Happy Thursday, guys. Let's get things rolling with a Soul Track today.
"You're No Good," by Betty Everett. Everett (1939-2001) was a Mississippi-born soul singer and pianist best know for "The Shoop Shoop Song" (covered by Cher for the Mermaids soundtrack). She was singing in gospel groups at an early age and moved to Chicago in the 1950s, where she was signed to the Vee-Jay label. "You're No Good," which was first recorded in 1963 by Dee Dee Warwick (a knockout version), was recorded later that year by Everett - the song just missed entering the top 40 charts. It was made into a hit the next year by the underrated British group the Swinging Blue Jeans and, of course, in the 1970s by Linda Ronstadt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4KfO7xX-0
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Movie Reviews
Almost nothing about the title character in Albert Nobbs (2011), as conceived, written and played, convinces me that this slight, buttoned-up, soft-speaking character is worthy of his/her own movie. Albert (Glenn Close) works as a butler at a fashionable, upscale, turn-of-the-century Dublin hotel, going about his business with a glazed, humbled rectitude. But Albert, you see, has a secret: he is really a woman.
That's a whopper of a secret, but the movie doesn't really do anything with it. The character would make a fascinating protagonist in a short story (perhaps one by one of the co-screenwriters here, the wonderful Irish novelist John Banville, who pens exciting, gorgeous Dublin noir under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black), but as the main character in a movie, he, like the film just sits there. Glenn Close, as Albert, has a fabulous, growly Irish accent, but she's almost too in character here and she gives Nobbs no interior life - she spends far too much time just staring waxenly into the middle distance. What is Albert thinking? More importantly, why should we care? The movie is stolen right out from under Close by the British actress Janet McTeer (a fellow Oscar nominee with Close), who plays a hotel painter, Mr. Page, who is also living life as a woman disguised as a man. McTeer, strong-shouldered, attentive, and crudely urgent, gives the movie some life. I wish the film were more about her. The lovely Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right) gives a fine performance as Helen, a hotel maid who, urged by her handsome, conniving boyfriend (Aaron Johnson), tries to bilk Albert into giving her money, Albert convinced that he and Sophie will have a future together.
Directed by the talented Rodrigo Garcia (who previously directed Close in 1999's Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her), Albert Nobbs isn't a bad movie per se. It has some good performances, a nice sense of place, but it's too remote, stiff to really engage the audience. Like its main character, it's a movie that never lets us in. One of the major problems in the film, a serious distraction for me, was how bad the makeup was. Neither Close nor McTeer remotely resembled a man, and because of this, the gullibility and naivety of the other characters, which is in no way ever alluded to or implied, became a problem.
(**)
In Gone (2012), a no-one-believes-me thriller set and filmed in Portland, Oregon, Amanda Seyfried plays a young woman who is convinced that her vanished sister has been kidnapped and held captive by the killer who took her a year ago and held her at the bottom of a pit in the woods. The local police never really believed that Seyfried's Jill was kidnapped, since no evidence (or kidnapper) could ever be found or described, so they are somewhat skeptical about the story of her sister's disappearance. Jill, confronted with their lethargy and indifference, soon becomes the focus of their attention, as she begins to run around the city, armed, trying to piece together what exactly happened.
The film, grounded by Seyfried's charismatic, intriguing lead performance, certainly grips you and holds your attention throughout. Seyfried, with her big, buggy eyes and earnest intensity, is well-cast here: we're not certain she isn't crazy, that the whole disappearance scenario isn't just in her head. And, really, she is the whole show here: the supporting parts (played by familiar actors such as Wes Bentley - in a nothing, red herring role - Jennifer Carpenter, Daniel Sunjata, Nick Searcy, Michael Pare) are perfunctory. The film, written by Allison Burnett and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Heitor Dhalia, was torn up by critics, who lamented the film's plodding, pedestrian plotting. I will say this: If you go into the homestretch expecting the usual twists and pull-the-rug-from-under-you plot contortions, you'll be disappointed. It's fairly straightforward always through the end, a narrative surprise in an ear when ambiguity - open, maybe-it's-this.maybe-it's-that endings - are all the rage.
(***)
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Let's examine the new movies opening this weekend in theaters:
Snow White and the Huntsman No, no, and no. Director Rupert Sanders unleashes the second Snow White re-telling of the year and looks as miserable, as unexciting as the first. You could do a lot worse than Charlize Theron as the evil queen and Kristen Stewart as S. White, but even they couldn't get me to see this action adventurer. Strictly average early reviews.
Verdict: Not Interested
Piranha 3DD 2010's Piranha 3-D was a lot of fun, campy, exciting, self-aware, groovingly gory. This just looks ick, a needless trip to the well with a lousy new cast (David Hasselhoff, Gary Busey, 30 Rock's Katrina Bowden) and some first-film holdovers (Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames). It's reputedly even gorier and breast-ier. The reviews are terrible - as opposed to the well-liked predecessor - and everything about it screams low-rent rush job.
Verdict: Not Interested
For Greater Glory Despite its intentions, bad reviews are greeting this saga about the 1926-1929 civil wars in Mexico over the freedoms of Catholics to worship. Supporters of the Catholic Church, called the Cristeros, fought against the government troops. Its subject a barely-known historical event, the movie is the most-expensive film ever made in Mexico and has a good cast: Andy Garcia (as the central figure), Ruben Blades, Peter O'Toole, Eva Longoria, Bruce Greenwood, and Catalina Sandino Moreno.
Verdict: Not Interested
High School A high school (get it? High school?) stoner comedy with Adrien Brody (he of the curious post-Oscar career) as Psycho Ed, a drug dealer. The reviews are not good, not at all good. I suppose there's a DVD audience waiting for this one, but I think it just sounds cheap and terrible. Co-stars Mykelti Williamson (Bubba!), Michael Chiklis, and Colin Hanks.
Verdict: Not Interested
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(Brief) Book Review
George Pelecanos' 2006 procedural The Night Gardener is filled with fine writing and nuanced characters. The plot involves three Washington D.C. detectives' search for a possible serial killer who dumps the bodies of young kids (with palindromic names) in community gardens. Pelecanos writes clearly and intelligibly and pens the best teenage dialogue I've ever read, but I'm starting to see formula at work here, from the way characters talk (too encyclopedia-like about obscure 70s soul), to the fanatic detailing of Beltway neighborhoods and streets to the way every character is loaded with extraneous detail that ultimately doesn't seem to matter that much. Good ending, though.
(***1/2)
Images courtesy of :
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