After a night at Bear Brook State Park, I still wasn't ready to leave New Hampshire. In fact, I had one more stop on my farewell reunion tour of Granite State cinemas. In particular, I had resolved to catch an afternoon showing of Away We Go at the Red River Cinema in Concord.
After learning about it on Manchester tv news last year, I had gone up to the Red River---the only independent cinema in the area---to see a French movie, only to have it screened from a DVD in a small room with hard office chairs. I had very much wanted to return to see a movie in one of the nice stadium theaters there.
Today would be my chance. Away We Go was showing at 3 in the afternoon, which gave me the day to explore western New Hampshire. I headed up Hanover, where I walked around the Dartmouth campus, and then drove along the Connecticut River, stopping at the very nice Saint-Gaudens Historic Site, which was once an artists colony. I was really getting back in my trip mode.
I got back to downtown Concord with about ten minutes to spare. I wound up parking in almost exactly the same spot in the parking garage next to the theater as last December, when the streets were covered with a couple feet of snow. It's fun to have something be the same, to balance out the contrast of the two situations.
The Red River is just a delight. The tickets are only six bucks for nonmembers, but the auditoriums are very nice. Away We Go was showing in the Stonyfield Farm auditorium, no doubt commemorating a corporate donation. The corporate logo with the familiar cow was mounted by the door.
About twenty minutes into the movie, I couldn't help think, "Wow, it's nice to see a real movie for a change."
Yes, it was nice not to know exactly what was going to happen next. It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy the story and actually not sit there waiting for the next obvious plot point to arrive. It was nice not to sit and pick the movie about based on the assemblage of well-worn character and story cliches.
It was just damn nice to feel like I was seeing something a bit original and fresh.
The story is about a young couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) looking for a new home, somewhere in North America, where they can raise their in utero daughter.
In succession we follow them first to Phoenix, then Tucson, Madison, Montreal, and Miami. At each stage, they learn something about their own expectations, something that seems to make their task more difficult at each step. Each stop presents a new form of parental or family dysfunction that seems to await them, or some form of disappointment to dampen their dreams. All in all, it was a very good way of telling the story. I very much liked this screenplay, which was written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. It's the kind of script that makes you believe in the art of screenwriting again.
Some damn good acting as well, much of it by familiar faces from television, including hte two leads. Fans of Two and Half Men will be suprised by the different-speed performance of Melanie Lynskey.
My favorite supporting performance was turned in by Maggie Gyllenhall, of whom I am a big fan, as a deranged college professor at the University of Wisconsin.
I couldn't help seeing the two lead charactes as much better nuanced versions of the typical Postmodern married characters (actually they aren't married, but we get an interesting alternative marriage ceremony on a trampoline near as the climax of the movie).
Burt (Krasinski) seems to be a typical week Postmodern boyfriend/husband, but really he isn't. He's actually got a complex strength beneath the gooey exterior. This is shown in the very first scene, which starts off in the Postmodern gutter, but quickly lifts itself out of it. He may say "I Love You" too much and too often, but he actually delivers the goods and decent provider and partner.
Likewise Verona (Rudolph) starts off somewhat as the seething bitch, with a chip on her shoulder, mad at the world (and her boyfriend) for reasons that she doesn't even fully understand. But we get to the learn the complex sources of her pain, and her journey to unravelling it, at least partially, to become a woman capable of being a good mother to her unborn daughter.
This is what art does. It takes cliches and makes them complex. This is cinema. I'm glad I got to see this movie in a fine place like the Red River, after a day seeing glorious sculpture as well.
Some days you just get lucky, and things work out.
It's another triumph for director Sam Mendes. At times I felt conscious that I was seeing a movie directed by the same guy who gave us American Beauty. There were some of the same themes at times, especially involving suburban disfunction in the imagery. But this lasted only fleetingly, and I was pulled back into the originality of the story. Maybe the only time I really felt like "aha, this is Mendes" was at the very end, when Mendes used the full length version of one of Alexi Murdoch's songs (of which are there nine on the soundtrack). I couldn't help recalling his use of Neil Young at the climax of American Beauty, albeit with a very different theme and tone. Just a little bit of signature, perhaps.
But heck, that's a masterpiece. Nothing wrong that kind of signature.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Land of the Lost
For my second course of the afternoon's double feature at the Regal Cinemas in Hookset, I bought another three-dollar and fifty cent ticket to Last of the Lost, a movie that had gotten even worse reviews than Imagine That.
By now you've undoubtedly learned that is an unwatchable disaster. I suppose it was the fact that I had such incredibly low expectations of this, but when I walked out of it I couldn't help think that I'd seen a lot, lot worse.
Narrative-wise, the movie actually holds together well. The story flows well from plot point to plot point. There's nothing much to say about it, except that it doesn't commit any major offenses.
Will Ferrell is Dr. Rick Marshall, a scientist down on his luck, afte rbeing humiliated about his supposed invention of a time machine.
Yes, ugh. Time travel. Minus one in my book, of course, but for a movie like this, I'm not going to even keep score.
After the introduction, Marshall is at his low point, his spirit broken. Holly (Anna Friel) shows up at his lab, believing in him, and convinces him to finish his invention. He does, and together they go off to test it on a "routine expedition." They are led by Will (Danny McBride) and fall into a time portal. The rest of the movie involves their trying to recover the machine in order to return home, all the while avoiding being eaten by a super-inteligent T-Rex, and also avoiding the Sleestaks.
There's a switcheroo plot point involving the leader of the Sleestaks that you'll probably see coming. There is also a comic subplot invovling Chaka, the primate, played in rather amusing fashion by Jorma Taccone.
Did I just say amusing? Yes, I guess the movie just sort of grew on me, and I found myself smiling a little, even though I'm not much of a Will Ferrell fan, outside of some good performances (Zoolander, for example). Like I said, I had ultralow expectations. Or maybe that I found a comrade in Dr. Marshall. I too did theoretical tachyon work in graduate school, and used to joke that if time travel were ever possible, it would rely on my research.
Why did the movie suck? Well, it was just doomed by being really, really stupid. It's not quite satire enough to be satire, and so everything that's supposed to be funny just sort of makes you groan. After all, the movie doesn't even take itself seriously, and so it's hard to find anything really funny, except now and then. Among other things, there is just way too much of A Chorus Line in it.
It's also a grossfest. There's way too much stuff about dinosaur poop, and dinosaur urine, and huge disgusting mosquitoes that squirt blood. When I see this stuff, I always think it is covering up for a lack of genuine creativity by evoking childlike giggling responses (actually this is Thor's idea, about how t.v. shows like Friends starting using the word "pee" in lieu of real jokes).
Lest you think this is some bastardization of the 1970s television show, it's worth mentioning that the movie was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. Yes, them. So it's the full-on genuine article.
But nevertheless I couldn't help liking a few things about it. Chief among them was the fact that Ferrell's character is actually a full-on classical scientist. What do I mean by this? Even though his spirit has been broken at the beginning of the movie, he is nevertheless completely devoted to his research and his discipline. He is a man on a mission.
Moreover, when Holly shows up, and is clearly infatuated with him, he doesn't suddenly switch into tail-chasing mode. She's welcome to accompany him on his mission, but the mission comes first, not what's between her legs.
How refreshing. Perhaps it takes satirical camp like this to have this kind of impeccable character, but at least we can still see it. Of course, Marshall's unswerving quest makes him all the more attractive to Holly, until she finally throws herself at him. Listen up, boys. That's how you get the girl---by following your path in life and not being distracted by a set of knockers.
Yeah, it's Will Ferrell, but until I find a better benchmark, you can use him.
Thus ended my farewell stop to the Regal Cinema in Hookset. In the late afternoon I drove a few miles outside of Manchester to Bear Brook State Park, which has a very nice campground store. It's a true credit to the New Hampshire state parks system.
As the sun set, I set up my tent, for the first time on this trip, and wound up getting attacked by giant (it seems) mosquitoes. What would that stud Dr. Rick Marshall do?
By now you've undoubtedly learned that is an unwatchable disaster. I suppose it was the fact that I had such incredibly low expectations of this, but when I walked out of it I couldn't help think that I'd seen a lot, lot worse.
Narrative-wise, the movie actually holds together well. The story flows well from plot point to plot point. There's nothing much to say about it, except that it doesn't commit any major offenses.
Will Ferrell is Dr. Rick Marshall, a scientist down on his luck, afte rbeing humiliated about his supposed invention of a time machine.
Yes, ugh. Time travel. Minus one in my book, of course, but for a movie like this, I'm not going to even keep score.
After the introduction, Marshall is at his low point, his spirit broken. Holly (Anna Friel) shows up at his lab, believing in him, and convinces him to finish his invention. He does, and together they go off to test it on a "routine expedition." They are led by Will (Danny McBride) and fall into a time portal. The rest of the movie involves their trying to recover the machine in order to return home, all the while avoiding being eaten by a super-inteligent T-Rex, and also avoiding the Sleestaks.
There's a switcheroo plot point involving the leader of the Sleestaks that you'll probably see coming. There is also a comic subplot invovling Chaka, the primate, played in rather amusing fashion by Jorma Taccone.
Did I just say amusing? Yes, I guess the movie just sort of grew on me, and I found myself smiling a little, even though I'm not much of a Will Ferrell fan, outside of some good performances (Zoolander, for example). Like I said, I had ultralow expectations. Or maybe that I found a comrade in Dr. Marshall. I too did theoretical tachyon work in graduate school, and used to joke that if time travel were ever possible, it would rely on my research.
Why did the movie suck? Well, it was just doomed by being really, really stupid. It's not quite satire enough to be satire, and so everything that's supposed to be funny just sort of makes you groan. After all, the movie doesn't even take itself seriously, and so it's hard to find anything really funny, except now and then. Among other things, there is just way too much of A Chorus Line in it.
It's also a grossfest. There's way too much stuff about dinosaur poop, and dinosaur urine, and huge disgusting mosquitoes that squirt blood. When I see this stuff, I always think it is covering up for a lack of genuine creativity by evoking childlike giggling responses (actually this is Thor's idea, about how t.v. shows like Friends starting using the word "pee" in lieu of real jokes).
Lest you think this is some bastardization of the 1970s television show, it's worth mentioning that the movie was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. Yes, them. So it's the full-on genuine article.
But nevertheless I couldn't help liking a few things about it. Chief among them was the fact that Ferrell's character is actually a full-on classical scientist. What do I mean by this? Even though his spirit has been broken at the beginning of the movie, he is nevertheless completely devoted to his research and his discipline. He is a man on a mission.
Moreover, when Holly shows up, and is clearly infatuated with him, he doesn't suddenly switch into tail-chasing mode. She's welcome to accompany him on his mission, but the mission comes first, not what's between her legs.
How refreshing. Perhaps it takes satirical camp like this to have this kind of impeccable character, but at least we can still see it. Of course, Marshall's unswerving quest makes him all the more attractive to Holly, until she finally throws herself at him. Listen up, boys. That's how you get the girl---by following your path in life and not being distracted by a set of knockers.
Yeah, it's Will Ferrell, but until I find a better benchmark, you can use him.
Thus ended my farewell stop to the Regal Cinema in Hookset. In the late afternoon I drove a few miles outside of Manchester to Bear Brook State Park, which has a very nice campground store. It's a true credit to the New Hampshire state parks system.
As the sun set, I set up my tent, for the first time on this trip, and wound up getting attacked by giant (it seems) mosquitoes. What would that stud Dr. Rick Marshall do?
Imagine That
Normally when I take off on a road trip, I like putting a lot of miles behind me as soon as possible, just to get up some momentum. Maybe it's the fact that my sister is shuttering up her place in New England, or the fact that I've been in motion so much lately, but this roadtrip has begun with the slowest of crawls.
I made it all of thirty-files miles on the first afternoon. Granted I didn't get started until midafternoon, but as I mentioned, I just had to stop and see a movie at the AMC in Tyngsboro one last time, and by the time I was done, I had just enough strength to pull off the road into a motel in Nashua.
On day two I dawdled in the motel until late morning, catching up this blog and then drove less than an hour north to the north side of Manchester, to make another farewell visit, this time to the Regal Cinemas second-run chain that sits atop a hillock beside I-93.
This was actually a must-visit, cleaning up things on my list. In particular there were a pair of Hollywood movies that had come out in June but had already gotten the boot from the cinemplexes, and which I wanted to see while I still had the chance. Actually there had been there such movies, but Brothers Bloom had already left the Regal. Must have been a real turkey. I'd been seeing the trailers since last October, and then kept delaying the release. I'll have to catch in on Redbox when it comes out a couple months from now.
It was a blistering hot day, as compared to the cold and snowy afternoons when I had last been up here, last December. I parked my car along the edge of the parking lot in the ample shade of some trees. Since I was early, I read from my copy of Fallen Founder about Aaron Burr for a half hour until it was time to go in. I felt like I was basting in the car while I read.
I love the ticket price---three bucks fifty at the Regal for the matinees. Can't beat it, even if part of goes into the pockets of Phil Anschutz and his personal Senator Michael Bennett. At least they're not getting much of my money.
First up on my list was the 12:50 showing of Imagine That, the Eddie Murphy vehicle which had opened and quickly closed to horrible reviews in June while I was in France.
I wanted to give the movie a fair chance. After all, every one panned the hell out of Meet Dave last summer. Although I didn't think it was a great movie, I actually laughed more than a few times during it.
One thing I remembered about the Regal Discount Cinema is that the projectors, or something else, scratch the hell out the prints. Just like when I saw How to Lose Friends and Alienate People last fall, I was going to have to see Imagine That between flickering lines of white on the screen. Not good. But I knew I'd get used to it after a while.
As you probably know, this is one of those "magic happens" movies. Eddie Murphy is Evan Danielson, a high-powered financial analyst. He is divorced and doesn't pay much attention to his young daughter, who seems lost in a world of imaginary friends.
The story is driven by the sudden ability of the daughter to get valuable insights into stock movements from her imaginary friends. At first Danielson (Murphy) thinks his daughter is crazy, and unloads on her for screwing up his notes with sparkles and crayon drawings. But then almost accidently he learns that she someone is able to channel the future. He then beocmes converted to her magic, and suddenly he is a whiz.
Of course what the movie is really about is Danielson's new ability to connect with his daughter. This is meant to be heartwarming. The magic is a complete crutch, and it is played as such, in a very contemporary way. It just happens, without any explanation.
Eventually Danielson will encounter difficulties, in the form of a rival (played in camp fashion by Thomas Hayden Church) who attempts to learn the secret of Danielson's newfound clairvoyance, and to sabotage him. This all builds up to a meeting with the "big boss" (Martin Sheen, well cast) to see which of the two rivals will become the next head of the division of the company.
I was suprised that even despite the gratuitous magical element, the story mostly works. Narrative speaking, it seemed to flow fairly well and I wasn't offended by any of the plot actions. Although I thought Murphy was fine, doing his usual schtick. I guess I'm sort of a fan, given that I liked his last movie too.
What sort of did offend me, however, were some of the premises of the plot. Let me explain: Danielson (Murphy) is a divorced workaholic who makes lots of money. All his exwife (Vanessa Williams) can do is bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch about how bad a father Danielson is, even though it appears she probably lives off his child support payments, given any realistic scenario. Likewise the daughter is petulant and withdrawn even though by the standards of just about any kid the world, she has a really, really good life. I couldn't help feel for the guy. Can't a financial anlayist get a break?
The movie seems to endorse our current cultural notion that it is the responsiblity of the parents to cater to the playful whims of their children, and to enter into the children's play worlds in order to, gee idunno, boost the kids' self-esteem I suppose. What happened to the idea that raising a kid is about introducing the kid to the reality of the adult world, and what really happens outside the world of imaginary friends?
I didn't think Danielson was that bad of a dad at the beginnign of the movie, but somehow our sentimental training is supposed to make us believe he is negligent. Worse yet, after Danielson spends an entire week living in his daughter's imaginary world, his wife still won't cut him the slightest slack at a moment when his entire career depends on it.
We get the same old cliche line about how Danielson has "two jobs," one of which is being a dad to his daughter, and she needs to know that "that job is just as imporant as his other one."
I call bullshit. What the movie really says is that he money-earning job should always take a backseat to anything related to his dad job.
There's a beautiful (and by that I mean horrid in a Postmodern sense) scene early in the movie that illustrates this well. Danielson, in the midst of an important business meeting, is called out of it for an "emergency" related to his daughter at school. He has to make a very awkward departure in front of an important client. What is the emergency? Is his daughter injured? In the hospital? No. His daughter won't come in from recess. It's not even the end of the school day. The school day is still going on.
If that had been me, I would have blown up at the crappy school teacher. That's your fucking job, lady! Deal with it! The WTF aspect of this was that Danielson lodges no such complaint. It's just assumed that the fact that she won't come in from recess is grounds to drag him away from whatever business he was conducting.
There were a few things about this movie that were actually entertaining. First off, the satire (I guess it was satire) of the current state of the financial investment business was sort of fun to watch. The movie suggests that being good sort of boils down to "magic." In the climax we got two versions, an authentic magic versus a fake won.
We've come a long way since Melanie Griffith accosted Phillip Bosco in the elevator in Working Girl (1988) to show him the proof that the portfolio he saw at the meeting was hers, and not Sigourney Weaver's. She drags out her newspaper clippings and recreates her thought process step by step.
But that was twenty years ago, at the front end of this long bubble, when the Fed was just ramping up the money creation process, to create a thousand new billionaires out of no real wealth but speculation. Now we've been reduced to unexplained magic. That says it all.
The other thing I really enjoyed about the movie was that it takes place in Denver. Not only was it shot on location, but it is full-on set in Denver, more than any other movie I have seen in years. It really embraces the city, with many familiar location shots to anyone who lives there. For my Colorado friends, it's worth seeing just for that.
I made it all of thirty-files miles on the first afternoon. Granted I didn't get started until midafternoon, but as I mentioned, I just had to stop and see a movie at the AMC in Tyngsboro one last time, and by the time I was done, I had just enough strength to pull off the road into a motel in Nashua.
On day two I dawdled in the motel until late morning, catching up this blog and then drove less than an hour north to the north side of Manchester, to make another farewell visit, this time to the Regal Cinemas second-run chain that sits atop a hillock beside I-93.
This was actually a must-visit, cleaning up things on my list. In particular there were a pair of Hollywood movies that had come out in June but had already gotten the boot from the cinemplexes, and which I wanted to see while I still had the chance. Actually there had been there such movies, but Brothers Bloom had already left the Regal. Must have been a real turkey. I'd been seeing the trailers since last October, and then kept delaying the release. I'll have to catch in on Redbox when it comes out a couple months from now.
It was a blistering hot day, as compared to the cold and snowy afternoons when I had last been up here, last December. I parked my car along the edge of the parking lot in the ample shade of some trees. Since I was early, I read from my copy of Fallen Founder about Aaron Burr for a half hour until it was time to go in. I felt like I was basting in the car while I read.
I love the ticket price---three bucks fifty at the Regal for the matinees. Can't beat it, even if part of goes into the pockets of Phil Anschutz and his personal Senator Michael Bennett. At least they're not getting much of my money.
First up on my list was the 12:50 showing of Imagine That, the Eddie Murphy vehicle which had opened and quickly closed to horrible reviews in June while I was in France.
I wanted to give the movie a fair chance. After all, every one panned the hell out of Meet Dave last summer. Although I didn't think it was a great movie, I actually laughed more than a few times during it.
One thing I remembered about the Regal Discount Cinema is that the projectors, or something else, scratch the hell out the prints. Just like when I saw How to Lose Friends and Alienate People last fall, I was going to have to see Imagine That between flickering lines of white on the screen. Not good. But I knew I'd get used to it after a while.
As you probably know, this is one of those "magic happens" movies. Eddie Murphy is Evan Danielson, a high-powered financial analyst. He is divorced and doesn't pay much attention to his young daughter, who seems lost in a world of imaginary friends.
The story is driven by the sudden ability of the daughter to get valuable insights into stock movements from her imaginary friends. At first Danielson (Murphy) thinks his daughter is crazy, and unloads on her for screwing up his notes with sparkles and crayon drawings. But then almost accidently he learns that she someone is able to channel the future. He then beocmes converted to her magic, and suddenly he is a whiz.
Of course what the movie is really about is Danielson's new ability to connect with his daughter. This is meant to be heartwarming. The magic is a complete crutch, and it is played as such, in a very contemporary way. It just happens, without any explanation.
Eventually Danielson will encounter difficulties, in the form of a rival (played in camp fashion by Thomas Hayden Church) who attempts to learn the secret of Danielson's newfound clairvoyance, and to sabotage him. This all builds up to a meeting with the "big boss" (Martin Sheen, well cast) to see which of the two rivals will become the next head of the division of the company.
I was suprised that even despite the gratuitous magical element, the story mostly works. Narrative speaking, it seemed to flow fairly well and I wasn't offended by any of the plot actions. Although I thought Murphy was fine, doing his usual schtick. I guess I'm sort of a fan, given that I liked his last movie too.
What sort of did offend me, however, were some of the premises of the plot. Let me explain: Danielson (Murphy) is a divorced workaholic who makes lots of money. All his exwife (Vanessa Williams) can do is bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch about how bad a father Danielson is, even though it appears she probably lives off his child support payments, given any realistic scenario. Likewise the daughter is petulant and withdrawn even though by the standards of just about any kid the world, she has a really, really good life. I couldn't help feel for the guy. Can't a financial anlayist get a break?
The movie seems to endorse our current cultural notion that it is the responsiblity of the parents to cater to the playful whims of their children, and to enter into the children's play worlds in order to, gee idunno, boost the kids' self-esteem I suppose. What happened to the idea that raising a kid is about introducing the kid to the reality of the adult world, and what really happens outside the world of imaginary friends?
I didn't think Danielson was that bad of a dad at the beginnign of the movie, but somehow our sentimental training is supposed to make us believe he is negligent. Worse yet, after Danielson spends an entire week living in his daughter's imaginary world, his wife still won't cut him the slightest slack at a moment when his entire career depends on it.
We get the same old cliche line about how Danielson has "two jobs," one of which is being a dad to his daughter, and she needs to know that "that job is just as imporant as his other one."
I call bullshit. What the movie really says is that he money-earning job should always take a backseat to anything related to his dad job.
There's a beautiful (and by that I mean horrid in a Postmodern sense) scene early in the movie that illustrates this well. Danielson, in the midst of an important business meeting, is called out of it for an "emergency" related to his daughter at school. He has to make a very awkward departure in front of an important client. What is the emergency? Is his daughter injured? In the hospital? No. His daughter won't come in from recess. It's not even the end of the school day. The school day is still going on.
If that had been me, I would have blown up at the crappy school teacher. That's your fucking job, lady! Deal with it! The WTF aspect of this was that Danielson lodges no such complaint. It's just assumed that the fact that she won't come in from recess is grounds to drag him away from whatever business he was conducting.
There were a few things about this movie that were actually entertaining. First off, the satire (I guess it was satire) of the current state of the financial investment business was sort of fun to watch. The movie suggests that being good sort of boils down to "magic." In the climax we got two versions, an authentic magic versus a fake won.
We've come a long way since Melanie Griffith accosted Phillip Bosco in the elevator in Working Girl (1988) to show him the proof that the portfolio he saw at the meeting was hers, and not Sigourney Weaver's. She drags out her newspaper clippings and recreates her thought process step by step.
But that was twenty years ago, at the front end of this long bubble, when the Fed was just ramping up the money creation process, to create a thousand new billionaires out of no real wealth but speculation. Now we've been reduced to unexplained magic. That says it all.
The other thing I really enjoyed about the movie was that it takes place in Denver. Not only was it shot on location, but it is full-on set in Denver, more than any other movie I have seen in years. It really embraces the city, with many familiar location shots to anyone who lives there. For my Colorado friends, it's worth seeing just for that.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
G-Force
On Monday, after several days of false starts, I was finally all packed up and ready to go. Every last item had been crossed off my pre-trip to-do list.
It also happened to be the fourth birthday of my twin nieces, and as the last bit of fun before leaving, I followed my sister and her kids in their car to Mirror Lake on the old army post at Devens, and we spent a hour or so relaxing on the little sandy beach beside the lake.
It was weird to finally say goodbye and drive off, considering that my sister is also leaving. I am very thankful, to say the least, for having gotten the opportunity to stay at her place, and experience life in New England, for these past months. Now it's on to new places.
As always, I wasn't even sure which direction I was going to take when I left. As I told my sister, I had the intention of heading up to Maine for a few days of camping, before turning south to visit friends in the Mid-Atlantic states.
When I was finally alone on the road, I had the urge to head up to Tyngsboro for one last matinee at the AMC there, since after Leominster, it had been my most regular haunt for movies during the last nine months.
I had no idea what the schedule was. I rolled into the parking lot about three pm and walked up to the box office. G-Force, the new semi-animated Disney release about a team of commando rodents, was showing in just twenty minutes, so I figured it would be good to cross it off my list.
Ah, good old Disney. You are always going to get a quality, watchable product, even if the premise is rather stupid, which this one was.
The story moved along very rapidly, getting into the action in the first scene. We get to see the rodent commandos in operation from almost the first minute. This is the way to tell a story like this.
The narrative had a nice compact feel. The rodents botch their mission and the program is cancelled by the FBI. The rodents wind up in a pet shop, where they meet other animals, all the while attempting to reunite and complete their original mission (which has a classic "ticking clock"). At stake is something involving a world-wide evil plot, the nature of which is not revealed until the end.
I have no complaints about the story, nor about the animation, or most of the acting. As usual, the best voice acting for the animated characters was done by the non-famous actors. My only beef in this regard was having to put up with PC-ness of having an obviously hip-hop black character and an obviously Latina character. I know they had to do it, but it always sticks out when something in a movie is done for political reasons, other than pure story reasons.
But I could stomach it. I was a kid's movie, and it thankfully zoomed along through the story without bogging down in any particular place. There was even a big twist at the end that I didn't see coming, but should have.
The only truly stupid part of the entire story was the romantic triangle subplot involving the Latina guineau pig (voiced by Penelope Cruz), and the two male guinea pigs (voiced by Tracy Morgan and Sam Rockwell).
What we get is the ultimate in degraded Postmodern romance. Namely, the two male guinea pigs obsess over trying to figure out "what the woman wants." Which of them is she interested in?
That is, instead of stepping up the plate and saying "I desire you," the job of the male is to figure out what is going on inside a woman's mind, and to minutely parse her words and actions for what her intentions and desires are.
Yecch. Get this crap off the screen. I could brush it off my saying "we're dealing with rodents here, not men and women." But come on, this is Disney. If anyone should be able to get rodents right, it is them!
It also happened to be the fourth birthday of my twin nieces, and as the last bit of fun before leaving, I followed my sister and her kids in their car to Mirror Lake on the old army post at Devens, and we spent a hour or so relaxing on the little sandy beach beside the lake.
It was weird to finally say goodbye and drive off, considering that my sister is also leaving. I am very thankful, to say the least, for having gotten the opportunity to stay at her place, and experience life in New England, for these past months. Now it's on to new places.
As always, I wasn't even sure which direction I was going to take when I left. As I told my sister, I had the intention of heading up to Maine for a few days of camping, before turning south to visit friends in the Mid-Atlantic states.
When I was finally alone on the road, I had the urge to head up to Tyngsboro for one last matinee at the AMC there, since after Leominster, it had been my most regular haunt for movies during the last nine months.
I had no idea what the schedule was. I rolled into the parking lot about three pm and walked up to the box office. G-Force, the new semi-animated Disney release about a team of commando rodents, was showing in just twenty minutes, so I figured it would be good to cross it off my list.
Ah, good old Disney. You are always going to get a quality, watchable product, even if the premise is rather stupid, which this one was.
The story moved along very rapidly, getting into the action in the first scene. We get to see the rodent commandos in operation from almost the first minute. This is the way to tell a story like this.
The narrative had a nice compact feel. The rodents botch their mission and the program is cancelled by the FBI. The rodents wind up in a pet shop, where they meet other animals, all the while attempting to reunite and complete their original mission (which has a classic "ticking clock"). At stake is something involving a world-wide evil plot, the nature of which is not revealed until the end.
I have no complaints about the story, nor about the animation, or most of the acting. As usual, the best voice acting for the animated characters was done by the non-famous actors. My only beef in this regard was having to put up with PC-ness of having an obviously hip-hop black character and an obviously Latina character. I know they had to do it, but it always sticks out when something in a movie is done for political reasons, other than pure story reasons.
But I could stomach it. I was a kid's movie, and it thankfully zoomed along through the story without bogging down in any particular place. There was even a big twist at the end that I didn't see coming, but should have.
The only truly stupid part of the entire story was the romantic triangle subplot involving the Latina guineau pig (voiced by Penelope Cruz), and the two male guinea pigs (voiced by Tracy Morgan and Sam Rockwell).
What we get is the ultimate in degraded Postmodern romance. Namely, the two male guinea pigs obsess over trying to figure out "what the woman wants." Which of them is she interested in?
That is, instead of stepping up the plate and saying "I desire you," the job of the male is to figure out what is going on inside a woman's mind, and to minutely parse her words and actions for what her intentions and desires are.
Yecch. Get this crap off the screen. I could brush it off my saying "we're dealing with rodents here, not men and women." But come on, this is Disney. If anyone should be able to get rodents right, it is them!
Blogging During the Road Trip
I have no idea how often I'll be able to access the Internet, let alone how many movies I'm going to see during this. I may wind up just writing short blurb reviews when I can over the next month or so. I'm going to play it by ear.
I'm currently writing this from a Motel 6 in Nashua, New Hampshire, which has decent wireless. But from here on out, it will probably be campgrounds.
I'm currently writing this from a Motel 6 in Nashua, New Hampshire, which has decent wireless. But from here on out, it will probably be campgrounds.
Goodbye, Leominster
After a week back in Massachusetts, it was time to start packing up for my big road trip. My sister had succeeded in selling her house while I was in Europe, and they were already boxing up their possessions when I got back. Although I had a much easier task, consisting mostly of getting my car in shape with a brake job and a new windshield, it still felt like a lot of tiresome work.
I knew I was going to miss New England, and most especially the movie theaters that had come to be my second home(s). Most of all I was going to miss the Entertainment Cinemas in Leominster. When I walked out of I Love You, Beth Cooper, I turned around a snapped a photograph to commemorate the many hours I had spent there during the last nine months, both in extreme cold and extreme heat.
In a few days it would be time to take to the road again, once again by car. It wasn't going to be a long trip, back west across the country, with a rather open schedule and destination. All I had in mind was to visit some of my friends on the East Coast before heading towards the other time zones, and eventually to California.
Other than, my goal was, as always, to see as many movies in as many different places as possible. Somethings are constant.
I knew I was going to miss New England, and most especially the movie theaters that had come to be my second home(s). Most of all I was going to miss the Entertainment Cinemas in Leominster. When I walked out of I Love You, Beth Cooper, I turned around a snapped a photograph to commemorate the many hours I had spent there during the last nine months, both in extreme cold and extreme heat.
In a few days it would be time to take to the road again, once again by car. It wasn't going to be a long trip, back west across the country, with a rather open schedule and destination. All I had in mind was to visit some of my friends on the East Coast before heading towards the other time zones, and eventually to California.
Other than, my goal was, as always, to see as many movies in as many different places as possible. Somethings are constant.
I Love You, Beth Cooper
Two months ago, before getting the plane to Dublin, I went looking in the Boston airport for a book to read on the flight. I wound up buying a copy of I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle, since even much my reading material lately centers on movies.
I read a good portion of the book before I landed in Ireland. What interested me most, actually, was the introduction where Doyle, who also wrote the screenplay, discusses the process of writing the book (with the intention that it would become a screenplay), and then turning it into a fullblown script.
One of the issues I remember is that he was disappointed that he had to tone down the sexual raunchiness so much from the book version in order to get it on film. To be honest, there is a lot of gross stuff in the book.
In any case, when I finally got around to seeing I Love You, Beth Cooper in Leominster last week, I felt like I was completing a special project. After many weeks I was at last going to get to see the film version that I had anticipated all during my trip.
When I read the book, one of the things that seemed really strange to me was how much of it was "internal"---that is, prose that described things that could not be seen by the camera. Considering that Doyle wrote the book with the idea of movie in mind, this seemed rather odd to me. It did not all read like a book adapted from a screenplay. If I hadn't known, I wouldn't have thought it was intended originally as "the ultimate teen movie," which is how Doyle himself described the goal of his project.
Given that, while reading the first couple chapters of the book, I had obsessed with trying to figure out which of the highly visual details would actually make it into the film. During the opening first few minutes in Leominster, I was quite surprised at how little of it actually did.
For example, in the book, during the opening scene in the high school graduation ceremony when Dennis confesses his nerdly love for the head cheerleader, Doyle makes a big deal about how hot it is in the gynmasium. Everyone is sweaty and uncomfortable, and just wants to get out of the place.
This aspect was completely absent from Chris Columbus' screen version. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that I was surprised. In fact, I can state that it probably wasn't necessary in retrospect. There is enough tension from the basics of the story itself. Likewise was dropped the fact that Dennis Cooverman's seat is right next to Beth's, and that he trips and falls into her seat when he returns from his valedictory speech. That too wasn't necessary for the screen story.
In retrospect it seems that Larry Doyle vastly overwrote the book, so as to have a rich variety of details from which to construct a screen version. Of course most novels are like that by their nature, but in the case where the book was written specifically to become a movie, it makes for a special case study of how these transitions work.
As for the story, I was really impressed at how quickly it sped through the story, and how few of the charactes in the book were necessary to drive the essential action. At times it felt almost too smooth and sleak, and I kept remembering Doyle's intention to write the "ultimate teen movie."
What surprised me most perhaps was the level of raunchiness. From the book, and from Doyle's own words, I was expecting a full-on raunchfest. Instead, if anything, the movie errs on the sweet and sentimental side. On screen, it felt much more like a genuine love story between the characters---a real teen romance in the guise of a sex comedy.
For the most part, this is a solid decent story that was fun to watch. The Postmodern touch of having characters consciously quote lines from other movies felt a little awkward at times, but I'm not a fan of that kind of self-reference, even if it has become part of our culture. It's the ultimate aspect of the Postmodern disease---that we have come to rely on fictional and virtual characters for our role models instead of other humans, and moreover that these virtual characters are now, after many years, based on other virutal characters instead of humans.
But the life force always must win out in a romance, and like I said, my biggest surprise was how much this was genuine love story. To that end, the basic journeys of the two principal characters are the familiar ones I have described to anyone reading my previous entries.
To wit, as the Postmodern teen hero, Dennis must learn that being a man means asserting himself through the "Risky Business" of announcing his sincere desire to a woman. In the opening scene of the movie, he fulfills this in spectacular way, and in Classical story terms, the entire rest of the movie is his "reward" for his boldness, even it doesn't seem that way (the hero must meet with difficulties, after all, or else you don't have a movie). His biggest challenge, in story terms, is not really the cast of adversaries who come after him and his friends, but rather his tendency to retreat from his bold actions by apologizing to Beth for them.
Likewise Beth, her protective bitch bubble having been penetrated by this sincere advance, must learn to connect with her true feminine principle of love and compassion, which she does. Along that lines, I was somewhat impressed by Hayden Panettiere, who is definitely not another a Megan Fox, thank god.
All in all, I was impressed by Doyle's screenplay, even if it felt a little constructed. But maybe that was just because I had read his own descriptions. I'm not surprised that the movie hasn't been a blockbuster. It just isn't raunchy enough. It's too sweet, in the end.
I should mention that the movie got extra points from me for a good use of the Magic Cow of Happiness, during a scene in which Dennis and Beth are alone together for the first time. The comedic use of the cattle here perfectly matched the tone and theme of the love story, during the entire movie and especially during that scene. The magic cow never fails!
I read a good portion of the book before I landed in Ireland. What interested me most, actually, was the introduction where Doyle, who also wrote the screenplay, discusses the process of writing the book (with the intention that it would become a screenplay), and then turning it into a fullblown script.
One of the issues I remember is that he was disappointed that he had to tone down the sexual raunchiness so much from the book version in order to get it on film. To be honest, there is a lot of gross stuff in the book.
In any case, when I finally got around to seeing I Love You, Beth Cooper in Leominster last week, I felt like I was completing a special project. After many weeks I was at last going to get to see the film version that I had anticipated all during my trip.
When I read the book, one of the things that seemed really strange to me was how much of it was "internal"---that is, prose that described things that could not be seen by the camera. Considering that Doyle wrote the book with the idea of movie in mind, this seemed rather odd to me. It did not all read like a book adapted from a screenplay. If I hadn't known, I wouldn't have thought it was intended originally as "the ultimate teen movie," which is how Doyle himself described the goal of his project.
Given that, while reading the first couple chapters of the book, I had obsessed with trying to figure out which of the highly visual details would actually make it into the film. During the opening first few minutes in Leominster, I was quite surprised at how little of it actually did.
For example, in the book, during the opening scene in the high school graduation ceremony when Dennis confesses his nerdly love for the head cheerleader, Doyle makes a big deal about how hot it is in the gynmasium. Everyone is sweaty and uncomfortable, and just wants to get out of the place.
This aspect was completely absent from Chris Columbus' screen version. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that I was surprised. In fact, I can state that it probably wasn't necessary in retrospect. There is enough tension from the basics of the story itself. Likewise was dropped the fact that Dennis Cooverman's seat is right next to Beth's, and that he trips and falls into her seat when he returns from his valedictory speech. That too wasn't necessary for the screen story.
In retrospect it seems that Larry Doyle vastly overwrote the book, so as to have a rich variety of details from which to construct a screen version. Of course most novels are like that by their nature, but in the case where the book was written specifically to become a movie, it makes for a special case study of how these transitions work.
As for the story, I was really impressed at how quickly it sped through the story, and how few of the charactes in the book were necessary to drive the essential action. At times it felt almost too smooth and sleak, and I kept remembering Doyle's intention to write the "ultimate teen movie."
What surprised me most perhaps was the level of raunchiness. From the book, and from Doyle's own words, I was expecting a full-on raunchfest. Instead, if anything, the movie errs on the sweet and sentimental side. On screen, it felt much more like a genuine love story between the characters---a real teen romance in the guise of a sex comedy.
For the most part, this is a solid decent story that was fun to watch. The Postmodern touch of having characters consciously quote lines from other movies felt a little awkward at times, but I'm not a fan of that kind of self-reference, even if it has become part of our culture. It's the ultimate aspect of the Postmodern disease---that we have come to rely on fictional and virtual characters for our role models instead of other humans, and moreover that these virtual characters are now, after many years, based on other virutal characters instead of humans.
But the life force always must win out in a romance, and like I said, my biggest surprise was how much this was genuine love story. To that end, the basic journeys of the two principal characters are the familiar ones I have described to anyone reading my previous entries.
To wit, as the Postmodern teen hero, Dennis must learn that being a man means asserting himself through the "Risky Business" of announcing his sincere desire to a woman. In the opening scene of the movie, he fulfills this in spectacular way, and in Classical story terms, the entire rest of the movie is his "reward" for his boldness, even it doesn't seem that way (the hero must meet with difficulties, after all, or else you don't have a movie). His biggest challenge, in story terms, is not really the cast of adversaries who come after him and his friends, but rather his tendency to retreat from his bold actions by apologizing to Beth for them.
Likewise Beth, her protective bitch bubble having been penetrated by this sincere advance, must learn to connect with her true feminine principle of love and compassion, which she does. Along that lines, I was somewhat impressed by Hayden Panettiere, who is definitely not another a Megan Fox, thank god.
All in all, I was impressed by Doyle's screenplay, even if it felt a little constructed. But maybe that was just because I had read his own descriptions. I'm not surprised that the movie hasn't been a blockbuster. It just isn't raunchy enough. It's too sweet, in the end.
I should mention that the movie got extra points from me for a good use of the Magic Cow of Happiness, during a scene in which Dennis and Beth are alone together for the first time. The comedic use of the cattle here perfectly matched the tone and theme of the love story, during the entire movie and especially during that scene. The magic cow never fails!
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Proposal
In my quest to see so many movies, I sometimes notice that movies that I see back-to-back will sometimes develop a mini-theme. In this case, after seeing an uptight tour guide (Nia Vardalos) who badly needs to get laid, I watched Sandra Bullock in somewhat the same type of role. Thank god I saw them in this order. Watching The Proposal in Leominster last week, I couldn't help but make some comparisons to My Life in Ruins, with The Proposal coming out ahead on nearly every score.
A fake marraige so that someone can stay in the U.S. is a fairly standard movie premise by now, with Green Card being the perhaps being the most ready example that comes to mind. We aren't going to get original concept in The Proposal, based on that fact.
But I don't mind so long as we get a fresh variation on it. In this case, the variation is the use of the Postmodern archetype of romantic relationships, which could be called "bitch in charge."
Bullock is Margaret, the boss from hell at a Manhattan book publishing house. Her character is a riff on Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). People cower in their cubicles when they get texts saying that she is arriving. Ryan Reynolds is Andrew, her loyal but long-suffering male assistant, who wants to move to being an editor. Reynolds is twelve years younger than Bullock, and it really shows here. Not that I personally object. Bullock was born a few months before me, and I love it that she can still pull of a romantic lead, and a near nude scene to boot.
But it all emphasizes the point that the woman here has all the power in the relationship, which initially is not romanitc all. Why would such a powerful woman want such a weakling man? She does because of the sudden reversal of fortune that leaves her needing to get married on short notice, in order to avoid being deported back to Canada (due to her own stupidity and arrogance in ignoring the immigration hearings).
Much of the fun of the story from this point onward will involve Margaret's awkward adjustment to not being in charge. The story whisks us off to Alaska (Andrew's home), where we learn that Andrew's family is "the Alaskan Kennedys."
The movie falls into the category of romances in which Classical themes attempt to emerge from underneath a Postmodern veneer. The interesting Classical point that the movie will endorse is the one of the "Unwanted Intrustion by the Man."
Basically this is the idea that for a man to win a woman, he needs, at least once in the initial phase, to be daring enough to break the boundary of her personal space, even to the point of making her slightly uncomfortable. This is endorsed as healthy so long as the man's desire is sincere.
In Classical terms, it is best if the man does this of his own volition. But failing that, it still works if an outside force intervenes to make him do it. In this case, it is the "old wise woman," Andrew's grandmother (Betty White, in a very good supporting role), acting as the life force to get them together. She forces her grandson to give his (fake) fiance a "real kiss" in front of the crowd.
Bullock is a pretty good actress. We can see just the slightest glimmer in her eyes after the kiss that indicates that everything has changed. She has felt something real, and from then on the story has the fairy dust of true romance about it.
Essentially the story is about the twin journeys, therefore, of Margarent learning to experience love as a woman-not-in-charge, and Andrew learning to be a real man who goes after what he wants.
The climax of the movie (the wedding ceremony, of course) involves an old time Classical "crisis of honor" in which one the characters must do the right thing by sacrificing her own happiness. But in Classical terms, true love can restore honor instantly, and this is exactly what we get, in a way that revalidates the title of the movie.
I think it mostly works, despite the gag about the "Alaskan Kennedys" and a less interesting subplot involving Andrew's relationship with this father (Craig T. Nelson). Whenever the action flags, Betty White is there to pick it up again. Perhaps Richard Dreyfus could get ahold of her agent.
A fake marraige so that someone can stay in the U.S. is a fairly standard movie premise by now, with Green Card being the perhaps being the most ready example that comes to mind. We aren't going to get original concept in The Proposal, based on that fact.
But I don't mind so long as we get a fresh variation on it. In this case, the variation is the use of the Postmodern archetype of romantic relationships, which could be called "bitch in charge."
Bullock is Margaret, the boss from hell at a Manhattan book publishing house. Her character is a riff on Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). People cower in their cubicles when they get texts saying that she is arriving. Ryan Reynolds is Andrew, her loyal but long-suffering male assistant, who wants to move to being an editor. Reynolds is twelve years younger than Bullock, and it really shows here. Not that I personally object. Bullock was born a few months before me, and I love it that she can still pull of a romantic lead, and a near nude scene to boot.
But it all emphasizes the point that the woman here has all the power in the relationship, which initially is not romanitc all. Why would such a powerful woman want such a weakling man? She does because of the sudden reversal of fortune that leaves her needing to get married on short notice, in order to avoid being deported back to Canada (due to her own stupidity and arrogance in ignoring the immigration hearings).
Much of the fun of the story from this point onward will involve Margaret's awkward adjustment to not being in charge. The story whisks us off to Alaska (Andrew's home), where we learn that Andrew's family is "the Alaskan Kennedys."
The movie falls into the category of romances in which Classical themes attempt to emerge from underneath a Postmodern veneer. The interesting Classical point that the movie will endorse is the one of the "Unwanted Intrustion by the Man."
Basically this is the idea that for a man to win a woman, he needs, at least once in the initial phase, to be daring enough to break the boundary of her personal space, even to the point of making her slightly uncomfortable. This is endorsed as healthy so long as the man's desire is sincere.
In Classical terms, it is best if the man does this of his own volition. But failing that, it still works if an outside force intervenes to make him do it. In this case, it is the "old wise woman," Andrew's grandmother (Betty White, in a very good supporting role), acting as the life force to get them together. She forces her grandson to give his (fake) fiance a "real kiss" in front of the crowd.
Bullock is a pretty good actress. We can see just the slightest glimmer in her eyes after the kiss that indicates that everything has changed. She has felt something real, and from then on the story has the fairy dust of true romance about it.
Essentially the story is about the twin journeys, therefore, of Margarent learning to experience love as a woman-not-in-charge, and Andrew learning to be a real man who goes after what he wants.
The climax of the movie (the wedding ceremony, of course) involves an old time Classical "crisis of honor" in which one the characters must do the right thing by sacrificing her own happiness. But in Classical terms, true love can restore honor instantly, and this is exactly what we get, in a way that revalidates the title of the movie.
I think it mostly works, despite the gag about the "Alaskan Kennedys" and a less interesting subplot involving Andrew's relationship with this father (Craig T. Nelson). Whenever the action flags, Betty White is there to pick it up again. Perhaps Richard Dreyfus could get ahold of her agent.
My Life in Ruins
For the second time in two days, I was back at my favorite strip mall second run theater in West Boylston. I had saved My Life in Ruins, which had come out just after I left for Europe, because I figured it would be a real treat.
I should explain: I really love summer movies about Greece, which is my favorite country in Europe, a place I have visited multiple times. I think it goes back to seeing the ultra campy Summer Lovers (1981) at the long-shuttered Foothills Twin in Fort Collins. Agnes, in an early job incarnation, let me in for free.
I don't care if the movies are silly. I just love the feeling of seeing Greece, especially the Greek isles, on screen when the sun is hot in the sky. Last summer was pretty good on that score, with the release of Mamma Mia and Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2, both which were delightfully light and watchable.
There was a bit of extra irony in My Life in Ruins coming out now, during my return to Europe. The last time I went to Europe as a tourist was exactly 10 years ago, when I went to the Cyclades with my fiancee, where we got married on Santorini. A couple years later, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) came out. It made an instant celebrity out of Nia Vardalos, who wrote and starred in it. Now it's a decade later, and my wife is now my ex-wife, and she has moved on with her life.
So here's Vardalos playing an American tour guide in Greece, awkwardly single. She's lovelorn, and the movie is about her finding a new romance. Nice little irony, I figured.
I should have known this movie was going to be an absolute disaster by the fact that it was pouring rain when I rolled into West Boylston to see it. It felt like a crummy day in November, chilly and damp---a truly bad omen.
Hoo boy...how can encapsulate how crappy this movie is, on just about every levvel. First off, let's take the protagonist Georgia (Vardalos). She is incredibly unlikable. At the beginning of the movie, she has supposedly lost her "kefi" (spirit). In our sex-is-everything culture, this basically translates to "hasn't gotten laid in a long time," a fact to which she actually confesses.
But she's not just very fun at all. She resents being a tour guide in Athens and is applying for jobs as a professor of classic literature back in the United States. The tourists she leads don't like her either. She has a constant frown. Who would like her?
But the thing that really repulsed me about the movie is the rampant anti-intellectualism. Whenever I go to Greece, I delight in learning and exploring the history. But according to this movie, history is just sooooooooo boring. Nobody wants to hear any of that crap. Whenever Georgia opens her mouth to say anything remote historical, we learn that this is the last thing any of the boorish tourists want to hear (mostly voiced by Richard Dreyfuss, who must have been wondering how his agent got him into this piece of crap). They want to be lied to. They want to buy cheap trinkets. But please spare us the facts.
The movie is just downright cynical. There is nothing wrong with cynicism in the right stories, but in a summer movie about Greece, I am just not intested in it.
The worst thing about this movie is it made Greece look like a very unappealing place to visit. We as viewers get to follow the "tour from hell" which finally gets decent at the end when Georgia gets horizontal with the tour guide. But most of the time, the Greece we see is just not fun all. If I were working for the Greek tourism ministry, I would organize a boycott of this movie. Fortunately few are going to see it anyway.
The script is just a disaster. There is really no turning point, or decent plot points to drive the action. Instead, almost every scene from the midpoint onward is a "soft" turning point, the same thing repeated over over. Look Georgia, can't you see you should f@ck the bus driver. Oh yes, I should. Go over there and talk to him. OK, I will. This movie could a very good screenwriting clinic is how NOT to write a screenplay.
And moreover it seems Vardalos is just a terrible actress. Or maybe it's the combination with the director Donald Petrie. Together they are a wretched combination.
The only time in the movie I smiled was at the very end, during the credits, when I learned that much of the movie was not actually shot in Greece! Instead it was shot mostly in Spain, from what I could see. That just says it all.
What a fricking ripoff. Worst. Summer. Greece. Movie. Ever.
I should explain: I really love summer movies about Greece, which is my favorite country in Europe, a place I have visited multiple times. I think it goes back to seeing the ultra campy Summer Lovers (1981) at the long-shuttered Foothills Twin in Fort Collins. Agnes, in an early job incarnation, let me in for free.
I don't care if the movies are silly. I just love the feeling of seeing Greece, especially the Greek isles, on screen when the sun is hot in the sky. Last summer was pretty good on that score, with the release of Mamma Mia and Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2, both which were delightfully light and watchable.
There was a bit of extra irony in My Life in Ruins coming out now, during my return to Europe. The last time I went to Europe as a tourist was exactly 10 years ago, when I went to the Cyclades with my fiancee, where we got married on Santorini. A couple years later, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) came out. It made an instant celebrity out of Nia Vardalos, who wrote and starred in it. Now it's a decade later, and my wife is now my ex-wife, and she has moved on with her life.
So here's Vardalos playing an American tour guide in Greece, awkwardly single. She's lovelorn, and the movie is about her finding a new romance. Nice little irony, I figured.
I should have known this movie was going to be an absolute disaster by the fact that it was pouring rain when I rolled into West Boylston to see it. It felt like a crummy day in November, chilly and damp---a truly bad omen.
Hoo boy...how can encapsulate how crappy this movie is, on just about every levvel. First off, let's take the protagonist Georgia (Vardalos). She is incredibly unlikable. At the beginning of the movie, she has supposedly lost her "kefi" (spirit). In our sex-is-everything culture, this basically translates to "hasn't gotten laid in a long time," a fact to which she actually confesses.
But she's not just very fun at all. She resents being a tour guide in Athens and is applying for jobs as a professor of classic literature back in the United States. The tourists she leads don't like her either. She has a constant frown. Who would like her?
But the thing that really repulsed me about the movie is the rampant anti-intellectualism. Whenever I go to Greece, I delight in learning and exploring the history. But according to this movie, history is just sooooooooo boring. Nobody wants to hear any of that crap. Whenever Georgia opens her mouth to say anything remote historical, we learn that this is the last thing any of the boorish tourists want to hear (mostly voiced by Richard Dreyfuss, who must have been wondering how his agent got him into this piece of crap). They want to be lied to. They want to buy cheap trinkets. But please spare us the facts.
The movie is just downright cynical. There is nothing wrong with cynicism in the right stories, but in a summer movie about Greece, I am just not intested in it.
The worst thing about this movie is it made Greece look like a very unappealing place to visit. We as viewers get to follow the "tour from hell" which finally gets decent at the end when Georgia gets horizontal with the tour guide. But most of the time, the Greece we see is just not fun all. If I were working for the Greek tourism ministry, I would organize a boycott of this movie. Fortunately few are going to see it anyway.
The script is just a disaster. There is really no turning point, or decent plot points to drive the action. Instead, almost every scene from the midpoint onward is a "soft" turning point, the same thing repeated over over. Look Georgia, can't you see you should f@ck the bus driver. Oh yes, I should. Go over there and talk to him. OK, I will. This movie could a very good screenwriting clinic is how NOT to write a screenplay.
And moreover it seems Vardalos is just a terrible actress. Or maybe it's the combination with the director Donald Petrie. Together they are a wretched combination.
The only time in the movie I smiled was at the very end, during the credits, when I learned that much of the movie was not actually shot in Greece! Instead it was shot mostly in Spain, from what I could see. That just says it all.
What a fricking ripoff. Worst. Summer. Greece. Movie. Ever.
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Soloist
One of the biggest surprises I encountered upon returning from Europe was to find that The Soloist was still playing in the discount cinemas. I was sure it would be gone by now. But then, Gran Torino was still playing there too, so I shouldn't be too surprised.
Nevertheless, after having sat through trailers for this movie for almost a year (because they kept moving the release date back), I had written off the possibility of seeing this in the theater. Being able to do so felt like a little victory.
Moreover, it was showing at the West Boylston Cinema, which is a located in an inconspicuous strip mall next to a Wal-Mart north of Worcester. It's the kind of no-nonsense, bare bones cinema that I love, because it shows how little you really need for the movie experience, and also it proves how vibrant cinema still is in this country, if these kind of places keep plugging along in the days of opulent multiplexes.
Robert Downey Jr.---well who isn't a fan, really? He's on the short list of the best actors of his generation. He's the kind of actor that makes anything good (although I really have my doubts about Guy Ritchie's upcoming Sherlock Holmes)
I had seen the trailer to this movie so many times that I practically had it memorized, and thus I knew what to expect for most of the plot. Downey is Steve Lopez, a columnist for the L.A. Times who has a bicycle accident, and while recuperating, meets a schizophrenic street musician Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) who turns out to be a dropout of Julliard. After Lopez writes a column about Ayers, the public sort of falls in love with Ayers, and one reader even donates a cello for him.
I liked the classical structure at the beginning of the movie. Lopez is in a low point of his life. The script and the direction help augment this theme of "going under" in the Nietschean sense of the word. At the moment right before he meets Ayers, there is even a voice over from a random tour guide saying that this the "Lower Plaza" from the Spanish colonial days of L.A. This kind of thing really makes me admire the screenwriter.
Much of the movie is about how Lopez tries to rehabilitate Ayers. We learn how hard it is, and that there really isn't a lot that Ayers can do. It felt more than a little workmanlike, in an emotional sense, with very few surprises. The fairly routine tone of the main plot was thankfully broken up by a series of flashbacks to the earlier life of Ayers, when he was a young man in Cleveland, and when he went to New York City. Had it not been for this backstory, I think the movie would have been much harder to watch.
There were a few other thematic surprises, although they sort of felt tacked on in a clumsy way. One was about the ongoing downsizing of the L.A. Times, and about the newspaper business in general. It was interesting, although I'm not quite sure how it was supposed to support the main story, other than to buttress the general tone of hardship.
The most interesting angle was about current hoemlessness in Los Angeles, a subject that is all but ignored by Hollywood right now, even though it has exploded in the last couple years. It was nice to see this treated in a rather straightforward and updated way.
But the part that seemed the least interesting was the thematic recurrence of the idea of belief. Somehow this was supposed to be a commentary on the nature of belief, in oneself, in art, and ultimately in God. But it felt very confused. The worst part of the movie by far was an extremely hamfisted criticism of contemporary Christianity. I winced during the scenes involving this. It's not that honest criticism of religion isn't appropriate or interesting, but not this way. It felt like a parody of what Christians think that (Jewish-dominated) Hollywood thinks of them.
Downey was his usual extraordinary self. A lesser actor would rendered this movie impossible. Catherine Keener showed up as her usual "give the man a hard time" mature female character. That she is both Lopez's ex-wife and his boss at the newspaper seemed like a perfect framing for how Hollywood sees the power relationships in contemporary marriages.
But Jamie Foxx. Well, I did finally buy his character toward the end of the movie, but their were plenty of cringe moments. Granted, it was a hard role, but I couldn't help wondering if Downey told him "don't go the full retard" on this one.
The biggest cringe was when they showed Foxx as Ayers supposedly at Julliard playing his cello in a symphony. As the camera panned across the musicians, it was clear that all of them really could play their instruments---except for the guy sticking out like a sore thumb who had no place being there, but who was supposed to be a musical prodigy. Maybe a little more of the Method here?
But musician roles are notoriously hard in movies, so I can forgive. It's the old Golden Boy syndrome (he's a champion boxer and a violin virtuoso!). An actor always has to be a great musician and be something else in the movie at the same time, in this case a schizophrenic. That Foxx felt short is not indicative of an inferior acting ability, but rather a director who didn't see the shots that shouldn't have been included.
Nevertheless, after having sat through trailers for this movie for almost a year (because they kept moving the release date back), I had written off the possibility of seeing this in the theater. Being able to do so felt like a little victory.
Moreover, it was showing at the West Boylston Cinema, which is a located in an inconspicuous strip mall next to a Wal-Mart north of Worcester. It's the kind of no-nonsense, bare bones cinema that I love, because it shows how little you really need for the movie experience, and also it proves how vibrant cinema still is in this country, if these kind of places keep plugging along in the days of opulent multiplexes.
Robert Downey Jr.---well who isn't a fan, really? He's on the short list of the best actors of his generation. He's the kind of actor that makes anything good (although I really have my doubts about Guy Ritchie's upcoming Sherlock Holmes)
I had seen the trailer to this movie so many times that I practically had it memorized, and thus I knew what to expect for most of the plot. Downey is Steve Lopez, a columnist for the L.A. Times who has a bicycle accident, and while recuperating, meets a schizophrenic street musician Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) who turns out to be a dropout of Julliard. After Lopez writes a column about Ayers, the public sort of falls in love with Ayers, and one reader even donates a cello for him.
I liked the classical structure at the beginning of the movie. Lopez is in a low point of his life. The script and the direction help augment this theme of "going under" in the Nietschean sense of the word. At the moment right before he meets Ayers, there is even a voice over from a random tour guide saying that this the "Lower Plaza" from the Spanish colonial days of L.A. This kind of thing really makes me admire the screenwriter.
Much of the movie is about how Lopez tries to rehabilitate Ayers. We learn how hard it is, and that there really isn't a lot that Ayers can do. It felt more than a little workmanlike, in an emotional sense, with very few surprises. The fairly routine tone of the main plot was thankfully broken up by a series of flashbacks to the earlier life of Ayers, when he was a young man in Cleveland, and when he went to New York City. Had it not been for this backstory, I think the movie would have been much harder to watch.
There were a few other thematic surprises, although they sort of felt tacked on in a clumsy way. One was about the ongoing downsizing of the L.A. Times, and about the newspaper business in general. It was interesting, although I'm not quite sure how it was supposed to support the main story, other than to buttress the general tone of hardship.
The most interesting angle was about current hoemlessness in Los Angeles, a subject that is all but ignored by Hollywood right now, even though it has exploded in the last couple years. It was nice to see this treated in a rather straightforward and updated way.
But the part that seemed the least interesting was the thematic recurrence of the idea of belief. Somehow this was supposed to be a commentary on the nature of belief, in oneself, in art, and ultimately in God. But it felt very confused. The worst part of the movie by far was an extremely hamfisted criticism of contemporary Christianity. I winced during the scenes involving this. It's not that honest criticism of religion isn't appropriate or interesting, but not this way. It felt like a parody of what Christians think that (Jewish-dominated) Hollywood thinks of them.
Downey was his usual extraordinary self. A lesser actor would rendered this movie impossible. Catherine Keener showed up as her usual "give the man a hard time" mature female character. That she is both Lopez's ex-wife and his boss at the newspaper seemed like a perfect framing for how Hollywood sees the power relationships in contemporary marriages.
But Jamie Foxx. Well, I did finally buy his character toward the end of the movie, but their were plenty of cringe moments. Granted, it was a hard role, but I couldn't help wondering if Downey told him "don't go the full retard" on this one.
The biggest cringe was when they showed Foxx as Ayers supposedly at Julliard playing his cello in a symphony. As the camera panned across the musicians, it was clear that all of them really could play their instruments---except for the guy sticking out like a sore thumb who had no place being there, but who was supposed to be a musical prodigy. Maybe a little more of the Method here?
But musician roles are notoriously hard in movies, so I can forgive. It's the old Golden Boy syndrome (he's a champion boxer and a violin virtuoso!). An actor always has to be a great musician and be something else in the movie at the same time, in this case a schizophrenic. That Foxx felt short is not indicative of an inferior acting ability, but rather a director who didn't see the shots that shouldn't have been included.
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
One of the advantages of falling behind the current release schedule is that it allowed some of the new movies to make their out of the multiplexes and into other venues, one that I usually don't have a chance to visit when I stay up-to-date. Since I'm only going to be in New England a few more days, it was nice to have a chance to broaden my experience before leaving.
One such venue that I had missed was the Strand Theater in the little town of Clinton, just off Interstate 190 between Leominster and Worcester. I was thrilled to see that The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 was playing there, and on Saturday afternoon, during a break for my road trip preparations, I decided it was the perfect time to cross both the movie and the theater off my list.
I rolled into downtown Clinton at about six pm, with an hour before showtime. This gave me a chance to walk up and down the main drag and peruse the businesses, as well as to grab dinner at a pizza parlor. From the signs around town, it looked to be historically Irish-American, but like many towns in the area, it had plenty of businesses that catered to the new wave of Brazilian immigrants.
From both the marquee and the lobby, I could tell the theater was a real classic. It turns out to have been built in 1924. The tickets were only five dollars and fifty cents, which was quite nice.
Once I got inside, however, I realized that I'd been fooled by the placid exterior. I figured this was an aging and neglected beauty, but instead I learned the Strand had been converted into a "restaurant" theater. That is, in the main large auditorium, every fourth seat had been removed and replaced with a flat table for drinks and food. The concession stand served not only the regular theater fare of popcorn and snacks, but full meals and alcohol.
The crowd was quite ample for a Saturday night in a small town. It consisted largely of middle aged and older couples, as well as groups of older women. I found a comfortable seat on the aisle and settled in for the feature.
I was thoroughly prepared to detest this movie. Although it had been a while since I'd since the original 1974 version (directed by Jospeh Sargent), I was quite fond of it as one of the movies that epitomize a certain view of New York City in the 1970s---gritty and fraying around the edges (both in a physical and social sense), but nevertheless quite civil by the standards of today's action movies, all made funky by a David Shire soundtrack.
In particular I was all set to really detest John Travolta as Ryder. Whereas Robert Shaw had been the epitome of coolness, I expected a more Postmodern take from Travolta, with a full-on violent psycopath we expect today. There would be more flood, and lots more frenetic action, and society would be shown to have decayed greatly from the civilized toy world of the captive subway train of 1974.
The sped-up action of the streets of Manhattan over the opening credits seemed to confirm my suspicions. I was ready to start tallying up the ways that the movie disappointed me.
But I really got thrown a curve by the Scott brothers on this. In about twenty minutes, I had completely gotten over my earlier prejudice and accepted the movie as a valid retelling of the same story, from the perspective of now.
First off, there was the nice touch of updating the technology. The same story is necessarily going to work different in a world with cellphones and wireless Internet, and Scott's film tackled this without any shyness, integrating our new gadgets into the plot seemlessly.
But what really won me over was Travolta's performance. Yes he had the edginess of a psychopath, but I was actually won over by the character himself, who turned out to be far more sympathetic than Shaw's "Blue" in the 1974 version.
In this story, Ryder becomes a martyr and vehicle for an indictment against the greed and decadence of an out-of-control New York under the manipulation of gangster bankers. I was fully sitting up in my seat when I figured this out.
Instead of it being about Garber vs. Ryder, it was about Garber and Ryder vs. the Establishment, which had screwed over both of them. Or had it? Deznel Washington's Garber (the MTA controller) is a more complex character than the one Mathau portrays. He turns out to have secrets.
And this is where the plot actually really takes off. In the end, this becomes a story not about a heist, or even revenge by Ryder against those who wronged him, but about Ryder attempted to rehabilitate Garber. It is as if Ryder is disgusted with the entire crummy world. No one has honor. Everyone is a phony. His final victory is simply to get Garber to become honorable again (as was Mathau's character). Ryder hates the world because it has no heroes, and in the end he is willing to die to force Garber to be a hero.
Not bad. Not bad at all. I liked this movie more than a little.
The Strand was really cool too. I wish I had discovered it earlier, so I could enjoy the food and drinks there. Well, you never know...
One such venue that I had missed was the Strand Theater in the little town of Clinton, just off Interstate 190 between Leominster and Worcester. I was thrilled to see that The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 was playing there, and on Saturday afternoon, during a break for my road trip preparations, I decided it was the perfect time to cross both the movie and the theater off my list.
I rolled into downtown Clinton at about six pm, with an hour before showtime. This gave me a chance to walk up and down the main drag and peruse the businesses, as well as to grab dinner at a pizza parlor. From the signs around town, it looked to be historically Irish-American, but like many towns in the area, it had plenty of businesses that catered to the new wave of Brazilian immigrants.
From both the marquee and the lobby, I could tell the theater was a real classic. It turns out to have been built in 1924. The tickets were only five dollars and fifty cents, which was quite nice.
Once I got inside, however, I realized that I'd been fooled by the placid exterior. I figured this was an aging and neglected beauty, but instead I learned the Strand had been converted into a "restaurant" theater. That is, in the main large auditorium, every fourth seat had been removed and replaced with a flat table for drinks and food. The concession stand served not only the regular theater fare of popcorn and snacks, but full meals and alcohol.
The crowd was quite ample for a Saturday night in a small town. It consisted largely of middle aged and older couples, as well as groups of older women. I found a comfortable seat on the aisle and settled in for the feature.
I was thoroughly prepared to detest this movie. Although it had been a while since I'd since the original 1974 version (directed by Jospeh Sargent), I was quite fond of it as one of the movies that epitomize a certain view of New York City in the 1970s---gritty and fraying around the edges (both in a physical and social sense), but nevertheless quite civil by the standards of today's action movies, all made funky by a David Shire soundtrack.
In particular I was all set to really detest John Travolta as Ryder. Whereas Robert Shaw had been the epitome of coolness, I expected a more Postmodern take from Travolta, with a full-on violent psycopath we expect today. There would be more flood, and lots more frenetic action, and society would be shown to have decayed greatly from the civilized toy world of the captive subway train of 1974.
The sped-up action of the streets of Manhattan over the opening credits seemed to confirm my suspicions. I was ready to start tallying up the ways that the movie disappointed me.
But I really got thrown a curve by the Scott brothers on this. In about twenty minutes, I had completely gotten over my earlier prejudice and accepted the movie as a valid retelling of the same story, from the perspective of now.
First off, there was the nice touch of updating the technology. The same story is necessarily going to work different in a world with cellphones and wireless Internet, and Scott's film tackled this without any shyness, integrating our new gadgets into the plot seemlessly.
But what really won me over was Travolta's performance. Yes he had the edginess of a psychopath, but I was actually won over by the character himself, who turned out to be far more sympathetic than Shaw's "Blue" in the 1974 version.
In this story, Ryder becomes a martyr and vehicle for an indictment against the greed and decadence of an out-of-control New York under the manipulation of gangster bankers. I was fully sitting up in my seat when I figured this out.
Instead of it being about Garber vs. Ryder, it was about Garber and Ryder vs. the Establishment, which had screwed over both of them. Or had it? Deznel Washington's Garber (the MTA controller) is a more complex character than the one Mathau portrays. He turns out to have secrets.
And this is where the plot actually really takes off. In the end, this becomes a story not about a heist, or even revenge by Ryder against those who wronged him, but about Ryder attempted to rehabilitate Garber. It is as if Ryder is disgusted with the entire crummy world. No one has honor. Everyone is a phony. His final victory is simply to get Garber to become honorable again (as was Mathau's character). Ryder hates the world because it has no heroes, and in the end he is willing to die to force Garber to be a hero.
Not bad. Not bad at all. I liked this movie more than a little.
The Strand was really cool too. I wish I had discovered it earlier, so I could enjoy the food and drinks there. Well, you never know...
Up
During my stay in Europe, my sister had managed to sell her house and was in the midst of planning her family's move out to Colorado. Given that, after I returned to the States, I would be in Massachusetts only about a week before taking off by car, on my continuing voyage.
I waited a couple days before logging onto the movie listings page on Google. Frankly, I just needed a rest (as well as to catch up on this blog), and I knew that the minute I started perusing the listings, I would swing into obsessive "got to see all the movies" mode.
Once I finally did have a look, I was surprised to find that my task was not nearly as daunting as I thought. I'd managed to keep slightly abreast in Europe, having seen all the Hollywood releases I possibly could. In many respects, it seemed the listings hadn't budged much. Among other things, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was still showing at the Lunenberg drive-in where I'd seen it two months before.
The movie at the top of my list was Up, which everyone I know had seen, and was talking about, but which wasn't going to be released in Europe until September, possibly as a subsidy for the pirates there.
So on my third full day back, I found myself back in my little black Beemer on the highway to Leominster. The whole seven-week Europe trip felt somewhat like a dream, but for the fact that it was now fully summer in New England.
It was nice to be back in familiar surroundings at the Entertainment Cinemas ten-plex, even if it might be for the last time. I noticed that they had finally changed the satellite feed of the pre-trailer music mix. The announcer no longer talked about the nominees for the "upcoming Grammy awards."
I figured Up would be a real treat, and the first ten minutes proved me right in many respects. As I've mentioned, I've come to believe that Disney/Pixar stands head and shoulders above the other studios not only in the quality of their animation, but in the quality of their storytelling as well (something that should be independent of budget).
Up was a perfect demonstration of this, in that it tells a nearly complete story in the first ten minutes completely without dialogue. This is old-school movie narrative, and it was nice to see it alive and well in 2009.
The animation was superb of course, as well. For the first half of the movie, I was expecting to chalk this up as another possible masterpiece.
But then something happened in Act Two that really left me scratching my head. It wasn't the animation, or the acting, but rather the story itself that got me confused. Basically I can sum it up with the statement: what the hell was so important about the god damn bird?
Since you've probably seen the movie too, you know that the essential conflict which drives the story at the end is the struggle over a rare bird in the Amazon jungle. Charles Muntz (the villain) wants to capture the bird. Carl Fredericksen and his child sidekick Russell want to keep Muntz from capturing it.
Fine. That's a good basis for conflict. But what motivates the characters? As far as Muntz, I understand his motivation completely. There is no question of where he is coming from, and why the bird is so important to him, since it is strongly spelled out by the story up to that point.
I also understand why Russell wants to save the bird, out of childlike sentimentality for his adopted pet.
But why does Fredericksen care so much about the bird, enough to sacrifice everything else on his personal quest? This remained a mystery to me right to the end of the movie.
The scene that really puzzled me was at the dinner that Muntz hosts for his guests. Muntz starts to go into detail about his obsession, and we see Fredericksen realize that Muntz is talking about "Kevin," the bird that has been accompanying them.
We see Fredericksen start to get very nervous. But why? Didn't Fredericksen hate the bird? Why does he get so fidgety?
It's not that I can't make up a motivaton myself. For example, perhaps Fredericksen is concerned about the endangered species status of the bird. Or maybe he wants to protect Kevin's babies? Or maybe Fredericksen wants to spare Russell the pain of having his pet become an exhibit in Muntz's museum.
All of those are possible, but none of this is spelled out. Given that Muntz is obsessed with the bird, it is absolutely essential that we know why it is a matter of life or death to Fredericksen that the bird be saved.
To my mind, at that point in the movie, it could have equally possible for Fredericksen to tell Muntz, "Well, heck, I know where that bird is right now. I can lead you right to it." This should not be the case, in a well-written story.
I have a feeling that we're supposed to read sentimentality into Fredericksen's motivation here. This is disappointing to me, as it was in the early scene in which he and Russell first meet Kevin. When Kevin starts piling up Fredericksen's food provisions, ostensibly to take them back to her hatchlings, Russell exclaims that they have to help Kevin get the food to the chicks.
At this point, Fredericksen, following the character established for him up to this point, should have said something like "Nature takes care of its own, kid." Instead he gets pulled into Russell's sentimental view of nature, one that needs their own personal intervention.
Have we come to the point in 2009 where we're all supposed to have the sentimental "protect nature" attitude by default? Were the screenwriters relying on this to make us understand Fredericksen's motivations here?
In any case, I was rather disappointed that Fredericksen allowed himself to be pulled off his journey in order to cater to Russell's sentimentality. Because he does so, the bird's story becomes more important than the human's story (Fredericksen's).
Personally unless I'm watching a nature film, I personally prefer the essential quest to revolve around a human, rather than an animal. I wanted Fredericksen to help Russell grow up and learn about the real nature of the world.
I wanted to Fredericksen keep going with his house to reach the falls. Absent further explanation, I felt his sacrifice was not worthy of his nature, given how well the movie had started. Where in those first ten minutes of silent brilliance was it indicated that Fredericksen would throw away his lifelong pursuit to help a bird reach its nest?
All of this could have fixed with perhaps one extra scene, and a few lines of dialogue, to explain why Fredericksen changes his attitude towards the bird so drastically. Instead it was left mushy.
It sort of pains me to say these things, because conceptually, the movie was brilliant. There were plenty of good things in it, as well, as I've mentioned. For example, I like the story element of "abandoning one's vessel in order to gain a greater one." There's a lot of good tight storytelling, which is perhaps why the mushy part I mentioned really stuck out to me.
My only other real quibble with the movie was that it disappointed me by upholding the Law of Destruction of Museums (Muntz' shipboard collection). I saw that one coming a mile away, and it feels so trite to me at this point. For Disney/Pixar, I have higher standards than the other studios.
I waited a couple days before logging onto the movie listings page on Google. Frankly, I just needed a rest (as well as to catch up on this blog), and I knew that the minute I started perusing the listings, I would swing into obsessive "got to see all the movies" mode.
Once I finally did have a look, I was surprised to find that my task was not nearly as daunting as I thought. I'd managed to keep slightly abreast in Europe, having seen all the Hollywood releases I possibly could. In many respects, it seemed the listings hadn't budged much. Among other things, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was still showing at the Lunenberg drive-in where I'd seen it two months before.
The movie at the top of my list was Up, which everyone I know had seen, and was talking about, but which wasn't going to be released in Europe until September, possibly as a subsidy for the pirates there.
So on my third full day back, I found myself back in my little black Beemer on the highway to Leominster. The whole seven-week Europe trip felt somewhat like a dream, but for the fact that it was now fully summer in New England.
It was nice to be back in familiar surroundings at the Entertainment Cinemas ten-plex, even if it might be for the last time. I noticed that they had finally changed the satellite feed of the pre-trailer music mix. The announcer no longer talked about the nominees for the "upcoming Grammy awards."
I figured Up would be a real treat, and the first ten minutes proved me right in many respects. As I've mentioned, I've come to believe that Disney/Pixar stands head and shoulders above the other studios not only in the quality of their animation, but in the quality of their storytelling as well (something that should be independent of budget).
Up was a perfect demonstration of this, in that it tells a nearly complete story in the first ten minutes completely without dialogue. This is old-school movie narrative, and it was nice to see it alive and well in 2009.
The animation was superb of course, as well. For the first half of the movie, I was expecting to chalk this up as another possible masterpiece.
But then something happened in Act Two that really left me scratching my head. It wasn't the animation, or the acting, but rather the story itself that got me confused. Basically I can sum it up with the statement: what the hell was so important about the god damn bird?
Since you've probably seen the movie too, you know that the essential conflict which drives the story at the end is the struggle over a rare bird in the Amazon jungle. Charles Muntz (the villain) wants to capture the bird. Carl Fredericksen and his child sidekick Russell want to keep Muntz from capturing it.
Fine. That's a good basis for conflict. But what motivates the characters? As far as Muntz, I understand his motivation completely. There is no question of where he is coming from, and why the bird is so important to him, since it is strongly spelled out by the story up to that point.
I also understand why Russell wants to save the bird, out of childlike sentimentality for his adopted pet.
But why does Fredericksen care so much about the bird, enough to sacrifice everything else on his personal quest? This remained a mystery to me right to the end of the movie.
The scene that really puzzled me was at the dinner that Muntz hosts for his guests. Muntz starts to go into detail about his obsession, and we see Fredericksen realize that Muntz is talking about "Kevin," the bird that has been accompanying them.
We see Fredericksen start to get very nervous. But why? Didn't Fredericksen hate the bird? Why does he get so fidgety?
It's not that I can't make up a motivaton myself. For example, perhaps Fredericksen is concerned about the endangered species status of the bird. Or maybe he wants to protect Kevin's babies? Or maybe Fredericksen wants to spare Russell the pain of having his pet become an exhibit in Muntz's museum.
All of those are possible, but none of this is spelled out. Given that Muntz is obsessed with the bird, it is absolutely essential that we know why it is a matter of life or death to Fredericksen that the bird be saved.
To my mind, at that point in the movie, it could have equally possible for Fredericksen to tell Muntz, "Well, heck, I know where that bird is right now. I can lead you right to it." This should not be the case, in a well-written story.
I have a feeling that we're supposed to read sentimentality into Fredericksen's motivation here. This is disappointing to me, as it was in the early scene in which he and Russell first meet Kevin. When Kevin starts piling up Fredericksen's food provisions, ostensibly to take them back to her hatchlings, Russell exclaims that they have to help Kevin get the food to the chicks.
At this point, Fredericksen, following the character established for him up to this point, should have said something like "Nature takes care of its own, kid." Instead he gets pulled into Russell's sentimental view of nature, one that needs their own personal intervention.
Have we come to the point in 2009 where we're all supposed to have the sentimental "protect nature" attitude by default? Were the screenwriters relying on this to make us understand Fredericksen's motivations here?
In any case, I was rather disappointed that Fredericksen allowed himself to be pulled off his journey in order to cater to Russell's sentimentality. Because he does so, the bird's story becomes more important than the human's story (Fredericksen's).
Personally unless I'm watching a nature film, I personally prefer the essential quest to revolve around a human, rather than an animal. I wanted Fredericksen to help Russell grow up and learn about the real nature of the world.
I wanted to Fredericksen keep going with his house to reach the falls. Absent further explanation, I felt his sacrifice was not worthy of his nature, given how well the movie had started. Where in those first ten minutes of silent brilliance was it indicated that Fredericksen would throw away his lifelong pursuit to help a bird reach its nest?
All of this could have fixed with perhaps one extra scene, and a few lines of dialogue, to explain why Fredericksen changes his attitude towards the bird so drastically. Instead it was left mushy.
It sort of pains me to say these things, because conceptually, the movie was brilliant. There were plenty of good things in it, as well, as I've mentioned. For example, I like the story element of "abandoning one's vessel in order to gain a greater one." There's a lot of good tight storytelling, which is perhaps why the mushy part I mentioned really stuck out to me.
My only other real quibble with the movie was that it disappointed me by upholding the Law of Destruction of Museums (Muntz' shipboard collection). I saw that one coming a mile away, and it feels so trite to me at this point. For Disney/Pixar, I have higher standards than the other studios.
Fish Tank
The Galway Film Fleadh continued right up through my last night in Ireland. In between all the other things going on, the three of us attended a festival of Irish animation shorts, which was pretty good. We made sure to sit in the first row of the balcony, which gave us more leg room.
Fergus and Audrey also wanted to attend the closing night banquet at the boat house, the ticket for which included a screening of the closing film, Fish Tank, and English production written and directed by Andrea Arnold
I hadn't heard of the movie, but Fergus and Audrey were keen on seeing it, partly because it featured Michael Fassbender, who is a well known Irish movie actor.
The film screenings had fallen behind schedule, so we killed time in the boat house before heading over to the theater. I wasn't really keen of spending time having cramped legs, so I wound up sitting in the loge of the balcony, even though it blocked a wee bit of the screen.
The closing ceremonies were still in progress when we arrived. The president of the festival was announcing the winners of the competition. Frozen River, a movie near the top of last year's "Best" list for me, won best feature. Second place was Baraboo! Given that, I figure there couldn't have been much competition. Afterward, the president of the festival gave a special "Galway Hooker" award to Anjelica Huston, who came up on stage to receive it.
Fish Tank turned out to be an awesome movie. It's about a teenage girl named Mia (the brilliant Katie Jarvis) living in a crummy apartment complex in Essex. Her father is long-gone, and her mother is a narcissistic alcoholic who spends her time cavorting with her boyfriend Connor (Fassbender). Mia is aggressive and defensive, but she is driven to escape her situation by her talent at hip-hop dancing, which she practices in an abandoned apartment when she is able to escape her domineering mother.
The only decent adult in Mia's life seems to be Connor, who acutally holds a respectable job as the manager of a retail lumberyard. But this is 2009, and adult men are never honorable, least of all in England, where all adult males are assumed to be pedophiles until proven otherwise. Seemingly decent men are always hiding a secret of some kind, and Connor's descent is swift and dramatic in the second half of the movie, leaving Mia ten times as embittered as before, and forcing her to commit a horrible act of desperation out of revenge, or simply get attention.
In the end, after Mia learns the truth about what her future as a dancer would mean, the only honorable male character is a fellow teenager, who is still innocent. Mia's escape at the end of the movie is a victory, but it is also poignant, because one senses she will grow into being the same self-obsessed mother as her own mum.
All in all, it's a very bleak and unromantic portrait of life in the suburbs of the English cities (as well as Scotland and Ireland, according to what Fergus and Audrey said later). It reminds me of what the eugenicists have been trying to do in the British Isles: turn the masses into the very beast-like creatures that they believe the masses already are. Here is what happens from perverted social engineering and demolition of the industrial base in the name of globalism.
I highly recommend Fish Tank for when it makes it way to an arthouse cinema near you sometime in the coming year.
Afterwards, the three of us went over to the boat house, where we ditched the long line for the banquet in order to sit out on the deck drinking wine until the twilight of 11:30 pm that reflected in the river like glowing phosphorescent sea creatures. I thought I was going to go hungry, but Audrey, to her nature, went inside and somehow returned in only five minues with two heaping plates of food. She wouldn't tell us how she did, claiming it was a trade secret. I can understand that.
It was a fantastic trip to Galway, and a wonderful first trip to Ireland. There was much I didn't get the chance to do, which I will have to do, when I return soon. Even thought I was looking forward to getting back to the States, I was somewhat sad to board the bus out to Shannon Airport, and then to get on the plane.
Fergus and Audrey also wanted to attend the closing night banquet at the boat house, the ticket for which included a screening of the closing film, Fish Tank, and English production written and directed by Andrea Arnold
I hadn't heard of the movie, but Fergus and Audrey were keen on seeing it, partly because it featured Michael Fassbender, who is a well known Irish movie actor.
The film screenings had fallen behind schedule, so we killed time in the boat house before heading over to the theater. I wasn't really keen of spending time having cramped legs, so I wound up sitting in the loge of the balcony, even though it blocked a wee bit of the screen.
The closing ceremonies were still in progress when we arrived. The president of the festival was announcing the winners of the competition. Frozen River, a movie near the top of last year's "Best" list for me, won best feature. Second place was Baraboo! Given that, I figure there couldn't have been much competition. Afterward, the president of the festival gave a special "Galway Hooker" award to Anjelica Huston, who came up on stage to receive it.
Fish Tank turned out to be an awesome movie. It's about a teenage girl named Mia (the brilliant Katie Jarvis) living in a crummy apartment complex in Essex. Her father is long-gone, and her mother is a narcissistic alcoholic who spends her time cavorting with her boyfriend Connor (Fassbender). Mia is aggressive and defensive, but she is driven to escape her situation by her talent at hip-hop dancing, which she practices in an abandoned apartment when she is able to escape her domineering mother.
The only decent adult in Mia's life seems to be Connor, who acutally holds a respectable job as the manager of a retail lumberyard. But this is 2009, and adult men are never honorable, least of all in England, where all adult males are assumed to be pedophiles until proven otherwise. Seemingly decent men are always hiding a secret of some kind, and Connor's descent is swift and dramatic in the second half of the movie, leaving Mia ten times as embittered as before, and forcing her to commit a horrible act of desperation out of revenge, or simply get attention.
In the end, after Mia learns the truth about what her future as a dancer would mean, the only honorable male character is a fellow teenager, who is still innocent. Mia's escape at the end of the movie is a victory, but it is also poignant, because one senses she will grow into being the same self-obsessed mother as her own mum.
All in all, it's a very bleak and unromantic portrait of life in the suburbs of the English cities (as well as Scotland and Ireland, according to what Fergus and Audrey said later). It reminds me of what the eugenicists have been trying to do in the British Isles: turn the masses into the very beast-like creatures that they believe the masses already are. Here is what happens from perverted social engineering and demolition of the industrial base in the name of globalism.
I highly recommend Fish Tank for when it makes it way to an arthouse cinema near you sometime in the coming year.
Afterwards, the three of us went over to the boat house, where we ditched the long line for the banquet in order to sit out on the deck drinking wine until the twilight of 11:30 pm that reflected in the river like glowing phosphorescent sea creatures. I thought I was going to go hungry, but Audrey, to her nature, went inside and somehow returned in only five minues with two heaping plates of food. She wouldn't tell us how she did, claiming it was a trade secret. I can understand that.
It was a fantastic trip to Galway, and a wonderful first trip to Ireland. There was much I didn't get the chance to do, which I will have to do, when I return soon. Even thought I was looking forward to getting back to the States, I was somewhat sad to board the bus out to Shannon Airport, and then to get on the plane.
The Quiet Man (1951)
My stay in Galway was, all in all, a splendid experience. Fergus and Audrey were excellent hosts. They even indulged me on Saturday with a road trip out to County Mayo, and the scenic area along the coast called Connemara, where the Irish Gaelic language is still spoken on a daily basis. As we drove, Fergus kept a Gaelic language radio station playing. He was pleased that I could still speak it a little, even after years of hardly any practice.
Our first stop there was the village of Cong, which happened to be the location where John Ford shot most of The Quiet Man in 1951. The Quiet Man is one of my favorite movies for several reasons, one of them being that it is the only Hollywood movie I know that has spoken Gaelic in it (the scene where Maureen O'Hara's character tells the priest, played by Ward Bond, that her husband has been sleeping in a sleeping bag).
It's also the first movie I showed when I was a projectionist for my film class back as an undergraduate, and I still remember the stress of changing reels for the first time. Professon Nolley had chosen it as the first film because the theme was the class was how Hollywood possibly "constructs" our gender identities. Obviously it's a theme which continues to interest me to this day.
At the tourist office in Cong, I bought a five euro map that provided a self-guided tour of the shooting location for Ford's movie. My hosts were patient with me as I made them walk around the town and the nearby road while I read from the guide map. It turns out that the tiny village of Cong serves as both the nearby village, and the "market town" in the movie, which the locations of each barely a hundred feet apart. It was all terrific fun, despite the on-and-off rain.
Later we drove down the road to Ashford Castle, which is actually now a five-star hotel. You're supposed to pay to enter the grounds, but Fergus drove the wrong way down the exit road, half by accident. We got flagged down and stopped by a guy claiming to be the manager, who excoriated Fergus, telling him to turn around. He pretended to, but kept going until we were in the parking lot. Fergus and Audrey said the guy spoke with a "Posh" accent from the wealthy areas of south Dublin. It sounds as close to an English accent as you get in Ireland, evidently.
We compounded our transgression by having a picnic right in the car from the cheeses, fruits, olives, and bread that Audrey had bought at the market earlier that morning (there was a sign saying absolutely no picnics).
Then we got really daring, exploring the grounds around the castle, where we nearly got attacked by a falcon from a tour guide giving a demonstration of the art of handling such birds.
I thought this was daring enough, since we hadn't paid a pence to do any of this, but Audrey decided we just had to sneak into the castle/hotel itself and have a "wee look around." It turns out Audrey really as a spirit for these kind of things.
So we found an open door and sauntered around the ground floor, through the bar area. Then we went upstairs and perused the large collection of photographs of the famous guests, including Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles (eugenicist), and Brad Pitt. Audrey signed the guest register nearby. She was hellbent on having a cup of tea at the restaurant, but Fergus was skittish, saying that they would surely want to charge it to our room. I'm sort of a wimp about these things too, so she was outvoted two-to-one. In retrospect, we should have just gone with it. What's the harm in getting thrown out, anyway?
What would John Ford, the Duke, and Maureen O'Hara have done in the same situation? They would have gone for it, of course. But Ford and the Duke would have been drunk by then anyway,
We capped our day to a visit to the "Quiet Man Bridge," which is quite a distance from the other locations. It looks exactly as it did in 1951. We swapped cameras and took pictures of ourselves on the stone bridge where John Wayne as Sean Thornton first met Michaleen Og (Barry Fitzgerald) in the movie. I made sure to get a picture with "cowie," the little plastic longhorn cow that my nieces gave me before I left, and which they insisted accompany me. My sister said that they loved the "cowie" pictures I sent my email from Portugal, making two copies of them to carry around with them.
Plenty of cows in Ireland, by the way. Cows in movies, by the way, always appear as a symbol of happiness and love. The appearance of a cow, and how it is shown, is indicative of the theme of how the characters experience love at that point int he movie. It's a pet theory of mine. I call it "The Magic Cow of Happinness." Sometime I'll have to write about it.
Our first stop there was the village of Cong, which happened to be the location where John Ford shot most of The Quiet Man in 1951. The Quiet Man is one of my favorite movies for several reasons, one of them being that it is the only Hollywood movie I know that has spoken Gaelic in it (the scene where Maureen O'Hara's character tells the priest, played by Ward Bond, that her husband has been sleeping in a sleeping bag).
It's also the first movie I showed when I was a projectionist for my film class back as an undergraduate, and I still remember the stress of changing reels for the first time. Professon Nolley had chosen it as the first film because the theme was the class was how Hollywood possibly "constructs" our gender identities. Obviously it's a theme which continues to interest me to this day.
At the tourist office in Cong, I bought a five euro map that provided a self-guided tour of the shooting location for Ford's movie. My hosts were patient with me as I made them walk around the town and the nearby road while I read from the guide map. It turns out that the tiny village of Cong serves as both the nearby village, and the "market town" in the movie, which the locations of each barely a hundred feet apart. It was all terrific fun, despite the on-and-off rain.
Later we drove down the road to Ashford Castle, which is actually now a five-star hotel. You're supposed to pay to enter the grounds, but Fergus drove the wrong way down the exit road, half by accident. We got flagged down and stopped by a guy claiming to be the manager, who excoriated Fergus, telling him to turn around. He pretended to, but kept going until we were in the parking lot. Fergus and Audrey said the guy spoke with a "Posh" accent from the wealthy areas of south Dublin. It sounds as close to an English accent as you get in Ireland, evidently.
We compounded our transgression by having a picnic right in the car from the cheeses, fruits, olives, and bread that Audrey had bought at the market earlier that morning (there was a sign saying absolutely no picnics).
Then we got really daring, exploring the grounds around the castle, where we nearly got attacked by a falcon from a tour guide giving a demonstration of the art of handling such birds.
I thought this was daring enough, since we hadn't paid a pence to do any of this, but Audrey decided we just had to sneak into the castle/hotel itself and have a "wee look around." It turns out Audrey really as a spirit for these kind of things.
So we found an open door and sauntered around the ground floor, through the bar area. Then we went upstairs and perused the large collection of photographs of the famous guests, including Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles (eugenicist), and Brad Pitt. Audrey signed the guest register nearby. She was hellbent on having a cup of tea at the restaurant, but Fergus was skittish, saying that they would surely want to charge it to our room. I'm sort of a wimp about these things too, so she was outvoted two-to-one. In retrospect, we should have just gone with it. What's the harm in getting thrown out, anyway?
What would John Ford, the Duke, and Maureen O'Hara have done in the same situation? They would have gone for it, of course. But Ford and the Duke would have been drunk by then anyway,
We capped our day to a visit to the "Quiet Man Bridge," which is quite a distance from the other locations. It looks exactly as it did in 1951. We swapped cameras and took pictures of ourselves on the stone bridge where John Wayne as Sean Thornton first met Michaleen Og (Barry Fitzgerald) in the movie. I made sure to get a picture with "cowie," the little plastic longhorn cow that my nieces gave me before I left, and which they insisted accompany me. My sister said that they loved the "cowie" pictures I sent my email from Portugal, making two copies of them to carry around with them.
Plenty of cows in Ireland, by the way. Cows in movies, by the way, always appear as a symbol of happiness and love. The appearance of a cow, and how it is shown, is indicative of the theme of how the characters experience love at that point int he movie. It's a pet theory of mine. I call it "The Magic Cow of Happinness." Sometime I'll have to write about it.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Brüno
Even amidst a film festival in Galway, I still had time to do some exploring of the city on foot, and even to sneak out to a multiplex at the shopping mall on the edge of town. The Omniplex at the Galway Town Center was showing Brüno. I'd been subjected to the trailers for this playing constantly over-and-over on a loop on the big screen above the ticket windows in the Dublin bus station. I had seriously considered passing this up entirely, but having decided to see it, I wanted to cross it over my list as quickly as possible.
Let me be blunt. I used to like Sacha Baron Cohen. I used to think he was funny. I laughed all the way through Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006). I thought it was brilliant. Actually, I'm a little bit ashamed about this now.
My patience with Cohen is completely exhausted. Brüno lived to everything I thought it was going to be from the trailer. It was disgusting and unfunny (although the audience in the Omniplex sure laughted a lot). For me it was like getting pissed on for two hours.
O.K., I've gotten uptight. Maybe it's the fact that of all the politicians Cohen goes after, he chooses the one decent and impeccable guy in all of Washington, D.C.---Ron Paul. He doesn't go after the gangster bankers of the guys lining their pockets, making imperial fascist war, and destroying our country. He goes after the guy fighting them, and the one of the few guys still trying to stop the war(s). He thus aligns himself with every nitwitted braindead talking head of the Operation Mockingbird media. Congratulations, Cohen, the Council on Foreign Relations outta give you a goddamn medal! You've earned your place as an Establishment shill!
I would love to link to the full-length clip of Cohen's encounter with Paul, with the parts Cohen edited out, where Paul has to hold himself back from slugging Cohen, but NBC Universal (i.e., fascist arms manufacturer General Electric), in its infinite corporate wisdom, has decided you are not allowed to see this full scene, and has pulled it from Youtube over copyright issues. Personally my respect for Paul went way up after this (for this I ironically can thank Cohen).
The implication of this film is that being decent and normal is somehow wrong. Being decent is now to be considered perverted.
Ha, ha, look at those stupid normal people reacting with disgust at having a penis waved in their face! They are so uptight!
Fuck Cohen, and fuck his hatred for America, and for normal people trying to get by. He looks at anything that isn't as perverted as him and sees sickness.
In reality, he is exactly what he parodies. He is a whore for fame who will do anything to get the approval of the very limelight-ravenous celebrities he attempts to skewer. But he has no real talent to offer except being outrageous in the most disgusting way.
O.K. I take the last part back a little bit. Cohen has done some decent voice work for the Madagascar movies. He was the funniest part of the second movie.
But that's all I'm willing to grant him. I'd say he can go to hell, but I think he already lives there. He's spoiled any appreciation I had of his earlier movie, in any case.
Let me be blunt. I used to like Sacha Baron Cohen. I used to think he was funny. I laughed all the way through Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006). I thought it was brilliant. Actually, I'm a little bit ashamed about this now.
My patience with Cohen is completely exhausted. Brüno lived to everything I thought it was going to be from the trailer. It was disgusting and unfunny (although the audience in the Omniplex sure laughted a lot). For me it was like getting pissed on for two hours.
O.K., I've gotten uptight. Maybe it's the fact that of all the politicians Cohen goes after, he chooses the one decent and impeccable guy in all of Washington, D.C.---Ron Paul. He doesn't go after the gangster bankers of the guys lining their pockets, making imperial fascist war, and destroying our country. He goes after the guy fighting them, and the one of the few guys still trying to stop the war(s). He thus aligns himself with every nitwitted braindead talking head of the Operation Mockingbird media. Congratulations, Cohen, the Council on Foreign Relations outta give you a goddamn medal! You've earned your place as an Establishment shill!
I would love to link to the full-length clip of Cohen's encounter with Paul, with the parts Cohen edited out, where Paul has to hold himself back from slugging Cohen, but NBC Universal (i.e., fascist arms manufacturer General Electric), in its infinite corporate wisdom, has decided you are not allowed to see this full scene, and has pulled it from Youtube over copyright issues. Personally my respect for Paul went way up after this (for this I ironically can thank Cohen).
The implication of this film is that being decent and normal is somehow wrong. Being decent is now to be considered perverted.
Ha, ha, look at those stupid normal people reacting with disgust at having a penis waved in their face! They are so uptight!
Fuck Cohen, and fuck his hatred for America, and for normal people trying to get by. He looks at anything that isn't as perverted as him and sees sickness.
In reality, he is exactly what he parodies. He is a whore for fame who will do anything to get the approval of the very limelight-ravenous celebrities he attempts to skewer. But he has no real talent to offer except being outrageous in the most disgusting way.
O.K. I take the last part back a little bit. Cohen has done some decent voice work for the Madagascar movies. He was the funniest part of the second movie.
But that's all I'm willing to grant him. I'd say he can go to hell, but I think he already lives there. He's spoiled any appreciation I had of his earlier movie, in any case.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Baraboo
After two nights at the decent-enough hostel in Belfast, I loaded up my backpack and walked back to the bus station, where I caught a bus back to Dublin. It was a relief in many ways to be back in the Republic, even though I had enjoyed my time in the North.
The Dublin bus station was familiar turf by this point. I didn't linger long, immediately buying a ticket on the first bus out to Galway. By the early evening, having passed many many cows on the green hills of central Ireland, I was on the west coast, ringing my friend Fergus' cellphone.
It was a great treat to see him, since we hadn't seen each other in a decade, when we were both back in Texas. He led me back to his apartment on the river front where I would have the pleasure of crashing on his comfortable leather sofa for the next couple days.
We didn't stay there long. As it happens, I had arrived in Galway just in time for the annual Film Fleadh, Galway's summer film festival. Fergus and his girlfriend Audrey, who speaks in a delightful Glasgow accent, had already been to a couple screenings, and they had tickets for the evening's feature, which was at the Town Hall Theater.
They invited me along, and as we strolled along the footpath by the river, I asked them, "So what is the name of this movie we're going to?"
"Baraboo," said Fergus.
The name immeidately brought back a flood of memories from a vacation that my family took when I was eight years old.
"Like the town in Wisconsin?" I said. "Is it about the circus?" They didn't know. I told them that Baraboo was the former headquarters of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.
It turned out that the film wasn't sold out, so I bought a seven euro ticket and we went into the auditorium, which was obviously originally for stage plays, given the look of balcony. We sat near the front, and I discovered a fact about the theater: the seats are small and the rows very close to together. I could sit only with legs to the side. I lived in fear of someone sitting next to me. Fortunately no one did.
I found out later that these seats are new ones put in after a recent renovation.
The discomfort from the seats was certainly not aided by the movie itself.
First off, the movie had nothing to do with Baraboo. I couldn't figure out why the director/writer had chosen that title. Maybe she just liked it. In any case, the only thing about Baraboo itself was a shot of the water tower at the beginning of the movie. The rest of the movie takes place in a tiny little crossroads town in the woods (I think Utica, Wisconsin, based on the signage). Nothing about the real Baraboo, or about he circus, which is what people think of, when they think of Baraboo.
OK, I can forgive that gag. But it was harder to forgive the movie itself. The acting was by local amateurs and was of very uneven quality. The budget was very low. OK, I can live with those too. In fact, sometimes they can be interesting.
But if you've read any of my other entries, you won't be surprised when I say that what I couldn't live with is that the story was chaotic and wandering. We get introduced to a bunch of quirky characters, but for the first half hour I had no idea who the protagonist was going to be, or what the essential conflicts of the movie were. It was just a lot of meandering.
Finally towards the midpoint of the movie, I had been able to construct the basic direction of the plot. The main story was about a fortyish woman in this small town who is divorced and who owns and runs both a dive motel and a general store/gas station. The story conflict seemed to be about her troubled relationship with her angry teenage son. There were also subplots involving the relationship between the son and his friend, a soldier on leave from Iraq. There was also a romance between the woman and a local man, as well as a story involving a woman who has lost her farm to foreclosure.
All in all, it felt very much like the "quirky character" school of independent film making, in which narrative takes a back seat to the colorful antics of a bunch of local yokels. It's really not my cup of tea. It had nothing to do with the low budget. It had everything to do with lack of imagination in constructing a decent narrative.
I could perhaps forgive even all that, but what little narrative there was, was all jumbled and out of order. After what I was sure was the climax of the movie (when the soldier is killed and the teenage son goes on a drunken rampage), I was sure that the movie was wrapping up, with the resolution of the relationship between mother and son.
Ah, an actual story trajectory, I thought. What followed was a denouement involving the mother helping out a family of strangers at her gas station. The end.
But it was not the end. The movie kept going, heaping on more story. What for? Well, first off it had neglected to wrap up some of the subplots, so we got more meaningless main plot (after the conflict hasd been resolved). I concluded that above all, this was a failure on the level of screenplay. The movie could have been saved by an appropriate editing, by placing some of the scenes from after the (apparent) denouement to a position more forward in the story.
Say what you want about Hollywood movies, but at least they (almost never) make collosal story-level mistakes like this.
As a result, the movie felt jumbled. I had a hard time enjoying it, or figuring out what it was supposed to be about.
Because it was a film festival, everyone applauded at the end, and we took the opportunity to slip out. I would have like to stay for the Q&A with the director/writer Mary Sweeney (specifically to ask her about the meaning of the title, which didn't make sense to me), but the seats in the theater were just too damn uncomfortable.
The three of us walked over to the Galway boat house on the river, where we drank pints of Guinness with other festival goers. I shared my opinions with the others around an outdoor picnic table on the river deck, and earned the admiration and respect of some documentarians sitting next to us.
The movie was sub-standard, but Galway was a lot of fun.
One other thing about the movie that irked me: every night shot in the movie seemed to include the full moon. What was this saying? I figured either the director was ignorant of astronomy, or else was in love with the full moon as an image, or else was trying to convey the idea that a month had elapsed between each night episode in the movie. I have a feeling that the answer is a combination of 1 and 2.
I pay attention to these things.
The Dublin bus station was familiar turf by this point. I didn't linger long, immediately buying a ticket on the first bus out to Galway. By the early evening, having passed many many cows on the green hills of central Ireland, I was on the west coast, ringing my friend Fergus' cellphone.
It was a great treat to see him, since we hadn't seen each other in a decade, when we were both back in Texas. He led me back to his apartment on the river front where I would have the pleasure of crashing on his comfortable leather sofa for the next couple days.
We didn't stay there long. As it happens, I had arrived in Galway just in time for the annual Film Fleadh, Galway's summer film festival. Fergus and his girlfriend Audrey, who speaks in a delightful Glasgow accent, had already been to a couple screenings, and they had tickets for the evening's feature, which was at the Town Hall Theater.
They invited me along, and as we strolled along the footpath by the river, I asked them, "So what is the name of this movie we're going to?"
"Baraboo," said Fergus.
The name immeidately brought back a flood of memories from a vacation that my family took when I was eight years old.
"Like the town in Wisconsin?" I said. "Is it about the circus?" They didn't know. I told them that Baraboo was the former headquarters of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.
It turned out that the film wasn't sold out, so I bought a seven euro ticket and we went into the auditorium, which was obviously originally for stage plays, given the look of balcony. We sat near the front, and I discovered a fact about the theater: the seats are small and the rows very close to together. I could sit only with legs to the side. I lived in fear of someone sitting next to me. Fortunately no one did.
I found out later that these seats are new ones put in after a recent renovation.
The discomfort from the seats was certainly not aided by the movie itself.
First off, the movie had nothing to do with Baraboo. I couldn't figure out why the director/writer had chosen that title. Maybe she just liked it. In any case, the only thing about Baraboo itself was a shot of the water tower at the beginning of the movie. The rest of the movie takes place in a tiny little crossroads town in the woods (I think Utica, Wisconsin, based on the signage). Nothing about the real Baraboo, or about he circus, which is what people think of, when they think of Baraboo.
OK, I can forgive that gag. But it was harder to forgive the movie itself. The acting was by local amateurs and was of very uneven quality. The budget was very low. OK, I can live with those too. In fact, sometimes they can be interesting.
But if you've read any of my other entries, you won't be surprised when I say that what I couldn't live with is that the story was chaotic and wandering. We get introduced to a bunch of quirky characters, but for the first half hour I had no idea who the protagonist was going to be, or what the essential conflicts of the movie were. It was just a lot of meandering.
Finally towards the midpoint of the movie, I had been able to construct the basic direction of the plot. The main story was about a fortyish woman in this small town who is divorced and who owns and runs both a dive motel and a general store/gas station. The story conflict seemed to be about her troubled relationship with her angry teenage son. There were also subplots involving the relationship between the son and his friend, a soldier on leave from Iraq. There was also a romance between the woman and a local man, as well as a story involving a woman who has lost her farm to foreclosure.
All in all, it felt very much like the "quirky character" school of independent film making, in which narrative takes a back seat to the colorful antics of a bunch of local yokels. It's really not my cup of tea. It had nothing to do with the low budget. It had everything to do with lack of imagination in constructing a decent narrative.
I could perhaps forgive even all that, but what little narrative there was, was all jumbled and out of order. After what I was sure was the climax of the movie (when the soldier is killed and the teenage son goes on a drunken rampage), I was sure that the movie was wrapping up, with the resolution of the relationship between mother and son.
Ah, an actual story trajectory, I thought. What followed was a denouement involving the mother helping out a family of strangers at her gas station. The end.
But it was not the end. The movie kept going, heaping on more story. What for? Well, first off it had neglected to wrap up some of the subplots, so we got more meaningless main plot (after the conflict hasd been resolved). I concluded that above all, this was a failure on the level of screenplay. The movie could have been saved by an appropriate editing, by placing some of the scenes from after the (apparent) denouement to a position more forward in the story.
Say what you want about Hollywood movies, but at least they (almost never) make collosal story-level mistakes like this.
As a result, the movie felt jumbled. I had a hard time enjoying it, or figuring out what it was supposed to be about.
Because it was a film festival, everyone applauded at the end, and we took the opportunity to slip out. I would have like to stay for the Q&A with the director/writer Mary Sweeney (specifically to ask her about the meaning of the title, which didn't make sense to me), but the seats in the theater were just too damn uncomfortable.
The three of us walked over to the Galway boat house on the river, where we drank pints of Guinness with other festival goers. I shared my opinions with the others around an outdoor picnic table on the river deck, and earned the admiration and respect of some documentarians sitting next to us.
The movie was sub-standard, but Galway was a lot of fun.
One other thing about the movie that irked me: every night shot in the movie seemed to include the full moon. What was this saying? I figured either the director was ignorant of astronomy, or else was in love with the full moon as an image, or else was trying to convey the idea that a month had elapsed between each night episode in the movie. I have a feeling that the answer is a combination of 1 and 2.
I pay attention to these things.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
After three nights in Swords, I figured I'd had had a successful visit to the Dublin area, and that it was time to visit other parts of Ireland. I wasn't ready to head off to Galway, which would be my ultimate destination, so I had some free time to go anywhere I wanted for a couple days.
It was all up in the air when I woke up on Monday morning, but nevertheless I knew where I wanted to go. Having seen the capital of the Republic for a couple days, I figured it was appropriate to venture up to the North to see the other side.
So I caught the double decker bus back into Dublin one last time, then headed to the main bus station and bought a ten euro one-way ticket to Belfast.
It was a nice relaxing three hour trip north on Bus Eireann. I felt a little trepidation crossing the border (where the road signs changed from green to black). To be honest, I had intended to completely avoid the United Kingdom on this trip, given that it has turned into hardcore police state. The UK itself now has the same impression in my mind as the USSR did in 1985. But I wasn't shy about crossing the Iron Curtain back then. I figure it was appropriate to venture into the domain of the Eugenicist-in-Chief of the World, Queen Elizabeth.
Having gotten my relaxation at the expensive Travelodge, I'd felt rested enough to book a hostel in Belfast over the Internet. It was only six quid a night, which meant a rustic experience, but my days in Lisbon had accustomed to it. Besides, there was free wireless Internet.
Belfast felt a little sad to me. The entire place shuts down in the evening and feels dead compared to Dublin. A tour bus driver mentioned how the shipyard (where the Titanic was built) has been shutdown and the dry dock cranes are being turned into restaurants. The future of Northern Ireland is all about tourism it seems. I thought to myself, they should build ships there, dammit. Damn eugenicists want to shut down the industrial base of America and Europe. Phony "carbon footprint" bullshit is designed to enslave us.
I also had a real blast after venturing into a cage-shrouded tavern next to the hostel in north Belfast. It turned out to be a stronghold of the Republicans, and I was bought free beers by the two daughters of the proprietor after expounding my hatred for the Crown, and how Northern Ireland is the beta testing ground for the police state for the entire world. I listened to them as they sang along to IRA songs on the jukebox.
All in all, the experience in North was quite fun and exhilirating, especially seeing the remnants of the Troubles. On the second day, I shelled out for a guided bus tour up along the Antrim Coast to the Giant's Causeway, the million-year-old rock formation that juts out into the sea, and which has become the most popular tourist attraction in Europe.
I even had chance to squeeze in a movie while I was in Belfast. On my first night, while exploring a shuttered city center, I found myself in Victoria Square, the opulent multi-story shopping mall which was pretty much the only thing open on Monday night. I took the elevators up to the top floor and found myself as the Omni multiplex.
Among the choices showing there, the obvious choice seemed to be Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I wasn't really looking forward to seeing this movie, but it seemed the appropriate thing to do, to cross it off my list.
I was a little put off when the young woman at the counter asked me where I would like to sit: in front, in the middle, or in back. I have to decide in advance, I thought? Sheesh. How am I supposed to know. I resisted the temptation to reply, away from other people. I took my chances and said "in the middle," and for a mere six quid forty (cheap compared to the Republic), she printed me out a ticket that said "Row E, Seat 19."
I was a few mintues early, and so I was only person in the auditorium when I walked in. It reminded me of the stadium-seating auditoriums in shopping malls in the United States, except for the two video cameras mounted conspicuously on the wall beside the screen, pointed directly down at the seats. We were there not only to watch, but to be watched. I resisted the temptation to ask for my money back.
As other people walked in, I was convinced that we would all wind up sitting in a tight cluster in the middle of the auditorium. But we were well spaced out, and then I noticed people changing seats. Evidently the assignment was just a suggestion. Knowing that, I stayed in my seat. Probably there was no one watching the camera feeds as well---the Panopticon state in action.
The movie itself was just a freaking disaster, confirming my growing impression that outside of a few exceptions, only Disney/Pixar is capable of producing watchable feature-length animation.
The story was stupid and the characters were cloying and annoying. Not for a moment could I get away from seeing Ray Romano and Queen Latifah sitting in a studio doing the voice acting along to the charactes (maybe its the fact that the mouths of the wooly mammoths are not visible as they speak).
Latifah is a decent actor, but I really really tired of the "wife as the adult, husband as the grown child" Postmodern motif yet again on screen. It was sitting through back-to-back episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, which if you know me, is not something I would look forward to.
Just as annoying was the constant winking parade of anachronisms. Anachronisms are of course necessary and fun for this type of movie, but this movie was laden with them to such a degree that it was impossible to take the premise seriously at all. We got a constant stream of references to the Theory of Evolution and cell phones, etc. WTF? OK, I get it. Mammoths are just like us today. It's really about now.
There was something deeply offensive about the anti-nature quality of this movie, with the idea that mammoth mothers need to care for their infants in the same way as humans too. A little bit of this is OK, but when it becomes the main premise of the story, it just doesn't work. It makes me sick to my stomach that this movie was even made.
The only watchable part of this movie was the sabrecat character. Whenever I heard Dennis Leary's cynical voice, it felt like a breath of fresh air, as if he too did not want to be a part of this piece of crap.
It was all up in the air when I woke up on Monday morning, but nevertheless I knew where I wanted to go. Having seen the capital of the Republic for a couple days, I figured it was appropriate to venture up to the North to see the other side.
So I caught the double decker bus back into Dublin one last time, then headed to the main bus station and bought a ten euro one-way ticket to Belfast.
It was a nice relaxing three hour trip north on Bus Eireann. I felt a little trepidation crossing the border (where the road signs changed from green to black). To be honest, I had intended to completely avoid the United Kingdom on this trip, given that it has turned into hardcore police state. The UK itself now has the same impression in my mind as the USSR did in 1985. But I wasn't shy about crossing the Iron Curtain back then. I figure it was appropriate to venture into the domain of the Eugenicist-in-Chief of the World, Queen Elizabeth.
Having gotten my relaxation at the expensive Travelodge, I'd felt rested enough to book a hostel in Belfast over the Internet. It was only six quid a night, which meant a rustic experience, but my days in Lisbon had accustomed to it. Besides, there was free wireless Internet.
Belfast felt a little sad to me. The entire place shuts down in the evening and feels dead compared to Dublin. A tour bus driver mentioned how the shipyard (where the Titanic was built) has been shutdown and the dry dock cranes are being turned into restaurants. The future of Northern Ireland is all about tourism it seems. I thought to myself, they should build ships there, dammit. Damn eugenicists want to shut down the industrial base of America and Europe. Phony "carbon footprint" bullshit is designed to enslave us.
I also had a real blast after venturing into a cage-shrouded tavern next to the hostel in north Belfast. It turned out to be a stronghold of the Republicans, and I was bought free beers by the two daughters of the proprietor after expounding my hatred for the Crown, and how Northern Ireland is the beta testing ground for the police state for the entire world. I listened to them as they sang along to IRA songs on the jukebox.
All in all, the experience in North was quite fun and exhilirating, especially seeing the remnants of the Troubles. On the second day, I shelled out for a guided bus tour up along the Antrim Coast to the Giant's Causeway, the million-year-old rock formation that juts out into the sea, and which has become the most popular tourist attraction in Europe.
I even had chance to squeeze in a movie while I was in Belfast. On my first night, while exploring a shuttered city center, I found myself in Victoria Square, the opulent multi-story shopping mall which was pretty much the only thing open on Monday night. I took the elevators up to the top floor and found myself as the Omni multiplex.
Among the choices showing there, the obvious choice seemed to be Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I wasn't really looking forward to seeing this movie, but it seemed the appropriate thing to do, to cross it off my list.
I was a little put off when the young woman at the counter asked me where I would like to sit: in front, in the middle, or in back. I have to decide in advance, I thought? Sheesh. How am I supposed to know. I resisted the temptation to reply, away from other people. I took my chances and said "in the middle," and for a mere six quid forty (cheap compared to the Republic), she printed me out a ticket that said "Row E, Seat 19."
I was a few mintues early, and so I was only person in the auditorium when I walked in. It reminded me of the stadium-seating auditoriums in shopping malls in the United States, except for the two video cameras mounted conspicuously on the wall beside the screen, pointed directly down at the seats. We were there not only to watch, but to be watched. I resisted the temptation to ask for my money back.
As other people walked in, I was convinced that we would all wind up sitting in a tight cluster in the middle of the auditorium. But we were well spaced out, and then I noticed people changing seats. Evidently the assignment was just a suggestion. Knowing that, I stayed in my seat. Probably there was no one watching the camera feeds as well---the Panopticon state in action.
The movie itself was just a freaking disaster, confirming my growing impression that outside of a few exceptions, only Disney/Pixar is capable of producing watchable feature-length animation.
The story was stupid and the characters were cloying and annoying. Not for a moment could I get away from seeing Ray Romano and Queen Latifah sitting in a studio doing the voice acting along to the charactes (maybe its the fact that the mouths of the wooly mammoths are not visible as they speak).
Latifah is a decent actor, but I really really tired of the "wife as the adult, husband as the grown child" Postmodern motif yet again on screen. It was sitting through back-to-back episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, which if you know me, is not something I would look forward to.
Just as annoying was the constant winking parade of anachronisms. Anachronisms are of course necessary and fun for this type of movie, but this movie was laden with them to such a degree that it was impossible to take the premise seriously at all. We got a constant stream of references to the Theory of Evolution and cell phones, etc. WTF? OK, I get it. Mammoths are just like us today. It's really about now.
There was something deeply offensive about the anti-nature quality of this movie, with the idea that mammoth mothers need to care for their infants in the same way as humans too. A little bit of this is OK, but when it becomes the main premise of the story, it just doesn't work. It makes me sick to my stomach that this movie was even made.
The only watchable part of this movie was the sabrecat character. Whenever I heard Dennis Leary's cynical voice, it felt like a breath of fresh air, as if he too did not want to be a part of this piece of crap.
Year One
My day in Dublin was so fun that I decided to extend my stay at the Travelodge in Swords for a third night, giving me another free day to explore the area. I decided to use it for a day trip out to the see the 5,000-year-old megalithic ruins at Newgrange, near the town of Drogheda.
I just love ancient megalithic structures, so this was almost a pilgrimmage for me.
Using another round of paid Internet at the Travelodge, I figured out the necessary changes of buses to reach Newgrange on a Sunday afternoon. It required first going back into Dublin before catching a bus out to Drogheda. While I was in the city, I walked back over to the Savoy and noted the show times. There was a showing of Year One in the late afternoon which, if my bus schedules were correct, would be perfect timing for when I got back to Dublin.
Of course I knew it was a low-brow comedy, which made me dubious about seeing it after experiencing the majesty of ancient megalithic ruins. I figured I would play it by ear, depending how I felt when I returned.
The ruins turned out to live up to my expectations. The highlight was definitely getting to go into the center chamber at Newgrange, where the tour guide turned the lights off , leaving us a pitch blackness and then duplicating the effect of having the sun rise on the winter solstice and illuminating the inner chamber. You have to enter a lottery to be able to experience the real thing, because there is so much demand and the chamber is tiny. I was satisfied with the facsimile.
Much to my surprise, I was actually in the mood to see Year One when I returned to Dublin. The experience was so powerful at Newgrange, that there was nothing that could spoil the day, I decided, even if the movie was unwatchable, which I suspected it might be.
The movie was showing in one of the upstairs auditoriums at the grand old Savoy, one with only about a hundred and fifty seats. No restrooms inside this auditorium. They were out in the upstairs lobby.
At first my suspicions about the movie seemed to be on the mark. I spent the first half hour of the movie being totally repulsed. It seemed to have been designed to be a direct assault on all possible sensibilities involving traditional Biblical religion. It seemed design to insult as much as possible, almost as a parody of the degenerate nature of Hollywood.
But then something happened near the midpoint of the movie. Harold Ramis, the director, is quite old school and it turns out he was just setting us up for a switcheroo.
The characters seemed to develop consciences, and sensibilities in reaction to the degenerate culture in which they were living. It was particularly nice from a narrative standpoint, since the characters followed a progression of civilization from complete barbarism to ancient urbanism (at Sodom, of course).
I began to see the movie not as a paean to barbarism and pornography, but rather as a description of the psychic journey of the modern individual trying to cope with life in our modern day version of Sodom. It was not just a dive into the trench of filth, but about coming out the other end and cleaning yourself off.
The best example of this in the movie was the scene in which the two main characters (played by Jack Black and Michael Cera) find themselves inside the Holy of Holies in Sodom.
Having come to Sodom, they have been transformed into the two degraded options available to men in our contemporary Postmodern culture. Zed (Black) has become a corrupt police state thug, whereas Oh (Cera) has become a feminized slave. Knowing that they probably face death when they leave, they have little hope of actually performing the rescue of their respective true loves, which is the quest that brought them to wicked Sodom in the first place.
In this hopeless situation, they do something very classical: they get down on their knees and importune the Creator for assistance. At this point, I'm thinking if this were a classical movie, this is exactly what they would need to do, and it would result in their ultimate victory.
And this is exactly what happens. After humbling themselves before God, they win, defeating their evil forces of Sodom and becoming heroes by rescuing their true loves. Zed renounces his role as a thug, and Oh becomes a true man, breaking his chains as a slave.
By the end of the movie, I was completely won over. What I thought was going to be a disgusting celebration of base culture turned out to be a fable of trying to live a classical life in the Postmodern world. Year One goes down as one of my favorite comedies of the year (so long as you can stand to watch the first part).
I just love ancient megalithic structures, so this was almost a pilgrimmage for me.
Using another round of paid Internet at the Travelodge, I figured out the necessary changes of buses to reach Newgrange on a Sunday afternoon. It required first going back into Dublin before catching a bus out to Drogheda. While I was in the city, I walked back over to the Savoy and noted the show times. There was a showing of Year One in the late afternoon which, if my bus schedules were correct, would be perfect timing for when I got back to Dublin.
Of course I knew it was a low-brow comedy, which made me dubious about seeing it after experiencing the majesty of ancient megalithic ruins. I figured I would play it by ear, depending how I felt when I returned.
The ruins turned out to live up to my expectations. The highlight was definitely getting to go into the center chamber at Newgrange, where the tour guide turned the lights off , leaving us a pitch blackness and then duplicating the effect of having the sun rise on the winter solstice and illuminating the inner chamber. You have to enter a lottery to be able to experience the real thing, because there is so much demand and the chamber is tiny. I was satisfied with the facsimile.
Much to my surprise, I was actually in the mood to see Year One when I returned to Dublin. The experience was so powerful at Newgrange, that there was nothing that could spoil the day, I decided, even if the movie was unwatchable, which I suspected it might be.
The movie was showing in one of the upstairs auditoriums at the grand old Savoy, one with only about a hundred and fifty seats. No restrooms inside this auditorium. They were out in the upstairs lobby.
At first my suspicions about the movie seemed to be on the mark. I spent the first half hour of the movie being totally repulsed. It seemed to have been designed to be a direct assault on all possible sensibilities involving traditional Biblical religion. It seemed design to insult as much as possible, almost as a parody of the degenerate nature of Hollywood.
But then something happened near the midpoint of the movie. Harold Ramis, the director, is quite old school and it turns out he was just setting us up for a switcheroo.
The characters seemed to develop consciences, and sensibilities in reaction to the degenerate culture in which they were living. It was particularly nice from a narrative standpoint, since the characters followed a progression of civilization from complete barbarism to ancient urbanism (at Sodom, of course).
I began to see the movie not as a paean to barbarism and pornography, but rather as a description of the psychic journey of the modern individual trying to cope with life in our modern day version of Sodom. It was not just a dive into the trench of filth, but about coming out the other end and cleaning yourself off.
The best example of this in the movie was the scene in which the two main characters (played by Jack Black and Michael Cera) find themselves inside the Holy of Holies in Sodom.
Having come to Sodom, they have been transformed into the two degraded options available to men in our contemporary Postmodern culture. Zed (Black) has become a corrupt police state thug, whereas Oh (Cera) has become a feminized slave. Knowing that they probably face death when they leave, they have little hope of actually performing the rescue of their respective true loves, which is the quest that brought them to wicked Sodom in the first place.
In this hopeless situation, they do something very classical: they get down on their knees and importune the Creator for assistance. At this point, I'm thinking if this were a classical movie, this is exactly what they would need to do, and it would result in their ultimate victory.
And this is exactly what happens. After humbling themselves before God, they win, defeating their evil forces of Sodom and becoming heroes by rescuing their true loves. Zed renounces his role as a thug, and Oh becomes a true man, breaking his chains as a slave.
By the end of the movie, I was completely won over. What I thought was going to be a disgusting celebration of base culture turned out to be a fable of trying to live a classical life in the Postmodern world. Year One goes down as one of my favorite comedies of the year (so long as you can stand to watch the first part).
Friday, July 17, 2009
Public Enemies
Before I arrived in Dublin, I used my favorite new Internet tool, HostelWorld.com, to book accomodation in Ireland. I'd almost gotten addicted to it in Portugal, so much so that the idea of not booking a hostel or hotel in advance over the web began to terrify. So much for the days of arriving in a place spontaneously. Something lost, something gained.
As it happened, I decided not to stay in Dublin proper. Ireland has become a phenomenally expensive place (even the Irish complain about it), and staying in the city would have meant another hostel. It was a fun experience in Lisbon, but I wanted to relax for a few days.
So instead I booked a couple nights at the Travelodge out in the suburb of Swords, not far from the airport. Using Google maps, I found the route from the airport, and when I arrived in Ireland in the afternoon, I simply strapped on my backpack and hiked out of the airport on the sidewalks, then along the road north to Swords, whistling and singing to myself as I passed the thistles along the road. I felt like I was twenty years old again, hiking in Scotland.
The Travelodge was confortable enough (for fifty-five euros a night), but the Internet cost seven euros for 50 minutes. I grudgingly signed up and paid with my debit card. The first thing I did was email my friend Fergus out in Galway, to tell him I'd arrived in Ireland. He emailed me back in short order, warning me against the "tough characters" in Dublin. I should watch myself, he told me.
The next morning (which happned to be July 4th) I went back out beside the road and caught a double-decker bus which carried me into the city. I spent most of the morning exploring the waterfront and the port areas along the River Liffey (I love ports).
After a couple hours I began to wonder if Fergus had been talking about the Russians, which seemed to be everywhere in Dublin. If you've seen the movie Once (2007), you saw a love story between an Irish man and a Hungarian woman working in Dublin. It turns out this is quite on the mark. Dublin is overflowing with Eastern Europeans who came here during the boom. For example, everyone working at the Travelodge out in Swords seemed to be Polish.
The bus that took me into Dublin had deposited me on Connelly Street, smack in front of the Savoy Theater, a nice old multiplex cinema in the city center, built in 1928. Before embarking on my walking trip, I perused the show times on the LED marquee. I noticed that Public Enemies, which had just been released in both the US and Europe, was playing in the late afternoon. For the rest of the day, the idea of sitting in a nice theater and resting my tired feet became my reward for a day's adventure (which included a trip to Trinty University to see the Book of Kells).
It was too late in the afternoon to get the discount price for the Savoy, so I wound up paying the full nine euros for the sow (about thirteen bucks). As the new big release, Public Enemies was showing in the main auditorium on the ground floor, with doors on either side of the concession area in the lobby. Confusingly I couldn't find the men's room in the lobby. When I asked the ticket taker, he told me the rest rooms were in the auditorium itself. A nice convenience from a different era of cinemas.
The main auditorium was huge---at least thousand seats arranged in a wide fan shape on a substantial pitch. The most interesting feature was that the screen was located at the bottom of the pitch, not raised at all. That meant that anyone in any of the center aisles cast a huge shadow on the screen as they navigated to find a seat. It was like a stereotype of an old movie.
I settled into my confortable seat for what I figured would be a nice couple hours of good-old-fashioned American escapism, quite appropriate for the Fourth of July. Mostly I wasn't disappointed. The acting by Depp and the others was impeccable. I was even impressed by the art direction, and the direction by Michael Mann that gave me the feeling like I was actually back in the 1930s. I could have been much, much worse on that score. I was quite surprised.
Where I felt sort of let down, however, was on the level of the narrative. Atlhough I cared about the characters, I didn't care that much about them. I never really understood what Dillinger's essential quest was, other than to survive as long as possible and keep robbing banks. What was he all about, really? How was his essential quest indicative of something wider and deeper in American society at the time?
Of course I can fill these things in, from what I know about Dillinger, but that's not the point. Something about Mann's directorial style keep the story on a surface level of "Miami Vice" style glamour and romantic glitz. In the end, I felt like I really didn't understand Dillinger at all.
The most impressive thematic element of the story, on the other hand, was the rise of the federal police force, something that Dillinger helped bring about. Today we live in the shadow of this bureaucracy, which now spies on us like we are all gangsters. I would have like to have seen this thematic element elevated to perhaps the center element of the story. Under a different director (and writer), it could have been, and the movie could have become a masterpiece. As it was, it seemed like romanticism overwhelmed any possibility of a deep statement on this topic.
But it was fun enough for the Fourth of July in Ireland.
As it happened, I decided not to stay in Dublin proper. Ireland has become a phenomenally expensive place (even the Irish complain about it), and staying in the city would have meant another hostel. It was a fun experience in Lisbon, but I wanted to relax for a few days.
So instead I booked a couple nights at the Travelodge out in the suburb of Swords, not far from the airport. Using Google maps, I found the route from the airport, and when I arrived in Ireland in the afternoon, I simply strapped on my backpack and hiked out of the airport on the sidewalks, then along the road north to Swords, whistling and singing to myself as I passed the thistles along the road. I felt like I was twenty years old again, hiking in Scotland.
The Travelodge was confortable enough (for fifty-five euros a night), but the Internet cost seven euros for 50 minutes. I grudgingly signed up and paid with my debit card. The first thing I did was email my friend Fergus out in Galway, to tell him I'd arrived in Ireland. He emailed me back in short order, warning me against the "tough characters" in Dublin. I should watch myself, he told me.
The next morning (which happned to be July 4th) I went back out beside the road and caught a double-decker bus which carried me into the city. I spent most of the morning exploring the waterfront and the port areas along the River Liffey (I love ports).
After a couple hours I began to wonder if Fergus had been talking about the Russians, which seemed to be everywhere in Dublin. If you've seen the movie Once (2007), you saw a love story between an Irish man and a Hungarian woman working in Dublin. It turns out this is quite on the mark. Dublin is overflowing with Eastern Europeans who came here during the boom. For example, everyone working at the Travelodge out in Swords seemed to be Polish.
The bus that took me into Dublin had deposited me on Connelly Street, smack in front of the Savoy Theater, a nice old multiplex cinema in the city center, built in 1928. Before embarking on my walking trip, I perused the show times on the LED marquee. I noticed that Public Enemies, which had just been released in both the US and Europe, was playing in the late afternoon. For the rest of the day, the idea of sitting in a nice theater and resting my tired feet became my reward for a day's adventure (which included a trip to Trinty University to see the Book of Kells).
It was too late in the afternoon to get the discount price for the Savoy, so I wound up paying the full nine euros for the sow (about thirteen bucks). As the new big release, Public Enemies was showing in the main auditorium on the ground floor, with doors on either side of the concession area in the lobby. Confusingly I couldn't find the men's room in the lobby. When I asked the ticket taker, he told me the rest rooms were in the auditorium itself. A nice convenience from a different era of cinemas.
The main auditorium was huge---at least thousand seats arranged in a wide fan shape on a substantial pitch. The most interesting feature was that the screen was located at the bottom of the pitch, not raised at all. That meant that anyone in any of the center aisles cast a huge shadow on the screen as they navigated to find a seat. It was like a stereotype of an old movie.
I settled into my confortable seat for what I figured would be a nice couple hours of good-old-fashioned American escapism, quite appropriate for the Fourth of July. Mostly I wasn't disappointed. The acting by Depp and the others was impeccable. I was even impressed by the art direction, and the direction by Michael Mann that gave me the feeling like I was actually back in the 1930s. I could have been much, much worse on that score. I was quite surprised.
Where I felt sort of let down, however, was on the level of the narrative. Atlhough I cared about the characters, I didn't care that much about them. I never really understood what Dillinger's essential quest was, other than to survive as long as possible and keep robbing banks. What was he all about, really? How was his essential quest indicative of something wider and deeper in American society at the time?
Of course I can fill these things in, from what I know about Dillinger, but that's not the point. Something about Mann's directorial style keep the story on a surface level of "Miami Vice" style glamour and romantic glitz. In the end, I felt like I really didn't understand Dillinger at all.
The most impressive thematic element of the story, on the other hand, was the rise of the federal police force, something that Dillinger helped bring about. Today we live in the shadow of this bureaucracy, which now spies on us like we are all gangsters. I would have like to have seen this thematic element elevated to perhaps the center element of the story. Under a different director (and writer), it could have been, and the movie could have become a masterpiece. As it was, it seemed like romanticism overwhelmed any possibility of a deep statement on this topic.
But it was fun enough for the Fourth of July in Ireland.
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