End of the Month

Hi, readers.  The end of January is upon us, and what a day it was yesterday in the Peach State - hurricanes, scary weather...

New Movies Opening This Weekend: 

Warm Bodies    It was only a matter of time before we got treated to a zombie rom-com.  Nicholas Hoult, the awkward-adorable boy from About a Boy, is the zombie who runs across a girl, his Juliet (played by Teresa Palmer).  There are reputedly more laughs and romantic moments than scary ones, which is fine by me.  John Malkovich and Dave Franco co-star. 

Bullet to the Head    What is this, 1989?  Two weeks ago we get a new Schwarzenegger movie, two weeks from now we get a new Die Hard, now we receive a new Stallone movie.  Critics are saying this one's a little above-average, mostly due to the crafty direction of action vet Walter Hill.  Stallone, or the heavily Botoxed, immobile-faced version of Sly, plays a New Orleans hitman who joins forces with a Washington D.C. cop to go after some bad guys.  I'll pass. 

Stand-Up Guys    Al Pacino plus Christopher Walken + Alan Arkin should equal a decent movie, right?  Alas, don't be so sure, critics say.  Pacino's a recently-released ex-con who meets up with his best friend (Walken) for a night of reminiscing - and Viagra jokes, no less.  Walken, however, is faced with an impossible dilemma: he must off Al before the morning comes.  Fisher Steven directs.  Julianna Marguiles co-stars.

*

Happy Birthday, Zane Grey!

On this date in 1872, one of the most popular authors of Westerns - one of the inventors of the genre, really - was born in Zanesville, Ohio.  His most famous novel was 1912's Riders of the Purple Sage, a Western that deals, in one of it storylines, with a woman's attempts to escape Mormonism.  As a teen, Grey was a semi-professional baseball player and earned a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he also studied (with noted indifference) dentistry, the field his father wanted him to go into.  He and his wife Dolly (who was both a homemaker and his editor/agent) had three children.

The success of his writings enabled Zane and his family to move west permanently to Altadena, California.  Zane, who also had a hunting lodge in Arizona, was a noted fisherman and traversed the world deep sea-fishing.  His pursuits were Hemingway-esque as well, as Zane traveled all over, even as far as Tahiti, seeking out adventures to write about and serialize in books and magazines.

He died of heart failure at the age of sixty-seven in 1939.  He left behind close to 100 books.  

*

I've been lacking lately in keeping up with my ongoing list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time.  That said, here is the latest entry for the list:

 
Henry Thomas
as Elliott in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) 

Arguably the greatest performance by a child actor in the history of movies, Thomas' indelible work as the full-of-wonder Elliott is warm and natural, curious and funny - and, ultimately, heartbreaking.  Which makes you ponder:  What did Henry Thomas ever really do after this?  In the 31 years since the Spielberg classic, the 41-year old Thomas' work consists of roles I hardly remember him in.  Outside of Legends of the Fall, who can recall him in Dear John?  Gangs of New York?  Was he really in the TV movie adaptation of the aforementioned Riders of the Purple Sage?  Did you see him as young Norman Bates in Psycho IV?  Me neither. 

Oh, well, I'm sure he's living just fine.   




Tomorrow, I'll unveil my 50 Favorite Books of All Time. 




Thanks to http://www.zgws.org/zgbio.php for the info.

Thanks to http://www.experiencefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/warm_bodies.jpg   
and  http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BdOmKJhWzng/TmjIMhPetQI/AAAAAAAABG0/hbOavPC8_yo/s1600/et7.jpg
for the images...

 

Tuesday

Another book review for today: 

My first exposure to this author and what a nice surprise it was.  The parallels to Rear Window have been well-blurbed, and obviously that classic is the reference point here.  Thomas, a schizophrenic thirtysomething, has just lost his father, a tragedy that scarcely affects his routine of sitting in front of the computer all day along.  The Whirl360 site he goes to allows him to traverse - and memorize - the streets of the world's cities.  Traveling down an NYC side street one day, he sees what appears to be a woman being strangled in a window.

His brother, Ray, an illustrator, is forced to be Thomas's caretaker now, and he generally indulges Thomas.  When he views the image on the site, he is convinced something's fishy too.  Soon enough, he is in New York, visiting the building where the image was captured.

I won't tell you what happens next, but I will say it involves the following characters: an New York gubernatorial candidate, his philandering wife, a hitwoman who once took silver in gymnastics at the Sydney Olympic Games (!), a reporter who snuggles up to Ray, and a pedophile.

Barclay paces the novel well enough and keeps things tight and interesting.  This is the definition of a a page-turner.  He, naturally, saves some twists for the final act - and, in this case, the final page.    

My only complaint with the book, really, is that it's too long.  No thriller need be almost 500 pages.    

Grade: B+ 

*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SON GABRIEL!

He turns four today.  We're going to give him the best day possible. 

We're going to give him the best year possible.  He's going to Italy in May - for over a month.

On today's agenda. though: speech therapy, a milkshake, the park, presents, pizza...

I can't believe he's four, just can't believe it.    















Images courtesy of: 

http://www.welovethisbook.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/node_view_photo/Trust%20Your%20Eyes%20hb.jpg

Axed

A book review for this Monday: 

Donald Westlake's The Ax (1997) is a timely novel about the extremes that a recently-laid off paper mill employee would go to insure that he keeps a leg up on the competition. 

If you've never read - or heard of - the late Westlake (1933-2008), you're missing out on a grand American crime craftsman: a meticulous, hard-driving, bleak, blackly funny writer of criminals and average Joes driven to murder and robbery and other fun stuff.  Westlake wrote dozens and dozens of novels, often under various pseudonyms - most notably Richard Stark, the man behind the propulsive Parker novels (most recently on screen in this past weekend's Jason Statham-starrer Parker).  Westlake also wrote screenplays, from the great The Stepfather to The Grifters (which earned Westlake an Oscar nod.

The Ax is a stand-alone novel about a a seemingly ordinary New England fiftysomething man who is let go/downsized from the paper company he had put over twenty years in.  Out of work for two years, he comes up with a scheme to ensure that the job he is now seeking will be his and his alone:  He creates a fake company in a trade journal and calls for the resumes of interested applicants.  After collecting the applications, he rifles through them and determines which of the prospective employees are more qualified than him for the job he thinks will come open and decides to kill them.  No more regional competition.  The novel follows his attempts to kill every one of his competitors.      

What gives the novel great shading and texture is the meticulousness (sorry to use that word again, but it's the one that keeps coming to me...) in which Burke goes about his business.  Fascinated by detail, Westlake makes Burke precise and careful, Westlake pays great attention to the roads and landscapes and homes Burke drives through and past - murder becomes routine, almost blase, just a part of the everyday environment.  Naturally, Westlake sees a parallel between Burke's ruthlessness and that of the corporate goings-on that led him - and thousands of others - to be out of work.  In Westlake's world, everyone is out for themselves. 

An allegory of our times, the novel does something utterly remarkable: We find ourselves rooting for Burke, much as we do for Dexter Morgan.  We give our allegiance to him because he becomes a sort of bastion for us in a world run by the faceless powers-to-be.  The authors evidently knows the world of business - of passive-aggressive throat-cutting and ensuing pacification, doublespeak, middle-management hell - very well.    

Thoughtful, intelligent, perfectly-paced, informative, and, above all, tense and a lot of fun, The Ax really hits hard.   

Grade: A-


* 

- 8 out of 13 on my SAG predictions last night.  Not bad.  I'll be happy when Alec Baldwin is no longer eligible to win a Best Actor award for 30 Rock.  Seven straight years?  Seriously?  I am glad, however, that Downton Abbey's superb ensemble won.   

- I threw in the towel on the Melissa George spy drama Hunted, which was cancelled after its 8-episode first season run on Cinemax but might end up getting picked up by another network.  Reputed to be in the same vein as Alias or Covert Affairs... well, take my word for it.  It's not!  Dark, dreary, overly complicated, and no fun at all.

- Weekend box office:

The ludicrous-looking Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (mysteriously starring Jeremy Renner) took hope the top honors, despite unanimous panning.  Mama, a surprise hit, continued doing strong, earning the second-place prize.  Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty, opening at more theaters, came in third and fourth, respectively, both now earning around $70 million  The aforementioned Parker opened in a weak fifth, despite its star power of Statham and J-Lo.  Movie 43 bombed.  




Image courtesy of: 

http://robertarood.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/ax.jpg

saggin'

Sunday, Sunday...

Well, another mostly slow weekend here in the 'Boro.  Things will start to get exciting (elsewhere) in the coming weeks when Julia starts having interviews and we go to the Book Festival.  Other than that...

Screen Actors Guild Awards tonight - really, the only film awards outside of the Oscars that has any  relevance (and insight into the Oscars...). 

My picks: 

Film
Best Ensemble: Silver Linings Playbook
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Best Actress: Naomi Watts, The Impossible 
Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln 
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables 

TV
Drama Ensemble: Downton Abbey 
Comedy Ensemble: Modern Family 
Actor, Drama: Damian Lewis, Homeland 
Actress, Drama: Claire Danes, Homeland 
Actor, Comedy: Louis C.K., Louie 
Actress, Comedy: Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation 
Actor, Movie or Miniseries: Kevin Costner, Hatfields &McCoys
Actress, Movie or Miniseries: Julianne Moore, Game Change 


Wow, I've picked out two duds in a row when it comes to movies.  Last night, Julia and I watched the 2012 film Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, a Bruce Beresford-directed misfire about an uptight lawyer (Catherine Keener, who deserves better) hauling her daughter (Elizabeth Olsen, ditto) and son (Nat Wolff) upstate to Woodstock to stay with her hippy, drippy-sounding mother, played by Jane Fonda, who does what she can with a thoroughly obnoxious character.  Not much of any interest happens, but the movie dug itself a huge hole in the first two or three minutes when Keener decides to take the kids up to see Fonda, who she hasn't seen in twenty years.  The movie never explains this action, gives no impetus behind it, and since it's clear that whatever conflict exists between the mom and daughter hasn't been resolved, we're literally bewildered and bothered by Keener's decision and, really, the whole set-up, so, with 90 minutes to go, the movie has a lot of making up and explaining to do.
Which it doesn't.  

The Valley of Vision, by British Romanticist landscape artist Samuel Palmer, born on this date in 1805

Images courtesy of:

http://img.posterlounge.de/images/wbig/samuel-palmer-the-valley-of-vision-173823.jpg 

http://www.indiewire.com/static/dims4/INDIEWIRE/a0cf411/4102462740/thumbnail/680x478/http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/93/d97be023b611e2938622000a1d0930/file/Silver-Linings-Playbook-1984905.jpg 

 

Gross Stuff

 
Well, now I know what Movie 43 it's about and I can honestly say that it's probably a shoo-in for next year's Razzie Award for best picture.  Critics absolutely hate it.  It's a series of sketches, each one trying to be grosser and more disgusting than the last.  For instance, in the first sketch, Kate Winslet goes on a blind date with Hugh Jackman, who has a pair of testicles growing out from his Adam's apple.  Another one: Naomi Watts and Liev Schrieber play parents who home-school their son and insist that they try to replicate the emotionally-scarring experience of a normal school, so before long Watts is making out with him, Schreiber is making sexual advances at him, and both are calling him "fag."

Umm...

It's rumored that a lot of the stars who took a few days out of their schedule at various points (for instance, Winslet and Jackman shot their scene five years ago), didn't know this film would ever be released.  It was a quick easy paycheck, and the filmmakers, inspired by gross-out comedy, anthology films (Kentucky Fried Movie, the 1977 omnibus by the filmmakers of Airplane), and Saturday Night Live-style sketches), try to push the boundaries.

And, yes, I want to see it!  Where else will you find Richard Gere playing a thinly-veiled version of Steve Jobs, running across Snooki (yes, that Snooki), who is doing a live reading of Moby Dick?  

*

And speaking of disgusting...

 
In the opening scenes of The Paperboy, the lurid, provocative, hot, but ultimately pointless adaptation of Pete Dexter's 1995 novel, Macy Gray, as a maternal but lippy maid, re-enacts what she thinks Zac Efron's character does all day in his room: masturbate.

Later, Efron gets bitten by a smack of jellyfish and Nicole Kidman's character is forced to pee on him to alleviate the sting.

If that's not enough, Kidman then pleasures herself in front of John Cusack's swamp-trash prisoner, while Cusack relieves himself in his pants.

Want more?  What about the scene where Efron and Matthew McConaughey (they play newspapermen brothers) visit a swamp family, only to watch this disgusting family pass around a vat of melting ice cream that they have been communally spooning out of?    

Should I even mention the scene where McConaughey's character gets tied up and brutally beaten to within an inch of his life by two homophobic African-Americans in a seedy motel?  

So what exactly is this movie about?  Well, some of the the above scenes are there in Dexter's novel, which was a melodramatic but atmospheric look at the ethos and morals of newspapermen in north Florida in the late 60s.  Despite its faults, the novel definitely portrayed the life, the bravado, the weariness, the ambition, and the queasy corruptibility of those dedicated to the print life. 

Director Lee Daniels' film, which plays up the trash and the racial elements, gives us plenty of milieu, but, as it was in the book, the plotline is a little sketchy.  It's a mystery without a mystery, a procedural without a procedure.  If you haven't read the book, you might be unclear as to what a lot of the characters are doing or who they even are.  For instance, you might not know that Scott Glenn's character, Efron and McConaughey's father, is himself a small-town newspaperman.  The mystery itself - whether or not Cusack's character killed a corrupt, hated sheriff - is almost an afterthought.  No groundwork is laid out, no clues, no evidence, no snooping...

Instead, what Daniels is most concerned about is the titillation.  And, for better or worse, I was okay with that.  This is one trashy film, the kind of film some of us actually - though we would never admit it to ourselves - want more from in the movies.  We get plenty of everything here.  And, boy, do the actors come through.  Cusack, spookily hollowed-out and gross, is creepy incarnated.  McConaughey, as the Miami Herald reporter who comes back home to northern Florida to try and set Cusack's character free, is full of sweaty, straightforward, earnest charisma; it's almost eerie how Efron, lit in a gauzy, dreamish way, seems to have stepped right out of the book.  Macy Gray, with her one-of-a-kind-voice, is a strong screen presence, sly and slightly impertinent.
  
The real star, of course, is Nicole Kidman, as the Louisiana woman who writes to hardened, hopeless prisoners and forges connections with them.  ("My boys.")  Are there real women like this?  I don't know, maybe.  Heavily made-up, in short, sequined dresses, vampish and playful, Kidman is a highly sexual figure - as she was in the book- but the actress captures the desperation, the abandonment, and mystery of this lost but certain woman.  What a fearless, up-for-anything actress!  It's as good a performance -as boundary-breaking, as much of a naked revelation - as Monique's was in Daniels' last overheated melodrama, Precious.

So...

Q: Is this a good movie? 

A: How do you define good?     







Images courtesy of: 

http://butlerscinemascene.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/paperboy-efron-kidman1.jpg

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/paperboy-movie-image-matthew-mcconaughey-zac-efron-2.jpg

http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/movie-43-04.jpg

Blah!

 
Almost any way you cut it, Woody Allen's To Rome With Love (2012) is a disappointment, especially considering that it's the follow-up to what is generally one of the director's most winning films, a masterpiece really, Midnight in Paris.  In the post-2000 Allen canon, it's above the truly terrible Anything Else or Hollywood Ending, but not a smear on a decent outing like Small Time Crooks or Whatever Works.  This is the price we Allen fans pay: love Match Point, then you'll have to put up with Scoop; get the gift of Midnight in Paris, then you'll be subjected to this.  

Allen sees as a Rome as a city of eternal possibility, and, hence, we get his most surreal film.  In each storyline, characters are confronted with improbable situations that range from the satiric to silly to the wish fulfillment.  Because it's an Allen film, most of them - even if they are briefly tantalized by fame or sex or success - will be hit with disillusionment.   Unfortunately, none of the stories are really that interesting and none of them connect with each other. 

- Roberto Benigni (where's he been?) plays a boring office worker who suddenly, mysteriously becomes famous, with reporters hounding him, concerned about what he eats for breakfast.  It's a nice idea - Allen musing about the whimsies of fame - but it goes on too long and doesn't build to anything.  Like most of the stories here, it just kind of peters out.

- Allen and Judy Davis are a couple visiting their daughter (Alison Pill) in Rome and meeting her fiancee and family.  Allen's character, a retired avant-garde opera director, discovers that the fiancee's father is a masterful singer... but only when he's in the shower.  This leads to a set piece that...kinda works but, again, is probably overextended.  

- Jesse Eisenberg (born to be in a Woody Allen movie) and an underused Greta Gerwig play, respectively, an architect and a student living in Rome who are visited by Gerwig's neurotic, charismatic, highly-sexed, culturally aware friend Ellen Page, who instantly forms an attraction to Eisenberg.  This whole storyline doesn't go anywhere, with its baffling use of Alec Baldwin proof that actors will do anything - and play anything - to get a role in an Allen movie.  By all extents, Baldwin's character certainly seems real - he's a famous architect re-visiting the city he lived in thirty years prior - but, with no evident transition, he morphs into a sort of semi-visible Greek chorus, offering Jesse advice and world-weary opinions.  Huh? 

- For me, the only storylines that felt complete were, again, fantasies of opportunity and chance, but with slightly more sizzle and humor.  Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) and Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) are a young couple in Rome one their honeymoon.   The two get separated, and Milly becomes entranced with a famous actor, who lures her back to his hotel room.  Antonio, meanwhile, is forced to entertain his parents, a fact that is complicated when prostitute Penelope Cruz shows up and is forced to pretend she is his wife!  Cruz, by default, walks away with the movie, much as she did in the infinitely better Vicky Cristina Barcelona.   

If any of these stories connected or merged together, I would have been left with a better impression of the movie, but, alas, they didn't, and I wasn't.   The whole movie consists of sort-of intriguing ideas not fully worked out or explored in entertaining or illuminating ways.  What a waste of a perfectly good city!  Too long and only occasionally amusing, To Rome With Love just doesn't offer up enough pleasures.  No fear for Allen fans, though: He will continue to make a movie a year until he kicks the bucket, and his next one, Blue Jasmine (set in New York and San Francisco ), starring Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, and Peter Sarsgaard, is already in the can and will be out later this year.   


Ranking Woody Allen Movies Since 2000

13. Anything Else (2003)
12. Hollywood Ending (2002)
11. Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) 
10. From Rome With Love (2012)
9. Scoop (2006)
8. Melinda and Melinda (2004)
7. Cassandra's Dream (2007)
6. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) 
5. Whatever Works (2009)
4. Small Time Crooks (2000) 
3. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
2. Midnight in Paris (2011)
1. Match Point (2005)







Images courtesy of: 

http://thesevensees.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/To-Rome-with-Love-Woody-directing.jpg

http://www.moviepicturedb.com/pictures/12_06/2012/1859650/l_1859650_62b04aad.jpg

http://www.rowthree.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/TOROMEWITHLOVE_550.jpg

The biggest cast ever...

Quiet times as of late here in Shitsboro, Georgia, so it would be worth our while to see what movies are opening this weekend: 


Parker    Donald Westlake, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, created the character of Parker - a brutal, anti-heroic loner thief - and chronicled his adventures in 24 novels.  Previous screen incarnations of Parker include, most memorably, Lee Marvin in 1967's great Point Blank.  Now, alas, Jason Statham takes over the role, so you know what you're gonna get with him.  It's an action film, involving robbery and revenge, and it may be worth noting that early scenes are set in and take place at the Ohio State Fair in Columbus.  Jennifer Lopez has the lead female role, so there's bound to be some booty shots.  Nick Nolte and Michael Chiklis growl the villain roles.  Somewhat perfunctory, the first critical reviews are saying.  Still...
(Yes)

 
Movie 43    Even after seeing the preview, I can't say that I have any idea what this movie is about.  It looks like an "outrageous," "offensive," comedic take on the Valentine's Day films, with numerous storylines going on and one of the most impressive casts ever assembled: Richard Gere, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Anna Faris, Emma Stone, Chris Pratt, Kristen Bell, Justin Long, Uma Thurman, Halle Berry, Elizabeth Banks, Bobby Cannavale, Seann William Scott, Stephen Merchant, Gerard Butler, Kate Bosworth, Terrence Howard, Chloe Moretz, Josh Duhamel,  Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Greg Kinnear, Dennis Quaid, and Common.  Oh, yeah, and Snooki.   A variety of writers and twelve directors (including Brett Ratner, Peter Farrelly, and Elizabeth Banks).
(Yes)

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters    Why, Jeremy Renner, why?   It seems Hansel and Gretel - yes, Hansel and Gretel! - are now grown up witch hunters, scouring the world for... I'll just stop there. 

* 

Nice ending to the season of Parenthood - though I'm curious as to why, for the second year in a row, the season ends in January.  If this does prove to be the end of the series, it was a solid way to go out.  Lead writer and series developer Jason Katims doesn't seem to have any luck with his shows.  Way back to when he was writing for My So Called Life up to the late, great Friday Night Lights, his shows never seem to rope in the audiences they deserve and seem to constantly teeter on the brink of cancellation. 

* 

On this day in 1862, Edith Wharton was born to an upper-class family in New York.  Here are five bits of biographical information you may or may not know about the Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist: 

- Her parents were products of high society and inherited wealth.  Family members and relatives had made fortunes in shipping and banking, among other ventures.  Edith was taught by a governess and spent six years of her childhood in Europe. 

- At the age of twenty-three, she married a man of leisure, Edward Robbins, who never shared her artistic sensibilities or interests.  After thirty years of an unhappy marriage, she divorced and stayed in Europe for good, where they had been living.

- She traveled to Europe yearly as an adult, France and Italy, and settled in France permanently in 1907.  She loved hanging out in artist circles in Paris and had an affair with a journalist friend of Henry James.

- She was a fierce advocate of the Allied Cause during WWI.  She reported for the American press, aided refugees from France and Belgium, created schools and hostels for women, helped create employment opportunities for women.

- She died in France in 1937, and is best remembered for the layered world of material and class distinction in her fiction: 1905's sterling The House of Mirth; 1911's novella Ethan Frome; and 1920's Pulitzer-winning The Age of Innocence.  Summer (1917), a short novel about sexual awakening, was assigned-reading in a college English class - what a book!

(http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/wharton/whar3.htm  was a big help with the Wharton information.)





Images courtesy of:

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/movie-43-naomi-watts.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XiD_wOCMEhY/Tx41uGEl1gI/AAAAAAAADoI/x9ChC_Ddukk/s1600/Edith+Wharton1.jpg
 

Tuesday

Well, I've been trying to get a list published on the Listverse website.  Have you guys ever visited that site: http://listverse.com/  It's pretty cool.  The list I'm trying to get submitted (and, um... paid for) is a list I called 'Authors Hollywood Won't Touch,'  which is a compilation of writers, either commercially or critically successful, whose works have stayed off Hollywood's radar: 
John Sandford, Richard Laymon, Willa Cather, J.D. Salinger, John Saul, R.L. Stine, Anne Perry, Tim O'Brien, Thomas Pynchon, and Sue Grafton.  Okay list?  I think so, but here's the next list I'm thinking of submitting:

10 Actors Who, Surprisingly, Have Been Nominated For and Oscar and 10 Actors Who, Surprisingly, Haven't  

Yes
10. Linda Blair 
9. Sylvester Stallone
8. Elliott Gould
7. Pat Morita
6. Jennifer Tilly
5. Gary Busey 
4. Casey Affleck
3.Michael Clarke Duncan
2. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
1. Dudley Moore

No
10. Ewan McGregor   (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Trainspotting, Beginners, The Impossible, Moulin Rouge, Big Fish, The Ghost Writer)
9. Richard Gere  (Arbitrage, The Hoax, Chicago, Primal Fear, Unfaithful)  
8. Joseph Gordon-Levitt  (The 500 Days of Summer, 50/50, Looper, The Lookout)
7. Kevin Bacon  (Murder in the First, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Stir of Echoes, Frost-Nixon, Sleepers)
6. Matthew McConaughey   (The Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike, Killer Joe, Bernie, A Time to Kill, Dazed and Confused, Frailty)
5. Donald Sutherland   (MASH, Klute, Backdraft, Pride & Prejudice, Without Limits, JFK, Eye of the Needle, A Dry White Season)  
4. Sam Rockwell  (Joshua, Moon, Matchstick Men, Snow Angels, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) 
3. Jeff Daniels   (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Something Wild, The Squid and the Whale, Pleasantville, Gettysburg)  
2. Steve Buscemi   (Ghost World, Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, Trees Lounge) 
1. Alan Rickman   (Snow Cake, Die Hard, Love Actually, Sweeney Todd, Sense and Sensibility) 


Not sure what to think of Fox's The Following.  The pilot was definitely freaky - with Kevin Bacon as a former FBI profiler impelled been into action when a serial killer escapes from federal prison - featuring some twists and a tense, propulsive performance by Bacon.  A lot of gore though, perhaps too much.  I'll probably watch next week's episode because I think it's going to prove watchable and clever, but I am overly tired of stories about brilliant serial killers. and a scene where a killer is shown to have murdered and cut out the eyes of dogs - is simply sick and unnecessary.   Oh, yeah, and Natalie Zea is very easy on the eye.  

What Have You Done With His Eyes?

Well, I was right again on my football picks, huh?  Suddenly the Super Bowl became a game I'm not remotely interested in...

Happy MLK Day, readers!  

I'm looking forward to watching the new Kevin Bacon-starring, Kevin Williamson-scripted serial killer drama on Fox tonight, The Following.  Looks like it can be good. 

Thumbs down to the BBC's Ripper Street.  I just didn't find it at all compelling.  I didn't see what it had to do at all with Jack the Ripper.  It was very mediocre and there wasn't a thing about it (from the characters to the storylines to the acting) that made me want to re-visit it in the forthcoming weeks. 

It took me of all three days to finish Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby.  I know I'm almost five decades late to the party on this one, but what a book!  I have a deep appreciation for the brilliantly scripted and directed film version (by Roman Polanski, with an incomparable Mia Farrow performance) and as fully realized and controlled an adaptation as that is, it would still be worthwhile to read the book if you haven't done so and have only seen the movie.

Ira Levin (1929-2007) is definitely an author of note.  He wasn't the most prolific of author - only seven novels in four decades - but is output was highly influential in the genre of horror and psychological suspense:

- A Kiss Before Dying (1953), his first novel, was an award-winning thriller about a deceitful, murderous young man who tries to cover up the death of his girlfriend by getting involved with her twin sister.  Made into two movies, one in the 1950s with a bland Robert Wagner, the other in 1991 with Matt Dillon.

- Rosemary's Baby is one of the most popular horror novels of all time.  The sequel, Son of Rosemary (1997), was an abysmally-reviewed paycheck of a book.

- The Stepford Wives (1972) introduced the term "Stepford" into the cultural lexicon.  Of course, it was made into a couple of movies too.

- The Boys From Brazil was another excellenntly-reviewed bestseller about Dr. Joseph Mengele's plot to restore The Third Reich, made into a successful 1978 movie with an Oscar-nominated Laurence Olivier.

- Sliver (1991) was another critically-approved bestseller morphed a couple of years later into a thoroughly awful Sharon Stone vehicle.

- This Perfect Day (1970) is Levin's version of A Brave New World - a dystopian novel about a "perfect" society.

- It is also worth noting that Levin was an accomplished playwright: No Time For Sergeants was a huge hit in the 1950s (and made into a movie with Andy Griffith, who originated the role on Broadway); Deathtrap, from 1978, was a cat-and-mouse, twist-filled thriller that for a time was the longest-running suspense play in Broadway history.  It was made into a movie in 1982 with Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.
           

Calling Bob Hoskins...

All right, ladies and gents, here are my picks for today's games: 

- By all accounts, the 49ers should beat the Falcons.  Mobile QB who can throw, physical run game, tough secondary, excellent road team... Which is exactly why I'm going to go ahead and pick Matt Ryan & co.  Atlanta 34, San Francisco 27  

- Round two of the Ravens-Patriots conference championship in Foxboro.  Joe Flacco has gone from a good QB to a magnificent (and occasionally lucky) one, so I like Baltimore's chances - what a consistent, inspired organization - a lot.... Next year.   New England 31, Baltimore 24  

- Magnificent day of college basketball on Saturday.  Great finishes between Syracuse-Louisville, Gonzaga-Butler, OSU-Michigan State.
Best 5 Teams in the Country (IMO):
1. Michigan 
2. Louisville
3. Duke
4. Syracuse 
5. Kansas

- Watching Unfaithful for the first time in years last night with Julia, I wondered what ever happened to director Adrian Lyne, that purveyor of gauzy, sexy, erotic melodramatic quandaries: Unfaithful, 9 & 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Lolita, Indecent Proposal.  Turns out he's all set to make his first film in over a decade, a long-gestating adaptation of the Oprah Book fave Back Roads (by Tawni O'Dell).

 
- Sequels and remakes this year or next (begin your groaning now): obviously, Die Hard (no), Evil Dead (why, oh, why?), Oz (no), Iron Man 3 (enough), and more...
- Fast and the Furious 6
- Star Trek 2
- Monsters University (sequel to Monsters Inc.)
- Man of Steel (Superman)
- Despicable Me 2   
- 28 Months Later 
- Grown-Ups 2  
- The Hangover 3 
- 300  (Rise of an Empire)
- Bridget Jones' Baby 
- Austin Powers 4  (though this seems to be more of a rumor)
- Robocop 
- Thor 2  
- G.I. Joe 2
- National Treasure 3 
- Kill Bill, Vol. 3 
- Child's Play   (uh, what? )
- Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
- Wolverine 2 
- Anchorman 2
- Sin City 2  
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 2
- Bad Santa 2
(the last two are in the very early stages of pre-production, so they might not arrive - if ever - until late 2014)

*  

Before I go and continue to plow through Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, I'll leave you with another entry in my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time: 

Uma Thurman 
as The Bride in Kill Bill Vol. 1& 2  

The baggage Uma is asked to carry in the Kill Bill movies is tremendous: she gets beaten to a pulp, bloodied, shot at, betrayed, psychologically tortured, stalked... and that's just in one film alone.  She proves to be an action star for the ages, and she carries the movie from an emotional standpoint too; she's good in every single scene.





 



 

Book Reviews

(This post is a duplicate of the one on my other blog, My Book-y Life: http://mybookylife.blogspot.com/  )


Here the most nominees for the Edgar Awards, the most prestigious awards for mystery and crime fiction in the country:

http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html 

I can attest to the power of Gone Girl, but Julia thought Potboiler was a dud, a real joke of a book.  Ace Atkins is supposed to be a good writer, and I want to read the Dennis Lehane book, of course.  I have never heard of Al Lamanda or Lyndsay Faye.   

*

Here are some recent reviews:

The Tortilla Curtain  

T.C. Boyle's most famous novel (1995), this is a still-timely novel about the relationship between rich whites and the illegal Mexican immigrants who dot their community.  Candido and and his young teenage wife are two Mexicans who find their paths crossing time and time again with the white people who live in a hilltop gated community, particularly Delaney and Kyra, a nature writer (who suffers a series of misadventures ranging from the blackly comic to the slapstick to the eerily prescient) and his real estate agent wife, respectively.

Boyle has ample opportunities to belabor the points and over-hammer his themes in the course of a story that plays upon white fears and hatred of our southern neighbors, but the fact that he doesn't (only occasionally preaching), that he creates a panorama of well-defined characters, that he gets us to see modern life fairly from a panoply of angles, is a tribute to his powers as an author.  The characters of Candido and America - and their poor lifestyle - are so sympathetically delineated, that once again Boyle leaves you awestruck at his abilities to conjure life so fully - with details and observation.  It's a tragic-comedy and a social expose with a suitably explosive ending.  I'm surprised Hollywood never attempted a movie out of this.

The Silver Swan       

The second Quirke mystery by Benjamin Black (John Banville's pseudonym) shares the same setting (1950's Dublin) and mood (dark) as the magnificent first entry - the award-winning Christine Falls.  But what really sets this 2008 novel apart - and the series as a whole - is Black's breathtaking ability to conjure imagery and character with the right word or turn of phrase or description every single of time.  He is incapable of writing a stale sentence.  The plots in these books are never any great shakes; it's noir stuff - blunt, intoxicating dames, rotten power players, thugs, soulful alcoholics - but they're pure pleasures to read.  I can't stress this enough: every characterization, every movement, every neighborhood or building, is so perfectly evoked.   

The BBC is adapting three of the Black novels into three 90-minute movies this year, with Gabriel Byrne in the role of Quirke.  Perfect casting.  Can't wait.  The esteemed Irish playwright Conor McPherson, who gave us the creepy Eclipse a few years back (not the Twilight movie, but that effective little number with Ciaran Hinds as the widowed man haunted during the weekend of a literary festival), is behind the series.

The Paperboy  

Pete Dexter's 1995 novel about the unscrupulous and often dangerous lengths some newsmen go to get a story is my first exposure to the writer (who grew up in Millidgeville, Georgia).  I primarily wanted to read it because the movie adaptation - co-scripted by Dexter, along with director Lee Daniels - is out on Redbox next week.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the novel, honestly.  It wasn't the mystery I thought it was going to be, that it lets on to be: A white trash man, Hillary Van Wetter (played in the movie by John Cusack) is on death row for the killing of a sheriff.  A trio of newspapermen (two brothers, Ward and Jack, and a more ambitious, corners-cutting Yardley) team up with a salacious, oversexed, strangely-motivated blonde woman, to set about proving his innocence - and maybe winning a Pulitzer.  Oddly, it's not much of a mystery - Dexter doesn't really seem to care whether Van Wetter is innocent or not and shows no concern with laying out pieces of a puzzle that we can put together.

So what he is interested in?  Well, other than constructing a reasonably engaging portrait of the ethos, ruthlessness, and tunnelvision of a group of hard-bitten news writers, he seems to be interested in plowing through the gutter.  For better of worse, this is a fairly trashy melodrama.  Dexter creates a seamy north Florida milieu and really wallows in the horny and deviant: Characters are constantly getting erections; Jack, the youngest of the brothers (embodied by Zac Efron), gets bitten by a smack of jellyfish, forcing a group of college students to pee on him to alleviate the sting; Ward is nearly beaten to death by a pair of homophobic sailors.  My favorite scene has a swamp family - Van Wetter's ilk - eating from tubs of ice cream.    

Can't wait for the movie!                

Images courtesy of:

http://storycarnivores.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/the-paperboy-poster-with-zac-efron-and-nicole-kidman.jpg?w=560

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GaNPg9M10nU/S71AVsZgvYI/AAAAAAAAAm0/0lHTThZYzaU/s1600/tortilla+curtain.jpg

He's Back!

Up and at 'em on a Thursday morning.  Awoken early by the sound of Daisy barking at the neighborhood husky that was milling about outside, waiting for me to get up and feed him.  Time to take down the Christmas tree and sweep the garage and check out what movies are opening this weekend...

Mama    Jessica Chastain goes the inevitable route for all up-and-coming, Oscar-nominated actresses: a starring role in a horror film.  "Executive-produced" by Guillermo del Toro, this creepy-looking thing has Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as an unmarried couple who take in his nieces, who have been missing in the wilderness for five years after their mother's murder.  If you've seen the previews, you know that something is off with these girls.  It may have something to do with the imaginary friend they see and call 'mama.'  Probably trash, but I'm interested.   
(Yes) 

The Last Stand    Across-the-board positive reviews for Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to action movies.  Critics are citing the film's modestly scaled B-movie pleasures, inventive direction, well-staged chase scenes.  It's a sort of updating on Rio Bravo, with Ah-nuld as a sheriff in a sleepy border town about to be visited by a notorious drugpin and his minions.  Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville, Zach Gilford, Luis Guzman, and Peter Stormare (think he's bad?) co-star.  The American debut of Korean director Kim Jee-Woon.  Looks like a lot of fun!
(Yes)

Broken City    An awfully good cast - Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mark Wahlberg, Barry Pepper, Jeffrey Wright, Kyle Chandler - for a movie released in the dog days of January.  Looks blah to me - which is along the same lines as the critics' sentiments.  Crowe is the mayor of NYC who hires PI Wahlberg to snoop around Crowe's wife (Zeta-Jones), believed to be having an affair.  It turns into a complicated political potboiler.  Lots of twists.

*

I finally got around to watching the HBO movie The Girl about Alfred Hitchcock's torturing - both emotional and physical - and obsessing over Tippi Hedren on the sets of the two movies Hedren starred in for him, The Birds and Marnie.  I really saw no point to this movie.  Really, what is the point?  That Hitch was an old, lonely creep, that Tippi was a perfect innocent?  Taken from Donald Spoto's book Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies, the film has no real shape to it and has a too narrow and vindictive a purpose.  Toby Jones gives a good performance as Hitch, and Sienna Miller captures Hedren's vulnerability, but these two fine actors need a better vehicle, for sure.

There aren't too many TV shows (outside of Mad Men) that I like to listen to as much as I do FX's Justified, never more so than when the dialogue pops out of Timothy Olyphant's mouth.  As the federal marshal who returns to eastern Kentucky to deal with nasty, tight, juicy little plotlines - usually having to do with chilhoodfriend Walton Goggins - Olyphant gives one of the finest, most underrated lead turns on television.  Razor-sharp, cool, sexy, bemused, lethal, plummy and wizened, Olyphant's Raylan Givens (created by Elmore Leonard) is one of the best things going.  Raymond J.Barry, that intimidating actor, is terrifying when he shows up as Raylan's father. 

*

On this date in 1833, the artist considered to be the first U.S. sculptor, William Rush, died.  He was one of the first artists to produce outdoor sculpture but he also created figureheads for frigates and was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  Today he is best remembered for his terracotta busts, wood carvings, and plaster work.

Allegory of the Schuykill River

    





Images courtesy of:

http://thefirstreel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/arnoldschwarzenegger.jpg

http://www.insecula.com/PhotosNew/00/00/10/45/ME0000104575_3.jpg

1/16/13

Humpity-humpity....

I'm not sure why in the world anyone felt it necessary to track Carrie Bradshaw's teen years.  Julia and I watched The CW's The Carrie Diaries last night, but my misplaced initial curiosity about it was quickly tampered and dispelled.  Who cares about Carrie Bradshaw at 16?  It's just a bland show, too CW-y.  I suppose the star, AnnaSophia Robb, pleasant enough, could maybe morph into Sarah Jessica Parker in fifteen years or so, but the actress doesn't have of the actress' tart bouyancy - or angular features.  Can't imagine that this show will be renewed for a second season.

When that was over, it was only 7:30.  Julia and I decided to start a movie - The Sitter, a comedy we didn't exactly have high expectations for.  Jonah Hill, looking blobbier than usual, is the thirty-year old layabout forced to babysit three kids for a night that goes from bad to zany to surreal to sort of funny.  Never quite on the level of the movie it clearly emulates, Adventures in Babysitting, though the kids do generate some laughs.  Sam Rockwell hams and slums as a drugged-out criminal.  It's the kind of movie that vanishes from your mind a half hour after it ends, but it was certainly watchable.

Being Flynn, with Robert DeNiro as a pompous, completely obnoxious dad who walked out on son Paul Dano (giving a non-performance, registering zilch), only to appear in his life years later, needing a room for the night at the homeless shelter Dano works in?  Bland, bland, bland.  I like Paul Weitz's films (well, two of them - About a Boy and In Good Company), but this one just seems like an under-realized misfire.  DeNiro has his moments, but a softer, less strident performance might have helped.

*

I realize that I've forgotten to post my entries this month for my list of Charles' 200 Essential American Films:  

Here are this month's entries (bringing our total to 130):

- All That Heaven Allows  (1955 - directed by Douglas Sirk)
- Almost Famous  (2000 - Cameron Crowe) 
- Anatomy of a Murder  (1959 - Otto Preminger)
- Laura  (1944 - Otto Preminger)
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller  (1971 - Robert Altman)
- Moonstruck  (1987 - Norman Jewison)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark  (1981 - Steven Spielberg)
- Say Anything  (1989- Cameron Crowe)   
- A Streetcar Named Desire  (1951 - Elia Kazan) 
- The Wild Bunch   (1969 - Sam Peckinpah)  

   
*    

One month until the Savannah Book Festival.  Here are the authors who will be there who I'd like to see or hear or sign for me:

- T.C. Boyle
- Ben Fountain   (his novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was just nominated for the National Book Award).
- Al Gore
- B.A. Shapiro
- J.R. Moehringer  (really want to read his novel Sutton)
(and if I happen to catch David Baldacci, James Patterson, Dave Barry, or Gregg Allman, walking around, I might bug them too...)  

 

Image courtesy of:

http://styleiseternal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/The_Carrie_Diaries_TV_Series-233306192-large.jpg

Movies From Books, 2013

I thought I'd take this Tuesday to go ahead and preview the year in film of books.  That's right, let's look at ten big movies this year being adapted from the pages...
(It goes without saying that all are movies that I want to see...)
And I'll avoid Catching Fire because we've all heard of that and we all want to see it...

- Carrie
Yep, another run-through of the picked-on girl doused in blood.  With Chloe Grace Moretz as Carrie and Julianne Moore (in the Piper Laurie role) as her wacky fanatic mother. 

- Therese Raquin 
Yes, an Emile Zola novel - arguably his greatest - and the reason you should be excited is that Elizabeth Olsen and Oscar Isaac (10 Years) are French lovers who murder Olsen's husband and are then haunted by his ghost.  Steamy!  Jessica Lange co-stars.

- Serena 
Ron Rash's 2012 novel got a lot of acclaim.  It's about a man who heads a timber empire in North Carolina during the Great Depression.  Complications ensue when his wife is unable to give birth - and, hence, an heir.  Why should you care?  Because it co-stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, both fresh off their recent Oscar nominations for Silver Linings Playbook. 

- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 
The great James Thurber story about the daydreaming, henpecked husband.  Directed and starring Ben Stiller and co-starring some really funny people: Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn, Patton Oswalt.

- The Spook's Apprentice        
A young adult novel by Joseph Delancey - the first in a series - about a countryside teen who lives on a farm boy and is known as the Seventh Son - a boy who can see things others can't.  Good cast: Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore.  A dark fantasy for teens.  Known as The Seventh Son.

- Parker
Out in a few weeks, Donald Westlake's novel (written as Richard Stark under the title The Hunter) about the title criminal  - previously brought to the screen by, among others, Robert Duvall and Lee Marvin (in the great Point Blank), who offs a lot of bad guys and has an overwhelming impact on the ladies.  Jason Statham is ideal for the role.  Jennifer Lopez is the token female.  Bobby Cannavale, Nick Nolte, and Michael Chiklis co-star.

- Admission
A light, comedic love story for adults, taken from Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel.  Tina Fey plays an admissions officer at Princeton who encounters an alternative student who might be the son she gave up for adoption years earlier.  Paul Rudd joins her, as does Lily Tomlin and Michael Sheen.  A different kind of role for Fey.  Directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy).

- The Company You Keep  
Robert Redford movies aren't really big deals anymore, but his one (taken from Neil Gordon's novel) sounds choice: A former Weather Underground activist has to go on the run when a journalist discovers his identity.  Redford stars and directs, and he is joined by Susan Sarandon, Anna Kendrick, Julie Christie, Shia LaBeouf, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins, Brendan Gleeson, Stanley Tucci, and Chris Cooper - this thriller might just have the cast of the year.

- The Monuments Men  
Okay, this might have the cast of the year.  There isn't a movie Julia and I want to see more year.  If you like art crime and are intrigued by the nefarious shenanigans the Nazis got up to during the war in regards to art theft, and you want to see some Hollywood heavyweights play the real-life men who were charged with retrieving the paintings, go no further.  Written, directed by and starring George Clooney (reason enough) and with an irresistible cast: Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Daniel Craig, Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville, and The Artist Oscar winner Jean Dujardin.  From Robert Edsel's non-fiction book.

- Horns 
Stephen King's son Joe Hill wrote the novel, and it should be a lot of fun.  Daniel Radcliffe - very good in last year's The Woman in Black - stars as a guy whose girlfriend is raped and murdered.  One day, he wakes up and discovers that he has horns on his head!   A horror fantasy directed by the guy (Alexandre Aja) who gave us the Piranha remake.


Any of these sound good to you?                 

Go Falcons!

Monday Monday here in the south.  Julia starts her spring semester today, teaching, in addition to her usual courses, a new course she designed herself: Art and Crime. 

Gabriel was a in a fussy mood as he was hauled off to school this morning.  Perhaps it was because he was up til dawn studying, really pounding the books. 

Great weekend of sports action - exciting playoff games, good college games (no more undefeated...) and what can I say about the Golden Globes, really... yay for Girls and Homeland and Maggie Smith and Ben Affleck. 

I really like the HBO show Girls.  I'm glad Julia and I went ahead and bought it on word of mouth.  The only thing I don't like about is Hannah's boyfriend, an obnoxious, unappealing creation (played by Adam Driver).  

* 

I will blog every day this week but my number 1 goal, really, before the end of the week is to try to get some sort of angel or lead or idea about a job - or a way to make some money somehow.  I think it would make me a lot happier.  Julia and I are dying to get out of this shit smear of a town, and Lord knows she's doing her part.   This town has long made me really restless.  Italy and the summer can't come fast enough!   

* 

A performance today for list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time: 

Christoph Waltz
as Colonle Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) 

In honor of his Golden Globe win last night, it's perhaps fitting to recognize one of the great out-of-nowhere performances of all time.  Waltz had a ball here - a merry terror - as one of modern cinema's most chilling creations: a puckish, intelligent, deliberate, thinking man's Jew-hunting Nazi.  He won every critics award imaginable for the part.  He has only about four or five scenes, but they're long, mesmerizingly great ones; you can't take your eyes off him.     

* 

Sat - ahhhh - day

Well, with the bounty of things to watch this weekend and with the possibility of moving to Savannah looming, and my flu firmly behind me and the nice weather, it's shaping up to be a nice weekend. 

Playoff predictions for today? 

Peyton Manning and the Broncos have had too good a season to blow their home-field advantage today, although the Ravens will come rip-roaring and ready.  Denver 24, Baltimore 17  

Not sure what's gonna happen tonight out in the 'Stick.  It will all come down to whether or not Green Bay can run the ball decently, that's it.  And if Clay Matthews can affect the game.  Because it's hard to imagine a scenario in which Aaron Rodgers doesn't play well.  Green Bay 27, San Francisco 20

*

Quick note: Today is the birthday of Charles Perrault, the father of fairy tales.  Perrault (1628-1703) was a French writer and poet and member of the Academie Francaise, the learned French organization that has the final say on all things related to the French language.  He is best remembered for his collection of fairy tales for children, many of which are still told: Mother Goose, Little Red Rising Hood, Cinderella, Puss in Boots.  He was, of course, influenced by folklore and the fables of Aesop.  He was to have a huge influence on the Brothers Grimm - who rewrote a lot of his stories - and Hans Christian Anderson.

*

Well, as the weather gets warm... yep, it's time to keep an eye on the rare bird alerts for the state.  In Bulloch County yesterday, a bird watcher spotted a...

Forster's tern 



Larger and bulkier than most terns, with longer legs and a thicker bill, this guy is usually seen in more secluded areas - marshes, ponds, bays.  


Image courtesy of:

http://10000birds.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/forstersternbc1.jpg  

Weekend

An abnormally swampy, humid day in mid-January Shitsboro.  Julia has a faculty meeting this morning, and now that my cold-flu thing is mostly in the rearview and I've found a book that I want to read (Joseph Kanon's The Good German, which was adapted into one of the rare George Clooney movies that I haven't seen), I'm looking forward to an unperturbed morning with Gabriel.  

Big sports weekend, Golden Globes too... oh my! 

New Movies Opening This Weekend: 

- Gangster Squad    According to critics, this is L.A. Confidential for less discerning viewers - a.k.a. idiots.  Directed by Ruben Fleischer (who mace the appealing Zombieland), this one stars Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Mackie, and Robert Patrick as a brutal pack of L.A. cops out to rid the City of Angels of east coast mobsters, specifically Mickey Cohen (a scenery-chewing Sean Penn).  Emma Stone shows up as a gangster's moll.

- Quartet    Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut and catnip for those of us who loved The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  Taken from the stage play, this film stars Maggie Smith (yes!) as a singer who moves into a home for retired musicians - including the members of the group she was once a member of!  A great cast of Brits - Tom Courtenay, Pauline COllins, Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly.
(Yes) 

- A Haunted House    It seems like a Wayans Brothers film but it's not, really - only one (Marlon) is here.  It's a parody - though critics don't find anything remotely funny about it, including the non-stop homophobia - of found-footage/Paranormal Activity films, as if anyone was asking for one. 

* 

A performance today for my ongoing list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time: 

Ryan Gosling 
as Dan Dunne in Half Nelson (2006) 

It's surprising and a crying shame that Gosling has only been nominated for an Oscar once, and that his work as drug-addled, idealistic inner-city high school teacher Dan Dunne - his lone nod - lost out to Forest Whitaker's overacting as Idi Amin.  A Method turn in the greatest sense of the phrase, Gosling acts with every part of his body.  He's a sympathetic, tragic figure, trying to make a difference in the lives of kids many have already written off.  He has plenty of great scenes, and his relationship with one girl (whom he also coaches on the basketball team), played memorably by Shareeka Epps, is indelible, but my favorite scene is the one in which his character goes home to visit his parents, a pair of a sour, once-fiery, opinionated liberals.  I've never seen an actor convey disillusionment the way Gosling does in that scene.   




Image courtesy of: 

http://snakkle.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ryan-gosling-half-nelson-GC.jpg
 

Reactions

Well, the nominees are out:

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

What do you think?

- It seemed like Lincoln was a sure-fire Oscar contender from its very genesis as an idea: the most popular director of all time, arguably the greatest actor of the last 50 years, a screenplay by a great playwright, a lauded supporting cast, a look at our most famous, beloved president, a release date during an election year...

- This is the second film Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams have co-starred in together in which both of them were nominated (2008's Doubt being the other).  Both actors have now been nominated four times in eight years.

- Every single one of the Best Supporting Actor and Actresses has been nominated before; there are only four first-time acting nominees: Bradley Cooper, Hugh Jackman, Emmanuelle Riva and Quvenzhane Wallis.

- At 85, Riva is the oldest Best Actress nominee ever; at 9, Wallis is the youngest.

- Ben Affleck might have been the most apparent snub; he seemed to be a shoo-in for Best Director; same with Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn Bigelow.

- Again, no love for well-reviewed action blockbusters - Looper, The Hunger Games, Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall...

- Denzel hadn't been nominated since 2001; DeNiro since 1991!  Helen Hunt since 1997. 

- Jacki Weaver now competes with Janet McTeer for the title of the Most Obscure Two-Time nominee. 

- Two Tarantino movies, two Oscar nods for Christoph Waltz. 

- Most of the races seem wide, wide open - though I think Anne Hathaway might have her category locked down. 


*  

 
Though the following were all long-shots (to say the least, in some cases) here are ten pieces of work I wish had been nominated: 

- Josh Radnor's original screenplay for Liberal Arts, a somewhat autobiographical, likable, often incisive look at college life; two years into her film career, Elizabeth Olsen is already starting to seem overdue.

- Jack Black's performance in Bernie, a triumphant turn that worked on many levels; it'd be impossible to see anyone else in this role.

- Liam Neeson in The Grey.  An overlooked movie.  I think we take Neeson for granted - especially as a robust action star - but here he brings even more gravitas and soul than usual in this exciting movie that is also a poignant ode to time and nature.

- the cinematography of Premium Rush.  This is the kind of first-rate B-movie that the Academy never acknowledges, but couldn't they have at least acknowledged the apparent difficulties of the location work? 

- the screenplay for Friends With Kids.  NPR had this on their list of the 12 Best Films of the Year, and I can dig that.  There was a lot of truth, nervous energy, pinpoint neuroses, and humor in Jennifer Westfeldt's ode to stressed parents and non-parents in NYC.

- Yes, Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike.  Sometime when we weren't looking, McConaughey went and became a sensational, scene-stealing performer.  His routine in front of the mirror was Brando-esque.

- Pitch Perfect's Rebel Wilson, who swipes the jubilant, appealing musical comedy as much as similarly chubby Melissa McCarthy did in Bridesmaids.

- Aubrey Plaza's breakout turn as the open-to-anything young writer in Safety Not Guaranteed.  We believe everything she does.

- Samuel L. Jackson, who was the true heart of darkness - frightening, funny, flamboyant, pure steel - in Django Unchained. 

- The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel... Something?  Anything?    

Early Forecast

Not much new today, but in honor of tomorrow's Oscar predictions, here are Film.com's (a treasure trove of information for cinema lovers) very very early picks for next year's Oscars.

Some of these look like great movies!

http://www.film.com/movies/oscar-predictions-2014

Picks

Before I watch the National Championship, we need to get to more important matters:
Final Oscar predictions.  (For me, movies will always trump sports.)

Here are my final guesses before Thursday morning's unveiling: 
(I had a similar post about a month ago.)

Best Picture

Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 
The Impossible
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty 

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln  
John Hawkes, The Sessions
Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables 
Denzel Washington, Flight  

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone 
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook 
Emmanuelle Riva, Amour 
Naomi Watts, The Impossible  

Best Supporting Actor

Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained 
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master 
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln  
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained 

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Master 
Sally Field, Lincoln 
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables 
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Maggie Smith, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Best Director 

Ben Affleck, Argo 
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty 
Michael Haneke, Amour 
Ang Lee, Life of Pi 
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln 

Best Original Screenplay

Amour
Django Unchained
The Master
Moonrise Kingdom 
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Adapted Screenplay

Argo
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Lincoln 
The Perks of Being a Wallflower 
Silver Linings Playbook 

Check back on Thursday for my reactions! 

Yuck....

No real post today.  I just feel like crap - stomach issues, sore throat, chest crud, stiff neck... Ugh.
Gabriel was up until eleven last night and I slept like garbage because of it.  I was so out of it I forgot to turn the heat on his room!  Today, I just want to lie in bed.  But cleaning needs to get done and Gabriel needs a few things from the store.  I'm glad Julia is getting home today.  Maybe her and I will watch last night's season three premiere of Downton Abbey.  I'll DVR the National Championship - I got Alabama 20, Notre Dame 13.

Until tomorrow...    

Sunday, Sunday

Well, bye, bye, Bengals...

Today's predictions:

- Gabriel's diaper rash won't improve unless I can find - or go out and buy - the Desitin. 
- At least half the house will be cleaned.
- I will finish season two of Downton Abbey. 
- Julia will do well at her conference.

Oh, for the games? 

As much as I'd like to pick Indy, I just can't.  The fact that it will be Ray Lewis' last home game?  Something extra will be behind the Ravens' play today.  Baltimore 30, Indianapolis 20

Seattle-Washington?  Tough one.  I'll give it to Seattle because I like their defense a little more.  Seattle 24, Washington 20.

* 

I've been catching up on some free movies on Amazon Prime this week.

- Jeff Who Lives at Home (2012), starring Jason Segel and Ed Helms, was the second Duplass brothers film I've seen (I'm still not really sure what to make of 2010's Cyrus, with Jonah Hill as a disconcerting man-child) and while Segel, as the contemplative slacker living in his mom's basement and certain that he has some sort of destiny, and Helms (as his brother living through a day of bad luck) are in fine form, it was really Susan Sarandon who I wanted more of; as the boys' mother, a lonely woman tantalized at work by a secret admirer, the often underutilized actress gave some heft and emotional poignancy to a story that's often ungainly.  Strange ending. 

- Headhunters (2012), the Norwegian thriller based on the novel by Jo Nesbo, puts its main character, a headhunter who moonlights as an art thief (Aksel Hennie), through more shit - literally, too, in the grossest scene imaginable - than any character in recent memory.  I thought this movie was going to be something wildly different - maybe a Thomas Crown kind of affair - than the relentless, silly actioner it mutated into.  Entertaining enough, but never remotely believable.  When our main character tries to nab a painting from a former mercenary (another kind of headhunter - get it?), the mercenary chases him for the rest of the movie.  A mixed bag.

Playoffs Start

Well, I need to occupy myself somehow since Julia is gallivanting around Seattle - escalating the Space Needle, seeing the Chihuly Museum, the Fremont Troll, etc. - so I am thankful that today is the start of the NFL playoffs. 

Before I give my predictions for today's games, let me go back and see how my preseason projections panned out: 

NFC East:  Way off.  Thought Washington would finish at the bottom, Philadelphia at the top.
NFC South: Not too terrible.  I had New Orleans finishing first, before Atlanta. 
NFC North: I had Minnesota finishing last, behind Detroit! 
NFC West: Nailed it! 

AFC East: Pretty good here.
AFC South: Flip-flop Tennessee for Indy. 
AFC North: Had Pitt finishing 2nd to Cincy's 3rd. 
AFC West: Correct on Denver but I had KC finishing 2nd. 

As for the playoff participants, from the NFC I had Chicago, Atlanta (yes), New Orleans, Philly, Green Bay (yes), and San Fran (yes).  3 out of 6. 

From the AFC, I had Buffalo, KC, New England (yes), Baltimore (yes), Denver (yes), and Houston (yes).  4 out of 6. 

So that's that.  As for today's games, I like - and I sincerely hesitate to say this - Cincinnati to win their playoff game in what seems like 50 years.  Yes, Marvin Lewis will win a playoff game and yes, he will win a road playoff game and yes...  Cincinnati 23, Houston 20. 

No way does Aaron Rodgers and the Pack lose for the second straight week to Minnesota, even if Adrian Peterson does run for 200 yards again.  Green Bay 34, Minnesota 20

*

The Woman in the Fifth (2012), taken from a Douglas Kennedy novel that was initially intriguing but collapsed at the two-thirds mark, is a deeply unappealing, unsatisfying film.  For those who haven't read the Kennedy book, I imagine you will be bewildered by the plot's lack of answers and closures.  About the only thing writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski (2004's intriguing My Summer of Love, which projected Emily Blunt into our cinematic lives) succeeds in is creating an enigmatic mood of menace and unease, disturbance, and those traits comes through in Ethan Hawke's odd, haunted performance as the writer who relocates to Paris to be near his ex-wife and daughter.

It's clear that something is off with Hawke, who is somewhat compelling but his character is too closed-off, softly preoccupied; Hawke chooses to speak in a low, rumbly tone.  As the titular woman of mystery, Kristin Scott Thomas is appropriately beautiful, but the film treats her harshly and her character doesn't seem fully (or even remotely) thought-out.   

The film is only about 80 minutes but it seems twice as long, to be honest.  There are way too many meaningless shots and there are far too many questions raised that aren't answered.  The last twenty minutes seem to try to cram in about 100 pages of the novel, and it left me confounded. Talk about a waste of time.  Fail! 




Image courtesy of: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8aFEWY1C61k/T0AbuWcZs3I/AAAAAAAAA1s/XyVc6_7WknI/s1600/woman-in-the-fifth.jpg

1/4/13

Ah yes, Day 2 of the Julia-less weekend.  Surprisingly, yesterday went by pretty quickly.  Gabriel stayed up late - 10! - and I watched some Downton Abbey, a movie, and the Fiesta Bowl, where Oregon easily defeated Kansas State.

Today, Gabriel and I will go to the wildlife center, Walmart (egh!), and then... well... 

*

 
I'm so glad Julia and I decided to go ahead and buy Pitch Perfect on feel alone.  Have you seen it?  If not, do so!  It's a less campy version of Glee.  The tartly chirpy, thoroughly appealing Anna Kendrick plays a college freshman who doesn't want to be there - she wants to be in L.A. working as a DJ - but decides to join one of the campus' a capella groups.  This group, the all-female Bellas, choked at the previous year's International Championship, but is determined - guided as it is by its disciplined, no-nonsense leader Aubrey (Anna Camp) - to get back and win it all. 

I suppose Rebel Wilson (the slobbish girlfriend of Kristen Wiig's odd roommate in Bridesmaids) steals the film as Fat Amy, a hilarious, unlikely powerhouse of the group.  But for me the most colorful and memorable of the girls is Lilly, the Asian who speaks so softly no one can hear her; tune your ears to her frequency and you'll hear some of the funniest, kookiest lines imaginable.

The film builds to an appropriately rousing climax - you know where Jason Moore's film (loosely adapted from Mickey Rapkin's book) is going every step of the way but that should in no way cloud your enjoyment of it - but for me the film's best scene is a sort of freestyle a capella-off with rival groups, with the teams doing renditions of 80s songs by women and songs about sex.

John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks (who co-produced) appear (and get some good one-liners) as the commentators of the a capella competitions.

*

Only a couple of movies of note opening this weekend:

- Promised Land     The Gus Van Sant movie (co-scripted from stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski from the Dave Eggers story) about fracking.  Critics are kind of lukewarm on this one, though the film has a good cast, which includes Frances McDormand, Rosemarie Dewitt, and Hal Holbrook.

- Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D     What's the point?  Every subsequent sequel or prequel to Tobe Hooper's scary 1974 original has sucked.  Why do we need this for the 3-D age?  Not screened, with probable good reason, for critics.     

      
   

Seattle

Well, in honor of Julia being gone for the long weekend in Seattle, I should probably give some kind of tribute to Seattle, a city I've always wanted to go to but never have.

Why mention the landmarks everyone knows?  You know, Pikes Place, the Space Needle, etc.  And we all know about grunge, too.  And Microsoft.  But what about other stuff?  Other tidbits?

Books set in Seattle:

Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford
        - Powerfully emotional cross-cultural romance set against WWII Japanese interment.   

Fifty Shades of Grey, E L James
         - Perhaps you've heard of this one?

Ed King, David Guterson
         - A take on Oedipus Rex, spanning the Seattle of the 60s through the internet age

Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
         - One of 2012's most acclaimed novels.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
         - A book club fave, it's about, yes, a philosopher dog.

Also, some Tom Robbins novels and Michael Crichton's Disclosure.

Films set in Seattle:

50/50
A Guy Thing 
The Fabulous Baker Boys 
The Ring 
Say Anything
Singles 
Sleepless in Seattle 
Stakeout  

For TV shows, let's not forget Frasier, Grey's Anatomy, or AMC's The Killing  

Artists From or With Connections to Seattle

Jimi Hendrix
Kurt Cobain
nonfiction author Erik Larsen (The Devil in the White City)
Pearl Jam
Rainn Wilson
Sherman Alexie 
singer Brandi Carlile
author Octavia Butler
Dale Chihuly

What Can You See at the Seattle Art Museum?

- many pieces, both stabiles and mobiles, by Alexander Calder
- Paolo Uccello's Episodes From the Aeneid 
- Australian Aboriginal art
- Lucas Cranach the Elder's The Judgment of Paris  
- Pacific Northwest art, such as Albert Bierstadt's Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast 


Enjoy the city, honey, and get home safely!

(One week until Oscar nominations are announced...)

  

 
Image courtesy of:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--wbztnShX0c/UFyfyKuJOLI/AAAAAAAACTY/MZFpW6UducA/s640/seattle-skyline-Main.jpg

    

Jan. 2

Well, we're two days into the new year and already Gabriel and I are already confronted with our first (long) weekend alone.  Julia leaves early tomorrow morning for the AIA conference in Seattle and will be gone through most of Monday.  She'll have a good time there - she'll see the Space Needle, Pikes Place, the Fremont Troll, the art museums.

Gabriel and I?  Well, we'll pass the time, I'm sure.

*

Over the Christmas break, David and I went to the movies twice.  For me, it was the first time I had been to the theater in a year - since David's last visit.

 
The first movie we saw was a film that had been in the theater a while, Robert Zemeckis' Flight.  Denzel Washington (in a superbly watchable, charismatic performance)  plays terrific air pilot Whip Whitaker, who nevertheless finds himself under fire when the plane he is piloting from Orlando to Atlanta crashes, killing six people.  Whip, an alcoholic, is found to have had cocaine and alcohol in his system, which puts his life and career and freedom in jeopardy.  Because Zemeckis is always at the forefront of cinematic possibility, you know that the plane crash is going to be a marvelously realistic, queasy sequence.  But the film was different than I expected - it plays out as an elongated warning against the dangers of alcoholism.  Not that I had a problem with this.  John Gatins' screenplay is detail-oriented and layered, and the supporting cast is very good: John Goodman (comic support) as Whip's dealer; Don Cheadle as the airline's lawyer; Bruce Greenwood as Whip's union rep; and, especially, English actress Kelly Reilly as the junkie who befriends Whip.

 
Django Unchained is a Quentin Tarantino film, so you know it's out to arouse and enrage and provoke.  Much has been said about the film's excessive use of the n-word; for me, it was just Tarantino's way of smearing history's ugliness in our faces.  It's also, of course, a lot of posturing.  There are no profound statements made about racism here; this is a film that knows it's a film.  We get oodles of great music, endless cinematic references and homages, clever framing, spot-the-cult-actor appearances... and, well, Christoph Waltz.  Waltz, who plays a bounty hunter who accompanies the titular freed slave (Jamie Foxx) to the Louisiana plantation to reunite with Django's wife (Kerry Washington, underutilized), just might turn out to be Tarantino's greatest discovery.  Once again, he's witty and off-balance, cheerfully, puckishly intelligent and ruthlessly swerving around amorality.  We have been hearing all year that this was the part that would win Leonardo DiCaprio his first Oscar; as the dandified plantation owner who likes to watch slaves beat each other to death, he's terrific.  When he disappears from the picture, the film turns into an overblown bloodbath.  Samuel L.Jackson does excellent work too as the true heart of evil, the 76-year old slave who for all intents and purposes is the power behind DiCaprio's throne - a malevolent, envious man who doesn't like to see other black people with higher social positions than him.  A highly, highly entertaining, if overlong, film, with great use of Jim Croce's 70's soft-rock classic "I Got a Name."              



Images courtesy of: 

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