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A Public Service Announcement

Do not pay money to see A History of Violence. 

More on this plus English country dancing and The Gilmore Girls and Mr. Darcy on my Netflix blog .

Nobody Knows

I saw this Japanese movie today in a theatre as big as a closet with the screen so high up on the wall that I thought I would probably have to consult a chiropractor afterwards.  There was a kajillion previews and one seat change--I was with my friends and, it turns out, seated in the wrong place, as they all wanted popcorn, and I didn't.  So, I ended up on the aisle--my favorite seat as it gives you leeway, always a good thing, especially in the modern moviegoing experience.

But then the movie started.  It's the story of a family--a mother and her four children--who live in an apartment where the landlords only know about the oldest boy.  The other children were smuggled in and stay inside all the time.  None of the children go to school.  And the mother is erratic--staying out late, leaving the household tasks to her oldest boy.  Eventually she goes away, leaves some money, and in her note, says she'll be back.  She does return for a day, but then leaves again.  The children are left to fend for themselves.

In many ways, this is an anti-movie.  The music is quiet.  It never telegraphs emotions that you are meant to feel.  And the movie doesn't move like a traditional Hollywood movie where crises are set  to the clock and each character, each plot development has been seen a hundred times before.  This felt like life, not one that you would ever want to have, but a story that was moving and compelling and it felt so long--I think it was two and a half hours, and it felt like four--because the people who made this flim believed in the intelligence of their audience.  They didn't cut us any slack.  They let us go deep into our feelings.  It was a real time at the theatre.

On Oscars and Baked Beans

Last night, I came home with three Oscars--six inch statuettes that now grace the top of my TV set--one for most wins in the major categories, one for sweep of major categories, and one for most wins in all categories.  I was 18 for 24.  I didn't know anything about the live action and animated shorts and guessed wrong.  I thought the "Phantom" song was the type that the Academy usually chooses.  I don't like Charlie Kauffman's work, so I couldn't vote for him.  If I had been strictly about winning, I probably would have, although I might have thought he was too anti-establishment to win.  For the most part, I decided that I would vote for "Million Dollar Baby"--the film I loved--for the major awards--and give "The Aviator"--the film I didn't like--the bones, as I thought the Academy would give them some things, but with the exception of Cate Blanchett, I hoped it would be mainly scraps.  And it was a plan that mostly worked, except for sound mixing., and I did vote for "Million Dollar Baby" for editing.

I had never cast a ballot for the Oscars before and so I didn't care and didn't think about it much.  Next time I will.  We now have a gang that's established a tradition.  A bar has been set.  I didn't try to fool anyone, but I am generally a quiet person, and if I talked beforehand, I mainly said that I hadn't prepared and hadn't seen much, which was true, but what I hadn't realized is that I do read a lot and I absorb a lot of things about film, even though I rarely go to the movies.  And I've watched the Oscars ever since I can remember.  I pretty much get how they work.  It's really not rocket science, and sometimes it's just jumping on the right page.  This time, I think it could have easily been one of two pages, and I decided to go for "Million Dollar Baby" in the categories that counted, because if I hadn't and they had won, I would have felt I had in some small way sold myself down the river.  Even if they lost, I could still feel that I backed a horse I believed in.  So, that's what I did and now I have these three silly knicknacks that please me to no end.

It was one of those potluck deals, where there's way too much food, and it's wise to wear comfortable clothes, because we start at the beginning of the red carpet and never look back.  I brought baked beans.  I've made this dish before and people like it and ask for it, and I'm happy to do it, because it's simple and cheap.  It was a busy weekend, and I found myself making mistakes--buying the few things I needed for the recipe, leaving the store, getting in my car, engaging the motor, and realizing that although my plan was to make baked beans, I had forgotten to buy the beans.  Or carving out an hour to cook them on one day and planning to cook them for another hour or so the next, and feeling happy that I figured out  how to make this work, and then realizing that I had cooked it with the lid on, creating more of a bean soup than anything else.  It was one of those kinds of experiences.  But it all coalesced in the end, and people really liked these beans.

So, here's the recipe.  I half it, and it's still a lot.

4 (28-ounce) cans baked beans, excess liquid drained*
2 cups dark brown sugar, packed
3 tablespoons dry mustard
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 slices of bacon, diced

1. Preheat oven to 325*F (160*C).
2. Combine the beans, brown sugar, dry mustard, onion and bacon; mixing well. Spoon into into a large,well-greased ovenproof Dutch oven or bean pot.
3. Bake, uncovered, for 3 to 4 hours or until sauce has thickened and reduced.

Makes 12 to 15 servings.

Sideways

I rarely see movies these days.

I'm just curmudgeonly about it.  I would prefer to stay home and watch it on Netflix or go to a friend's and see something there.

But I did go to see Sideways tonight.  It was my second attempt to see it.  The first time, the Chronicle not only had the movie time wrong, it had placed it in the wrong theatre.  Once we got there, it was too late to go anywhere else.  The only movie showing at the right time for us was Meet the Fockers, which I enjoyed, although it was highly silly.  It was tun to see Babs having a good time, but all the while, I thought, "I haven't even seen it, but I know this wouldn't hold a candle to Sideways.

Which isn't really a fair comparison.  Meet the Fockers is pure Hollywood product.  Something that's been focus grouped to death and still by some miracle manages to hold on to some vestige of a heart.  Sideways is much more indy in spirit filled with "no name" actors and one of those slice of life stories, one of those character driven movies.  Wow, characters with layers.  What a concept.

I knew I would like Sideways, because I had liked the writer/director's last movie, About Schmidt so much.  I loved it, because Jack Nicholson was so quiet in it, and we got a lot of opportunities to see him alone, which seemed rare to me in movies these days, these quiet, often anxiety producing moments where a character is left to his own devices.  Sideways is similar in that there's a loner at the center, and like About Schmidt, the characters are full of quirks.  The story is, too.  One thing I loved about Sideways is that once something happened, it made total sense in these characters' universe, but the action was often so audacious that it would catch me by surprise and then I would often laugh at the total crazy logic of that story move.

It was one of my favorite movies of the year, and it probably shouldn't be, because it is, after all, a "little film," just this account of these guys going up to the wine country for a week.  But the actors are great--Giamatti should have been nominated.  It makes no sense that he wasn't. And if I ruled the Oscar world he and Jeff Bridges (The Door on the Floor) would grace that list.  But in this film, you see these actors go through changes that make emotional sense and feel real.  As actors, they're not afraid to look ridiculous.  They're pretty joyous in their work.  There's a moment when Giamatti runs down this hill, which is so physically wonderful, because the way he runs is so reflective of his character.  They just seem so unself-conscious onscreen, there's none of that "I'm a big name and you and I are both aware of it at all times." It's a wonder to see. 

The Aviator

Plot points are told in this piece.  If you like to go to movies knowing nothing, stop reading now.

I was predisposed not to love this film.

I was biased walking in, because I had read this article and learned that one of the key scenes, Hughes paying off a journalist so that he wouldn't publish photos of Tracy and Hepburn, didn't happen.  Di Caprio's argument, "But he felt that strongly about Hepburn.  It could have happened" didn't convince me.  It planted that seed of doubt, which remained, because I don't know much about Howard Hughes, of "What actually happened and what's just been made up?"

For example, I wondered if Ava Gardner really cleaned Hughes up before he appeared before the Congresional committee.  I wondered who cleaned up him afterwards, as they made a point in saying that she saw him six days before the hearing.  I wondered who cut his hair, as she didn't, and when he appeared, it had been taken care of.  I wondered how he became so functional so quickly--from living naked in a room, repeating phrases over and over again, unable to have a face to face conversation with people, and urinating in bottles to passionately and coherently arguing his points in a pressure packed situation like a Congressional hearing, even effectively turning the tables on his interrogator.  How did this happen?  It made me wonder if they were using actual transcripts from the meeting or if he wasn't really that clever.  It made me wonder if they had messed with the sequence of events and he really hadn't gone that crazy yet.  It made me wonder if they skipped over something or some important scene was left on the cutting room floor.  I just could not believe that someone could go from being that dysfunctional to being that highly effective and commanding in a very stressful situation.

I also wondered how Hughes could gladhand all those people after the committee hearing.  There seemed to be an inconsistency--in some points of the story, he went out of his way not to shake hands with people.  Then at these moments, he seemed to be able to touch the hand of any stranger.

I also wondered about sex.  For someone so concerned about cleanliness and boundaries and order and control, I would think that sex with all of the passion and fluids and just general messiness would be difficult for him.  He seemed to not have any issue with it, and that surprised me, and I wondered if that was really true.

I also wondered about Scorcese as in "What has happened to you?"  This is a good film, but I was not emotionally moved by it.  I was not challenged by it except in thinking about what didn't make good sense to me, what took me out of the story.  "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas" are two of my favorite movies of all time.  I also loved "New York, New York" and "Casino."  In these movies, I felt that Scorcese was willing to take risks, to show edgy characters, to fill the screen with surprising detail, to provide a great musical commentary to the story.  This film felt sterile to me, homogenized Marty, way too calculated for Oscar time, something he should have won long ago, but not for this.

But Di Caprio surprised me.  I thought he did as well as he could with a script that let him down, but I thought that he inhabited the character.  Blanchett was marvelous as Kate Hepburn.  And I love watching Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda work, even though in this film, they were stock characters in stock situations.

And I wondered if part of the problem for me was the subject itself.  Maybe it was hard to get emotionally involved with this film because Hughes was the center of it.  Maybe his compulsions, his need to control things, his isolation doesn't translate well into a bonding experience with the audience.  But in the old days, I thought, Scorcese would have made it so interesting.  It might have been uncomfortable to sit with this quirks, but we would have felt them through the film.  We would have experienced his world.

More on David Thomson

After I saw David Thomson at the Pacific Film Archive, I googled him.  And I made this amazing discovery.  He's writing a regular column for the Independent, a U.K. newspaper, one that had a pretty extensive archive of his work.  It kept me busy reading all of last week.

Not every column was my cup of tea.  But I thought he was dead on about "MIllion Dollar Baby."  I loved reading the reality of what the Rat Pack really is.  I haven't yet stopped thinking about his piece on Robert Downey, Jr, and his arrests.  He's made me want to watch Preston Sturges films.

He's a definite taste, and not everyone's flavor.  But if his writing works for you, he's an absolute treat.  I know that I look forward to reading his thoughts.  It's almost like reading a blog, these column ruminations about what's struck his fancy since the last time he wrote.

David Thomson and the PFA

Much to my happiness, I read in the Chronicle a week ago Sunday that David Thomson was going to be at Pacific Film Archive that Thursday night in Berkeley.  He had written a new book on the history of Hollywood, The Whole Equation, and had created a film series around the book that would play at the Pacific Film Archive Thursday through Sunday through the end of the month.  On Thursday, opening night, he would give a lecture and sign books.  The series began with The Last Tycoon.

Coincidentally, the night before I read this article, I had dipped into The New Biographical Dictionary of Film before going to sleep.  I hadn't picked it up for a while, although it remains at my bedside, waiting.  In this book, David Thomson writes about all sorts of people connected with film, giving their credits, and his frank opinion on their contributions to this medium.  It's just a great book, and I'm now slowly going through it chronologically.  I'm only on the B's.  This is what happens when you read multiple books at the same time.  And this is what happens when you get distracted.  "But what does he think of Meg Ryan?  I must look up Tom Cruise."

It was a fun night.  Most people there, including myself, seemed to be on solo journeys for this excursion.  It was a crowd of older people, many clutching Thomson's new book in one hand, many talking about the different art houses in the area, and who was their current scheduler, and what was coming up on their calendars.  I kept quiet.  I frankly felt intellectually overmatched.

David Thomson at first does not look like an imposing figure.  He's an older English guy, someone you could easily pass in a crowd without noticing him.  Even his presentation was at first disappointing in its ordinariness.  He spent a lot of time reading from The Last Tycoon.  I wanted to hear his words, his thoughts, not Fitzgerald's.  He even did this silly reenactment from the novel, which I wish he hadn't.  But then he just started talking, and I was reminded again of his brilliance.  At one point, that mentioned that often when he couldn't sleep, he went downstairs and watched Heat, the movie which is actually the final film of this series.  His wife said to him, "You must really like that film."  And he said, "Oh, I only want to watch these little bits of it."  He said he thought that Michael Mann was one of the best in the business today for sound and light.  He said he found this movie and Collateral to be inherently flawed, because they expressed the notion that criminals and policeman were about the same.  He said that perhaps this glorification of evil was a reflection of our time.  Then he stopped talking and we watched The Last Tycoon.

Afterwards, he apologized. He said that it was the weakest film in the series.  The scenes regarding the industry, I thought truly worked, where a young DeNiro as Monroe Stahr (as Irviing Thalberg) made decisions on how to improve his movies.  But the woman cast as the romantic lead, I suspect, had been a  model in her other life. I wonder how much acting experience she truly had.  There was not much mobility in her face or much intelligence in her voice.  She was out of her depth, and the movie suffered greatly from this.

A lot of people left after the movie, even though Thomson had said before the lights went down that we could chat afterwards.  It amazed me, that people would pass up this opportunity to hear this man's thoughts.  People asked questions, commented that Harold Pinter was not the perfect screenwriter for this type of story.  "Oh, the pauses were deadly," Thomson agreed.  I listened.  Again, I felt I didn't know enough to contribute, but I was glad to be there and learn.

Before I left, Thomson signed my book.  I asked him if he was planning to update the Biographical Dictionary of Film.  "I will if I live long enough," he said.  I put in a vote for Chris Cooper to be included in the next edition.  "Oh, he's there," he assured me.  Apparently, when the paperbook version of his latest edition came out, Thomson added 30 names.  One of them was Cooper.  I was glad that actor had made The Book.

I left very glad that I went, but knew even then that I probably wouldn't return to the series.  Thomson will not be there at every film.  He is introducing some of them, and I would love to hear what he would have to say, but I have his book, which I'm reading, along with everything else.  And  in this era of Netflix, I would prefer to see what I can get on DVD, and watch them at my leisure.  I'm really more of a homebody than an out in the world girl.

A Very Long Engagement

NOTE: I wrote this last week and posted it in my dvds blog.  It seemed at the time that I should just write about movies in that one place.  But today, reason came back for a surprise visit, and said "DVDs are DVDs and movies in the theatres are movies in the theatre."  So, here is what I wrote, now, I believe, in its proper place.

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Last night, I went to the movies, to one of my favorite theatres in the East Bay, the Albany Twin, a homey little place that feels like you're watching a movie in a livingroom with friends.  I was also sitting next to French people, which added a certain glamour to the evening as well.

I can't say I liked A Very Long Engagement, despite its great reviews.  I did appreciate it.  I like movies that call back old Hollywood glamour by being "big pictures."   And it seemed to me to be a unique  pastiche of several different kinds of films--you had your war scenes, your murder mystery moments, your indy quirky times, your moments of chick flick romance.  My favorite part of the movie was the story involving Jodie Foster's character.  First of all, she surprised me by even being in the movie.  I didn't realize before that I had missed seeing her on the screen.  She had a great low key French accent.   It was a moment in the film that felt serious and emotional and true, where the feelings came from the moment rather than feeling like a certain style or attitude.

I'm one of those people who didn't like Amelie, so I knew walking in that going in to see a movie with that film's director and star in it , there would be a good chance I wouldn't like it.  And their penchant for quirkiness remains, and still doesn't appeal to me. The girl playing the tuba just seemed precious.  The aunt's appreciation of  dog farts bizarre and unappealing.  I did like the mailman's fondness for gravel, his assertion that that particular substance demands anyone riding a bike to make a grand entrance.  And I'm also no good at murder mysteries.  I'm not the type of person who watched those kinds of films or reads those kind of books, and is thinking ahead, figuring out the case.  I generally get lost in the plot machinations.  I forget who people are or my mind wanders during those procedural conversations where you have to remember particular details in order to solve the case.  It just doesn't mean that much to me, and so most of this movie left me cold, except for those Jodie Foster scenes.  That was the story I really wanted to see.

Million Dollar Baby

I had low expectations going into this movie.  I often like Clint Eastwood films, but I didn't like Mystic River, and I often agree with the Salon reviews, and Charles Taylor didn't like this movie.   But I'm interested in boxing, I like to see Oscar contenders, and I like Clint Eastwood.  So, I went.

Going in, I knew of two things that might really bother me about this movie.  I had heard complaints about the lighting, that it was dark and murky and hard to see anything.  I didn't have a problem with that at all.  And I had heard that the supporting characters around the triumvirate of Eastwood, Swank, and Freeman were second tier, and that that took away from the movie.  I would agree with that.  They seemed more like television actors, but I also think that the whole subplot around her family was written poorly.  The situations were implausible and they were written as stereotypes.  It's tough to rise above that, and I think it could have been cast in a more interesting way.  And--

(major spoiler alert--if you want to see this film and haven't, step away from the post)

... a friend who saw it with me who's a nurse questioned a lot of the medical situations presented in this movie.  She said that most patients in Swank's situation would not have been able to talk without some sort of apparatus and then not very clearly.  She said that also the nurses would have a monitor in their station so that they would have been alerted to any change in Swank's situation.  My friend said this in a very gentle manner, so as not to totally break the spell that I was in from the film, and I really appreciated both having the information and the way that she told me.  She also said that she really liked the film, and she didn't care about that.  And I really liked the film as well, and one part of me cares, because to me that makes it a cheat.  Either you're too lazy to find out if what you're setting up in the story can happen or you are so invested in the way that you told the story that you are unwilling to change it, even though it doesn't make sense in the real world.  I wish in preproduction they would treat this as as big a dilemma as the dramas they present in the story.  I wish they could figure out another way that would stand up and nurses all over the country could see this film, and not walk away, shaking their heads sadly.

But in the emotional realm, for me, the film rang true.  By the halfway point, I was in tears to the final conclusions.  I was transported despite later gripes.  It's a film I would see again.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

A quick post today, as I still have miles of work to go tonight before I sleep.

Wishes are funny.   I wanted more freelance work, and now i'm getting offers that I have to refuse.  I'm in heavy work mode, and it feels difficult to turn that knob off and say, "Now go write."

But I did take some time off today and went off to see some friends.  We rustled together some dinner--some cheeseburgers on the grill, salad, green beans, and ice cream--all the vital components for a good meal.  We then tooled off to the Elmwood Theatre, where all movies go before they die, where they busted one of my friends who tried to bring in a burrito under his jacket,  where two darling boys sat next to me at the "The Sixth Sense" and told me the ending before the beginning, and then looked so mortified at what they had done that I forgave them immediately.  It is a place with a history for me, a well loved institution. 

We went to see "The Story of the Weeping Camel," a movie that a friend had recommended to me long ago, but one that I could not excite anyone else about.  Who wanted to see a movie about a camel?  But these two friends did, and we watched this quiet movie--one where the translator definitely took some time off.  Don't you hate it in foreign films when you can hear them talking but there's no subtitles to accompany them?  It was more noticeable in this movie, because many times there's no dialogue at all involved, just moments with the camels.

And the camels are lovely.  They're charming.  I never knew they had such expressive faces.  I had never thought of what a camel could sound like.  I never had seen a camel being born or watched a camel cry.  Now I can say I know all these things, and I'm happy that I do.