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A mention of Steve Martin over at Cynthia's got me to thinking. What if he was still with Cindy Office Killer Sherman, rather than romancing and exploiting anemic retail workers on page and screen to the vicarious delight of certain nebbishy film critics? I'd argue that Steve's always better when he's with someone his own age. [Remember Bowfinger? Exactly.]
Anyhow, just imagine a hybrid of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and "Untitled Film Stills" for a minute.
OK, as you were.
This year, your provincial pal the cinetrix celebrated Thanksgiving--her second ever outside of the northeast--with the Fesser's extended family in Michigan. [Come to think of it, the first time I skipped the family turkey fest I was also in the midwest--I ate steak and watched Trust with my pal the Adjustable Boy as snow fell outside his Chicago apartment. But I digress.]
The virtues of spending holidays with someone else's family are many. Traditional embarrassing stories are still trotted out, but they're rarely about your childhood. Also, you come off as a hero merely for helping with the dishes.
You also watch different movies. Cousin Dan and I had some free time last Wednesday, so we went to the university library's media collection. Tough to browse on a browser--so we spent a lot of time wracking suddenly empty craniums for names of films or directors we thought would play well to a diverse audience. We came up with Richard Linklater.
School of Rock was a surprising crowd-pleaser with the older folks on Wednesday night. Now that I am myself something of an educator, I was astonished how closely Summer the grade-grubber resembled some of my more tightly wound honors students. Oy. But I am not Jack Black, nor was meant to be. And, let's face it, even with Linklater at the helm, without Black you've got a Mr. Holland's Opus retread.
Unfortunately, after such a promising start, on Thursday the post-football stupor was accompanied by the braying caricatures of Meet the Fockers, a cringe-worthy entertainment courtesy of cable. Damn you, cable! What a cynical piece of shit that "movie" is. After two hours of idiocy, I had a larger sign language vocabulary and a renewed appreciation for Dustin Hoffman's ability to twinkle at will. That man is a machine.
Friday brought with it a trip to the Heidelberg Project, followed by sofa snoozing in front of the oh-so soothing story of Werner Herzog's quixotic quest to haul a ship through a South American jungle in the Les Blank doc Burden of Dreams, now available from Criterion. If you don't know the backstory of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, pull up a chair, because he encounters impossible to summarize difficulties while shooting the story of a man who wanted to build an opera house in the middle of the Peruvian jungle and basically makes Terry Gilliam [in Lost in La Mancha] look like a piker and Francis Ford Coppola [in Hearts of Darkness] come off as a whinging sissy boy. Herzog takes fiasco into a new dimension of mud and squalor.
Why put oneself through such misery?
Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.
It's fucking awesome, in the true sense of the word. [Pssst, Sac: Kinski!]
As a nice lagniappe, we also watched Blank's short doc Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. I can think of few better ways to recover from the excesses of our most American of holidays than to sit back as a German auteur cooks up his shoes at Alice Waters' chi-chi Chez Panisse circa 1980 and then eats them in front of a rapt Berkeley crowd, all because he bet Errol Morris he'd never make a film. I may make screening this a new holiday tradition.
So, what did you watch?
This week, Hizzoner opens his heart to a very different bildungsroman and reveals more than a passing acquaintance with Madonna's oeuvre.
Breakfast on Pluto
An enormous array of emotions, ranging from poignancy to belly laughs, is exhibited in this unusual Irish film.The principal figure is Patrick Braden (Cillian Murphy) who as an infant was left at the church rectory door by his mother who had an illicit affair. Patrick, who lives in the rectory with Father Bernard (Liam Neeson), has three playmates: Charlie, a girl of black and white parentage; a boy named Irwin who is very much like himself, and Laurence, who has Downs syndrome.
Patrick eventually leaves home and goes to London in search of his birth mothe,r where he has many adventures. He is the victim of a sex predator seeking to strangle him and works in a sex shop where contact with the customers is limited to talking and looking. The scene reminded me of a Madonna video. After an IRA bombing incident, he is jailed and brutalized by the London police. Cillian Murphy is superb in his role.
I occasionally found it difficult to understand the Irish accents. There were times when I thought it would be helpful to have an old-fashioned pony used in Latin classes to translate the story and lay out the plot, which is often obtuse. I don't want to be accused of revealing too much of the story, so if you want to know more about it, read Stephen Holden's superb review in The New York Times. "Breakfast on Pluto" is a wonderful film, but why wouldn't it be? The director is Neil Jordan who also directed the brilliant film, "The Crying Game."
Anyone have a line on this pony Ed mentions, speak up.
In his second review this week, Koch hits Kuwait, reprazents for Brooklyn, and dismisses onanism as no match for the cinema.
Jarhead
The basic training interaction between the marines depicted in this film is very different than what I experienced when I entered the army 62 years ago at the age of 19 in World War II. I can't report on whether or not it is close to accurate, but I assume it is. While training for the marines is very difficult, it is hard to believe that the immature responses to the daily routine shown amongst these marines could be real. Nevertheless, I still marvel at their ability and courage when deployed in battle which makes every American proud of them.The script is based on a book of the same title by Anthony Swofford, which I did not read. The movie covers a brief period in 1991 of Gulf War I when the United States went to war against Iraq, which had invaded Kuwait. Indeed, most of the film covers the building of our forces in Saudi Arabia before we entered Kuwait to repel the invading Iraqi. Few combat scenes are depicted, but the burning oil wells in Kuwait, which the Iraqi set fire to before retreating, are graphically shown.
The principal roles are those of Swoff (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Troy (Peter Sarsgaard), two marines in the same unit, and Staff Sgt. Sykes (Jamie Foxx). Their roles are similar to those depicted in most war movies - fortunately, we are spared the prototype recruit from Brooklyn. Swoff is a guileless, bookish youth, Troy is enveloped with a mysterious background, and Sgt. Sykes, who guides them through basic training and combat, cares for them as though he were their surrogate father.
I expected much more from this film and did not come away at all satisfied. Indeed, I was disappointed. Efforts to convey sexual deprivation and emotional strains by emphasing the need for the young men to masturbate will titillate some but will hardly substitute for a satisfying night out at the movies.
Amen to that. Happy Thanksgiving, folks!
How far would you travel to see a film?
A few weeks ago, the cinetrix and the 'Fesser logged some serious drive time simply to revel in the projected petty voluptuaries of Bernardo Bertolucci's Il Conformista. A new 35mm print that includes the vaunted "Dance of the Blind" sequence has been leapfrogging around the country lately and next alights in Queens at the Museum of the Moving Image this Saturday and Sunday.
If you can, do transport your tryptophan-addled selves to the theatre this weekend and spend two satisfying hours marveling at facism's endless photogenicness. It's gorgeous.
For the patient handful that guessed at the author and films behind this statement...
Mr. President, in order that these incredible reviews may be seen in their full perversity, I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
...it's time for the big reveal. In truth, it was difficult to excerpt something provocative yet anonymous enough not to give the game away.
But, first, a little back story. On June 20, 1968, the New York Times published critic Renata Adler's review of the John Wayne movie The Green Berets. Here's the lede:
"THE GREEN BERETS" is a film so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail that it passes through being fun, through being funny, through being camp, through everything and becomes an invitation to grieve, not for our soldiers or for Vietnam (the film could not be more false or do a greater disservice to either of them) but for what has happened to the fantasy-making apparatus in this country. Simplicities of the right, simplicities of the left, but this one is beyond the possible. It is vile and insane. On top of that, it is dull.
A mere six days later, on June 26, 1968, Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) made a statement from the senate floor, essentially denouncing Adler and her review. It begins
Mr President: This afternoon the Town Theatre will present the Washington premiere of a new film called "The Green Berets." I have not yet had the opportunity to see this movie, but I am extremely anxious to do so. This is not only the first major studio movie about the Vietnam War, but also it portrays our American heroes in action. But if my admiration for John Wayne were not enough to make me want to see the movie, I became convinced that this must be one of the finest and most admirable movies of our generation, after reading the review which appeared last week in The New York Times when the movie opened there. The first paragraph of this review was enough to convince anyone that this was a good movie. Please listen carefully to what The New York Times reviewer had to say.
[He then reads the graf reproduced above.]
That last sentence is the tip-off since I find it hard to believe that John Wayne could ever be dull. But it did set me to wondering what on earth the standards of criticism are that are current in The New York Times that a film which is patriotic and pro-American should receive such treatment.
I got a small clue about The New York Times' standards when looking back over recent reviews on the entertainment page in The New York Times. I came across a review that begins in ecstatic terms of admiration. This is the review of the recent Broadway musical entitled "Hair."
[Read Clive Barnes' review here.]
So here we have a review that starts out just the opposite of the review of "The Green Berets." Whereas "The Green Berets" is unspeakable, stupid, rotten, false, vile and insane, "Hair" is likeable, new, fresh, unassuming.
<snip>
I think now we have a clear picture of the standards of criticism used by The New York Times reviewers. If The New York Times says a film is unspeakable, etc., it must be pretty good. And if The New York Times says a film about depravity is fresh and likeable, we know well enough to avoid it.
Mr. President, there is something utterly perverted with our society's standards of art and entertainment if these examples from The New York Times in any way actually reflect the temper of our time. We have come to the point described by Orwell in 1984, where he talks about newspeak. In newspeak, words are used to mean the opposite of the commonly accepted meaning. Love means hate, peace means war, and so forth. We are now at the point where depravity is fresh and likeable, whereas virtue is apparently false and insane. Despite the ecstatic review of "Hair" by The Times, I confess that I have no desire whatsoever to see it. Despite the incredible blast by The Times at "The Green Berets," I am eager to see the film. I trust John Wayne's judgment more that I would trust that of The Times movie critic.
Zing! The final paragraph was what you read last week.
So there you have it, kids: Strom Thurmond: cultural arbiter, close reader, reviewer denouncer. Tony, Manohla, Stephen--when you're stuck, ask yourself "What would Renata do?" and, you know, let the sunshine in.
The rest is silence.
[Cue reprise of "Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)" and fade to black.]
Props to the NYT stylists responsible for the color photo for stealing from the best--the black and white shot of Bacall helped launch her film career. The rest of the iconic wartime cutie resets starring Junebug scene-stealer Amy Adams are pretty good, too.
Your pal the cinetrix is just back from a blissful Internerd-free weekend with friends and family. I didn't even read the papers. Did I miss anything?
