Manhattan is ripped off the face of the earth and sealed in a giant bubble by aliens; that bubble is hauled into the alien ship and placed on a large plain, surrounded by other bubbles. What's going on here? Are the aliens assembling an intergalactic zoo? Collecting souvenirs? Gathering their next meal?
Stith focuses on half-a-dozen or so human heroes (and one or two villains); all of his characters are appropriately heroic/stalwart/courageous or shifty/unscrupulous/scheming, as the plot requires. The heroes set out on a mission to escape their bubble and contact their captors while the villains, fearful that this mission can only make things worse, attempt to sabotage things.
There's not a lot of subtlety here; characters are paper thin, and the romantic relationship between the two principal hero characters is painful to read. But as cheesy sci-fi goes, Manhattan Transfer does have the virtue of moving swiftly along; Stith is at least trying to make the science plausible; and there are some unexpected twists involving the alien captors and their real motivations. It's not great literature, but if you're in the mood for mindless entertainment, you could do worse.
July 19, 2006
July 18, 2006
MOVIES: You, Me, and Dupree (2006, Anthony & Joe Russo)
When bad movies happen to good people...
The three lead actors here may not be threats to win Oscars anytime soon, but they're all reasonably capable actors, and all are cast solidly in their comfort zone. Owen Wilson as the blissed-out free spirit who disrupts the lives of his more stable pal; Matt Dillon as the put-upon decent guy coping with aforementioned free spirit, and with disapproving father-in-law; Kate Hudson as the blandly pleasant wife whose main job in the movie is to scowl disapprovingly, either at Wilson (for the first half of the movie) or at Dillon (for the second half of the movie).
But the three of them are stuck in so deadly dull and predictable a movie that no matter how they try (and lord knows they're trying), they can't salvage much. Even if you haven't seen the movie -- even if you haven't seen the ads -- you know the story already. Wilson needs a place to stay, moves in with just-married best pal Dillon over the objections of bride Hudson. Wilson's zaniness grows increasingly annoying, lives are disrupted, etc. until the Great Epiphany, after which Wilson rushes about in his zany way to undo all of the damage he's done. Happy endings for all.
What's the point of making this movie if you're not going to do a single distinctive, interesting, or original thing with it? There's not a scene or a line of dialogue that we haven't seen before, and the actors all seem vaguely depressed to be stuck in this mess. Chin up, I say to them. At least they don't have to watch it.
The three lead actors here may not be threats to win Oscars anytime soon, but they're all reasonably capable actors, and all are cast solidly in their comfort zone. Owen Wilson as the blissed-out free spirit who disrupts the lives of his more stable pal; Matt Dillon as the put-upon decent guy coping with aforementioned free spirit, and with disapproving father-in-law; Kate Hudson as the blandly pleasant wife whose main job in the movie is to scowl disapprovingly, either at Wilson (for the first half of the movie) or at Dillon (for the second half of the movie).
But the three of them are stuck in so deadly dull and predictable a movie that no matter how they try (and lord knows they're trying), they can't salvage much. Even if you haven't seen the movie -- even if you haven't seen the ads -- you know the story already. Wilson needs a place to stay, moves in with just-married best pal Dillon over the objections of bride Hudson. Wilson's zaniness grows increasingly annoying, lives are disrupted, etc. until the Great Epiphany, after which Wilson rushes about in his zany way to undo all of the damage he's done. Happy endings for all.
What's the point of making this movie if you're not going to do a single distinctive, interesting, or original thing with it? There's not a scene or a line of dialogue that we haven't seen before, and the actors all seem vaguely depressed to be stuck in this mess. Chin up, I say to them. At least they don't have to watch it.
July 09, 2006
BOOKS: The Virgin of Small Plains, Nancy Pickard (2006)
This is a marvelous book, with vivid characters and a compelling mystery at the center of the story.
Pickard jumps back and forth between the present and 1987, when the naked body of a young woman is found in a blizzard. That discovery changes the lives of three high-school students. Rex Shellenberger, who finds the body; Mitch Newquist, who mysteriously leaves town the next day; and Abby Reynolds, Mitch's girlfriend, who can't understand why he would leave without even saying goodbye. The town authorities -- the sheriff, the judge, and the doctor (who happen to be the fathers of Rex, Mitch, and Abby) -- arrange for the unidentified girl to be given a decent burial in the Small Plains cemetery. Over the years, her grave becomes something of a shrine, and a legend grows that "the Virgin of Small Plains" performs miracles and heals people.
Jump to 2004, when Mitch returns to town for the first time since his disappearance. In different ways, Rex's and Abby's lives have always revolved around the unsolved mystery of the Virgin's death and Mitch's departure; his return triggers a series of investigations, and much panic on the part of those who have been keeping secrets for seventeen years.
The relationships among these characters, especially the three principals, are sharply drawn and interesting enough to be a fine story in their own right, and I was so caught up in their present-day story that I almost forget about the central mystery of the Virgin's death. When Pickard does begin to resolve that story in the final chapters, though, the revelations are all the more devastating because we've come to care about the characters so deeply.
This is a very fine novel; highly recommended, even to those who think they don't like mystery novels.
Pickard jumps back and forth between the present and 1987, when the naked body of a young woman is found in a blizzard. That discovery changes the lives of three high-school students. Rex Shellenberger, who finds the body; Mitch Newquist, who mysteriously leaves town the next day; and Abby Reynolds, Mitch's girlfriend, who can't understand why he would leave without even saying goodbye. The town authorities -- the sheriff, the judge, and the doctor (who happen to be the fathers of Rex, Mitch, and Abby) -- arrange for the unidentified girl to be given a decent burial in the Small Plains cemetery. Over the years, her grave becomes something of a shrine, and a legend grows that "the Virgin of Small Plains" performs miracles and heals people.
Jump to 2004, when Mitch returns to town for the first time since his disappearance. In different ways, Rex's and Abby's lives have always revolved around the unsolved mystery of the Virgin's death and Mitch's departure; his return triggers a series of investigations, and much panic on the part of those who have been keeping secrets for seventeen years.
The relationships among these characters, especially the three principals, are sharply drawn and interesting enough to be a fine story in their own right, and I was so caught up in their present-day story that I almost forget about the central mystery of the Virgin's death. When Pickard does begin to resolve that story in the final chapters, though, the revelations are all the more devastating because we've come to care about the characters so deeply.
This is a very fine novel; highly recommended, even to those who think they don't like mystery novels.
MOVIES: A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater)
Our setting is Orange County, California, sometime in the new future, where "Fred" -- that's his code name -- is an undercover narcotics agent investigating some small-time users of Substance D, a drug so addictive that "you're either on it or you've never tried it." While undercover, he wears a scramble suit, a full-body (including head and face) jumpsuit that constantly changes his appearance so that those he deals with (even his supervisor) can never get a solid grip on what he looks like; the most they'll see or remember is a vague blur.
Among those being investigated is Robert Arctor, who spends most of his time lounging around his house, having long rambled drug-fueled conversations with his pals, who are also hooked on D. Bob is beginning to suffer the side effects of long-term D use, which include a growing inability to recognize familiar faces and objects, and a dissociation of the hemispheres of his brain, which are beginning to do battle with one another.
Those symptoms are making Bob's day job more difficult, because as it happens, Bob and Fred are the same person, so addled that Fred doesn't recognize himself when watching surveillance tapes of Bob, and Bob has no idea that he's the one who planted the cameras in his own home.
Keanu Reeves plays Bob/Fred, and while it's not one of his best performances, his befuddled blandness fits well with his character's increasing confusion and disorientation. The supporting cast includes Robert Downey, Jr., Winona Ryder, and Woody Harrelson (a twistedly appropriate group for a movie about addiction), and they make up for Reeves' weakness; Downey is especially good, and deserves to be in contention for a supporting Oscar nomination.
Odds are that won't happen, though, if only because the movie is animated, using similar rotoscoping technology to that in Linklater's Waking Life; the movie was filmed live, and the individual frames traced to create an animated film. In Waking Life, I thought the jiggliness of the technique was annoying, and it left me with a bad headache; here, the look is a bit more stable (though the shifting highlights in Ryder's hair are oddly snakelike) and much easier to watch.
And unlike in Waking Life, where the rotoscoping felt like an unnecessary gimmick, the technology serves useful purposes in this movie; it allows for a beautiful realization of the scramble suit technology, which would be very difficult and expensive to achieve in live action. In addition, rotoscoping gives the movie a crisp and vivid look, but you never lose the awareness that what you're seeing isn't quite real, which (though I can't speak from personal experience) feels appropriate for a movie about drug use.
Among those being investigated is Robert Arctor, who spends most of his time lounging around his house, having long rambled drug-fueled conversations with his pals, who are also hooked on D. Bob is beginning to suffer the side effects of long-term D use, which include a growing inability to recognize familiar faces and objects, and a dissociation of the hemispheres of his brain, which are beginning to do battle with one another.
Those symptoms are making Bob's day job more difficult, because as it happens, Bob and Fred are the same person, so addled that Fred doesn't recognize himself when watching surveillance tapes of Bob, and Bob has no idea that he's the one who planted the cameras in his own home.
Keanu Reeves plays Bob/Fred, and while it's not one of his best performances, his befuddled blandness fits well with his character's increasing confusion and disorientation. The supporting cast includes Robert Downey, Jr., Winona Ryder, and Woody Harrelson (a twistedly appropriate group for a movie about addiction), and they make up for Reeves' weakness; Downey is especially good, and deserves to be in contention for a supporting Oscar nomination.
Odds are that won't happen, though, if only because the movie is animated, using similar rotoscoping technology to that in Linklater's Waking Life; the movie was filmed live, and the individual frames traced to create an animated film. In Waking Life, I thought the jiggliness of the technique was annoying, and it left me with a bad headache; here, the look is a bit more stable (though the shifting highlights in Ryder's hair are oddly snakelike) and much easier to watch.
And unlike in Waking Life, where the rotoscoping felt like an unnecessary gimmick, the technology serves useful purposes in this movie; it allows for a beautiful realization of the scramble suit technology, which would be very difficult and expensive to achieve in live action. In addition, rotoscoping gives the movie a crisp and vivid look, but you never lose the awareness that what you're seeing isn't quite real, which (though I can't speak from personal experience) feels appropriate for a movie about drug use.
July 06, 2006
TV: Emmy nominations
Lots of surprises when the nominations were announced this morning. A few quick thoughts:
Most inexplicable nominations: Alfre Woodard (the least interesting character in the least interesting plotline in her show's disappointing season), Kevin James (ahead of Zach Braff or Jason Lee? Really?), Stockard Channing (did people think she was still on The West Wing?)
Most inexplicable omissions: James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, obviously, but also Jason Lee and Ethan Suplee. And as always, the perpetually bizarre lack of love for Lauren Graham, Kelly Bishop, and John C. McGinley.
Not-all-that-surprising omission: Hugh Laurie. Best Actor/Drama was a very crowded field this year, and while I'd have preferred Laurie to some who did get nominated (Sheen or Meloni, for instance), there are others who didn't get in who deserved it even more (Michael C. Hall, Edward James Olmos).
Not a good year to be the defending champ: Three of four Best Actor/Actress winners and one of the two Best Series winners from last year were eligible to be nominated this year; none of them were.
Planned obsolescence: Seventeen of the forty acting nominees (in the series categories) this year are from shows that have been cancelled, and at least one other (Alfre Woodard) has already been written out of her series (and who knows whether Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart will be back for the next season of 24?), which means that there are likely to be lots of new faces come this time next year.
Most inexplicable nominations: Alfre Woodard (the least interesting character in the least interesting plotline in her show's disappointing season), Kevin James (ahead of Zach Braff or Jason Lee? Really?), Stockard Channing (did people think she was still on The West Wing?)
Most inexplicable omissions: James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, obviously, but also Jason Lee and Ethan Suplee. And as always, the perpetually bizarre lack of love for Lauren Graham, Kelly Bishop, and John C. McGinley.
Not-all-that-surprising omission: Hugh Laurie. Best Actor/Drama was a very crowded field this year, and while I'd have preferred Laurie to some who did get nominated (Sheen or Meloni, for instance), there are others who didn't get in who deserved it even more (Michael C. Hall, Edward James Olmos).
Not a good year to be the defending champ: Three of four Best Actor/Actress winners and one of the two Best Series winners from last year were eligible to be nominated this year; none of them were.
Planned obsolescence: Seventeen of the forty acting nominees (in the series categories) this year are from shows that have been cancelled, and at least one other (Alfre Woodard) has already been written out of her series (and who knows whether Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart will be back for the next season of 24?), which means that there are likely to be lots of new faces come this time next year.
BOOKS: Lost and Found, Carolyn Parkhurst (2006)
Lost and Found (the book) is set against the backdrop of Lost and Found, a reality TV show that is basically The Amazing Race with a scavenger hunt thrown in. Teams of two race around the world, stopping at various checkpoints; the last team to arrive at each checkpoint is eliminated. But the race isn't really the story here. Parkhurst is more interested in the relationships between the members of each team, and those that develop between the teams -- the real reality behind the made-for-TV "reality."
We focus on three teams. Laura is a single mom and Cassie is her teenage daughter; their relationship has been strained of late because of a secret Cassie waited as long as possible to share with her mother, who now feels guilty for not realized sooner what was going on. Abby and Justin are newlyweds, hoping to use the show as a forum to spread their message: God can save you from homosexuality, as he has saved both of them. Juliet and Dallas are former child TV stars struggling to adjust to life post-stardom; Juliet is particularly eager to work her way back into the limelight.
Everyone gets to tell the story; a new character takes over the narration with each chapter. Parkhurst gives each of her characters a distinctive voice, and she has a knack for turning to each narrator just as you find yourself wondering what they're up to.
The host of Lost and Found asks each eliminated contestant the same question, "You've lost the race, but what have you found?" What most of her characters find is themselves, and sure, that's not the most original story in the world, but Parkhurst's variation on the theme is crisply written, with sincere feeling and flashes of wit. Her characters' emotional lives feel genuine, and their behavior rings true.
We focus on three teams. Laura is a single mom and Cassie is her teenage daughter; their relationship has been strained of late because of a secret Cassie waited as long as possible to share with her mother, who now feels guilty for not realized sooner what was going on. Abby and Justin are newlyweds, hoping to use the show as a forum to spread their message: God can save you from homosexuality, as he has saved both of them. Juliet and Dallas are former child TV stars struggling to adjust to life post-stardom; Juliet is particularly eager to work her way back into the limelight.
Everyone gets to tell the story; a new character takes over the narration with each chapter. Parkhurst gives each of her characters a distinctive voice, and she has a knack for turning to each narrator just as you find yourself wondering what they're up to.
The host of Lost and Found asks each eliminated contestant the same question, "You've lost the race, but what have you found?" What most of her characters find is themselves, and sure, that's not the most original story in the world, but Parkhurst's variation on the theme is crisply written, with sincere feeling and flashes of wit. Her characters' emotional lives feel genuine, and their behavior rings true.
July 04, 2006
MOVIES: Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006)
Oh, dear. What happens when everything that can go wrong does go wrong? You get a mess like this, that's what.
Be warned that I'm going to be giving away plot points here; there's really no way to talk about the movie's problems without doing so.
The movie is designed as a sequel to Superman II (we are asked to forget the not-so-popular III and IV), so I feel less guilty about making comparisons to the cast of that movie than I normally would. It seems likely, in fact, that Brandon Routh has been cast largely because of his strong resemblance to Christopher Reeve. Routh handles the Superman half of the role adequately, which is to say that he looks good in cape and tights. As Clark, though, Routh is a disaster, with none of Reeve's charm, wit, or skill at physical comedy. You can't help but notice how little dialogue Routh has been given; the script is designed to require him to do as little actual acting as possible.
The other principal roles aren't cast any better. Kate Bosworth has none of the spark or energy that Margot Kidder had; she doesn't even measure up to Teri Hatcher in the 90s TV version. Hell, even the comic strip Lois Lane is closer to three-dimensional than Bosworth. As Lex Luthor, Kevin Spacey aims for camp and misses badly; none of his jokes are funny, and he's straining so hard for light and witty that he forgets that a villain has to be at least a little bit menacing or scary.
There are enormous plot holes throughout. For instance:
Be warned that I'm going to be giving away plot points here; there's really no way to talk about the movie's problems without doing so.
The movie is designed as a sequel to Superman II (we are asked to forget the not-so-popular III and IV), so I feel less guilty about making comparisons to the cast of that movie than I normally would. It seems likely, in fact, that Brandon Routh has been cast largely because of his strong resemblance to Christopher Reeve. Routh handles the Superman half of the role adequately, which is to say that he looks good in cape and tights. As Clark, though, Routh is a disaster, with none of Reeve's charm, wit, or skill at physical comedy. You can't help but notice how little dialogue Routh has been given; the script is designed to require him to do as little actual acting as possible.
The other principal roles aren't cast any better. Kate Bosworth has none of the spark or energy that Margot Kidder had; she doesn't even measure up to Teri Hatcher in the 90s TV version. Hell, even the comic strip Lois Lane is closer to three-dimensional than Bosworth. As Lex Luthor, Kevin Spacey aims for camp and misses badly; none of his jokes are funny, and he's straining so hard for light and witty that he forgets that a villain has to be at least a little bit menacing or scary.
There are enormous plot holes throughout. For instance:
- How exactly did Superman get to Krypton and back? His powers derive from being under Earth's yellow sun, after all -- and there's a passing line of dialogue in the movie that explicitly makes that point -- so once he's far enough from Earth, wouldn't he lose the ability to fly and survive the vacuum of space?
- Late in the movie, Superman's been badly wounded by kryptonite exposure; there's still a chunk of the stuff in his body. So how does he find the strength to rip a small island -- an island that is itself laced throughout with veins of kryptonite -- from the ocean floor and fly it into space?
- In one scene (one of the few in the movie that works), we watch a group of frustrated doctors try to treat Superman; their needles won't penetrate his skin, and attempting to use the defibrillator just shorts out the machine. But we're supposed to believe that Superman's kid hasn't raised any medical eyebrows in five years? (And then there are the questions raised by the child's conception, which are brilliantly explored in Larry Niven's classic "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.")
What does work in the movie? Not much. Oh, it's sweet to see Noel Neill and Jack Larson -- Lois and Jimmy from the 50s TV show -- in small roles, and Frank Langella brings some needed snap to Perry White. And it's certainly thrilling to hear John Williams' classic opening theme bursting forth in full stereo sound again, but even here, the movie finds a way to botch things. When we get to the "Clark and Lois go flying" scene, John Ottman's score keeps tap dancing around and sneaking up to Williams' love theme ("Can You Read My Mind?") until we're desperate to hear that melody, but Ottman never gives us more than a few bars of it; it's ridiculously distracting.
And that's pretty much what the whole movie is like; nearly everything in it leaves you disappointed and reminds you of how much better the Reeve movies were. Time to put the real Superman on the Netflix list, I think.
July 03, 2006
TV: The Emmys: My dream ballot
Emmy nominations will be announced on Thursday morning, and if it were up to me, these are the shows and people who'd be nominated:
COMEDY
Series
How I Met Your Mother
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
My Name Is Earl
Scrubs
Slings and Arrows
(Never got into Arrested Development, Entourage, or The Office; and I think that Two and a Half Men is the Home Improvement of its generation -- a perfectly competent, but never special, sitcom.)
Actor
Zach Braff, Scrubs
Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report
Paul Gross, Slings and Arrows
Jason Lee, My Name Is Earl
Tyler James Williams, Everybody Hates Chris
(OK, yeah, I know, Colbert's not even eligible in this category, but he should be; his rightwing anchor is the most subtle comic creation of the year, and he does it four nights a week)
Actress
Marcia Cross, Desperate Housewives
Lauren Graham, Gilmore Girls
Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewives
Jane Kaczmarek, Malcolm in the Middle
Lisa Kudrow, The Comeback
(How does Lauren Graham keep getting overlooked year after year? It's embarrassing.)
Supporting Actor
Neil Flynn, Scrubs
Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother
John C. McGinley, Scrubs
Mark McKinney, Slings and Arrows
Ethan Suplee, My Name Is Earl
(Along with Graham, McGinley is one of the Emmy Awards' most shamefully overlooked comedy performers, and Suplee has given us one of the most sublime idiots in TV history.)
Supporting Actress
Tichina Arnold, Everybody Hates Chris
Kelly Bishop, Gilmore Girls
Alyson Hannigan, How I Met Your Mother
Megan Mullally, Will and Grace
Jamie Pressly, My Name Is Earl
(Arnold won't be nominated, as she and her producers foolishly decided to run her in the Lead category, where she doesn't stand a chance of being nominated, but she's certainly deserving of a nomination; Bishop is the Graham/McGinley of this category, doing magnificent work that's been ignored for too long.)
DRAMA
Series
24
Battlestar Galactica
Lost
Six Feet Under
The West Wing
(Just finished catching up with Galactica, which is brilliant, and which bumped The Sopranos off my list -- too much time spent in Tony's coma fantasy and following Vito around Gayville, NH made for a weak season; I don't watch Rescue Me, and don't care for Grey's Anatomy.)
Actor
William Fichtner, Invasion
James Gandolfini, The Sopranos
Michael C. Hall, Six Feet Under
Edward James Olmos, Battlestar Galactica
James Spader, Boston Legal
(A tough field, this one, and I wish I'd been able to find room for Alan Alda, Peter Krause, and Hugh Laurie.)
Actress
Frances Conroy, Six Feet Under
Edie Falco, The Sopranos
Mary McDonnell, Battlestar Galactica
Kari Matchett, Invasion
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer
(Not much to say here; as usual, it's the weakest category on the ballot, and I felt happy to find five names that I could put on my list without wincing.)
Supporting Actor
Vince Curatola, The Sopranos
Michael Emerson, Lost
Jorge Garcia, Lost
Gregory Itzin, 24
William Shatner, Boston Legal
(Emerson made enough appearances to appear in this category instead of Guest Actor; this is another crowded field, and you could practically fill it with the male cast of Lost -- Terry O'Quinn, Naveen Andrews, Josh Holloway, Daniel Dae Kim, all deserving.)
Supporting Actress
Lauren Ambrose, Six Feet Under
Tricia Helfer, Battlestar Galactica
Grace Park, Battlestar Galactica
Mary Lynn Rajskub, 24
Jean Smart, 24
(Helfer and Park do remarkable work, each playing multiple versions of the same character with impeccable subtlety. Helfer particularly surprised me, since her work in the first season of the show had been limited to a not-so-interesting sex-kitten; it was great fun to watch her rise to the occasion when given a broader range to play. Still, the winner here must be Smart, who gave the performance of the year.)
COMEDY
Series
How I Met Your Mother
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
My Name Is Earl
Scrubs
Slings and Arrows
(Never got into Arrested Development, Entourage, or The Office; and I think that Two and a Half Men is the Home Improvement of its generation -- a perfectly competent, but never special, sitcom.)
Actor
Zach Braff, Scrubs
Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report
Paul Gross, Slings and Arrows
Jason Lee, My Name Is Earl
Tyler James Williams, Everybody Hates Chris
(OK, yeah, I know, Colbert's not even eligible in this category, but he should be; his rightwing anchor is the most subtle comic creation of the year, and he does it four nights a week)
Actress
Marcia Cross, Desperate Housewives
Lauren Graham, Gilmore Girls
Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewives
Jane Kaczmarek, Malcolm in the Middle
Lisa Kudrow, The Comeback
(How does Lauren Graham keep getting overlooked year after year? It's embarrassing.)
Supporting Actor
Neil Flynn, Scrubs
Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother
John C. McGinley, Scrubs
Mark McKinney, Slings and Arrows
Ethan Suplee, My Name Is Earl
(Along with Graham, McGinley is one of the Emmy Awards' most shamefully overlooked comedy performers, and Suplee has given us one of the most sublime idiots in TV history.)
Supporting Actress
Tichina Arnold, Everybody Hates Chris
Kelly Bishop, Gilmore Girls
Alyson Hannigan, How I Met Your Mother
Megan Mullally, Will and Grace
Jamie Pressly, My Name Is Earl
(Arnold won't be nominated, as she and her producers foolishly decided to run her in the Lead category, where she doesn't stand a chance of being nominated, but she's certainly deserving of a nomination; Bishop is the Graham/McGinley of this category, doing magnificent work that's been ignored for too long.)
DRAMA
Series
24
Battlestar Galactica
Lost
Six Feet Under
The West Wing
(Just finished catching up with Galactica, which is brilliant, and which bumped The Sopranos off my list -- too much time spent in Tony's coma fantasy and following Vito around Gayville, NH made for a weak season; I don't watch Rescue Me, and don't care for Grey's Anatomy.)
Actor
William Fichtner, Invasion
James Gandolfini, The Sopranos
Michael C. Hall, Six Feet Under
Edward James Olmos, Battlestar Galactica
James Spader, Boston Legal
(A tough field, this one, and I wish I'd been able to find room for Alan Alda, Peter Krause, and Hugh Laurie.)
Actress
Frances Conroy, Six Feet Under
Edie Falco, The Sopranos
Mary McDonnell, Battlestar Galactica
Kari Matchett, Invasion
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer
(Not much to say here; as usual, it's the weakest category on the ballot, and I felt happy to find five names that I could put on my list without wincing.)
Supporting Actor
Vince Curatola, The Sopranos
Michael Emerson, Lost
Jorge Garcia, Lost
Gregory Itzin, 24
William Shatner, Boston Legal
(Emerson made enough appearances to appear in this category instead of Guest Actor; this is another crowded field, and you could practically fill it with the male cast of Lost -- Terry O'Quinn, Naveen Andrews, Josh Holloway, Daniel Dae Kim, all deserving.)
Supporting Actress
Lauren Ambrose, Six Feet Under
Tricia Helfer, Battlestar Galactica
Grace Park, Battlestar Galactica
Mary Lynn Rajskub, 24
Jean Smart, 24
(Helfer and Park do remarkable work, each playing multiple versions of the same character with impeccable subtlety. Helfer particularly surprised me, since her work in the first season of the show had been limited to a not-so-interesting sex-kitten; it was great fun to watch her rise to the occasion when given a broader range to play. Still, the winner here must be Smart, who gave the performance of the year.)
July 01, 2006
MOVIES: The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006)
There's a horrible flaw in the conception of the main character here that keeps the movie from being really great, but there are enough good jokes and funny performances to make it well worth seeing.
Anne Hathaway stars as Andy Sachs, a wholesome midwestern girl just arrived in New York hoping for a career in journalism. Instead, she lands a position as assistant to Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep), editor of Runway magazine, and as such, one of the most powerful women in the fashion industry. Andy does not follow the world of couture, and has never even heard of Miranda before being hired, so she has no idea that Miranda is a tyrant of a boss, burning through assistants at a dizzying pace.
It doesn't seem likely that Miranda will put up with Andy for long. Her clothes are wrong, she's not pretty enough, and she doesn't know the industry (Taking a phone message, she asks, "And how do you spell 'Gabbana'?"). But after the inevitable makeover sequence -- very nicely edited to show us a dozen or so of Andy's new looks in one walk to work -- Andy gets down to business and sets out to become a great assistant.
There are no surprises in the story; we've seen all of this before. Andy's determination to meet Miranda's impossible demands ("My twins want to read the next Harry Potter; get me a copy of the manuscript.") means that her relationships with best friend (Tracie Thoms, who deserves better parts than this) and boyfriend (Adrian Grenier, who doesn't) will suffer, and Andy must eventually choose between life and work. (In a way, it's Click: The Chick Flick.)
The problem is that Andy is a passive wimp. She never fights back or challenges Miranda, and the movie desperately needs a good verbal battle between the two. Instead, she simply takes all of Miranda's abuse with good spirits and an occasional fit of whining to her friends. And at the movie's climax, when the formula requires that she ingeniously save Miranda from some awful fate, she's such a weak character that even that opportunity is taken away from her by the script.
Hathaway does all that can be done with the role. It is one of the standard bits of Hollywood nonsense that the girl who needs a makeover was already pretty damned attractive to begin with, but I think that's part of the joke this time; everyone at Runway is so caught up in high fashion that they genuinely can't see Andy as pretty until they see her in couture.
The movie's real attractions, though, are in its supporting cast. Stanley Tucci gives the gay sidekick role more dimension than it usually gets; Emily Blunt is marvelously brittle as Andy's co-assistant, who sees her primary position vanishing as Andy works her way into Miranda's good graces.
And as Miranda, Meryl Streep is magnificent. Miranda is not one to fly into furious rages at people; she simply nods or purses her lips before dismissing them -- "That's all" -- almost under her breath. Streep looks fabulous here, and it's an interesting choice to show a woman in the fashion industry who embraces her maturity; her hair has gone silver-white, and it would never occur to Miranda that it needed to be colored a more youthful shade. Streep lands every joke and gets every laugh to be found in the part.
The movie's a lot of fun, and it's a solid piece of entertainment, but I can't help wonder what might have been if Andy had been written as someone capable of giving Miranda a real battle; that could have been an all-time classic.
Anne Hathaway stars as Andy Sachs, a wholesome midwestern girl just arrived in New York hoping for a career in journalism. Instead, she lands a position as assistant to Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep), editor of Runway magazine, and as such, one of the most powerful women in the fashion industry. Andy does not follow the world of couture, and has never even heard of Miranda before being hired, so she has no idea that Miranda is a tyrant of a boss, burning through assistants at a dizzying pace.
It doesn't seem likely that Miranda will put up with Andy for long. Her clothes are wrong, she's not pretty enough, and she doesn't know the industry (Taking a phone message, she asks, "And how do you spell 'Gabbana'?"). But after the inevitable makeover sequence -- very nicely edited to show us a dozen or so of Andy's new looks in one walk to work -- Andy gets down to business and sets out to become a great assistant.
There are no surprises in the story; we've seen all of this before. Andy's determination to meet Miranda's impossible demands ("My twins want to read the next Harry Potter; get me a copy of the manuscript.") means that her relationships with best friend (Tracie Thoms, who deserves better parts than this) and boyfriend (Adrian Grenier, who doesn't) will suffer, and Andy must eventually choose between life and work. (In a way, it's Click: The Chick Flick.)
The problem is that Andy is a passive wimp. She never fights back or challenges Miranda, and the movie desperately needs a good verbal battle between the two. Instead, she simply takes all of Miranda's abuse with good spirits and an occasional fit of whining to her friends. And at the movie's climax, when the formula requires that she ingeniously save Miranda from some awful fate, she's such a weak character that even that opportunity is taken away from her by the script.
Hathaway does all that can be done with the role. It is one of the standard bits of Hollywood nonsense that the girl who needs a makeover was already pretty damned attractive to begin with, but I think that's part of the joke this time; everyone at Runway is so caught up in high fashion that they genuinely can't see Andy as pretty until they see her in couture.
The movie's real attractions, though, are in its supporting cast. Stanley Tucci gives the gay sidekick role more dimension than it usually gets; Emily Blunt is marvelously brittle as Andy's co-assistant, who sees her primary position vanishing as Andy works her way into Miranda's good graces.
And as Miranda, Meryl Streep is magnificent. Miranda is not one to fly into furious rages at people; she simply nods or purses her lips before dismissing them -- "That's all" -- almost under her breath. Streep looks fabulous here, and it's an interesting choice to show a woman in the fashion industry who embraces her maturity; her hair has gone silver-white, and it would never occur to Miranda that it needed to be colored a more youthful shade. Streep lands every joke and gets every laugh to be found in the part.
The movie's a lot of fun, and it's a solid piece of entertainment, but I can't help wonder what might have been if Andy had been written as someone capable of giving Miranda a real battle; that could have been an all-time classic.
MOVIES: Click (Frank Coraci, 2006)
Click is two different movies, each of which would be moderately entertaining on its own, but the two don't mix well at all.
The first half is a standard Adam Sandler man-boy-idiot comedy, in which Sandler's Michael Newman is an architect with an overly demanding boss (David Hasselhoff), a gorgeous wife (Kate Beckinsale), and two movie-cute kids. Michael ventures into the "Way Beyond" room at the local Bed Bath & Beyond -- can you say product placement, boys and girls? I knew you could -- in search of a universal remote, hoping to simplify something in his hectic life. He's given "the newest technology" in remotes by Marty (Christopher Walken, who seems to be auditioning for a particularly wacko version of Willy Wonka).
And this sets up Movie #1, in which Sandler uses his remote (which allows him to fast-forward, pause, mute, etc. his actual life) to skip through colds, arguments with Donna, and family dinners. If you like this sort of thing (and I do, as an occasional thing), Sandler does it as well as anyone, and scattered among the cheap jokes are a few clever ideas; a joke involving the color adjustment on the remote is nicely done.
But the remote has a mind of its own, and it's not long before it starts skipping Michael through life of its own accord, setting up Movie #2, which gets all sentimental and heartwarming in a Frank Capra-wannabe kind of way, pounding home the lessons that life must be enjoyed while it happens and family is the most important thing. Sandler isn't going to be stealing roles from Tom Hanks any time soon, but he pulls off the emotional moments well enough. (He really is a better actor than most give him credit for; he was quite good in Spanglish, and deserved an Oscar nomination for Punch-Drunk Love.)
There's much fine work in the supporting cast. Walken is, as always, entertaining and gives dialogue his unique spin. Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner are charming as Sandler's parents, and there's some remarkable digital work to de-age them in flashbacks to Michael's childhood, an especially challenging task since we have such vivid memories of the younger Winkler and Kavner from their TV sitcom days. (Well, at least those of us who are 40-ish and up have vivid memories; Sandler's core audience of 15-year-old boys, maybe not so much.) There's also superb old-age makeup by Rick Baker as the movie leaps into Sandler's future.
(An aside: The movie stumbles into a common flaw of stories set in the not-too-distant future -- over-changing things. Violins, for instance, have remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. So when we see, in a scene set roughly 20 years from now, a quartet playing skinny metallic pseudo-violins and -cellos, someone is trying too hard to be futuristic.)
Click isn't an awful movie, and there is much to enjoy about it. But the chasm between fart jokes and It's a Wonderful Life is wide, indeed, and the screenplay (by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe) doesn't quite bridge it successfully; the movie's shift of gears isn't well prepared, and the contrast between the two halves was too jarring for me.
The first half is a standard Adam Sandler man-boy-idiot comedy, in which Sandler's Michael Newman is an architect with an overly demanding boss (David Hasselhoff), a gorgeous wife (Kate Beckinsale), and two movie-cute kids. Michael ventures into the "Way Beyond" room at the local Bed Bath & Beyond -- can you say product placement, boys and girls? I knew you could -- in search of a universal remote, hoping to simplify something in his hectic life. He's given "the newest technology" in remotes by Marty (Christopher Walken, who seems to be auditioning for a particularly wacko version of Willy Wonka).
And this sets up Movie #1, in which Sandler uses his remote (which allows him to fast-forward, pause, mute, etc. his actual life) to skip through colds, arguments with Donna, and family dinners. If you like this sort of thing (and I do, as an occasional thing), Sandler does it as well as anyone, and scattered among the cheap jokes are a few clever ideas; a joke involving the color adjustment on the remote is nicely done.
But the remote has a mind of its own, and it's not long before it starts skipping Michael through life of its own accord, setting up Movie #2, which gets all sentimental and heartwarming in a Frank Capra-wannabe kind of way, pounding home the lessons that life must be enjoyed while it happens and family is the most important thing. Sandler isn't going to be stealing roles from Tom Hanks any time soon, but he pulls off the emotional moments well enough. (He really is a better actor than most give him credit for; he was quite good in Spanglish, and deserved an Oscar nomination for Punch-Drunk Love.)
There's much fine work in the supporting cast. Walken is, as always, entertaining and gives dialogue his unique spin. Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner are charming as Sandler's parents, and there's some remarkable digital work to de-age them in flashbacks to Michael's childhood, an especially challenging task since we have such vivid memories of the younger Winkler and Kavner from their TV sitcom days. (Well, at least those of us who are 40-ish and up have vivid memories; Sandler's core audience of 15-year-old boys, maybe not so much.) There's also superb old-age makeup by Rick Baker as the movie leaps into Sandler's future.
(An aside: The movie stumbles into a common flaw of stories set in the not-too-distant future -- over-changing things. Violins, for instance, have remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. So when we see, in a scene set roughly 20 years from now, a quartet playing skinny metallic pseudo-violins and -cellos, someone is trying too hard to be futuristic.)
Click isn't an awful movie, and there is much to enjoy about it. But the chasm between fart jokes and It's a Wonderful Life is wide, indeed, and the screenplay (by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe) doesn't quite bridge it successfully; the movie's shift of gears isn't well prepared, and the contrast between the two halves was too jarring for me.
June 25, 2006
MOVIES: Wordplay (Patrick Creadon, 2006)
Charming documentary about crossword puzzles and the people who solve them.
The movie revolves around Will Shortz, who edits the New York Times crossword, hosts the weekly Sunday puzzle on National Public Radio, and organizes an annual crossword tournament in Stamford, Connecticut. He's a lifelong puzzle fanatic, having gone so far as to design his own major at Indiana University, making him the only person with an academic degree in Enigmatology.
We also watch Merl Reagle, one of the top crossword constructors, at work creating a puzzle. That's a fascinating process to observe, and you begin to understand that solving the puzzle is the easy part; creating it is the real challenge. Shortz talks about the fact that every puzzle is really a collaboration between the creator and the editor. As an editor, Shortz re-writes as many as half of the clues for each puzzle, to correct factual errors, to conform to Times style, and to make the clues match the needed level of difficulty for the day on which it will appear (puzzles get progressively difficult from Monday to Saturday, and re-writing the clues might be all it takes to turn a Monday puzzle into a Thursday puzzle).
Later, we sit in as several celebrity crossword fans solve Reagle's puzzle. What's amusing about those scenes is the way in which working the puzzle seems to concentrate the personality. Jon Stewart is funny and mock-angry, treating each puzzle as another battle in an undeclared war with Shortz; Bill Clinton is thoughtful and articulate, explaining what the crossword can teach us about diplomacy and human relationships. The Indigo Girls are earnest and a bit self-absorbed, reminiscing about the first time they saw themselves as a puzzle answer; documentarian Ken Burns crams so much smugness and pretension into his brief appearance that it's like being forced to sit through another one of his 12-hour monstrosities.
The second half of the movie focuses on Shortz's tournament, and the movie benefits immensely from Brian Oakes's animated graphics, which allow us to follow along as the contestants work on the puzzles. Oakes's work is very smartly conceived and executed, and contributes greatly to the tension that builds in the last half-hour of the film. Creadon also had the good luck to be present for a tournament in which the final round was particularly dramatic and hearbreaking.
Do you have to be a crossword fan yourself to enjoy Wordplay? I don't think so, not any more than you had to love spelling to enjoy Spellbound, or know how to tango to enjoy Mad Hot Ballroom. Keith's Rule to Live By #26 tells us that people talking about their passion are almost always interesting, even if their passion is something that would normally bore you to death. Wordplay has a lot of colorful personalities, a suspenseful ending, and some insights into the longevity of the crossword puzzle. It's a lot of fun.
The movie revolves around Will Shortz, who edits the New York Times crossword, hosts the weekly Sunday puzzle on National Public Radio, and organizes an annual crossword tournament in Stamford, Connecticut. He's a lifelong puzzle fanatic, having gone so far as to design his own major at Indiana University, making him the only person with an academic degree in Enigmatology.
We also watch Merl Reagle, one of the top crossword constructors, at work creating a puzzle. That's a fascinating process to observe, and you begin to understand that solving the puzzle is the easy part; creating it is the real challenge. Shortz talks about the fact that every puzzle is really a collaboration between the creator and the editor. As an editor, Shortz re-writes as many as half of the clues for each puzzle, to correct factual errors, to conform to Times style, and to make the clues match the needed level of difficulty for the day on which it will appear (puzzles get progressively difficult from Monday to Saturday, and re-writing the clues might be all it takes to turn a Monday puzzle into a Thursday puzzle).
Later, we sit in as several celebrity crossword fans solve Reagle's puzzle. What's amusing about those scenes is the way in which working the puzzle seems to concentrate the personality. Jon Stewart is funny and mock-angry, treating each puzzle as another battle in an undeclared war with Shortz; Bill Clinton is thoughtful and articulate, explaining what the crossword can teach us about diplomacy and human relationships. The Indigo Girls are earnest and a bit self-absorbed, reminiscing about the first time they saw themselves as a puzzle answer; documentarian Ken Burns crams so much smugness and pretension into his brief appearance that it's like being forced to sit through another one of his 12-hour monstrosities.
The second half of the movie focuses on Shortz's tournament, and the movie benefits immensely from Brian Oakes's animated graphics, which allow us to follow along as the contestants work on the puzzles. Oakes's work is very smartly conceived and executed, and contributes greatly to the tension that builds in the last half-hour of the film. Creadon also had the good luck to be present for a tournament in which the final round was particularly dramatic and hearbreaking.
Do you have to be a crossword fan yourself to enjoy Wordplay? I don't think so, not any more than you had to love spelling to enjoy Spellbound, or know how to tango to enjoy Mad Hot Ballroom. Keith's Rule to Live By #26 tells us that people talking about their passion are almost always interesting, even if their passion is something that would normally bore you to death. Wordplay has a lot of colorful personalities, a suspenseful ending, and some insights into the longevity of the crossword puzzle. It's a lot of fun.
June 18, 2006
BOOKS: Dark Tort, Diane Mott Davidson (2006)
13th in the series of mysteries featuring caterer Goldy Schulz.
Davidson's usual method is to give us two or three chapters of groundwork, introducing the new setting and characters who will be featured in that book before bumping off one of them and finding a way to involve Goldy in the crime. Not so this time, as Davidson dives right in from Goldy's first sentence: "I tripped over the body of my friend Dusty Routt at half past ten on the night of October 19."
Dusty was in training to be a paralegal, and works at her uncle's high-class law firm, where Goldy serves breakfast for lawyers and clients holding early-morning meetings. She was also Goldy's neighbor, and Dusty's mother, knowing of Goldy's frequent involvement in helping to solve murder cases, begs Goldy to help find Dusty's killer. There's no shortage of suspects, most of them the lawyers and secretaries at the law firm, and Goldy once again, against the usual protests of her policeman husband, begins investigating the murder.
As always, the book includes about a dozen or so recipes for goodies that Goldy serves to her catering clients during the course of events; there's a novel twist this time, as Davidson finds a way to make one of those recipes an integral part of Goldy's detective work.
The Goldy Schulz series isn't the place to go for groundbreaking, brilliant writing, but they're solid, reliable entertainment. The regular characters are a pleasant family; the suspects and red herring characters are a mix of colorful personalities; and the mystery itself is cleverly presented, with clues laid out fairly enough that the reader has a good shot at solving the puzzle himself.
Davidson's usual method is to give us two or three chapters of groundwork, introducing the new setting and characters who will be featured in that book before bumping off one of them and finding a way to involve Goldy in the crime. Not so this time, as Davidson dives right in from Goldy's first sentence: "I tripped over the body of my friend Dusty Routt at half past ten on the night of October 19."
Dusty was in training to be a paralegal, and works at her uncle's high-class law firm, where Goldy serves breakfast for lawyers and clients holding early-morning meetings. She was also Goldy's neighbor, and Dusty's mother, knowing of Goldy's frequent involvement in helping to solve murder cases, begs Goldy to help find Dusty's killer. There's no shortage of suspects, most of them the lawyers and secretaries at the law firm, and Goldy once again, against the usual protests of her policeman husband, begins investigating the murder.
As always, the book includes about a dozen or so recipes for goodies that Goldy serves to her catering clients during the course of events; there's a novel twist this time, as Davidson finds a way to make one of those recipes an integral part of Goldy's detective work.
The Goldy Schulz series isn't the place to go for groundbreaking, brilliant writing, but they're solid, reliable entertainment. The regular characters are a pleasant family; the suspects and red herring characters are a mix of colorful personalities; and the mystery itself is cleverly presented, with clues laid out fairly enough that the reader has a good shot at solving the puzzle himself.
MOVIES: Cars (John Lasseter & Joe Ranft, 2006)
Pixar has set such high standards for itself that it seems a disappointment that Cars is only a very good movie, and not a brilliant one.
The story is familiar: A young hotshot from the city is stranded in a small town that's seen better days. From him, the town learns to take pride in itself and takes the first steps towards a general sprucing up; from the town, he learns that old-fashioned values and friendship are more important than money and fame. It's a common movie plot -- Doc Hollywood and Sweet Home Alabama come to mind -- and Cars does it reasonably well.
The hotshot this time is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a rookie racecar on the Piston Cup circuit; he's on his way to California for the championship race when he gets stuck in Radiator Springs ("the cutest little town in Carburetor County"). There's a wise old mentor car, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman); a pretty girl to flirt with, Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt); and a local yokel to serve as best friend, Mater the tow truck (an extremely annoying Larry the Cable Guy).
And in Pixar tradition, there's an ensemble of supporting cars; there's Cheech Marin as the Latino lowrider who enters every scene with a different flashy paint job; George Carlin as the VW bus who's into Hendrix and organic fuel; Paul Dooley as Sarge, the jeep; Tony Shalhoub as Luigi, the Italian sportscar. They're a bunch of rather cliched types, but within the limits of those cliches, some of the performances are good; Shalhoub is the standout, stealing every scene he's in.
There are some nice touches in the animation; the use of windshield wipers as eyebrows is effective, and I love the way that the hippie van's license plate hangs from its front bumper like a goatee. The movie's biggest problem is that as hard as the animators have worked, cars just aren't capable of being very physically expressive. They've got no limbs and their front ends don't allow for much facial expression. So the voice performances have to provide even more energy and expression than usual for an animated film, and the principals here don't bring quite enough life to their characters.
Cars is the least of the Pixar films to date, but even with its unexpressive characters and familiar story, it's still a moderately entertaining movie, and better than most of the family films we get these days.
The story is familiar: A young hotshot from the city is stranded in a small town that's seen better days. From him, the town learns to take pride in itself and takes the first steps towards a general sprucing up; from the town, he learns that old-fashioned values and friendship are more important than money and fame. It's a common movie plot -- Doc Hollywood and Sweet Home Alabama come to mind -- and Cars does it reasonably well.
The hotshot this time is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a rookie racecar on the Piston Cup circuit; he's on his way to California for the championship race when he gets stuck in Radiator Springs ("the cutest little town in Carburetor County"). There's a wise old mentor car, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman); a pretty girl to flirt with, Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt); and a local yokel to serve as best friend, Mater the tow truck (an extremely annoying Larry the Cable Guy).
And in Pixar tradition, there's an ensemble of supporting cars; there's Cheech Marin as the Latino lowrider who enters every scene with a different flashy paint job; George Carlin as the VW bus who's into Hendrix and organic fuel; Paul Dooley as Sarge, the jeep; Tony Shalhoub as Luigi, the Italian sportscar. They're a bunch of rather cliched types, but within the limits of those cliches, some of the performances are good; Shalhoub is the standout, stealing every scene he's in.
There are some nice touches in the animation; the use of windshield wipers as eyebrows is effective, and I love the way that the hippie van's license plate hangs from its front bumper like a goatee. The movie's biggest problem is that as hard as the animators have worked, cars just aren't capable of being very physically expressive. They've got no limbs and their front ends don't allow for much facial expression. So the voice performances have to provide even more energy and expression than usual for an animated film, and the principals here don't bring quite enough life to their characters.
Cars is the least of the Pixar films to date, but even with its unexpressive characters and familiar story, it's still a moderately entertaining movie, and better than most of the family films we get these days.
BOOKS: My Latest Grievance, Elinor Lipman (2006)
Lipman is one of our best comic novelists, with a gift for creating vivid characters and planting them in awkward positions; it's great fun to watch her characters squirm their way out of the messes they've gotten into.
Her principal character this time is 16-year-old Frederica Hatch, who has grown up in a dormitory at a small women's college in Boston, where her parents are professors and house parents. She has been something of a campus mascot since birth, and is beginning to feel frustrated by the confines of the campus; Frederica longs for a little bit of excitement and turmoil. She certainly doesn't get that from her parents, who are kind and loving people, but occasionally too busy with campus politics -- they are chief organizers of the faculty union, which makes them the campus radicals in 1978 -- to pay as much attention to Frederica as she would like.
Excitement finally comes to Frederica's life in the form of Laura Lee French, the new housemother at the neighboring dorm. Laura Lee is glamorous, flamboyant, and free-spirited to a fault. She also turns out to be a distant cousin to the Hatches, with a connection to Frederica's parents that she never could have expected.
As always, Lipman's writing is elegant and entertaining, and her characters are lively and entirely believable. Her plotting falls a bit short this time, I think; the resolution is a bit of a deus ex machina, and the final chapter zips through thirty years -- bringing the characters to the present day -- rather hastily and artlessly.
Second-rate Lipman is better than a lot of what's out there, and My Latest Grievance is a pleasantly diverting book, but if you haven't read her before, there are better places to start; I'd suggest The Inn at Lake Devine or The Ladies' Man.
Her principal character this time is 16-year-old Frederica Hatch, who has grown up in a dormitory at a small women's college in Boston, where her parents are professors and house parents. She has been something of a campus mascot since birth, and is beginning to feel frustrated by the confines of the campus; Frederica longs for a little bit of excitement and turmoil. She certainly doesn't get that from her parents, who are kind and loving people, but occasionally too busy with campus politics -- they are chief organizers of the faculty union, which makes them the campus radicals in 1978 -- to pay as much attention to Frederica as she would like.
Excitement finally comes to Frederica's life in the form of Laura Lee French, the new housemother at the neighboring dorm. Laura Lee is glamorous, flamboyant, and free-spirited to a fault. She also turns out to be a distant cousin to the Hatches, with a connection to Frederica's parents that she never could have expected.
As always, Lipman's writing is elegant and entertaining, and her characters are lively and entirely believable. Her plotting falls a bit short this time, I think; the resolution is a bit of a deus ex machina, and the final chapter zips through thirty years -- bringing the characters to the present day -- rather hastily and artlessly.
Second-rate Lipman is better than a lot of what's out there, and My Latest Grievance is a pleasantly diverting book, but if you haven't read her before, there are better places to start; I'd suggest The Inn at Lake Devine or The Ladies' Man.
June 11, 2006
MOVIES: A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, 2006)
I don't think that I've ever had such mixed feelings going into a movie as I did with this one.
On the plus side, it's an Altman movie, so it's likely to be good, and even if it's bad, you can count on Altman to be bad in more interesting ways than most directors. And there's that cast: Streep, Tomlin, Kline, Madsen, Harrelsen, Reilly.
But on the bad side, I despise Garrison Keillor. The radio version of A Prairie Home Companion has its moments -- much of the music is lovely, and some of the comedy sketches are amusing -- but Keillor's on-air personality is so smug and unlikable that I can't get through the show. Especially awful are his interminable monologues about Lake Wobegon, which are meant to be heartwarming pseudo-nostalgia for a small-town life that doesn't really exist anymore, but which are laced with an undercurrent of anger and cruelty toward the small towns that Keillor is claiming to love.
And when the movie was over, I came out with pretty much the same mixed feelings I had going in; much of the cast is superb, there's a lot of delightful music, and there's Keillor at the center of it all, so morose that you'd think he was deliberately trying to suck the joy from the movie.
The setting is the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, from which the real Companion is broadcast. Keillor is playing a version of himself, usually referred to just as "GK," and Companion is similarly playing a version of itself; the movie's PHC really is the small-town, small-audience local radio show that the real PHC pretends to be.
In this fictional universe, the radio station's new owner is tearing down the theater and shutting down the show, and tonight will be the last broadcast. All of GK's guests and regular cast are saddened at the impending death of the show, and urge him to make some acknowledgement of the event on the air; he refuses. "Every show is the last show," he says, "that's my philosophy."
Some of the actors are playing characters who appear in sketches on the real radio show (but who are not played on that show by these actors); Kevin Kline plays Guy Noir, who appears in private eye sketches, but for the movie, is moved into the "real" world as the show's security chief (the role's not terribly well conceived, and Kline is stranded in a series of bad slapstick scenes); Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are charming as singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, constantly pushing the boundaries of taste. There are also actors and musicians who appear on the real show, some as themselves (singers Robin and Linda Williams, and Jearlyn Steele; sound-effects wizard Tom Keith), some in fictional roles (Sue Scott as the show's makeup woman).
And there are actors who appear in new fictional roles, best of all Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin as Yolanda and Rhonda, the "Johnson Girls" who are all that's left of what used to be a quartet. If you saw Streep and Tomlin introducing Altman at the Oscars this year (he received an honorary Oscar), then you have some idea of their relationship in this movie; they're constantly interrupting each other, finishing each other's sentences, and telling long, drawn-out anecdotes about their childhood and life on the road. They are a magnificent comic duo (and Streep, in particular, is a fine singer), and some smart director should build an entire movie around them.
Keillor, on the other hand, isn't much of an actor; his scene with Virginia Madsen, who plays a mysterious presence credited only as "Dangerous Woman," is painful to sit through. He's got the saddest face I've ever seen, all heavy jowls and eyelids; even when he smiles (which isn't often), that only manages to elevate his mood from suicidal to glum. You understand after this movie why his career is in radio.
So the movie's a big sloppy mess. There's no real plot; it's more just a series of semi-random character interactions. If there's a theme, it's death and how we deal with it, though I wouldn't say there was any particular coherent statement being made. There's a lot of music, so much that the movie almost feels like a weird concert film; most of it is very well done, though if you don't have a taste for old-fashioned Americana, folk, and sentimental ballads sung entirely without irony, you're likely to be bored. Performances range from stellar to dismal, with Streep and Tomlin at the top of the peak and Kline and Keillor at the bottom.
If you're a fan of Keillor and the real Companion, by all means go to the movie, which you will love. If you're not, you'll have to decide whether it's worth putting up with him to get what good the movie has to offer.
On the plus side, it's an Altman movie, so it's likely to be good, and even if it's bad, you can count on Altman to be bad in more interesting ways than most directors. And there's that cast: Streep, Tomlin, Kline, Madsen, Harrelsen, Reilly.
But on the bad side, I despise Garrison Keillor. The radio version of A Prairie Home Companion has its moments -- much of the music is lovely, and some of the comedy sketches are amusing -- but Keillor's on-air personality is so smug and unlikable that I can't get through the show. Especially awful are his interminable monologues about Lake Wobegon, which are meant to be heartwarming pseudo-nostalgia for a small-town life that doesn't really exist anymore, but which are laced with an undercurrent of anger and cruelty toward the small towns that Keillor is claiming to love.
And when the movie was over, I came out with pretty much the same mixed feelings I had going in; much of the cast is superb, there's a lot of delightful music, and there's Keillor at the center of it all, so morose that you'd think he was deliberately trying to suck the joy from the movie.
The setting is the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, from which the real Companion is broadcast. Keillor is playing a version of himself, usually referred to just as "GK," and Companion is similarly playing a version of itself; the movie's PHC really is the small-town, small-audience local radio show that the real PHC pretends to be.
In this fictional universe, the radio station's new owner is tearing down the theater and shutting down the show, and tonight will be the last broadcast. All of GK's guests and regular cast are saddened at the impending death of the show, and urge him to make some acknowledgement of the event on the air; he refuses. "Every show is the last show," he says, "that's my philosophy."
Some of the actors are playing characters who appear in sketches on the real radio show (but who are not played on that show by these actors); Kevin Kline plays Guy Noir, who appears in private eye sketches, but for the movie, is moved into the "real" world as the show's security chief (the role's not terribly well conceived, and Kline is stranded in a series of bad slapstick scenes); Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are charming as singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, constantly pushing the boundaries of taste. There are also actors and musicians who appear on the real show, some as themselves (singers Robin and Linda Williams, and Jearlyn Steele; sound-effects wizard Tom Keith), some in fictional roles (Sue Scott as the show's makeup woman).
And there are actors who appear in new fictional roles, best of all Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin as Yolanda and Rhonda, the "Johnson Girls" who are all that's left of what used to be a quartet. If you saw Streep and Tomlin introducing Altman at the Oscars this year (he received an honorary Oscar), then you have some idea of their relationship in this movie; they're constantly interrupting each other, finishing each other's sentences, and telling long, drawn-out anecdotes about their childhood and life on the road. They are a magnificent comic duo (and Streep, in particular, is a fine singer), and some smart director should build an entire movie around them.
Keillor, on the other hand, isn't much of an actor; his scene with Virginia Madsen, who plays a mysterious presence credited only as "Dangerous Woman," is painful to sit through. He's got the saddest face I've ever seen, all heavy jowls and eyelids; even when he smiles (which isn't often), that only manages to elevate his mood from suicidal to glum. You understand after this movie why his career is in radio.
So the movie's a big sloppy mess. There's no real plot; it's more just a series of semi-random character interactions. If there's a theme, it's death and how we deal with it, though I wouldn't say there was any particular coherent statement being made. There's a lot of music, so much that the movie almost feels like a weird concert film; most of it is very well done, though if you don't have a taste for old-fashioned Americana, folk, and sentimental ballads sung entirely without irony, you're likely to be bored. Performances range from stellar to dismal, with Streep and Tomlin at the top of the peak and Kline and Keillor at the bottom.
If you're a fan of Keillor and the real Companion, by all means go to the movie, which you will love. If you're not, you'll have to decide whether it's worth putting up with him to get what good the movie has to offer.
June 06, 2006
A fine post on the same-sex marriage issue from John Scalzi at Whatever, making the point that with the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts two years ago, it is now the anti crowd that is fighting to change the very definition of marriage (since that definition in the US now includes same-sex marriage), and to destroy thousands of existing legal marriages.
June 04, 2006
BOOKS: The Girl in the Glass, Jeffrey Ford (2005)
This year's Edgar Award winner in the Best Paperback Original category.
That's a category that may be obsolete soon. Ten or fifteen years ago, when paperback always meant mass-market, and paperback originals were generally considered to be (and usually were) the dregs of the publishing world, the category made some sense as a way to single out for praise the relatively few good books published in the format.
But now, the trade paperback format doesn't carry nearly the stigma that mass-market does, and major authors are seeing their work published as paperback originals; the playing field is relatively level now, and the best paperbacks are being acknowledged when they're published. There's less need today for a special category to rescue good paperbacks from obscurity. Ford's Depression-era novel is certainly as good as any mystery I've read in the last year.
Our narrator is Diego, a 17-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico who has lived since childhood with Thomas Schell. Schell is a con man, providing phony seances to the grieving wealthy of New York; Diego works as his assistant, "Ondoo," a turban-wearing mystic from India. (It is a running joke that none of Schell's clients are able to tell the difference between a Mexican and an Indian; brown faces are all the same to them.)
During one seance, Schell sees something that isn't part of his fakery, the image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently beckoning for help. A few days later, the same face appears in the newspaper; the girl has disappeared and is presumed to have been kidnapped. Despite the fact that he has no actual psychic abilities at all, Schell volunteers his "services" to the girl's family.
Ford's prose is delightful to read. Diego's English has the precision that often comes when someone learns a second language, and the elegance of his era and milieu. The story is nicely plotted, with villains whose motives are historically apt and sufficiently evil to make the stakes high. I'm always fond of con-artist stories, and while Schell's con games aren't the principal focus of the story, there are some fascinating details of how he pulls off some of his effects. The final confrontation with the bad guys is a grand, exciting set piece with some very clever chicanery.
That's a category that may be obsolete soon. Ten or fifteen years ago, when paperback always meant mass-market, and paperback originals were generally considered to be (and usually were) the dregs of the publishing world, the category made some sense as a way to single out for praise the relatively few good books published in the format.
But now, the trade paperback format doesn't carry nearly the stigma that mass-market does, and major authors are seeing their work published as paperback originals; the playing field is relatively level now, and the best paperbacks are being acknowledged when they're published. There's less need today for a special category to rescue good paperbacks from obscurity. Ford's Depression-era novel is certainly as good as any mystery I've read in the last year.
Our narrator is Diego, a 17-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico who has lived since childhood with Thomas Schell. Schell is a con man, providing phony seances to the grieving wealthy of New York; Diego works as his assistant, "Ondoo," a turban-wearing mystic from India. (It is a running joke that none of Schell's clients are able to tell the difference between a Mexican and an Indian; brown faces are all the same to them.)
During one seance, Schell sees something that isn't part of his fakery, the image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently beckoning for help. A few days later, the same face appears in the newspaper; the girl has disappeared and is presumed to have been kidnapped. Despite the fact that he has no actual psychic abilities at all, Schell volunteers his "services" to the girl's family.
Ford's prose is delightful to read. Diego's English has the precision that often comes when someone learns a second language, and the elegance of his era and milieu. The story is nicely plotted, with villains whose motives are historically apt and sufficiently evil to make the stakes high. I'm always fond of con-artist stories, and while Schell's con games aren't the principal focus of the story, there are some fascinating details of how he pulls off some of his effects. The final confrontation with the bad guys is a grand, exciting set piece with some very clever chicanery.
MOVIES: The Break-Up (Peyton Reed, 2006)
OK, the movie's called The Break-Up, so it's not surprising that it's mainly about the break-up of its central couple, but that poses a structural problem that the movie doesn't solve. We see virtually nothing of Brooke and Gary (Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn) as a happy couple -- their 2-year relationship is compressed to a series of snapshots during the opening credits -- so when they start fighting, we don't like or care about either of them.
And since they're not just fighting, but deliberately going to great lengths to hurt one another, we're seeing them at their worst, which only makes it harder to give a crap. That can work, if the movie's willing to completely commit to a very dark sense of humor -- The War of the Roses, for instance, got away with it for the most part -- but The Break-Up wants to be loved as a sweet-natured romantic comedy, and wants us to love its characters. The result is a tone that yo-yos back and forth from slapstick to emotional brutality, and while each extreme works moderately well in its own right, the writing doesn't manage the transition between extremes very well.
But by the time the characters get to their moments of redemption -- each of them gets one, an attempt to salvage the relationship they've spent the entire movie trying to destroy -- I hated both of them so damned much that I was actively rooting for them to fail, and for both of them to spend the rest of their lives alone and miserable.
There are some funny performances scattered around the edges of the movie. Aniston and Vaughn each have a best-pal sidekick, played by Joey Lauren Adams and Jon Favreau, and they're both very charming; unfortunately, the chemistry between either of those pairs (Vaughn and Favreau especially) is stronger than the chemistry between Aniston and Vaughn. Justin Long, an actor who I've never much liked before, is funny as Aniston's flamboyant idiot co-worker; Judy Davis is all brittle edges and sharp clavicles as their boss, a self-absorbed gallery owner. John Michael Higgins gets the movie's best scene; he's an a cappella singer who drags an entire dinner party into joining him in a horribly embarassing performance.
That scene reminded me that director Peyton Reed has always had a knack for staging musical numbers; think of the marching-band opening from Bring It On, or the McGregor/Zellweger production number over the closing credits of Down With Love. I'd really love to see him go to town on a witty musical. I wonder what he'd do with Sondheim's Into the Woods, for instance.
And since they're not just fighting, but deliberately going to great lengths to hurt one another, we're seeing them at their worst, which only makes it harder to give a crap. That can work, if the movie's willing to completely commit to a very dark sense of humor -- The War of the Roses, for instance, got away with it for the most part -- but The Break-Up wants to be loved as a sweet-natured romantic comedy, and wants us to love its characters. The result is a tone that yo-yos back and forth from slapstick to emotional brutality, and while each extreme works moderately well in its own right, the writing doesn't manage the transition between extremes very well.
But by the time the characters get to their moments of redemption -- each of them gets one, an attempt to salvage the relationship they've spent the entire movie trying to destroy -- I hated both of them so damned much that I was actively rooting for them to fail, and for both of them to spend the rest of their lives alone and miserable.
There are some funny performances scattered around the edges of the movie. Aniston and Vaughn each have a best-pal sidekick, played by Joey Lauren Adams and Jon Favreau, and they're both very charming; unfortunately, the chemistry between either of those pairs (Vaughn and Favreau especially) is stronger than the chemistry between Aniston and Vaughn. Justin Long, an actor who I've never much liked before, is funny as Aniston's flamboyant idiot co-worker; Judy Davis is all brittle edges and sharp clavicles as their boss, a self-absorbed gallery owner. John Michael Higgins gets the movie's best scene; he's an a cappella singer who drags an entire dinner party into joining him in a horribly embarassing performance.
That scene reminded me that director Peyton Reed has always had a knack for staging musical numbers; think of the marching-band opening from Bring It On, or the McGregor/Zellweger production number over the closing credits of Down With Love. I'd really love to see him go to town on a witty musical. I wonder what he'd do with Sondheim's Into the Woods, for instance.
June 01, 2006
MUSIC: a virtual cathedral
This is fascinating. Computer technology has been applied to a new CD -- an organ recital -- to create a virtual cathedral, a simulation of what the organ might sound like if it were located in a different room with different acoustics.
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