Sunday, May 15, 2011
Quick High
Fast Five, the Rocky-is-an-old-man-boxing-when-Medicare-goes-bankrupt edition of The Fast and The Furious, is a perfect perfectly formulaic heist caper with delightful over-the-top violations of the laws of physics and good timing in the delivery of the goods, whether it be just-in-time saves of the main characters, witty ripostes, or explosions. There's no sex, little language, some great zippy vehicles and very few de riguer booty shots of luscious women lithely draping themselves over even more luscious automobile engines, and overall a sweet chemistry between the characters, particularly the comfortable-in-his-own-skin Vin Diesel, who practically perspires beefy cool, and the picture-perfect Paul Walker, who is saved from sinking into an abyss of conventional prettiness by his charming fondness for his onscreen brother in car thievery. The supporting players all seem to be having an equally good time, and although you can map the route to the ending without your Garmin, it's so much fun to ride along that you don't care. It was a great couple of hours' entertainment--left me feeling like a kid, and I'm actually tempted to acquire it for my DVD/Blu-Ray collection for that very reason. Every once and a while you just need to go on a joy ride!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Speaking Kingishly & A Very Potter Musical
I have never wanted to be an actor, knowing too well that I wasn't blessed with even a small portion of the gift of unselfconscious imitation. I'm a behind-the-scenes sort, adept at makeup application (I remember one particular Halloween night when a girlfriend wanted to go to a party as an accident victim, and I did too good a job: people at the party kept inquiring, with real concern, "What happened to you?!"), and competent at costuming, but awful onstage. But I've always admired those people who have that gift of gab that makes speaking in voices which aren't really their own believable in front of audiences both receptive and critical.
So it was that I was particularly impressed by Colin Firth's recent turn in the Academy Award-nominated The King's Speech, as he was required by the role to go against decades of thespian training and practice of smooth articulation and comfortable delivery. Firth is best known among Jane Austen fangirls from the lengthy two-decade-old BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, wherein he is an improbably buff but verbally winsome Mr. Darcy. Affecting trouble speaking is not a stretch for some of us (my first major public presentation, in high school, had me shaking so much that I was literally pounding the podium from nerves), but for someone whose stock-in-trade is glibness, allowing seeming anxiety to seize the throat and jangle the vocal chords realistically is doubly awesome.
I also enjoyed The King's Speech because of its narrative applicability to other psychological situations out of which one cannot "snap" despite well-meaning exhortation from well-placed people. King George was not healed from his infirmity, but he was able to mitigate the worst manifestations of its effects through the rigorous application of disciplinary techniques and (most of all) the steady support of a real friend. Prior to the diagnosis of my OCD (the real, clinical kind, not the slight personality quirk that some like to claim), so many "normal" people gave me so much advice about this or that silver bullet cure for my condition. Each of these miracle cures wasn't--some had short term benefits, but most were just so much mumbo-jumbo self-help claptrap. Kudos to the writers and producers of this excellent film for capturing that tension between the role of personal responsibility, mental healing, and the acknowledgement that some conditions are beyond cure, that it is not the one who triumphs entirely over circumstances who is heroic, but the one who meets them and refuses to succumb despite his or her infirmity.
On a much lighter note, last night an acquaintance suggested to me that I look up the Harry Potter musical on YouTube. Because of its considerable length, the people who posted it split the video into dozens of segments, of which I've only watched the first two. But it was great! Decent singing voices, and the writers and actors captured so much of what we love about Rowling's characters (and their film incarnations). I'll enjoy watching the rest in bits over the coming weeks.
So it was that I was particularly impressed by Colin Firth's recent turn in the Academy Award-nominated The King's Speech, as he was required by the role to go against decades of thespian training and practice of smooth articulation and comfortable delivery. Firth is best known among Jane Austen fangirls from the lengthy two-decade-old BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, wherein he is an improbably buff but verbally winsome Mr. Darcy. Affecting trouble speaking is not a stretch for some of us (my first major public presentation, in high school, had me shaking so much that I was literally pounding the podium from nerves), but for someone whose stock-in-trade is glibness, allowing seeming anxiety to seize the throat and jangle the vocal chords realistically is doubly awesome.
I also enjoyed The King's Speech because of its narrative applicability to other psychological situations out of which one cannot "snap" despite well-meaning exhortation from well-placed people. King George was not healed from his infirmity, but he was able to mitigate the worst manifestations of its effects through the rigorous application of disciplinary techniques and (most of all) the steady support of a real friend. Prior to the diagnosis of my OCD (the real, clinical kind, not the slight personality quirk that some like to claim), so many "normal" people gave me so much advice about this or that silver bullet cure for my condition. Each of these miracle cures wasn't--some had short term benefits, but most were just so much mumbo-jumbo self-help claptrap. Kudos to the writers and producers of this excellent film for capturing that tension between the role of personal responsibility, mental healing, and the acknowledgement that some conditions are beyond cure, that it is not the one who triumphs entirely over circumstances who is heroic, but the one who meets them and refuses to succumb despite his or her infirmity.
On a much lighter note, last night an acquaintance suggested to me that I look up the Harry Potter musical on YouTube. Because of its considerable length, the people who posted it split the video into dozens of segments, of which I've only watched the first two. But it was great! Decent singing voices, and the writers and actors captured so much of what we love about Rowling's characters (and their film incarnations). I'll enjoy watching the rest in bits over the coming weeks.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Plan A 9ght Of Movie Spaciness
A fun activity for an evening's entertainment is getting a group together to eat and then watch a really bad movie. You need a quick wit, a good sense of humor and a willingness to let (encourage) everyone to make snide remarks throughout the repartee and action onscreen. Your stomach muscles will be better for the giggling, and your appreciation for genuinely good film will be exponentially improved.
Sometimes you really luck out and instead of a mildly wretched movie that ends up being boring, you hit the mother load of dreadfulness that keeps you in stitches throughout: A perfect such Bad Movie Night movie is the legendarily awful Plan 9 From Outer Space, directed by the world's worst director, Ed Wood. Some friends and I got together recently to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Kansas statehood and (irrelevantly) to screen Plan 9, which none of us had seen in full. This movie does not disappoint in any respect: the camera work, the continuity, the costumes, the dialogue, the plot, the scenery, the acting and the cinematography are all so appallingly bad that not a minute went by without one or another viewer's just ridicule. It didn't even need alcoholic enhancement to achieve the desired hilarious effect.
I can understand why Plan 9 has become something of a cult classic--from the polished-satin peasant shirts of the space invaders, the snails-pace "attacks" of the zombies (including a corset-pinched femme fatale with dagger nails and witch makeup), the body-double-sub-for-Bela Lugosi (who died early in production) who spends most of the movie with his cloak over his face (yeah, really--suuure we can't tell it's not Bela), to the jumps from daylight to darkness and back, from the wooden (yet earnest) acting to the shameless disregard for firearms safety to the leaden super-complex explanatory dialogue, this is a wreck not to be missed. One of histrionic proportions.
Sometimes you really luck out and instead of a mildly wretched movie that ends up being boring, you hit the mother load of dreadfulness that keeps you in stitches throughout: A perfect such Bad Movie Night movie is the legendarily awful Plan 9 From Outer Space, directed by the world's worst director, Ed Wood. Some friends and I got together recently to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Kansas statehood and (irrelevantly) to screen Plan 9, which none of us had seen in full. This movie does not disappoint in any respect: the camera work, the continuity, the costumes, the dialogue, the plot, the scenery, the acting and the cinematography are all so appallingly bad that not a minute went by without one or another viewer's just ridicule. It didn't even need alcoholic enhancement to achieve the desired hilarious effect.
I can understand why Plan 9 has become something of a cult classic--from the polished-satin peasant shirts of the space invaders, the snails-pace "attacks" of the zombies (including a corset-pinched femme fatale with dagger nails and witch makeup), the body-double-sub-for-Bela Lugosi (who died early in production) who spends most of the movie with his cloak over his face (yeah, really--suuure we can't tell it's not Bela), to the jumps from daylight to darkness and back, from the wooden (yet earnest) acting to the shameless disregard for firearms safety to the leaden super-complex explanatory dialogue, this is a wreck not to be missed. One of histrionic proportions.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sherlock
I have been introduced to a new audio-visual obsession by my friend Louisa: the frustratingly brief Season One of the BBC’s new take on the world’s most famous consulting detective.
Starring the (British) Office’s Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson, and as the title character, a limber-limbed and dark-locked man with the exquisitely improbable [birth!] name of Benedict Cumberbatch (with such a Shakespearian Victory Garden moniker, A Much Ado about Melon Raising handle, is it any wonder that this AD 2011 BC chose acting as his profession?) this Sherlock owes as much to Dexter as to Doyle.
Like the main man of the American Showtime crime serial, the 21st century BBC-1 reincarnation of the Victorian sleuth is a “high-functioning sociopath,” unnaturally fascinated by extra-legal puzzles, most involving blood, and naturally incapable of responding appropriately to verbal and physical cues that the rest of us ordinary, non-criminally-minded folk take for granted. As my sister would say, he’s unequivocally “on the spectrum,” brilliant and quick with observation as he is with technology, able to gauge in milliseconds what most might not grasp in hours, delighted with horror as he ferrets out who perpetrated the problem that so fascinates him, and quick to offend those around him who are not operating at his speed of logic.
Dexter’s transatlantic influence is likewise evidenced by the fact that the laboratory and the morgue, the cell phone and the search engine are as familiar territory to this Sherlock as were the hansom cabs and deerstalkers of his nineteenth century predecessor. And even some of the musical scoring for this series incorporates precisely the synthetic harpsichord which so thrills the bloodthirsty fans of Miami’s favorite mass murderer.
And still, as with all good “reboots”, the creators have not lost their reverence for the beloved literary original, from referencing the “five pips” to the “three-pipe problem” [a “three patch problem” in these nonsmoking times]. The relationship between Afghan veteran doctor John Watson—who now blogs about his unusual roommate—and the impractical yet impossibly smart Sherlock Holmes is exactly—one might even say truthfully—rendered. The steady, yet ready Watson keeps his frenetic friend from stepping on too many toes and makes sure their refrigerator is regularly re-stocked, while Holmes’ adventures offer the necessary excitement his war-wounded comrade fails to find in much of civilian life.
And me, I am simply fascinated.
As of now, however, they’ve only made three episodes. THREE! And the last ends with a cliff-hanger (not at Richenbach Falls, but next to an equally-remote municipal indoor pool) confrontation with a metrosexual Moriarty. They say Season Two is forthcoming, but not until this autumn. How very maddening.
Starring the (British) Office’s Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson, and as the title character, a limber-limbed and dark-locked man with the exquisitely improbable [birth!] name of Benedict Cumberbatch (with such a Shakespearian Victory Garden moniker, A Much Ado about Melon Raising handle, is it any wonder that this AD 2011 BC chose acting as his profession?) this Sherlock owes as much to Dexter as to Doyle.
Like the main man of the American Showtime crime serial, the 21st century BBC-1 reincarnation of the Victorian sleuth is a “high-functioning sociopath,” unnaturally fascinated by extra-legal puzzles, most involving blood, and naturally incapable of responding appropriately to verbal and physical cues that the rest of us ordinary, non-criminally-minded folk take for granted. As my sister would say, he’s unequivocally “on the spectrum,” brilliant and quick with observation as he is with technology, able to gauge in milliseconds what most might not grasp in hours, delighted with horror as he ferrets out who perpetrated the problem that so fascinates him, and quick to offend those around him who are not operating at his speed of logic.
Dexter’s transatlantic influence is likewise evidenced by the fact that the laboratory and the morgue, the cell phone and the search engine are as familiar territory to this Sherlock as were the hansom cabs and deerstalkers of his nineteenth century predecessor. And even some of the musical scoring for this series incorporates precisely the synthetic harpsichord which so thrills the bloodthirsty fans of Miami’s favorite mass murderer.
And still, as with all good “reboots”, the creators have not lost their reverence for the beloved literary original, from referencing the “five pips” to the “three-pipe problem” [a “three patch problem” in these nonsmoking times]. The relationship between Afghan veteran doctor John Watson—who now blogs about his unusual roommate—and the impractical yet impossibly smart Sherlock Holmes is exactly—one might even say truthfully—rendered. The steady, yet ready Watson keeps his frenetic friend from stepping on too many toes and makes sure their refrigerator is regularly re-stocked, while Holmes’ adventures offer the necessary excitement his war-wounded comrade fails to find in much of civilian life.
And me, I am simply fascinated.
As of now, however, they’ve only made three episodes. THREE! And the last ends with a cliff-hanger (not at Richenbach Falls, but next to an equally-remote municipal indoor pool) confrontation with a metrosexual Moriarty. They say Season Two is forthcoming, but not until this autumn. How very maddening.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
John Adams MiniSeries Premier at the Capitol, 03.05.08
At the reception in the Capitol Building's Statuary Hall.
Tom Hanks gives the introduction.
David McCullough remarks on HBO's efforts against "historical illiteracy."
The crew with David McCullough.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
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