intertext

With Fall and the new school year, also comes the Serious Movie Season (yay!!). Get out your handkerchiefs! All these look rather promising

Here's the first trailer for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones on Apple.com (hasn't Peter Jackson got thin!).

The Time Traveller's Wife opens this week. I adored this book and had the usual concerns about a movie adaptation, but the trailer made me tear up; that's not all that difficult, but still..

And then there's Jane Campion's movie about the relationship between Keats and Fannie Brawne. Of course we know it's not going to end well...

Of course, I didn't go to the movies while I was in Europe, but I did see three films while going to and fro, and I've been catching up with my "Zip" list now that I have so much free time. Some brief comments:

Doubt (seen on outgoing plane). This was a film of a stage play, and it shows, rather, though the performances were all very strong. Meryl Streep's was, I thought, a little mannered. Philip Seymour Hoffman was particularly good, but he always is. The issues in the play movie were complex and unresolved in a very satisfactory way, and I would have liked to talk to someone about them afterwards.

Coraline (seen on return flight) Worth seeing for the "real" stop-motion animation, which is wonderful. I think I liked it somewhat better than the book (with which I was not wildly impressed), but I still found the story somewhat predictable and not wildly original.

The Edge of Love (also seen on return flight) I had never heard of this - the dramatization of relationships in Dylan Thomas' life, starring Kyra Knightly, Cillean Murphy and Sienna Miller (and someone whose name I forget playing DT). It was BBC, so perhaps had been made for television? Kyra sings! And rather well, too. Kyra acts! Better than I've seen her in anything since Bend it Like Beckham. It was a quality production all round, and a fascinating story, though it didn't leave me liking Dylan Thomas any more than I did already (except as a poet).

The Quantum of Solace I'm sorry. I came to the conclusion about halfway through this that I don't like Daniel Craig and I don't believe he is Bond. And I'm so effing tired of chase scenes that are so special-effects-ridden that you can't see who is doing what or which car is the one you care about. A little over halfway through, I fell asleep, which just shows you. Judi Dench was lovely, though.

Iris Speaking of Judi Dench... I had avoided this movie for years, for reasons that might be obvious to readers of my flist. However, it came up on my Zip list and I watched it and enjoyed it, more for Kate Winslet's fiercely intelligent portrayal of the young Iris Murdoch than anything else. I felt that it skimmed the surface, and I would have liked _more_ of Murdoch's writing and ideas at the beginning to that the loss later in her life was more apparent. But it was beautifully acted by all concerned and a very sensitive portrayal of the story and of the relationship between Iris and her husband.

The Power of Song A documentary about the life of Pete Seeger, who is one of my heroes. This was terrific, and not completely uncritical of Pete, though it was mostly about how wonderful he is. But it was clear, throughout, that having a "saint" as a husband and father is not ideal, no matter how much you can admire his character and his work. Great music, of course, and the advantage of watching such things alone is that you can sing along ;-)

Australia This had two potentially terrific movies in it, and if it had finished two-thirds of the way through I would have loved it and celebrated it as a thumping old-fashioned romp. However, it did not end two-thirds of the way through, and by the time it did I had not exactly lost interest but gotten a bit exhausted by everything that was being thrown at me. It was beautiful to watch, of course. Overall, it was a little better than I had thought it was going to be; at least I did not fall asleep!

A Mighty Heart

For a long time I was afraid to watch this movie; even the trailer made me cry. And, yes, I cried watching it, but it earned my tears in a way that I hadn't expected. It didn't go for the obvious, sentimental button pressing that it could have. Angelina Joli's performance was dignified and restrained, and did honour to the woman she was portraying. The story unfolded to some extent like a police procedural (and although I'm aware there was some criticism at the time of the way the local authorities handled the case, the overall impression here was that everyone cared deeply about it and worked very hard). I found the movie suspenseful, despite knowledge of the outcome, finding that suspense tinged with irony that is at the heart of the most effective tragedies.

Sweet Land

I came to this movie with quite high expectations, having read a review of it comparing it to the work of Terence Malick (whose Days of Heaven is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen). It was a very nice movie, but not in that league, nor as compelling as the review would have had me believe. In telling the story of an immigrant couple, the woman coming to the US as a mail-order bride, neither of them speaking good English and both encountering prejudice on the heels of WW1, yet also attempting to show the importance of Land and love of the Land, it had too many different messages to convey and weakened all of them. At its heart is a very tender love story, and I wish it had focussed on that. The framing story about the generations to follow was to some extent unnecessary and distracting. All the players were good - it was quite nice to see Alan Cumming playing a "normal" person, and John Heard plays a fairly sympathetic preacher-man. The two leads were attractive and interesting - again, this was pleasant viewing but by no means earth shattering.

The Dark Knight

This was, to coin a phrase, awesome. An exceptionally polished and - yes - even profound piece of filmmaking. Dark, violent, noisy, full of spectacle, but ultimately focussing on the heart of humankind and what it means to be good or evil and whether or not it is possible to fight the darkness underlying our societies. My friend lidocafe, with whom I viewed this at the theatre, wrote a long and thoughtful review that conveys more than I could in this brief discussion, and her knowledge of the comics adds more depth than I would be able to. I need to say though, that as good as Heath Ledger was, I don't think it was "his" movie. The depth and gravitas that the movie conveyed would not have been possible without the support of Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart. And of course there was Christian Bale. I love Christian Bale.

Rescue Dawn

And here he is again. In fact, I've seen three movies of his in the last month, all fine films, all graced with his intense, intelligent presence. And seeing three performances within a relatively limited time period highlighted his ability to inhabit a role, to lose his own ego within his presentation. For me, that is always the mark of the finest actor, when you can see the character from his eyes, when it is not simply a mask or a set of twitches. This movie was also an effective piece of film-making. I'm not sure I would have realized that it was Werner Herzog at the helm had I not known in advance, yet in hindsight I realize that its focus on Man in Nature is extremely Herzogian. Like A Mighty Heart, this is based on a true story, yet I found here that knowledge of the outcome did lessen the suspense somewhat. What was enjoyable was watching Bale's performance and his interplay with his fellow prisoners of war. Steve Zahn is a revelation, equally intense and compelling. Jeremy Davies is more a collection of twitches; we never really get a handle on what motivates him, unless it is that he has been broken by his time as a prisoner (his performance in Saving Private Ryan is far more affecting).

It can be a good thing to approach a movie with low expectations; often you are pleasantly surprised, as I was with this one. I ordered it from Zip with the notion that it was a Western (I like Westerns), and it had two of the most interesting actors working today in it (Russell Crowe and Christian Bale), so it certainly couldn't be all that bad.

It was considerably better than "not all that bad." I liked it a lot. I liked it better than Eastern Promises, which came with much more critical hoopla surrounding it. And the more I think about it, afterwards, the more I like it in retrospect. ( Read more... )

I can't imagine what it must have been like for Daniel Day Lewis to inhabit the role of Daniel Plainview for however long it took to film Paul Thomas Anderson's near-masterpiece, There Will Be Blood. Inhabit it he does. At first, listening to the cadences of a voice that some critics have likened to an imitation of the late John Huston, I thought "oh, this is just mannered," but gradually you realize that the character lives behind the actor's terrifying eyes, in turns glittering, manic, cold as a great white shark, and equally deadly. If Daniel Day Lewis did, in fact, base the voice on John Huston, you can't help thinking of the character Huston played in Chinatown, and the bleak vision of amoral capitalism presented in that movie. Or of Huston's own Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Humphrey Bogart's obsessed, almost insane character.

Plainview has been likened to Satan, but I fear that he is all too human, representing a side of humanity, an aspect of American identity and aspirations that most of us would fear to touch or even come close to. The excesses of both capitalism and religion - the US's twin obsessions - are what are on show here, in a vision so black, so darkly humourous, that it recalls Beckett or Ionesco, or Kubrick.

What is almost another character in the movie is the remarkable score. Beginning like a hive of demented bees, and in turns atonal, dissonant, mesmerising or frantic, it jars, disrupts, sets on edge in the same way as Daniel Day Lewis' eyes contrast with his cultured, almost plummy voice. At peak moments, we suddenly hear Brahms violin concerto as yet another signal of the contrast between the romantic ideal of the American Way and the vicious, amoral behavior on the screen.

This is in many ways not a pleasant movie; it is sometimes difficult to watch. But it is risky, bold, confident filmmaking, by a director in complete control of his craft in partnership with an equally fearless actor.

I don't think the adaptation of an overtly metafictional novel is ever completely successful, at least in the eyes of those familiar with the original. A movie that I personally consider to be one of the best adaptations of a novel, The English Patient, succeeds as a movie because it had the courage to BE a movie, to abandon any attempt to capture the essentially literariness of the source. ( Read more... )

My day yesterday was filled with event. lidocafe called me in the morning and asked me if I would like to go and see No Country For Old Men, which we had both been eagerly awaiting. Of course, I wanted to, but I was scheduled to go to an Early Music concert in the evening, and had work to do, dogs to walk, chores to do. So of course, I went. I remarked that going from this ultra violent movie to genteel singing and orchestral music would be a stark contrast, not from the sublime to the ridiculous, but from the "something" to the "something else"; in fact, it was from the sublime to the equally sublime.

No Country For Old Men was, to coin a phrase, "fucking awesome."

Now I can see that it might actually be possible to film The Road, but I want the Coen brothers to do it. Watching this movie was like watching the reading experience of reading The Road (if that makes any sense at all). It picked you up, sucked you in and didn't let go until the last second.

It is visually breathtaking, with its wide, gorgeous shots of sunrise, sunset, movement of clouds, lightning over prairie, but all slightly desaturated so that we know this is not some Romantic Western Epic.

There is no score. The silence is breathtaking, punctuated only by creaks, clicks, gasps of breath, explosions of gunfire and the stacatto thump of a cattle prod gun.

The cattle gun is used by one of the most terrifyingly impassive psychopathic killers in movie history. Played by a chilling Javier Bardem, he has a slightly autist air about him - detached, incapable of human empathy or understanding, but with his own peculiar standard of logic. He is Death.

Then there is Random Chance, in the figure of the Lewellyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin. He stumbles on a drug deal gone wrong and makes choices according to his own standards of behavior and logic which lead him inexorably into the path of Javier Bardem.

Then there is Good, represented by the wonderful Tommy Lee Jones. There is a line he speaks about "carrying the flame" which will resonate with all familiar with The Road. Jones' performance is, as always, wise, powerful, amused, laconic, tinged with sadness.

There is not a lot of dialogue, but what there is resonates with the music of Cormac McCarthy's words. I haven't read the book - now, I want to.

Brief intermission while lidocafe and I stumbled, gasping, from the theatre, and met up with my friend kp, with whom we went for a somewhat rushed but tasty Chinese meal

After which, kp and I met our friend mkb at the Alix Goolden Hall, where we listened to a concert of a Baroque Orchestra with guest soloists - a soprano and a counter tenor - performing a Handel orchestral suite, some Handel arias and Pergolesi's Stabat Mater.

We do not often enough have the opportunity to hear a counter tenor singing live. His voice is unearthly, hauntingly beautiful. With him singing the alto line, the opening verse of the Stabat Mater was so exquisite I almost broke in half.

It was lovely.

I'm amazed I slept at all, after both those experiences.

Away From Her, Written and directed by Sarah Polley

I'm grateful to lidocafe for strongly recommending this movie, because I might not have had the courage to watch it otherwise. It was a lovely, simple, heartbreaking film, beautifully directed and lit from within by three marvellous performances.

Sadly, the [fucking] Academy is unlikely to notice, let alone reward, Gordon Pinsent's remarkable portrait of - yes - quiet anguish. He has been married for forty-four years to Fiona, played by a luminous Julie Christie. She has developed alzheimer's (or probably, more correctly, dementia) and is in a long-term care facility. Once there, she develops an attachment for another "inmate": the husband of Marian, the character played with remarkable restraint by Olympia Ducakis. The Gordon Pinsent character has to watch as first Fiona comes to life in the presence of this other man, and then pines and fades away when they are separated.

It's adapted from a short story by the wonderful Alice Munro, and it lives up to the quality of her work. Sarah Polley is to be congratulated for the restraint and real beauty she brings both to the script and to her direction of the three wonderful actors. Actually, all the performances were wonderful, and so many small scenes had remarkable impact. The one that brought me to tears was the exchange between Gordon Pinsent and a young punkish girl.

Overall, the movie is heartbreaking, as life can be heartbreaking, but not really sad. I found it at times hard to watch, more because of some emotional buttons of my own that it pressed. I spent hours, it feels like years in total, going in and out of hospital rooms to visit my mother or take her to visit her friends, and I still find it difficult to spend any time there, or, apparently, to see a movie about someone else doing that.
And then, there's my darling aunt who suffers from dementia, with whom I've had no contact for about three years although she still lives in a home in a village in Wales near her daughter. Because I spent some time with her when she was in the early stages of dementia, I can testify for the clarity of Julie Christie's performance, but that again makes it no less hard to watch.

Still, it is a beautiful film, and I'm glad I saw it.

What was that book he was reading out loud? Letters from Iceland? I'll have to Google it. (ETA: oh, it's Auden. No wonder)

And one silly comment: although the snow and wintry landscape was appropriate to the mood of the film, it is a shame that it's going to perpetuate false stereotypes about Canada. Because it was a thoroughly, unashamedly, Canadian film, and that was a great thing about it.

Some time ago, I can't remember exactly how long, I read a wonderful review of a film about some guy who read this book once and wasn't able to find it again and then went on a quest to find others who had read and remembered it and find out what happened to its author, who never wrote another book. Oddly echoing the events in the movie, I have, until now, been unable to remember the title of the movie, or find anyone who knew anything about it.

I was browsing my local video store, looking for a "weekly rental" to make up my 2-for-1 Monday rental, and lo and behold, there it was. The film is "Stone Reader," and it's just as wonderful as that review led me to believe. It's a quest, a detective story, a testament to persistence and mild obsession (well... maybe not so mild), but ultimately it's a meditation on writing and reading. It has so much to offer about the miraculous and mysterious process of becoming immersed in a book that I would recommend it to anyone who loves books and reading.

Mark Moskowitz is a filmmaker - a political ad maker in "real" life - who remembered reading, at the age of 18, a book called The Stones of Summer by Dow Mossman. He had read a glowing review of it in the New York Times. He bounced off it, but tried again a few years later, when he thought it brilliant and life-changing. When he looked for other works by the same author, he discovered that the book itself was out of print, the author had never written anything else, and noone seemed to have heard of him or the book. So he sets out to find out more, in the process visiting many other authors, teachers, and literary agents and has many conversations about writing, reading and the art of the novel. To say more would spoil what is a strangely suspenseful story. The process of detection and the complex road Moskowitz follows on his search add up to a fascinating and ultimately quite moving film.

Only one thing: if you were to judge the American literary scene from the last half century or more on the basis of what you see and hear about in this movie, you would think it populated with almost no exception by men. All the literary people interviewed are men; only two - no three - women writers are mentioned: Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell and Emily Bronte. This is not really a criticism, just an observation, but - just saying.

(How's that for a nice snappy headline?) It was Black Tuesday once more yestereve, and our movie of choice was The Big Sleep. This one deserved its reputation. So what if the plot was terribly convoluted! (someone reported a rumour that even Howard Hawks couldn't keep track of what was going on). The fun was getting ... wherever it was we got, well, apparently with Bogie and Bacall going off into the sunset together, which is how it should be. The chemistry between them was not as palpable in this as it is in To Have and Have Not but was nonetheless quite zingy. But, as lidocafe remarked, the film was also filled with every attractive brunette in Hollywood, all exuding sex appeal and thrusting themselves at Philip Marlowe. There was even a female taxi driver (a first?) who had obviously been round the block more than a few times. The dialogue was snappy and amusing, the action tense and exciting. All in all, a most satisfactory movie-watching experience. Next week? Chinatown, which I've seen before, but look forward to enjoying again.