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07Aug

The Weekly Review: August 1 – 7

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“The father of the bride [Bill Clinton] appeared to have followed his daughter’s instructions and lost quite a bit of weight for the ceremony. She had ordered him to lose 15 pounds.” — New York Times story on August 1

To me, Clinton looks emaciated and much, much older since he followed Chelsea’s “instructions.” I’ve noticed that high-profile, high-pressure jobs seem to accelerate the aging process. Here are some recent pictures of other public figures:

Hillary Clinton

Laura Bush

Donald Rumsfeld

Barack Obama

Dick Cheney

*****

“Actor Andy Griffith has a new role: pitching President Obama’s health care law to seniors in a cable television ad paid for by Medicare. The TV star … tells seniors that ‘good things are coming.’” — wire service story

He should know. Here is a publicity still of Griffith, 84, in full coital bliss from the movie, Play the Game.

*****

“[Steelers quarterback/accused rapist Ben Roethlisberger] was greeted warmly by an enthusiastic crowd estimated at 10,000 on Saturday at St. Vincent College.” — Associated Press story

“It’s [dodgeball] a great game that I loved in school. It’s one of the few times when you can purposely hurt someone else, and the fat kids and nerdy non-athletic kids became easy targets.” — NBA star Ron Artest

It’s nice to know that professional jocks think as much of their fans as the fans think of them, isn’t it?

06Aug

The Living and the Dead (2007)

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The Living and the Dead begins quietly enough. The setting is one of those stately British manor houses with an imposing facade but which, once you step inside, has fallen into hopeless disrepair, probably because its occupants are too proud to leave but too poor to pay for upkeep. The three inhabitants of the house are a respectable father (Roger Lloyd Pack), a dignified but terminally ill, bedridden mother (Kate Fahy), and their only son, James (Leo Bill). Everything seems peaceful and proper. There is very little indication that director Simon Rumley is about to unlatch the gates of hell.

Our only clue that things are about to unravel – big time – is the unorthodox behavior of adult son James. Actually, James’s problems are a bit more than unorthodox; he is a full-blown schizophrenic. He is hyperactive, needy, and childish – but all of this is managed by medication and the loving care of his father (mother, remember, is unable to leave her bed). James, who really means well, is desperate to prove to his parents that he is a responsible boy, that he can be “normal.” And then one fateful day, father has to leave the house on business, and the day nurse can’t come right away, and James is left alone in the house with mother ….

I’ll have to say that watching Leo Bill as James, I initially felt that he was overacting and that his histrionics would grow tiresome and kill the movie. I was mistaken. Bill, Pack, and Fahy all turn in superb performances in what must have been difficult roles. Bill, especially, impresses. When James panics, you panic. What in God’s name will this unfortunate soul do next – to himself, his poor mother, or anyone around him?

The Living and the Dead can count among its cinematic ancestors movies like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Misery, but Rumley’s film is even more horrifying because it’s more realistic. There are no faded movie stars, famous writers, or crazed nurses in this film; just an ailing mom, an absent dad, and a boy with problems. And boy, what problems. Grade: A-

Director: Simon Rumley Cast: Roger Lloyd Pack, Kate Fahy, Leo Bill, Sarah Ball Release: 2007

Watch Trailers (click here)

04Aug

The Case of Jennie Brice

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by Mary Roberts Rinehart

It’s a shame the way history rewards some authors and neglects others. Take, for example, the reputations of Agatha Christie and Mary Roberts Rinehart. What’s that, you say? Mary Roberts Who? My point, exactly. Everyone knows Dame Agatha, and more power to the great British mystery writer. But how many readers know of Rinehart, an American novelist who not only predates Christie but who also, in some ways, surpasses her? The Case of Jennie Brice is the second Rinehart book I’ve read (following The Circular Staircase), and both novels are delightful. They contain all of the murder and intrigue a reader expects from a Hercule Poirot story, but Rinehart’s characters are more human – and humorous – than anyone found in Christie.

04Aug

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (2005)

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In the recent documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, the venerable comedienne insists that, when it comes to standup, no topic is off limits. That might be true, but when compared to today’s top comedians, old pro Rivers seems awfully tame.

Case in point: Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. Silverman, who joins Kathy Griffin in the upper echelon of American female comics, doesn’t seem to have any limitations: “Smelly” Mexicans, blacks who don’t leave tips, anus analysis, and dying old people are all just fodder for a routine which, I have to admit, is often hilarious. What seems to be sad but true is that the crueler the setup, the funnier the payoff.

What separates Silverman from the standup pack is her surface innocence. Her “who, little old me?” persona and cutie-pie face are at comic odds with her delivery whenever she drops the f-bomb, simulates sex, cracks wise about the Holocaust, and so forth. It does make me wonder, however, just how well Silverman’s shtick will play when she’s 45 and no longer “cute” – something never an issue for Rivers, and probably not for Griffin, either.

But for now – or, in the case of this concert film, 2005 – Silverman’s politically incorrect, profane, and outrageous offensive works just fine. Grade: B

Director: Liam Lynch Cast: Sarah Silverman, Brian Posehn, Laura Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Kelsie Lynn Release: 2005

Watch Trailers (click here)

03Aug

Life During Wartime

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Say the word “pedophile,” and most people look the other way. In Life During Wartime, director Todd Solondz asks you to spend 96 minutes not looking away – just to see, you know, if you might learn something about this uncomfortable subject. Solondz does everything in his power to keep you watching. Much of the film is shot in sunny Florida, with bright colors, pretty people, and polite conversation. Ah, but what lurks between the lines of those conversations ….

We hear a lot in our news media about the victims of sex abuse. What goes under-reported is the devastation wreaked on the families of the abusers – those siblings, wives, and children who are not abused themselves, but who are nevertheless affected. The emphasis is on these people in Wartime, and there is much talk about “forgetting” and “forgiving.”

Although most of the film is about these relatives, its most powerful scene is between the pedophile himself, recently released from prison, and his college-student son. It’s a short scene, and there are no histrionics, but actors Ciaran Hinds and Chris Marquette turn it into the most potent five minutes in the movie.

I suppose some viewers will feel that, by focusing on the father in this dramatic scene, Solondz is asking us to empathize with a child molester. I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as a filmmaker pointing his camera at two talented actors, letting the scene unfold, and simply saying to the audience, “Here. This is unpleasant but this is what happens. You be the judge.” Grade: B+

Director: Todd Solondz Cast: Allison Janney, Shirley Henderson, Michael Lerner, Dylan Riley Snyder, Ciaran Hinds, Michael K. Williams, Paul Reubens, Charlotte Rampling, Ally Sheedy, Chris Marquette Release: 2010

Watch Trailers (click here)

02Aug

Free Flick of the Week: “Wonder Boys”

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These are heady times for fans of Kirk Douglas’ son. Michael Douglas wowed critics earlier this year in Solitary Man, and next month he stars in the much-anticipated sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Ten years ago, Douglas gave a rare comic performance in what I think is one of his best films, Wonder Boys. Read my review of that movie here, and then watch it for free by clicking here.

31Jul

Cropsey

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Every little kid knows the bogeyman. The bogeyman hides in the bedroom closet, or lurks on the floor beneath the bed. Fortunately, most kids grow up and find out who the real scary people are: math teachers and driving instructors. But for documentarians Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio, both of whom grew up on New York’s Staten Island, the bogeyman never really went away. He is, apparently, still haunting them.

Zeman and Brancaccio wrote and directed Cropsey, a documentary about child abductions and the alleged, real-life bogeyman behind them. The filmmakers grew up in the 1980s during what surely must have been a nightmare-come-true for Staten Island parents: Children kept disappearing, and one of them was found dead and buried near the site of an abandoned mental hospital. Suspicion fell on a middle-aged drifter named Andre Rand, and this pathetic outcast became the borough’s “Cropsey” (a Hudson Valley nickname for any ax-wielding bogeyman) as related in this creepy – yet ultimately unsatisfying – movie.

I call it unsatisfying because, try though they might, Zeman and Brancaccio never get past gossip, rumor, and speculation regarding the decades-old disappearance of five children on the New York island. Rand was eventually convicted of kidnapping two of the kids, though he never confessed to their killings, and no additional bodies were ever recovered. This lack of hard evidence forces Zeman and Brancaccio to venture all sorts of hypotheses, including: Rand, who once worked as an attendant at the notorious Willowbrook mental institution, was seeking to rid the world of mentally disabled children; Rand was under the influence of a devil-worshipping cult, which roamed a network of subterranean tunnels beneath the ruins of Willowbrook.

There are no revelations from Rand, no interviews with him, but instead lots of wide-eyed theories posited by regular folk and authorities. But all of this speculation – from police, citizens, reporters, “experts” – has no payoff. Rand remains in prison, possibly guilty, possibly the scapegoat of a fearful, ignorant community. This ambiguity kills Cropsey, rendering it just a big-screen version of Dateline NBC when the film’s focus shifts from horror to courtroom politics.

Unfortunately for Zeman and Brancaccio, their bogeyman stayed in the bedroom closet … when they really needed him to come out. Grade: C-

Directors: Joshua Zeman, Barbara Brancaccio Featuring: Donna Cutugno, Karen Schweiger, David Novarro, Ralph Aquino Release: 2009

Watch Trailers (click here)

31Jul

The Weekly Review: July 25 – 31

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Special K Week:

The Kindle and Killing Kim Kardashian

One nice thing about getting older is that you tend to miss out on what’s trendy — unless you accidentally stumble onto it. Such was the case the other night when I happened upon Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

I don’t live in Botswana, so of course I had heard of these idiots, but I’d never actually watched their show, which apparently has been fouling the airwaves since 2007. My impressions:

1) What the hell happened to Bruce Jenner’s face?

2) That Kim is a cutie.

3) The mother, Kris Jenner, is a glorified pimp.

4) Somebody needs to … kill the Kardashians! I cannot see the teensiest benefit to our sharing the planet with them.

*****

The Kindle

Amazon lowered the price of its e-reader, the Kindle, so I broke down and bought one. My thoughts:

Cons:

1) Stephen King wrote his own appraisal of the Kindle, in which he quoted Gertrude Stein’s observation about her childhood home in Oakland: “There is no there, there.” After using the Kindle, I know what that means. It’s just an eerie sensation to realize that you cannot rifle through pages. And it sucks if you are on, say, page 78 and want to go back and read something on page 39. To do that, you must laboriously tap back 39 times for 39 pages. Very time-consuming — especially if you get to page 39 and then realize that what you’re looking for is actually on page 59. Tap, tap, tap ….

2) No color, and the graphics can suck. I read The Passage on my Kindle and there was a map in the book. But because the Kindle’s screen is so small (six-inch reading area), there was no way to get a satisfactory view of it.

3) The Web browser is slow and has a primitive display. The audio voices sound like Robby the Robot reciting Shakespeare in Pig Latin.

Pros:

1) The light weight (8.7 ounces). There is something to be said for a device that lets you read War and Peace or Moby Dick with your left hand while you eat, drink, smoke, or play with yourself with your right hand.

2) Free public-domain books. Within seconds, I downloaded books by Jane Austen, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Charles Dickens, and George Bernard Shaw. It was like checking out library books without leaving my bed.

3) The instant dictionary. It’s sweet to simply highlight “repudiate” and instantly have a definition at the bottom of the screen.

Irrelevancies:

1) Amazon hypes the fact that you can store up to 3,500 books on the Kindle. Nice, but do you really expect to live long enough to read 3,500 books on your Kindle?

2) A glare-free screen that allows you to read in sunshine. OK, but I can also do that with a paperback.

3) Download new books from the Amazon store in 60 seconds. Rarely do I need a book in 60 seconds. Sometimes a drink, yes. Besides, I enjoy browsing at real bookstores.

30Jul

The World of Henry Orient (1964)

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The World of Henry Orient is a small movie that begins as a silly romp about two teen girls infatuated with a zany pianist, and then — thanks to a pair of adult actors at the top of their game — becomes something much better: a quietly powerful story about growing up.

Despite the title, The World of Henry Orient is initially a world belonging to New York City girls Marian and Valarie. Marian (Merrie Spaeth) is a child of divorce who lives with her mother and a friend of the family. Valarie (Tippy Walker) is a child prodigy who rarely sees her own parents, wealthy globetrotters who visit their daughter only when it’s convenient. When Marian and Valarie hook up at a private school, they concoct a childish obsession: the stalking of Henry Orient (Peter Sellers), a cowardly lothario from the Bronx with uptown aspirations and a bogus, continental accent.

Sellers, riding high in 1964 with The Pink Panther and Dr. Strangelove on his resume, does his deadpan shtick in this film and is, as always, amusing. Walker and Spaeth have winning personalities and, although I confess there were times I felt I was watching two novice actors attempting to act, their enthusiasm is infectious.

But something near-miraculous occurs in the film at its midpoint, and this is largely thanks to a pair of consummate actors who turn a frivolous comedy into something sad, powerful, and utterly wonderful. Tom Bosley and Angela Lansbury, as Valarie’s absentee parents, command the screen, Lansbury as a self-centered socialite and lousy mother, and Bosley in a precursor to his Happy Days role on TV — the perfect Dad. Bosley, in particular, has a scene with Walker that is heartbreaking, uplifting, and emblematic of why this little gem from 1964 still sparkles. Grade: A-

Director: George Roy Hill Cast: Peter Sellers, Paula Prentiss, Angela Lansbury, Tom Bosley, Phyllis Thaxter, Bibi Osterwald, Merrie Spaeth, Tippy Walker Release: 1964

Watch the Trailer (click here)

30Jul

The Passage

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by Justin Cronin

The Passage is the literary equivalent of a Hollywood summer blockbuster: all bluster and special effects, no substance. Justin Cronin’s vampire saga is a pretentious, derivative, colossal waste of time. Did I mention that I hated this book? Actually, The Passage is worse than a shallow film like, say Avatar, because Cronin’s tripe is littered with self-important religious allusions, quotations from Shakespeare — and it takes longer than two hours to finish.

So what, exactly, are my problems with this book? Start with the characters, with whom the reader has to spend way too much time. These are cardboard people. Two of the main characters, Peter and Michael, are virtually indistinguishable. One of them is handy with engines and computers; other than that, I could rarely tell them apart. Cronin’s political correctness is gag-inducing – all of his female characters are saintly or indestructible. In fact, one of them actually turns into a superhero. Conversely, the males are all either deeply flawed or ineffectual. Spending hundreds of pages with these people is worse than becoming undead.

What’s worse is the novel’s plot. Even in the fantasy genre, an author must set ground rules and then follow them. Cronin’s vampires are sometimes omnipotent, sometimes not, depending on what his plot calls for. Heroes are routinely killed off and then miraculously resurrected. This kind of cheating goes on ad nauseam.

Was there anything I liked about The Passage? The attack scenes are not bad. Cronin stages some tense, nasty battles between his dullard protagonists and the “smokes.” But those scenes are too few to overcome all the tedious exposition that surrounds them. The Passage is a Stephen King wannabe and should be burned at the stake.

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