The Home Viewer 8: Here Come Some Brides

For June, I promised our local paper a column on "June Brides." And immediately regretted cornering myself into yet another clichéd theme--which I weaseled into the following, culminating in a petulant snit as I bring up The Shining, of all things. Feh. I think.

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“Up, up, fair bride,” the poet John Donne calls, his voice typically imperative. And so he should be, as he entreats the “phoenix” bride to “come forth … To an inseparable union.” Ah, what a fond dream it is, one that the movies conjure all the time—and stir up, shake and shatter. Let’s turn to face the bride during this most stereotypical month for (here come famous last words) “what no one may put asunder.”

Princess Brides

Some brides stand in patience, certain and self-assured, not in the back waiting to process, but already at the altar, to be approached. Arwen in The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)—as dewy-eyed as Liv Tyler may play her—not merely courts but claims her husband, withstanding the dangers of the Ring-quest and the loss of her immortality, leaving her father and asserting her place. The film gives her more Grrl Power than Tolkein’s book, although in the end she remains a blushing bride.

Rosalind Russell, though, blushes not at all as she dangles an almost-ex-husband (Cary Grant) and an eager-to-please almost-to-be-one (Ralph Bellamy) in His Girl Friday (1940)—and don’t let the title fool you: Hildy Johnson is her own girl, an ace reporter whose Tommy-gun delivery and cyclone wit toss both men every which way she pleases, until she gets the man she wants—and probably a Pulitzer in the bargain.

There is one bride of solemn wisdom, both princess and companion, away in an ideal tower—but thankfully real when you finally reach her: Audrey Hepburn in Robin and Marian (1976). Not a great film, but what better bride to still the bluster of an aging Robin Hood, played by Sean Connery with his usual knowing wink? True to form, Hepburn underplays, inviting us to pay special attention, until she becomes the center of things—no mean treat, with James Bond unsuccessfully straining to save the day every ten minutes.

Runaway Brides

Like greatness, some women have bride-ness thrust upon them. In both Picture Bride (1994) and Sweet Land (2005), mail-order brides struggle to reconcile with strangers in strange lands. Picture Bride’s Riyo (Youki Kudoh) flees her troubles in early-twentieth-century Japan and goes to Hawaii as a mail order/”picture” bride. Isolated and unsure, she slowly finds, if not happiness, at least herself, amid the island’s beauty and hardships. (By the way, look for Toshiro Mifune as a benshi, a performer who accompanied Japanese silent films, providing narration and dialogue. His spirited cameo out in the sugar-cane field, brandishing his wooden samurai sword, is one of the great movie-within-a-movie moments.)

On the mainland, the mail-order tribulations continue in the rural Minnesota of Sweet Land, with the added burden of post-Word-War-I anti-German sentiment. Structured as a family memory, the film looks through Inge’s (Elizabeth Reaser) eyes at those who reject her, while managing to ask us in the present to reconsider our own attitudes—in which, for instance, “official language” acquisition becomes more important than the quality of the “outsider’s” character. Beyond that, though, the film remains a personal story of all-but-despair and the blind persistence of love, beautifully filmed—like Picture Bride—so that Nature broods over these melancholy stories, trying Her best to provide moments of sun and shade as needed.

Brides of the Monster

You’d be surprised—or maybe not; but who am I to judge your view of marriage—how many horror films have “bride” in the title, or feature marriage as both pit and pendulum. The most interesting ones involve the notion that marriage “changes” a person—as in I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), in which Tom Tryon (who wrote The Other) is body-snatched, giving bride Gloria Talbott one Atom-Age Gothic honeymoon. It’s a well-worn SF theme (with variations featured in, for instance, the old Outer Limits series, with William Shatner—which itself was more or less remade as The Astronaut’s Wife (1999)—and I’ll let you decide if you’d rather see Bill S. or Johnny Depp as the alien spouse); and for the non-SF variant there’s always The Return of Martin Guerre (1982)—remade as Sommersby (1993).

For me, though, the Wicked Queen of the conjugal switcheroo is The Shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick’s trapped-in-a-marriage allegory, with fire-ax. Wendy’s (Shelly Duvall) husband (Jack at his most eyebrow-arching) stares, glares, and pitches homicidal fits as he lurches like Frankenstein’s creature to “correct” his wife and son. On that note, allow me to convey best wishes to all you June Brides out there. May your marriage last “for ever, and ever, and ever.”

Rating Game Redux 38: Meet Some Beatles

More impossibilities for our local paper's Rating Game: "Best Beatles Songs." I made the mistake–after picking the first without hesitation–of going to a Beatles website that listed everything they recorded. It is, if you love pop music, overwhelming. So, perhaps more than any other Rating Game Gang of Three, the following is essentially random–again, except for the first, which is all I need.

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“All You Need Is Love”

Just when their pop status reached what seemed an unattainable height, the Beatles invited us all up for a sing-along—anyone remember the world-wide satellite linkup broadcast?

“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”

They were good at bitter love—and okay, sad love too, as with “Yesterday”—but when John ruefully invites “all you clowns” to “gather round,” misery couldn’t be better.

(And thanks, Stephe, for all those impromptu acoustic hootenannies in grad school. Every time I think of this tune--and a good dozen or so others we'd rough up like big happy dogs--I can see us in your dorm room or on Foley Beach, yawping with Tom, another lifetime ago.)

“Revolution”

All the rocking of early Beatles with all the exasperation of—well, John, early or late.

"That's HEDLY": Harvey Korman, 1927-2008

I suppose I shouldn't be too worried that Harvey Korman is gone: Something or other is bound to make me laugh in the same way: overwhelmed by schtick, almost-sniggering asides, eyeball-rolling indulgence--all with a wit as keen as his timing, and a mad love for dopey laughs. What a cliché it is to state the importance of laughter--but I've never let the descent into the facile and the trite stop me before, and I certainly won't now, as I attempt to wave goodbye like a starstruck kid to Harvey Korman--a man whose very name verges on funny--that "K," that perfect "Harvey"--I'm smiling already.

I couldn't wait to see him on Carol Burnett's show. He gave me permission to laugh, even though I was a punk teen in the '70s, and adults--and by extension anything that would make them go haw-haw-haw--were supposed to be square hypocrites--and of course we are--OK, I am. But Harvey entered laughing--at least in his eyes, at the corners of his mouth--especially if he were approaching Tim Conway (oh, man: another genius for another day). And I didn't have to be hip; thanks to his sly generosity, I could laugh at stuff that--well, whaddaya know?--was straight out of Your Show of Shows, down to the on-air crack-ups. A long laugh-line stretching like an ample Borscht Belt all the way to Harvey.

I could blather on, but who needs it? What matters is that permission. Harvey always let you in on the joke--but he was never cute about it. He helped you keep up, grinning a little when you got it, hamming it up until you didn't. And at the end of the trail is Blazing Saddles, always funny, endlessly quotable, and Harvey'd up just right. And I also won't geek all over your shoes by ticking off his many moments in that film. I know we'd all rather let Harvey take care of it himself.

Rating Game Redux 37: Pixel-ated

Our local paper's Rating Game this week asks us to consider the "best computer-generated characters." While that stained-glass knight in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) still holds quite a bit of Industrial Light and Magic-al charm, I opted for more recent synthespians (and aintcha glad that appellation never caught on?).

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Gollum

Andy Serkis is motion-captured and rotoscoped into one of the two or three best performances in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. “Precious,” indeed.

(Honorable mention: Peter Jackson/Andy Serkis' King Kong.)

Jurassic Park Dinosaurs

Stan Winston’s dinosaurs all but closed the gap between the filmmakers’ and viewers’ imaginations, creating that rare moment when you stop thinking, “It’s only a movie.”

Pixar

All right, I’m cheating. But--from Woody’s wry grins to Mike Wazowski’s surprisingly expressive single eye, from the Incredibles arguing at the dinner table to Ratatouille’s hurt feelings--Pixar’s characters bridge another gap: between the computer and the cell-drawn cartoon, reinvigorating both media.

Rating Game Redux 36: "Get Back to Work"

Another easy list for our local paper's Rating Game: Best Songs About Work. The following three quickly came to mind.

(And you know, I keep posting these, but nobody offers their own favorites. I hereby officially solicit your responses. Now get back to work.)

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“The Promised Land”

Bruce Springsteen has written many songs about work, but “The Promised Land” captures the frustrations of working dreams deferred: “I've done my best to live the right way / I get up every morning and go to work each day / But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold / Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode.”

Something to listen to for all of you itching for something to start while you drive all night chasing some mirage:



(Now you see him, now you don't: Rest in peace, Danny Federici.)

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“The Internationale”

Wikipedia offers more lyrics than you’ll ever need to this global workers’ anthem. But the stirring melody doesn’t change, and from the collective farm to the Ford plant the workers-of-the-world unite, raised-fist anger and optimism of this song remain the same.

Sing along with Bill Bragg's version, and for three minutes unite the Earth in song.

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“Hallelujah I’m a Bum”

The perfect tune for when you can’t work because there’s no work to do: “When springtime does come, / Oh won't we have fun, / We'll throw up our jobs / And we'll go on the bum.”

Arthur Fields skips through the tune at 78 revolutions per minute:

Rating Game Redux 35: Duos ex Microphone

(Above: My most tortured title yet.)

This was yet another one of those categories for our local paper's "Rating Game" that could've baffled and confounded: "Best Duets." Consider the thousands of wonderful pairings most of us barely remember--if we know them at all--or cannot fully appreciate, given our musical tastes. For my trio of choices, I didn't even consider opera--not that there's anything wrong with that; I just don't know one performer from another ("They're all wonnnnderful," he enthused diplomatically). And I left out the quirky ones I know (David Byrne once sung a duet with Selena).

Nonetheless, this was the easiest "Rating Game" ever--I actually have a short list of all-time favorites. The first two sprang immediately to mind; the third I had never heard--although my wife, Jill, saw them perform--and you can too, at the bottom of this post (and try not to be distracted by the video--although it's fun(?) seeing John Cryer (get it?) with his 1987 feather-cut). I have always held this duet in my head as a dream-team moment--which it is.

So for once, it seems, three is enough.

“Let’s Do It”

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong sail with humor and affection through Cole Porter’s comic ode to—well, doing it, down to the last educated flea and sentimental centipede.

“I Never Talk to Strangers”

Like Armstrong-Fitzgerald, another gravel-and-butterscotch combination, as Tom Waits and Bette Midler cat-and-mouse their way through a bar pickup, eventually admitting “we all begin as strangers” before clinking their glasses in (at least temporary) agreement.

“Crying”

Roy Orbison takes a late run at one of his standards with K.D. Lang, and the result is one of the greatest pop-opera moments ever recorded.

Rating Game Redux (34): Group Shot

When our local paper asked for three ensemble cast movies, I was reminded how difficult it is to make a good movie that doesn't profit from ensemble. Even "star vehicles" improve when the secondary characters are allowed to step up; consider the floating eccentrics of most Coen brothers movies, drifting into the scene, demanding our attention, then moving on. Episodic pictures like After Hours (1985) and The Lord of the Rings explicitly forefront such contributions--in fact, as the hero(es) encounter(s) each moment, those who inhabit the new space often determine the trajectory of the narrative--or at least provide a satisfying interlude.

Still, certain group efforts are hard to miss. Here's a scant three of them.

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Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce, and Alec Baldwin preen and bluster and wheedle their way through David Mamet’s best “men’s club” movie, in which real estate salesmen vie for a Cadillac, a set of steak knives—and the last shreds of their dignity.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

What’s amazing is that the sets, costumes and makeup do not overshadow the actors; in fact, these troopers join forces to outshine the Technicolor excesses, resulting in a surprisingly “personal” movie, funny (even satirical) and touching.

Tokyo Story (1953)

The great Yasujiro Ozu, with his all-but-invisible touch, has his characters whisper in our ears the sad everyday secrets of family life, whose minor separations, rivalries, and missed opportunities accumulate into a tragedy expressed as a sigh.

The Home Viewer (7): Mother May I?

Here's the column I wrote for our local paper to celebrate some of May's bounty. OK, so I left out the following May observances:

Lou Gehrig's Disease Awareness Month
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Awareness of Medical Orphans Month
Better Hearing & Speech Month
Borderline Personality Disorder Month
Brain Tumor Awareness Month
Creative Beginnings Month
Family Wellness Month
Fibromyalgia Education and Awareness Month
Freedom Shrine Month
Get Caught Reading Month
Gifts From The Garden Month
Go Fetch! Food Drive for Homeless Animals Month
Haitian Heritage Month
Heal the Children Month
Healthy Vision Month
Huntington's Disease Awareness Month
International Audit Month
International Business Image Improvement Month
International Victorious Woman Month
Jewish-American Heritage Month
Latino Books Month
Motorcycle Safety Month
National Allergy/Asthma Awareness Month
National Arthritis Month
National Barbeque Month
National Bike Month
National Correct Posture Month
National Egg Month
National Foster Care Month
National Good Car Keeping Month
National Hamburger Month
National Hepatitis Awareness Month
World Lyme Disease Awareness Month
National Meditation Month
National Mental Health Month
National Military Appreciation Month
National Moving Month
National Neurofibromatosis Awareness Month
National Older Americans Month
National Osteoporosis Prevention Month
National Photo Month
National Physical Fitness & Sports Month
National Preservation Month
National Salad Month
National Salsa Month
National Smile Month
National Stroke Awareness Month
National Revise Your Work Schedule Month
National Vinegar Month
Navajo Code Talkers Month
Personal History Month
Prepare to Buy A Home Month
React Month
Strike Out Strokes Month
Sweet Vidalia Onions Month
Teen Self-Esteem Month
Tennis Month
Tay-Sachs and Canavan Diseases Month Link
Ultra-violet Awareness Month
Women's Health Care Month
Young Achiever's Month
National Family Month

But wouldn't it be cool to find a movie that fits each of these? Or maybe not. Anyway, go read, if you like.

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For T.S. Eliot, April may have been “the cruellest month,” but May is the greediest. From May Day to Memorial Day, from maypoles to Blessed Virgins, from earnest anarchists to honored dead—and wandering around in there somewhere, supermarket flowers and drugstore perfume in hand, dearest Mom—this month is just one thing after another. Not that I’m complaining.

May Day (I)

I wonder: Does anybody in the U.S. erect (so to speak) maypoles anymore? Or is it just capering Swedes and Brits, glimpsed on CNN and looking silly? Sometimes I wish we’d all join in and start the month with a little pagan merrymaking, as in L'Auberge espagnole/The Spanish Apartment (2002)—also known as, I kid you not, Euro Pudding. A French college student in Barcelona rooms for a year with a variety of Europeans, yielding various sweet, sad, roisterous fruits.

May Day (II)

Catholic school kids know May Day as Mary’s Day. When I was in my parochial prime, we would assemble in the playground and fidget while first-graders processed toward the Virgin’s statue, crown of flowers in hand, silly and sweet minor saints. Barring your own life-experiences among God’s peanut gallery, see The Flowers of St. Francis (1950). Directed by Roberto Rossellini and co-written by Federico Fellini, the film—whose Italian title is Francesco, giullare di Dio/Francis, God’s Jester—employs actual monks, who play Francis and his followers as gentle slapstick versions of sanctity, filled with humility and the quiet urge to be happy.

May Day (III)

Also known as International Workers’ Day, when labor unionists, Communists, and anarchists commemorate Chicago’s Haymarket Riot in 1886, spurred by an act of “labor terrorism” and sparking pro-union movements around the world. Not to mention the eight-hour workday. If you didn’t take my advice last week (in the Rating Game for “Best Documentaries”) and check out Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976), now’s the time to remember the real battles fought and sacrifices made. And if you want a (more or less) fiction film, John Sayles’ Matewan (1987) also walks the coalfields—this time, of 1920s West Virginia. In his book Thinking in Pictures, Sayles asserts that the story of labor is also an American one, and so he constructed the movie as if it were a wooded-hills Western, including a Main Street showdown—except here, the hero is a collective and the guys in black hats are union-busters.

Cinco de Mayo

On May 5, 1862, the Mexican army beat the French at Puebla. Over the years, this day has been happily re-invented as a trans-border party of Mexican culture, spirit, and pride, particularly in the United States. In Real Women Have Curves (2002), Ana Garcia (America “Ugly Betty” Ferrera) and her family personify the community of love, sorrow and hope that Cinco de Mayo celebrates.

Mother’s Day

I’m as eager as anyone to support the couplet-glutted greeting-card market, but if you want to give your mother a celluloid bouquet, try The Incredibles (2004)—now there’s one super Mom—or select scenes from John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Jane Darwell as Ma Joad is pure Dorothea Lange: as sad and solid as the hard-packed fields she is forced to abandon, looking into a middle distance where she yearns to build a home for her children, one weary mile at a time. Thanks, Ma.

Of course, if she’s that “other” kind of mother, just screen Mommie Dearest or Throw Momma from the Train or Psycho or White Heat or The Manchurian Candidate or Serial Mom or Carrie or Aliens or—well, there’s plenty of Moms to go around.

Memorial Day

Formerly known as Decoration Day, it began as a way to honor the Civil War dead, but over the years has rested its soothing hand, filled with poppies and small flags, upon mourners of all wars. We could begin with Gettysburg (1993), a four-hour living journal of the decisive battle of a War that engendered too many mourners.

But a deeper urge persists, one that not only mourns but indicts the ones who cause the sorrow of those who live on. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), based on Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I novel, leaves its grim soldiers staring blankly at the future that has been left to them, as blood-soaked and filthy as the trenches they hate—and hate to leave—and as bleak as the slate skies that look down and could care less. The movie demands that, before we memorialize, we ask ourselves why we put ourselves in the position of honored dead and earnest mourner. As when I wrote about Veterans Day films last year, I’m reminded of the hesitation Lincoln expressed in the Gettysburg Address: “we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.” As he tells us, the dead have done that already, and we would do well to trade in our pride for humility, at least once a year, on the last Monday in May.

Rating Game Redux (33): Nothing But the Truth

Our local paper's Rating Game wanted the truth on Best Documentaries. Not happening, with only three allowed on the list. But here--with all due apologies to Robert Flaherty, Frederick Wiseman, the Maysles brothers, and even that Big & Tall Man gadfly, Michael Moore--is a good start. In cinema veritas!

Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Kentucky coal miners strike in 1973, and Barbara Kopple marches right along, through double-dealings, drive-by shootings, homespun egos and hard-won (partial) victories. Talk about your bitter Americans.

The “Up” Series (1964-present)
Michael Apted has followed a group of English boys and girls from age seven onward (49 Up in 2005) in an epic series that explores personal and social change—and continuity.

Gates of Heaven (1980)
Errol Morris’ first documentary, an exploration of pets, pet cemeteries, the American Dream, and endless tangents, as Morris aims his camera at his subjects and lets them take over. A slyly manipulative “anti-documentary” in which the periphery becomes the story.

The Home Viewer (6): The Cruellest Month

T.S. Eliot's old-timey spelling notwithstanding, our local paper thought I should do a little something on spring--which in the baleful Midwest we haven't really experienced yet--mostly bursts of fitful sunshine followed by straight winds. But I decided to consider it a Silly Season, and tunefully wedged my way into the narrow margin springtime seems determined to maintain this year.

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As we turn–at last!–toward spring, stuck in my head is a relentlessly joyful tune written back in the 1920s by Harry (“I’m Lookin’ Over a Four-Leaf Clover”) Woods entitled, “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along.” The lyrics are famous for repeatedly entreating the “sleepyhead” to “get up” and “cheer up,” and commanding that we “live, love, laugh and be happy.” So we better get to it.

Live

Federico Fellini saw life as an epic dream, a memory recovered so passionately it melts the boundaries between past and present, reality and imagination. Amarcord (1973) (literally, “I remember”) looks back on the director’s childhood with equal parts affection and irony. In his hands, even the rising fascist culture of 1930s Italy becomes part of his small town’s circus procession of love, rage, longing, mischief, departure, and renewal, with a peacock in the snow, a fever-inducing encounter with first lust, a giant animated Mussolini head–and the airborne puffballs of spring. Amarcord climbs the tree of life and, like mad Uncle Teo, shouts its demands for more.

In Richard Linklater’s lucid dreaming grab-bag, Waking Life (2001), a multitude of philosophical observations/rants are delivered by a host of rotoscope-animated thinkers, freakout-artists, slackers, and crazies–dreamers all. As Speed Levitch observes, “Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others’ presence.” OK, maybe a bit clichéd and/or overblown. But as the dreamer (played by Wiley Wiggins, whose name alone evokes Wonderland) falls awake into further dreams, he gives himself the chance to live many lives, sometimes merely by listening to his fellow dreamers.

To truly live, then, one life may not be enough. But each, as we see in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring (2003), has its trials. This South Korean film by Ki-duk Kim, set in a monastery floating on a lake, follows the seasons as it explores the Buddhist injunction to show infinite compassion while striving for detachment. Beautifully filmed, hushed in contemplation, it gazes at lives that, like stones tossed in the water, spread inevitable ripples.

Love

In honor of spring, let’s agree that love is revival. One of my favorite comic versions of this is Born Yesterday (1950), in which a racketeer (Broderick Crawford) gets more than he bargains for when he insists his moll, “Billie” (Judy Holliday), receive an education. Enter William Holden as the Henry Higgens-esque tutor, who gives Billie the chance to exercise the independence she already had: Just watch the scene in which she beats Crawford in a game of gin. Smartest dumb blond in movie history.

Love is also rejuvenation. Four years after Al Jolson bawled the talkies into existence (Edison’s 1895 Kinetophone notwithstanding), Charlie Chaplin made a “silent” film (with music and sound effects), City Lights (1931), marking the final appearance of the Little Tramp. Not only is this movie unashamedly sentimental, it reminds us of the beauty of silent films and the universal appeal of the Tramp. At forty-two, Chaplin seems as fresh and eager as he did back in 1914, in Kid’s Auto Race, ready to dazzle with his nimble frame and surprising attention to the small gesture. City Lights keeps the promise that the cinema so often breaks: that seeing a movie can be like an openhearted return to youth.

Laugh

Knowing what’s funny is one slippery fish to grasp. There is, of course, a simple rule: If it makes you laugh every time, it’s funny. For me, that includes The Producers (1968) and every 1930s Marx Brothers movie–but I’ll settle for Monkey Business (1931). I’d also like to add an Honorable Mention: The Imposters (1998), in which Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt, more than willing to be ridiculous, combine Max Bialystock with Groucho to produce a farce that either of their anarchic, over-acting predecessors would be proud of. Filled with verbal sleight-of-hand and giddy disregard for life and limb (and propriety), these movies place no demands on higher brain functions–but plenty on your stamina.

Be Happy

Some movies, such as A Hard Day’s Night (1964), make being happy look easy. It’s obvious how much fun Paul, John, George and Ringo are having: You can see it on their faces. And there’s more than a little Marx Brothers in their one-liners and blithely awful puns.

Then again, happiness can be a life-and-death battle–but that doesn’t mean you can’t sing and dance. Consider Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony (2002), a documentary that celebrates the relationship between music and the struggle to destroy apartheid in South Africa. Whether in mourning or joy, tragedy or victory, the comrades unite in their song of “amandla” (power), their bodies rising and falling–and rising again, like their lives, faces upturned in melodic defiance and joy.

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) depicts the struggle for freedom as a middle-class nightmare, perfectly capturing (thanks to Will Smith’s portrayal of Chris Gardner) the anxiety of poverty and the burden of the American dream–and a triumph that is not only financial. All in all, an idea that, even misspelled, Gardner asserts is worth pursuing.

Rating Game Redux (31): Sad, Sadder, Saddest

In considering the "saddest songs" for our local paper's "Rating Game" this week, I must confess I fell back on what is for me overly familiar ground. So if you can stand another mention of Springsteen, read on. If not, cry if you want to.

“Stardust”

Hoagy Carmichael’s elegy to lost love–dreaming in vain, wandering in the night with nothing but memories. Could it get any worse? Well, yes:

“Dreams to Remember”

Otis Redding sees his love with another, walks away and cries; still, he refuses to give up, even though, like Hoagy, he has nothing but dreams. Now we’re at the depths, am I right? Almost:

“I Wish I Were Blind”

Bruce Springsteen also sees his girl with someone else, and figures, “though this world is filled / With the grace and beauty of God’s hand / Oh I wish I were blind / When I see you with your man.” Like sad old Hopkins tells us, “No worst, there is none.”

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Oh, yeah: This is the saddest of them all. I forgot all about it; but this elfish chanteuse on Toobio or whateverthehellitis sure didn't. Watch and grin; listen and weep.

Touch of Evil: Charlton Heston, 1924-2008

I may not be saying it first, but I'll still say it: Get your hands off him, you damned dirty apes. I don't care how vigorously he courted the Right, nor how effectively he became a whipping boy of the Left. When I see him in my head, he is not holding high a long-bore hunting rifle but a Technicolor Decalogue, final warning to sinners in the hands of an angry God. And more: his whip held high, the chariots plummeting. And in a quieter mood, an Omega Man watching Woodstock over and over--or most of all, the clenched-jaw cynics, munching on Soylent Green or cursing on the beach, goddamming us all to hell--Moses once more at the end, seeing creation and concluding it is not all that good.

And these images last because, as an adult, I saw on video the strange statue Orson Welles had carved back in 1958, the Mexican Heston, stooping beneath low border-town apartment-dive ceilings like John Wayne in The Quiet Man, both of them out of their elements, and transformed. He was exactly what Touch of Evil needed: a slab of marble among all those sweaty double-crossers, with his wife, Janet Leigh, packed into her foundation garments--un-dress rehearsal for Anthony Perkins just a little down that black and white road. And Heston plugged along, wading in the oily water, a practical Ahab after the Great White Orson, the double-est crosser of them all. That single late glimpse of Charlton Heston clears up everything between us, and allows us at last to set down that shootin iron and lift a toast to Apocalypse, whether pillar of fire or busted-up Statue of Liberty, car-bomb or plague-psychos. Now those are moments you're going to have to pry from my cold, dead--ah, you get it.

Rating Game Redux (30): Trippy

This week our local paper asked contributors to hit the road with "Best Road Trip Movies." As usual, a huge category, but only three picks allowed. So many miles to go before we sleep.

The Straight Story (1999)
The real David Lynch takes it on the road with the inimitable Richard Farnsworth as they explore the breadth of human kindness from the seat of a tractor.

Broken Flowers (2005)
Bill Murray does his dead-on Buster Keaton impression in Jim Jarmusch’s lopsided comedy, a little trip–with dangerous curves–down romantic memory lane.

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake discover the crossroads where comedy and tragedy meet in Preston Sturges’ messy masterpiece, part Hollywood satire, part social critique, part sentimental journey.

Rating Game Redux (29): This Aint No Disco

More music listing for our local paper: Best '70s Songs. Mostly off-center picks. I suppose I could've just stayed with Motown--or been honest enough to reveal my Art Rock leanings and picked ELP, Yes, Tull. Then again, there's always "Smoke on the Water"--as long as you don't pay attention to the lyrics. Anyway--for what it's worth--here you go:

“Theme from Shaft” (1971) Isaac Hayes
The Stax Records sound elevated to sainthood—and one of the few endlessly repeated singles that has never passed into cliché.

“Thunder Road” (1975) Bruce Springsteen
I suppose “Born to Run” should be the pick, but this surprisingly melodic rocker perfectly captures Springsteen’s mid-decade effort to give rocknroll a future.

“Psycho Killer” (1977) Talking Heads
Whipping up a fitting anthem for The Little Decade That Couldn’t, Byrne and Co. hand the club kids exactly what they deserve; like the man says, “I hate people when they’re not polite.”

Rating Game Redux (28): I Don't Even Want to Hear It

A non-movie category this week for our local paper: worst lyrics. None of the panelists seemed to be responding, so our editor sent out a second email request for submissions. Gallant as I am, I tossed together the following. As the Cramps put it, "bad music for bad people."

“American Pie”
Pseudo-Dylan mishmash I was sick of sometime in late 1971—but at least you can dance to the Madonna version.

“Horse with No Name”
Well, maybe in the desert "there ain’t no one for to give you no pain" because there ain’t no radio for to hear this song.

“I Write the Songs”
That, Mr. Manilow, was your first mistake.

Rating Game Redux (27): Animated Response

When our local paper asked for a list of "best animated films," I knew what they wanted: feature-length fare, classics and watershed moments. But what sprang to mind were the little critters, seven-minute bouts of wabbit trouble--and mouse trouble, and billy goat, and Martian. Mustache fiends. Cats who hates people. Cats who look and sound suspiciously like Abbott and Costello. Cats who thuffer thucotash. And their prey, mice and birds, falsely innocent, with startling upper-body strength. Ah, we could go on and on, could we not? Sniffles and Wolfy and Daffy (that mad, impetuous boy) and Foghorn. But you gotta be a flippin' magician t'keep a kid's attention more than five--or seven minutes--these days, so I will bow to the following three prestidigitators, stretching animation* with Sam Clampett molecular hoodoo, many frames per second.

Pinocchio (1940)

The son rejects then rescues the father in a Magic Realist wish-fulfillment chiaroscuro cartoon-dream, in which nightmare and sentiment seamlessly combine, with music.

Spirited Away (2001)

Not since Lewis Carroll has anyone better understood the fears and hopes of childhood than Hayao Miyazaki, whose beautiful film creates a Wonderland that, like Carroll’s, invents its own mythology—and knows how to keep a secret, sometimes even from the viewer.

Street of Crocodiles (1986)

The Brothers Quay’s sublimely disquieting stop-action masterpiece of impenetrable gloom and compulsive attention to movement—even the dust on their hybridized found-objects/subjects seems infused with febrile life—capturing the alternate-reality essence of animation, both captivating and delirious.

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*Except for the Brothers Quay, whose animations usually run under twenty minutes or so. But for those of you unfamiliar with their work, I promise they will be the longest twenty minutes (in a good way) you'll ever spend.

The Home Viewer (5): Go, Erin, Go!

So, to introduce this month's Humble Viewer version of the monthly column I write for our local paper--which will be online after this Thursday, so why do I bother posting it here? Ah, vanity, vanity--anyway, in trying to be cute, I searched an "Irish Proverbs" site to find something appropriate to get us started, and found this: In winter the milk goes to the cow's horns. Say, kids! Submit your own impenetrable sayings! Here's the column, on movies about Ireland or Irish people.

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St. Patrick’s Day as we celebrate it in the U.S. may have as little to do with Ireland as corned beef and cabbage, but such fabrications and confusions still make a fine feast, whether at the table or in the movies. The Irish poet W.B. Yeats is supposed to have said of someone, “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” So, when one accuses the Irish of whimsical melancholy—or vice versa—they have only themselves to blame—and perhaps the film world as well, mightily fond of Ireland and its people, whether just as they are or as we (or the Irish themselves) would like them to be.

Emerald Isle, Lucky Charm

Few Hollywood filmmakers understood the reality-fantasy of Ireland better than John Ford in The Quiet Man (1952). He took his favorite leading man, John Wayne, and the most durable leading lady he could find, Maureen O’Hara, and plunked them down on the Old Sod to brawl their way toward marital bliss. Watching Wayne shoulder beneath those cottages’ low ceilings, exasperated and withdrawn—before exploding for fifteen minutes at a time, whether at O’Hara or her brother (Victor McLaglen)—I’m reminded how well he worked with Ford—and the Ford “family” (Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, McLaglen)—especially in this film, which re-imagines Ireland without “The Troubles,” and offers perfect peace between Catholics and Protestants. Even the IRA seems genial.

Such light spirits persist in Irish films: The Snapper (1993) paves the way for the recent Juno with its tale of twenty-year-old Tina Kellegher (Sharon Curley), who becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Much of the film’s focus is on her curmudgeonly “Da,” Dessie (Colm Meaney), whose clueless bluster and one-liners lead to a gradual acceptance of his role as Modern Grandfather. Once (2006) is also set in Dublin—and set to music, as the nameless “Guy” and “Girl” form a compelling, magical duo, their lives expressed as song; to be sure, an Irish ideal.

Irish Troubles

Unfortunately, it isn’t all merry eccentrics and lilting melodies. From the Blight to the Famine, from Home Rule to the Easter Rising, from outright war with England to civil war among themselves, Ireland has had its share of “The Troubles.” Many great films have risen to accept the challenges of this tragedy; a few stand out:

In the Name of the Father (1993) Daniel Day-Lewis proves once more his ability to deeply affect an audience—here, as Gerry Conlon, who in 1974 was wrongfully accused with three others of an IRA bombing. The film pours outrage and sorrow on the errors and malice of a system so intent on laying blame and righting wrongs that all it accomplishes is radicalizing the innocent.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) Ken Loach’s bitter history lesson. 1919 brings revolution, with civil war quick on its heels. The film eventually becomes a classic brother-against-brother story, brutal and heartbreaking.

Odd Man Out (1947) Carol Reed directs James Mason (as Johnny McQueen) in this fable-like tale of a Belfast Nationalist on the run. More “Ulysses in Nighttown” than action flick, Reed’s quasi-surreal epic leads McQueen in almost total silence through a world whose shadows are as menacing as the politics that drive him.

In America

Over the past two centuries, the Irish story has been also an immigrant’s story. Movies such as In America (2002) and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) have interpreted the decision to travel “into the West” as struggle, reconciliation, and sometimes triumph. But once in America, and generations pass, the climb seems steeper, the terrain less certain. In The Last Hurrah (1958), John Ford follows the Irish to the political arena, in which party machines, mass media, and entrenched corruption pit themselves against Ford’s typical hero: unassuming, optimistic, tenacious. Spencer Tracy gives one of his rough-tooled/fine-tuned performances as the mayor (based on real-life Boston Mayor James Burley).

Even harsher battles are fought on the streets of Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone (2007), which begins like a particularly engrossing Law and Order episode, but, under Ben’s direction and with its remarkable cast—especially his brother Casey and Amy Ryan—the film explores guilt and innocence, sin and salvation, with fierceness and rueful acceptance.

Roaches and Rabbits

In America, the earliest “Gangs of New York” hurtled at each other with fanciful names—Roach Guards, Ducky Boys, Dead Rabbits—and Martin Scorsese’s 2002 picture attempts to capture those bloody collisions as an immigrant tale of rejection and assimilation, followed by oblivion. It was Yeats, once more, who writes of Byzantium that it is “no country for old men”—and the gangster Irish America is no exception: the young themselves may not survive the bludgeoning. Scorsese continues his interrogation in The Departed (2006), a cell phone-infested, bullet-ridden proving-ground. Nicholson’s Frank Costello asks a man, “How's your mother?” and the fellow replies, “I'm afraid she's on her way out”; without missing a beat Frank replies, “We all are. Act accordingly.”

In the end, though, it seems that even in their murkiest incarnations, the Irish never lose an otherworldly sensibility—at least in the cinema. With Miller’s Crossing (1990), the Coen brothers situate their Irish, Jewish, Italian and what-all gangsters in an alternate 1930s universe of snappy comebacks (“Where’d you get the fat lip?” “Old war wound. Acts up around morons.”) and wind-blown hats, where “Danny Boy” becomes a Tommy gun ballad of casual havoc and cool under fire—in short, a movie in which everything that can go wrong, does—citing a law that, not coincidentally, appears to be named after one “Murphy,” assumedly an individual of Irish descent.

Rating Game Redux (26): Novel Movie Ideas

Our local paper asked for "Best Movies Based on Novels." The following three came to mind pretty quickly. I'll follow this with an addendum.

The Lord of the Rings (2001-03)

Despite plot changes and deletions, Peter Jackson exuberantly devotes ten-plus hours to J.R.R. Tolkein’s never-can-be-filmed work—and pleases just about everybody, even those who find the books a bit creaky.

In Cold Blood (1967)

If Capote’s work is a “nonfiction novel,” then Richard Brooks’ film is a fictionalized documentary. And thanks to Conrad Hall’s dust-bowl-noir cinematography and Quincy Jones’ exclamatory music—and most of all, Scott Wilson’s and Robert Blake’s Dick and Perry—the movie gazes into the abyss with lidless courage.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)

The first postmodern novel (which just happened to be written in the late eighteenth century), Tristram Shandy’s fractal-ized narrative becomes a Russian nesting doll of a movie-within-a-movie—without restraints. As funny a deconstruction of an already-deconstructed book as it is of filmmaking—and the egos necessary to make a movie about a man who cannot stop referencing himself.

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More great novels-to-movies. The rule for me here is that the movie should (a) refelct the "spirit" of its source and/or (b) re-imagine the novel. After all, if I want just the novel--all its plot, characters and details--there's always, you know, the novel.

Wise Blood
A Clockwork Orange
The Maltese Falcon
The Big Sleep (Bogart version)
Naked Lunch
Dracula (Coppola's version, Lugosi's performance)
The Age of Innocence
Ragtime
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel's and Kaufman's versions)

A decidedly partial list--in both senses of the term. Feel free to add your own.

Oscar the Grouch

As much as I admire No Country for Old Men--perhaps the best (American?) movie since Raging Bull--and even as I write, "It describes evil perfectly," I wonder how much we needed it--and all right, maybe we do, if only to notice evil's bland advance, a cheap crook with a gimmick--two, if you count the flipping coin--who ruins everything for the rest of us. But like those kids at the end, we'll take the cash and grin in complicity, bare-chested in the giving, while the Bad Man rolls "further up the road." And something else, maybe more: I admit my eyes filled with tears as Ed Tom Bell/Tommy Lee Jones (and has Jones finally separated himself from his character by the merest slanting line?) tells his dream about his father in the mountain pass:

It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past ... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.*

I'm not sure which ached more, the thought of that fiery horn or the waking up. Any of you out there an orphan, father gone, can bawl along with me, in this "world more full of weeping than we can understand." And I thank the Coens for a good cry, and for reminding us--OK, reminding me--that much is taken, and much remains--and more will go. Jeez, even the last roaring moments of The Shining make me sad now, Father Jack losing himself, love turned upside-down "in all that dark and all that cold."

(But the brothers made it up to us Oscar night, with an image in their acceptance speech that made me laugh out loud: Ethan, eleven years old, down at the airport, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, Joel shooting their first movie: Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go.)

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*Thanks, IMDb; I'll trust the accuracy of your quote.

Home-Made Film Festivals (5): Scorsese Without Tommyguns

Below: The last of the "home-made film festivals" from a THIRD site I'd tried to maintain. So, although I may want it not, I will waste not. (I'd like to continue these, but my other blog constantly calls.)

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We tend to associate Martin Scorsese with crime films, but he has made a number of compelling movies that, while they avoid the Goodfellas crew, still explore his recurring themes of lost love, over-reaching ambition, and even the trials of the spiritual quest.





The Age of Innocence (1993)

Based on Edith Wharton's novel, this film's social infighting is almost as ruthless as the business-as-usual mayhem of his wiseguys, as Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is forced to repress his love for the disgraced-by-divorce Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), amid the "useless beauty" of late-nineteenth-century New York.

The King of Comedy (1983)

Along with After Hours (1985), a pitch-perfect dark comedy. Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin ("often misspelled and mispronounced") is as hilarious as he is scary, while Jerry Lewis delivers his iciest performance since Buddy Love. And let's not forget Sandra Bernhard's voracious stalker-fan. Together, the three handle this tale of fifteen-minute fame like dynamite-jugglers, at once precise and reckless.

Kundun (1997)

A meditative-ecstatic biopic of the young Dalai Lama, as beautiful as it is heartbreaking, a genuinely transcendent movie that painstakingly builds then sweeps away its sand-painted mandalas, infinite sanctity and human impermanence finally reconciled.

Rating Game Redux (25): I Heart These 3

Just in time for that most romantic day of the year--that's right, February 12, the birthday of not only Abraham Lincoln but Cotton Mather, Lorne Greene, and Forrest Tucker--yet another "top" three list submitted to our local paper. A quick Tom Waits quote: "Life is a path lit only by / The light of those you've loved."

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Lost in Translation (2003)

John Keats gets it right:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

For an audio version, check out the Trembling Blue Stars’ song, “The Ghost of an Unkissed Kiss.”

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Despite its aggressively UN-romantic title, Fassbinder’s remake of two Douglas Sirk movies quietly submerges us into the ecstasy and agony of romance, as a late-middle-aged German woman and her younger Arab boyfriend face race and class antagonisms—and their own weaknesses—in their struggle to hold on to each other.

“The May-Erwin Kiss” (1896)

Eighteen seconds of kissing, at the dawn of projected motion pictures. “An osculatory performance” that has been repeated thousands of times, but you can see it here first.