Mostly Off Topic: Fear of 50 (and a few words about "Antichrist")

If you think this Doodad Kind of Town has been more like a Ghost Town this year, you're not wrong.

In its two-and-a-half year history, this blog has been on hiatus more often than Joan Rivers has been in a plastic surgeon's office. But the dead spaces have been longer and more frequent in 2009.

I've chalked this up to work stress and overtime, but really, it's more than that.

My fiftieth birthday is now less than six weeks away, and as it grows ever nearer, I get increasingly introspective and gloomy. I divide my precious moments of spare time between competing in Bejewelled Blitz tournaments with old college friends on Facebook and meditating depressively on the question "What have I done with my life?" Which is generally accompanied by thoughts like "My body is falling apart!" or "I'm too immature to be this old!"

On the subject of falling apart:

I've never been what you'd call athletic (as my high school gym teacher and the girls who always picked me last for their volleyball teams would attest.) But in my forties, I became something of a gym rat. I dropped forty pounds while embracing the endorphin-producing pleasures of the treadmill and the elliptical trainer, and savoring the appearance of defined abdominal muscles that resulted from the hours logged in Pilates classes.

And then, a few months before my 49th birthday, I pulled a hamstring. I pulled it real good. And it didn't heal properly. Eventually, the muscle got so contracted that it pulled my lower spine out of alignment. And so on the Sunday before Christmas 2008, I awoke to find my back in such painful spasms that I literally couldn't get out of bed.

That was the beginning of a long, slow, painful discovery that everything I'd taken for granted about my body - its abilities to withstand injury, stress, or lack of sleep; its tendency to regain a pleasing shape and size after a period of sloth and overeating with just a week or two of fewer carbs and more treadmill time - was forever gone. Even after weeks of muscle relaxers, pain pills, physical therapy, and daily exercises, I was still hobbling though life. Formerly minor, mindless actions like cleaning the cat box or picking up a fork I'd dropped on the floor became drawn out, carefully choreographed maneuvers in which I clutched furniture for support and executed awkward deep knee bends to avoid stress on my aching back. I grimaced through my days at work, popping Advil every four hours, and coming home on gloomy winter nights to sit in a recliner equipped with a heating pad and back support pillow - and a ginormous bowl of Hershey's kisses close at hand. Always something of an emotional eater - and now deprived of my daily endorphin rush at the gym - I now ate chocolate every night to feel better. (And it worked, until my jeans got so tight, I couldn't zip them up. Eventually I gave in and bought bigger jeans, which I'm still wearing today.)

I think moments like this come to everyone when they hit middle age - that one injury, that nagging physical problem, that day when you take a good look in the mirror and ask "Where the hell did this pot belly come from? - that whup you upside the head with the revelation: "You can no longer neglect your body without consequences." Over the past year, my back has become the absolute and foolproof measure of how well I'm taking care of myself. If I'm going to regular yoga classes and eating right and getting enough sleep, I feel little-to-no pain. If, however, I'm working late, and getting no exercise for weeks on end, I will experience a day like the one I had two weeks ago: I will have trouble getting out of bed, I will hobble around my house trying to "work the kinks out" of my seriously screwed-up back, and I will finally have to work from home because I will be physically unable to get into my car.

With regard to those other thoughts:

I think it's also true that everyone in middle-age, no matter how much they've accomplished or how great their lives and families are, asks themselves "What have I done with my life?" After all, that's why the phrase mid-life crisis was invented.

Hell, even 51-year -old Alec Baldwin, in this month's Elle magazine, bitches and moans about the fact that "I haven't had a luxe life," and how he wants to marry a rich woman so he can spend the rest of his life travelling and reading books. (I'm not sure what constitutes a 'luxe life' in Baldwin's world, but I would think that a man with a hit TV show, an apartment on Central Park West and a big house in the Hamptons might be doing a little better than OK. I'm just saying. But I digress.)

As for that other observation - "I'm too immature to be this old!" - that's a tougher one for me to deal with. The acknowledged milestones of adulthood in our society are getting married and having children, two things I have not done (and, at this point in life, don't ever expect to.) Sure, I do other adult things like hold down a responsible job, own a home, and so forth. But what I don't have is a legacy to hand down. And with fifty approaching, the notion of what I'll leave behind when I go is weighing heavy on my mind.

"Children and art," wrote Stephen Sondheim, are what we leave behind when we leave this world. I'm not leaving any children behind. What I do hope to do before I die, I realize with greater clarity as each day passes, is to produce some piece of writing that matters, that touches someone and helps them to feel less alone. What form that will take is not in my control. I'm not expecting to produce a masterpiece, or even a best-seller. But I'm beginning to doubt that I'll accomplish it by being, for example, the 400th person in the blogosphere to weigh in on "Antichrist."

But, since I brought it up:

I saw "Antichrist" three weeks ago, but I haven't felt compelled to write a single word about it.

What makes this odd is that it's a Lars Von Trier film, and I've always had lots to say about his work. Every other Von Trier film I've seen - whether I've loved it ("Dogville") hated it ("Manderlay") or had mixed feelings ("Dancer in the Dark," "Breaking the Waves") - has lingered in memory for days after watching it, giving me plenty to mull over and analyze. And there's a lot going in "Antichrist," too, but it was completely out of my system by the next day. I have no desire whatsoever to revisit it.


Then, too, I broke my own cardinal rule of never reading another review until I had written my own. The day after seeing "Antichrist," I read a lot of reviews. And if you want to read the best and most balanced of them, I would refer you to Andrew O'Hehir's thoughtful piece on Salon. I'd also refer you to this fine piece from the deceptively titled site Pajiba: Scathing Reviews, Bitchy People. I say the site is deceptively titled, because this review is neither scathing nor bitchy; in fact, it's remarkably generous and fair-minded. It also contains the single greatest sentence ever written about the bad of boy of Danish cinema: "Von Trier doesn't push the envelope; he burns down the entire fucking post office, but for what cause, I couldn't begin to fathom."

And that about sums it up. I'm not sure whether "Antichist" is meant to be a misogynist screed, a straight-on horror story or a fever dream from Von Trier's admitted bout of clinical depression. It's certainly a serious work of art, but it's a brutal and disturbing one without much in the way of a discernible point. It's also the only Von Trier film that's ever made me laugh out loud (when the obviously animatronic talking fox takes a break from chewing on its own entrails to warn Willem Dafoe that "Chaos reigns!")

If that sounds a little weird, well, that's the least of it. "Antichrist" has been decried as "arthouse torture porn" and an 'endurance' sort of film, along the lines of Pasolini's "Salo." In my opinion, it is neither, and I'm a notoriously and excessively squeamish viewer. Its scenes of graphic gore cumulatively account for less than two minutes of the film's running time, and I only had to avert my eyes for about 20 seconds of that. (Hint: When Charlotte Gainsborough reaches for the scissors, beware of what's coming.)

I can't dismiss "Antichrist," but neither can I recommend it. I will say this though: it's the most difficult, disturbing and confounding film you'll see all year.

Meanwhile, as I struggle with getting older, I trust my readers will not mind if I take this blog off-topic occasionally to delve into more personal issues. I feel a change is in the wind here, but I don't have a clear picture of where this blog is headed just yet.

Stay tuned...

"A Serious Man" and "The Invention of Lying"

For the second time this year, I've turned to a friend during the closing credits of a film and said "I've got to see this again in order to get my mind around it."

The first time I said this was just after the closing scene of "Inglorious Basterds,"and the repeat viewing felt necessary in order to determine whether it was truly great or just overrated fanboy crap. The jury's still out here on "Basterds;" that second viewing has yet to take place.

With the Coen Brother's "A Serious Man," however, I suspect the repeat viewing may take place as soon as next weekend, so anxious am I to revisit its pleasures and puzzle out the density of its layers of meaning.

If indeed there is anything there to puzzle out.

"A Serious Man," while in many ways a radical departure and an uncharacteristically personal work for the Coens, is of a piece with the nihilistic tomfoolery in their most recent outing "Burn After Reading." And it resoundingly reaffirms that film's closing line: "What have we learned from this? Not a thing." It's many things all at once - a take-off on the Book of Job; an unsettling, absurdist meditation on human suffering and the limited efficacy of religion to help us make sense of it; and a meticulously detailed remembrance of growing up Jewish in the suburban Midwest of the 1960s. Ultimately it's the kind of film in which the words to Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" prove to contain more wisdom than those of three revered rabbis put together. But its final shot is every bit as ambiguously ominous as the conclusion of "No Country for Old Men."

It opens in a Polish shtetl where a couple is visited by what may be either a kindly, elderly neighbor, or a dybbuk (demon) - if it's the latter, they've been cursed by God. We never find out who the visitor really is; all too soon, we're whisked into the opening credits and then to 1967 Minneapolis where we're introduced to Lawrence Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). His doctor proclaims him a healthy man, and his college physics class stares glassy-eyed as he enthusiastically fills blackboards with convoluted equations that apparently describe how everything in the world works. When a character is introduced with such an assurance of his well-being and understanding, you can bet he's in for a spectacular run of bad luck. And the bad stuff starts almost immediately.

First, his wife asks for a divorce so she can marry their widower friend, an unctuous, dulcet-voiced aging hipster named Sy Ableman (the wonderful Fred Melamed). Then his bid for tenure is threatened when an unnamed party begins writing letters to the tenure board describing Gopnik's "moral turpitude." The ne'er -do-well bachelor brother (Richard Kind, funny and poignant) who sleeps on his couch lives a secret life that finally and embarrassingly catches up with him. Cars crash. Legal bills mount. Lawrence suffers nightmares, considers taking a bribe from a student who would like a higher grade. He consults rabbis, searching for meaning and solace; in return, he gets an exhortation to find evidence of God in the beauty of the synagogue parking lot and a hilarious, but ultimately meaningless, tale about a plea for help carved into the inside's of a goy's teeth. (I can't do it justice, I can't. Just trust me.) And all the while, his son Danny is spending his days getting high in the boy's room at Hebrew school, his daughter is forever trying to get in the bathroom to wash her hair, and the Gentile father-and-son next door glower at him between their vigorous backyard games of catch and hunting trips from which they return with a freshly killed elk strapped to the top of their station wagon.

Stuhlbarg, an acclaimed stage actor, was seemingly born to play stunned, comic incomprehension; he's the perfect, beleaguered straight man to the coterie of lunatic characters that surround and bedevil him. Among a universally superb supporting cast, the standouts are Kind, Melamed and Amy Landecker (daughter of legendary Chicago DJ John "Records" Landecker, BTW) as the smoldering Mrs. Samsky, the Gopnik's nude-sunbathing neighbor. And the Coens, as ever, have the greatest gift this side of Fellini for casting memorably funny/grotesque faces in minor roles. except this time, even the funny minor characters feel more authentic, as if they're people the Coens remembered from their own early lives.

If you don't already love the Coens, I suspect "A Serious Man" is not going to win you over. Those of us who delight in their particular brand of absurdity will find much here to love and be challenged by. And if you're old enough to remember the 1960s, you may find nostalgic pleasures here as well. The wood panelled rec room walls, the hi-fis, the pictures on the walls, and the antenna on the roof that must be endlessly fussed with in order to get a clear picture on Channel 4 will all bring on a knowing smile. I've seen lots of movies set in the 60s, but can't recall one that has so recognizably and authentically captured the domestic details of that era. They're the kind of details that make "A Serious Man" feel so personal and specific and sets it apart from the Coens' other work, even as its cynical, frequently cartoonish humor unmmistakably brand it as theirs.

In "The Invention of Lying," a modest yet charming new comedy from British comic Ricky Gervais (he co-wrote and co-directed with Matthew Robinson in addition to starring), we're transported to a world where human beings "have not evolved the ability to lie." Actually it's worse than that - they haven't evolved the ability to withhold information. So not only does Jennifer Garner blurt out to Gervais at the outset of their blind date how unattractive she finds him, but the waiter at the restaurant greets them both with the revelation that "I'm embarrassed I still work here." Strangers routinely confess to one another their deepest personal insecurities and miseries, all the while displaying a highly evolved ability to articulate their own emotional complexity. "I'm threatened by you because there are things about you I don't understand," Gervais slimy co-worker tells him. "And I don't like things I can't understand."

Gervais plays a sad, schlubby loser who can't score with his dream girl (Garner) and can't hold on to his job, but he develops a miraculous talent. He discovers how to "say what isn't" - to lie - and because he lives in a world where no lie has been told before, everyone believes him. His first trick is to withdraw more money from his bank account than it actually contains ("Our computer must be wrong!" the teller apologizes cheerfully as she hands him a hefty stack of bills), but soon he's using his newfound ability to soothe the misery of those around him, assuring everyone from his suicidal neighbor (Jonah Hill) to the bickering couple at the coffee shop that everything is going to be ok.

"Invention" takes a particularly sly, subversive turn when Gervais tell his biggest lie. Undone by his dying mother's fear that she'll pass into eternal nothingness, Gervais assures her she's going to a better place where she'll be reunited with everyone she loves and she'll have her own mansion. The credulous medical staff at his mother's bedside are enthralled - soon word has spread that Gervais knows all about the afterlife. A mob appears at his door, and to appease them, Gervais delivers a list of informational tidbits about "the man in the sky" and the afterlife - it rapidly devolves into a fitfully funny Q&A about sin, God, Heaven and Hell. The scene feels as if it were lifted straight from "Life of Brian," and it's every bit as funny. Suffice it to say Gervais apparently feels very much the same about religion as does Bill Maher; unlike Maher, however, he's not an asshole about it.

"Invention" is most satisfying when it pokes gentle fun at the kind of lies we sometimes have to tell ourselves and each other just to get through the day without slitting our wrists. It's somewhat less successful as a romantic comedy. How is it that Gervais has managed to star in two of the smartest and sweetest rom coms of the past year ("Ghost Town" in addition to this), yet has never once been shown actually kissing the girl? "Invention" is tiresomely full of references to Gervais as a "little fat, snub-nosed" man; Garner dithers endlessly about whether to commit to him because she can't face the prospect of bearing "little fat, snub-nosed" children. I guess I wouldn't like Gervais as much if he weren't so self-deprecating, but, jeez, he needs to give himself a break. Tall and chiseled is nice, Ricky, but smart and funny is a pretty sexy combo, too.

Diary of a Weekend Movie Marathon

Saturday, 10/10: Has anyone who's ever seen Woody Allen's "Alice" been even remotely shocked by the way it ends? From the first frame, Mia Farrow's Alice Tate looks so uncomfortable in her big, rambling Upper East Side apartment and matronly sweaters with pearls - her slight frame so overwhelmed by her enormous fur coat - that there's no doubt she's going to chuck it all by the time the signature black-and-white credits roll. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Mia we all know and love showed up in the final scenes, wearing schlumpy jeans and an army fatigue coat, happily heading to her job at the homeless shelter.

I'd seen "Alice" before, years ago; it didn't improve on the second visit. Allen's 1990 film feels like a love letter to his then-girlfriend's benevolent spirit on some levels, but sadly he didn't write her much of a part. Allen is at a loss when it comes to putting genuine depth behind Alice's impulses to do good and live a more meaningful life. The character is just one more of the mousy earth-mother types he's written for Farrow in the past(as in "Hannah and Her Sisters," "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "New York Stories"). Only much whinier.




By this time, I pretty much know what's going to happen when I see a new Michael Moore movie. First of all, my friends will be all excited to see it, and we'll go together in a big, fired-up group. And we'll be joined by a whole auditorium full of similarly left-leaning moviegoers who will express their solidarity with Moore through hearty laughter , cries of outrage and occasional bursts of applause.

And the film itself? You can expect sequences of cleverly edited commercials, educational films, home movies and news footage - sometimes accompanied by jocular pop tunes, and sometimes by ominous or heart-wrenching music, according to the tone of whatever message Moore hopes to hammer home at that moment. At some point, Moore will show up at a corporate headquarters building to ask for an interview with the CEO; he'll inevitably be greeted by a phalanx of security guards rushing to shoo him and his camera crew away. And, there will be heartbreaking interviews with ordinary people who have been deeply hurt by government or corporate policy.

My experience of "Capitalism: A Love Story" played out exactly I had anticipated, with one happy exception. There was no WTF moment in this film where I groaned, rolled my eyes and thought "Mike, you've gone too far!" (as in the"Why does everyone say Cuba is bad?" section of "Sicko," or in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when Moore observes that, on the night before the attacks "the president went to sleep on a bed made with fine French linens." Wanna bet that Michael Moore himself dozed off between some nice, high-thread-count sheets on the night of September 10, 2001?)

Moore still knows how to rile up an audience; he's more propagandist/entertainer than documentarian, and like all his films, "Capitalism: A Love Story" is tailor-made for an audience of registered Democrats and rancorous Bush bashers. (The man next to me kept blurting out "Monkey Boy!" in an almost Tourette's-like manner every time W's face showed up onscreen, and the whole audience broke into sustained applause during a clip of Dennis Kucinich's impassioned speech to Congress against the federal bailout.) But even so, this time out, Moore's film is notably less smart-alecky, and more deeply suffused with a sense of his own heartbreak and fatigue. And though his most pointed attacks are directed at Reagan, Bush and bank CEOs, he doesn't shy away from exposing the roles of Clinton and other Democratic leaders in bringing about the country's devastating economic conditions.

The film concludes with a scene of Moore putting yellow Crime Scene tape around the headquarters of AIG; in voiceover, he tells us "After 20 years, I'm tired of doing this. Why don't you help me?" I have to admit, having seen what Moore had to show me about the death of the once-great American dream, I was more than ready to pitch in.


Sunday, 10/11: I love Fellini, but after seeing "La Strada" for the first time, I had the distinct feeling that a little bit of Giulietta Masina goes a long, long way. She was cute and everything, but God!!! All that mugging! I couldn't take it after awhile.

So it took me several more years to get around to "Night of Cabiria," fearing as I did that Masina would "cute" it to death. No worries, Masina is wonderful - tough, tender and funny all at once. I love that little, perky ponytail she wears. My heart absolutely broke for her all the way through.

I was in such an expansive frame of mind regarding Masina that I decided right after watching "Cabiria" to finally watch "Juliet of the Spirits" - a film I slept almost entirely through in my college Introduction to Film class, buried under my winter coat on a Monday night in drafty old Woodburn Hall.

Turns out, I've should have watched this one before seeing "Alice," since "Alice" is at least partially based on/inspired by it. Another upper-crust housewife in an empty marriage, searching for meaning and fulfillment, more fantasy sequences and mystical stuff. (Except with Fellini, the fantasy sequences really are fantastical - strange, beautiful and way, way over the top. And the costumes are so yummy and crazy. Even if it's' not top-drawer Fellini, you gotta kinda love it, right?)

And yet....

By about the one-hour point, it was all all too weird for me. I think it was the "Exorcist"-like moment with that wizened little guru-lady being taken over by some other personality while she's in the midst of giving Juliet sexual advice. - that's the moment that sent me over the edge. I hit the Stop button, I couldn't go on. Maybe I was just weary from cramming too many movies into a 48-hour period. (I haven't even gotten to the documentary film "Chris and Don" that I watched early on Saturday morning.)

The remaining 90 minutes of "Juliet..." are waiting for me on the DVR. Perhaps I'll get to them on Tuesday.

Lazy Post on "Nine"

All the buzz over the upcoming release of Rob Marshall's "Nine" (which is, of course, the musical version of Fellini's "8 1/2") has made me nostalgic. As I've mentioned, I was in a 1993 Indianapolis production of "Nine" - what I may not have mentioned is that the show was the best stage experience I ever had.

Inspired by those happy memories - as well as Ryan Kelly's recent post on some of his own acting experiences, I offer a few photos:

First, here's a look at the set and most of the cast. Not the best quality picture, but looks fairly Felliniesque, huh? I loved our all-white set and all-black costumes. Not to land a spoiler on you (and God only knows what Marshall is going to do with the film), but in the finale, the entire cast appear in all-white costumes to allow them to blend into the background and out of Guido's mind - all except Guido and Luisa, who remain clothed in black. In case you can't tell, these are all women. The Guidos - adult and nine-year-old versions - are the only males in the cast.


That's me on the right. The actress on my left (the wonderful Wendy Haydock) and I were two of the show's four cartoonish German women - roles which you can be pretty sure will be eliminated in the film version. They were already cut from the show in the 2004 Broadway revival, and as we all know, they aren't based on any of the characters from "8 1/2."

Here are all four Germans (to my right are my very dear friend Cindy and the delightful Tam DeBolt). These are really just glorified chorus parts, but we each got some fun bits to do, plus we were featured in our own big production number, "The Germans at the Spa."



More production number fun:



And finally, here we are with Guido,being taught how to dance the tarantella, which we're meant to perform in his musical biopic on Casanova. Have I mentioned that "Nine" takes some huge liberties with Fellini's original script? I can't tell from the trailer if Marshall is keeping the Casanova production numbers, but I hope he does. They're a whole lot of fun, even if their connection to "8 1/2" is a little tenuous.

Where I've Been, What I've Seen

I hate to start yet another post with an explanation for a prolonged absence from the blogosphere, but here goes...

My job continue to entail long hours and high stress, and there is no end in sight. After working a 10 or 11 hour day, I can't bring myself to come home and get on a computer again, much as I might like to write something. And, you know, every once in a while you have to pay bills or do some laundry.

Even so, I was able to get away to New York for a couple of days last week, and it was a much needed - and truly refreshing - break with the routine. Not only did I have the pleasure of meeting a fellow film blogger face-to-face (the very genial Sam Juliano of Wonders in the Dark), but I also got to see some great stuff, cinematic and otherwise.



If a gal's gonna go to New York, she's gotta take in a Broadway show, right? I was fortunate to see the impeccably acted and directed comedy "God of Carnage." Two couples meet to determine how they'll handle the aftermath of their respective sons' playground fight. In just 90 minutes, their strained but cordial evening descends into heavy drinking, hysterics and the kind of unhinged bad behavior that suggests the parents have far worse problems than their squabbling sons. Confessions are made, large quantities of rum are consumed, and - in one particularly shocking moment - copious quantities are vomit are spewed. It's sort of like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on laughing gas.

And make no mistake, it is very, very funny.

Which is particularly miraculous, because "God of Carnage" is the kind of over-the-top play that could easily become unbearably goofy and shrill in the wrong hands. Thankfully, the actors (a dream cast consisting of Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini) and the director (Matthew Warchus, who won the Tony) are all dazzlingly on top of their games. The quartet of performers have been in these roles for a while, and their comfort with their own characters and with one another is apparent; the roles feel lived-in and the comic timing and interactions are dead-on.



I have no formal education in art; everything I've learned about painting and sculpture, I've gleaned from museum placards and audio tours. I'd be hard pressed to tell you why or how I fell in love with Vasilly Kandinsky's paintings on a visit to the MoMA three years ago, only that something about the purity and immediacy of his abstract images really spoke to my soul. I purchased a copy of the artist's treatise "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" at the museum gift store, skimmed it, brought it home and relegated to the growing pile of Books I'm Going to Get Around to Reading Someday.

Yet I was thrilled when I discovered I'd hit town just in time to catch the opening day of a major Kandinsky retrospective at the Guggenheim. And the exhibit did not disappoint me. As I wandered through, reading and listening to the story of the artist's life, I couldn't help but think "Someone ought to make a movie about this guy." He lived through the Russian Revolution and two World Wars, endured long years in exile from his native Russia, worked with and loved his muse/partner for many years (though they ultimately parted), then fell in love with another woman just from hearing her voice on the phone. That's a lot of drama before you even get around to his paitings and his role in major artistic movements. Who would we trust to make the film of Kandinsky's life? Julie Taymor did a pretty great job with "Frida," Julian Schnabel's film on "Basquiat" was pretty good, Ed Harris directed himself pretty capably playing Jackson Pollock.... Hmmmm.



The opening images of Jane Campion's "Bright Star" are instructive: close-up shots of a needle making painstakingly even stitches in coarse fabric, a reminder that creating things of beauty - whether they be ruffled collars, poems or deep, loving relationships - takes time and patience.

Such is the leisurely pace of "Bright Star," a film about the doomed love between the young poet, John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his darling Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Fanny is the seamstress of the opening shots; she's also sharp-witted and slow to fall for Keats. She acknowledges the perfection of the opening lines of his "Endymion"("A thing of beauty is a joy forever...") but isn't afraid to tell him that the rest of it isn't up to snuff. Yet their mutual attraction builds as Keats becomes a friend to Fanny's family, and ultimately to her.

Campion's film may be slow, but slow does not equal dull in this case. It's no surprise to encounter the director's painstaking attention to period details or her talent for creating charming scenes of early 19th century families at leisure. What is remarkable, however, is how she presents a compelling, tragic love story in a manner that does not play to conventional expectations. Rather she finds and depicts the rhythms of a life too often lived in interminable waiting - for the post to arrive, for a lover to appear. "Bright Star" is the stuff of which tearjerkers are made; I left the theatre dry-eyed, but no less moved for that fact.



Fall marks the start of "serious" movie (i.e. Oscar-bait) season, and with it generally comes at least one corporate malfeasance/whistle-blower drama. I guess we can give Steven Soderbergh points for originality for delivering his true-life film "The Informant!" as a zany comedy, although I'm not sure what the point was. Matt Damon, chunked up and badly toupeed in the title role does a nice job, but the most indelible part of the film is not his performance, but rather Marvin Hamlisch's annoying, intrusive score - a sixties-style pastiche that sounds like a mash-up of leftover incidental music from "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Mannix," and "Love American Style." The point of such a score is also lost on me - as are the retro-groovy titles (reminiscent of that from the egregious Hugo Stiglitz moment in "Inglourious Basterds") - since "The Informant!" takes place in the 199os.

I wanted to like this, but it mostly just annoyed and confused me. Was the agri-business firm of Archer Daniels Midland seriously corrupt - or just Damon's character? Was Damon meant to be a sociopath or a goofball or a little of both? And why is he shown walking into ADM headquarters in Decatur, Illinois on March 17, 1993 wearing no topcoat or gloves and walking past trees that are abundantly full of green leaves? (Note to Mr. Soderbergh - you might catch a balmy St. Patrick's Day once every few years in Illinois, but you'll NEVER see leaves on the trees in March! )

And seeing Melanie Lynskey as Damon's prim, sprayed-and-coiffed wifey made me wonder again: Why can't someone give this woman a role worthy of her talents? Despite some mildly interesting but disappointingly brief turns in "Shattered Glass" and this year's "Away We Go," the ferociously talented Lynskey seems doomed to an endless procession of baby-voiced dingbat roles. Does anyone else remember her stunning debut in"Heavenly Creatures" - frizzy-haired, baby-fatted, husky-voiced and almost demonically sulky, she unabashedly embraced her character's awkwardness and darkness. Her performance blew me away, and was at least the equal of her co-star, Kate Winslet. Where's that Melanie now? There's got to be a whole lot more to her than what she's showing us on "Two and Half Men." Or here.

I'ts TOERIFC Time!

Come join the discussion on Lindsay Anderson's 1969 classic "if....." led by the other Pat -that'd be Mr. Pat Piper - at Lazy Eye Theatre. It all starts Monday morning around 10 am EST.

And BTW, the Criterion disc is 10% off at Barnes and Noble this week; if you're a Reader's Advantage member, you'll get an additional 10% off.

(Not that I'm shillin' for B&N mind you, but they have had some great Criterion Collection sales this year.)

The LIttle Details that Make a Movie

This blog has been a pretty quiet place for most of the summer. I've let long hours at work and other stresses keep me from doing much writing. I've seen movies, I just haven't felt particularly motivated to write about most of them.

Over the recent holiday weekend, I saw no less than three movies, all of which I liked: "Cold Souls," "Away We Go," and "World's Greatest Dad." Two days later the only one I'm still thinking about is "World's Greatest Dad." And I'm pretty fixated on one scene in particular.

In "World's Greatest Dad," the usually insufferable Robin Williams turns in a painfully brilliant performance as the father of a deviant, dimwitted and thoroughly reprehensible teenage son. His character, Lance Clayton, is a guy who can't catch a break: a unpopular high school English teacher and would-be writer with a stack of rejected manuscripts on his desk, a sort-of girlfriend who manages to make him feel cared for without ever quite managing to go on a date with him, and a son who routinely calls him a 'fag' and a 'dumb ass.' There isn't a bright spot in Lance's life (except for maybe the secret stash of pot in his kitchen cabinet), and Williams shows us the character's loneliness and pain without ever once being cloying, cuddly or obvious.

And nowhere more devastatingly than in a scene set in the teacher's lunch room, early in the film. Allow me to set the scene.

In the course of one morning, Lance has discovered his son engaging in auto erotic asphyxiation, learned that his poetry class in being dropped from the school curriculum and been asked by the principal to consider enrolling his son in special education. And then at lunch period comes the worst blow of all: the school's much more popular creative writing instructor has had an article published. In the New Yorker. On his very first try.

Poor, unpublished Lance learns this from his sometime girlfriend, as she bounces and squeals and gets all touchy-feely with the successful author, a handsome, athletic type named Mike. She's soon joined by other teachers who insist that he read the article at the next student assembly. Lance makes a great show of congratulatory support for his colleague but the pain behind Williams' eyes is almost unbearable to watch. He reacts to each revelation ("The New Yorker!" "His first try!") as if he's being stabbed and pretending to really enjoy it.

And through it all, he keeps fiddling with his "Fresh and Fit" lunch kit, folding and refolding his paper napkin, endlessly arranging and re-arranging little plastic containers of unidentifiable food on the lunch table. There's something about that lunch kit and the way Williams can't stop fussing with it, the way he fixates on the lunch kit whenever there's an new outpouring of praise for Mike, that makes the scene even sadder to me. It's a deceptively simple little bit of business that deepens the pathos of the scene.

Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait (yes, the helium-voiced, lunatic comedian) adds a lot of telling little details like these throughout "World's Greatest Dad." I especially like the stack of Lance's rejected novels with titles like "Darwin's Pool" and"The Narcissist's Life Vest." Wouldn't you love to know what those books were about? I know I would.