Pushing Daisies (as promised)

OK, I promised an explanation of why I love Pushing Daisies. Now that the series is cancelled (only three more episodes to go!), it seems sad to write about it, but since I've been spending the last few days trying to convince my sister how amazing the show is, here I go:

The main premise of Pushing Daisies is a bit confusing, and I'm sure it was its demise. Ned is a pie maker who can raise the dead with his touch -- this includes people, animals, and plants. If he touches it again, though, it dies. Plus, if he raises something from the dead for more than one minute, something else of equal "value" dies (e.g., a person for a person, or a plant for a plant). The words make it sound hokey and stupid, but the result is much more magical.

The first magical thing is that Ned's girlfriend is someone he raised from the dead. This means he can never touch her. My sister hates this, but I think it's amazing. First of all, it's very old fashioned. I'm reminded of the censorship days of movies and television, when love stories had to be chaste even if sexually charged -- Ned and Charlotte (aka Chuck) even sleep in separate twin beds with a nightstand in between like all the sitcom couples of old.

Also, I'm pretty sure all romance is about not getting what you want. If you never get it, it's a tragedy. If you get delayed gratification, it's a comedy. Pushing Daisies pushes this definition and creates a tragicomedic relationship. Boy gets girl in once sense, but in another he doesn't (and never will).

The second magical thing is that death becomes malleable. One of my main gripes with modernity is we care so much about death -- we're so afraid of it. Maybe this is just my youth talking, but I'm not sure why we are so scared. Shows with death tend to try to drive this home, making death as sad and overwhelming and ugly as our society perceives it to be (see, e.g., House, every cop show ever, every mob show, even Six Feet Under). Pushing Daisies doesn't make light of death, but it isn't afraid of it, either. People die horrible deaths, but it's never gruesome. And since people can come back to life, but the story doesn't have time for them to go into shock or horror about being dead, it's nice to see characters who don't have a problem with being dead, either. (This reminds me of other Bryan Fuller shows, such as Dead Like Me, which was also brilliant).

The third magical thing is Kristin Chenoweth. She's just amazing -- a funny little spitfire who would be the grounding normal character of the series, if she weren't so quirky herself. In fact, all of the characters are quirky. It's a bit forced at times, but it's nice to know that people don't fit into neat categories -- the hardboiled detective also knits and makes pop-up books, and the shut-in aunts are former synchronized swimmers.

Finally, I love the production design of the show -- I absolutely love the costumes, which tend to be all over the place from 40s to 70s, but always are amazing. I love the visual jokes (Chenoweth's character is named Olive, and she recently got a rain slicker with olives on it, and Emerson Cod the detective's slicker had fish on it). And I love the myriad movie visual references, especially since they are so Hitchcock-heavy (The Birds, Vertigo, Psycho and Suspicion have all been copied. I'm really hoping for the key scene from Notorious before the end of the series, but that may be asking for too much).

Sure, there are faults with the show. The strange premise is often bent or broken -- some things come alive and others don't, but there's no real rhyme or reason to it (dead leaves but not wood? dead fruit but not other baking supplies?). There are a couple of camera and editing problems -- a visual joke involving a one-eyed aunt in the pilot episode was done backwards, and it drives me nuts every time I see it.

But its faults are easily forgotten when weighed against the fact that there's really nothing else like it. For people who like movies and old-fashioned TV more than reality TV or procedural dramas, this is a wonderful show. Plus, Lee Pace is hot.

The Windy City is mighty purty

OK, this isn't really movie or television related, but to me it is entertaining. I don't know what it is about Illinois, but I don't get angry at corruption there, just amused. I find the Daleys, Al Capone & the rest of the Chicago Outfit, "vote early vote often," and even Governor Blagojevich strangely loveable. Maybe it's because even in corruption, Chicago & Illinois are misfits (how bad do you have to be to be ostracized by the Five Families??). Maybe it's because I watch too many old gangster movies. Maybe it's because the corruption there is always so ridiculously outrageous (What makes a governor think he can get away with a "corruption crime spree?" And let's not even talk about Chicago city aldermen, or 3 others of the last 7 governors.) Or maybe it's just that I love Chicago so much that even its state can do no wrong. So even while on one level I'm very sad about Governor Blagojevich, and apalled by what he did, it doesn't make me love Illinois any less.

Wallace and Gromit Are Back

So very excited that the boys are back. Official site and less official video

My new obsession

Pushing Daisies is my new obsession. I found it last week and immediately fell in love. I've ordered Season 1 on DVD and watched all of this season so far at least 3 times each.



More about why I love the show to follow.

Wallace and Gromit!!

I love Wallace and Gromit for several reasons:

1. The patience involved in claymation always amazes me.
2. Cheese!!
3. Rube Goldberg devices in all their delightful frivolity

And so I'm super happy with Hulu right now for adding Cracking Contraptions to their lineup. Now if only they could get A Close Shave. . . .

Harvie Krumpet online

Don't know how long this will be up (it's on the Youtube screening room), but it's worth checking out. Harvie Krumpet on Youtube:

Movie Analogy

These imposed sartorial standards in China remind me of, of course, the ridiculous hoop skirts on Siamese women in this movie.

I Procrastinate (And So Can You!)

Gosh this seems like the story of my life some days. I really need to figure out how to get things done and not overcommit. Oh, and also just go ahead and do things I don't want to do (ahem! that phone call!) From the Prelinger Archives:

The Women

If you don't know anything about the movie The Women, at some point you will feel there's something off about it. Something strange; something forced. I'm not quite sure when you'll realize it, but it'll happen. You see, there are 130 speaking roles in the movie, and who knows how many people on screen. The movie is set in homes, and department stores, and spas, and other semi-public places and yet it seems that half the population has been deleted from the screen. Not a single man or boy appears on screen during the whole film.

We're used to seeing movies with mostly or only men. I don't remember any women in The Great Escape, or any in Platoon. No wait, there were some mothers in the village in Platoon. It's hard to just take women out of village scenes after all, even if they're just for show.

And that's my problem with The Women -- unlike war movies, where the lack of women is actually an issue, and represents a loss to the men, this movie just deletes men as if they don't matter. This sounds like an extreme tactic to be all about women, to be a proto-feminist movie about the issues and foibles and world of "women only." But actually, the whole movie is about the crazy competition that women have with each other in order to get men. Like a No Boys Allowed sign outside a bunch of grade school girls' secret hideout where they gossip about boys, The Women is, as its DVD case proudly proclaims, all about men. Apparently, the lives of these women revolve completely around men -- whose husband is having an affair, which rich bachelor can be hooked into being a woman's next husband after Reno, and on and on.

Now let's be fair about this: there are few movies with the star power of the Women. Made in that glorious year of Hollywood, 1939, it's got so many excellent actresses that there were problems with billing and who got to have the biggest names on screen. Apparently Norma Shearer had written into her contract that no one's name could be bigger than hers in the title credits (except for a leading man's), but damned it Joan Crawford wasn't getting at least as good. So they both got huge lettering, and Rosalind Russell had to be content with smaller letters and just stealing the show with her portrayal of the completely over-the-top gossip Sylvia Fowler. There's also Paulette Goddard (Mrs. Charlie Chaplin), Joan Fontaine (who was in Hitchcock's Rebecca) and Mary Boland (who you probably have never heard of, but she's brilliant as the worldly but silly, "in love with being in love" Countess DeLave).

And it's also a comedy of manners, sort of a female version of Oscar Wilde, spearing gossipers and the scheming ways of rich housewives (remind you of any reality TV these days?). I love these sorts of comedies, and I love those women lighting up the screen. So why didn't I like this movie?

It's not just about the No Men on Screen gimmick. It makes sense for a play, and I applaud the idea of seeing if it would work, even if it's a bit forced. But -- can I even allow my feminist self to say it? --- these women need men. Without men on screen to actually fight for or even fight over, all of the women's catty tactics towards each other just play out in a vacuum, and I could never really care about who got the guy in the end. Without men, you could never see these women be sexy and smart and winsome; they're just fighting with each other. Without men anywhere to be found, their world seems impossibly small and trivial. Where is the outside world? Where are the working classes on the streets of Manhattan (both men and women) where this movie supposedly takes place?

I often love the women in movies made around this time. The dames, the sidekicks, the gamines -- they might all exist before the glorious sexual revolution of the 1970s, but those women had it figured out. They knew how to fight to be equal with men but still be women. Think of Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday just one year later -- a fast-talking reporter who can give and good as she gets from Cary Grant. Think of Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, playing a brilliant, high-powered political columnist. Think of Barbara Stanwyck in basically anything she did. For goodness' sakes, even think of Vivian Leigh in that movie made the same year as the Women. Instead of being a smart, funny movie about smart, funny (if also conniving) women, The Women ends up just making the women small and ugly -- even if their names were big up there on the screen.

Wanted

This is for John Mark.

Imagine a group of twenty-something men -- men of my generation -- in a room together talking about their favorite things. Video games, a hot chick in leather (but not too much), stuff blowing up.

Then imagine this group of men put all of their favorite things in a movie. Sound of Music, I assure you, it would not be.

Instead, you'd get what is called a summer blockbuster movie. And if one of the men in that hypothetical room vaguely remembers Greek mythology from high school, you'd get the movie Wanted. The only way to describe it is an excess -- and I do mean excess -- of all things a post-adolescent boy would consider "badass." It's got Angelina Jolie shooting things, Morgan Freeman being the wise godlike figure, and a Fight Club set-up with the main character (played by James McAvoy, who really can do better) living a zombie-like existence until he is rescued to a group of elite fighters who spend about as much screen time beating each other up as training as killing targets. Plus, most of the shots work perfectly as a video game set up. What more could a boy want? A Rocky reference or two? Oh, they are there, too (mmm . . . meat on hooks . . .). Oh, and throw in a little bit of the Matrix for good measure -- those special effects were cool, right? And everyone's mind was blown by the whole existential "There is no spoon" discussion. Might as well throw in some fate/pre-determination stuff here, too.

It is a movie that revels in excess, and this can be entertaining, but only if you've already got a high tolerance for that sort of thing. The combination of influences was a merry jumble, if somewhat overwhelming, and I must admit I enjoyed the unselfconscious stupidity of throwing all those movie and pseudo-philosophical references into a grab bag of ideas and visuals. However, if you, like me, are not used to playing Grand Theft Auto for hours on end, sitting through so many fight scenes with frenetic editing and pounding hard rock soundtrack becomes a little numbing to the senses. I'd say I liked about half of the movie and for the rest worried about an impending headache.

My friend's favorite part of the movie was when our "hero" -- I really hate calling him that -- hits someone with a keyboard. Keys fly off (as well as a tooth), and they magically align into two angry words I won't type here, but suffice it to say that the second one was "you."

This effect was clever, and somewhat funny, but I think it works a lot better in its original comic book (or is it "graphic novel"?) form. I haven't read any of the original source, but I suspect a form that uses the written word doesn't have as much trouble having to explain if the words spelled out in a picture are actually spelled out in that picture's world. When a superhero hits the villain with a POW! written in a starburst, I've never thought about where that starburst came from. But when a bullet said the word "Goodbye" in this movie, I was distracted from the moment by the nagging question, "Is that actually written there? Does it appear magically, or was it already on the bullet when it was loaded, therefore not having any specific significance in this situation?" Some parts of the comic book medium just don't work as well in a movie.

I suppose I could summarize the plot a bit, but it doesn't really matter. James McAvoy is a sadsack temp who discovers his father was part of an elite group of assassins called the Fraternity. He gets recruited, nominally to kill the man who killed his father, and quickly learns how to fight, get bloody, and curve bullets. Apparently the Fraternity has a couple of magical items in its possession. First, a magical loom's threads tell the Fraternity who should be killed (imagine the Fraternity to the be the Three Fates with guns). Second, magical paraffin wax baths serve the useful plot device of helping the assassins recover from their rough-and-tumble ways.

James McAvoy's character quickly becomes as badass as the rest of the gang, and then surpasses them in badassness when he discovers a secret of the Fraternity and decides to Do What Is Right -- which involves a lot of blowing stuff up. In fact, one of his old jackass friends, after being beaten up by him, intones in an awed voice that the friend he once took advantage of is now "the man." You can almost hear the voices of those young men writing the script bowing down to the awesomeness of the character they have just created.

Unfortunately no one has told those young writers that trying really hard to be badass doesn't actually make someone badass. You have to be a little cooler, a little more sleek, a little more aloof. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but give me Keanu and the half-baked mysticism of the Matrix any day.

1.5 stars

Doctor Who & Science Fiction

Recently I read a blog post about science fiction and how it's not very popular among women. one of Professor Somin's assertions caught my eye:

Casual empiricism suggests that most people with a strong interest in science fiction or fantasy literature developed that interest very as children or teenagers. I think it's very difficult to persuade an adult to take an interest in these genres if they never had previously.

Empirics aside, it must be noted that adults are not immutable in their interests. I have always avoided science fiction by and large. What little science fiction and fantasy I read comes dangerously close to being what I will call "literary fiction" -- fiction about books, history, etc. (but not historical fiction). Jasper Fforde novels are the prime example here. A couple Terry Pratchett novels are as deep I wade into science fiction. I've also always disdained of science fiction television. I pretty much can't stand any of the Star Treks, although I do like the original in small doses for its kitsch value.
So it surprises me greatly to tell you that my new TV obsession is the revived series of Doctor Who. I've thought about it quite a bit in the past couple weeks, as I've been devouring the first three seasons and part of the fourth, and I think I know why:

In the end, science fiction isn't really a description of the type of storytelling you're going to get. It's like "westerns" -- all you know is the location of the plot, not anything about it. The problem in the genre occurs when an author thinks that said location matters more than the rest of the story. When westerns are just cowboy and Indian shoot-em-ups, when science fiction devolves into monotone repetition of fanciful pseudo-science, then the genre is in real trouble. But if you dig beneath the surface, the new Doctor Who is really just an action comedy that happens to have made-up places and people. Star Trek is just a soap opera with the same (I know I'm going to get killed for saying that, but there it is -- all the episodes I've seen are so *serious*!). I like Doctor Who because though it caters to the obsessive sci-fi geeks who live for finding patterns hidden in the episodes, many of the story lines are basically just ghost stories littered with strange jokes. The quirky humor is everywhere: take even the fact that the doctor's space ship isn't some cool, sleek, "boys' toy" but rather a blue police box because the spaceship's cloaking device got stuck. There's plenty of sci-fi standbys like teleporting, but in the end the science doesn't matter as much as the plots and stories: the only two repeating "gadgets" are a blank piece of "psychic" paper and a "sonic" screwdriver.
And the use of historical plots as well as outer space plots makes the thing more like that "literary" fiction I like -- I geeked out a little bit when they visited Shakespeare and the Doctor quoted Dylan Thomas to the Bard but then told him he couldn't use it because it was "someone else's." My other favorite episode from that season (3) takes place in 1913.

So, maybe if we're all concerned about making science fiction attractive to girls as well as boys, maybe writers should take a hint from Doctor Who, which reaches about a broad an audience of British children as it can possible get. Or maybe that's just a commentary about British television and the forced ubiquity of the BBC.

Priceless

Another mini-review:

I came to this movie to watch Audrey Tatou, who I enjoyed so much in Amelie, and to relive Breakfast at Tiffany's, a brilliant and beautiful movie of which this is a loose adaptation. In the end, though, Ms. Tatou suffers from a script and direction that to some extent reduced her to a mannequin for all the expensive labels draped over her body. The best scenes are closeups of her, where she is actually allowed to act and remind of us her gamine quality rather than being forced to strut about in a manner very much like the women in Sex and the City. However, this movie still has wit and charm, and the minor characters are all perfect caricatures (especially the dog owners at the beginning of the movie). Most importantly, I absolutely fell in love with Gad Elmaleh, whose fumbling and awkwardness is subtle enough to reveal both charm and intelligence. I've read (but not yet seen) that he is even better in the Valet, but this was plenty good for me.

Spartacus: mini-review

OK, I've got lots of work still to do this weekend, but something's better than nothing, right? Here's my review from Netflix:

Spartacus is NOT your typical Kubrick in terms of lasting takeaway message -- the nihilism and despair that linger in Clockwork Orange, 2001, and Dr. Strangelove just don't exist here. It is, however, typical Kubrick insofar as it is masterful. There is not an actor in this film that I did not admire more after watching Spartacus -- they all give amazing performances, which is pretty easy, I suppose, if you have such amazing material. This would be worth a spot in your queue just to watch the famous "I am Spartacus!" scene, but it's really oh so much more. It's got layers and layers here, with certain parts of the characters' lives (I'm thinking especially Tony Curtis here) obfuscated because of the Censor Board. But that only makes it better -- you have to actually be thinking and caring about these characters to understand why they do what they do. And it's well worth the effort.

Sorry for the inconvenience

I know I've been away forever -- sorry! I've been having computer problems, and of course there were finals and vacation and starting a summer job in there, too. In any case, I've been making my way through some movies in the past few weeks, and I hope to add some new reviews soon. To give an idea of some reviews in the hopper, I'm having to take the summer to rewatch some AFI movies. As many of you know, after college I made it a point to watch every movie on the AFI 100 Years . . . 100 Movies list, which was made in 1998. Well, in 2007, the American Film Institute decided to update that list, knocking off 23 films and replacing them with 23 other films. 1/5 of the movies were incorrectly put on the list??? And only 4 films from 1997 to 2006 were added, so we're talking some serious revisions. Anyway, I'm watching those movies added to the list that I haven't already seen (and thanking my lucky stars for film class in college, without which I wouldn't have seen some of the harder-to-find films).

Exam Elixir

As it's study season here at school, I found this short instructional/propaganda film extremely apropos. From the goodness that is the Prelinger Archives at archive.org.

Smart People

Smart People fits into the mass-audience pseudo-indie film category that some of the most popular movies of the past few years (Juno, Napoleon Dynamite) come from. But with over-exposure comes being over-done. This is a passably enjoyable film, exhibiting both the best and the worst of the genre.
On one hand, all the actors (except SJP, who mostly just looks like she's mixing Family Stone with SATC and hoping that'll pass as acting) inhabit their characters incredibly, revealing their fear and vulnerability under the hard exteriors that come with being "smart" and "successful." I really loved the poignancy of Ellen Page's character -- a high school girl whose desire to live up to her father has sapped her of her childhood. Dennis Quaid, as lonely, over-compensating misanthropic professor, is also amazing.
Unfortunately, the great performing suffered from a script at times too obvious ("We're smart people; we'll figure it out" is a bit of a 2x4, no?) and direction too blatant (a brilliant bit with Thomas Haden Church's character posting signs on telephone poles is almost ruined by calling too much attention to the gag). And, the story has too many haphazard events unnecessary to the resolution of the film (I'm thinking mostly of the son's girlfriend, the recommendation letter, and the pregnancy).
In the end, though I enjoyed it, I wish the movie had lived up to its name and been a little more, well, smart.

2.5 stars.

Play Misty For Me

Clint Eastwood is my mother's favorite actor, and so, in honor of the approaching holiday in her honor, I watched Clint's directorial debut. (OK, well, I didn't really watch it for that reason, but I did watch it in large part because I grew up with my mother gushing over the man.) I must confess horror movies don't generally do it for me. With the exception of Hitchcock and his disciples, I can never really get into them. I don't particularly like gore -- it either grosses me out, or just as often looks way too fake for me to do anything other than stare at it with an amateur director/critic's eye and just be unimpressed. And the whole idea of being scared or "thrilled" rarely works differently -- the only movie that has come even close to freaking me out since I was 16 and started watching R rated movies was The Shining. Everything else just seems too contrived for me. It's so formulaic that there's no horror involved -- you know exactly who's going to die or get hurt and when, and that just takes all the fun out of it. It's not like romcom, where the formula supports the genre; horror is supposed to surprise and startle you, but if it's so obviously working off something as predictable as sewing patter, well, I'm not sold.

So maybe I'm not the best person to review this piece with a favorable eye, but while I thought the movie was decent, my main comment is that Play Misty For Me has become a period piece -- everything about it is steeped in the early 70s, which is fun to watch but even more distracting to the idea of a thriller. Even the suspense seems dated: a quaint idea based on the premise that someone would meet a woman, slowly realize she is suicidal and has psychotic episodes, and then proceed to do nothing about it until all sorts of havoc has been wreaked. However, if you can get over the things that date this movie, it's quite enjoyable: the actors are all young and passionate (I mean that in all senses of the word) and the plot makes for a simple vehicle for them to chew scenery and revel in 1970s California, which is shot quite beautifully (red woods, ocean, and cliffs abound). The direction is sometimes predictable (lots of shots that seem omniscient and then you realize they are point of view shots, for example), but it is worthy enough to foreshadow the much better work that Clint directed later, from Unforgiven to Mystic River to Million Dollar Baby.

The Aviator

Confession: I am not a Martin Scorsese fan. Raging Bull was fine, but I definitely wouldn't rate it as the fourth best American movie ever. But eventually the perpetual hype got to me, and I put The Aviator in my DVD player with great anticipation. A three-hour long movie (170 minutes, to be exact) that got rave reviews has to be riveting, right?

Unfortunately, the other option for a 170 minute movie is that it's overblown with its own importance. Granted, it fits well with the subject matter here -- it appears that Howard Hughes was a pretty self-important man -- but Mr. Scorsese seems to forget that a movie is still a movie no matter how long, and it would have been nice to feel like there was a reason for my watching rather than seeing a scattershot of events that happen to be roughly true.

For those of you who may have missed it, The Aviator outlines the life of Howard Hughes, the great filmmaker and aviator, from the late 1920s to the 1940s. (Howard Hughes produced Hell's Angels, Scarface, The Outlaw, and a slew of films noir in the '50s, and set multiple air-speed records during his lifetime.) I'm not quite sure why the timeframe of the movie was chosen -- after a brief prologue of a scene of Hughes as a child, it jumps straight to the production of Hell's Angels, which wasn't Hughes' first movie. And it stops after he successfully tests the Hercules, a huge aircraft that spent him years to make, but before he took control of RKO, or severed his relationship with his longtime assistant Noah Dietrich, or founded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Maybe this would make sense if we assume that everyone knows about Howard Hughes's story and his descent into madness in his later years, but let's not assume that a movie-going public that is mostly teenagers knows about a rich and crazy guy who died in the 70s.

As for the movie itself, the best part about the movie was that it was star-studded as Howard Hughes' apparently was: big names played bit parts for the chance to be in a Scorsese film, and it was fun to watch Gwen Stephani, Jude Law, Ian Holmes, Alan Alda, and a bunch of others in fairly small roles. Leonardo DiCaprio does a good job playing a part with almost no guidance from the script as to a story arc. Now, I know people's lives don't necessarily have climaxes and turning points and drama to their days, but if you're consolidating a life (or part of a life) to a few hours, you've got to have a reason for what you see and what you dont. Now, I don't mean that I need to know why Hughes went mad, for example, but hinting that it was a childhood thing but not exploring that just frustrated me, and to have character after character march in and out of his life isn't helpful to understanding his life. Similarly, Cate Blanchett does a passable job as Katharine Hepburn, but her role seemed more about imitation than acting -- the problem with playing a person that spent a lot of the time on film herself. In the end, I felt like the movie was less a story than an observation/impersonation, which seems a waste of time and talent to me. Even documentaries are supposed to be edited to have a direction to the story it tells, but this was just sprawling and pointless even though it was larger-than-life and impressive to watch. Maybe that was the point: that Howard Hughes' life was jam-packed with action, danger, risky business moves, Hollywood stars, and paranoia, but in the end didn't have much direction or purpose. But if that was the point, I'd rather read a biography that really explores the whole life and wonders why his life was both so amazing and so screwed up. Just watching some random, disparate parts of a man's life for three hours was about double the time I was willing to spend. Note to future Scorseses: Editing something to make it shorter generally makes it better, not worse.

2 stars

Sense and Sensibility

In honor of my friends who are having a Jane Austen marathon as I post this:

With unfortunate frequency I find myself frustrated at the lack of new movies. I don’t mean there aren’t new releases every week, but rather that they seem to be simple repackaging of the same stories over and over. Now, I know that there are only 36 situations in stories , but at least the story should look new at first gloss, right? Instead, I seem to see constant remakes and sequels of older movies, comic books, novels, even biographies – all of which were better the first time around. Just think of the big movies of summer 2007: Spiderman 3 (a sequel of a comic book adaptation); 28 Weeks Later (sequel); Shrek the Third (sequel of a pop culture/fairy tale mashup); Pirates of the Caribbean, At World’s End (sequel); Ocean’s Thirteen (sequel of a remake). We got another Die Hard movie, and another Harry Potter adaptation. Hairspray was a movie version of a stage production. Even the Simpsons movie was basically just a full-length version of a 22-minute regular episode. Of course, there were a couple new movies (like the brilliant Ratatouille), but adaptations and sequels seem to have taken over the big screen.

I understand the business reasoning behind such endeavors – it takes less work to get people to come to a movie they already know. I mean, Harry Potter movies practically sell themselves just by the title. Even ostensibly new movies get sold as “from the makers of . . .” and even Ratatouille got billed by its connections to prior successes with the Pixar label.

But every once in a long while a beautiful adaptation comes along, making me succumb to old stories. Surprisingly enough, three of my favorite adaptations come from Jane Austen: Clueless (an adaptation of Emma), Pride and Prejudice (not the A&E version, the Keira Knightly version, believe it or not), and the 1995 Sense and Sensibility, adapted by Emma Thompson. My plea to the writers of the many many adaptations to come, if producers remain as risk-averse as they have been lately: learn from Ms. Thompson and Ang Lee, the director (yes, of Brokeback Mountain fame).

The key to a wonderful adaptation is to figure out the essence of the story without feeling burdened by it. A two hour movie is basically equivalent to a novella in length – you just aren’t going to be able to have the plot and character development of a full novel. Don’t even try. The only times it’s ever worked is the A&E Pride and Prejudice marathon and Ken Branagh’s endless uncut four-hour Hamlet. I must admit that though I love Jane Austen stories, the prose gets incredibly cumbersome, which is perhaps why adaptations of her work tend to fare relatively well. No movie is going to take twenty minutes analyzing the quality of the garden hedges, so let’s just cut that wholesale.

Second, feel free to add scenes, but only if you can understand the material enough to be seemless. Apparently, many people have written Emma Thompson or told her that they loved that she kept their favorite part of the book in the movie – a scene about the little girl Margaret being coaxed out of hiding by Elinor and Mr. Ferras pretending to not know any geography. But this scene isn’t in the book. It just fits so well that people thought it was.

Third, remember your medium! My favorite part about the movie is that it’s so clearly a movie. Ang Lee does amazing things with his shots, covering in seconds what takes pages and pages in a book. I’ve seen the movie many times, and every time give a little shudder of delight with the abrupt cutting between Elinor and Mr. Ferras when they are awkwardly talking in the stables. Those cuts make the scene hilarious in a way that even the best comedic adaptation couldn’t do on its own. Mr. Lee also uses the English landscape to set the tone of a scene in a way that would make Ms. Austen proud – one scene, for example, brilliantly uses a long interior shot allows the audience to see the wind rustling the cloaks by the door to create a sense of expectation and foreboding.

Fourth, casting casting casting. The cast in Sense and Sensibility is basically perfect. Costume dramas are hard to cast, as the horrible miscasting of Keanu Reeves in another Emma Thompson movie makes clear. You have to get people who are comfortable with language, and who make sense for the parts. If there’s every a place to typecast, this is it, and Sense and Sensibility does so with a loveable but inept Hugh Grant as Mr. Ferras (does he ever play any other part) and Alan Rickman as the kind but brooding Colonel Brandon. Kate Winslet plays young and impetuous Marianne well, which probably was less playing and more just being a nineteen-year old who lied about her age to get the part. If the original source uses physical attributes to display character traits, by all means do so in your casting here, as the rotund and ridiculous Mrs. Jennings (played by Elizabeth Spriggs) and the haughty and pointy-nosed Fanny Dashwood (Harriet Walter) exhibit.

All in all, this adapation is everything an adaptation should be – great story that’s made into an equally great movie, with a brilliant cast (some of whom got their big breaks here) and a brilliant script and brilliant director. 4 stars.

The Skulls

I went ahead and watched The Skulls, which I posted in its entirety just a couple entries ago. I had watched it a few times in high school as one of those trashy movies you put on in the background during a sleepover, so it brings back fond memories for me, even though I couldn't remember the plot at all. In fact, I could only remember two things about the movie before watching it: that at one point the main character says "Hell yes!" instead of "Hell yeah!" which was the topic of conversation during one of these sleepovers, and that there were a couple beautiful scenes, by which I mean the visuals (aka people) are beautiful, not that they are written beautifully or anything.

My review, then, is colored by the movie sending me back to high school, so please cut me some slack when I say I enjoyed it. It is the movie equivalent of one of those mystery/thriller novels you buy for summer reading: sleek, cleverly crafted and terribly fun, even if it's not "highbrow" fare. Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker are sexy and assured in their roles as two very different undergrads at Yale -- the working class boy and the rich legacy boy -- who both become members of a secret society. The working class boy (Jackson) is the main character, of course, and the one with the ethical convictions, of course, even if those convictions waiver for a while in the face of the riches and opportunity that come with being part of the elite Skulls. When his best friend dies while trying to write a newspaper story on secret societies, Working Class Boy calls on the help of Trusty Female Sidekick/Love Interest to help free him from the clutches of his new pal, Legacy Boy, and the rest of the powerful members of the Skulls. The plot is moderately well developed (even though it's trite and the end feels slapped together at best), and Leslie Bibb does a wonderful job as the only female role of any substance and the only character who seems to have normal human reactions -- like screaming in fear -- to the things going on around her. There are some fun lines and slick moves on the part of the main characters, even beyond that "Hell yes!" scene. So while there are very few interesting characters for a conspiracy-theory story, and while the characters sometimes become caricatures, and even while Paul Walker can't shake being too stiff at times, it's enjoyable enough to pull it out of being a complete mess.

2 Stars

The Jerk

I just watched my first full length movie on hulu and would first like to mention that this service and the others like it aren't going to kill the DVD any time soon. Even with my high speed internet in a college town, the picture stopped pretty often to "buffer" itself, and of course the resolution was no match for the full screen of my beautiful 15" apple computer. But most importantly, when you have to create a login to watch an R rated movie like The Jerk, you sort of expect it not to be a censored version of the movie. One of the most pervasive jokes in the movie is a dog named S***head, but in this movie his name was dubbed to Stupid. This completely changes the joke, and though it might not be extremely funny in my opinion the original way, it certainly doesn't hold up to repetition when it's just Stupid.

Given this movie's cult classic status (see, e.g., episode 14 here), I was actually a bit worried to watch it. I expected not to like it very much, because most of the time my humor isn't the same as a 12 year old boy's. And while I love the SNL spawn of Blues Brothers [music in link], I don't buy into the idea that all SNL touches is gold.

Thank goodness it was just a rehash of a lot of Steve Martin stand-up routines that I already knew and loved, like Cat Juggling, which is on the marvelous record A Wild and Crazy Guy. Like some of the best comedies, the plot seemed a loose connect-the-dots between gags and jokes for the starts of the show, a formula that worked well for a standup comedian like Steve Martin. With some great lines ("You know, you can tell so much about a person from the way they live. Just looking around here I can tell ... you're a genuinely dirty person," "That guy gypped me; he put daisy stems on my roses!" and yes, I'll even give you "He HATES these CANS!" ), Martin really carries the movie to a loveable place, and somehow even the incongruity of Bernadette Peters in such a slapstick movie seems part of the joke rather than a factor working against it. And, really, who wouldn't laugh at those juggled cats?

Then again, it was kind of a rehash of routines I already knew, like his bit about what happens to a guy when he tries to ask a girl out (frankly, I like the stand-up version better). It's a good movie if you've never heard it before, and a decent one if you have, but even with a running time of 1:35 some of the jokes feel tired by the end.

I can't say I love this movie, at least my first time around. Although it does seem obvious to me how it would get better the more times you see it, just waiting for the next of your favorite oh-so-quotable lines to come around.

2.5 stars

P.S. A little research revealed that the cable-edited version I saw did include some scenes not in the original, like the Tilt-a-Whirl scene (which I felt went on too long) and the cracked leather airplane seat conversation (brilliant). Don't know if that changes anything, but for any aficionados I may have offended with this review, maybe that's the difference. Well, that and all that buffering.

Intellectual Property Update

Last week, a great website finally went out of beta testing: hulu.com. There, in a completely legal medium, I can watch tv shows and movies for free. I can even post them on websites, email them to people, or share them in other sites (like myspace or facebook) with customized start and end times. They have limited commercials through them, but so far seem less annoying that the studios' own websites for tv shows (although it still annoys me that it doesn't archive all the episodes for some shows, like Psych). And yes, the movie selection is pretty crappy so far. But let's give some props to network executives who do something other than whine about piracy, and instead work to serve consumers in a way that the extreme lack of quality control in the world of piracy is worth it.

And, besides, some of the movies and TV shows are good. Take, for example, Sideways or The Usual Suspects or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Or, for less high class fare (but more likely something you decide to watch on a whim, which is what streaming access is for, right?) you can try out some guilty pleasure-type movies, like The Skulls. Yes, I'm embedding it. Because I can.

ANTM

Sometimes TV creates the best parody of TV. See now a pretty close representation of the essence of America's Next Top Model, from the brilliance of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders:

Bull Durham

I finally got around to watching Bull Durham last week. I think I put it off for two reasons: 1) it's supposed to be an amazing movie and 2) it's about a place and a team I grew up watching. The mixture of the two just couldn't live up to expectations, I thought. And that famous speech that's supposed to be so amazing ("I believe in . . .") I had seen as a clip and it wasn't that impressive.

Well, that speech still doesn't move me the way it apparently does everyone else. But all the rest of my worries were thoroughly dispelled. Susan Sarandon is the heart of this movie, and she controls both the plot and the screen. Next to Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind, this is certainly the best southern woman role -- may be the best female role period -- in the movies (yes, even including Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor roles). She's smart, powerful, experienced, wise, silly, conflicted, and searching all at once, and it's a joy to watch Sarandon swim around in the depths of her character.

And then there's Tim Robbins, who is so much funnier as the talented but naive rookie than I ever realized he could be, since I mostly know him from The Shawshank Redemption and Mystic River. He's great in a totally different way from either Susan Sarandon or Kevin Costner (who is probably the most predictable and boring character of the three: the wise but frustrated older player -- but Costner does it well, as we all know he can from all those other sports movies he's been in).

Then, there's the plot. I won't go through the plot here, since it's classic enough that plenty of others have done it thoroughly. But I hadn't known before I watched the movie that it was written and directed and produced by men who had actually been minor league baseball players, so there's a fidelity to reality that I hadn't expected. I mean, authenticity isn't exactly what makes sports movies popular. People watch sports movies for the same reason they watch sports: to see their guy win. The only other "authentic" sports movie I can think of is Bad News Bears, which I don't actually like that much for some reason or another. But here, sports isn't about a team winning or losing, it's about a bunch of guys trying to make money and getting girls and prolonging adolescence as much as possible. Though I've never known a minor league baseball player, it seems to me that would be pretty spot on.

Finally, there's Durham. Thank goodness they did it on location. Those dingy brick building, the clay that's practically in the air, the potholes in the roads on the outskirts of Durham -- these details make me homesick, believe it or not, but also lend credence to the size of the characters' world -- the idea of the major leagues does seem like a paradise when you're working in rundown towns with working class spectators, and not too many of them at that. Sounds depressing, but the movies that affect me the most tend to be those that realize that the big dreams of ordinary people are important and inspiring and engrossing, at least to the people who live them.

4 stars.