Surprisingly Heavy

No, smart@$$, that isn’t another one of my nicknames.  I am actually referring to a movie I watched recently.  With a title like 21 Grams, you would expect it to be lighter – or about drugs, perhaps.  It is neither.  It is one of those multiple-interweaving-narratives movies.  As is common for the type,   its perspective was bleak and existentialist and I found that the film ultimately left me with a sense of the futility of human endeavor, morality, life itself…

Red Meat

First of all, happy Easter.  I saw a little rabbit on the lawn a couple mornings ago, and am taking it as a good omen.  Also, little brochures saying “He is Risen!” have been appearing sporadically on our door for about a week.

Rebekah and I watched Crank last night.  I had wanted to see it for a bit, being intrigued by the premise.  While I can’t say that it was everything I’d hoped, it did have that 70′s exploitation film vibe – gratuitous violence, sex, and cussing, and just enough humor to draw the occasional laugh without trying too hard.   Between that and the viciousness of A Clockwork Orange, which I am about halfway through, I am in a bit of a slaughterhouse mood.  Which is why, I suppose, Rebekah and I are having red meat for Easter, which I believe is something of a no-no.  Still, we do have this beautiful pair of NY strip steaks Pop gifted me to further my Mattkins, so it’s kind of a golden opportunity.

Speaking of Mattkins, that one day of transression almost a week ago has more-or-less stalled my weight loss.  I think I am still losing, but I have definitely entered the “long slow grind” portion of the program.  I made it to the gym four times this week, so here’s hoping that I can keep things headed in the right direction.

Again, happy Easter, and I hope those of you able to eat sweets enjoy some Cadbury eggs in my stead – I look forward to those things all year.

Mattinee

Forgive the pun, I am helpless before that particular compulsion at times.  I’d like to catch y’all up on some of the movies I have seen recently.

Miami Vice – I didn’t seek this out because of my fondness for the 80′s tv show, which I have never seen.  No, I was intrigued because of director Michael Mann, whose previous directing credits include Heat and Collateral and who, as you might imagine, has a reputation for excellence when it comes to these gritty crime sagas.  Personally, I always find that the  endings of his movies are botched, but enjoy the first 80-90% immensely.

I’ll never know how he did with Miami Vice, as it became perhaps the third or fourth movie I have ever deliberately stopped watching midway through.  Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell have so little chemistry as partners that one almost suspects they performed separately in front of blue screens and were edited together, and there wasn’t an abundance of action or any comedy to distract the viewer from the inadequate acting.  Awful, just awful.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist – This, on the other hand, is a suitably charming teen comedy.

The Assassination of Jesse James – Superb, but be warned.  It moves slowly and draws on the psychology of its characters to provide most of the drama.  This makes it a less than ideal choice for people in need of a shoot ‘em up western.  This finely-etched, understated drama benefits immensely from the skills of its two lead actors.  Brad Pitt excels in his portrayal of the famous outlaw, and Casey Affleck turns in possibly his finest performance yet as the ill-fated Robert Ford.

The Shallow End

I recently finished Washington Irving’s Sketchbook, and have begun digging into the Bourne Ultimatum.  It will be the last Bourne novel for me; though I understand that the character was franchised out to veteran hack Eric Van Lustbader in an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the movies, I have no interest in going beyond the original three books.

As I begin this latest Bourne book, I find myself musing about, of all things, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.  It has always been a reflex to compare the two, ever since they emerged from the relative obscurity of playing bit parts in early Kevin Smith movies to be illuminated by the same lightning bolt of genius, Good Will Hunting, which they starred in and co-wrote.

Since then, both of their careers have gone in different directions.  Damon has accrued a series of increasingly impressive roles as a “serious” dramatic actor, and Affleck has…well, continued to act in various movies while being connected romantically to a number of famous beauties.  You can pick your own winner, I suppose.

Ultimately, though, their careers converged again in 2002 when each played a secret agent of literary fame – Affleck portraying Jack Ryan in Sum of All Fears, and Damon as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity.  In this particular comparison, there can be no doubt who fared better.

Affleck got the chance to play perhaps the most famous secret agent in American fiction, but he had to fill the shoes of recent predecessors in the role Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin, both of whom excel him in charm and acting ability.  Moreover, his costar, Morgan Freeman, likewise overshadows him, which is never good.  Throw in a lousy script and you have the kind of bomb that can kill off one of the more successful book-to-film franchises in history.

Damon took on the role of a famous agent in Jason Bourne, but did not have any previous theatrical releases to contend with.  He was able to show a surprising degree of sincerity in playing a black operative stricken with amnesia – really an implausible role, but one which he was able to make real enough for moviegoers with his convincing performance.  His vehicle was filled out with very good actors as well, like Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, and Clive Owen, but they were used more appropriately as foils and villains, and never overshadowed Damon’s protagonist.

The end result is that Affleck wound up looking like a third-rate version of Alec Baldwin (a niche previously filled by William Baldwin), while Damon created the most memorable secret agent since Connery’s Bond.

Shamrock

Well, today is St. Paddy’s Day, but I won’t be getting up to any of my usual shenanigans – ‘Bekah is on Spring Break, and we are going to the zoo.  Hopefully it will not be so crowded today, so there will be no one to see when I vault into the enclosure where they keep those miniature deer and bring Clemmy home a new friend – we will bring along a stroller for smuggling our new buddy home.

For those of you interested in being Irishy without getting a green hangover for tomorrow, I might suggest a number of fine Irish films as a possible vector of appropriately Irish enjoyment.  For a long time my favorite was, corny as this may sound, Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Good luck tracking it down, though – I don’t think it’s even been made into a dvd.  For the more serious-minded, Michael Collins may be a good choice – it is a compelling look at some of the most pivotal events in Irish history – the ones that led to most of Ireland being its own country today.

Other than those, there are a slew of wonderful comedies set in Ireland that I can recommend – Waking Ned Devine being perhaps foremost, or maybe A Separate Piece.  Finally, any of the “Barrytown Trilogy”: The Commitments, The Snapper, or  The Van, would be a good decision.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

The Latin, of course, translates to “Now we shall talk about Watchmen”, which I saw the other night.  To be honest, I didn’t really think it was filmable.  Or more precisely, I thought it was filmable, but not in a way that would be terribly accessible to the casual moviegoer, which would nix its chances of getting a decent budget from a major studio.  I was not alone in this opinion either – it seems that Terry Gilliam, once attached to direct, said the same thing, and Alan Moore, who wrote the thing, concurred.

We were all wrong, as it turns out.  By backing off just a tiny bit from the more difficult aspects of the film, or glossing over/streamlining just a couple of the more unwieldy elements, the film preserved  as much of the original’s virtues as can be expected from any cross-media adaptation.  Like the Lord of the Rings movies before it, it took a beloved piece from a different medium and adapted it at a standard which met the high expectations of a die-hard fanbase.  If one is new to the whole Watchmen phenomenon, I would recommend reading the graphic novel first, because it is still better, but then, by all means, go see the movie.  It stands with Sin City as the shining example of how to adapt comics to the big screen.

I Can Hardly Wait

Tomorrow Watchmen comes out.  It is based on arguably the best graphic novel of all time, written by the astonishingly talented Alan Moore.  I would say that for fans of superhero comics it is possibly the single most essential read there is.  I sincerely hope that the movie doesn’t cop out on the comic’s incredible ending, which is not even close to the typical Hollywood paradigm.  I have promised to wait a couple days and see it with Ezekiel, who has to spend his Friday night attending a musical for class.  ohmanohmanohmanohman…

Live From New York…

Whew!  Periodically the pressure builds up and I have to address the tumultuous events going on in my personal life, after which I can go back to nattering about inconsequential matters.  Today is a nattering day…

It is no real secret to those who’ve known me for any length of time that an important influence in my childhood was Nickelodeon’s rerunning of various old television shows, particularly old episodes of Saturday Night Live (the “not ready for primetime” era).  I devoured all of these I could get, and they helped me develop an adult sensibility about comedy and a liberal worldview well-laced with irony.  Which may not have been good things to acquire when your age was still in single digits, incidentally.  If I had needed any help alienating myself from my peers, my trenchant observations about the Carter administration would certainly have finished things off.

Still, this would’ve just been an odd detail from my childhood had Comedy Central not syndicated the episodes from the show’s second golden age, the era of Hartman, Myers, Carvey, Farley, Sandler et al.  I was again immersed in the irreverent sketch comedy, and getting to watch several episodes a week allowed me to get it at a higher dosage than watching just the latest new episode each Saturday.

I have spent a lot of my life with SNL, and for better or worse I know that it has been an influence on my own thought, speech, and writing.

I spent some more time with SNL recently, this time in the form of a pair of dvds.  The first was The Best of Christopher Walken, who has hosted SNL on numerous occasions, and done some great work.  I must confess to being somewhat disappointed in this one, actually.  Sure, it has the legendary “cowbell” sketch, and one of my favorite recurring characters, “the Continental”, but that is really about it.  If you are a big fan of SNL’s brand of humor, and you haven’t seen these sketches, it is definitely worth a look, otherwise give it a pass.

The second was Saturday Night Live: The First Five Years.  This is a documentary about the shows origins and that amazing first cast of Akroyd, Belushi, Chase, Curtin, Morris, Newman, and Radner (and Murray starting with season two).  It provides some very cool insight into the show’s beginnings, but is still just a bare overview – I found myself willing/wanting to spend another couple hours on the subject when it was over.  In addition, there was very, very little actual sketch material on the disc, so potential viewers looking to catch their old favorites are out of luck (though I understand the first few seasons are available in their entirety in expensive box-set form).  Ultimately, it is for already devoted fans who are looking for a bit more info, not people looking to get a feel for what the show itself is about.

Smoke Signals

Back in college I had read Sherman Alexie’s very good book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  It is a series of vignettes and short stories about life on a reservation, in format somewhat similar to The House on Mango Street.  It is a very accessible book, its stories deftly-spun and moving.  I knew at the time they had made a movie of it, but hadn’t gotten around to watching it until just last week.

I recommend it.

The film is called Smoke Signals, and it does a very good job of selecting a single strand of narrative from the book’s tangled skein and running with it.  It lacks starpower (Tom Skerrit is in the film for 5 minutes, and you’ve never heard of anyone else in the movie), and the production values are minimal, but it is just about the most accessible independent film you’ll ever see, eschewing convoluted narrative structures, experimentation with cinematic techniques, or bizarre symbolism in favor of a well-told tale from a fresh perspective.

A Night at the Movies

Rebekah and I made up yesterday.  We even went out to a movie last night, something we rarely do.  We saw Taken, a new action movie which delivers admirably on its premise and doesn’t waste time doing anything else.  It wasn’t one of those great transcendent films, just a tightly focused, well-crafted action-thriller.  I recommend it to anyone who enjoys those.

Well, it appears that I have staved off a total breakdown this week, but I have really spread myself thin.  I can tell because alot of the negativity which roils around inside me more-or-less all the time seeped out into the wider world this week.  Sorry to anyone whom I managed to hurt.  I’m trying to feel better, to be better.