If you can make it past the opening scene of this drama, in which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei do their best to convince us that we are watching a hardcore sex film, you’ll discover that the late, great Sidney Lumet still had his magic at the ripe old age of 82. However, if you are like me, you’d prefer not to think about the octogenarian director barking instructions to his actors in that opening scene. Click here to watch it for free.
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Such a pretty girl. I wonder who she is.
*****
Golden Globes Musings
Host Ricky Gervais was too tame. He lied when he said he would continue last year’s hilarious smackdown of Hollywood’s snobbish elite.
*
Johnny Depp’s fake voice is grating. I don’t recall him having that affected accent back in his Private Resort days.
*
Jodie Foster was a good sport during Gervais’s Beaver jokes. Too many actors take themselves way too seriously. For proof of that, just listen to almost any actor’s commentary on DVD extras.
*****
Asshole of the Week: Michael Roizen
Dr. Michael Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic, speaking on CNN: “The thing that we can do most to improve job competitiveness, to lower the budget deficit, is to ban smoking among state workers or ban smoking — not hire — federal workers who smoke. That single thing would do the most to make America more competitive for jobs.”
What an obnoxious prick. Ban smoking and you’ll lose millions of tax dollars, Roizen. And since when is some doctor in Cleveland the go-to-guy for economic policy? If you are so concerned about “competitiveness,” then you’d better also promote job discrimination against people who drink, and people who are fat. Of course if you do that, in no time at all you won’t have anyone left to hire.
*****
Jon Huntsman “suspends” his candidacy. Herman Cain “suspends” his candidacy. Rick Perry “suspends” his candidacy. The suspends is killing me. This is why people hate politicians. They refuse to use plain English, even when they simply quit.
But it was a great week in politics, watching all of those Republicans implode. It was especially gratifying to watch Mitt Romney squirm as he tried to tell ordinary Americans why they should vote for Richie Rich.
*****
We keep hearing about “saving the women and children” on that capsized cruise ship in Italy. Are we back in 1912, talking about the Titanic? Save the children, sure, but why the women? Does equality of the sexes only apply when it works in the woman’s favor?
*****
*****
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton announced that, as part of his efforts to encourage diversity in the workplace, surgeons have successfully completed the first head-of-state transplant. Dayton’s head will share executive decision-making with this Asian man’s head.
*****
The Huffington Post on Friday forgot to add captions to these pictures, so we took the liberty.
Before After
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I like my movies odd, and I like my movies sexy. In general, when I review an odd, sexy movie, I want to be kind because I don’t want filmmakers to stop producing them. But there is a limit to my tolerance, and freshman director Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty is too long on odd, too short on sexy.
Beauty is about a young woman named Lucy (Emily Browning) who is psychologically damaged. In fact, everyone Lucy encounters — an old boyfriend, her co-workers at a temp job, the landlords with whom she lives — is damaged in one way or another, and is either hostile, bitter, or emotionally impenetrable. So Lucy, who is nothing if not experimental, takes a new job as a living blow-up doll for rich old men to play with (but never to “penetrate,” as we are constantly reminded by the madam of the high-end brothel where Lucy goes to work).
Leigh’s movie is basically a 100-minute peep show in which we spy on Lucy and her peculiar acquaintances. It’s also an Australian production with French art-film pretensions. When someone pours a glass of tea or wipes down a tabletop, Leigh’s camera lingers portentously. There is much unspoken angst in the film — but not to worry, because all of that somber silence is soon interrupted by kinky sex.
If I didn’t know better (actually, I don’t), I’d wager that Sleeping Beauty was financed by a committee of dirty old men, several of whom had it in their contracts that they got to appear in scenes with the fetching Ms. Browning. How else to explain numerous scenes in which these geezers, their twigs-and-berries on full display, spoon with the naked and unconscious girl, or mount her (drugged) body, or recklessly toss her onto the floor?
This movie is promoted as an “erotic drama,” but while watching it I found myself empathizing with one of Lucy’s customers, who complains: “The only way I can get a hard-on these days is if I swallow a truckload of Viagra.” Grade: C-
Director: Julia Leigh Cast: Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Bridgette Barrett, Hannah Bella Bowden, Les Chantery Release: 2011
Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)
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In 1975, Steven Spielberg released Jaws and taught us not to go swimming in the ocean. Three years later, director Alan Parker and screenwriter Oliver Stone released this movie and taught us never to bring drugs on board an airplane – at least not in Turkey. Watch Midnight Express by clicking here.
© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
Lake Superior State University came up with a list of words and terms that it believes should be banished from the English language. Nice list, but I would add two more:
“Indie Darling” — I was reading Entertainment Weekly and, on page 12, I noticed an item about “Indie-rock darling Carrie Brownstein.” In the same issue on page 80, there was a piece about “indie-cinema darling” Parker Posey. So I did what anyone with too much time on his hands would do, I Googled “indie darling” and another annoying term that pops up everywhere, “(fill-in-the-blank) porn.”
*****
“Imagine if you flicked on your television and found that the government had cancelled American Idol, 30 Rock, The Office, and Dancing with the Stars.” — CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, commenting on government censorship in China. Next time, Fareed, could you please pick shows that don’t deserve to be censored?
*****
Until this week, I’d never heard of CNN correspondent Alison Kosik. But on Wednesday I listened as this (presumably) highly paid TV reporter told unemployed Americans that temp jobs are “not that bad.” Then I read that in October Kosik had mocked the Occupy Wall Street folk. And I see that she advocates the use of job-killing self-checkout lanes in grocery stores. So now I know more about Alison Kosik. She is a jerk.
*****
Runaway: I love this film. It’s nine minutes of goofy greatness. Watch it by clicking here, and thank me later.
*****
Stephen Colbert is “running for president.” Ha ha. This guy has never struck me as funny. He is a one-joke act, and I tire of that act after about 15 seconds. Colbert gets a lot of media attention because of his proximity to Jon Stewart and because he jokes about politics. But that don’t make him funny, do it?
*****
I’ve been wondering whatever became of the male stars of Dawson’s Creek. Turns out that Joshua Jackson, who played Pacey Witter, has been getting up to all sorts of mischief in Latin America. Just in case you weren’t a Dawson fan, here are a few pictures of Joshua, Hollywood-style (top row), and Joshua, Peruvian-style (bottom row).
*****
For some unfathomable reason, there are people interested in the fact that Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, are new parents. Their baby girl is named Blue, but I’ve been unable to discover her surname. In fact, I’ve been unable to discover her parents’ surnames. So I guess I will just call them the blacks and Blue.
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The downside of any great TV series is that, at some point, it will run out of creative gas. You’re not likely to hear anyone proclaim: “I just watched season six of The West Wing, and the show just keeps getting better and better!”
Eventually, actors leave series for other roles, writers run out of fresh ideas, and shows decline. Although there are some exceptions, generally the first two or three years of classic series are the best. My point is this: Now is the best time to catch Downton Abbey, entering its second year on PBS, and Homeland, which just wrapped its inaugural season on Showtime.
Homeland
Claire Danes is a trip in this psychological thriller about an Iraq war hero who, after eight years as a prisoner of war, returns home to glory and fanfare. Danes, as a pill-popping, manic-depressive CIA agent, suspects that Sgt. Brody (Damian Lewis) has been “turned” by al-Qaeda and might be involved in a terrorist plot on American soil.
There are some trite elements in Homeland: an obstinate, preening boss who places obstacles in the heroine’s path; her loyal but ineffectual sidekick, mostly on hand for comic relief. But Danes’s wild-eyed intelligence operative, Carrie Mathison, is endlessly watchable, and Homeland’s plot has multiple hooks — it’s a whodunit (is Brody a turncoat and, if not, then who is?), a thriller (agents race to prevent an unknown attack on an unknown date), and a romance. It’s also an effective reminder of how terrorism affects the people who actually fight it.
Homeland resolves its whodunit about two-thirds into the season, and as a result the show is drained of some suspense. But the cat-and-mouse relationship between borderline-psychotic Carrie and the intense, enigmatic Brody is riveting. Carrie is no traditional heroine; self-absorbed, high-strung, often annoying, she’s not above using sex to get what she wants. Brody is prickly, paranoid, sexually screwed up, and quite possibly dangerous. In other words, these two are made for each other — right? Grade: A-
Cast: Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Morena Baccarin, David Harewood, Diego Klattenhoff, Morgan Saylor, Mandy Patinkin, Amy Hargreaves, Brianna Brown, Melissa Benoist Premiere: 2011
*****
Downton Abbey
The term “soap opera” gets a bad rap. You could describe much of Shakespeare as “soap opera,” considering all of The Bard’s melodramatic musings on young love, family strife, jealousies, and societal oppression. Romeo and Juliet, Gone with the Wind, War and Peace, Casablanca — they all have ingredients of soap opera. Good soap opera. Which brings me to Downton Abbey, which is superb, polished soap.
As an unpolished Yank, my initial reaction to this world of British aristocrats and their servants was a strong desire to see the various maids and butlers creep upstairs in the middle of the night to slaughter their upper-crust “superiors,” and then serve their hoity-toity kidneys on silver platters in the elegant dining room. But the genius of series creator Julian Fellowes is a knack for sucking viewers into this stodgy universe. I wound up caring as much about a pampered rich girl’s marital prospects as I did about a young soldier’s ordeal in the trenches of World War I.
Fellowes overpowered my inner populist by illustrating that all of us — rich and poor — are to some extent powerless in the face of the larger society in which we live. Or, as a renowned soap-opera writer put it a long time ago, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
For the inhabitants of Downton Abbey, both upstairs and downstairs, appearances are everything. Says the indomitable Maggie Smith, who plays the indomitable Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham: “The truth is neither here nor there; it’s the look of the thing that matters.” Packed with wit, subtlety, and soap, Downton Abbey does more than look fabulous. It is fabulous. Grade: A
Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Maggie Smith, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Joanne Froggatt, Phyllis Logan, Laura Carmichael, Dan Stevens Premiere: 2010
Watch Trailers and Clips: Homeland (click here); Downton Abbey (click here)
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Click here if you’d like to watch this romantic comedy again. Click here if you’d like to watch this romantic comedy again. Click here if you’d like to watch this romantic comedy again. Click here if you’d like to watch this romantic comedy again. Click here ….
© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
Please forgive today’s abbreviated edition of the “Weekly Review.” Grouchy has been a bit preoccupied of late. During a recent excursion in cyberspace, he happened upon what might be — hold on — the girl of his dreams.
She’s a lovely lass: a dog-loving beauty queen, whiling away her days in the Florida sunshine and, no doubt, captivating every man that she meets.
The Grouch does not yet know the name of this vision of loveliness (her initials, she teases, are C.A.), but he did manage to grab a screen capture or two of her, and he feels certain that once you gaze upon her sweet visage you will agree with him: She is every man’s fantasy girl.
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I don’t know about you, but when I board a rollercoaster, the real thrills don’t come from the car’s frenzied drops and loops. I get my chills earlier, during the ascent as the train ominously clicks, wheezes, and grinds its way to the highest point. The anticipation, or dread, of what’s about to happen — that’s the best part.
I can’t think of a better analogy than a nail-biting coaster climb to describe Ti West’s directorial style. West, whose low budget The House of the Devil was surprisingly effective, knows how to turn the screws of suspense. The Innkeepers, West’s new haunted-hotel movie, doesn’t provide many payoffs to his screw-tightening, but when the jolts do come, they’re nasty.
Sara Paxton stars as Claire, a young woman stuck in a dead-end job at the Yankee Pedlar, a 19th-century hotel preparing to lock its doors after one more weekend of business. Claire shares hotel duties with fellow slacker Luke (Pat Healy), a nerdish cynic who relieves boredom at the front desk by working on his passion, a Web site devoted to the paranormal. The only other (apparent) inhabitants of the Yankee Pedlar are a mother and her child, and a sharp-tongued actress (Kelly McGillis) in town for a speaking engagement.
Not much happens in the first hour of The Innkeepers, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because, unlike so many “young-people-in-peril” flicks, in this one we get to know our two heroes and, also unlike the youngsters in so many horror movies, they are actually worth knowing. Paxton, especially, is adorable as awkward tomboy Claire, who must summon her reserves of courage. (It’s curious that no matter how many chillers we see with “No! — Don’t go into that room!” scenes, they still work in the hands of a skilled director.) There is also an amusing bit involving Claire, a leaky garbage bag, and a dumpster. It has absolutely nothing to do with ghosts or the plot, but it’s priceless, one of the best scenes in the film.
The movie does take a long time to deliver the goods. The characters, likeable as they are, can’t carry a full hour of thin material. But for what it is — a small movie intent on delivering shivers — it’s a nice ride. Grade: B
Director: Ti West Cast: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis, George Riddle, Alison Bartlett, Lena Dunham Release: 2011
Watch Trailers and Clip (click here)
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Amelie is one of those “love it or hate it” movies. I’m guessing that you will know into which category you fall within the first five minutes of the film. The movie looks great, but has what might kindly be called a “quirky” style. Read my review of Amelie by clicking here, or go here to watch this award-winning, French (yes, it’s subtitled) romantic comedy.
(You have to register with Hulu, but it’s free.)
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