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24May

A Moveable Feast

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by Ernest Hemingway

I wonder if this Hemingway memoir would have such a legendary reputation if the people populating its pages were lowly Bill the bartender, Carl the concierge, and Connie the coat lady, as opposed to Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other luminaries from the “lost generation.”

I say that because the stories themselves, derived from Hemingway’s life in 1920s Paris, aren’t all that intriguing – at least on the surface. Hemingway has lunch with a poet; Hemingway edits a woman’s manuscript; Hemingway goes for a walk; Hemingway has lunch with another poet. And the celebrated artists we meet through “Papa’s” pen come off less mythic than all-too-human: We learn that Ford Madox Ford had body odor, and Fitzgerald suffered from penis-size anxiety … if you believe the author, who claimed to be a stickler for “truth.”

But Hemingway’s writing style grabs and holds. His voice is strong yet remote, as if he noticed everything but none of it really affected him. He describes a person or situation, and then sums it all up with some pithy, perfect observation, and suddenly those mundane sidewalk strolls and lazy lunches become compelling.

22May

Reviews in Short: May 2012

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Rampart See Woody snarl. See Woody cry. See Woody puke. This is an “actors’ movie” if ever there was one, and Harrelson is very good as a crooked L.A. cop, but you still need a story, and Rampart’s plot is threadbare and unpleasant. Release: 2011 Grade: C

*****

Corman’s World For decades, Roger Corman has been Hollywood’s crazy uncle, the embarrassing relation who tells dirty jokes at dinner and insists on shots of whiskey for dessert. Corman made B movies, but his list of protégés is impressively A-list. Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese are just two of the Corman graduates who pay tribute in this entertaining, clip-filled documentary. Corman himself never graduated to the Hollywood big-time — a fact not really explained in this movie. Release: 2011 Grade: B

*****

Asylum Blackout My bar is at ground level for low-budget horror movies, but this one isn’t half-bad. Here is what Asylum has going for it: 1) characters with some depth; not a whole lot of depth, but more than we usually get when kids hang out at cabins in the woods (in this case, the kids are trapped in a mental hospital when the power goes out); 2) some genuine suspense; 3) an intelligent screenplay, albeit a tad too smart for its own good near the end; 4) ominous settings; and 5) a good, creepy villain. Release: 2011 Grade: B

21May

Free Flick of the Week: “Adaptation”

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That Nicolas Cage, you never know what to expect from him, do you? Just when it seems that he will appear in nothing but junk for the rest of his career, he wins an Oscar or stars in an acclaimed movie like Adaptation. I haven’t seen this, but the critics adore it, and critics are never wrong … are they? Watch it for free by clicking here.

19May

The Weekly Review: May 13 – 19

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I’m going to make a point of watching American Masters. Monday’s biography of Johnny Carson was tremendous — enlightening, and more than a bit sad. You can watch it for free at the PBS Web site.

*****

It must have been a slow news week for MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who on Wednesday went after Fox News court jester Greg Gutfeld. Gutfeld raised O’Donnell’s hackles by making fun of chef Mario Batali, who was living on a food-stamp budget to protest potential cuts to the program.

“Kinda makes you wonder what the ‘Greg Gutfeld Foundation’ has done lately,” O’Donnell raged. “These people [Gutfeld and his guests on Red Eye] think Mario Batali deserves to be slapped around.”

Gutfeld is a quick-witted little twerp, but he’s often guilty of the same ploy he accuses Bill Maher of using: blurting out some vile comment and then playing the “comedian card.”

However … unlike the independent Maher, Gutfeld also plays shameless kiss-ass for his masters at Fox, in particular Bill O’Reilly.

*****

I don’t think Entertainment Weekly much cares if it appeals to people like me. The cover this week features Channing Tatum and his male stripper pals. EW’s second major story this week is about a woman who designs costumes. This is not manly material.

I would return to Newsweek or Time, but Time has a breast-feeding teenager and Newsweek has a homosexual politician on their covers.

Perhaps Playboy. Does Playboy still publish a magazine?

*****

People magazine paid $800,000 for pictures of Jessica Simpson’s baby. This is a picture of a baby:

Many newborns in the animal kingdom are cute, such as puppies and bunnies. Human babies all look the same — ugly, wrinkled, and like Winston Churchill. And yes, that includes your baby.

19May

Shame

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Shame is an emotionally wrenching portrait of modern-day sex addiction and features a powerhouse performance by Michael Fassbender.

Just kidding.

Here is a more accurate lede: Shame reminded me of masturbation — self-indulgent and meaningless. Its star, Michael Fassbender, shows his penis and, consequently, critics are hailing his performance as “fearless” and “brave.”

At least a good session of self love lasts no more than 15 minutes, whereas this pretentious drama from director Steve McQueen drags on for an hour and 40 minutes.

Shame is one of those tiresome “damaged people” films, with mournful piano music and actors who wear haunted expressions. When they wear anything at all.

There are lingering shots during which the audience is expected to reflect on what it’s just witnessed. Sex addict Brandon (Fassbender) jogs and jogs while his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) has sex with his boss in Brandon’s apartment. Sissy, a struggling nightclub performer, sings a complete rendition of “New York, New York,” presumably to give us time to ponder the fact that Sissy isn’t likely to “make it” — anywhere.

Mostly, I grew bored during these interminable scenes and instead pondered what might have been in the actors’ film contracts. Did they void “non-nudity” clauses so that they could perform full-frontal scenes in this movie? Had any of them seen a really good film about addiction, such as Days of Wine and Roses? Why does Brandon masturbate so much, when he apparently has no trouble picking up chicks in bars?

Nothing in Shame makes us care about these characters. Brandon’s a handsome, well-paid office drone who lives in a nice Manhattan crib. Sissy is a moderately talented, attractive singer. Apparently Brandon and Sissy are Irish kids who somehow wound up in New Jersey. That’s as much as we learn about them.

Shame delivers sermons about the usual crap — sex for sex’s sake is sad and destructive; addicts have trouble connecting emotionally with others. Along with the graphic sex scenes, this is material that might have been daring in the 1960s, but today is just a pointless jerk-off. Grade: D+

Director: Steve McQueen Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie, Lucy Walters, Mari-Ange Ramirez, Loren Omer, Hannah Ware, Elizabeth Masucci, Rachel Farrar Release: 2011

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

14May

Free Flick of the Week: “Moon”

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Early in Moon, actor Sam Rockwell turns his back to the camera and scrubs down for a brief shower scene – but no, silly goose, that’s not what the title refers to. Sight & Sound sums it up: “Moon is an old-fashioned sci-fi movie in the best sense: far more psychological drama than space opera, dispensing with overweening CGI and loud flashy action sequences.” Watch it free of charge by clicking here.

13May

The Weekly Review: May 6 – 12

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Maddow, Cooper Moving On

Count me among those surprised observers when, in the wake of revelations about Mitt Romney’s bullying of a gay student when both were in high school, Anderson Cooper announced plans to leave his lucrative anchor job at CNN to join Romney’s presidential campaign. Cooper’s decision was nearly as eye-opening as the announcement earlier this week by Rachel Maddow that she will be leaving her post at MSNBC to join the fact-checking gang at PolitiFact.com. Good luck to both of you!

*****

Smart people seem to get more respect in England than they do in this country. In Britain, people turn on the telly to watch a tall, scrawny guy who is virginal, a genius in his profession, and a social misfit. This is what he looks like:

In the U.S., we turn on the telly to watch a tall, scrawny guy who is virginal, a genius in his profession, and a social misfit. This is what he looks like (on the left):

*****

This is a picture of Howard Stern. He didn’t do anything particularly newsworthy this week, but next week Stern begins his stint as a judge on America’s Got Talent. I have a feeling he will be gracing these pages from time to time, so get used to seeing his mug.

*****

I’ve been curious about how Fox News managed to talk liberal stalwart Bob Beckel into taking a seat at the table on The Five. Beckel is forever outnumbered and out-sniped by his four conservative co-hosts. But then I realized that someone at Fox was clever enough to ensure that Beckel is always seated right next to the “legs chair.”

*****

The governor of my state actually thanked Snidely Whiplash, aka Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf, for blackmailing Minnesota taxpayers into building a new stadium for his team.

Wilf rhymes with MILF. But’s it’s not Zygi who’s getting screwed.

13May

Lord Grizzly

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by Frederick Manfred

When I was a kid, my parents used to drop me off at Blue Mounds State Park in Luverne, Minnesota, near the confluence of that state, South Dakota, and Iowa. Not only were the park’s pink, quartzite cliffs spectacular, but in the distance I could see buffalo grazing, and nearby was the futuristic-looking (this was the 1960s) home of a real curiosity: a man who wrote books for a living, name of Frederick Manfred.

So it was with a mix of nostalgia and intrigue that I recently picked up Manfred’s Lord Grizzly, a National Book Award finalist in 1955 and the story of Hugh Glass, a real-life mountain man who survived a bear attack and subsequent abandonment in 1820s South Dakota – not far from my Blue Mounds stomping ground.

Lord Grizzly invokes that long-ago land of Indians, grizzlies, mountain lions and buzzards, but Manfred recreates it to a fault. The book reminded me of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain with its endless depictions of wilderness flora and fauna – nirvana for naturalists and American West fans, I’m sure – but not my cup of tea. Old Hugh’s cumbersome crawl across the Midwestern Plains had nothing on my tedious trek through 100 pages of riverbeds, sunsets, and prairie-dog villages.

The plot is about Glass’s quest for revenge on the men who left him for dead, but the theme is man’s struggle between his desire for freedom and the bonds of society. Manfred seemed to prefer the former; for me, those daylong prowls in his Blue Mounds backyard were wilderness enough.

Blue Mounds State Park: my childhood playground and Manfred’s backyard.

08May

Sherlock

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, TV | 3 Comments

No Shit, Sherlock

When this modern-day retelling of the venerable Sherlock Holmes stories debuted two years ago, I was pleasantly surprised. My powers of deduction had warned me that text messaging, computer hard drives, and Internet blogs would be a poor substitute for Arthur Conan Doyle’s 19th-century cobblestone, London fog, and horse-drawn carriages. And I thought that the young actors cast to play Holmes and Dr. Watson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, were too green and baby-faced to convincingly battle the lords of London’s underworld.

OK, so I was wrong. If anything, Sherlock is getting better. The second season’s opening episode, “A Scandal in Belgravia,” is a delight on several levels:

1) The pace is breakneck — almost as fast as Holmes’s crime-detecting intellect and his rapid-fire dialogue. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to watch the first episode twice, because if you blink you might miss important clues.

2) If solving the mystery is too much of a chore for you, you can simply sit back and enjoy the real draw of the series: the amusing interplay amongst what can only be described as the queerest “family” ever to break bread on Baker Street — Holmes, Watson, and the irrepressible Mrs. Hudson. Unlike the 1980s-’90s Jeremy Brett take on Holmes (also superb), humor and warmth permeate Sherlock. Just when the rat-a-tat pace and complex plot begin to make your head spin, some bit of comic business between Watson and Holmes reminds us that it’s their relationship that holds everything together.

3) “Belgravia” is an especially good episode because Holmes is pitted against his greatest challenge: his own human feelings. There is a Christmas scene in which Holmes is compelled to socialize (awkwardly) with his small circle of friends. And then there is a secondary foe, the formidable Irene Adler (Lara Pulver), an upscale dominatrix who handles kingmakers with aplomb but who meets her match in the peculiar Holmes. To Sherlock, Adler is simply “the woman.” To Adler, Holmes is “the virgin.”

All of this is done tongue-in-cheek, and with energy and visual flair. The only downside to the start of a new season of Sherlock is the unfortunate fact that there are just three new episodes. Sunday’s entry promises to provide a showcase for Freeman (The Office) because, if the script adheres to Conan Doyle’s original story, The Hounds of Baskerville will feature more Watson than Holmes. Grade: A-

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves, Loo Brealey, Mark Gatiss, Andrew Scott, Lara Pulver Premiere: 2010 Sundays on PBS

Watch Clips or Episodes (click here)

07May

Free Flick of the Week: “The Square”

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I am tired of the clichéd term “psychological thriller.” I am also sick to death of every new suspense film being compared to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. The Square is a nifty little nail-biter from Australia. Read my review of the movie by clicking here, or click here to watch this Hitchcockian, psychological thriller free of charge.