I do not particularly like Charlize Theron. I do not like Diablo Cody. I did not like Juno -- it was facile and crass. I did not like Up in the Air -- it was facile and sentimental. I still have not seen Thank You for Smoking, and that is alright by me.
I remember the ads for Juno upon its release. They made a big deal about how similar it was to Little Miss Sunshine, probably some of the same producers were involved.
Little Miss Sunshine was a true black comedy. Black as tar, as my friend Nick C says. They stole a corpse and stuffed it in the back of a VW van!
Young Adult will not end, or even contain, anything that twisted, or profane, or mean as that.
(And, note to Hollywood: Please fucking stop using Bowie's brill Queen Bitch for your trailers. Wes Anderson kicked your ass on this one. Give him his due and move on.)
I am saying it here now, and loudly: Jason Reitman is a safe, sentimental, backlash film maker, who should be saving his breath for working in a time like ours.
Hell, even the goody-goody, dopey reactionary Capra at least made you feel something, watching his corny films.
You want comedy, with great performers, go see Polanski's Carnage, instead.
As for Reitman's slice of burnt apple pie, this reviewer will pass.
AH
UPDATE, 12/9/11:
Ugh, apparently the "theme" song for Young Adult is Teenage Fanclub's The Concept, one of my all-time fave tracks. It is similar to how I felt when I heard all of my favorite Supertramp songs in Magnolia.
A.O. Scott and Mick LaSalle leeerved Young Adult, by the way.
In other movie news, Manohla Dargis has a splendidly written review of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy today on the NYT Arts & Leisure cover page. Now, there's another movie I would rather see than Young Adult. Benedict Cumberbatch gets second billing! What a coup!
What it would have been like to go to a pub with Ken Russell, Oliver Reed, Alan Bates, and Glenda Jackson. Say, back in 1970. Perhaps they were all celebrating Women in Love and Jackson's Oscar? Or, maybe, it was someone's birthday?
Ms Jackson is an MP now. Did you know that? I did not.
I imagine much drink would be involved: first growths, ales, Scotch, etc, ... And I imagine the conversation would be fantastic: The Old Vic; Sir Larry; Pinter; Finney; The "New" National Theatre; those old "pooftas" Gielgud, Orton, and Lindsay Anderson (and maybe Bates might have bristled here, or, perhaps, his friends all knew and did not care); Shakespeare; Lear; Othello; Richard III; D.H. Lawrence; Keats; Shelley; Byron; John Dunne; Blake; The Who; Swinging London; Beatle Wigs ("They're buying Beatle Wigs in Woolworth's, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind [the 60s] is over, man." h/t Withnail and I); The Profumo Affair; The Suez Crisis; Vietnam; Tom Courtenay; Julie Christie (they probably hated her); Schlesinger; Midnight Cowboy; Kubrick; Sellers; Oliver's Uncle, Sir Carol Reed; and on and on in to the night.
Of course, Reed would probably have left the group two or three times to fuck a pretty lady in the loo.
It would all end up in a fistfight, arguing over who was the best Lear ever, or, some silly quotidian detail of D.H. Lawrence's novels (or criticism.)
Eventually, Tom Courtenay -- who arrived late -- and I would trundle "the lads" -- Ms Jackson browned off hours ago -- in to a London taxi, as they sang "Jerusalem" or "Sing As You Go" at the top of their lungs.
"You see, dear boy," Courtenay would say to me, "They simply cannot help themselves. They're artistes, you know? Let's see if we can grab a pint before they call, 'Time'."
************
There is something to be said for the passionate, yet, uneven, artist. I know that, personally, I like a fair amount of them. Kubrick comes to mind, Nic Roeg, Thomas Pynchon, ...
In fact, Pynchon can go two hundred mind numbing pages before changing your life in an episode, or a paragraph.
Russell was certainly passionate, and he was horribly uneven, sometimes in a single film. Yet, no one, no one, translated Lawrence to film better than him. Sadly, no one really even tries nowadays. Of course, this is currently not an era where folks are reaching for Lawrence novels, or Keats, or Shelley. (If we are looking for Classic Novels, it is the gentle comic novels of Jane Austen or gloomy "bodice-ripping" Bronte sisters we seem to covet in film.)
Russell was born Out of Time. He was a hopeless Romantic during an age of Vietnam, Watergate, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Disco, the money-mad 80s, and, eventually Reality Television. Plus, he had a temper, and was ever so passionate about his art, which does not play well with movie studio types, at all.
Look at his career! He was constantly feuding with the movie brass over sexual content, movie titles, publicity campaigns, running lengths, what have you. In fact, I am amazed he made as many films as he did.
In what many consider Russell's best film, Altered States, he feuded with Hollywood legend, screenwriter, Paddy Chayefski. Well, for Hollywood, that truly was the last straw.
I am v glad that he returned to England and made films like Gothic and Lair of the White Worm, two of my personal faves, uneven and/or messy as they are. And even in the Gordon Gekko go-go Wall Street America of that time, those films resonated with American audiences, and were art-house hits.
I saw Gothic with friends at the University of Texas Union Theater in its' first release. We talked about it for hours afterward. Even then, at that young age, I could recognize the films' faults, but there are to this day, still, moments that stay with me. But, more importantly, Gothic clued me in to an amazing, different world, where poetry could unseat Kings; where art was the true path to Spirituality (or Damnation); and where intelligence and imagination are not things to be cursed.
Still, to me, Women in Love, is his finest film. And that is what, hopefully, I will be curling up with tonight.
Passion is a virtue, not a curse.
There is truly something to be said for the difficult, brilliant artist. Sometimes it is those who flail, fight, and fail the loudest that ultimately, we think of the longest, even if their failures might outweigh their successes.
One paragraph might change the world. Or one moment in a darkened cinema.
RIP, Ken Russell. We are desperate for more passionate film makers today.
To start watching The Hour on BBC America. First, because, after reading a review in the SF Chron, it seemed The Hour was another Mad Men rip-off like Pan-Am and however many others there are. And, second, because I would have to watch the program with commercials, which I simply cannot abide these days. We tend to dvr everything in this house, just so we can skip the ads. (Love you RedZone! No commercials ever!)
Abi Morgan. Yeah, how about a photograph of the writer once in a while?
But David Thomson wrote some nice things about it in his blog for The New Republic and mentioned how you can see it commercial-free onDemand with Xfinity (Comcast.) (Thomson spelled Xfinity wrong, by the way. He spelled it Exfinity. But, is not that cute? Thomson lives in the City and we have the same cable provider.) So, I watched the first three episodes of Season One last night.
(Sigh, and audible grin.) It is great, of course. Here is the amazing British cast, many of them big favorites of mine: Dominic West (McNutty in The Wire, barely in Chicago); Ben Whishaw (I'm Not There); Romola Garai; Juliet Stevenson (so many things: Drowning by Numbers, Truly Madly Deeply, Inspector Lewis, A Place of Execution, Miss Marple, Bend It Like Beckham, When Did You Last See Your Father, etc, ... ); Burn Gorman (fantastic in Bleak House); Anna Chancellor (Miss Marple, Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis!); Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones and The Devil's Double); and Julian Rhind-Tutt (Poirot, Miss Marple, and AbFab). Plus, The Hour is part of the BBC America Dramaville Series, so each episode is hosted and introduced by Idris Elba ("Stringer" Bell in The Wire, The Office, 28 Weeks Later, Law and Order, and AbFab.)
It is similar to Mad Men in style, with plenty of red lipstick and nylons for everyone! There is not as much sex as in Mad Men, though, and The Hour is told in a much more traditional, theatrical storytelling type of way. The show is about a newsmagazine program, complete with a love triangle that features a woman producer, a privileged dense anchor, and a slightly unhinged journalist. So, there is the Broadcast News similarity, as well.
The performances are great. Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai are the real stand outs here. And it looks great, shot in a louche candlelit sort of a way, plus the script is chock full of fabulous dialogue, written by Abi Morgan (Ms Morgan is also a playwright, but she has two movie scripts coming out next month, Shame -- cowritten with the director, Steve McQueen -- and The Iron Lady. So we'll be hearing a lot more about Ms Morgan very soon.) The whole thing is a fabulous fun entertainment and much more my cup of tea than Mad Men. But that is probably just me.
You should definitely check it out. The Wife and I will finish Season One tonight with a big bowl of popcorn.
About what is now one of my all-time fave films, a film I saw for the first time ever, just a few days ago, A propos de Nice, I would like to give you a few quotes from the filmmaker, Jean Vigo, to wit:
Shame on those who, during their puberty, murdered the person they might have become.
Or, re his film, A propos de Nice:
[The film presents] the last gasp of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution.
And on the true aim of the Social Documentary:
The aim of the social documentary is achieved when it suceeds in revealing the hidden meaning of a gesture, when it shows up the hidden beauty or the grotesqueness of an ordinary-looking individual. The social documentary must lay bare the mechanism of society by showing it to us in its purely physical manifestations. And it must do this so forcefully that the world we once looked at with such indifference now appears to us in its essence, stripped of its falsehoods. The social documentary must rip the blinkers from our eyes.
And finally:
The fellow who makes a social documentary clearly states his personal point of view and commits himself one way or another.
At least one of the quotes is from an address Vigo gave upon the second screening of A propos de Nice, in Paris, June 1930. But according to his collaborator and photographer, Boris Kaufman, they had seen Un chien andalou for the first time just the night before. Apparently, Vigo was so enthralled with Bunuel and Dali's masterpiece so much, that he barely spoke about his own masterpiece that day.
(By the way, after Vigo's death, Kaufman eventually went to Hollywood and photographed some of Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet's films, winning an Oscar for On the Waterfront. He also shot Baby Doll, 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Splendor in the Grass, The World of Henry Orient, Long Day's Journey in to Night, and many others.)
A propos de Nice is a gently satirical, slightly surreal documentary of the bourgeoisie in Nice, France. It is about twenty-five minutes long. It is bursting with energy, poetic, and breathtaking all in one sweep.
The film is over eighty years old now and if, perhaps, some of the Revolutionary Fervor has been lost in time's translation, none of the magic or lyricism or joy has dimmed, at all.
It is a profound, whirlwind of a debut, and one of only four films Vigo made. Vigo died of tuberculosis in 1934. He was twenty-nine years old.
Fantastic hair!
A propos de Nice is absolutely essential viewing, as are his other three films, Taris (a film about a French olympic swimming champion), Zero de Conduite (a subversive, and ultimately banned in France until after WW2, film about a boarding school rebellion), and his "sell-out" feature-length masterpiece, L'Atalante.
Criterion has grouped all these together in a wonderful blu ray package, full of fantastic essays, commentaries, and featurettes, The Complete Jean Vigo. Crucial for any true cineaste.
Obsessed with Black Fridays, Cyber Mondays, and the elusive Super Deal, including things like Two Dollar Wine.
Those that could do otherwise prefer to stuff their cash 'neath the proverbial mattress.
Whilst many without behave like Dickens' Micawber, foolishly believing our gamed System will reward them their Jackpot any moment now. This "Inevitability", along with a Cultural Divide on Icky, nearly deceased Social Issues, prevents these many from voting in their best economic interests time and time again.
It is a Vicious Circle. And it is one that affects not just us as a nation but the whole world.
Other than the fact the whole frickin world is gonna end, there are are a ton of amazing things that are going to happen in 2012.
Like, for instance, Renee and I have been invited to the Frog's Leap Leap Day Party for the first time evah! Woo-hoo! It will be at the winery's Red Barn, w/ bands, and food, and Frog's Leap eau de vie, and the "Rutherford Girls" constantly pouring us Rutherford Cab from Magnums. Woo-hoo, I sed!
Plus, there is some silly election happening in November, wherein, we need to show up, kick the Teabaggers out of the House, and re-elect that Muslin Kenyan Commie, Barack Obama.
Then, there is the London Summer Olympics. Hullo, Louisa Necib!
And, of course, the Texas Rangers will endeavor to win their third straight American League pennant.
But all of those things pale in comparison to the truly, big, earth-shattering event of 2012, the Sight and Sound Greatest Films poll, which happens once every ten years.
Here are the results from the most recent, 2002 poll. Vertigo? Really? I guess it is just me. I can not stand that film, and I love Hitchcock.
Anyhoo, the Sight and Sound poll will probably be released in the Fall of 2012.
But I am enlisting you, all of my dearest friends and family to do a poll of our own! Soon, you will receive a ballot with all the necessary instructions (most of you will receive ballots through a facebook message, the rest through personal ballots, hand delivered.)
Your job is to list, from one through ten, the ten greatest films ever made, in your opinion.
It is that simple.
The ballot must be back to me by January 31, 2012. So, you have seventy days, or so, to ruminate o'er your list.
I will publish, on this fauxluxe blog, the poll results, along w/ the Wife and I's personal ballots, on February 29, 2012. I will also publish other ballots that I find interesting or special. If you do not wish me to publish your ballot, please tell me.
There are a number of other rules I would like to spell out, to wit:
Just like Sight and Sound do, The first two Godfather films are to be treated as ONE FILM. The third Godfather film is a completely separate entity.
TheStar Wars films, all six of them, should be treated as six separate films. I am going to be very very strict about this, and your ballot could be thrown out if you do not comply.
Just as David Thomson does, The Lord of the Rings films, all three of them, should be treated as ONE FILM, an eleven and a half hour epic, if you will.
If you send in a ballot that contains an alphabetical list, or an unranked list (which is perfectly acceptable), those films will all receive an EQUAL RATING, e.g. If your ballot contains ten films with no ranking, each film will receive five and a half points. There are 55 points up for grabs in a ten ballot ranking, which brings me to:
The poll will be just like the Sight and Sound Poll is, or the AP college sports poll, to wit, in this instance, the first place film will receive ten points; the second, nine; the third, eight; the fourth, seven; and so on, etc, ...
If you produce a ballot that has fewer than ten films and is ranked, your number one film will be still worth ten points; the second worth nine; and so on, etc, ...
If you produce an UNRANKED or ALPHABETICAL ballot with less than ten films (which is perfectly acceptable), the films will all receive equal points, relative to the amount of points available on your ballot. For instance, Donna Lewis Spitler sends me a ballot of five films in alphabetical, unranked order. There are forty points available on this ballot, each film will receive eight points, the average of five films and forty points.
Once again, you have until January 31 to send me your ballot, one way or the other. I will not accept any ballots, period, full stop, after that date, no matter how much I love you.
If you are reading this blog post and did not receive a ballot through facebook or in person, just make a list for me personally, or send me a message through facebook.
Poop last night on the teevee, turn off our minds and float downstream. (Sort of, no drugs were involved other than 2006 Grgich Hills Merlot. Gosh, it is so good, and Biodynamic!)
And man, did Renee find some good poop!
I am loathe (embarrassed) to tell you the name of the film we watched, but you will prob figure it out, anyway.
It features a brunette, lantern-jawed girlfriend who always wears broad-shouldered button down shirts, jeans and big belts. The only time we see her in a skirt (and it is an awful green floor length thing, which she pairs with a huge, corduroy sweater on top) is her big intimate night with her co-worker, otherwise known as our
Hero, who wears glasses. So, that we know he is v smart, and a journalist for a big-time, muckraking magazine. The brunette girlfriend is a photographer for the same magazine.
Our villain is blonde, natch, lives next door to the journalist, and loves to lounge around in a bikini right beneath our hard-working hero's office window. The villain loves horses, too, and Wuthering Heights, and is v bright, and knows a lot about insects, espec wasps.
The film references Lolita, Fatal Attraction, and, most bizarrely, Strangers on a Train.
The script is awful, the performances are all awful, the score is awful, the whole movie is a complete train wreck.
Have you figured it out, yet?
But it was good fun. We watched Woody Allen's Manhattan after that, and fell asleep to Whit Stillman's Barcelona.
************
And speaking of bad films, I finally saw The Devil's Double. And it is terrible. And unintentionally campy, to boot. What is it with films about "twins"? Why do they so often end up so campy? Dead Ringers really comes to mind. Dead Ringers is a great film, though. The Devil's Double is not even good.
I love Dominic Cooper. He is one of my favorite young actors, and I am sure he relished the juicy tour de force part. And he turns a good, ironic, winking performance out here. The problem is the subject matter; the script; the insane and silly violence; the ridiculous love story; the crappy, strange sex scene (with a sleepwalking Ludivine Sagnier -- another of my personal faves! Ugh!); and the glamourous, glossy, golden lighting; and, oh, just about a dozen more things.
Oh well. Maybe the Wife and I will need to watch some poop right before Thanksgiving 2029 and will stumble upon The Devil's Double?! That will be cool.
************
Finally, some random wine notes in movies:
Hey, Nick C! During the Woody Allen documentary they showed the great Mira Sorvino scene, explaining how she became a porn star, "I liked acting. I wanted to study," she says. The scene with Woody takes place at a restaurant and they are drinking Chappellet Signature Cab! I could not tell the vintage, though. Mighty Aphrodite was released in 1995.
Second, I was watching another mid-nineties movie, Naked, which is set in London, and one of the characters strictly drinks Yellow Label throughout the entire film. I noticed that the label is actually Yellow, not orange, like it is today.
Now, does England or Europe only get Yellow Labels and the US gets orange? Or, did they change the Yellow Label to orange after this film was made? What gives?
Still like the wine, though. Do not care whether it is orange or yellow or whatevah.
Mwah, ...
PS Big, fun movie news coming up on fauxluxe shortly, so, stay tuned.
Woody Allen, a Documentary, immensely, even if it is, basically, a film version of Eric Lax's (Lax is also one of the "witnesses") glowing, sanitized authorized biography of Mr Allen.
I did not want a hatchet job, but more objectivity would be appreciated, and, I imagine, will eventually come down the pipeline in the future.
"I need the eggs"
And, I guess, we will never see the "rest" of Annie Hall, particularly, the Allen as a New York Knick fantasy sequence, until after Allen's death.
In fact, it will be interesting to see, if Allen's estate will let commentaries, deleted scenes, and other feature-ettes be part of Allen's blu rays in the future. I hope so. He (and his audience) deserve them, even if Allen finds them abominable. (Though, part of me, likes that Allen lets the films stand on their own in dvd form. I am v torn.)
I wish they would have told the Marshall McLuhan story; Allen wanted someone else and was furious and pouted for ages, even when McLuhan was on the set. He need not have worried, obv, because the scene is American film history now, and insanely funny, and perfect.
But I did like that they highlighted Pauline Kael's famous last quote from her review of Stardust Memories (a sadly prophetic film about celebrity -- John Lennon was murdered by an adoring fan just after its' release -- that I rather enjoy, despite its' bleakness):
If Woody Allen finds success very upsetting and wishes the public would go away, this picture should help him stop worrying.
David Thomson does not like Allen's films much, either, (though Thomson seems to have softened his attitude towards Allen in his latest installment of his Biographical Dictionary of Film) and John Simon hated Woody.
As much as I respect Kael and Thomson, (John Simon was a douche and was constantly getting exposed in Review of Reviewers in Spy Magazine) they are both wrong. Woody Allen is one of the greatest American film makers, period, full stop.
So, I get home, and Oregon is getting waxed by USC. Stanford lost. Oklahoma St lost (gosh, I feel bad for them.) And the Sooners are in a dogfight with Baylor. (I cannot watch this game, I am following it on what our family calls, "tap tap" i.e. the computer.
Really? This is what the College Football Gods want? A rematch of the "Game of the Century", the most boring college football game evah, or to see LSU obliterate the Sooners for the Title?
For the record, there are no College Football Gods. There are baseball Gods, however, and they are capricious, vengeful bastards, that often reward the nastiest of folks.
-Ardent
PS: I'll keep you posted.
AH
UPDATE: Sooners trail by one touchdown late in the third (I am not too concerned, yet.) I am more concerned that the Ducks are creeping closer to the (hated) Trojans. Ick. (It is like rooting for the Yankees.)
More soon.
UPDATE x 2: The world is returning to normal. Sooners really in a hole now. Oregon has a chance to tie or win, late in 4th.
Final update, prob v soon.
UPDATE x 3: Oregon loses. The Sooners are within one TD. Less than six minutes left. Is there some Sooner Magic available?
When I was convinced that the Talking Heads' record, Little Creatures, was a simply smashing masterpiece. Sure, Little Creatures, as great as it was, was not as good as other Talking Heads records, such as Talking Heads: 77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, or Remain in Light. (For whatever reason, Stop Making Sense and Speaking in Tongues did not do much for me then -- and I have never owned, to this day, The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, which sounds quite good to me now.) But Little Creatures, with its' quirky, v American pop obliques, like, And She Was and The Lady Don't Mind; and the countryfied Creatures of Love; and the new baby staple, Stay Up Late; and of course the faux gospel blind alley that is Road to Nowhere (which I desperately wanted to love back then, and pretended to, but which I have never liked, at all), all fit v snugly in to my (v white, suburban) twelfth grade/now I am going to college aesthetic. Heck, it made perfect sense to me when after the release of Little Creatures, Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed Talking Heads the best American band today.
The 80s were interesting, for sure.
Listening to Little Creatures now (it is one of the Wife's fave records) I have to wince. The album, certainly no masterpiece, has not aged poorly. It is just not v good, really. The performances are stale, lacking verve or excitement and the "church" inflections of David Byrne on Road to Nowhere are embarrassing. The subject of Television Man was already tired, even then, plus, like many even great Heads albums there is a substantial amount of filler, which I will not even get in to here, today.
I understand that the group wanted to ditch the ever growing number of extra members at the time, that the group wanted to be a true four piece, like they were in the old days, that made an American album, that would not rely on the old Brian Eno treatments, or Funkadelic sounds. And it is a direction they pursued again with their abysmal follow-up, True Stories, which was tied in to a terrible film of the same name that David Byrne directed. (David Byrne, Time Magazine Renaissance Man, indeed!)
Chris and Tina's names were solidly on all three of these projects. They were a band, after all, a very good band, but in retrospect, I find it difficult, indeed, to see them as excited or enthusiastic about the direction the band was moving in at this time. Chris and Tina were passionate about freeing people's asses and then their minds. Chris and Tina also were in to exploring the outer space laid bare by artists like Funkadelic, Sun Ra, Bootsy Collins, and James Brown. Byrne seemed in love with his headlines and himself.
(Plus, it prob did not help Chris and Tina's case that The Tom Tom Club was so crucial, cultish, and popular in New York -- and other parts of the US.)
The band was DOA by the time Byrne had discovered "world music" and had dumped Naked on to the market, another album with a few good tracks, that absolutely falls off the edge of the planet by the end.
************
For the longest time, I felt the best Talking Heads album was More Songs About Buildings and Food, a record that seamlessly blends their special brand of geek with Soul music. Everyone in print kept telling me Remain in Light was their best record. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now. The first side and the first track of side two, Once in a Lifetime, are savvy, sassy, danceable, evocative treasures. But I cannot call any album that includes abominations like Seen and Not Seen, Listening Wind, and The Overload, seminal or crucial, at all.
I still like Talking Heads. A lot. But the album I reach for the most today is Fear of Music. I also really like Speaking in Tongues. Talking Heads: 77 does not do much for me today, though, I will always like Don't Worry About the Government (it might be an idiosyncratic thing: I remember coming back from a debate tournament, piled in to a van with lots of kids, me singing the song out loud, whilst listening to it on my Walkman. It was a v beautiful moment.) More Songs sounds just as good today as it did in 1986.
I made myself an "Ultimate Heads" cd. It is in chronological order. The last track is This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), which to this writer might be their best track. (Though, Life During Wartime is pretty damn good, too.)
This is a photo of the Amazing Ms Warren on her Wedding Day.
Rove's Crossroads Group and the Randite Peanut Gallery (incl my fave knuckle head, Ron Paul) will keep throwing bombs, portraying Ms Warren as Che Guevara, while Scotty boy is going to have to tack hard left (well, for a silly Republican, anyway.)
Ms Warren is not going to screw this up like Coakley did. She is going to stay on message and trounce Scotty, for sure.
The Skin I Live In (or: La piel que habito, if you will.) And I am interested in seeing that, for sure, but I also worried a bit, that perhaps Renee might not like the film, as it is very arty, very weird, spooky, long, and was foreign.
(Renee def likes foreign films, though, not so much at home, where it is a pain for her to read the subtitles.)
And this was planned for our Date Night, last Sunday, a couple of days ago, before we would have dinner at A16. (Ho ho ho, Renee's Da laughed, You guys are married now, you do not get to go on dates anymore.)
(I went on a first date w/ someone in Austin, a million years ago, and we saw Barton Fink! Ugh! And once, before that date, I went on a first date w/ someone in Austin, a million years ago, and we saw Blue Velvet! Eek! Needless to say, those relationships did not really take off, if you will, though I am still long-distance friends w/ one of the someones.)
I told the Wife my misgivings and asked her to think about it.
So, late Saturday night, Renee has another suggestion: Playing at the same theater (the Landmark Embarcadero, our fave art-house cinema), Renee now wants to see ... wait for it ... Melancholia, dir by Lars von Trier. Hoo-boy.
I am agreeing w/ her Saturday night but am desperate Sunday morning to see if anything else is out there. Drive is showing in The City, but at only one theater, at one time, nine twenty PM. So, that is a no-go. I do notice that Midnight in Paris is still playing in The City, and tell the Wife that Midnight in Paris is Woody Allen's highest grossing film of all-time, Can you believe that? The Wife says it is just b/c Owen Wilson is in it. We both loved the film but we do not want to see it again on our Date Night. Things are looking grim. I am preparing myself for Kirsten Dunst, rogue planets named after Freudian terms, Kiefer, and crazy depressing Lars.
(For what it is worth, my buddy, Nick C, went and saw Melancholia w/ his Special Lady Friend, and they both loved it.)
But I am saved! Hooray! Also at the Landmark Opera theater (where Midnight in Paris is playing) is what sounds like a delightful, heart-warming French film, The Women on the 6th Floor.
Renee is reluctant, still. I read her Mick LaSalle's glowing review. She remains wary. I remind her how much she hated Charlotte Gainsbourg in The Cement Garden. She does not remember seeing The Cement Garden. I emphasize to her,how it would be better to see an uplifting movie on our Date Night, and she finally caves. We move the reservation at A16 back a half-hour, and we are set.
************
The Women on the 6th Floor is delightful. Renee loves the movie (especially the cool, early 60s period brocaded, textured gowns -- Renee is really in to costumes and Art Design now in regard to films) and so do I. It is a little sappy at the end, they hold the last shot waaaaay too long, but it is the perfect apertif for our dinner at A16. (And yeah, I know I am talking about a French film -- about Spanish maids -- and an Italian restaurant. So sue me.)
It was a splendid Date Night, certainly.
(And I had a cracked egg on my pizza for the first time, evah.)
A few years ago, I was talking with one of my Wine Reps.
He is a fantastic guy, Italian-American, and works, natch, for an Italian import business. I always see him on Wednesdays, and we always talk way more about sports than we do about wine. Just a couple of days ago we talked about baseball rumors: He'd heard the A's (he is a massive A's fan) were interested in unloading Gio Gonzalez to the Red Sox for prospects. (Which would be an absolute travesty, and I believe, really bring out the torches and pitchforks up here in beautiful Oaktown.) And I had heard that the Rangers were interested in acquiring A's free-agent, Josh Willingham. (Which is a brill move, cause then we could trade Murphy for bullpen help, yada yada yada.) We also talked about the Paterno situation and we were in complete agreement about that whole thing.
One of the greatest Option Quarterbacks of all-time, Steve Davis.
Anyhoo, a few years ago, when Julian and I were talking about sports we were talking about Tedford, Cal football, the stadium upgrade, the protesters in the trees, and Big Time College Football. Julian might have thought I had some unusual things to say about all that, espec me being such a huge Sooner fan, and all. But I feel even stronger today re my feelings towards Big Time College Football (and athletics.)
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My first true Sports Love (and the one I will prob never be able to kick) is Oklahoma Sooners football. I did not really have a choice in the matter, as at the time, the Sooners lived right across the street from me, literally. My most vivid early childhood memories are of me living on Jenkins Street, with Owen Field (where the Sooners play) right across the street. I lived in the shadow of the stadium. We used to sell parking spaces in our front yard. ($1! In the early seventies!) There is even, extant, although I cannot produce it for you at this moment, a photograph of me, a four or five year old child, holding up a sign that covers my entire body, revealing just my tiny blonde head, that says, "Parking $1".
My Mum and I moved a few years later. We were still in Norman, though. And that is when I first have memories of attending Sooner football games. That would be 1975, which was a magical year for the Sooners, culminating in their fifth National Title with a 14-6 victory over Michigan on New Year's Day, 1976. I saw that game on the teevee with my Grandma in Tulsa.
Above are some highlights from that game. (One of the best College Football names ever was playing for the Sooners, Elvis Peacock. And that is 'Niners great, Dwight Hicks getting beat by Tinker Owens on the long pass.)
I saw many Sooners home games that season. I saw them destroy the Oregon Ducks 62-7, and the next week, the Big Deal was Tony Dorsett was coming to town with his Pittsburgh Panthers. This is what we did to him: (The Sooners won 46-10.)
I listened to a good portion of the Sooners win over Miami (FL) at a Mexican restaurant in Norman with my folks. I also remember that people in Norman were grumbling that the game had been too close a contest (this was nearly ten years before the Hurricanes were good.) The Sooners were home the next week but I did not attend. I listened to the game on the radio in the front room of the v tiny house Mum and I lived in on Findlay St. It was a nail-biter that included some Sooner Magic (Luck.):
Next up for the Sooners was No. 19 Colorado, who brought a 3-0 record and the nation's No. 1 offense to Norman. The vaunted Sooner wishbone offense looked abysmal against the Buffaloes, and Oklahoma surrendered a 14-point lead in the second half. Colorado closed the gap to one point with just over a minute remaining in the contest on an eight-yard touchdown pass. And even though kicker Tom Mackenzie had missed two field goals earlier in the game, CU coach Bill Mallory opted not to go for the win with a two-point conversion. Mackenzie's game-tying attempt sailed wide again, and the Sooners held on for the 21-20 victory, though they were overtaken by Ohio State in the polls.
(h/t to soonersports.com for the recap.)
Texas was next. I was with my Grandparents at the Lake House my Gramps was building all by himself. There was no electricity to the main part of the house yet, so Grandma and I listened to the game on a transistor radio. The Sooners won 24-17.
For whatever reason I have no memory of the next three games, all victories. One of those games was at home versus the Cyclones of Iowa State, and it is entirely possible I was there (or not).
The next memory I have from that season was the debacle against Kansas. That was a home game and I could have attended that game and I desperately wanted to be there but my folks would not go. I spent that day at my "other", father's side, great-grandparent's house in Mustang, OK. I heard the whole fiasco unfold from a radio in one of the guest bedrooms, by myself. I do not remember crying but I probably did. The Sooners were booed off their field after losing 23-3. (More on this later.)
I do remember crying and carrying on for hours with my poor Mother, back in Norman, a couple of days after the loss to the Jayhawks, when I learned that the Sooners had fallen to #6 in the AP Poll. My Mother is a Saint. (Thanks, Mum, for putting up with all my "stuff".)
The next week real Sooner Magic happened up in Columbia, MO. I listened to the game on the radio in front room on Findlay St. And heard the immortal "Go Joe!" call just as you will hear here in the video below:
I remember jumping up and down ecstatically, so thrilled. Even at seven years old, I knew the Sooners' season was saved.
Next up was Nebraska. And we went to that game. My most clearest memory of that game was a punt return fumble by the Cornhuskers. (Which can be seen in the video below.) The 'Huskers turned the ball over six times that game and were routed by the Sooners, 35-10.
(I also remember being scared shitless, I was seven years old, mind you, by Herbie Husker, the Nebraska mascot. He is in the video, as well. Ugh, I still get shivers looking at that guy. They have softened him up enormously over the years.)
Still, if the Sooners were to be the first team to win back to back National Titles twice, the Sooners won the Title in 1955 and 1956, part of their still unbroken record of forty-seven straight wins (that is a whole other story, best recalled in Jim Dent's v fine book, The Undefeated,) they would need help on New Year's Day, 1976.
They got it. I watched the Rose Bowl with Grandma in Tulsa.
UCLA beat Archie Griffin, Woody Hayes, and Ohio St, 23-10, in what was to be Hayes' last appearance at the Rose Bowl.
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I am generally reluctant to provide links to newspapers and magazines because I am an old-school tree killer, who believes that great newspapers and magazines should be bought and read every day. It will be a v sad day when the print media goes completely digital, a day this Luddite will forever mourn.
But, this excellent article by Taylor Branch (if a bit lawyerly written) in the October 2011 The Atlantic magazine deserves to be read in full. I will talk about the gist of the lengthy essay, and may even provide some quotes, but if you are a serious fan of Big Time College Football, it is an absolute must-read from beginning to end.
I had forgotten (or, perhaps, never realized) that it was my v own beloved Sooners (and Georgia Bulldogs) that responded to the NCAA's threat of sanctions against the sixty-one Big Time Football schools that wanted to negotiate their own television contracts without the NCAA receiving and "sharing" the money as they saw fit, with an antitrust suit.
You love watching the Big 10 Network, the Longhorn Network, or over seventy-five college football games every weekend? Well, you can thank the Oklahoma Sooners. Because, although the Longhorns (and other schools) talked tough, and prob sent some v sternly worded letters to the NCAA, it was the Supreme Court decision re NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma in 1984that made all that possible.
Believe me, I do not necessarily believe, ultimately, that that was the right decision in the best interests of college athletics, or our nation's culture, in general. But the Supreme Court ruled correctly, despite its' possible effects on the future.
The sting the NCAA felt from the Regents decision was alleviated by the then burgeoning March Madness bonanza monster that now is the only real source of revenue the NCAA can claim. Still, after losing to the Sooners in court, the NCAA expanded their rule book exponentially, adding some of the absolutely idiotic rules that make feature headlines, or material for late-night comedians, i.e.,
NCAA officials have tried to assert their dominion—and distract attention from the larger issues—by chasing frantically after petty violations. Tom McMillen, a former member of the Knight Commission who was an All-American basketball player at the University of Maryland, likens these officials to traffic cops in a speed trap, who could flag down almost any passing motorist for prosecution in kangaroo court under a “maze of picayune rules.” The publicized cases have become convoluted soap operas. At the start of the 2010 football season, A. J. Green, a wide receiver at Georgia, confessed that he’d sold his own jersey from the Independence Bowl the year before, to raise cash for a spring-break vacation. The NCAA sentenced Green to a four-game suspension for violating his amateur status with the illicit profit generated by selling the shirt off his own back. While he served the suspension, the Georgia Bulldogs store continued legally selling replicas of Green’s No. 8 jersey for $39.95 and up.
Despite a Nation (and a sitting President) clamoring for a National College Football Playoff, it will not happen until a group of Universities, with one of them like the Sooners, willing to put their name on a lawsuit; or an act of Congress, before we see a March Madness-stylee Football Playoff.
Because that would be the first domino. Then, it is likely possible that the NCAA would lose March Madness, too.
But the colleges are so cowed and frightened of the consequences of a revolt that they stick by their ludicrous and vastly unpopular BCS system.
(Personally, I would rather they just go back to the old system, letting the AP vote for the National Champion, with the Major Conferences returning to their past Bowl tie-ins.)
More from Mr Branch,
Thus the playoff dreamed of and hankered for by millions of football fans haunts the NCAA. “There will be some kind of playoff in college football, and it will not be run by the NCAA,” says Todd Turner, a former athletic director in four conferences (Big East, ACC, SEC, and Pac-10). “If I’m at the NCAA, I have to worry that the playoff group can get basketball to break away, too.”
This danger helps explain why the NCAA steps gingerly in enforcements against powerful colleges. To alienate member colleges would be to jeopardize its own existence. Long gone are television bans and the “death penalty” sentences (commanding season-long shutdowns of offending teams) once meted out to Kentucky (1952), Southwestern Louisiana (1973), and Southern Methodist University (1987). Institutions receive mostly symbolic slaps nowadays. Real punishments fall heavily on players and on scapegoats like literacy tutors.
A deeper reason explains why, in its predicament, the NCAA has no recourse to any principle or law that can justify amateurism. There is no such thing. Scholars and sportswriters yearn for grand juries to ferret out every forbidden bauble that reaches a college athlete, but the NCAA’s ersatz courts can only masquerade as public authority. How could any statute impose amateur status on college athletes, or on anyone else? No legal definition of amateur exists, and any attempt to create one in enforceable law would expose its repulsive and unconstitutional nature—a bill of attainder, stripping from college athletes the rights of American citizenship.
The NCAA needs to be blown up for good. Its' legal term of art, its' sacred fall back position in every case, the "student athlete", needs to be exposed for having no honest legal status. The capricious and self-serving judgements it metes out against Universities, players, faculty, etc, ... (Just look back to last season, the whole Cam Newton debacle) should be ignored or rendered toothless.
And, we as a Nation of fans, graduates, students, citizens need to take a very long look in the mirror ourselves, and ask, "Are the way things now, and, yet, to only get worse, really in the best interests of the Universities, athletes, students, and common welfare of our Nation as a whole?" (Remember, this is coming from about the most die-hard Sooner football fan there is.)
Does anyone really believe that the Penn St scandal was swept under the rug because Paterno built a library?
One voice of sanity amidst a mob:
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My parents moved to the Bay Area a couple of years before I did. They have since moved hither and yon, traversing two continents, (and v smartly) spending near the whole Bush 43 Administration, living in Switzerland. I am still here.
Still living in Austin at the time, I went to spend Xmas and New Year's with my parents in Berkeley.
On New Year's Eve I listened to the Cal Bears play the Wyoming Cowboys in the Copper Bowl on the radio.
It was the first Bowl Appearance for Cal since 1979. The Bears finished the 1990 season with seven wins, four losses, and a draw, one of those victories a narrow win over Wyoming. Being a fanatical Sooner supporter, I cannot tell you how surprised I was listening to the post game interviews with players and coaches. Those kids were filled with such joy and humility. The Cal radio folks were legitimately proud of the team, the University, and the city of Berkeley. Growing up in Oklahoma, following the Sooners, this was something new and different I was experiencing, where the University's priorities were not completely out of synch re athletics and higher learning. It was, in a word, refreshing.
I can bloody well tell you, that when the Sooners (or Longhorns or USC or Notre Dame) finish a season with four losses and a narrow win in a v modest Bowl there is no joy in the locker room like that. As soon as the mics are turned off, the radio folks are most likely debating if the Head Coach or Athletic Director should be canned. Or how many coordinators will be let go.
And this college football junkie went right back to his junk the following night and watched with great relish, Notre Dame lose to Colorado in the Orange Bowl:
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And, finally, that is what I expressed to Julian a few years ago. Did Cal, under Jeff Tedford really want to become a Big Time College Football Institution? Did they really want to ruin their v pretty, modest little stadium, nestled in the Berkeley hills? Did they really want their campus overrun by unscrupulous boosters and predatory agents? Did they really want to slip in to bed with Corporations like Nike (who have retained their deal with Penn St, despite the recent scandal)? Did they truly want to become so competitive with schools like USC that players would be tempted to use steroids, hoping it could land them jobs in the NFL? Would they be willing to demolish regional rivalries, switching Conferences at a whim, in pursuit of Teevee Lucre? Did they want to establish, "A University the football team can be proud of"? (That is a very famous quote from OU President, George Lynn Cross, to the Oklahoma State Senate, but it applies to nearly all the Big Time College Football Schools.)
I might not have a choice. I will probably be a Sooner/Big Time College Football junkie the rest of my life.
And this is what Sooner junkies all too often look like: (The following quote is from Barry Switzer's book, Bootlegger's Boy, regarding that loss to Kansas in 1975 that I spoke of earlier.)
I was standing beside Steve Davis late in the game, and we heard the boos starting. Here was a kid who had quarterbacked at Oklahoma for three years and had never been beaten in twenty-nine games, and now some of the home fans were booing him. The clock was ticking down and it was inevitable that we were going to lose the ball game by twenty damn points, and nobody in the world hurt worse than Steve did. It was hard to believe that our fans would boo the whole bunch of us, who had had such success. I put my arm around Steve on the sideline and told him, "These people we hear are really insignificant. We can't let them influence us or anything we have to do. These people are just molecules in the universe."
It is remarkable how quickly it can change. How one incomprehensible and awful decision can ruin what otherwise was a stellar, wonderful career.
The end of the line.
The board of trustees absolutely did the right thing. There is no way that Joe Paterno should have been allowed to return to the sidelines for those last few games, and retire on his terms. Although, the graduate assistant should be canned, as well.
And the students are not covering themselves in glory right now, either. The terrible, tragic, criminal things that happened to those young boys should be the prime concern for everyone at Penn St right now, not their football team.
(I often watch a dvd of the Sooners winning their sixth National Title at the 1986 Orange Bowl versus Penn St. It will always be different now, seeing Sandusky and Paterno tread the sidelines.)
It is scalding hot here in my home. Soon I will report to work to do Quarter-End inventory. Ah, retail, ...
I propose a retail worker's holiday. This is necessary, due to the fact that Labor Day is not a retail holiday at all. I propose that all retail shops should be closed for two days, the first consecutive Monday & Tuesday of August.
Retail workers would host huge Summer parties, or head for quiet in the hills. Cyclists and pedestrians would own the streets. There would be music & mayhem & untrammeled joy. The notes proper begin now:
*** Couldn't say it any better than this: "Now that we have decided to not elect a woman president, we'll go back to judging potential first ladies by cookie recipes and wardrobe purchases." That was a letter to the SF Chronicle Opinion Page on July 2nd.
*** Finally got a chance to see Billy Liar, & was amazed to discover how much Ewan McGregor has "stolen" in terms of "style", mainly vocally, from Tom Courtenay. The film shows remarkable depth despite its, even then, shopworn "frustrated adolescent paralysis" themes. Plus, it is possible I would love anything Julie Christie is in.
*** The honeymoon is well over for me and Mr Olbermann. I can barely watch his show now. His Obama/FISA about-face was the last straw. I hope he will return to his Summer of 06 form as we get closer to the election. I am sure eventually all will be forgiven.
*** Mojo Magazine gave a rather tepid review to White Denim's import full-length, Workout Holiday. I don't think they have listened to the record enough times. (I know that's a facile, fan-ny thing to say, but it's true.) It is amazing how every time I listen to those songs, I hear something different or new. What seems a mess at first, opens up so marvelously, with depth, breadth, and power. I had completely given up on "indie" (whatever that is) music for good. They have lit a fire up my butt, for sure.
*** I miss Molly Ivins terribly.
*** Went back to Austin a few months ago, and fell in love all over again. Even the up-scale restaurants there are funky. We preferred Castle Hill to Wink. Everyone is still in a band, everything is open 24 hours, still. It was the perfect speed and mode of travel for life today.
*** I celebrated the 4th by curling up with the Criterion Dazed and Confused, "Remember what you're really celebrating: a bunch of white, slave-holding aristocrats who didn't want to pay their taxes."
*** Will the US ever reach a point where the people will finally decide that even a modest, fair tax burden would make life so much better for all its' citizens? Will it take a full-fledged depression again to see this happen? Meanwhile levees burst, bridges collapse, & nearly half of the country uses the emergency room as its' doctors office.
*** We landed at the Barbara Jordan Terminal when we went to Austin. It is not nearly so much as she deserves but it is a start.
*** We don't get HBO, so we've been watching the Wire on DVD. I am dying to know what happened to Omar. No spoilers, please! Next month, season 5 is released.
*** Nadal owns Federer now, & what a thrilling, awesome match that was today, but I worry about Nadal's knees and his future. Federer, meanwhile, mainly because of Nadal, has gone from an athlete in the Tiger, Jordan, Ruth, Gretzky league, to simply an all-time tennis great. Nadal deprived him of transcendence.
*** It is disgusting to see the TM insulate Walnuts from legitimate criticism. And Mr Clark said absolutely nothing untoward or wrong, even. Crashing jets in wartime does not, on its' face, make anyone more qualified to be POTUS.
I will most certainly curl up w/ a Claude Michot Poilly-fume tonight after counting wine bottles all night long,
mds
POSTED BY ARDENT HENRY AT 4:18 PM 0 COMMENTS LINKS TO THIS POST
TAGS BARBARA JORDAN, BILLY LIAR, DAZED AND CONFUSED, JULIE CHRISTIE, KEITH OLBERMANN, MOLLY IVINS, OBAMA, OMAR, THE WIRE, WHITE DENIM
That idiot on Fox News, the one who does the "business" news in just before Prime Time, did a frickin' feature on the death of Smokin' Joe Frazier.
This loser, naturally, went on about what a "good" black Frazier was, not one who refused to kill innocent Vietnamese, and become a Muslim.
It is supremely sad when every fucking single thing has to pass through a political prism.
I have had it up to here with arguing with these morans (that sic is on purpose).
Why can we not enjoy today the life of Smokin' Joe, his Gold Medal, his monumental achievement of being the first man evah to beat Ali in the ring? His thrilling fights with Ali, incl the immortal Cosell call, "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!", which will live in American sports history for decades?
Frazier was no saint. But he is a crucial, important sports figure in Baby Boomer Sports History. Can we puh-leeze skip the personal, private details of his later life, and just treasure him for what he was in his salad days?
The folks who passed this shit along sed, natch, "This was a private joke. I am sorry if anybody out there was offended."
Smokin' Joe Frazier is one of the greatest heavy weight fighters of all-time. I do not give a rats' ass about his politics. And to use that against Ali, suffering from Parkinson's, which Fat Ass Rush Limbaugh feels is just an excuse to espouse Liberal ideas (see Limbaugh's abominable treatment of Michael J. Fox when he spoke his mind) is the absolute lowest of the low.
As the Wife sed, re a racist email of Obama as the 44th president, Obama is the one in the in the bottom right hand corner, "Man, it is time for people to fucking grow up."
(It is v simple, pleasurable, and comforting to claim, "That is not my guy, I support Ron Paul", or whatever. Well, Ron frickin' Paul is not even man enough to run on the Libertarian, or third party ticket. The people who run Fox News and the same people that throw up this hateful kind of shit every frickin' day of the week, and 2ce on Sundays, are the GOP. Ron fucking Paul is a card carrying [yeh, how does that feel?] member of the GOP. These are your people. And like the Wife sed, "It is time for you to fucking grow up.")
You know, even Hearst in his day could not defeat FDR, our last truly great president. FDR foiled the GOP time and time again. And when he did reach across the aisle and compromise with the GOP, it was a disaster. You can never trust a Republican (or espec a Libertarian, they are the worst.)
Europe, decades ago, decided that the common weal was of supreme importance to its' individual country's survival. My goodness, I spoke about this a billion year ago, in a much more sober, sane way:
*** Will the US ever reach a point where the people will finally decide that even a modest, fair tax burden would make life so much better for all its' citizens? Will it take a full-fledged depression again to see this happen? Meanwhile levees burst, bridges collapse, and nearly half of the country uses the emergency room as its' doctors office.
That was July 2008 that I wrote those words on a long dead blog that eventually re-sprouted and became the tiny slip of a thing you read today.
We are done. That is why I refrain from political posts these days. The good guys lost.
The Occupy folks give me hope, but they are so not hardwired in to the money that really moves this nation and convinces folks time and time again to vote against their best interests.
The good movie, Bonnie and Clyde, expressed the Kansas/Oklahoma Socialist/Anarchist times best. There was a time then that people wanted to rob banks and shoot landlords.
Those days are done. The landlords and banks have fucking won the battle, so far.
As crazy at it sounds, it will take much worse than the Great Depression or some major cataclysmic war on our soil before this country fucking wakes up.
(That is in the near future. The tide is def turning against the GOP, and they have no back-up plan to speak of. But what will be left of the leftists, eventually, when they are all owned by the banks and corporations, by then?)
That would be five foot six, Alan Ladd, and the five foot (in her stocking feet), Veronica Lake. They showed This Gun for Hire and The Blue Dahlia.
(The great Veronica Lake story is that her peek a boo haircut was so popular amongst US women during war time that many were getting their hair caught in the machinery. The studio asked Lake to cut her hair for all future pictures. Those are the days when Hollywood cinema was king.)
This Gun for Hire is much better than Dahlia. Dahlia is bigger, faster, more complicated, and has a better-known cast, but suffers from some v silly melodrama involving William Bendix's character, Buzz. Plus, we barely get to see the ravishing Ms Lake, at all.
This Gun for Hire, on the other hand, is dirty, moody, dark, and features a v bleak (happy) Hollywood ending, which is astonishing for 1942. Yeah, I know, Raven is a bad dude but he is our hero, nonetheless, and it is surprising, to say the least, to see what happens to him at the end.
Ah, now I ruined it for you?
Nah. Cause if you have not seen the film, you have not seen the cat scene, which is a splendid, gripping, yet v sad Hollywood moment. Or, Gates. Gates is a fascinating character, a pusillanimous yes man, wealthy, spoiled, and, shall we say (for 1942, at least), fey. Laird Cregar played Gates and one of his scenes with his hired goon, Tommy (played by Marc Lawrence), is fascinating, rich film making. Woody Allen used that scene in Crimes and Misdemeanors, brilliantly.
If it took four years to reunite Ladd and Lake for The Blue Dahlia, that is a shame. According to my boy, David Thomson, Ladd and Lake never got along, even though the public adored them together. Both ended up drunk, desperate, lonely, and miserable. Ladd killed himself, eventually.
This Gun for Hire comes highly recommended by Ardent Henry. "Check it out, Syd." (h/t to Spalding Grey, Swimming to Cambodia, and The Killing Fields.)
Were assuming our usual positions on the sofa, covered in cats, tucking in to the delicious Bistro Jeanty tomato soup that Renee had made for us (thanks, Angel, it was so good), watching the tube, when a commercial for cell phones (or services, I do not know) came on. It is the company that has that skinny chick for a spokesperson. She always wears hot pink dresses.
Anyhoo, the commercial is an Xmas ad, featuring Santa's elves building 4G cellphones, I imagine, and all the elves have hot pink facial hair. You have prob seen this, already.
Instantly, I thought to myself, and expressed, "You know, this is the first time I have seen this absolutely awful commercial, and the saddest thing is, I am going to see this commercial at least five hundred more times before this year is over."
Renee laughed.
(As I wrote this, and set up the Bistro Jeanty link, I was listening to John's Children. So, when I brought up the Bistro Jeanty website, the French music melded w/ John's Children. It actually sounded "pretty cool," as Dignan would say.)
Starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, is pretty as all get out to look at, in beautiful English Technicolor. (Yup, there is Natalie Kalmus' name in the credits.) And the "meet cute", involving Ms Oberon finagling a (separate, natch) bed in Larry's hotel suite would nearly make a special short film.
But it is all downhill after that. Oberon is not a remotely serious acting talent, and Sir Larry is his usual mugging self, selling the comedy short.
"Larry, could you pass me the marmalade?"
Ms Oberon does these things, though, either wrinkling her bottom lip, or biting it, that are supremely intoxicating.
The Divorce of Lady X seems to be a valiant English swing and a miss at Hollywood's sophisticated and/or rollicking Screwball 30s comedies. Or a stab at something like Lubitsch would do.
Lubitsch would have nailed this material, for sure, and made a great picture. Of course, there is no way Larry could have been in it then. Lubitsch did all the line readings for his actors, acting out all their parts, as he wanted them played. No way Larry would have gone for that.
Of course, Larry and Ms Oberon were in another picture together, a lavish Hollywood picture, Wuthering Heights. And, yeah, I am going to rain all over that parade, as well. Despite Gregg Toland's rich, foreboding photography, Wuthering Heights is an absolute travesty of a film, and colossally over-rated.
I have thrown myself in to film. Luckily, I am on a major winning streak. Because nearly everything I have picked (from my couch in lovely Walnut Creek) has been v good.
I bought Page Eight, Tabloid (I have already seen it), Beginners, Rosemary's Baby (Halloween, natch), 28 Days Later (Halloween, already seen it), and dvr'd Catfish, Some Like It Hot (already seen it, one of my all-time faves), and La Fille Coupee en Deux.
Beginners, Tabloid, and 28 Days Later have all been discussed in this space, already, but I might have some stray notes at the end re these films and Le Nom des Gens, as well.
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Believe it or not but I had never seen Rosemary's Baby until four days ago. I am not quite sure why. I like the Horror genre, even if I am not passionate about it, per se. And I am a huge fan of Roman Polanski, particularly Repulsion, Chinatown, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, etc, ... But, for whatever reason, this one had escaped my attention. The wife and I had company over for dinner on Halloween and watched "scary" movies, and Renee wanted to watch this.
My favorite scene in the entire film was a simple, static shot from Mia Farrow's point of view, staring in to the living room, seeing nothing but pipe smoke fill the space from right to left on the screen. I liked the v first dream/nightmare sequence, too. And I naturally loved the whole idea that the story is set in motion because a struggling actor (Farrow's husband, John Cassavetes) wants to make it big on Broadway.
Still, despite great pacing; great shots; and some great performances from Elisha Cook Jr, Sydney Blackmer, Ruth Gordon, Ralph Bellamy, and Charles Grodin (!); the film seemed woefully dated to me. I will stick with the black and white, Swinging London, Repulsion, thank you v much, which is still provocative and shocking today.
But, do not ever forget that a year after Rosemary's Baby, another monstrous "Family" would brutally murder Polanski's wife and child in Hollywood. Bizarre and awful. The sweep of Polanski's tragic, insane life deserves an epic novel. I do not know who would be sensitive enough to write it, though.
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Page Eight, written and directed by the stellar playwright, David Hare, has a top shelf cast, sublime dialogue, and perfect dramatic structure (of course.)
"Spud. Casual sex, Spud."
Here is your top shelf cast: Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Rachel Weisz, Judy Davis, Ewen Bremner, Ralph Fiennes, and Tom Hughes, just to get you started.
The film is not groundbreaking or profound or seminal in any way. It is just a solid dramatic entertainment, full of memorable scenes, and a positive ethical/moral message.
The best scenes, with the best dialogue, are reserved for Nighy and Ms Weisz (who is extremely fetching, wearing all black throughout the entire picture, yet never once showing us her legs), particularly the "meet cute" and the few scenes they have right after that.
My favorite lines are, "As mean at cat meat." and "I'm (You're?) living in injury time."
Page Eight is good stuff, and will be on Masterpiece Contemporary on PBS this Sunday.
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You know, I do not care if Catfish is a hoax. More power to the film makers, then, if it is. I am biting at that hook, anyway. There are some genuinely scary moments in the film and the way the "stars" of this (ostensibly a documentary) film handle the situation in such a loving, sensitive way is v touching to me.
I am fine with being conned if it produces this kind of empathy and warmth.
The trailer and the marketing for the film are a whole different issue, though. I would like to believe the film makers had little or nothing to do with that.
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Ludivine Sagnier (what a preposterously gorgeous name) is a v fine actor. I have seen her in two films now, Love Crime (where she is v good, indeed) and La Fille Coupee en Deux. She is not pretty, really. She can sometimes be v sexy, especially in her walk, and she most certainly looks better in jeans than she does in skirts or dresses. (There is nothing wrong with her legs, that is just the way she is.) She reminds me of Chloe Sevigny (another blonde with a similar French name), though Ms Sevigny, while attractive, is definitely more masculine in her appearance than Ms Sagnier. Ms Sagnier is a better actor, as well.
The magician has his work cut out for him.
La Fille Coupee en Deux is one of the last films the French nouvelle vague Master, Claude Chabrol made. And it is not at all unlike any of his other forty (or fifty) or so films. Still, it is a pleasure to watch.
Chabrol loved Hitchcock and made many many many thrillers. But Chabrol's thrillers, like this one, were not quite the same thing. My favorite Chabrol film, Les Bonnes Femmes, barely gives the viewer even the slightest hint of what the climax ultimately becomes. Which is something Hitch would absolutely abhor and is antithetical to Hitch's entire film making aesthetic (even if he might have enjoyed the film, personally.) There are certainly more hints in 2007 with La Fille than in 1960 with Les Bonnes Femmes.
What is also remarkable about Chabrol's films is that so many of them are stories about women, and that if you just heard their story lines, without ever seeing any of them, you would think they are blatantly misogynistic. But seeing the films, you do not get that feeling, at all. Chabrol's work reminds me of the furore surrounding Mike Leigh's near-Masterpiece, Naked, suggesting quite loudly that the film was an attack on women. How absurd! Naked is a proto-apocalyptic millennial critique of Thatcher and the right-wing's destructive influence on men. It is a hyper-active reflection of Susan Faludi's excellent book, Stiffed.
La Fille is quite funny, as well. And its' suggestion that the author might be more twisted than the playboy is so skillfully handled, and with such grace and wit, that you understand exactly Ms Sagnier's plight, and probably agree with her decisions.
Or, maybe, you do not. What is it about French directors, who seem to have such a talent for expressing ambiguity and objectivity?
It is a lesson American artists could do well to pay intense attention to.
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Some stray notes:
I did not mention earlier how much Mills' work in Beginners reminded me in tone, and editing, and "tricks", of Wes Anderson's work. Which is funny, 'cause Godblesshim, Anderson is one of the most derivative film makers working today. (And I am a massive fan of Anderson's films, especially the first two.)
And speaking of derivative, Le Nom des Gens has a lovely original score but it also contains a crucial piece of music that sounds near just about like a Neil Innes song for the Rutles, Another Day. Which is hilarious because Another Day is a pastiche of the Beatles' song, Martha My Dear.
