lacks punch.

One of the film's obvious themes is redemption and the movie itself's redemption is its acting, uniformly solid from the top on down. Ethan Hawke is Sal, the cop with the family problems, and it seems that perhaps Mr. Hawke has found himself a niche - what, with this and "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" - as the down-on-his-luck, can't-get-it-together but still good-hearted guy. He makes his problems your problems. Is there another actor right now who so convincingly portrays exasperation? Don Cheadle is the guy going "Donnie Brasco" undercover who finds himself torn between loyalties to the police force that seems to have turned a blind eye to his deepening plight and to his drug dealing confidant Caz (Snipes). He keeps us on edge the whole time as to whether or not he is about plunge into the abyss. Richard Gere is the facing retirement Eddie and in this role he seems to retreat within himself. He is quiet, so quiet, and in the early scenes watches things as if he is not really seeing them. This is a man who has given up on everything, a notion Gere does an admirable job of conveying on his own, who will eventually have to choose whether or not to save just one thing.

All three of these men will be pushed to the brink. To act or not to act? They will, as they must, take the law into their own hands. Movie characters are always taking the law into their own hands without any real regard for how such actions might be viewed within the context of reality. This is rarely a concern in the law-being-taken-into-own-hands genre, of course, but since "Brooklyn's Finest" spends two hours addressing morals again and again the most intriguing element of the entire film is the outcome, which I won't give away, per se, and instead observe that the characters who take the law into their own hands strictly for self-serving purposes do not survive and the characters who take the law into their own hands for reasons bigger than themselves in the grand scheme do survive.

So is that the lesson for kids entering the police academy? Remember, only take the law into your own hands for reasons bigger than yourself in the grand scheme. If this is true than why was Major Colvin's Hamsterdam shut down on "The Wire"?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Happy 101 Award

So I've been tagged in yet another one of these festive internet memes by blogger extraordinaire Castor at Anomalous Material to name 10 things which, quite simply, make you happy. Say no more!

10 Things That Bring Me Joy:

1. Lady Gaga. At the present time no one and nothing makes me happier than Lady Gaga. She is the cheese to my macaroni. I should note that I just saw her live for the second time this past Friday at Lollapalooza and I have already authored one of my trademark epic, earnest, hyperbolic sermons in relation to it which I will unleash at some point in the future. So don't say you weren't warned.


2. A Medium Rare Burger & A Pale Ale. Greatest meal on earth. Yeah, I know. I'm predictable.

3. First Saturday Of College Football Season. I love every single Nebraska football game, of course, but there is something so beautiful in that very first Saturday of the new season, when every team is 0-0, when hope and promise fills the air. It's less than a month away now. I cannot wait.

4. Sienna Miller. Or did you already know she made me happy? It's not like I mention her every third post.


5. The Algonquin. Whenever I visit my best friend in New York all I want to do is kick back in the lounge of the hotel where all the old school literary minds used to hold court and drink a $67 (slight exaggeration) cocktail.

6. This New Arcade Fire Song. It's rather awesome.

7. Quoting Seinfeld. There are friends I can go years without seeing and yet the power of "Seinfeld" quotes allows us to fall into step within 12 seconds. "Who leaves a country packed with ponies to come to a non-pony country? It doesn't make sense."

8. Winter. I'm one of those bozos who prefers winter to summer. I'm craving winter right now. I'll take gigantic snow drifts, negative zero wind chills and darkness at 5:00 over this humid 95 degree crap every day of the week.


9. The News From Lake Wobegon. Don't hang around and let your problems surround you - there is The News From Lake Wobegon.

10. Writing. Writing this blog, writing screenplays, writing short stories, writing melodramatic rants about the things I love, writing letters (yes, I still occasionally send old-school letters), writing things that are only for me. Just writing. Writing is FANtastic.

And if anyone else reading this has any desire to be tagged, well, consider yourself....tagged.

Monday, August 09, 2010

Q & U: An Appreciation

Mad scientist Quentin Tarantino has a severe Uma Thurman fetish and of this there can be no doubt. At the conclusion of Kill Bill Vol. 2, upon the initial go-around with the acting credits, Tarantino re-indulges in the acting credits, super-imposing them over black and white images of Uma Thurman as The Bride, a retired hitwoman, who takes a journey around the world to eliminate those who tried to kill her, driving. Just driving. That's all. Nothing more. Shots from the front and the back and from the sides. And when the credit reciting Written & Directed By Quentin Tarantino emerges it is paired with a shot of Uma winking at the camera, as if she's winking at the Tarantino credit to say 'thanks,' or as if Tarantino is having her wink at his credit. Perhaps there is a psychology term paper to be written on all of this but that is not what I am here to discuss.

I have said before and will now say again, simply because I love saying it so much, that for me there are two cinematic pairings which stand above all the rest: Bogie & Bacall and Quentin & Uma. Lauren Bacall was often good, of course, but she was never as good as when she was opposite Humphrey Bogart. Uma Thurman is often good, of course, but she is never as good as when she is opposite Quentin Tarantino, and even though he never shares the screen with his favorite leading lady you can always sense his presence just off camera, lurking, looming, presenting her just so.

Uma is a fair woman. Like, you know, duh. But so often filmmakers make her extensive beauty the whole point and nothing but the point. In "Beautiful Girls" she's, well, probably the most beautiful of all the girls, uber-attractive but also "completely cool," the one girl over whom the many guys in the cast most lust. In "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" she is supposed to be the bedazzling counterpoint to Janeane Garofalo. Even in "Gattaca," a film which I fervently adore, she is essentially Bo Derek in "10," The Perfect Woman. Now Uma is beautiful in "Kill Bill." Don't get me wrong. I reckon she has never been more beautiful than when she is face to face with Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishi in the infamous House of Blue Leaves, O-Ren up above on the balcony, The Bride below, literally glowing, Uma's face streaked with blood.

But that's the whole thing - her face is streaked with blood. I mean, the atrocities Quentin commits against his mighty muse.....oh my. She gets shot, knifed, samurai sworded, kung fu kicked, thrown against walls, through glass, bloodied, bruised, battered, and even buried alive. Yet for all the choreographed mayhem in "Kill Bill" Quentin is asking Uma to do so much more and she is does it so well, and so easily and effortlessly, that what gets lost amidst prescient and hilarious observations on the "Superman" comic and Japanime and The Crazy 88's is an intricate leading performance.

When a Yakuza bodyguard dressed like a schoolgirl named GoGo turns up with a giggle and the reveals a ball and chain Uma lets a convincing smile of amusement play on her face. It says: "Well, this is all rather ridiculous, isn't it?" But a mere five seconds later when GoGo is swinging that ball and chain above her head, readying for the attack, Uma lets a bit of very real fright show up on her face instead. It says: "Oh, shit. I am in for it now. Breathe deep, breathe deep. You got this." Earlier, when she wakes up from her 4 year coma, she is, of course, shocked and she proceeds to poke at the bullet lodged inside her head, which gets a nice audience laugh, before feeling her belly where four years earlier her baby had been and, realizing it is gone, breaks down into hard-hitting sobs unaccompanied by any helpful soundtrack cues. To go from one to the other is a jarring shift and she handles it all with skill so simple you hardly even sense it. Again and again, over and over, this is what Quentin is asking of his muse: to be the wirewalker and to be the person who makes sure the wire stays up. She's art deco but she's also the brick and mortar.

What she also manages to achieve is an actual sense of peril. Certainly there are moments where she shows off a most cocksure and cunning smile, which would have to be part of her arsenal to earn the codename "Black Mamba," but in there is a moment when she is completely surrounded by The Crazy 88's, all intending to, you know, kill her good and dead, and she loses that smile and gains an intense concentration. And later, and better, when she and O-Ren finally have their one-on-one showdown Thurman's face actually projects a little bit of fear - "Oh boy. O-Ren is better at this then me. She knows it. I know it. Here we go." These faces pop up all over the place in "Kill Bill," if you're paying attention, and successfully squash any sense of her being a superhero, even though that's kinda what she is. Like a voiceover says, since revenge is her only concern, and she has no daughter of which she is aware, she can go to extremes the others can't.

What becomes most apparent on seeing "Vol.1" and "Vol 2." back to back is the arc from the opening scene of Thurman taking Vivica A. Fox's Vernita Green, now a Pasadena housewife, away from her daughter by killing her in cold blood to the closing scene when Thurman is re-united with the daughter that was taken from her. Truly, and regardless of the reams of violence, this is a journey of motherhood. (I also had somehow never noticed the cereal box in which Vernita stows her gun was called Kaboom!) This initial scene presents the viewer a distinct sense of the balancing act required by Uma throughout. Without so much as a word she and Vernita wind up in a knife fight that winds up in things getting broken and faces bloodied and then Vernita's daughter returns from school and immediately Thurman (and Fox) have to settle down and then banter over coffee without ever losing the edge two women who 37 seconds ago were trying to kill each other with knives would have. And then seconds after ending Vernita's life she has to perform a 180 and address Vernita's daughter in the politest terms about having, uh, just murdered her mother. It would be so easy to hate The Bride at this point but Uma impressively maintains vulnerability. The limbo stick is, like, three inches off the floor but Uma, unstoppable Uma, dances right under without even skimming it.

Tarantino films are filled to the brim with nods to other movies and with kitsch and visual superlatives and so he desperately need actors who can insert themselves into these hyper-stylized universes he creates and hold it all together while maintaining a sense of playfulness. Amused gravitas, perhaps, and no one - that is, no one - can bring the Amused Gravitas quite like the U.

Friday, August 06, 2010

A Digression: Finding The Truth With Tift

It's been awhile since one of my trademark insanely self-involved musical rants and, well, forgive me, but since this blog is my outlet as much as anything I am left with no choice this afternoon and so feel free to skip this post and check back tomorrow with our regular scheduled programming. Thank you for your patience.

For most of this year I've had a serious love/hate relationship with Chicago, leaning toward the latter. Now it is tough to say if I'm leaning toward the latter simply because of Chicago or because my own circumstances are being accentuated by the fact I live in Chicago. Again, I'm leaning toward the latter. Getting in depth would be ridiculous, boring and impossible but suffice it to say I keep feeling as if 1.) All my money is swirling down a toilet and 2.) I should have more things "figured out", as they say, at this age in life. Chicago is a fantastic place for young people but am I on the fringes of my youth? Or is my youth actually gone and I'm just in denial? Oh, God. But I digress.

Last Friday night my friend Dave and I attended a show at the lovely Lincoln Hall, right across the street from where Johnny Depp - er, John Dillinger, was shot, of the North Carolinian chanteuse Tift Merritt who would have been labeled "alt-country" with her debut album eight years ago but has since shedded just about any label any music critic could possibly heave at her. Being that this is Chicago and being that any given night there are two dozen concerts, possibly more, happening any given place, Dave and I had no trouble whatsoever attaining fantastic standing room as once the opening act concluded he and I and a few others simply walked a few feet forward and were right up against the stage. This meant that when Tift and her fine supporting band took the stage we were but two arm-lengths away from her, and a couple times when she rocked the guitar its neck swerved about an arm-length away from my face. (It also re-inforced the fact that Tift Merritt is really small. I mean, she is tiny.)

(Tift Merritt's handwritten setlist.)

They say you should never meet your idol. Now Tift Merritt is not my idol - that's this guy - but Tift Merritt has recorded some of my absolute favorite songs in the last eight years. She has recorded my favorite song of all so far in 2010, which is the song, quite frankly, my idol has been trying to record for the last ten years and hasn't. She has the #7 most played song on my cherished Ipod. She recorded the song that concludes a mix I have titled My Personal Book Of Hymns. When I could not make it home last Christmas Eve because my native state of Iowa had transformed into one giant death zone of ice I soothed myself that holiest of nights with her music. And so when you're this close to an artist who means so much to you I could not help but wonder all evening long what would happen if she and I made eye contact? This was a very real possibility. Are you allowed to make eye contact with your idols? (I am 97.4% sure if I ever made contact with Kylie Minogue my heart would just give out.) But I digress again.

I like music so much for the simple fact that my connection to music is entirely emotional. I am always watching movies with a critical, discerning eye and while I have become much better in the last few years, I think, at finding things to appreciate in films, even in many films that are not so great, and paying attention to more than just the technicalities, I sometimes I wish I could just have that visceral attachment to it like I do with music. On a nominal level I know nothing about music. Sheet music may as well be hieroglyphs to me. I can't play an instrument and I can't sing (which I re-proved implicitly the night following Tift when I sang Robert Palmer Wii Karaoke at my friend Kristin's birthday party and scored, like, a 22. And I was drunk! If I'd been sober I probably would have scored a 12!) I love not having to listen to music with an analytical ear and just letting my ears and mind and body respond, and so often it seems what I respond to with music is the music itself and how words are being sung, not necessarily what words are being sung.

(Tift Merritt's beer.)

Which is to say there are very few lyricists to whom I am intensely drawn but Tift strikes me as an amazingly earnest person (read her liner notes to "Another Country") and earnestness is a quality for which I have mad respect, yo. I never went in much for the art-rock "poetry". I prefer straight-forward truths expressed with maximum emotion. This is why I like Springsteen. This is why I like Tift. There is a line off her new album where she says: "Some days you got the blues/and other days you don't." I love that line. It recollects recent Springsteen candidly explaining "Hard times, baby, well they come to us all." Oh, perhaps the would-be Robert Christgaus of the world would take offense to these lyrics and then I'd have to throw bourbon in their faces but, you know, whatever. Pretentiousness? No. Earnestness? Check. Or consider the lines that open my aforementioned favorite song so far this year when Tift advises: "I don't know how to fix the world/I don't know how to fix myself." Again, the straight facts, but it's also that Springsteenian thing where he juxtaposes the large-scale with the intimate. Yes, the world is f---ed up right now, but, no, I can't fix it and, for God's sake, I gotta fix myself first anyway or the world's gonna eat me alive. But lyrics are not always about identity. "Laid A Highway" is about growing up in a mill town and I did not grow up in a mill town but I listen to that song and she puts me there, you know?

This was my second Tift Merritt show and at both of them many of the other Tift-tees (?) in the audience shouted out requests, none of which our host acquiesced to which seems to be because she has a concept for her concerts. She closed this one with "I Know What I'm Looking For Now." I am fairly certain I have no idea what I'm looking for now. I think this should concern me. But it doesn't, and it doesn't because what Tift can do is write songs that make you think "I have no idea what that feels like but she makes me absolutely sure that I will know what it feels like and I will know it precisely when it happens and I will like it a whole lot."

(Tift Merritt herself.)

I guess I'm all really trying to say is that for all I hate about Chicago I still really like living in a place that lets me see Tift Merritt from two arm-lengths away. And I think I'm still fine with being whatever that makes me. Maybe the pieces are here....if I just took a good look around.

Your Summer Movie Moment Of Zen

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Stromboli: The Peak Of Neo-Realism

If your cable package of choice includes TCM (Turner Classic Movies) it would behoove you to know that tomorrow is a day devoted entirely to her highness Ingrid Bergman (we're not worthy!!!) and that at 7:15 AM (CST) (adjust your time accordingly) they are airing her performance of boundless brilliance in then future-husband Roberto Rosellini's "Stromboli." This is critical because it is one of Ingrid's three finest performances (which is like saying it's one of Shakespeare's three finest sonnets or one of Springsteen's three finest songs) and "Stromboli" anymore is essentially impossible to find on DVD. This is your chance! DO NOT miss it. DVR it, call in sick, something, anything! You gotta see this one.

Acting gets no better.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Miami Blues

I don't think Alec Baldwin got the credit he was due. Sure, sure, he's been much lauded in recent years for his hysterically subtle work on "30 Rock" as the fictional President of NBC and even as the writing has suffered massively in the last 2 seasons he is still wringing all he can from that role, but I'm talking about credit in Hollywood. In Ian Parker's profile of Baldwin for the New Yorker - quite possibly the greatest star profile I've ever read - it is made clear that Baldwin's lack of huge success as a cinematic leading man still - and probably always will - frustrate him. This is a real shame because his work in the 1990 film "Miami Blues", which I read somewhere recently, a place which I now cannot recall, was a cult classic, re-proves yet again the significant talent this man has at his disposal.

In George Armitage's film Baldwin is Frederick Frenger, a wily, violent, unremorseful crook fresh from prison who leaves behind California and takes his talents to South Beach (anyone?). His opening moments are unfathomably hysterical as he makes like a more frightening, though just as deadpan, version of Robert Stack in "Airplane!" who upon being accosted by an overeager Hare Krishna at the airport immediately grabs hold of the Krishna's finger, bends it back and breaks it. Unbeknownst to Frenger, the Krishna goes into shock and dies moments later. Such is life. A detective with false teeth and serious paunch, Hoke Moseley (Fred Ward, who also produced), takes the case.

That this is the set-up of "Miami Blues" should speak volumes. It is one of them so-called black comedies, and it is black like central Iowa in the middle of a June afternoon right before the tornado siren sounds. Much of this has to do with the performance of Baldwin, suggesting someone who is mentally off. Way, way off. You always hear people say "He must have been dropped on his head as a kid." Baldwin projects this sentiment in totality. If anyone was dropped on their head as a kid it was Frederick Frenger. Another sentiment you often hear, particularly in relation to actors and actresses, is "Motivation." I sense Baldwin could not have care one single iota less about Frederick Frenger's "Motivation." There are glimpses of backstory but they don't amount to much. No, Frenger is a man of action, and his actions are - in a word - deplorable.

He quickly meets a hooker named Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose mental capacity is approximately the size of a shot glass, and marries her. I mean, sure. Why not? She is so unwitting it is the perfect match. But Moseley turns up since Frenger matches the description of the man who killed the poor Krishna. He stays awhile, eats with them, drinks with them, almost as if he assumes Frenger committed the crime but doesn't really care. Which is what makes so unfortunate when Frenger turns up at Moseley's place to beat to within an inch of his life and abscond with his gun, his teeth and, oh yeah, his badge, allowing for Frenger to morph into a more dastardly version of Jodie Foster's "The Brave One" as he bustles about Miami making phony arrests and then stealing his victims' cash.

He makes no attempts to get out of town and appears quite content to just keep living the good life until he can live it no more, a moment which will inevitably arrive and when it does the black comedy of "Miami Blues", inconceivably, gets even more extreme. Jennifer Jason Leigh's words are so poignant they ascend to hilarious absurdity and Frenger's final words parallel eerily with words he would speak years later on "30 Rock" as Jack Donaghy lay in a hospital bed post heart attack and, hopped up on drugs, declared, "My mouth tastes like purple." Two roles that could not be more different, both expertly played.

In that New Yorker profile Baldwin says at one point: "I don’t think I really have a talent for movie acting." Oh, Alec, I beg to differ.