pullquote

Sex ed

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: one is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell; the other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on Earth and you should save it for someone you love."--Butch Hancock

That pithy little epigraph pops up in The Education of Shelby Knox, which screened at this year's Full Frame documentary film festival, where it won the Emerging Pictures audience award. The cinetrix, reluctantly, missed it then, but now, thanks to PBS and P.O.V., we all get another chance tonight to meet young Shelby Knox of Lubbock, TX, "a conservative Christian teenager and warrior princess for comprehensive -- as opposed to abstinence-only -- sex education."

There is the small matter of getting past the well-meaning New Yorkers documentarians getting over themselves [Ooooh, look! Baptists!], but this film does tell a great story. In the words of the NYT's inestimable Virginia Heffernan:

Ms. Knox and her fellow travelers seek to institute more thorough sex education in the town's public schools. Without it, they contend that the students' sole source of information is "Sex Ed," a fact-challenged, hail-fellow pastor named Ed Ainsworth who brings to mind Joe Simpson, the minister father of the pop stars Jessica and Ashlee. He happens to be the most compelling figure in the film.

He's the one who oversaw Ms. Knox's sexual-purity pledge to her parents ("On my wedding night, that night will be my first time"), as well as those of other young people in Lubbock, and he has a slightly leering, unctuous, overfamiliar manner with the local teens.

A perfect antagonist for the righteous sweetheart Ms. Knox, Mr. Ainsworth begins a typical sermon this way: "Listen, young people. The first time I ever had sex in my life was when I was 20 years old. It was in Austin, Tex., at the Hilton Hotel, at 11:30 at night, in room 1158. That's right. You say, 'Ew, that's T.M.I. - too much information.' Well, I don't think so. Because it was on July 15, 1978. I celebrate it every year. It's my wedding anniversary."

It's on at 10 p.m. tonight, check local listings yadda yadda and set those DVRs.

Ed's ennui

Boring, Sidney.

The summer doldrums seem to have caught up with Ed Koch. Even Batman Begins left Hizzoner strangely unmoved. [Pssst, I think he means "allusion," not "illusion" below. At least, I hope so.]

Batman Begins
The movie received rave reviews and, when I saw it, the audience applauded at the end. The theater was sold out, clearly the movie will be a huge success. I did not like it. I don’t often like movies based on cartoons, whether they be humans playing the cartoon characters, or simply full feature-length regular cartoons. But this film appeared from the reviews to be headed in a different direction. The actors were provided with good, thoughtful and provocative dialogue.  The actors were first caliber, Christian Bale as Batman; Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard, a guru, part of a Tibetan-appearing group called the League of Shadows, intending always to keep world class cities free of crime, even if it were necessary to burn a city down as Ducard says they did to London generations ago. This time, they are focusing on Gotham -- read New York City -- and are prepared to treat it as God treated Sodom and Gomorrah, described in the bible.

Under the philosophy of Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), good people could be destroyed if there were enough bad people in the same city who had to be eliminated. This is a philosophy that presides in wartime, but certainly not in times of peace. Batman did not agree with that philosophy.

Morgan Freeman plays Lucius Fox, who is in charge of the scientific discoveries at Batman’s father’s created corporation, the largest in the world, that would help society. Freeman did a terrific job of acting, making the cartoon role seem very human and intense. He tells us that gear costing $300,000 to protect the American soldier in wartime on the battlefield was refused by the government because of the cost. It would be interesting to know if that was an illusion to the unarmored Humvees used in Iraq by American soldiers, some of whom died needlessly when they were blown up. It sure sounds like it was.

Michael Caine was also wonderful in his role as an English butler, making sure that the role of noblesse oblige would continue, imploring Batman to understand his obligations to the world.

Katie Holmes plays Rachel Dawes, Batman’s love interest, an assistant district attorney bent on eliminating crime and corruption. She’s fine in the role, and subject to even greater audience interest because of her recent engagement to Tom Cruise and his schoolboy antics in announcing his love. It’s not a bad movie, and you may like it. I just found it boring.

Lords of Dogtown also left Koch feeling meh. Sir, you gotta stop relying on AO Scott's reviews--clearly you two have a fundamental difference of opinion when it comes to the pictures.

Lords of Dogtown
In his New York Times review, A.O. Scott wrote that this film "from start to finish, is pretty much a blast." So, with few new movies to choose from, I decided to see it.

I found it to be a degenerate film with perhaps only one guy standing out from the others as more gentle and courteous. Allegedly, it is based on the 2002 documentary, "Dogtown and Z Boys," which was very exciting. As far as I know, that was the first film featuring skateboarding as a sport, and it appeared to be as exciting as ocean surfing.

Let me refresh your memory. In the first film, we watched a group of Californians from Venice break into private pools which were empty of water and use the sloping walls of the pool for their skateboard antics. They all had blond hair which apparently is the hair color to have if you want to be accepted in California.

In "Lords of Dogtown," we have the same characters. Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) is the owner of the small skateboard manufacturing operation who takes advantage of a dozen youths.  He organizes their surfboard team to give his skateboard brand notoriety. The nice guy is Stacy Peralta  (John Robinson). The other characters are Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch), Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk) and Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger).

As A.O. Scott describes them in his review, "their lives are a complicated and perhaps typically Southern Californian blend of hedonism and striving." He goes on to say, "They throw punches, trash restaurants and break into suburban homes." I came away disgusted with their lifestyle, morals and code of conduct. All in all, it was a terrible night at the movies.

Poor Ed. Even with the senior citizen discount and the [presumed] Hizzoner hookups, no one should have such a bad run at the movies. Your recommendations for making this his celebrated summer in the comments, please. It'd be a mitzvah.

The waiting is the hardest part

Look who showed up, late to the party and making no excuses. That's right, folks. Joe Morgenstern is now returning David Edelstein's calls and answering that pressing question, "Did George Lucas and Steven Spielberg ruin the movies?" with satisfyingly Murrow-like You Are There elan: 

Certainly Spielberg and Lucas changed the movies fundamentally, in some ways for the worse. But I'm with you on Jaws—if only we could see new films of such flair and power today—and I was even more excited than you were about the first two Star Wars films.

My first encounter with Spielberg's material predated the movie. I snatched the basic story from the jaws of Peter Benchley—who was a colleague and a friend at Newsweek—who was writing mainly about TV when I was the magazine's movie critic in the '60s and the early '70s. On long Wednesday and Thursday nights when we had to wait for dilatory editors to edit our copy, Peter would regale us with lurid facts and extravagant tales of sharks he'd heard about or maybe even seen on Nantucket, where his family had a summer home. I can't say I was entranced, but I did grasp the essentials—big, dumb, insatiable, pitiless, dangerous. (Four of those five adjectives describe many studio executives.) Then came Peter's novel, which I read, so I hardly expected to be surprised when the movie came out. Yet I was, to a degree that spoke—and I'd like to think still speaks—well for my childishness.

A fun fact to know and shout: Morgenstern once was married to Piper Laurie--around the time when she was in Carrie. Stop and think about that for a sec. Yeah, I did the whole involuntary-shudder thing, too.

Even though it is unfolding with all the alacrity of an epistolary romance, I look forward to reading the next sally, don't you?

I'll be your mirror

One of the features of the schmancy new IFC Center got the cinetrix to thinking. You may consider this a public service announcement if you like because, well, you should know about the restrooms. More specifically, you should know that the two mirrors in the hallway leading to the gents and the ladies are classic interrogation-room issue. That is, once inside your preferred-gender facilities, you can watch unsuspecting people as they primp in front of the "mirror."

Fun for one and all, sure, but if you're like one of the cinetrix's old college pals, who could never pass a reflective surface without conducting a quick assessment, just know that the panopticon is on the case.

The ladies' room, of course, is at the end of the hallway, past the men's room [fucking sexist architects], so members of the fairer sex might do as the cinetrix did on her second trip and throw the gents a big smile and a wink on your way past.

Those not planning a trip to this theater any time soon can make do with humming Rockwell as they consult Kamera's top 10 Being Watched list, which boasts excellent pairings of voyeuristic flicks. For example:

The Conversation (1974)

The greatest spying movie of them all: a morality tale about what happens when you listen too much and interpret what isn't there. Gene Hackman was never better as the 'best bugger on the west coast' hired to tape a conversation between two people who may or may not be having an affair. Without giving too much away, this is a film in which nothing can be taken at face value. The set pieces are clammily terrifying – hotel bathrooms have rarely been so gut-wrenching – while watching Hackman at work is a fascinating insight into the minutiae of surveillance. Check out the opening scene – one long, slow zoom – and the desperately dispiriting finale, where Hackman realises that even he is not above being watched and listened to.

To be watched with: Night Moves (1975)

Administrative note

When the cinetrix went to the premiere of Me and You and Everyone We Know this past Wednesday, she did not know about the IFC Center's regrettable decision not to employ union projectionists, nor about the union's subsequent action. There was no picket line that night, and while ignorance is no excuse, I do hope everyone who visits Pullquote knows how I revere professional projection. It is, as they say, a difference maker, and an increasingly rare thing in this age of multiplexes and platters. I hope the involved parties can arrive at a mutually agreeable understanding.

To sum up, the cinetrix: not a picket-line crosser.

Zen koan

So, what is the sound of one critic "in conversation"? We've all come a little closer to answering that ancient riddle this week.

On Tuesday, as part of its Summer Movies "issue," Slate launched a conversation between its resident film critic, David Edelstein, and Wall Street Journal film critic [and this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism], Joe Morgenstern.  Just one problem, Joe was a no-show. His silence was, as they say, deafening.

So, come Friday, Edelstein gamely rejoined the fray of one:

Well, Joe: It has been an honor to share an ID box with you, although our dialogue was maybe a tad one-sided. Nevertheless, we are lucky to be able to read you regularly in the Wall Street Journal.*

If anyone out there has a line on what really happened, operators are standing by in the comments.

Meanwhile, can we just all take a moment to mourn what might have been? In his opening post, Edelstein got at what makes Morgenstern the guy you want to hear from about the changing landscape of summer blockbusters, then and now:

You were a critic before and after the changeover (with a break in between to work in the industry), so your anecdotes might be more illuminating than mine. But here are two conversations I remember most vividly. In January 1988, I was at the Sundance Film Festival, where producer Gale Anne Hurd was on the jury. She couldn't believe what she was hearing from Hollywood about the cost of Die Hard. For one thing, Bruce Willis had been paid $6 million. Unprecedented! And for a television actor! Of course, certain infamous super agents took this as their cue to demand more and more money for their clients: Two years later, even Willis' wife, Demi Moore, was earning $12 million a picture (and those pictures were bombing).

The other anecdote involves Elvis Mitchell, who had a job at Paramount in the early '90s. One day he told me, with a little sneer, that executives there referred to Star Trek as "the franchise." I laughed derisively. The franchise! A franchise is a McDonald's, a True Value Hardware! Movies aren't franchises! Less than a decade later, the term "franchise" was used openly. A top executive at Warner Bros. earnestly explained to reporters that he wanted the studio to be in the franchise business exclusively—hence Batman, Harry Potter, etc. It reminded me of another story I heard, that in the '90s a studio conducted an expensive marketing study to determine which kinds of films were the most consistently profitable—the theory being that then it would only make that kind of movie. Months later, the answer came back. Yes, there was one type of film that did consistently better: sequels.

And as that chilling image fades to black, roll credits on "the people who ruined the movies," a noble failure. We can only hope that Edelstein & Morgenstern 2: Electric Boogaloo is already in preproduction.

*If one has a subscription, that is. It's not in the WSJ business plan to give that stuff away.

Back and forth forever

If you really love me, then let's make a vow....
Repeat after me: I'm gonna be free.

Wednesday night the cinetrix slipped into New York just long enough to attend the premiere of Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know at the schmancy new IFC Center* [aka the Waverly]. My friend--let's call him Paul--graciously invited me to be his plus-one because he suspected that I might like the movie. He was right.

Wow. What a beautiful film. Shot by Chuy Chavez in a rich palette of the tired pastels, sharp tropical hues, and rough stucco of rundown LA neighborhoods and set to a haunting score by Michael Andrews, this film about lonely people who are hemmed in by ritual and private obsessions even as they try to reach out and connect is anchored by sterling performances. In particular, sweet Brandon Ratcliff, who plays 6-year-old Robby, gives the most natural and unforced performance--in a movie notable for its amazing child actors--since Victoire Thivisol's turn in the title role in Ponette.

In today's Times, AO Scott suggests that Me and You and Everyone We Know might even be classified as a romantic comedy. Well, yes, but its romance is with people and shyness and those strange moments of magic in the everyday, which are all around you if only you're attuned to them.

At the end of Me and You, I felt the way I did after seeing Trust for the first time, or The Dreamlife of Angels: I had been somewhere new and strange and was reluctant to come back to the "real" world; I had fallen in love.

I also can't remember the last time I saw a film so gentle. The narrative ebbs and flows, exerting a tidal pull on the characters, exposing their glistening idiosyncrasies to our gaze for a moment before sweeping them away. I can't wait to see it again.

))<>((

The cocktail reception afterward was a scene. There were fancy folks in attendence; hipsters snacked on passed canapes and grabbed for promotional tee-shirts. Katie Trainor, the new manager of the IFC Center, dashed about, running on pure adrenaline. John Vanco cornered Matt Ross with his feedback on the Voice article about the new theater. I spotted Michael Almereyda's curls through the crowd and Nick Denton's massive, Schulzian head. David Byrne drifted by, a white-haired ghost with dark eyes.

In the center of it all, Miranda July stood, unflaggingly gracious as friends and strangers approached her, taking it all in. I can't wait to see what she does next.

*NB: New Yorkers should definitely check out the film and the theater this weekend. Ms. July will be appearing four times daily during Me and You's run, and hard work like that should be rewarded.

Minnesota nice

Twin Cities denizens, say it with me: "Nice marmot."

That's right, the Landmark Uptown sports a midnight [OK, 11:59] screening of The Big Lebowski tonight in the land of the Gunderson. Surely a pre-film trip to Nye's is in order, yes?

Mark your calendars

On Friday, June 24, at 7:30 p.m., Camera d'Or winner Miranda July continues her campaign to make the rest of us feel tired and lazy when faced with her boundless creativity. She'll be reading from her story The Boy from Lam Kien at Skylight Books at 1818 N. Vermont in beautiful Los Feliz.

July appears alongside three other authors--Mary Rechner, Carol Tredwell, and Laurence Dumortier--all published by the small imprint Cloverfield Press [which was started by indie producer Matthew Greenfield and is based in Santa Monica]. Fans of July must promise to be on their best behavior and stay for the other women's readings.

Fun fact: a trillion years ago, the cinetrix was in an undergraduate creative writing class with the enviably named Ms. Dumortier. Clearly she got a lot more out of it than I.

Happy Bloomsday

In observance of the greatest celebration of a first date in all of literature, the cinetrix suggests watching this. But then, I'm sentimental.