Interview with Justice Ginsburg! Sent to me courtesy of my dear old friend Brady. Not that he’s actually old, mind you, but I have known him since I was 6.
Tonight? Away We Go, which I keep wanting to call Up and Away.
Archive for the 'movies' Category
Isn’t this awesome? I’d like to add a few more ideas to the list — strolling down State, lunch at Chataura, an actual beer on the terrace — but it’s still pretty great, in my opinion. An added plus is the Anthology shop they mentioned, which is co-owned by a gal I played tennis with in high school.
Speaking of Wisconsin, which we now are, the state’s been going rather bonkers for a long time now over the movie Public Enemies. I don’t know how the rest of the country is reacting to its premiere (though I suspect Michael Mann + Johnny Depp + John Dillinger = lots of excitement and hype), but Sconnie just about collapsed from the weight of it all. As you may know, lots of scenes were filmed here — Madison, Columbus, Oshkosh and more. Most significantly, perhaps, was the infamous shoot-out at the Little Bohemia lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, which still stands and which we often comment upon when we are up on our annual family vacation in near-by Presque Isle. Anyway, lots of towns had early premieres and people came out in 1930s wear and drove around old cars and smoked cigars. It was really quite a reaction.
So, with all of this in mind, I saw the movie last night. At Sundance. Gosh, I just love that theater. Even though the restaurant blew and reminds me of a low period in my adult life, the movie theater is just the bees’ knees and makes me not want to go to any other movie theater ever again (well, that doesn’t include the drive-in or the Orpheum, both of which I adore). Anyway, as soon as the movie started, it occurred to me what I was really going to see. A Michael Mann movie about John Dillinger. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me early. Maybe because I didn’t really know much about Dillinger (this despite there being an old family story that my great-grandfather was kidnapped by Dillinger’s gang to repair some plumbing or electrical problem at one of their hide-outs). So, it hit me late that this was going to be (a) long and (b) violent. Michael Mann is not even close to one of my favorite directors and I absolutely hated his uber-long, unedited, ultra-violent, super boring Heat. But it was too late to turn back. The movie starts with a pretty violent jailbreak, which sets the tone. There’s a lot of blood in this movie and a lot of killing. Johnny Depp is pretty great, though, and Marion Cotillard is simply gorgeous and commanding. Christian Bale, though…Ugh. I don’t know why I feel bad criticizing him, but I do. Enough’s enough, though. I let his Batman performance slide and I can’t do it again. I feel like he’s really pushing when he “acts.” I don’t believe him at all. I don’t know if he’s trying too hard to cover up his Welsh accent or what. Personally, though, I’d rather have a Welsh accent slip in in an otherwise smooth and believable performance than watch someone speak so woodenly so that we don’t know where he’s actually from. It’s really enough already. At least for me. And it probably didn’t help that his role, a would-be federal agent though the FBI has yet to come into its own, is really boring. I was hoping for more of a movie like, say, American Gangster. In American Gangster, you are just as interested in Russell Crowe’s police work as you are with Denzel Washington’s criminal work. In Public Enemies, though, there is very little police work and it’s just not that interesting.
Overall, though, I liked the movie and it didn’t feel as long as I thought it might. I would give it a B. For whatever that’s worth. Maybe a B+ since seeing the Capitol was pretty cool.
People are amazing & amazingly annoying
Published April 6, 2009 local , movies 17 CommentsTags: documentaries, madison, movies, wisconsin, yoga
The above is the lesson I (re)learned from this past weekend.
One of the things I hate most in this world is also — probably understandably — one of the things I understand least. I’ll paint you a picture of it. You’re sitting in a crowded, dark moviehouse watching a film like, say, Brokeback Mountain. You’re watching a beautiful movie, watching breathlessly as everything clicks just right — the cinematography, the photography direction, the actors, the world, everything. And then the movie comes to a close and the music comes on, the credits roll and you’re faced with having to reenter the real world. And that reality comes even faster because someone is stepping over you to leave the theater and a couple is walking down the aisle out of the theater laughing about how one of them almost tripped on the carpet. Inane things. And things that instantly break the spell and break my heart. Such it is, I know, and it will continue to be this way. But I really hate it. If you don’t respect the movie, fine. But respect that I’m sitting there and have been changed a little bit by watching it and need some time to readjust.
Ok, but that’s movie theaters and not everyone has the same reverence for the medium that I have. I do get that. But here’s something I really don’t get. I’m taking a yoga class on Saturday mornings at the Memorial Union and my favorite part is the calming voice of the instructor (even when we’re doing some pose that has me shaking and feeling that death is imminent) and her efforts to have us relax. So, I was completely incensed this past Saturday when, about a minute after class started, two buffoons enter the classroom late and the nice, sweet instructor calmly tells them, “Come on in. We’re just starting.” I believe polite people of even below average intelligence would then quietly take off their shoes, put their coats to the side, roll out their mats and get started. All without a word. But, as usual, I am wrong. Instead the two launch into a loud recitation of how difficult it was for them to find the room; how they asked six different people for directions and received six different answers; how the third floor of the union disappears midway through (true, but common knowledge); and how they are finally here and aren’t we all thrilled. So, after this commotion, we try to all go back to being all centered and calm and looking up to our third eye or whatever. Then we do our yoga and it’s hard and frustrating and I’m really terrible at it. But then I am rewarded with my favorite part — the part at the end when the instructor tells us to relax, lie back, close our eyes, we’re done, we’ve done a great job and we need to let all of the stress and tension go. We get to lie down in the darkness for several minutes while calming, tranquil music plays. Unfortunately, in addition to being terrible about yoga poses, I’m terrible at shutting down my brain and relaxing. As she tells us to sink into the floor and then tells us to just float like a leaf, I can’t stop wondering how if I am supposed to be sinking, I can’t possibly be floating. And then I chastise myself for these thoughts, but then come back to, “But it’s true. I mean, really. How can I relax if I’m supposed to be both sinking and floating at once? No wonder I can’t do yoga.” Anyway, finally, there is a moment of peace and calm and I don’t even realize it’s happened until the instructor says, “It’s time now to come back. Wiggle your toes. Rotate your ankles. Open your eyes.” Damnit! I don’t want to wiggle my toes! I was just getting into it. And as I’m thinking, “Oh, that was so nice. I love the quiet,” my near-serenity is interrupted by one of the buffoons nearly screaming, “So, are we going to be in this room again next week?” And then loud advice from several people about which stairway is the best stairway to take to get to this room. And then louder discussion about which door to enter to get into the union itself to find this best stairway. My almost-moment was dashed. And this I really don’t get because these are people who are voluntarily paying to take yoga. The best part is the end and why you would want to cut that short — and ruin it for others — is beyond me.
Ok. Done.
I’m going to try now to balance the annoying people section of this post, though, with inspiration I found this weekend at the eleventh annual Wisconsin Film Festival. If you count the shorts as separate movies (and why wouldn’t you), I saw twelve in all. Of these twelve, there were several highlights. For example, Win or Lose: A Summer Camp Story. This was an awesomely funny documentary about an all-male summer camp in northern Wisconsin that ends the summer with an event they call “Collegiate Week.” It’s an incredibly intense week of competitions that (most of) the campers and staff hold in the highest regard. For example, a past participant said that getting married, having his kid and winning collegiate week were the best parts of his life. Probably in that order. It was neat, too, to see how boys behave at these ages, particularly in the absence of girls or women. This was an insanely fun movie, but I wouldn’t put it in the category of inspirational. Of course, I don’t think it was meant to be.
In the “people are amazing” category I place the following films: Football Under Cover, Between the Folds, Cheese Wars & The Rock-a-Fire Explosion. Also, the film festival’s own trailer is in this category because it was hilarious, creative, retro and just damn cool.
Football Under Cover was a neat story about a German women’s soccer team that had learned that Iran had its own national women’s soccer team, but that the team had never played a match against anyone but themselves. So, the German team sets out to change that. And the Iranian women are all for it. There are many obstacles to overcome — including getting visas and playing in pants and headscarves — but it comes to fruition and even ends in a tie! It was just neat to see how hard “ordinary” people work to pull off something like an international soccer game. And it was so interesting to see the women in the stadium watching the match (women aren’t allowed in the stadium at men’s matches and men weren’t allowed at this match). The women were so excited, cheering like crazy and demanding rights. It was just a really good, inspiring, honest movie.
Cheese Wars was a snapshot of the California dairy industry versus Wisconsin’s. It was made by a native Wisconsinite who is now a grad student at Berkeley. Though balanced between conversations with industry insiders from both states, Wisconsin came out securely on top, producing better quality products using less destructive and nasty means to do so. Wisconsin looked so beautiful in this movie — everyone was proud.
Between the Folds is a movie about people doing some serious origami. While the designs were truly outstanding, I was more moved by people who are so passionate and loving about something like paper folding. Some of the artists made really intricate figures that had expressive faces and detailed clothing. Some, though, were obsessed with the math involved and the implications the models had for scientific discovery. All, though, were people who fully embraced this art form and reveled in working with it. The two (very) short animated films that followed it were made by animators who clearly, too, love origami. These two films were almost as inspiring as the feature, even though they couldn’t have been more than two minutes each. They were so lovingly made that you couldn’t help but be entranced.
Speaking of entranced, a real disappointment was the movie It Takes a Cult. It was an inside look at the Washington state-based Love cult. Started in the 1960s (shocking!) by a fellow who called himself Love Israel, the cult developed around the idea of leaving the past behind (wow!); giving the cult your entire net worth (original!); taking the last name Israel; living all together on a plot of land outside Seattle; drug use (no!); men sleeping with any woman they wanted (unique!); no monogamy for men (what?!); women raising the children (outstanding!); book burning; and ridiculously annoying folk music. The thing was, the movie was billed as a “sympathetic” look at the cult, so I was wary that this would annoy me. The problem, though, was more that the movie felt really incomplete. There were more than allusions made to the greed of Love Israel and the disintegration of the cult from more than 300 people to fewer than 40, but there was absolutely no exploration of this. Most of the folks interviewed for the documentary had left the family, but the filmmaker refused/declined/neglected to ask any probative questions regarding why they had left. There was talk of some letter they had written to Love, who, without reading it, tore it up. Apparently, that was that and these members went on their way. Anyway, it was, as I said, a disappointment. I was left with way too many unanswered questions.
The last film I saw was The Rock-a-Fire Explosion, which is, expectedly, about The Rock-a-Fire Explosion. You remember, the Showbiz Pizza Place band, featuring Fats & Billy Bob & Mitzy Mozzarella. The film briefly chronicled the rise and fall of Showbiz Pizza and the related disintegration of the band, but mostly it was about the peeps who continue to be so in love with the band that they buy up the old memorabilia and hope for some sort of a resurrection. These people are pretty odd, but totally loveable. They speak about this band as if it were real, and as if it was the most remarkable human accomplishment ever. One guy worked three jobs for two or three years in order to buy a never-used complete band set (it seems as though it comes with tons and tons of miscellaneous props and, I’d say, at least six characters) to stick in his approximately 600 square foot house. He’d have the neighborhood kids come over from time to time to watch a show. I was worried this would get creepy, but it really didn’t. He made a bunch of videos of the band playing all sorts of songs and posted them on youtube and, apparently, the response has been tremendous. The creator of the band, a self-described inventor, is also — not surprisingly — a nut, too, and has some serious pack rat tendencies. In any event, the movie was a great reminder of how connected we can all become around something as odd as animatronics. And that human creation can sometimes touch us in such indescribable ways and that those feelings stay with us so much longer than we would have ever expected.
Saw The Reader yesterday. My first words (letters, really) when the ending credits rolled were, “WTF?” Seriously, WTF? I am so confused by the seriousness with which people are taking this movie. I am floored that this movie has gotten positive reviews. It is, in a word, craptastic! It starts out ok — the relationship between Michael, the boy, and Hannah, the woman, is somewhat interesting and benefits from the young Michael’s charm. During this portion, we are in late 1950s West Germany (at least mostly; sometimes we are in a more modern-day Germany with Ralph Fiennes being all cold and distant). And that’s pretty much where any part of the movie that could be considered good ends. After this point, the acting deteriorates rapidly and the inanity begins. Michael goes off to law school in Heidelberg and takes what can only be described as the dumbest law school class I’ve ever seen. The six or so students sit around and look morose and pained while discussing the then-current prosecution of former members of the S.S. One of the students is prone to ridiculous outburts that are all over the map — he alternately thinks the judicial proceedings against six female guards is “justice!” and then, later, a “diversion!” He screams and screams while his professor stupidly stands around looking impotent and saying things like, “A diversion? From what?” and “Exciting? How so?” These kids really should demand their tuition back. Anyway, as you know, Michael attends these proceedings to discover that Hannah is one of these former guards on trial for her life. It is at this point that Kate Winslet really lost it, in my opinion. Her constant forlorn, deer-in-the-headlights, confused look as to why she was on trial for sending her prisoners to Auschwitz was just plain ridiculous. Is she stupid, naive or evil? Are we somehow supposed to find nuance or humanity in her here? It’s just dumb and unbelievable. This stupidity and unbelievability are summed up in the image of another of the defendants knitting during the trial. I don’t dare to suggest that it seems entirely implausible that any country’s justice system would allow a defendant to knit during her trial, but how annoying and over-the-top was it to force this image down our throat? Oh, these women are just horrid! They were guards in a concentration camp and in the mid-to-late 1960s they still don’t get it, they are callous, unapologetic, evil ladies. Making characters purely evil like that is the place of comic book stories. I just had to roll my eyes.
After this point, Michael’s behavior becomes inexplicable to me. Actually, everything after this was inexplicable to me. The law student becoming such a hystrionic weirdo; the other law student storming out of the class; the vacant, Alzheimer-suffering professor; Hannah deciding it would be better to admit to horrendous war crimes than to admit she can’t read; Michael deciding he must confront her about this, only to back out; Michael growing up unable to be close to anyone made known to us by him telling us that (was this because Hannah was a Nazi or because of the fact he had a serious affair at 15 with a much older woman or because he had suffered from scarlet fever as a kid or just because? Does anyone care?); Michael making cassette tapes of the books he had already read to Hannah and sending them to her in prison, but refusing to acknowledge her attempts at literacy; Michael visiting her in prison when she is set to be released and refusing to touch her (this seems way more to me because she is old now, and not because he now knows she was a Nazi); and Hannah’s you-could-see-it-coming-from-almost-the-first-frame-of-the-movie-suicide.
Maybe the weirdest of all, though, was the near-final scene of the movie. Hannah is dead and she has left her money to a woman who had been a young girl in the camp at which Hannah worked and grew up to write a book about her experience (she had testified at Hannah’s trial). This woman, played by Lena Olin, is so unbelievable I felt I had missed something. Michael goes to see her in America and their conversation is beyond odd. I want to recount it word-for-word just to emphasize the totally bizarre quality of it, but I will summarize it as this:
Michael: I don’t know if you heard, but Hannah just died.
Lena Olin: Am I supposed to feel bad?
Michael: No, but she was a friend of mine.
Lena Olin: I demand to know what kind of relationship you two had!
Michael: We had an affair a long time ago.
Lena Olin: People always ask me what I learned in the camps. No one goes to the camps for an education. Nothing comes out of the camps!!!!
Michael: Anyway, she left you this money.
Lena Olin: I cannot accept that money!! If I gave it to a Jewish group having something to do with the Holocaust, it would be inappropriate!!!!
Michael: I was thinking a literacy group.
Lena Olin: Oh, yeah, that’d be ok. But Jews can read.
Michael: Thank you so much.
Lena Olin: I’m keeping this tea tin.
Basically, the end. Again, WTF?
A cliched Monday & a wrestling spoiler
Published February 16, 2009 movies 36 CommentsTags: craptastic, movies
I am in such a bad mood again and I feel terrible about it. The day started out fine. I mean, it’s Monday and I’m still shaking this cold, so I was a little foggy, but mostly it was ok. Pup and I took a stroll around the block. My bus driver asked me if I was spoiled on Valentine’s Day. And a nice lady in the elevator made a friendly comment that I didn’t understand until she got off on the fourth floor. Oops. But then.
The first thing was there was a message for me on my work voicemail left a little after 8 am from the Board president telling me he had sent me an email and needed my vote on something asap. Well, it was now 9:30 since that’s what time I get to work. I check my email and there’s a dozen emails about said-item-on-which-to-vote that indicate I am the last to vote. Oh, shut up. Then I try to pay my mobile phone bill because I got a letter this weekend saying, “Oops! Did you forget to pay us?” And, of course, I have. I must have signed up for webbills or something because I have not received a paper bill from them in some time. This is Credo mobile, which used to be Working Assets. Does anyone else have them? I used to really love Working Assets but since getting their mobile plan, I’ve had nothing but trouble, really. I’ve had to hassle on several overbilling problems and their failure to give me credit for switching plans, which they had promised. Anyway, that has all been in the past. But today I am trying to pay the bill online and I’ve been thwarted. You have to enroll in their webbilling program to pay. Well, I tried and get the response that I’ve already enrolled. But, I tried using my normal, and variations upon the normal, userid and am locked out. To retrieve your user id? You have to send them an email. What? So, hmm. I wonder when I’ll hear back about that. I am trying to pay my bill, and I can’t. I really, really hate that.
And the last thing is, my office is a total mess and it’s driving me crazy.
What I actually wanted to talk about, though, is The Wrestler. Have you seen this little film that has generated so much buzz? Well, if you haven’t, I definitely am not going to be the one to suggest you do. I have no idea — other than Mickey Rourke being Mickey Rourke and being in the movie — why in the world this movie has received so much attention. Though not nominated for best picture (thank God), it has received too big of a share of the awards season’s spotlight. Interestingly, Springsteen’s song — easily the best part of the movie (not just because the movie isn’t very good, but because the song is a masterpiece) — is not nominated for an Oscar, despite winning Best Song at the Globedy Globes. Explain that! Anyway, back to the movie. I thought the trailer was great — it looked compelling, heartfelt, honest and redemptive. I suppose it was maybe honest. But not really in a good way. More in the sense that a grocery store looks kinda like the one in the movie.
Mickey Rourke plays Randy the Ram, a professional wrestler whose actual name is Robin. Isn’t that hilarious? The thing is, I thought the movie was about an on-in-years professional wrestler who tries to stage a comeback, despite the industry telling him he’s finished. I thought the movie was about pursuing your dream and not letting others tell you you’re not good enough. I thought the movie was going to be one man’s tale of victory in the face of defeat. Boy was I wrong. This is a movie about a guy who’s really, pretty much, a selfish ass. I suppose it’s a tragedy — Robin’s fatal flaw is his love of wrestling in front of a crowd cheering for him, wearing flashy tights and cutting himself with a razor blade for his fans entertainment. And it is his fatal flaw. Well, one of them. The other seems to be he can think only of himself. Let me be clear: this movie is bleak. It is violent (in the sense that there’s a lot of blood and guts, not in the sense that people are really maliciously hurting each other) and there is a lot of ugly sex stuff, including a really super vulgar sex scene. Marisa Tomei, playing the proverbial stripper with a heart, is in a dumb role. She’s fine in it, of course, since she’s Marisa Tomei, but the role is ill-defined and cliched. I know it would be unusual for Randy to meet a woman at, say, a library or the symphony, but really, it has to be that he’s in love with the on-in-years stripper? And I fail to see any meaningful parallels between their worlds. Yes, they are both aging in a young person’s profession. But he loves wrestling. I don’t get the impression that she loves stripping and is sad that the frat boys at the bachelor party reject her for being too old. [Sidenote: I found that sort of unbelievable. I know I’ve never been to a strip club, but I have to imagine having someone as attractive as Marisa Tomei working in a tacky Jersey strip club would not be something a young man would thumb his nose at.] In any event, what basically happens is Randy is going along, wrestling on the weekends, stocking stock at a grocery store during the week. One day, bam, he takes it too far and has a heart attack. The doc tells him to knock off the wrestling. He asks Marisa Tomei out for a hamburger. She says he should call his daughter. He buys Evan Rachel Wood a pea coat and takes her to the Jersey Shore where they discover an abandoned ballroom. He has fun at his new job at the deli counter. He asks Marisa Tomei out again. She tells him she doesn’t date customers and, really, he doesn’t know her and she has a kid, does he really want that? Instead of convincing her he does want that and telling her that he’ll stop being a customer, he insults and degrades her. He then blows off Evan Rachel Wood by having sex in a bathroom with a firefighter-loving cokehead (what was this about?). He then decides to wrestle again. He tells Marisa Tomei about it when she comes to apologize to him. Yes, you heard that right. She apologizes to him. She quits her job and runs to find him at his big event, asking him not to do it, offering herself to him. He rejects her, goes out to the ring, his heart is failing him, he adopts some sort of Christ-like pose and bam! Springsteen!
What the hell was the point of this movie? I have no idea. I found it self-indulgent and pretty vacuous. Plus, the handheld cams made me dizzy.
life and puppies 