Something Old, Two Things New

Four quick things:
1. I was on vacation and the only DVD in the house was Ice Storm. I hadn't seen it since it came out in the late nineties. It is an amazingly good movie. If there has been a better American movie made since it came out I can't think of it (maybe In the Bedroom, maybe The Hours, maybe Capote, maybe Juno, maybe anything with Penelope Cruz and a few others--these might be as good, but they're not better), and don't say American Beauty; it is a pale imitation. I love this move so much that I rationed it out over three nights. Watch it again if you haven't seen it in a while. It's funny, sad, wise, beautifully shot, and you can actually see how Ang Lee made this and then a few years later Brokeback Mountain.

2. Speaking of good suburban literature, check out the Franzen short story in the summer fiction issue of the New Yorker. I loved The Corrections and this has the same tone.

3. New season of Weeds just started. Is it just me or has it gone the way of farce like Desperate Housewives and Big Love. Can't watch it anymore; it's episodic and unbelievable. I liked it back in the early days when Nancy was a simple drug dealing surburban mom grieving her dead husband.

4. Finally, I just finished the pilot episode of Nurse Jackie on Showtime. Oh. My. God. I know I was excited at first about United States of Tara, but this is even better. Starring Edie Falco as a drug addled, adulterous, manipulative and conniving (for the good) nurse, it's the best written TV since possibly Six Feet Under, or West Wing. It's even got Anna Deavere Smith in it who I love (from her one-woman shows Twilight: Los Angeles and others as well as her turn in the West Wing as Defense Secretary). Jackie even has a gay best friend and hot husband. It's full of blood, foul language, shocking emergency room drama that wouldn't go on network television, and most of all humor and heart. This could possibly get us through the summer TV doldrums.

Sister Dearest or Pop Porn, Summer in the City

Hi. I know it's been forever. My friend Jeffrey said I'm taking slogging (slow blogging) to new heights. I've been trying to finish this post, but maybe I feel guilty that I read this yummy piece of trash book about Madonna. Meanwhile, I've seen lots of movies (new Star Trek: super duper fun joyride; see it in iMax if you can), and had lots of serious thoughts about film (like how Kirstin Scott Thomas's performance in I've Loved You So Long is compelling and heartbreaking) and superficial thoughts about TV (Adam was robbed, yes, but Kris is so damn cute!). But first I have to get this entry out of the way.

Read all the way to the end for a verymarkmccormick scoop!

Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone has written a tell-all book about what it's been like living in his sister's shadow. It's positively the worst book I've ever read, absolute trash, and I couldn't recommend it more highly! Three words: dee-lish-us!

Everyone knows that I've had a nearly three-decade long fascination with Madonna. (Not adoration, fascination; they're different.) It started when I was in college, about 18 years old, working in a Record Bar store in the Pocatello Mall. The manager put on a record, Madonna's first self-titled album. We couldn't believe it was a white girl. It's hard to imagine now with Brittney, Kylie, and dozens of other imitators, but in those days white girls didn't sing like that. We loved it and played it all the time. And we sold the shit out of that record.

Many years later I made a short film about Madonna, starring moi, making the point that most people, especially gay men, have a story about some Madonna song that formed the soundtrack to an important event in their life. That little movie I'm proud to say played in film festivals all over the world.

A story I would have liked to have told in Madonnalogue, but it didn't even occur to me was how being Madonna's brother, and being gay, and having aspirations as a performing artist, even a fine artist--well that could really fuck you up. And it did for poor Christopher.

Basically, he puts the psycho in sycophant. At the same time you can't help but feel for the guy. This is his side of the story, no doubt, but it rings true. Her Madgesty is impossibly imperious from early childhood. There are lots of stories of the "she always got the most cake" variety from their childhood. And still he always craved her approval and attention. She encouraged him to study dance, as she did. And that ensured him a role in her early years as a perfomer. When she was just starting, playing small gay clubs in Manhattan and then London, Paris, and other places, he was a back-up dancer. Through all of this she was at best decent and at worst a total and completely self-serving bitch. And the stories ring true, because they're all so consistent with each other and with what you can hear any night of the week on Extra and Access Hollywood.

The entire arc of the narrative is simply a series of fights about tours, houses, husbands, drug usage (his, not hers--that girl is clean) and email battles. It's written in first person present tense, which can really get confusing when he flash-forwards from the present, to, um, the present. It's an awkward tense; blame his co-writer, no doubt hired to bring semi-coherence to his rambling litanty of slights.

As I said, it's tours, houses, husbands, and drugs. The tours and houses parts are easy to explain. Madonna hires him as a dancer, then dresser, then art director on many of her tours. She treats him like shit, doesn't pay him enough, but gives him just enough affection for him to come back for more. Lather, rinse, repeat. This guy is a glutton for punishment. The exact same pattern is true of her houses: "Christopher will you decorate my house?" "Sure. How much will you pay me?" "A pittance." "Oh, Madonna, you're such a bitch; you underappreciate me; I'm living on the edge of poverty, but okay." "Good, you little fucking ingrate; now I'm going to be the most demanding client you can imagine and then I'm going to withhold the palty sum we agreed to, because I've heard you're doing drugs with supermodels and actresses and that really pisses me off." "Oh Madonna you are so mean. Naomi and Linda and Demi and Farrah--they're all so nice, and they really understand me, and we're hardly doing any coke at all--now give me my fucking money or I'll never speak to you again." "Check into rehab and I'll think about it." "I hate you! But okay. . . dammit!" On and on, I swear, through every goddamn tour and house. Christopher tries to be even-handed in the telling of this, because he wants you to sympathize with him. Sometimes it works. But he'll never work in Hollywood again.

Madonna and Her Husbands
The best parts are the dishy chapters about Sean, Warren, and Guy. He relates how each of them treated him, focusing on how they handled his homosexuality. Here's the summary.

Sean was decent. He treated Christopher well. Sean apparently had a sort of man crush on Charles Bukowski of all people. He was always around the house. Sean was into male bonding rituals and once had Christopher cut his thumb whereupon Sean cut his and they became blood brothers (years later, Christopher was incensed when Sean approached him at a party and, referring to the blood brother incident, asked him if he had AIDS).

Warren was the best of them all. He was secure in his own masculinity and entirely comfortable wtih Christopher's homosexuality. In fact he showed quite a bit of personal, and seemingly purely platonic, interest in Christopher's sexuality.

Guy was a jerk. He was boorish and homophobic, at least in the beginning; much of Christopher's impressions of him were based on their early time together, because during most of Madonna's marriage to Guy, she and Christopher were estranged. Guy and his buddies liked to use words like "twee" and Christopher found it all maddeningly homophobic.

So while reading I couldn't help wondering about the overall veracity of the story. Luckily verymarkmccormick is very connected: Here's the scoop! I once met Randy Taraborelli, who wrote a very good biography of Madonna, semi-authorized I believe. He's a friend of a friend. And he how has now done me two massive favors. The first was that he delivered the movie I made about Madonna to her personally. I was having the hardest time getting it into her hands. I even have another good friend who is close to her longtime publicist and manager Liz Rosenberg. He gave me her address. I sent it to Liz a few times and always heard back, through my friend: "well we didn't get the disc" or "well I'm sure it's here somewhere; I'll make sure she gets it." But I wanted to know that it was in her hands. Randy took a disc to the Golden Globes or some awards ceremony and later said in an email to our mutual friend, "I put it in her purse and said, 'This guy has made a short film about you and it's really good, and I want you to swear by all that is kaballah that you will watch it.'" I have not received the adoring note I had hoped from Madge, but I'm glad it made it into her posession.

Second favor: when I finished Ciccone's book I wrote to him and asked him what he thought. I wanted to gauge how accurate the portrayal was. Here's what he agreed to let me quote:

I loved that book, actually. I devoured it. But then, when I finished I was a little sickened by both brother and sister. Both appear to be hopelessly flawed, at least by his interpretation. She will survive it, of course. Nothing in there was exactly surprising where she is concerned. Not sure about him, though. I think that might be it for Christopher, maybe in the business -- because who can trust him now? -- and most definitely in his sister's life. But I guess he was willing to take that chance.

So listen, I know we're all verybusypeople. But if you have any pool or beach time this summer, this is the perfect accompaniment to your Ban de' Soleil and icy beverage. They should sell a version in a brown paper wrapper.

Love is as Love does

I haven't liked a movie more than Two Lovers in a long time. See it. It's like a foreign movie in many ways: subtle, beautifully shot, surprising, and in the end, nourishing.

Joaquin Phoenix is mesmerizing as Lenny, a guy too old to live with is parents, but too depressed to be trusted alone. He works in the family dry-cleaning business in Brooklyn, but not the cool part of Brooklyn. His mother is Isabella Rossellini. She's a Jewish mother, but one of the nice things about this movie is that no one is a stereotype.

The story is quite simple. Lenny's parents are trying to set him up with the daughter of a their new business partner. She's lovely and lovable, a completely round character, surprisingly, and he is in fact smitten with her. But he becomes obsessed with his neighbor Michelle, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who I think he sees as someone even slightly more fucked up than himself.

That's it really. He loves two girls in entirely different ways. He makes a hard choice, between these two and in the end he makes a bargain with love to save his own life.

I couldn't stop thinking about this movie, and what it said about lonliness, obsession, about familial love and expectations, and about filmmaking. The plot is so, so simple, that the success of the film can only be credited to the director, writer, casting agent, production designer, cinematographer. These elements are ochestrated finely, and the result is like a Kronos Quartet version of a complex little sonata.

I Wish I Had a River I Could Skate Away On

There's still time to catch Melissa Leo's Oscar-nominated (and Critics Choice Award-winning) performance in Frozen River before the Oscars next Sunday. It's out on DVD, even BlueRay. Directed and written by Courtney Hunt, the film is also nominated for best original screenplay.

This is a quiet, small, powerful film about motherhood. The plot involves a woman, Ray Eddy (Leo), living in a northern border town near Canada, who's husband has recently left her to go on another gambling binge. She's left with two sons, a sweet five year old, and an angry, hurt, sensitive 15 year-old. The timeframe is a few weeks before Christmas until the day after. I won't repeat to say how it transpires that she ends up getting into the people smuggling business--transporting illegal aliens from Canada to the US--but suffice to say she is doing it out of desperation. She needs money. She has a dead-end job and a deposit on a double-wide trailer she's going to lose if she doesn't come up with the balance / balloon payment. Also, there's no food in the house (but always food for lunch money even if she has to dig under the cusions) and no presents under the tree.

To get the aliens from Canada to the US she and her partner in crime Lila (Misty Upham) have to drive across a frozen river and transport the poor souls back in the trunk. It's a dangerous business with shady characters on both sides, and neither Ray nor Lila are saints. They are purely mercenary and lose a bit of their own humanity every time they make the trip.

The dramatic movement is between the two women as they go from enemies to business partners to friends--in all cases their bond evolves over something related to the unbearable burden of being a mother in poverty. Lila's son has been "stolen" by a sister-in-law, because Lila couldn't take care of it, and Ray's oldest son blames her for driving the father away. In one sub-plot, Leo accidentally seemingly kills a baby of a Pakistani woman and then Lila and, according to Lila, divine providence, bring it back to life. The scenes between Ray and her son are terribly affecting, and I have to say hit me very deeply and personally: I won't go into detail here, but my mother was quite a bit like Ray, our family situation was similar, and sadly I recognized me and my two brothers in the portraits of the sons.

A mother's love will always melt a frozen heart, but like the blowtorch the boy uses to melt the frozen pipes under the trailer one frigid night, sometimes the heat is so intense it can burn the whole house down.

Wrestling with Oscar

I haven't done any sort of pre-Oscar slog entry and I've seen a bunch of the contenders. I wrote about Benjamin Button, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Happy Go Lucky, and Revolutionary Road here, but I'm a little behind with the rest. Okay a lot behind, but remember, it's a slog not a blog.

I'm always surprised to find out that everyone hasn't seen the major flicks, hasn't read the reviews and is, in fact, waiting for verymarkmccormick to weigh in. Kidding of course: I sense that people are really apathetic about movies this year. So much real-world drama: Michelle forcing Ty to rename the Mahilia and Sasha dolls (I would NOT want to be on Michelle's Obama's bad side), more sex scandals from Ted Haggard, Michael Phelps getting his wrist slapped for a little bongage (don't get me started), Wells Fargo executives swinging from chandeliers in Las Vegas (not), plus who can see movies when they're obsessed with Facebook (I'm just sayin') and keeping their jobs.

Well here are a few mini-reviews, so you'll know how to vote at your Oscar party.

The Reader


Liked it more than I thought I would though I am generally over Kate Winslett. And tired of hyper art-directed movies about the Holocaust. Still, it's a fairly gripping and complex story with a very open ended question at its core: why doesn't the young man say what he knows about his former lover who is on trial for war crimes, knowing that the truth would both shame her deeply, but free her from a lifetime of imprisonment.

I can't even write about The Reader, more than that, because I am humbled by the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis who said it best (stand and up applaud for this fine paragraph--it's so FUCKING true (Sorry, I feel really strongly about this. Emphasis below is mine):

"Although the commercial imperatives that drive a movie like this one are understandable — the novel was a best seller and an Oprah’s Book Club selection, for starters — you have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard. You could argue that the film isn’t really about the Holocaust, but about the generation that grew up in its shadow, which is what the book insists. But the film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it’s about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation."

Rachel Getting Married



Loved it. Loved Anne Hathaway in this, and even was sympathetic to her character. You probably won't be. But if you grew up in a wildly dysfunctional family, then were at the center of terrible family tragedy, and then you became a drug addict because of the combination of those two situations, you might be a narcisssist too. Wouldn't this make a lovely double feature with Margot at the Wedding? Date night!

Man on Wire


Up for best documentary. At least I've seen one in that category. Every year I say I'll see more. I think this will win. Vote for it. It got tons of press and rave reviews. It's about the guy who strung a line between the World Trade Center towers and walked across, in the 70's.

The Wrestler


Wow. Really didn't expect to like this. Don't like wrestling, don't like Rourke, don't like the director Darren Aronofsky all that much (though he's super cute in a retro way--very 1940's moustache). But this movie moved me and impressed me. The father / daughter dynamic is intense, and I cried. I love to cry at movies. And the filmmaking is just fantastic. I don't like the handheld camera all that much, but Aronofsky just makes you face this guy's face and life and sorrow and predicament head on. You CAN turn away but try not to. I'm sorry, but I had to when he was slicing the meat at the deli--I just knew he was going to cut himself. I have no idea why this was completly unbearable to watch; the wrestling was much more gruesome, but somehow that blood was pure theater, even though it was real--are you with me? Maybe not--I'm still catching up myself. I just saw the movie a few hours ago. I loved the way the movie plays with reality vs. drama, fiction vs. fact in a sort of dizzying meta way. Rourke and Tomei, play a washed up wrestler and dancer, and they are perfectly cast of course, because of their status in Hollywood, and the wrestling is theater, but Hollywood is a real battle, and the erotic dancing is a total fake as is the transitory beauty of actresses. In that way it is no less conceptual than Aronofsky's Pi, but far more entertaining.

So I would see all these movies, but my money and my heart is still on Slumdog Millionaire for best picture.

Tara Tara Tara

I'm watching The United States of Tara, third episode.

This is THE new show of the season. This is the new Weeds, the new Mad Men, the new Six Feet Under, the show you'll all be renting next season to watch the first season, because you read it here first, and then soon you read it everywhere, and then everyone at work was talking about it, and then it won a bunch of awards, and then you were behind. So just set your DVR to record it now. It's not one of those shows where you have to watch every episode to "get it."

There are about a thousand things I like about this show. Here are a few:
1. The premise. When I was a kid I couldn't get enough of split personality books and movies (Sybil, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden). This show is about a woman with associative identity disorder, which is, apparently, a controversial diagnosis. Who cares? It's intriguing in a magical sort of way. Who wouldn't want to have more than one personality? (Or "alters"--the clinical term). With more than one personality you have someone else to blame for all stupid shit you do, someone with courage to chew out people you hate, someone with unrepressed sexual desires and lots of self-confidence, which--if you just could just get it through your head--is really all it takes to get laid as often as you want.

2. Toni Collette. She played, of course the quirplucky (invented word: quirky plus plucky) heroine from Muriel's Wedding. But she's becoming the go-to actress for the sympathetic, harried housewife. Her character in its unaltered state is sort of like the character she played in Little Miss Sunshine. But she really chews up the alters: a prissy, but supremely bitchy housewife, a truck driver dude, and a teen-age nymphomaniac.

4. ALL of the minor characters. The husband played by John Corbett, dreamboat from Sex and the City and (remember? god, you're old) Northern Exposure. The kids are fascinating, especially the young precocious, gay son (lots of signals, but the kid's not out yet--he's 13) who gets all the best lines. The family is sweet, because they all tolerate their mother's illness. They are totally embarrassed by her, but at the end of the day they stand by their mom.

4. The writing:
Marshall (13 years old, precocious, trying out for the school musical, Grease) : I can't believe they're mounting such a trite production. I wanted to do No Exit.
Petula (His friend, another prococious teen age girl who has a crush on him): Even something mainstream like Miller or god forbid Wilder. But sex crazed teenagers-it's not even good on an ironic level.
Marshall: (dreamily looking at another student): Is that Jason Moraz auditioning?
Petulia: No I think he's just on crew.
Marshall: I always assumed he was dumb, based on the whole Santana fetish, but his take on Roshomon in film class last week was pretty good. . .

5. The Showtime gloss: They do a great job with production values like art direction and music. It's slick but it looks real, and there's the de riguer indie soundtrack.

So: watch it. Don't wait. Be ahead of the curve. And embrace your inner Tara.

A Blogger with a Slow Hand

It's gratifying on one hand that so many people have commented that I haven't blogged in a while. It means people are noticing.

Well I realized I'm actually, unwittingly, part of the latest trend in blogging: slow blogging. What I've come to understand about this movement is that some bloggers (like moi) prefer to write longer pieces more thoughtfully than the rapid-fire paced and abbreviated length entries that have heretofore defined the medium.

I do like to write longer pieces, and at the same time I've been going through a lot personally such that blogging has not been a compelling way for me to spend my free time. Why blog when you can whine about your failed romances. Just be glad I spared the Internet and faithful readers that woesome drama. There are far more interesting ones on the screen. . .

But I think of all of you out there each time I see a new movie, get obsessed with a TV show, see a play, or now, as I indulge my latest form of entertainment: play a new video game on my PlayStation 3. More on that in a minute.

Also, I've been getting more serious about painting, oil painting that is, and the occasional Mendocino barn.

I'm going to create a separate blog for my painting hobby for anyone who wants to watch my slow (that word again) progress from absolute childish amateur to pompous amateur. That would probably be an audience of one, my mother, who is always encouraging. I love painting, but I'm not good at it. Still, it gets me out of my head. When I was in high school and college I painted a bit. I was one class short from getting a minor in art. Instead I opted for the infinitely more practical minors in History and Theater. I picked the hobby back up in '08 and took lessons in the summer from Rob Langley, American Impressionist and am now studying with Kristine Reiner, American Realist. I'm trying to develop my own style, which I imagine will be somewhere in between.

But I still watch TV and see movies.

Some people said to me: I got hooked on Mad Men because of your blog. Thank you. The second season really delivered, I think. But I'm always looking for something new and meaty, something I can sink my teeth into (couldn't resist). I became obsessed with True Blood.

Vampires R Us

I should have done a whole blog entry about vampires and vampire movies. I could have compared and contrasted the salty HBO series True Blood with the moody movie Twilight. I suspect true vampire snobs will like neither—finding he former lurid and the latter insipid—but for me I fall for almost anything vampire. It’s like candy for me, or candy for me as a boy: Three Musketeers? Sure! Jolly Rancher? You bet. So different, but both satisfying.

True Blood—the series is over, but I’m sure it’s out on DVD or will be, and it's going to have a second season—is sexy, and first and foremost a vampire movie or story should be sexy. It’s set in some fictional backwoods swamplands in Louisiana, so you get a good dose of voodoo mixed in and some sultry Cajun accents, though most of the actors just play the drawl generic southern. The premise is that vampires have come out of the closet (casket), because a new synthetic blood allows them to feed without killing. They want to be accepted, and they want civil rights. Parallels to gays and HIV are everywhere, completely intentionally. The synthetic blood is like sex with condoms, it postures: it does the job but it’s not as fulfilling. And the vampires’ wish to be mainstreamed is met with suspicion, xenophobia, and out right hostility. There are liberals who accept the vampires, and then there are those that see them as sort of a tribe of goth rockers and want to be one of them: “fang bangers” they’re called.

This is trash of the highest order. But it has the Alan Ball signature (American Beauty, Six Feet Under): moody depth and unexpected three-dimensional characters--even in the minor roles. No one is entirely good or entirely evil. Ball is credited as creator, producer and director, and writer of some episodes. (By the way: name-dropping side note. I met Alan Poul at a party; he was Alan Ball's collaborator of sorts on Six Feet Under--they are both credited with producing and directing many episodes, though I think it's fair to say Ball was more the creative genius of that show. Poul is the genius behind Swingtown, though. Anyway, Poul gave me the adjective "lurid" to describe True Blood, though he had some good things to say about it too.)

All vampire stories have their own spin on the vampire myths and both True Blood and Twilight take creative liberties with the garlic, mirrors, crosses, sunlight motifs and create some new twists. In True Blood ingesting a few drops of vampire’s blood is like taking the drug ecstasy, combined with ‘shrooms and LSD. It has street value. It also has healing properties if you’re hurt. In Twilight, vampires can roam about in daytime as long as it’s not real sunny, thus the location: a gloomy northwestern town, shrouded in mist and clouds.

Twilight is very teen-age-girl. (That’s an actual adjective, by the way, because Tina Wang once used it describe her inspiration for a new collection she presented. It’s quite useful to describe many things as teen-age girls control so much of our economic and cultural lives. You may use it, but please cite verymarkmccormick and Tina Wang if you are questioned on its etymology. This will have to do until the new version of the OED comes out and we both get proper credit.)

As I was saying, it’s easy to see why teen-age girls have made Twilight a box-office success. The narrator is a misunderstood, not altogether geeky nor altogether popular and pretty, teen-ager, with a huge heap of angst on her shoulder. Of course she is starting at a new school and the only guy she likes is the vampire (it’s like me at a party: if there’s one straight guy there. . . oy!). And it’s easy to imagine the rest, which is my way of reminding readers that I’m not much for plot summaries. See Twilight for the moodiness, the somber romantic tone. It’s like a Smith’s song. And see True Blood—more Kurt Cobainish—for a weekly dose of sexy, dark, Cajun mystery, some horror show thrills, and the image of Jason Stackhouse’s butt (Ryan Kwanten). It’s in every episode, and I would say it’s worth the price of TiVo. (I swear this could be a drinking game—it’s laughably consistent)

Movies
I've seen a lot of movies since I last wrote. I want to do a best of '08--maybe I'll get around to it, but meanwhile, here are some mini-reviews.

Happy Go Lucky--Mike Leigh's new film. He's never done any film that's un-interesting. Check out Naked and Vera Drake. His movies tend to be very, very dark, teetering on the razor's edge of overwrought and emotionally profound. This one is different. It's about a cockeyed optimist. You'll wonder if it's really a Mike Leigh film until a pivotal scene with a driving instructor who calls her on her happiness. I've always said moodiness is not a victimless crime, referring to someone whose emotional state roller-coasters, but even aggressive positivity can be mean in a way as we learn.

Slumdog Millionaire--If you only see one movie in the next few months see this. I don't know a single person who wasn't moved by it. It has that formulaic underdog-makes-it-big plot that so many movies rely on, from Rocky to Billy Elliot to Seabiscuit. I've written about that pattern a few times in this blog. But because the hero comes from the slums of India, and because his wretched life is not sugarcoated at all the fairy tale ending really soars.

Milk--The story here is Sean Penn's performance. Sometimes I wonder why I blog at all about exceptionally good performances that have been widely lauded in the press, but I do think that Sean Penn's work here is astounding, some of the best I've ever seen. My friend Greg said he's channeling Harvey Milk, and it feels like that. There's a scene where they're celebrating an electoral victory of a proposition which would have, in the 1970's, made it legal to fire gay teachers. Its a transcendent moment, because Penn projects the joy so powerfully. I thank Penn for this--we need all straight people to do what they can to advance civil rights of gay people to care enough about us to be inconvenienced and to sacrifice their time and money. To be brave. We can't do this alone. We don't have Harvey now. He was brutally assassinated.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button--I was disappointed in this movie, because the pace was lugubrious, but I did like a few things about it: the message (find what you like and be it). I liked the supporting role of Benjamin's mother, Queenie (Taraji P Henson). I hope she gets an Oscar nomination. Pitt's role was understated, but the art direction and score were overstated, so you get the feeling that this film was pumped up to be an Oscar contender. It's contrived for that goal--you can almost hear it being pitched: "Blanchett and Pitt play characters that age over 60 years during the course of the film!" Well that's a triumph of make-up if nothing else, and computer generated graphics as they had to morph Pitt's head on a smaller body for a good part of it. I did admire Blanchett as she moved into middle age and beyond. She wore the weariness gracefully; I believed she was an aging dancer. The movie is just overly-ambitious. I would have liked to have the same story done with half the budget, half the time, with actors half as famous.


Revolutionary Road--Quite liked this movie in the way I like emotionally charged domestic dramas and period pieces like Mad Men. No I'm not going to compare it. The New Yorker review said that's annoying since this movie is set in the 50's and Mad Men is in the 60's, but it does that have that slice of truth about how suburban women perceived themselves and were perceived as social objects before The Feminine Mystique, The Female Eunuch, Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem, Virginia Slims, Charlie perfume, and That Girl. I don't mean to be glib. The reviews I've read can't seem to agree about the meta-themes of this movie: Is it about a feminist polemic or a commentary on suburban angst or the institution of marriage? Is it general or specific? I think what makes it art is that it is all of these things. I'm wondering--and I would love to hear your comments: Are movies about bad marriages, or rather love / hate relationships like The Squid and The Whale, Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf, and Revolutionary Road somehow more compelling to those of us who grew up in chaotic households? I certainly love a movie like this where the characters psychically eviscerate each other--so long as there's redemption. Honestly there's not much in this movie. But it underscores what for me is the greatest requirement of a relationship: to see someone and be seen. If you don't have that: expect tragedy.

Quick TV note:

Damages is coming back. FX is running first season catch up sessions. Try to catch it so you can be a part of the second season. Glenn Close is riveting. I promise. She won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for this role. This is, like Mad Men, True Blood, and a few others, must-see TV.

So What Else Have I Been Doing?
A new genre to my blog: Games. Yes, I've given in, but only for what they call "rhythm games." I have a Playstation 3 now and two games Guitar Hero World Tour (like Rock Band), and Sing Star. I have just one word for this whole world: addictive. I know that gamers look down their noses at TV: they would rather play. But when I'm playing I always think: I should watching TiVo. So don't worry. I haven't turned into a teen-ager . . . yet. But like Benjamin Button, I do feel myself getting younger and younger every day.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope it's better than '08. I'm going to the inauguration. I'm in a state of optimism for many things. Thanks for your patience as I let the blog go for a while. I will keep it up in '09, but I do think the slow blog is -- let's call it a "slog"-- probably my genre. Stick with me, please. And know that your comments and subscriptions keep me going.

Somewhere over this Rainbow

About once a year I get obsessed with an album. And by that I mean I have to listen to it at least once a day. And then I start really listening hard and trying to hear the lyrics, and then I start memorizing lyrics and looking up the ones I can't quite get on the Web. Then I start even listening to the songs I originally didn't like.

Last year it was Silversun Pickups. This year it's Radiohead's In Rainbows. The albums that get under my skin are usually ones that challenge me. Silversun Pickups is a raucous rock band. Radiohead of course is experimental, alternative, sometimes abstruse. I have never really liked an entire Radiohead album until this one.

The melodies are intoxicating, the rhythms complex. Listen to the cymbal and piano at the end of Videotape. It's like they are characters talking to each other. Yorke's voice is sweet and high and you can see how they've influenced Coldplay and a thousand other commercial bands. I'm not saying anything particularly insightful here. Radiohead is a cult and there are reams written about them. But I encourage you to buy this album and study it. My favorite song is Jigsaw Falling into Place. These lyrics about the hopefullness of picking someone up in a bar, before you both get too drunk, is sublime in its subtlety:

Jigsaw Falling into Place

Just as you take my hand
Just as you write my number down
Just as the drinks arrive
Just as they play your favourite song
As your bad day disappears
No longer wound up like a spring
Before you've had too much
Come back in focus again

The walls are bending shape
You got a Cheshire cat grin
All blurring into one
This place is on a mission

Before the night owl
Before the animal noises
Closed circuit cameras
Before you're comatose

Before you run away from me
Before you're lost between the notes
The beat goes round and round
The beat goes round and round

I never really got there
I just pretended that I had
Words are blunt instruments
Words are sawn off shotguns

Come on and let it out
Come on and let it out
Come on and let it out
Come on and let it out

Before you run away from me
Before you're lost between the notes
Just as you take the mic
Just as you dance, dance, dance

A Jigsaw falling into place
So there is nothing to explain
You eye each other as you pass
She looks back and you look back
Not just once
and not just twice
Wish away your nightmare
Wish away the nightmare
You got the light you can feel it on your back
[A light,] you can feel it on your back
Your jigsaw falling into place

Other albums I've been obsessed with in the past decade or so: Rufus Wainwright's self-titled first album, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach's album, Painted from Memory, Chakha Khan's album of standards with the London Symphony Orchestra, Classikhan, Beth Orton's Without Reservation, The Light in the Piazza soundtrack, Joni Mitchell's Hejira.

And now I will tell you a funny Radiohead story. When I was 39 I was having a mid-life crisis, dating a 23 year old named Charlie. I don't think Charlie would mind if I said he was all of these things: brilliant, sexy, troubled. He liked to drink a lot and then listen to Radiohead at loud volumes. I would wait for him to lose interest and pay attention to me, but it was like he was in another world. We had quite an age difference and our tastes in music had overlaps, but our favorite stuff was really far apart--or was it? Once we went to Yosemite and we agreed that we would alternate choosing CDs, but we would bring stuff we wanted to expose the other to. He brought Radiohead, and I brought Joni Mitchell and Sondheim. Too funny. Charlie had some musical sophistication. He encouraged me to remember my high school band music theory and listen to the time signatures of the Radiohead songs. A waltz is 3/4 time, for example. You can't figure it out with Radiohead. It's all over the map, which is what makes it cerebral and dynamic (click on the image above). And I will say he really got the Joni, and I turned him on to other stuff too, like Rufus Wainwright. We broke up after a short time, and he later moved to New York, but we've kept in touch, and I knew I had raised him well when Charlie, now thirty or thirty-one, told me excitedly recently that he had seen Rufus doing his full length re-creation of the famous Judy Garland concert at Radio City Music Hall. And now he will be happy to hear I'm finally young enough to appreciate Radiohead.

Teach Me Tonight

A few years ago a great movie came out, Little Children, about a woman in the suburbs who begins having an affair with a stay-at-home dad. Separate but loosely inter-twined plots concern a registered sex offender and a retired cop who is after him. It's a brilliant script and people told me the book, by Tom Perrotta, was even better. The voiceover narratives in the movie, presumably lifted from from the book, were really good. I wanted to read the book but never got around to it.

So when I read the reviews for Perrotta's new book The Abstinence Teacher I was intrigued. Time magazine called him the Steinbeck of suburbia (so what does that make Cheever? or Updike?).

It's a good read, a real page turner, but I did not find it particularly sophisticated. In fact it was a jolt to my palette, because I had just finished Pride and Prejudice (my first Austen). Her prose is psychologically insightful and masterfully florid, definitely a product of its time stylistically, but it's easy to see why we still read Austen.

The Abstinence Teacher is a little too self-consciously political, however. Perrotta has tried create dual portraits, both sympathatic, about somewhat extreme characters on the culture war continuum. The first is about a born again Christian, Tim, who was once an addict, but came under the seductive spell of an evangelical pastor. He finds purpose in the church and eventually even marries a young congregant partly to please the pastor and partly to patch his broken heart. When he was using, he fucked up up his life so bad his marriage fell apart, the usual story. He soldiers on, though, and he's noble. And he's not a conservative Christian jerk. He's an ex-rock 'n' roller, and misses it all. He stays open-minded. To illustrate this, there are long patches explaining why he doesn't agree with his church's stance on gay marriage and other extreme positions.

His foil is Ruth, a sex-ed teacher in town who has braved a controversy caused by her telling her ninth graders that some people like oral sex. She is reprimanded, and the conservative school board adopts an abstinence-based sex ed curriculum she is forced to teach. She's miserable. Add to that, she can't get laid and she thinks she's always going to be single.

They are connected by their daughters' soccer team that Tim happens to coach. Ruth makes a scene one day when Tim, spontaneously, asks the team to join him in prayer after a particularly triumphant win.

They become unlikely friends, and the novel is really about how they are managing their own lonliness and ultimately how they let their attraction for each other (more than physical) subvert their socio-religious leanings.

It's a sweet story and I enjoyed it, couldn't put it down, but it's kind of shallow. A beach read.

Elegaic? Yes, but. . .

Elegy will make you think, and it will make you feel, but I'm not sure it's a great movie. I would love to hear what others think.

Without being overly personally and so completely subjective, I will say that the movie struck a lot of chords for me: what is the nature of aging and age and what roles do aging and age differences play in romantic love? What is the nature of obsessive love (the Kingsley character, an aging but emotionally and sexually vibrant professor/writer/critic says of his lover (in essesnce), "I was anxious all day until we would speak and then I was I was anxious afterwards." And what is the nature of sex, romance, intimacy, long-term connection? It's all explored here.

I think about these things all the time; I have lived the situations in the film from all sides. And at the same time I have had, for many years, a negative reaction to one particular Hollywood formula: the on-screen love affairs between male actors in their 60's and actresses in their 30's. Pairing Sean Connery with Michelle Pfeiffer--or in the case of Elegy, pairing Ben Kingsley with Penelope Cruz, is quite simply playing out the masturbatory fantasies of the producers who finance these films. No doubt that the world is full of such romances, but how many times is it the reverse situation? So few: The Graduate, a smattering of others.

Okay, so trying to put aside my personal judgments is not easy nor is it entirely possible or required with this hobby (criticism). Even the Kingsley character David Kapesh says (advancing Roland Barthes' thesis): a book is a different book depending on the reader, and the reader will change such that re-reading a book 10 years after reading it the first time, the reader will experience the book through a diffent lens.

Still, that aside--I am really am trying to get to the point: is the movie good?

I just don't know. I have to think about it more. It's a story of Kingsley as an aging writer, David Kepesh, as I said, who falls in love with a student, Consuela Costilla, played by Cruz. He also has a lover who he sees regularly, the more age-appropriate Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson). He lies to Carolyn about Consuela, and never tells Consuela about Carolyn. He is almost estranged from his son, Kenneth (played by the excellent Peter Sarsgaard who needs a leading role, and soon--I love him) who can't seem to get over his past grievance--how Kepesh divorced his mother and abandoned him. And Kepesh has a best friend, George, played by, of all people, Dennis Hopper, who serves as Kepesh's Id in a way--encouraging him to go for the sex, but not get hung up on Consueala. And believe it or not we also have a cameo by Deborah Harry as George's wife--it's brief but credible. Yes, Deborah Harry!

Re-reading the paragraph above, I realized that, for me, the movie's interesting dimensions were in the relationships of secondary characters. Clarkson is a total favorite of mine, and she delivers another of her intelligent, subtle performances. And Sarsgaard as I mentioned does the seething, aggrieved son quite well--totally believable.

And the movie is gorgeously shot. Meaningful light and shadows, deep colors, sensual angles. It's beautiful, if obsessively mannered somehow--perfectly art directed, a little too perfect sometimes, but pretty to look at.

So what's the rub? As you all know I'm a huge Cruz fan. I can't get enough of her, but I have to say I did not like her in this role. I felt she was objectified, and I felt her stretching too hard to be a serious "actress." (P.S. to Penelope: you already are a world class, legendary talent. You have nothing to prove.) I thought the plot was contrived--you'll understand when you see how a certain body part of her is fetishized and then exactly what disease she gets. I thought her vulnerability was forced and her natural charisma was tempered. I found myself actually kind of angry that she was somehow used. Kingsley, on the other hand, played the role with sufficient depth and found many levels to his character.

I want to hear from others on this. What was wrong with Cruz's performance here, or with the direction? Why did the movie ultimately ring somewhat hollow? I've read zero reviews of this film so far. I'll be interested in your opinions, and the real critics.