Stranger Than Fiction

People who know me best know that I've never grown out of the "What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?" stage of childhood. And, like the stereotypical child, I often change my mind based on what new and fun encounter I've had. In the past year and a half, I've wanted to be the following: an architect, a professor, a writer, a missionary, a third-world developer (specifically in public health), an entrepreneur, a cinematographer, a journalist, a pastry chef, and a Lego enthusiast (OK, maybe that last thing doesn't count as a job, but it certainly seems to take up a lot of time). And, of course, a lawyer. Some of those I can probably be at once (like, lawyer + writer + professor), but some are harder to fit together.

Basically, though, the common thread of all of these things is that something sparks my imagination. My father used to always have to remind my big sister that imitation was a form of flattery whenever I copied my big sister in what she did when we were little. But I still have the same tendency, and it *is* perhaps the highest praise I can give to something to say that I left wanting to do that thing for a living.

With that preface, I came out of the movie Stranger Than Fiction this weekend and wanted to be a novelist. When I come out of incredible plays, I want to be a director or actress. When I come out of exceptional movies, I want to writer screenplays or be a film editor. Stranger Than Fiction had neither of these effects on me, because in fact it wasn't an exceptional movie. It had a lot of flaws: an inability to commit (the cardinal sin of dramatic arts), and in general an intellectual feel that never quite expanded beyond the cerebral, and an aesthetic that was sometimes confusing. There were lots of wonderful details in the movie that were almost hidden - the quote around a bakery store's exterior, a throwaway background quote about the novelist's religious beliefs, fleeting visual references to books and authors throughout. If you do go see the movie, try to keep alert for these things, even as you get bombarded with silly animations of maps and calculations.

But at the same time, the movie *did* inspire me. Its premise is quite smart and intriguing. Artists create worlds and characters in order to manipulate them into something beautiful - but what if that beauty were actually destructive? It doesn't matter when they are just bits of printed words on paper, but as most artists and writers know, they often seem more separate from one's own creation. In a word, they seem more real. And so, what do you do then? Sacrifce them to the story and the beatury of Art, or do we recognize a purpose of Art other than to illuminate its own beauty? All these thoughts and more poured out of my head as I left the theater, feeling a little empty by the wishy-washy ending of the movie. The movie is about a novelist (or perhaps, more acurately, a tragedian), played by Emma Thompson, and the hero of her new novel who is, inexplicably, real. But - and here is the catch- the hero finds out that he is a character destined to die when he begins to hear the narration of the story in his head. So now he has to figure out what is going to happen to him, and if and how he can save his own life. Throw in a little romantic sideplot with Maggie Gyllenhaal (who is, by the way, delightful as a Harvard Law School student drop-out turned baker. yay!), and you've got pretty much all the important plot points down. Will Ferrell, as the bland anti-hero Harold Crick, seems a bit awkward containing his manic persona to play such a subdued and insecure character, but he does quite well. And we know there is more life bursting to get out from underneath his monotone and bewildered expression, which is important to win over the audience and make us care about his fate. Dustin Hoffman, as the literature professor Harold seeks out for guidance, has apparently perfected the likable but callous (and somewhat phoned-in) performance. See I [Heart] Huckabees and, (oh horror) Meet the Fockers for examples.

The film's biggest problem, however, is the same as Emma Thompson's character's: the ending. How do you end a film about a book character who is real? Unfortunately, you've only got two choices: tragedy and comedy. In the first you kill off Harold Crick, as Emma Thompson's character originally intended. And really, what movie with Will Ferrell as the main character is going to end with such a dramatic and terrible note? In the second, though, you destroy all the build-up of the movie, and end up with a bland cop-out. Or at least, it feels like a cop-out if you can't explain why it makes more sense - for the *story* - for Harold Crick to live. At the end of the day, this movie *is* fiction, and just saying, "oh, you shouldn't kill people" doesn't seem like enough. The script in Stranger Than Fiction makes some half-hearted and cursory attempts to explain a decision of comedy over tragedy, but they aren't explained well or even taken very seriously. Which leaves the film somewhat abrupt in its ending, with me sitting through the credits trying to figure out if there was a better ending out there than the one the film seemingly painted its way into.

All the film's weakness, though, I forgive, not because I think the movie is great, or even necessarily one that i would recommend to any movie goer (think: if you liked I [Heart] Huckabees, you'll probably like this, too). But I forgive the weaknesses of Stranger Than Fiction because I came out of that movie theater with a heightened awareness of the world around me and its beauty, and also a renewed conviction that I wanted to write about it. I came home and sat down in front of my computer and opened up an old story I started about a year ago and started working on it some more. Some new characters came out onto the page, ones I didn't know and didn't expect to meet. But I like them, these new characters of mine. And now, with Strange Than Fiction in the back of my head, I hope they survive the story.

Studio 60

When I was in elementary school, my dad told me that the most important day of my academic life was the first day of kindergarten. It's their first impression of you, he said. If you have a good first day, anything worse will just be a bad day. If you have a bad first day, good behavior will just be a pleasant surprise. While his summary of the past 17 years of my life might have been an overstatement, certainly it is true that you should always try to start off with a bang. You've got to have a great hook to keep people interested.

How disappointing, then, that Aaron Sorkin's new series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, started off ...well, I'm not sure how they did it, but it started both slow and confusingly fast. We're introduced to characters, and then they're fired, seemingly to never come again (at least not in this episode or in anything I could find online). Some characters are fictional, but Felicity Huffman pops in briefly to play Felicity Huffman. The camera moves around a lot, but not in that smooth, hand-holding technique of the West Wing. Instead, we're given a lot of cuts and spinning around characters before we really get a chance to look at them. At the same time, it's almost boring because the plot line is directly taken from the 1976 movie "Network". The similarities are recognized by the script, but that doesn't forgive a pilot episode for having a lengthy, preachy monologue before we're ten minutes into the series.

But, mercifully, after the first segment, the show hits its stride. Little wonder that the actors who finally carry the script off are West Wing veterans Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry. They understand that, for better of worse, Aaron Sorkin's dialogue requires a certain level of musicality -- Sorkin is a writer who loves writing, and his characters have to love language, too. Whitford and Perry's introduction into the episode also signal a shift from the Network-based plot, and the last third of the show felt eerily similar to certain episodes in West Wing or Sports Night ("What if she's for real?" is actually a line of Whitford's). From the introduction of those two characters, the rest of the episode seemed to fly by. The jokes got better, the dialogue got smarter, and I no longer felt like I was watching a cheap TV rip-off of a 70s movie that I didn't really like anyway.

It'll be intriguing to see where the show goes from here. I love Sorkin's writing, and once Schlamme calmed down from some impressive camera gymanstics in the first segment, the show found a great pace. And there's a lot of material that the Studio 60 team obviously is going to cover. The pilot introduced religious bigotry, cocaine addiction, and media self-censorship, and Sorkin is probably one of the few television writers who can address those issues without being too patronizing or didactic. I just hope he doesn't get carried away with his issues (as some of the weaker episodes of Sports Night did), and that he keeps the characters smart, inspired, and inspiring. That hope for intelligent television is, after all, what we like about Sorkin and why we tuned in tonight at all.

TMNT

For one reason or another, there was a lot of normal childhood that I missed out on. For example, I didn't grow up watching cartoons on Saturday, or watching Nickelodeon most afternoons. It took me until college to see a Brat Pack movie or a single episode of SNL. That said, I did get some pop culture of the late 80s/early 90s. And, I might argue sentimentally, I got the best part. And now I get to relive it. Totally awesome, dude.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

I’ll admit it: I read movie critics’ reviews to decide whether to watch movies, especially A. O. Scott of the New York Times. So when he, along with seemingly every critic with a word processor, fell in love with Miranda July’s first feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, I was ready to like it. In fact, I was eager to like it – so much so that I sat through the entire movie struggling to figure out what, exactly, it was that I was supposed to like.

Miranda July, who wrote, directed, and starred in the film, is first and foremost a performance artist, and to a large degree her debut film valiantly and stubbornly refuses to comply with the conventions of feature films, instead relying on her own background to create the world of film. This creates some very magical moments, all underscored by Mike Andrews’ beautifully simple and whimsical soundtrack. Certain scenes are more like poems than scenes in a movie: a walk down a street becomes a metaphor for a couple’s relationship, a ten year old girl uses her bedroom ceiling as the blank page to blueprint her future kitchen, and a man tries to hide a framed print of a bird – a relic of his unhappy past – by wedging it into a tree.

Unfortunately, these moments do not come together with the charm that they individually suggest. While I am all for films creating worlds and storytelling paces that are not “realistic,” films (and, indeed, all art) requires some real connection between the audience and the characters or plot. The loose story noncommittally wanders between small plots involving an amateur performance artist, a shoe salesman, and their family and friends, but we never really get to see any story long enough to really understand it. Worse still, we cannot care about characters so utterly removed from humanity that they have none of the same worries and fears as normal human beings. In the world of Me and You and Everyone We Know, people do not worry about conversations with strangers or being too forward when first meeting someone. They do not worry about a child who obsessively buys kitchen and home supplies for her hope chest. They do not worry about the fact that sexually explicit messages taped to a window facing a bus stop might be read by more than the two teenage girls for whom the messages are intended. Somehow, in this world, everyone is unconcerned for the safety and health of a man who pours lighter fluid on his hand and ignites it in front of his sons. Nor does anyone seems to notice or be disturbed by a seven year old boy who wanders into an online chat room and ends up having multiple conversations I will not describe here. Instead, all of these incidents are supposed to be somehow endearing and indicative of inherent worth.

Instead of exploring her characters, Ms. July relies on the crutch that too many modern artists lean on: being different without deciding why it matters to be different. Instead, her work seems to proclaim that just being different makes it Important. Most critics seem to have fallen victim to this ploy, falling in love with this movie for no other reason than the fact that Ms. July uses a non-linear plot and doesn’t focus on character or plot or, indeed, much of anything. After all the critical attention this tactic acquired, a conscientious viewer might, like me, try to like the film because it claims to be Artistically Important.

And yet, I could never focus on the artistic techniques and merits of the film because I was too distracted by the fact that I didn’t care at all about the movie or the people it portrayed. Who cares if a film is artistically different if it doesn’t use those qualities to convey something more powerful: a message, a story, or maybe even a character’s revelation or two? The same critics who pan a blockbuster action film for not developing plot or character even if that film created new innovations in pyrotechnics or computer animation should have turned in a similar complaint for this film: all technique, but for no reason.

Me and You and Everyone We Know feels more like something you should be watching as an installation at your local museum, sitting on a large hard bench and pondering not only the film but the paint splotch helpfully named “Untitled No. 4” next to it. It is a noble idea to remind us not to pigeonhole the medium of film any more than we do the medium of paint or print. However, without any other purpose that breaking filmic conventions, this film ends up being more something the critics tell you you’re supposed to appreciate than something you can actually enjoy.

1 out of 4 stars (do I have to give it any stars?)

Movie Review: Stolen

My relationship with rain fluctuates quite a bit. Sometimes it's glorious to walk through; sometimes it's just annoying to get wet. Sometimes I feel cooped up being inside; sometimes I love looking out the window at the raindrops, or curling up with a book or movie. Currently, though, I'm pretty happy with rain. It's summer rain, first of all, so it's warm and therefore less of a pain to walk through. And second of all, it's allowed me to duck in to a couple movie theaters recently and see some good flicks on the big screen. Yesterday's movie at E Street Cinema was one you may not have heard of, but if you get a chance, you might want to check it out.

Stolen is a documentary about the 1990 art theft that took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, wherein two unknown thieves posed as Boston police officers entered the museum, tied up the guards, and proceeded to steal thirteen works of art, among them three Rembrandts, five Degas, and a Vermeer. But Stolen is also a documentary about Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, her art collection, and its acquisition. And though the film is only 82 minutes, it also has its share of con artists, conspiracy theorists, art detectives, and art-obsessed writers. And a bit of a ghost story. And some international politics. In order to keep all these elements organized, the viewer is subjected to many interjected chapter titles, which are annoying and ruin almost all sense of pacing.

To the film's credit, however, all these disparate elements somehow come together to create a single story, even though it's hard to say what that story is. One could make the argument that it is just about the theft, and all the background about museum and the thirteen stolen pieces, especially Vermeer's The Concert, just illuminate just what what stolen and why it is important. Presumably, this is what the film's creator, Rebecca Dreyfus, wants this film to be about: the trailer, the website, and even the film's title lend themselves to this reading of the myriad of topics she raises in her film.

But almost as easily, the exact same film could have been named Isabella's Museum. There is a lot of focus on the aura of this little museum in Boston, to which the theft has certainly contributed: because of the structure of Ms. Gardner's will in 1924, the museum's collection may not be altered, so the walls simply remain empty where the stolen pieces used to hang. The woman behind the museum and how she acquired the pieces is at least as interesting as the theft that occured there, and we learn about both in parallel.

My opinion, though, is that Stolen is really about how art can capture the soul, the imagination, and perhaps even the common sense and sanity of those who dedicate their lives to it. In just 82 minutes, it is hard to understand how so many people have had their part of their lives consumed by the art involved in the theft. And yet every single person onscreen is overcome, either by the artwork itself or the mystery that surrounds it: a Boston reporter claims to have "lost" a year to the search for the masterpieces, a Vermeer biographer and a couple novelists nearly break down just talking about the theft of The Concert, and in a letter Isabella Stewart Gardner compares her art collecting to taking morphine or being alcoholic. A renowned art detective is dedicated to recovering these pieces even though he has skin cancer and is past retirement age, and becomes perhaps too confident that he can recover at least some of the artwork. Another detective stops talking on the record for safety reasons. And perhaps most intriguing are the museum attendant and the former art thief who find themselves involved in this story, each obsessed in his own way.

Even the film itself seems a result of this preoccupation with the museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and that single Vermeer that was stolen along with 12 other pieces of priceless art. Ms. Dreyfus saw the The Concert as a little girl, and her film now studies -- pores over, really -- the image of that painting, hinting at Ms. Dreyfus's own obsession. And for those in the audience who do not share a passion for 17th century art or 19th century Bostonian museum creators or 20th century art theft, it is the obsession itself -- not the object of obsession -- that captivates one's attention.

2.5 out of 4 stars

Best Commerical Ever

And by best, I mean weirdest.

Rube Goldberg

Many of you know I love Rube Goldberg devices. And even though there isn't a Wallace and Gromit movie coming out soon, I feel compelled to share with you.