One blog. Two opinions. One zillion films.

Tam, Turner Classic Movies (channel 57 locally) just emailed me their schedule for April. A quick scan shows some real highlights.

• April 3, 6:30 AM: Brando. TCM’s original two-hour documentary on the guy who pretty much established modern acting. I’ve been waiting for this; I caught only the first half of it last year. There’s a lot of fascinating rare footage, including a strange TV interview of Marlon Brando with his father — who was a real a-hole.

• April 4: A Mockumentary Four-Fer!: Gotta make room on the TiVo for four consecutive very funny movies. Oh wait, I already own the Christopher Guest movies.

- 6:00 PM Take The Money And Run. Let’s review how funny Woody Allen really was.

- 7:30 PM Real Life. Albert Brooks’ satire on TV “real life” documentaries. That’s the great Harry Shearer wearing one of those helmet-cams.

- 9:15 PM Best in Show

- 11:00 PM This Is Spinal Tap Two classics, to say the least, and Spinal Tap was the movie that started it all.

• April 5, noon: The President’s Analyst. James Coburn in the hippest Bond spoof ever. A quintessential 60’s films. Been a while. Does it hold up?

. . . Lordy, there’s just too much this month. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly; Shane (pandering to locals, are we?), Modern Times, Butch Cassidy et al, The Horse Soldiers (a family classic because my Uncle Johnny, an extra, gets shot in the eye!), Gone With the Wind !!!11!, Double Indemnity (K finds Fred MacMurray sexy, which further adds to her charm) — that’s all too much, leaving no time for stoner classics like I Married A Monster From Outer Space.

I got work today. You finish logging the schedule.

Well, David, I finally saw Duplicity last week, and I was pleasantly surprised.  I was also confused. I’m a bit scared of telling you how I was confused because you weren’t confused.

Although the movie is a romantic spy-romp, with a lot of camera time spent making love to plush hotels  it kept me interested.  Sometimes these simple formulas backfire; the chemistry doesn’t work between the stars, the story dumps off prematurely, ends with a whimper.   I did not see the ending coming until just before it happened.

Why do trailers take the low road?   Duplicity’s trailers were so uninteresting, and really didn’t give enough of a peek into the multiple layers of the story.  It looked like Roberts and Owen played spies who may or may not have cheated on each other romantically.  And that was boring.  If they’d included some teasers about Wilkinson’s and Giamatti’s roles, a few look-sees into the spy laboratory, I’d have gotten to the theater sooner than I did.

That slow-mo corporate rumble on the airport tarmac was great.  Loved it!  Should have made the trailer.

I’ve come to appreciate Julia Roberts’ acting.  She wasn’t in a stretch situation here, but she has a great earthy presence now that she’s had children.   She’s put some weight on too, and is comfortable in that skin.  A great step forward for female actresses.  There really isn’t another actress “like” Roberts, she’s unique.  Most of the time these days, actresses are interchangeable; they look like each other, talk like each other, and they all date Owen Wilson.

Roberts was great in Charlie Wilson’s War.

Owen was fine, too.  He seemed a bit dumb at times; he’s the softie and Roberts is the more hard-bitten of the two.

Of course, it ends up that neither is in charge.

Ok, I was confused at the flashbacks and the whole deal with the script Owens and Roberts rehearse.

Tammy. You’re quiet. Too quiet. Because Knowing is worth chatting up. Big themes here. I don’t want to give too much away, but did you read Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” set (The Amber Spyglass, The Subtle Knife, The Golden Compass)? I thought of Will and Lyra. Enough said.

Plus I like Alex Proyas. He’s a low-yield director; The Crow from 1994 is one of the few great movies sourced from comic books graphic novels, and Dark City was just plain years ahead of its time. Sci-noir?

Proyas taps the power of the big screen. There’s an airline crash in Knowing that might be most eye-popping special effect I’ve ever seen, made all the more horrific because its immediate aftermath is a lengthy and calm tracking shot. In fact, on paper Knowing is a veritable dump truck load of scary-movie tricks — weird voices, strangers lurking in the woods, crazy visions, guys cruising in old Detroit iron and stalking kids, drinking Lord Calvert — yet there’s not one cheesy frame throughout.

Except for Nicolas Cage. I miss the Cage of Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas. Lately he’s been pretty much the same character: feet and arms spread apart in grim, manly fashion, eyebrows cocked in cartoon worry, ready to cope. Knowing depends heavily on computer effects and they are quite excellent. If Nicolas Cage, concerned single parent of Knowing, was created not with a live actor but by a computer running the Nicolas Cage Harried-But-Steadfast algorithm, I would not be the least bit surprised.

But anyway, Tam, I hope you see Knowing and answer this: worthy story or pure bunk?

Tammy,

Absent a 10-year moratorium on superhero movies, here’s one way Hollywood could improve its output: pay heed to Tony Gilroy. As a screenwriter, he knows how to leach the ridiculous from the merely preposterous; he wrote the Bourne movies, whose reputations are out-Bonding James Bond movies in bloodied-spy genre.  Gilroy’s first shot at directing his own screenplay, Michael Clayton, was brisk and multi-layered, featured a slam-bang ending as well as lingering discord. How grown-up.

Duplicity could have used some of that briskness but it’s still quite a bit of fun. Not to mention grown-up. (No jokes about defecating in one’s pants, which is more than I can say for the Monsters vs. Aliens trailer. ) The foreground is a relationship between two professional liars, played more seriously than a Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn pairing would have it. On the other hand, the background is a brutally comic corporate war fought through spies and moles. The credits roll during a slo-mo brawl by two captains of industry, as funny a thing as I’ve seen in a while.

Onward with the lazy writer’s favorite tool: bullet points.

• Clive Owen sent two of my favorites the past few years, Inside Man and Children of Men. Duplicity has the Clive I had hoped to see in The International. (I forgot to review that movie here. Not a good sign.) In Duplicity, he’s the Amazing Rubber Cad.
• I suspect that some will complain that Clive Owen and Julia Roberts aren’t sparking a full 1000 watts.  Tough magic to bottle, that screen chemistry. Roberts seems a tad world-weary here — her character certainly would be — but the way she undersells her lines often makes them funnier. 
• What a cast. Paul Giamatti’s wall-eyed gawk, when stuffed into a wide-angle lens, is a model of paranoia mixed with mad aggression. By time time all the counter-ploys and supermoles are revealed (Gilroy must have designed his dense caper with a spreadsheet and 3-D modeling software), you realize why barely-there characters were barely there. Big fun. I’m going to mention Tom McCarthy here — just for the tag — and post more about him soon. The guy’s a gift.
• Watch for a scene with Julia and a hapless Ms Bofferd (Carrie Preston). Bofferd has been seduced by Clive and now her corporation is compromised. (You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Clive Owen fake a Southern accent.) It’s a brief scene. Julia wordlessly glowers, one of the biggest laughs.  Yet at the same moment Carrie Preston delivers a wonderful speech in her own defense. It’s a glorious human moment, the kind a good writer thinks up once he’s had it with certain movie cliches.
• Cream or lotion? The stakes are high.

Tam, K and I ducked into the 2 p.m.-only showing of Coraline. It’s a real marvel to watch, and probably quite creepy for a lot of kids. I’m not familiar with the work of Neil Gaiman but he’s becoming the storyteller of the moment, which is fine by me. He’s witty and sharp, one of the few guests on The Colbert Report to give Stephen Colbert a run for his money.

As film art, Coraline is one of a kind. It simply creates a vivid, brand new world for us to occupy, which for me is the number one reason to go to movies. From the first sequence — the disassembly of an old-fashioned doll by spindly metal fingers — you know you’re not in for a Disneyesque confection. There’s a real-world problem of a bossy, lonely girl, Coraline, with inattentive and possibly troubled parents. Then Coraline enters a fantasy world of ideal-seeming parents. There is a price to pay if she wishes to swap worlds.

What I liked best are that the standard devices (secret doors and mirrors) which shift Coraline from layer to dream layer become unreliable. This mimics that woozy panic you get when you’re convinced a dream state is real life. Take your kid to see this movie. Discuss. Fascinating observations may come out of the kid’s mouth. Or maybe it will take 20 years and a therapist’s couch.

Seems eons since I watched VCB (the subject line of your email made me think you were pointing me towards a Very Cool Blog…oh, wait!  You were!) and though I enjoyed the movie, passed the time pleasantly…I essentially agree.  A do-over.   I’ll never not love Woody, but it’s the old Woody,…or the young Woody who makes me smile.

I do adore his humor.   In many ways, he’s a woman’s director.  He loves women, so that’s no surprise.   It ain’t easy to repeatedly visit Freud’s sofa whilst gazing at your own navel whilst making a movie and still get laughs.  He makes us laugh at ourselves when he’s at his best.   He makes fun of others, but gets away with it because he makes fun of himself.   He’s one of our great American writer-directors.

Glad we’re on the same page about the P.Cruz “Not-scar.”   Somebody paid somebody off.  Amy Adams was robbed.

Happy first day of SPRING!!!!!!  Tiptoe through some tulips, my friend!

Welp, Tammy, finally got hold of Vicki Cristina Barcelona. Was I ever a Woody Allen fan? Why, yes. Sleeper, Bananas, and of course Annie Hall. Communal fun-times. Nifty gems like The Purple Rose of Cairo and Bullets Over Broadway. Zelig. They guy had game, half a life ago.

The question is, does Woody Allen remember Woody Allen films? He’s become the living incarnation of the Alzheimer’s joke about getting to solve the same crossword puzzle over and over. Younger viewers who see his films in reverse chronology won’t be getting the same surprises we did. They’ll be watching pre-runs.

In a vacuum, VCB is a pleasant distraction, a bedroom farce-cum-tourist slide show. Pretty scenery, hearty laughs on schedule. For the umpteenth time, Woody posits that people like sex so much they do it even after promising not to. Not that the movie is sexy. For a guy obsessed with sex, Woody manages to be both flaccid and a stiff.

Here’s who should see it: 17-year-olds who want a short course on how to live the bohemian life, assuming there’s anything left in the trust fund.

I know you like Woody a lot, Tammy, but don’t you get tired of movies in which everyone talks like Woody Allen? It’s bad enough that a (superfluous, irritating) narrator, a young not-Woody, still talks like Woody Allen — minus the stammering and dry mouth. But when two young lovelies also talk like Woody Allen, where’s the turn-on? 

Ah, but Javier Bardem. He’s so good, he manages to sound like a hot, bold artist rather than a polished, aging wiseacre Manhattanite. Bardem is so good, we forget Woody wrote his role with Ricardo Montalban c. 1955 in mind.

As for Penelope Cruz’s Oscar, perhaps the academy has a thing for sexpots who show a modicum of serious effort. See Cher. In fact, Cruz is always terrific in her Almadovar films. Here, buh. I’m not convinced that manic-depressive artists who have recently attempted suicide tend to look just plain fabulous.

Quoth the Tammy:

When have you ever been drawn to somebody solely because of intellect?

Always. Is there any other reason to be drawn to someone? That is, once we’re past the single-minded mammal-in-heat stage of life? (Well, maybe I speak only for males.) If all my relationships have a theme it’s this: I’m the dumber one. It’s devious and self-serving but my system compensates for my general slow-wittedness.

Those are elective relationships. Not so in Rachel Getting Married, where the pain is there to stay whether Kym remains in the fold or is turned away. Or perishes. When fate deals that lousy a hand, it doesn’t take brains but rather some sublime spiritual gift to find a modicum of sweetness and light. In the immortal words of Yossarian: “There, there.”

It’s late, can’t sleep, blood to be drawn first thing in the morning. One could dwell on why brains never seem to overcome the blues. Instead I’ll step back an admire the painting.

• Bill Irwin, as a father who, dammit, is going to get everyone through all this, is simply heartbreaking here. You sure made me want to see Fool Moon; I checked, no disc of it seems to exist, another stage production lost to the ether. 

• Rosemary DeWitt — in the title role! — swings us around the room but good. We first meet her as the older, wiser sister. At about the time she needs to buck up as poor Kym falters, suddenly we hear decades-old habits of haranguing and button-pushing. Rachel should know better. She doesn’t. She can’t hear herself. Sister-schmister, she’s had her fill of Kym.

• I’m still loving Anne Hathaway here; ye shalt not tax my faith. Let’s cut to her dinnertime toast. She rambled on, flicking words of gratitude and reassurance and therapy-speak at the assembled. Sheesh, the tension. Did she end in a tantrum? Breakdown? The dinnertable being over turned? (I’m looking at you, Ed Harris-as-Jackson Pollock.) No. It was a much better scene than that. Did you see About Schmidt? Jack Nicholson also had a wedding toast in a similar tense situation with a strangely touching– and non-movie-ish — outcome.

• I’m in awe of Jonathan Demme overall. There’s scarcely a false note in an entire movie built mostly on small gestures, heated comebacks and occasional non-sequiturs concerning a bunch of wedding guests who aren’t wrapped up in (or are purposefully obliviously to) the family fireworks. It’s an amazing — and not-that-fun — movie to watch yet oddly delightful to remember.

“Smart people” are TOTALLY full of angst!  They spend much time worrying if others think they are smart, or if someone is smarter than they.

I’m uncomfortable delineating “smart” from “un-smart” people; all manner of wisdoms exist.  Having a measurably high I.Q. doesn’t mean emotional intelligence is high.  And emotional intelligence—being open–is what counts. When have you ever been drawn to somebody solely because of intellect?   Fascinating at first; there’s a big power field.  Later, if that’s all there is, a drudge.   If qualitative and quantitative I.Q. are present, it’s a joy.

These (Ordinary) people, Rachel and Kim’s family, don’t exercise this healthier side of their soul.  These people suffocated me, even as I found the ensemble acting to be excellent.   A landscape full of rain, driving everyone indoors where they pile up on one another. They can’t get out and neither can we.  I imagine the cast actually living together in that house, in the rain, preparing for their roles.

I know what K. is saying about long on-screen therapy.  There’s a reason counseling sessions last 50 minutes!

Bill Irwin is an interesting choice to play this family’s patriarch.  I know Irwin from Broadway—he’s a master clown, in the tradition of Chaplin and Keaton.  Back in the 90’s he and another mime, David Shiner, wrote, produced and performed a most glorious show:  Fool Moon.  Saw it twice.  The show is completely wordless, and “…finds the poetry in life’s most basic frustrations…(the show) bears the same relationship to contemporary urban dwellers that Sophoclean tragedy did to ancient Athenians. Its catharsis…is not of a trivial order. Fool Moon is a wrestling match with the world at large.”

Irwin’s work displays a piercing connectivity to the human spirit.  He’s this family’s enabler/connector.  And nobody is happy.   He is generous in his acting, very present.  Irwin is a Sesame Street contributor.

Hathaway’s performance reminded me Jolie’s interrupted girl too often.  Also found myself thinking of Cameron Diaz’s one-time breakout performance in Being John Malkovich.   I saw Hathaway acting.  If we list the things she does in building her character, we’re watching her act.  We shouldn’t remember those things.  But that’s o.k.  She’s broken out.  Let’s see if it sticks.  I’m not sure what Hathaway brings to her film acting that radically stands out—at least she’s not blond! She’s very attractive, she can sing—she should try Broadway herself.  She’d be very good on stage.

Convergence. Must act.

1. Lauren Whaley wrote about King Corn at her nutritious, edifying blog PleaseHappy. Reminded me to proselytize about this brilliant documentary.

2. Main Event put a couple of copies of King Corn on their New Releases rack. (Our household owns a copy. Just ask.)

3. We do need to answer the plaguing question of the moment: “How did we get here?” Many answers in King Corn.

4. A marriage of free-market lunacy and corporate welfare has created a monster, “the most troublesome food in America.”

5. What’s wrong with high-frustose corn syrup? Short course.