Sort of by accident, I saw two movies this weekend starring Steve Carell (or at least his voice): Dan in Real Life (on DVD) and Horton Hears a Who (still in theaters, if only because parents are desperate to take their kids to anything animated). Both movies are flawed, though this has little to do with Carell and quite a bit to do with the screenwriters.
First of all, Horton Hears a Who suffers from the overabundance of famous comedian voices and self-conscious pop-culture references that has plagued animated features since Aladdin. But, perhaps influenced by my dear Porpoise—for whom there is no plot-sin worse than a diversion that sidetracks the characters, only to have them return to exactly the same spot where they were before the diversion—I felt like the film introduced plenty of unnecessary obstacles into Horton’s quest to find a safe spot for the tiny world of Whos that he’s discovered on a speck.
Horton’s main adversary, the sour Kangaroo of the jungle of Nool, is rather inexplicably outraged by Horton’s belief in the people on the speck. She declares, “If you can’t see it, hear it, or feel it, it doesn’t exist”—and, in other parts of the movie, she voices concern that Horton will lead the children to use their imaginations. More entertaining than the movie is a quick glance through online reviews that try to interpret the ideological stance of the Kangaroo. Her insistence on empirical evidence means that she’s anti-religious (which, you know, is the same thing as liberal), but she also “pouch-schools” her joey rather than trusting him to Horton’s tutelage, so that must mean that she’s—gasp—a fundamentalist!
Or maybe she’s just a Kangaroo, brought into her confused and confusing existence by desperate screenwriters. In an improbable stretch, she consults a buzzard named Vlad, apparently a representative of the Russian mafia within the jungle of Nool, and enlists his help to destroy the clover upon which Horton claims the speck exists. Enter chase scene with buzzard and elephant. When this fails, the Kangaroo rounds up the other jungle creatures to go after Horton, and they’re amazingly willing to turn into an angry mob. Yet, once the mob is pacified, once the Whos have proved their existence, and once both Horton and the Kangaroo have been reintegrated into the community, the clover and its accompanying speck still haven’t reached their destination. There’s little worse than a series of improbable, unwarranted conflicts followed by an incomplete resolution.
The Whoville portions of the story are more interesting and entertaining, though I agree somewhat with the reviewers who have complained that the Mayor’s one son, rather than any of his 96 daughters, is treated with importance and deemed worthy of finally saving the day. I don’t think the gender bias was intentional—silent son JoJo comes across as the animated version of Paul Dano’s Nietzsche-loving teen from Little Miss Sunshine—but I do think the story could have placed one of the daughters (a shy daughter who feels ignored) in the same role, with less problematic implications.
The failure to explore the girls’ story actually bothers me more in Dan in Real Life. Dan—like the Whoville Mayor, played by Steve Carell—is that most hallowed of movie stock characters: the widower father. If that’s not enough to make us feel sorry for him, the fact that two of his three daughters are teens should do the trick.
The movie seems to realize that it needs to do something to make Dan’s character more three-dimensional, but in trying to give him depth, the screenwriters can’t seem to decide how likable he should remain. We’re clearly supposed to like him, but it’s hard to extend that grace to a father who’s so unreasonable that he won’t let his 17-year-old daughter drive, not even with him in the car.
Dan does get to experience a moral quandary when he falls for his brother’s girlfriend. The quandary is heightened by his realization that his brother, something of a ne’er-do-well, genuinely cares for Marie. Unfortunately, the movie never deals satisfactorily with this complication—unfortunate, because this is one thing that could have raised it above the level of a predictable romantic comedy.
Another potential saving grace would have been giving us a little more insight into why Marie decides that Dan is her soul mate. We know hardly anything about her, except that she’s been plunked into this terribly uncomfortable family reunion—and that she makes good pancakes. In other words, she’s mostly a plot device, as are Dan’s three daughters. The one that wants to drive gets to reflect ironically on her father’s getting his license revoked, the one that wants to date gets to reflect ironically on her father’s recklessness-for-the-sake-of-love, and the one that wants attention gets to look cute and sad. Yet none of this irony (apparently the sole purpose for which the daughters’ characters exist) even translates into any character growth for Dan.
If I had to weigh the two movies against each other, I’d say Dan in Real Life is better, because, though it’s flawed, you actually do care about the characters. You care enough about the movie to want it to be better. Horton is just a big, tangled mess—a pretty mess, but a mess all the same. Let’s hope that Steve Carell’s next project, Get Smart, is less convoluted.
In conclusion, may I make the completely irrelevant comment that I would pay good money to see something called Horton Hears Doctor Who?
April 20th, 2008
Y’all know how much affection I feel for John Krasinski, but even his presence couldn’t completely override my doubts about seeing Leatherheads after a horde of mediocre and less-than-mediocre reviews appeared. Fortunately, Dormouse prevailed and convinced me to go see it with her; I found it much more enjoyable than expected. Though far from perfect, Leatherheads is an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours—much more entertaining than watching an actual football game.
Part of Leatherheads’s argument, to the extent that it has one, is that football was much more entertaining before it had all these pesky rules. In these golden days, circa 1925, pro football is practically ignored—which, the movie suggests, might mean that it’s more fun, if harder to earn a living at. Wily, scrappy, aging pro player Dodge Connelly (George Clooney) and his fellow Duluth Bulldogs may have to share their field with a cow, but they love their game. Until the team goes bankrupt, that is.
In contrast, 1920s college football is beginning to draw quite a following, especially with the added draw of former war heroes like Carther “The Bullet” Rutherford (Krasinski), who singlehandedly forced a German platoon to surrender. Or did he?
Carter Rutherford’s all-American golden boy smells a little too clean to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, who sends “lady reporter” Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger, a.k.a. Squinchy McZellweggie) to dig up some dirt. Littleton’s character has been seen before in both Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—the strong, yet secretly lonely journalist, usually played by Jean Arthur, who ends up falling for the naïve goodness of Jimmy Stewart (or Gary Cooper) and feels reluctant to expose him to the cruel world.
Clooney is clearly borrowing from/paying tribute to Frank Capra comedies, as well as other golden oldies. There’s a scene on a train that I could have sworn came straight out of It Happened One Night. Critics have been slamming Clooney for copying the formulas of classic Hollywood comedies without maintaining their apparent ease—or for combining too many elements that don’t fit together. There are some moments that are a stretch—a chase scene in which Dodge and Lexie rather inexplicably don police uniforms—and some loose ends left unwrapped, but it’s still more fun than any recent romantic comedy I can think of—except for Enchanted, that is. (And since I don’t generally like romantic comedies unless they’re in black-and-white, I’m hardly an unbiased source.)
Speaking of Enchanted, it might be fair to compare Leatherheads to what Enchanted would have been if it had been made by someone other than Disney. What I mean is that when you’re riffing off your own artistic heritage, you’re free to invest it with a little self-conscious mockery along with the tribute-paying. When there’s less of a direct connection between you and your predecessors, the tone has to be different. While clearly evoking Jimmy Stewart, John Krasinski tones down Stewart’s aw-shucks routine enough to make it palatable to this irony-steeped generation.
Leatherheads will probably never achieve the iconic status of It Happened One Night or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. There’s one area, however, in which it improves on its inspiration: the smart lady reporter gets an equally intelligent guy, rather than being “tamed” by the innocent doofus. There are still definitely some ways you can surpass the oldies.
April 6th, 2008
When trying to describe Adam Rex’s novel The True Meaning of Smekday over the past few days, I’ve typically said it’s like Douglas Adams meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. (A strange combo, yes, and perhaps even stranger because you will find the book in the children’s section of your local bookstore. Amazon tells me that the book is suitable for ages 9-12. As the novel’s heroine Gratuity Tucci would say, “Whatever.”) Go ahead and throw a little Mark Twain into the mix, too, because this post-apocalyptic road journey has biting social commentary and truly touching moments of bonding between human and alien.
Initially framed as a school essay, the novel begins in the year 2013 with eleven-year-old Gratuity and her cat Pig driving to Florida, where the invading alien race of Boov have forced all Americans to relocate. Of course, there are great parallels here to Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal, and the satire is skillfully delivered. Gratuity (also known as “Tip” to her friends) meets a fugitive Boov named J.Lo, and the three end up journeying together across the southern half of the United States.
One of Rex’s brilliant strokes is to make it hard to pin down who’s Huck and who’s Jim in this 21st-century adventure. Gratuity is human; J.Lo is a member of the conquering alien race. However, J.Lo is also an outcast among his own people—and Gratuity is African American. Gratuity herself has clearly read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and admires Mark Twain, even if she doesn’t approve of his female characters. One of Huck’s most famous lines is worked in subtly and appropriately, without calling attention to itself, but enriching the impact for those who recognize the reference.
Will 9-12-year-olds recognize the reference? Maybe not. I imagine the adventure-story aspects of the book will appeal to older children, but the parts I most enjoyed—bureaucrats who can’t conceive of taking any action if there’s not a proper form for it, UFO-believers still hanging out in Roswell because the recent, real alien invasion didn’t meet their expectations—will resonate more profoundly with the funny-bones of adults. Plus, the theme of alien invasion gets rather intense at times. We know that people and aliens alike get killed, though never exactly “onscreen.”
For older children and adults, though, the way the book addresses the theme of mass suffering may be helpful. I think I’m just going to quote one of my favorite scenes here, occurring just after Tip and J.Lo have survived torrential rain and flooding:
“When I was a little girl,” I said, sitting down, “the wallpaper in my room had pictures of the Noah story.”
“Pictures of forty nights of raining?”
“Well, no,” I said. Now that I thought about it, that wallpaper didn’t show any rain at all. Wasn’t rain the whole point? “No, it had cute pictures of Noah’s ark. His boat. Adorable little zebras and elephants and things. It’s a popular story for little kids, I guess because of the animals.”
“Little people like the animals,” said J.Lo, nodding and folding his hands. “Is true with the Boov as well.”
“You know what’s weird, though? It’s weird that the ark would be such a kids’ story, you know? I mean, it’s . . . really a story about death. Every person who isn’t in Noah’s family? They die. Every animal, apart from the two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It’s the worst tragedy ever,” I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest. I’d been speaking too fast without breathing, and I sucked down air before speaking again.
“What the hell,” I said, “pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?”
J.Lo understood me well enough by now not to answer. So I looked off to the west in silence, and saw a thousand miles of hopeless wasteland before we reached Arizona . . .
J.Lo’s hand was on my shoulder suddenly, and he said, “Rainbow.”
I looked up. First at him and then at the sky where he was pointing.
. . . It was a perfect, bright, unbroken rainbow stretching over the western horizon like a door. It was so beautiful it looked fake. Above it was another, fainter one in reverse, and I exhaled and thought, of course. Of course there’s a rainbow. ‘Bout time.
Tip’s wallpaper exegesis leads me to believe I would enjoy discussing the Bible with her. I have a lot of respect for someone who is aware of and sensitive to all the horrible things that happen in the Bible and throughout human history and yet still responds to rainbows with expectation of a promise fulfilled (“’Bout time” seems to me like a paraphrase of many of the Psalms.). Incidentally, I thought of this moment from Smekday yesterday when I was in Barnes & Noble and saw religious studies scholar Bart Ehrman’s (or “Barty Crouch,” as he’s known for some reason among our circle of friends) latest book being promoted. Its title, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer, makes me want to laugh and/or snort—because, well, duh, of course the Bible doesn’t completely answer our questions about suffering. If it gave a pat, definitive answer, I don’t think we would have this thing called “the problem of evil” that philosophers and theologians have been arguing for centuries. The Bible seems to give several ways of looking at suffering, but the theme that runs throughout is pretty much what Tip’s experience suggests: it’s a mystery, but, somehow, God is faithful.
Anyway, I don’t mean to suggest that Tip’s commentary always has a theological bent. Sometimes she is quite discerning about elves, for example. When staying with the Roswell-ites, one of whom has a baby named Andromeda, Tip observes that Andromeda is dressed in “both her Legolas onesie and her Keebler booties. Which seemed wrong, you know—mixing two different kinds of elves like that.” Bravo, Tip. Tolkien couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly.
Also, I’ve noted before that post-apocalyptic literature tends to “reveal” or “uncover” the truth about human nature. The True Meaning of Smekday is no exception. As Tip notes, “Most people want to break other people’s things and roll cars over, but won’t unless their planets are invaded by aliens, or their basketball team wins the finals.” Or football team. Whatever.
In short, The True Meaning of Smekday is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Rex, whose previous work has been mainly in illustrating children’s picture books, includes entertaining “snapshot” illustrations, as well as occasional comic-book-style segments. And, as I hope I’ve indicated, Tip’s narrative voice is sharp, witty, and insightful. Find, read, and enjoy.
March 11th, 2008
Netflix recently delivered the DVD of Becoming Jane to our mailbox, because I wanted to give it another chance, to see if it offended my aesthetic and feminist sensibilities as much the second time. I wanted to listen to the commentary, to see how aware the filmmakers were of the implications they created (implications I’ve previously railed against here). And, yes, I did want to see James McAvoy again. I think he’s developing into a minor crush of mine. Or maybe it’s just the green velvet coat he wears in this movie.
My conclusions? The same things still irked me, some even more so, after hearing the commentary. However, I don’t think director Julian Jarrold and writer Kevin Hood were intentionally suggesting that a woman needs a man in order to write well; they do pay lip service to Jane Austen’s genius on the commentary. It’s frustrating, though, how unaware they can be of the messages they’re sending. Watching the movie the first time, I was probably most deeply offended by the conversation between Austen and Lefroy about Tom Jones, in which Austen came off sounding like a prude and Lefroy’s claim that Austen’s experience needed to be widened (read: she needed to know more about sexual attraction, possibly by reading “scandalous” novels like Tom Jones, but preferably by first-hand experience) before she could become a better writer was left unchallenged. Imagine my even greater irritation, then, when I learned from the commentary that Hood knew that Austen read Tom Jones before she ever met Lefroy. She read it on her own, which was quite shocking for a young woman of her day, but not something from which she shrank back. In the few references to Lefroy among Austen’s unburned letters, she mentions discussing Tom Jones with Lefroy, but she had already read it. He was not her teacher; he was not responsible for “broadening” her horizons. I don’t at all mind the fictionalizing of Austen’s and Lefroy’s relationship, but I do object to re-inserting old gender stereotypes into a situation where they didn’t actually exist.
Another thing irritated me more the second time around: in the first sequence in which Lefroy listens to Jane read aloud, he is bored and dismisses her writing as “accomplished.” Since we only hear her what she’s written in snippets, we don’t really get any opinion to the contrary. He gets the last word. So is it progress when, in the film’s final scene, we see him applauding and smiling at her reading? Sure, her writing has gotten better, and maybe his taste has improved, too, but it still leaves with him the final verdict, implying that his opinion is the one that really matters. I’m really torn about this scene, because it is really moving when read at the level of personal reconciliation—but the personal is all tied up with issues of gender and writing in Becoming Jane.
I’ve been thinking that part of my reaction to this scene may have to do with lingering anger towards Gilbert Blythe. I refer to the Gilbert Blythe of the Anne of Avonlea TV miniseries, which was a staple of my childhood. He tells Anne, who has been writing “highfaluting mumbojumbo,” to write about “the real people you care about right here in Avonlea.” (Yes, I can quote the movie word for word. Still. It’s embarrassing.) Eventually, she takes his advice, and he turns out to be right, because she gets a book published. He is right about her prior writing; it is silly. But why, why, why, in movies about women writers, does the man who critiques her writing in favor of experience and realism always have to be right? It makes me want to kick things.
Plus, why do they make Jane Austen look like Emily Dickinson in the movie’s final scenes? Was the white dress really necessary? Do we really need to bring every single stereotype about “old maid” women writers into one film?
In spite of my fury at some parts of Becoming Jane—and, as I hope I’ve made clear, that fury is really due to an accumulation of similar messages and not exclusively to this one movie—I do like other parts of it very much. I like that we get to view the economics of marriage from many different viewpoints, both male and female. I like that Mr. Wisely, Jane’s awkward suitor who has been dubbed a “booby,” turns out not to be a booby after all, and yet they still don’t get married.
Most of all, I like the dance scene in which Jane is listlessly going through the figures as Wisely’s partner until, seemingly from nowhere, Tom Lefroy whirls into place as her corner. It may be worth watching the whole movie just for this scene (or, alternately, you can just watch the scene on YouTube). James McAvoy’s “kinetic energy” (I quote one of his costars) and the subtle changes in the music make the moment. In the commentary, Jarrold also pointed out that Lefroy’s character has been absent from the screen for a while, as the focus has shifted to the Austens’ financial troubles, so when he finally swoops into view, the audience feels the delayed gratification as well.
Also, in case you’re as obsessed with the details of period music and dance as I am (which is probably unlikely, but oh well), the music in this scene is not included on the soundtrack. It is Purcell’s tune “The Hole in the Wall.” (Jarrold went on about how choreographer Jane Gibson wanted to use a dance that hadn’t been seen in any of the other Austen movies. Too bad that Gibson herself already used “Hole in the Wall” in the 1996 Emma miniseries–as well as in her choreography for Wives and Daughters. It’s a great tune and a great dance, but let’s not resort to false advertising.) Also, one of my favorite bits of the commentary explained how composer Adrian Johnston went through Austen’s music notebooks and used some of the themes from those songs in the movie’s score. The most obvious example is the use of the tune “The Irishman” in Tom Lefroy’s musical theme. You can listen to a snippet of “The Irishman” here, then hear the same tune repeated in the “Bond Street Airs” track on the Becoming Jane soundtrack. Why yes, I am a nerd.
March 8th, 2008
I wanted to like Michael Clayton. While I’m not as much of a Clooney-phile as many women seem to be, he’s a decent actor; the movie also stars Tilda Swinton (who just won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film) and Tom Wilkinson, whom I’ve seen in approximately one movie per year for the past fifteen years and haven’t grown tired of yet. The movie’s plot summaries—along the lines of “a corrupt legal ‘fixer’ begins to develop a conscience after his colleague goes bonkers”—made it sound kind of like classic Hollywood, like something in black-and-white that Gregory Peck would star in. Plus, the director/writer is Tony Gilroy, the scribe behind all three Jason Bourne movies. If a writer can make your Otter like an action flick as much as I’ve liked the Bourne movies, he’s pretty good.
Unfortunately, however, Gilroy seems to have been determined to make Michael Clayton as different from the Bourne movies as possible while still working within the genre of conspiracy thriller. It’s like you can hear the gears clicking in his head throughout the movie: “Must . . . not . . . do . . . anything popular or crowd-pleasing.” It’s not just that it’s a “talkier” movie than the Bourne movies—I revel in ridiculous amounts of dialogue, so that doesn’t bother me. The biggest problem is actually the movie’s structure: it starts out in media res and then goes back to fill in the details. The first time we see Clayton in action, he’s already tired of his shady ways and beginning to suspect that his firm’s client, U-North, may be even more crooked than he thought. He’s also in precarious financial circumstances, he has family troubles, and, oh yeah, he’s a recovering gambling addict.
The problem with starting at Clayton’s lowest point is that we’re told that he’s really good at the sneaky, greasy things he does—but we never get to see him in action at his peak. Therefore, we don’t really know what he’s like before his “fall,” so to speak, a fall into conscience that seems to be spurred mostly by concern for his friend Arthur Edens (Wilkinson). Yes, his last name is “Edens.” No, it’s not subtle, especially since the first sign of Arthur’s mental instability is when he strips down naked in the middle of a deposition.
Arthur is the most interesting character in the film, not only because of the grand literary tradition of fools who speak truth, but also because, as Wilkinson plays him, you can also see the brilliance speaking through the madness. You can see why he’s been such a success in the courtroom—something you never see with Clayton himself. We don’t see anything of Clayton’s and Arthur’s relationship before Arthur bares it all at the deposition, though we’re told that Clayton helped Arthur years before when he had gone off his medication and had a manic episode. We don’t really see why Arthur matters so much to Clayton, though, perhaps because the movie spends so much time dealing with Clayton’s relationships with his equally dysfunctional siblings and son. We need to see more of the relationship between Arthur and Clayton to understand Clayton’s later actions.
As much as I enjoyed Tilda Swinton’s bizarre Oscar acceptance speech, I was a little surprised at her win, because her character wasn’t fully fleshed out either. Swinton, as Karen Crowder, the chief counsel for U-North, manages to convey the outline of a woman who’s fought to the top and will do anything to preserve her uneasy place there. The movie does hint that she’s both victim and villain—I found myself thinking that her story would be a lot more interesting than Michael Clayton’s. And Tilda Swinton could have done marvelously in the title role of a movie called Karen Crowder–one of the many, potentially better movies lurking within the unwieldy plot of Michael Clayton. As it was, we just got to see her put on a suit, sweat profusely, and speak with an American accent.
I’ve already voiced my opinion that The Bourne Ultimatum won all three Oscars for which it was nominated because voters realized they should have nominated it for Best Picture instead of Michael Clayton. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I do genuinely think The Bourne Ultimatum is a better movie. Plus, there’s more running and chasing and things that go boom—things that I do occasionally enjoy, believe it or not.
March 1st, 2008
Alas, I had to cancel my own Oscars party last night, not due to the writers’ strike (at least that would have put me in good company with the Vanity Fair party), but due to my own habit of acquiring colds at inconvenient times. I considered live-blogging the whole thing, but thought that might be almost as taxing as hosting a party, so decided to go for the simple day-after summary. And here it is:
- Jon Stewart is one of my favorite Oscars hosts. I don’t think he was quite as funny last night as he was two years ago, and it’s clear that Hollywood still doesn’t quite know what to do with him (“Wait . . . is he making fun of us?”), but still, much better than last year’s Snore-Fest with Ellen. I particularly liked the bit where he complimented Cate Blanchett’s range, mentioning that she was nominated this year for playing Queen Elizabeth I and Bob Dylan, and then going on to assert that, unknown to most viewers, Cate Blanchett also played the role of the pit bull in No Country for Old Men. Hee! As some of you know, No Country for Old Men is shut out of my own personal Otter Oscars, because I can’t bring myself to see dog death, and I know that said pit bull meets a tragic end. But maybe if I tell myself that it’s Cate Blanchett playing a pit bull, I can get through it. And yes, that is different from knowing the dog playing the pit bull was not actually harmed. Don’t ask me how it’s different, but it is.
- Speaking of Cate Blanchett, she looked fabulous. As usual.
- Amy Adams did a good job in her first Oscars song performance (of “Happy Working Song” from Enchanted), but, goodness, would it hurt to give the girl some props (literally)? She desperately needs some vermin to sing to. We kept waiting for some pigeons to drop from the ceiling or something, but no luck. “Falling Slowly” needed no props in its glorious simplicity, “That’s How You Know” benefited from a song-and-dance number to distract from its somewhat lackluster lyrics, and “So Close” had costumed ballroom dancers to keep the audience from falling asleep. Adams needed prop-support not because the song is weak—it’s very clever and actually my second-favorite out of the nominated bunch—but because it’s the one that makes the least sense outside of the context of the film. See here for yourself. Now, can you imagine having to sing that on an empty stage by yourself? I want to know who made that decision, and I want to send Cate Blanchett the Pit Bull after them. I’m assuming that it wasn’t Amy Adams herself who made the decision, because, in my book, she can do no wrong.
- While we’re on the topic of Best Song, let’s take a moment to reflect on the adorableness of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who, in truth, produced not only the Best Song and, I would argue, one of the best movies of the year, but also one of the best Oscars broadcast moments. When Irglova’s own song cut her off during their acceptance speech, she looked disappointed but gamely left the stage. Then, after the commercial break, Jon Stewart actually brought her back onstage to deliver her thank-yous. Hurrah! In honor of Hansard and Irglova, here’s “Falling Slowly,” in case you had the misfortune to miss it. And here’s a montage (montage!) of some of 2007’s movies, set to “Falling Slowly.”
- Can we say Bourne Ultimatum Sweep? Three awards, which is more than any other film except No Country for Old Men, which earned four. So they were “only” Film Editing, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing, but my theory is that Oscar voters racked up the little awards for The Bourne Ultimatum because they felt guilty that they didn’t nominate it for Best Picture above Michael Clayton (directed by Tony Gilroy, who wrote all three Bourne movies), and they recognized that Bourne Ultimatum is actually a better movie, even if it isn’t traditional “Oscar-worthy” fare. I’m sure that’s what voters were thinking. Even if they didn’t realize it.
- Now, Michael Clayton did have amazing acting, which is why I wasn’t unhappy to see the Tilda Swinton Best Supporting Actress upset. Plus, she gave one of the most entertaining acceptance speeches of the evening. My one disappointment: while her dress was severely unflattering, it wasn’t the level of nuttiness I would expect from Swinton. She could get away with something like Bjork’s swan or Imogen Heap’s head-shrubbery. She is the White Witch, after all.
- Speaking of nuts, um, Daniel Day-Lewis? Did it disturb anyone else how he referred to his real-life wife (who also happens to be playwright Arthur Miller’s daughter) as “Mrs. Plainview”? (His character’s name in There Will Be Blood is Daniel Plainview.) I’ve heard Mr. Day-Lewis is very “method” and stays in character even off set, but, dude, the MOVIE’S OVER. I’m sure your wife would appreciate not being referred to as the wife of a fictional psychopathic oil tycoon. Actually, though, given the insanity of her Oscars apparel, maybe she doesn’t mind.
- Daniel Day-Lewis did redeem himself somewhat by kneeling and asking Dame Helen Mirren to knight him with his Oscar, which she did with the inherent grace she displays everywhere. I think this moment proves what we all already knew, which is that Helen Mirren IS STILL THE QUEEN. She definitely wins the award for best dress of the evening. I read somewhere that she told someone on the red carpet that she’d knitted a little scarf for her Oscar. Ha!
February 25th, 2008
It’s hard for me not to compare the movie to the comic book (or “graphic novel,” if you prefer, but author Marjane Satrapi has said that she finds that term pretentious) Persepolis, because I love the latter. This tale of a childhood in late 1970s and early 1980s Iran is endearing, sharp, poignant, and funny. The movie, in which Satrapi had a significant hand, is actually a combination of Persepolis (which follows Marji until the age of 14, when she leaves Iran) and Persepolis 2 (which details Marji’s search for identity as a student in Vienna and then back home in Tehran). I haven’t read Persepolis 2 yet, but I’ve heard from several people who didn’t like it as much as Persepolis, because it was less funny and involved more navel-gazing.
From what I can tell, it seems as if Satrapi and the other filmmakers evened out the tone difference between the two books by choosing to include the parts of Persepolis that were more like Persepolis 2 (i.e., more serious, more focused on individual identity). I wish I knew more about the reasons for combining them, because I find myself wishing they hadn’t. The film Persepolis is certainly still worth seeing, and it’s still a lot funnier than you might expect for a film dealing with the rise of fundamentalism in Iran. However, it lacks the tone and the depth of the book Persepolis.
One scene I particularly missed was the one in which, after having been given a comic book about dialectical materialism (yes, a comic book about dialectical materialism), the eight-year-old Marji reflects on how Karl Marx and God look alike, only Marx has a curlier beard. This is the one scene I was really hoping would make it into the movie, but it didn’t. And yet, in a scene that occurs during the Persepolis 2 half of the film, Marji has an encounter with God and . . . some random old guy with a curly beard. Without the previous scene, most viewers will probably have no idea what Marx (if they figure out his identity) is doing up there with God. Seems like poor continuity editing to me.
As far as complexity, the movie shuns the obvious ironies of Marji’s family’s political beliefs (leftist) and their social class (decidedly upper). In the book, the young Marji wants to be a prophet when she grows up—she wants to be “justice, love and the wrath of God all in one.” (And it’s this, along with the fact that she read a comic book about dialectical materialism at the age of eight, that makes Porpoise say, “So . . . this book is basically about you as a child?” “Yeah,” I say, “except for Islamic fundamentalism and execution of political prisoners and minor stuff like that.” However, another big difference is that Marji’s parents are a little hypocritical—call me biased, but I don’t think my parents were—and she doesn’t shy away from exploring that.) One of Marji’s first actions when she becomes a prophet will be to declare that all maids shall eat at the table with the rest of the family. The book is quite poignant as it deals with Marji’s growing awareness that her family participates in the class injustice that, theoretically, they oppose.
After the revolution against the Shah, after the country becomes an Islamic republic, it becomes clear that Marji’s family has disdain for “the masses.” Even her beloved Uncle Anoosh acknowledges that “in a country where half the population is illiterate you cannot unite the people around Marx. The only thing that can really unite them is nationalism or a religious ethic . . . .” Alas, this kind of irony is completely missing from the film Persepolis. Marji’s parents are simply leftist heroes, seemingly there for the rhetorical purpose of showing a Western audience that “not all Iranians are like that.” Part of Satrapi’s stated purpose in the book is indeed to set the record straight, to correct the image of Iran that dominates in the West, but, again, she does so with the awareness that even her “heroes who lost their lives in prison defending freedom” are far from perfect.
I still haven’t addressed the question that I’m sure will be weighing on everyone’s minds during the Oscars tonight: is Persepolis better than Ratatouille? I’m tempted to say “yes,” just because I don’t think Ratatouille is as great as many reviewers claim and I’d love to see an upset. But, frankly, Persepolis is no masterpiece either. Both films share the flaw of internal inconsistencies. But I’ll trust the vote of the people (okay, the elite who probably haven’t watched half the nominated films) to give Best Animated Feature to something that isn’t Surf’s Up.
February 24th, 2008
(The following tips are directed toward Danny Boyle’s 2007 film Sunshine, which, though described in some reviews as “the thinking person’s” sci-fi thriller, seemed to require significant lack of thought on the part of both filmmakers and viewers.)
1. If your characters are on a mission to re-ignite the sun, thus saving Earth, do not name their spaceship “Icarus.” This simply makes them look dumb. If the first Icarus mission fails, do not name the movie’s second spaceship “Icarus II.” This makes us think your characters are so moronic that they deserve to die.
2. Please allow your characters to have some distinguishing personality traits. Yes, we know that in a dire, life-threatening, potential-world-saving situation, people are under stress. But this usually does not eradicate their individual personalities to the point where you can only tell the men apart by whether or not they have beards. Think about “Firefly” and Serenity: no one has beards. Many characters have the same skin color. And you can tell them apart because they have personalities.
3. Include space cowboys.
4. If your characters have no personalities, but some of them have beards, do not make those characters shave their beards. Then we really can’t tell them apart.
5. If you are going to feature some character who has gone mad and lost his humanity and basically become Reaver-ish, you should include some explanation for why he’s been able to survive for six and a half years without skin. We’d be willing to accept that staring at the sun makes people supernatural if you actually pursued this as a theme, rather than using a mysteriously invulnerable character as a plot device to add conflict when oxygen-deprivation, possible failure, and certain death are not enough.
6. If you decide to use oxygen-deprivation as a major plot point, then do not then have your characters fight inside a huge bomb that appears to be pressurized. People do not usually need to breathe inside bombs.
7. If you’re going to have all your characters eat with chopsticks, couldn’t you just go ahead and make them space cowboys who swear in Chinese?
8. Give us some decent dialogue.
9. Did I mention space cowboys? Or at least space rhinos?
10. No cheesy Apollo 13 “hero music,” please.
February 21st, 2008
Because it’s good, even if it does not include a sung version of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” (from the original Broadway show, quoted above).
How pleased I was yesterday when Johnny Depp received a Best Leading Actor Oscar nomination yesterday for Sweeney Todd. He does extremely well in his first singing role, and if his voice isn’t exactly pleasant to listen to—well, that’s how it should be. Speaking of which, the classical music critic for the New York Times has written an article saying that opera singers could learn a lot from Depp’s portrayal of Todd—specifically, they could learn how to act and to invest the words they sing with meaning. I get his point, and I think Depp’s acting/singing here is indeed to be commended, but I’m surprised that the critic doesn’t seem to consider that Depp is singing Sondheim. Sondheim, who has been parodied in a number called “Into the Words.” His melodies exist for the cleverness of the words, while opera . . . well, let’s just say I’ve never run across a particularly thought-inspiring operatic line in any language.
Speaking of music, I had a hard time pinning down exactly what I liked so much about Tim Burton’s film until I heard an interview with Stephen Sondheim. Yeah, I know people like Tim Burton for his visual creations, but, as I mention from time to time, I’m woefully inadequate at noticing stuff like “Art Direction” (for which Sweeney received another Oscar nomination). But Sondheim hit the nail on the head when he said, “He’s very musical, and he’s filmed it to the music. . . . He is responding visually to what he hears aurally. You can see it in the rhythm, the way the camera glides, the way it moves, the choice of angles. It just goes—forgive me—straight for the jugular.”
Yes! That’s it! And that’s what someone like me, who’s much more tuned in to the aural than to the visual, can appreciate. I’m not sure how much of that is due to the cinematographer and how much is due to Burton, but it works. Now that I think about it, that sense of phrasing in the camera work may actually be what has been missing from so many recent film adaptations of stage musicals.
I know many people will probably be asking (as I was before going to see it), “So just how violent is it?” Well, it’s a classic revenge tragedy, so there’s lots of death and blood. You do see many throats slit on screen, but the way it’s filmed made us cringe and look away and then giggle, as opposed to, say, cringing and looking away and being traumatized for the rest of our lives. If you’re an optimist about human nature, you probably won’t want to see it. I think this is the sort of film that makes my latent Calvinist come out, though, like when Todd sings, “We all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett, even I.” Plus, as a vegetarian, I find the theme of cannibalism amusing.
My one problem with the movie is that we don’t get observers to the revenge-tableau at the end. You know, like in Hamlet, where Horatio, the one sort of normal person in the play, comes in and observes all the dead bodies on the ground and shakes his head and clucks but somehow lets the audience know that things will be a little more peaceful now? Well, we didn’t get that in Sweeney Todd, even though there were characters perfectly well suited to filling that role—and Wikipedia tells me that these characters do come in and observe the carnage at the end of the stage play. So why did Burton leave it out? It left me with a sense of incompleteness. I can understand wanting to disrupt the genre conventions a little bit, but why observe them faithfully throughout the movie and then chuck them out the window at the end?
Anyway, that’s a fairly minor gripe, but because it’s at the end, it did affect the movie’s aftertaste for me. Here’s the bottom line: if you too have an inner Calvinist that doesn’t get out much, then, by all means, treat it to a day at the movies with Sweeney Todd!
January 23rd, 2008
There was a lot of flack over the casting of John Travolta as Edna Turnblad in the recent remake of Hairspray (well, “remake” in the sense that it’s the film version of a stage musical based on a 1988 movie) because the role has traditionally gone to a gay man, but I don’t understand why there hasn’t been any sort of large-scale complaint about the treatment of race issues in the movie. The 2007 Hairspray is, at best, naively ignorant and, at worst, racist—and, in all cases, something to be ashamed of.
(Note: I’ve never seen the 1988 movie or the stage musical, so my comments here are entirely based on the 2007 movie.)
Did you even know that Hairspray dealt with race? Chances are, you didn’t, because Queen Latifah is the only one, of the many African American actors in the film, to receive top billing. In a movie that, half an hour in, pompously proclaims to be about integration, that’s a problem. The movie subsequently forgets its announced subject matter to focus on John Travolta in a fatsuit, Michelle Pfeiffer as a rather boring villain, and, of course, Zac Efron singing and dancing as a teen heartthrob. In other words, though set in 1962, the movie is a pretty realistic portrayal of 2007—including our willed ignorance of the continuing reality of racism.
Hairspray centers around the character of Tracy Turnblad, a plump, white Baltimore teen who wants nothing more than to sing and dance on The Corny Collins Show (think The Mickey Mouse Club, only with more early rock music). When she meets that goal, she nobly decides that her next step is to “make every day Negro Day”—because, you see, the daily Corny Collins Show devotes one day of every week to music popular with African American teens. Tracy actually makes her first black friends when she is sent to detention—because where else would young black people be? (The movie could have made this acceptable by somehow indicating that the African American students are unfairly represented in detention because of the racism of white administrators, but, no—it seems they’re just the only people in detention because that’s where fun-lovin’ black people belong.)
After a long, long time and no content at all related to race relations, for some reason there’s suddenly a protest march to integrate The Corny Collins Show—which would indeed be a good goal, if the movie or its characters actually cared about it. Mostly, the protest march just gives Queen Latifah to sing a solo number. And then, when they reach the television station, Tracy, who has been marching along with the African American characters, accidentally taps a policeman on the back of the head with her protest sign. He promptly tries to arrest her for assaulting a police officer, and she RUNS AWAY. Hello? Isn’t getting arrested the whole point of a protest march?
It would be one thing if Tracy had to face the consequences of her cowardice, but the movie doesn’t even recognize her actions as cowardice. Nope, it’s necessary self-preservation so that she can compete in the Miss Teenage Hairspray pageant. Meanwhile, all the black protestors get arrested. True, Tracy’s father does bail them all out (if that’s not white noblesse oblige, then what is?).
The most egregious moment in the film is when Tracy, still on the lam from the law, shows up at Motormouth Maybelle’s (Queen Latifah’s) house to hide, and Maybelle, all smiles, says, “Why wouldn’t we help her out, after all she’s done for us?” ALL SHE’S DONE FOR YOU? Excuse me? Thank you, white screenwriters. Whoever wrote that line, I hope you never get a raise and have to keep picketing for the rest of your life. Just you. Even if you’re John Waters.
And those are just the film’s moral problems. I haven’t even started in on its aesthetic failures, from the director’s apparent lack of knowledge of how to film a dance number, to John Travolta’s fat-costume, which renders his face immobile.
To return to the main issue, though, I think one of the film’s biggest problems is that it treats all forms of prejudice as equal. “Fat, black, gay—we ought to accept and celebrate all ‘different’ people!” proclaims the film cheerily. And I’m not here to say feeling prejudice against overweight people is any less bad than feeling prejudice against African Americans. As feelings, all prejudices may indeed be created equal—but in historical reality, there are significant differences between oppression of African Americans and oppression of fat people. I don’t recall reading about lynchings of overweight people anywhere in my American history textbook. To somehow equate the experience of the overweight and the experience of African Americans is offensive. And stupid.
So, in conclusion, I hereby dub Hairspray the second-worst film of 2007, after 300. (Of course, that’s just among the films I’ve seen, and I have no intention of seeing Norbit or Alvin and the Chipmunks.) No musical has ever made me this grumpy. If it wins any Golden Globes tomorrow, I’m expatriating. Oh, wait–the Golden Globes are given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press, so that won’t help. Rats.
January 12th, 2008
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