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17Jun

Jane Eyre

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by Charlotte Bronte

Until now, my exposure to Jane Eyre has been limited to four-letter answers in many a crossword puzzle. I thought of Bronte’s 1847 novel as one of those stuffy classics that I really should read – someday. So now that the deed is done, I’ve learned that the book has pleasant surprises … and also that it confirms some of my worst suspicions about 19th-century “chick lit.”

Good: By far the biggest surprise is a creepy subplot about a mysterious entity that lives on the third floor of Thornfield, a family mansion that serves as most of the story’s setting. This … thing, conjuring images of Linda Blair at her demonic worst in The Exorcist, likes to pay unexpected, middle-of-the-night visits to sleeping guests on the floor below.

Bad: There is much character analysis by narrator Jane, who goes on ad nauseam about everyone’s good qualities, bad qualities, religious beliefs, social standing, grooming habits, forehead shape, and bristly eyebrows. But that’s nothing compared to poor, repressed Jane’s endless self-analysis and, at times, self-pity. Can you say, “inner turmoil”?

Good: The best novels allow you to completely escape your own world, and there’s no greater diversion from the 21st century than 19th-century literature. Bronte’s England is at once familiar and foreign, and it sucks you in.

Bad: Jane Eyre is all about character, which is fine, but its plot doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. There are amazing coincidences (Jane, near death in an unfamiliar part of the country, just happens to be rescued … by a man who turns out to be her cousin), and contrived plot developments (a character who creates an obstacle for two lovers commits suicide, thereby clearing the way for a happy ending).

16Jun

The Weekly Review: June 10 – 16

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Debbie Downer

I was in the mood for something fun and uplifting, like an astronomy show with lots of cool outer-space pictures. So I tuned in Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. At the conclusion of the episode, Hawking announced that there is no God, no happy afterlife.

I watched a second episode. At the end, Hawking said that there likely are aliens in space, but we’d better hope that they stay far away from us because they are probably aggressive and nasty and might try to exterminate us and gobble up our resources.

I turned off the television. I was reminded of some dialogue snarled by James Brolin in The Amityville Horror: “Don’t you have any GOOD news?”

*****

Piers Morgan interviewed the cast of TNT’s Dallas reboot. Piers pointed out that during the original show’s run, viewers all over the world wanted to move to Dallas and get rich.

I moved to Dallas in 1980, during the height of the first series’s popularity. I did not get rich. I did, however, make one late-night drunken visit to Southfork. A buddy and I hopped the Southfork fence, tip-toed over grass toward the famous ranch house … and were chased off the premises by an angry, barking dog. There is a lesson, somewhere, in that story.

*****

Gripe 1: Gravel-voiced George Zimmer (above) touting his stores in Men’s Wearhouse commercials. Zimmer, apparently too cheap to hire professional advertising talent, is hell-bent on driving me nuts with his raspy, grating plugs. If I ever run into him on the street, I will yank his beard and throttle him. I guarantee it.

Gripe 2: Those indecipherable “crawls” on the bottom of TV screens. Cable news has them. Baseball games have them. Networks seem to believe that everyone owns a high-def, big-screen television. If you don’t, good luck reading the tiny print.

Gripe 3: I tried to watch Game 2 of the NBA finals but was reminded why I no longer watch much basketball. Pro basketball is the only major sport that intentionally and consistently ruins the suspense of a game’s final moments by allowing an onslaught of timeouts — and therefore commercials — at the end of the game. Tie game with 5 seconds to go? Plenty of time for a Toyota commercial. Or two.

*****

Bonehead Quote of the Week:

“If it wasn’t for rap [music], white people wouldn’t have been so open to vote for somebody like Barack Obama.” — Rapper Ice-T, pictured above with his wife’s ass, on The Today Show

That’s news to me. I voted for Obama, but if I thought he was planning to replace “Hail to the Chief” with some rap crap, I would have left the country.

*****

14Jun

Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)

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Last week, I watched a ghost story called The Woman in Black. It’s a $15 million studio production, designed as a post-Harry Potter vehicle for superstar Daniel Radcliffe. It was pretty and polished, but I doubt if I’ll remember a thing about it in three months.

Forty-two years ago, I sat in a small, dingy cinema in rural Minnesota and watched a monster movie called Count Yorga, Vampire. Its budget was $64,000 and it was originally conceived as a soft-core horror film. It was el cheapo, to be sure, but Yorga made an impression on me that’s lasted four decades.

Thanks for the memories (or nightmares), Robert Quarry and Bob Kelljan. Thank who, you ask? Good question. Quarry, the actor who played the title character, and Kelljan, the film’s writer-director, don’t have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They weren’t exactly hot properties back in 1970, either.

“We had just four crew members — that was it,” said Quarry in a 2004 interview. “There was one makeup man and a few guys with little arc lights. You say the film was ‘dark and mysterious.’ The film was dark and mysterious because we didn’t have enough lights!”

Kelljan didn’t have much money, but he had something better, something that the makers of Woman in Black apparently lacked: creativity and a passion for his movie. If you can overlook Yorga’s cheesy production values — admittedly, no easy feat — the film has some genuinely scary moments. I’m thinking of three scenes in particular: one involving a couple stranded in a van on an isolated road; a second featuring a woman and her … well, what used to be her cat; and a third in which the suave, menacing count has a final showdown with his nemesis, a doctor played by veteran TV actor Roger Perry.

Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee be damned, Quarry’s mocking, triumphant bloodsucker in that climactic scene is as good as it gets. Said a reviewer in the New York Times: “Robert Quarry [is] the best chief vampire I have seen in years.”

The acting is all-around respectable — something not common in B-movies of the period — and Kelljan’s script was even seminal in one respect: In having Yorga take up residence in modern-day Los Angeles, the cinematic vampire was at last removed from his previous haunts in 19th-century Europe. Fans of Twilight and True Blood can thank Kelljan for the immigration.

At times, the bare-bones production values even work in the film’s favor, because we aren’t distracted by Hollywood gloss. Yorga’s retro scenery, jerky edits, and scratchy soundtrack are more realistic than many of today’s “found footage” productions. Grade: B

Director: Bob Kelljan Cast: Robert Quarry, Roger Perry, Michael Murphy, Michael Macready, Donna Anders, Judy Lang, Edward Walsh, Julie Conners, Sybil Scotford, Marsha Jordan Release: 1970

Watch the Trailer (click here)

11Jun

Free Flick of the Week: “Hard Times”

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I’m old enough to remember Charles Bronson back in his heyday, and it’s impossible to dismiss his once-formidable popularity. In 1975, he was Hollywood’s fourth-highest box-office attraction, behind only Redford, Streisand, and Pacino. A few years earlier, he received a Golden Globe for being “the most popular actor in the world.” I never really understood his appeal, but Hard Times (1975) is Bronson in the midst of good times. Watch it for free by clicking here.

09Jun

The Weekly Review: June 3 – 9

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Big (Red-Faced) Apple

I used to like New York City. But lately, thanks to blowhard Donald Trump and midget Mike Bloomberg, the Big Apple’s image is taking a whipping. Apparently, New Yorkers can banish super-sized soft drinks but not super-sized egos.

*****

Rachel Maddow, still smarting over election results in Wisconsin, launched into an attack on big money in politics. Fine by me. But Maddow chose the wrong target for her wrath: Big Tobacco and the millions of dollars it spent in California to defeat an anti-smoker tax known as Proposition 29. “Everyone” was in favor of this tax, whined Maddow, because its merits were “incontestable.”

Contest this, Rachel. Before you leap into your next harangue against smokers, please explain the merits of your weekly glorification of alcohol, specifically your Friday-night “happy hours” in which you extol the virtues of mixed drinks.

Meanwhile, in a world gone mad, I found myself rooting for Ann Coulter, who on Fox’s Red Eye went to bat for nicotine addicts everywhere. “Smokers get a lot of work done,” Coulter asserted. Yes. Unlike, say, people who drink too much.

*****

I was watching cable news the other day and someone said, “You know what they say about Oklahoma? If you don’t like the weather, just wait a day!”

Thirty years ago, shortly after I moved to Texas, a city councilman named Harris Hill welcomed me to the Lone Star State with this information: “You know what they say about Texas? If you don’t like the weather, just wait a day!”

Since I moved back to Minnesota, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard, either on TV or in real life, “You know what they say about Minnesota? If you don’t like the weather, just wait a day!”

Do they say this even in California?

*****

Crystal Harris, Hugh Hefner’s 26-year-old “runaway bride,” has reunited with the old fart. In case you’ve forgotten what Crystal looks like, here is a picture:

Former Hefner squeeze Kendra Wilkinson did not take the news lightly. “I’m kind of ashamed. I’m like, ‘Hef, what are you doing?’” Kendra sniffed, adding, “I don’t want him to be, like, caught up in this woman.” In case you don’t recall what Kendra looks like, here is a picture:

And finally, in case you’ve forgotten what 86-year-old Hugh Hefner looks like …

09Jun

Prometheus

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, Movies | 6 Comments

Well, at least he gave it the old college try. Ridley Scott, the man who gifted us with the sci-fi classics Alien and Blade Runner, is back at age 74 to see if he can’t make it a triple treat.

Prometheus has most of the requisite ingredients: top-notch actors, state-of-the-art special effects and, from Scott himself, energetic pacing and some memorable set pieces. But his movie suffers from that old bugaboo, a lackluster script.

The film contains a surprising amount of recycled, stale material, both from the Alien franchise and from myriad other science-fiction films. Scott, rather than capitalize on what made his own Alien so good — creepiness, claustrophobia, and characters — instead borrows from its sequel, James Cameron’s Aliens, with its emphasis on action and special effects. Instead of great Scott, we get so-so Cameron.

When I think back to the original Alien, I think of Sigourney Weaver’s “Ripley” battling both male chauvinism and interstellar horrors. When I think back to Blade Runner, I think of Rutger Hauer’s replicant, feeling the rain stream down his cheek, smiling wistfully, and saying, “Time … to die.” There are no such memorable characters or moments in Prometheus.

There are, however, dazzling sets and kick-ass effects. The $120 million budget and spectacular European scenery are put to good use.

As in the original Alien, this film begins with a small crew on a mission to deep space. Ancient rock drawings, discovered in a cave on Earth, appear to depict a star map, and so a hybrid crew of scientists and at least one evil corporate-type is dispatched to discover the map’s message. Or, at least some of them are. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is.

The movie does raise intriguing questions. Did life originate on Earth, or was it brought here? Do we share DNA with life elsewhere in the universe? Is “God” benevolent, hostile, or even godlike?

Films like Contact dealt with these issues intelligently. Expecting Ridley Scott, or anyone, to come up with answers to those questions is, of course, expecting too much. But I don’t think it’s asking too much to expect a bit more originality from this movie. Or some characters worth remembering. Grade: B

Director: Ridley Scott Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Emun Elliott, Benedict Wong, Kate Dickie Release: 2012

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

07Jun

Revanche (2008)

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In recent years, just about every Hollywood thriller is expected to have “the twist.” At some point near the climax of the film, we discover that nothing is as it seemed, or no one is as we thought.

Problem is, very few of these twists hold up to scrutiny. Most of them are ridiculous or, at the very least, implausible. I walked out of The Sixth Sense in 1999 and thought to myself, “Wow — they really got me!” Today, I generally soak in the obligatory twist and think, “What a load of bunk!”

There are twists in the Austrian thriller Revanche, but they are so subtle, so realistic and organic, flowing naturally from events and characters, that they really shouldn’t be called “twists.” They are unexpected dramatic turns.

The plot: An ex-con brings his girlfriend along as he robs a bank. Tragedy ensues. The action shifts to the countryside, where the robber takes refuge with his elderly grandfather, who happens to be neighbor to a cop and the cop’s unhappy wife.

What follows is slow-paced by Hollywood standards, yet it’s always absorbing — and often unexpected. Grade: B+

Director: Gotz Spielmann Cast: Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Andreas Lust, Ursula Strauss, Johannes Thanheiser, Hanno Poschl Release: 2008

Watch Trailers (click here)

06Jun

Take This Waltz

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, Movies | 1 Comment

How to Make a Movie That Will Alienate Men

Your story should be about a woman (Michelle Williams) who is torn between two lovers: a solid-but-dull husband (Seth Rogen), and an unattached male model– er, “artist” (Luke Kirby), living next door.
To antagonize the straight males in your audience, make sure that both the husband and the lover boy have annoying and/or ludicrous personal traits, so that we don’t want to identify with either of them. For example, depict the husband as a man-child who enjoys speaking baby talk to his wife and whose idea of foreplay is similar to that of Little Billy Brat back in third grade, the kid who enjoyed pulling girls’ pigtails.
Include a scene in which women receive “aqua fitness” instruction from a Richard Simmons wannabe.
Just to be mean, include a shower scene in which Williams and sexy comedienne Sarah Silverman are completely nude, and then — just when you finally have the attention of your male audience — sabotage the whole thing by tossing in full-frontal nudity by a group of elderly, obese actresses.
Create a cute, cloying occupation for the moon-faced lover boy. Lover boy is an artist and therefore must be “sensitive.” But he must also eat. To put vittles on his plate, give lover boy a part-time job — hauling a rickshaw. In Toronto. In Canada.

Include pretty pictures of things like lighthouses, sunsets, and painted toenails. Especially the painted toenails.
Include dialogue like this: “Sometimes I’m walking along the street, and a shaft of sunlight falls in a certain way across the pavement, and I just wanna cry.”
Or like this: “I just kissed the top of your head, ever so gently, and then I kissed your eyelids and they fluttered underneath my lips … just a little.”
Include not one, but two scenes in which the wife — apparently as a test to find out how much her two men love her — sits down on a toilet and pees in their presence. In the only instance in this movie in which both males display good sense, they both walk out on her.

I didn’t say much about the plot. Williams’s young wife feels trapped after just five years in her marriage to loyal puppy Rogen. Will they live happily ever after, or will life interfere?

Hold on … that was also the plot of Williams’s 2010 film, Blue Valentine. Blue Valentine was a great movie about a young couple going through a dreadful time. Take This Waltz is a dreadful movie about a young couple (and heterosexual men in the audience) going through a dreadful time. Grade: D+

Director: Sarah Polley Cast: Seth Rogen, Michelle Williams, Sarah Silverman, Jennifer Podemski, Luke Kirby, Aaron Abrams, Vanessa Coelho, Graham Abbey Release: 2012

Watch Trailers (click here)

04Jun

Free Flick of the Week: “Panic Room”

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Sure looks good on paper: a thriller starring Jodie Foster and directed by David Fincher. Alas, Panic Room will likely not go down in film history as the pinnacle of either hotshot’s career. And yet second-tier work from Fincher and Foster is still worth checking out. Watch it for free by clicking here.

02Jun

The Weekly Review: May 27 – June 2

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WHEN ZOMBIES ATTACK!

I suppose it’s in bad taste, but I want to chew on this Florida face-eating incident, just a bit more. There are a lot of juicy nuggets and tasty tidbits related to this story, so please humor me if you find any of the following items hard to swallow:

Face-eater understatement No. 1, from Miami cop Javier Ortiz: “It was very sad to see what happened to this gentleman that had his face eaten.”

Face-eater understatement No. 2, from Miami cop Armando Aguilar: “In my opinion, he [victim Ronald Poppo] just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Editors at The Huffington Post seem to think that if you include the word “naked” in your headline, people will pay attention:

Above, the most popular stories on The Huffington Post. Who needs The Walking Dead when we’ve got all this to digest?

*****

From Parade:

Question: Does Martha Stewart ever order takeout?

Answer: “Oh, I never do!” says Stewart, 70. “I can’t remember the last time I ordered in a pizza. I will either eat out in a very good restaurant or I will cook.”

Not sure why Parade didn’t ask Stewart about prison food. Didn’t she have to “order in” pretty much every day when she was behind bars?

*****

Lots of outrage over the John Edwards trial. I’m not about to defend Edwards’s behavior. However … didn’t anyone read the book Game Change? Elizabeth Edwards, who is portrayed as a saintly victim in many media reports, comes across in the book as an ill-tempered, unstable harridan.

I am reminded of Jack Lemmon’s old movie, How to Murder Your Wife. In the final act, Lemmon asks a pal if, given the opportunity to simply push a button and make his wife disappear, he would push it. If I was Edwards, I would have pushed that button.

*****

I’m tired of hearing about “urban legends.” Aren’t there any good rural legends?

*****

Author Janet Evanovich finally got a movie produced, based on one of her books. One for the Money was savaged by critics, bombed at the box office, and currently has a 2% “fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes. So I’m guessing that when Evanovich blogged about attending the premiere of the film, she didn’t intend for her comments to sound, well, quite the way they sound:

“The premiere for One for the Money, the movie, was last night in New York City. It was pretty exciting!” she gushed. “And just so you know, it’s not all glamorous … my eyes didn’t swell up and break out until after I saw the movie.”

*****

Bonehead Quote of the Week:

“Don’t you worry about the optics of this, you as a doctor?”

— CNN resident idiot Sanjay Gupta, expressing his disapproval to a doctor who dared to oppose Proposition 29, a new tax on smokers up for a vote this week in California. Gupta, in the guise of objective journalist, acknowledged that he is on the board of directors of an anti-tobacco foundation. I guess he’s not concerned about the “optics” of that.