Movie review: "The More the Merrier" (1943)

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“The More the Merrier” is one of those movies that seems very ordinary until it sneaks up on you and bites you on the butt.

It sounds unremarkable in synopsis: Washington DC working woman Jean Arthur decides (for patriotic reasons) to rent out half her apartment, because there’s a housing shortage. She (reluctantly) ends up with grandfatherly wiseguy Charles Coburn as a roommate. He almost instantly rents half of his half-apartment to handsome young Joel McCrea, who’s doing some kind of mysterious government work.

And, as they say, hijinks ensue.

Unpromising, right? But it’s full of delights.

First of all: Jean Arthur. She’s almost forgotten now, but she was a great comedienne with a voice that was husky and squeaky at the same time, and she had terrific comic timing and a very expressive face.

Second: Charles Coburn. He’s sly and sympathetic, and is obviously plotting to get Joel and Jean together from the very outset. (He won an Academy Award for this performance, by the way.)

Third (and not least): Joel McCrea. You know how I feel about him. He’s not traditionally handsome – his nose is a little pointy – but he’s intensely masculine without being threatening or boorish, and he has the best smile.

Some of my favorite scenes:

-         McCrea and Coburn charge around the apartment making choo-choo-train noises, pretending to keep up with Jean Arthur’s ridiculously precise morning schedule.

-         McCrea and Coburn lie on the roof, on their stomachs, reading the Dick Tracy comic strip from the paper, while Jean Arthur watches them with bemusement. (Coburn reads Tracy; McCrea does the voice of the Leopard Lady.)

-         Jean Arthur, in her room, turns on some Latin dance music, and dances to it, all by herself. (She even turns her head to check out her own butt). In the next room over, Joel McCrea (in bathrobe) slowly begins to do the same step, also all by himself. And in the next room over from that, Charles Coburn does a few steps too.

-         Joel McCrea jumps into the shower, removes his bathrobe (after getting it soaking wet!), and proceeds to slap himself all over and bark like a seal, while Jean Arthur listens in astonishment from her bedroom.

-         An astonishing scene in which Jean Arthur describes her engagement to her “fiancé Mr. Pendergast,” while Joel McCrea makes love to her and kisses her. This scene is hotter than Hades, kids! And this is something Joel McCrea does very well; he did a similar scene in “The Palm Beach Story.” The message he communicates is: “I know you think you love someone else. But I love you, and I know you love me too.” It’s a very powerful message, and he communicates it better than any actor I’ve ever seen.

This is a classic movie. It’s small, but perfect in its way. It reminds me of Jane Austen’s remark about carving her “two inches of ivory.”

“The More the Merrier” is two inches of perfectly carved ivory. And (as Jane reminds us) two inches of perfectly-carved ivory can be very lovely.

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Book review: “How to Train a Wild Elephant (& Other Adventures in Mindfulness)” by Jan Chozen Bays

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I have been a wannabe Buddhist for decades now. I love its core ideas, and I accept the Four Noble Truths, but I find it difficult to practice any of the devotions or the meditations. My mind is just too busy and clouded with samsara.

So I was pleasantly attracted by the title of this book.

The human mind – your mind, my mind – is the “wild elephant” of the title. It runs in all directions at once. How do we tame it? This book offers suggestions.

I’ve found some of them very useful.

Examples:

Take three deep breaths. I close my eyes while doing this. Here’s the thing: don’t think. Slowly: inhale/exhale, inhale/exhale, inhale/exhale. Now open your eyes.

This is not just a calm-down exercise, or a “Serenity Now!” mantra. Just think about yourself, and your breathing, for a few seconds.

It works.

Whenever you see someone during the day, think: “This may be the last time I ever see him/her.” It reminds you of mortality. It keeps you from treating them slightingly or badly. And who knows? Once in a while it may be true.

Notice the color blue. This sounds stupid, but it’s very effective. Blue is the sky color, but it’s also everywhere. Take a moment and notice all the bits and pieces of blue around you. You’ll be astounded.

And the most difficult of all: When you’re eating, just eat. Take a bite, chew it, and swallow it. Do not take another bite until you’ve completely chewed and swallowed the first one. Make yourself aware of the taste of the food. Don’t read, or watch TV, or talk. Just eat, slowly and with appreciation.

Slowly, step by step, breath by breath, bite by bite, we may actually achieve nirvana.

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Movie review: "Holiday" (1938)

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Partner told me that, at a recent training session, the trainer asked each member of the class: What’s your favorite movie?

  Partner found it an impossible question. Who has just one favorite movie, after all?

  I agree completely. I have about twenty favorite movies, a few of which I’ve spoken about here: “Annie Hall,” “The Mask of Dimitrios,” “Dodsworth.”

  But, absolutely, “Holiday” (the 1938 version with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant) is on my list.

  It’s a witty little Philip Barry play from the 1920, which was first made into a 1930 movie, and then (immortally) into this 1938 movie. The movie didn’t do well, supposedly because late-Thirties audiences didn’t want to see a movie in which the hero didn’t want to work. Also, Katherine Hepburn had recently been declared "box-office poison."

  Piffle.

  Summary: Wealthy-by-birth Doris Nolan meets wealthy-by-hard-work Cary Grant at Lake Placid, and brings him back to New York City as her fiancé. Cary meets Doris’s carefree sister Katherine Hepburn, and realizes within a few days that he’s in love with the wrong sister.

  There are lots of things to admire here: Lew Ayres as alcoholic brother Ned, who’s pathetic but brave; Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon as Cary Grant’s funny best friends; George Cukor’s quiet sympathetic direction.

  Best of all, however, is the dialogue. Many of the best lines are given to Hepburn, as follows:

  Cary Grant has just admired an icky-poo doll once owned by his fiancé (Hepburn’s sister), saying “It even looks like her.” This follows:

  Linda Seton: [Hugging a toy giraffe] “Now don't you a word about Leopold, he's very sensitive.”
Johnny Case: “Yours.”
Linda Seton: “Looks like me.” [turning its head in profile]

  Or, when Hepburn’s horrible cousins appear in the doorway:   

Linda Seton: “Oh, for the love of Pete – it’s the witch and Dopey!”   

Or, questioning Cary on his family background:

  Linda Seton: “Do you mean to say that your mother wasn’t even a Whoozis?”

  This movie is a slice of lemon meringue pie, cool and refreshing. I could watch it morning, noon, and night.

  Do yourself a favor and take a look at it.

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Movie review: "Footlight Parade" (1933)

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I thought I’d seen everything made before 1935. Brother, was I wrong.

Turner Classic Movies threw “Footlight Parade” at me a few weeks ago. It’s a minor classic. Here’s the plot in brief: movie theaters are putting on live musical shows between their presentations, in order to bring in bigger audiences. Producer Jimmy Cagney is mass-producing these musical shows and sending them all over the country, but someone (???) is stealing his ideas. His secretary (Joan Blondell) is in love with him, though he’s too business-minded to notice.

Etc., etc., etc. Lots of musical numbers (by Busby Berkeley!), and lots of wisecracking dialogue.

But the revelation here is an actor named Frank McHugh.

McHugh is doing gay. And, for once, not flamboyant Franklin Pangborn gay, but subtle gay.

McHugh’s a dance director. He’s a miserable hypochondriac, and he threatens to quit every few minutes, and he always looks as if he’s ready to burst into tears. He leads the chorus girls in dance numbers, dancing almost as smoothly as they do, smoking a cigar the whole time.

Best of all: he sings a love duet with Dick Powell (all the while puffing on his cigar), in order to show the girls how it’s done. He’s perfectly oblivious, and he’s perfectly sweet. (And, I have to add, Dick Powell never once chokes on the cigar smoke that McHugh is blowing into his face.)

This is a charming movie, with some lovely dance numbers, and some interesting performances. And it’s a valuable study in 1930s Beliefs and Standards.

Take a moment out of your busy schedule and see it, if you have the chance.

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Movie review: "The Loved One" (1965)

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TCM featured “The Loved One” recently. The novel (by Evelyn Waugh) was strange enough, but the movie is stranger still. It was billed as “the motion picture with something to offend everyone.” Listen to this cast list: Milton Berle, Rod Steiger, Robert Morse, John Gielgud, Jonathan Winters, Liberace, Robert Morley, Tab Hunter.

Summary: an innocent young English poet-wannabe (Morse) comes to America in the 1960s to visit (and sponge upon) his successful uncle (the fey John Gielgud), who’s working in the movie industry. Uncle is fired from his studio and commits suicide. Nephew has nothing to fall back upon, and goes into the pet-cemetery business. His girlfriend (Anjanette Comer), who happens to be an embalmer at a high-class cemetery –

Well, you should really see the movie. It’s too funny and odd and outrageous.

Waugh’s novel is bitter enough, but the movie is far darker. It’s a bitter movie about the movie industry and the artificiality of Hollywood. Americans are shown to be shallow and stupid, but the British colony in Hollywood (led by the insufferably stuffy Robert Morley, an actor who plays “prime ministers and butlers”) is portrayed just as badly.

And the moral is: human beings are a bad lot. Bring on the replacements.

(Postscript: I couldn’t help counting up the name of gay actors in the cast: Gielgud, Liberace, Tab Hunter, Roddy MacDowell. It was a pleasure seeing them all together here. I hope they all got together after filming, and had a drink and a good laugh.)

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Movie review: "42nd Street"

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I think about movies a lot. Well, of course I do: I’m a gay man over fifty. And sometimes I wonder: Is there really such a thing as “the best movie”?

It would need to be Practically Perfect In Every Way: acting, direction, cinematography, dialogue. It would need a cleverly-constructed plot that ends satisfactorily. It would need to leave you feeling profoundly moved – amused, charmed, thoughtful – so that, a week later, you’d still be thinking about it.

As it turns out, there are a number of movies like this (for me, anyway). So: is it “Annie Hall”? “Casablanca”? “Duck Soup”? “The Maltese Falcon”? “Godfather Part II”? “The Lion in Winter?”

I can’t do more than make a list of ten or fifteen that fit all the above criteria: dynamite acting, beautiful direction, a crackerjack plot, sharp dialogue. All of the above fit the bill.

And so does “42^nd Street.”

This is a gem from 1933, and it’s easily the best “hey, let’s put on a show!” movie ever made. In short: it’s the Depression, and two amusingly morose Broadway producers are putting together a Broadway show. They hire the mercurially brilliant director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter), and the charming leading lady Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels). Dorothy sprains her ankle right before opening night. What will become of the show? Well, thank goodness there’s a plucky young chorus girl (Ruby Keeler) who can take over the part . . .

This sounds corny, but you can’t imagine how much fun it is until you’ve seen it. The dialogue – from eighty years ago – crackles with wit. (My favorite: the chorus performs an awful musical number, and the director screams in agony for them to stop. The musical director runs up front. “Didn’t you like it?” he asks. “Yes!” Warner Baxter screams. “I’ve loved it since 1905!”) The portrayals make me laugh, especially Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel as two sassy chorus girls, Ned Sparks as Morose Producer #1, and Guy Kibbee as a plump millionaire who likes to pat chorus girls on the bum. (The movie was pre-Code. Follow this link if you don’t know what that means. In short, for the rest of you: it means that the moviemakes could do pretty much what they felt like doing without censorship.)

This movie has some of the best musical numbers ever staged. Some of them are staged, remarkably enough, as practice numbers: you’re seeing them as if they’re being practiced for the Big Show. Naturally, you don’t see them in full costume and with full choreography until late in the movie, and then you see the genius of Busby Berkeley in full flower: the naughty hilarity of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” and the huge (and strangely moving) New York panorama of the title number.

And at the end, we see Warner Baxter the director on the sidewalk listening to departing audience members  talking about the show. They loved it! But why does the director get all the credit? It’s the leading lady that makes the show . . .

It’s a perfect ending.

It’s a perfect movie.

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Movie review: "Oz the Great and Powerful"

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Partner and I saw “Oz the Great and Powerful,” with James Franco and Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis, this past weekend. We knew the reviews hadn’t been great, but we knew also that it had done terrific box office the past few weeks, and that a number of my friends had seen it.

 

 

Um. Well . . .

 

 

I am, as you’d expect, a huge Ozphile. I love the 1939 movie (what gay man doesn’t?), and “Wicked” (both book and musical), and I own all fourteen of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, and I have seen “The Wiz” and a couple of the other knockoff versions. It’s a rich mythology, and lots of people have had fun playing in the wonderland that Baum created.

 

 

But this new movie is a mess, frankly. It has some great bits: the opening credits are wonderful – an animated sequence of magic tricks – and there are some beautiful scenes along the way: gorgeous super-realistic color, flowers that are gems and musical instruments. But it tries to recapture the amiable magic of the 1939 movie, and it fails. There are all kinds of winking reminiscences of the old movie: a lion, and some scarecrows, and a reference to “having no heart,” and singing/dancing Munchkins.

 

As in the 1939 movie, we open in Kansas, in a sepia-toned black-and-white. The Wizard (Mr. Franco) is a sideshow conjuror and a womanizer. He gets in a hot-air balloon to escape from the circus strongman, who’s just found out that his girlfriend has been seeing the Wizard on the side.

 

 

Cue the tornado!

 

 

The Land of Oz, naturally, is super-Technicolor. We meet witches, and flying monkeys, and talking birds. The movie was filmed in 2D/3D, so there are lots of soaring / flying / coasting scenes; when the Wizard first gets to Oz, he rides down a waterfall in a way that reminded me exactly of the Splash Mountain ride at Disney World. (If there’s not an “Oz” ride in Disney World within ten years – provided this movie is a hit – I’ll eat my magical hat.)

 

 

You’d think, with all that background material, that the screenwriters would have had enough to work with.

 

 

But they ended up with a thin movie full of thin characters.

 

 

You know what? Save yourself the heartache. Go to Netflix and see “Wild at Heart” instead. It’s a very sly retelling of the Oz story, and it’s much better than “Oz the Great and Powerful”:

 

 

 

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Book report: Anthony Powell's "Venusberg"

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There’s a certain kind of novel that was produced in great quantity by British writers in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s and 1950s.  They are usually brief, and set in Asia, or Eastern Europe, or Africa.  The characters are almost entirely expatriates – not only British, but Canadians, Americans, exiled Russians, and are often diplomats, or con men, or spies.  The atmosphere is usually light, until something oddly serious happens: an assassination, a declaration of war, some tragic event. 

 

 

These novels were (I think) a response to the British Empire’s expansion through the world.  There were enormous numbers of British people working in countries all over the world, living in unfamiliar environments, clinging to one another (and to other English-speakers and Europeans) for a sense of community.

 

 

Think of Kipling’s “Kim” as a progenitor of the genre.  Think of Graham Greene, with his African and Asian and Caribbean comedy/dramas like “A Burnt-Out Case” and “The Quiet American” and “The Comedians” and “Our Man in Havana.”  Think of Olivia Manning’s “Balkan Trilogy” (did I ever tell you that I knew someone who knew her?).  Think of Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet.”  Think of Doris Lessing’s “Children of Violence” series.  Think of Muriel Spark’s first story, “The Seraph and the Zambezi,” and her novella “The Go-Away Bird.” Think of Rose Macaulay’s wonderful “The Towers of Trebizond."

 

 

I recently discovered a prime example of the genre: Anthony Powell’s “Venusberg.”

 

 

It’s a simple story: a British journalist, Lushington, goes to an unnamed Baltic country on assignment.  Lushington is in love with a Englishwoman who is, in turn, hopelessly in love with the local British attaché, who (perversely and carelessly) doesn’t care about her at all. 

 

 

Whom do we meet in our unnamed Baltic country? Not one but two displaced Russian counts, one melancholy and doomed, the other probably a fake.  A local woman who’s only too eager to have an affair with Lushington.  Her husband, a clueless eminent local professor.  An American embassy worker who rattles on endlessly about virtue and progress and the future, while pronouncing himself a man of few words.  A local military officer named Waldemar, who is very pleasant and sincere, and who is trying very hard to learn how to be a true European.

 

 

We never discover the name of the country we’re in.  Everyone is speaking English most of the time, with a little bad French thrown in.  Now and then we’re told that someone speaks “in an unknown language”; the joke is that it’s probably the local language, which few of the main characters speak.

 

 

Love affairs happen.  Death happens.  Lushington goes back to England.

 

 

All in one hundred and sixty pages.

 

 

Here is Powell’s epigraph for the novel, which explains the title:

 

 

“Here, according to popular tradition, is situated the grotto of Venus, into which she enticed the knight Tannhauser; fine view from the top.”

 

 

From the sublime to the absurd: from the airy beauty of folklore and mythology to the flat pronouncements of a travel guide.

 

 

"Venusberg" is sad and funny and lovely, and gave me a few hours of pleasure, and it will stay with me.

 

 

Try it, if you can find it in your dusty old public library.  You may like it.

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Movie review: "Dodsworth"

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“Dodsworth” is a gem from 1936, directed by William Wyler, based on a subtle little Sinclair Lewis novel. Walter Huston is Sam Dodsworth, head of an automobile-manufacturing firm in Ohio, who’s retiring so that he can enjoy the Good Life in Europe. Ruth Chatterton is his silly shallow younger wife, who’s fairly drooling to get to Europe so that she can misbehave (and she does).

 

 

And Mary Astor is the nice divorced lady that Sam meets on the boat going over to Europe, who lives in Italy “because it’s cheap.”

 

 

Sam adores his silly young wife, even while she cheats on him with a variety of men: English, French, Austrian.

 

 

Finally Sam and his wife part ways.

 

 

Do you think Sam will find the nice lady in Italy whom he met on the boat?

 

 

Hmm. I wonder.

 

 

Mary Astor wrote about it in her wonderful autobiography, “A Life on Film.” She especially remembered creating the scene in which she sees Sam Dodsworth coming to her from the steamship in the Naples harbor. She recreates it for us: the chalk marks on the scenery, and the silly stuff (an ashcan labeled PUT YOUR BUTTS IN HERE that was in her eyeline). And she imagined herself the heroine, and waved to an imaginary man in a boat in the harbor, and made herself believe that it was real.

 

 

And it was real. “At every theater, at every performance,” she wrote, “the audience clapped their hands. It sounded like applause, but it was sheer joy.”

 

 

See “Dodsworth," kids. It is sheer joy.

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Movie review: "Admission"

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Partner and I saw “Admission,” with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, yesterday. Tina is a Princeton admissions officer; Paul is the hipster principal of a funky New Hampshire school that teaches cow-birthing and water purification alongside other subjects. Paul has a student he thinks ought to go to Princeton, and he contacts Tina, and –

 

 

Well, if I tell you that the movie is at least sixty percent romantic comedy, you can write the rest yourself.

 

 

It’s pleasant enough. There are some funny moments, and some well-acted moments. Tina is always funny and really very pretty, and Paul is an all-purpose romantic leading man: cute without being overwhelming, cheerful, smart. There’s a nice supporting cast, including Michael Sheen (who was one of Tina’s boyfriends on “30 Rock,” and who has wonderful anti-chemistry with her), Wallace Shawn (doing his funny squinting schtick, but always welcome), and Lily Tomlin (more on her later).

 

 

But the movie goes in too many directions. Sometimes it wants to be a commentary on college admissions; there’s a running gag that, when Tina or one of her colleagues reads an application, the applicant appears in physical form before them. All of them are good kids, one way or another. How do you choose between them?

 

 

But it muddles the issue. American college and universities can’t admit every applicant, so they try to balance everything: test results, transcripts, extracurriculars, essays, recommendations. They want the kids who are most likely to succeed. The movie tries to make this point, but then lets sentimentality fudge the issue. A minor character makes an icy comment early in the movie: “In England we rely on test results. Why can’t you do that here?” (She’s supposed to be a unpleasant person, so it’s assumed that she’s heartless, and we’re supposed to disagree with her. But: why not indeed?)

 

 

Also there’s a lot of foofaraw about parentage. Tina has an ambivalent attitude toward being a parent, and maybe has a kid, and maybe not. Paul has an adopted African son and a crazy alcoholic mother who thinks lawn jockeys are cute. Tina’s mother is an unrepentant 1960s feminist, of whom Tina is not very fond.

 

 

This is supposed to be interesting and meaningful. But: meh.

 

 

Overall, this movie is a minor effort.

 

 

Now let’s talk about Lily Tomlin.

 

 

Manohla Dargis in the New York Times pointed out that Tina Fey has a knack for being clear-eyed about what it means to be a feminist, both the positives and the pitfalls. On “30 Rock,” Tina created a comedy writer (played by Carrie Fisher) who was way ahead of her time, but who was now living nearly-penniless in a filthy apartment and was still writing 1970s-style comedy.

 

 

Lily Tomlin, playing Tina’s mother in “Admission,” is the ultimate 1960s feminist. When Tina walks into her mother’s house, the first thing you see is a poster of a fish riding a bicycle. (If this doesn’t immediately suggest anything to you, just Google “fish bicycle woman.”) Lily’s dogs are named Gloria and Betty. She has a tattoo with the word “Bella” on it. Just to show that some things never change, she has an “Occupy Wall Street” poster framed on the wall. Lily has a double mastectomy without thinking about it too much, and without telling her daughter Tina. “They said it was aggressive,” Lily says. “I’m aggressive too. So I got rid of it.”

 

 

I was paying attention to every moment Lily was onscreen. She made the movie worthwhile to me.

 

 

It’s not a great movie. But if you like Tina Fey, or Lily Tomlin, you should see this movie.

 

 

Because sisterhood is powerful.

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Movie review: "Quartet"

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There’s a certain kind of movie: you take mature actors and give them a simple drama with a simple framework, and you let them have fun with it.

 

 

“The Whales of August” was one of these movies. So was “Autumn Sonata.” So was “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

 

 

And now we have “Quartet.”

 

 

It has the simplest of simple plots: a group of elderly musicians in a retirement home. They still sing, and play, and recall their former glory. Then a great diva (Maggie Smith) comes to live there, which greatly disturbs another resident, her former husband, a great tenor (Tom Courtenay). Their friends, the sweetly demented Cissy (Pauline Collins) and the randy Wilf (Billy Connolly), heckle and coax them from the wings.

 

 

But the big gala is coming up. Will the four of them reunite to sing the quartet from “Rigoletto,” as they’d done so gloriously five decades before?

 

 

Well, yes, of course they will.

 

 

The joy is in the acting: Billy Connolly’s bright-eyed mischief-making, Pauline Collins weaving in and out of reality. Michael Gambon plays the impresario, and I swear he’s wearing his Dumbledore outfit, and he yells at everyone. Also, there are a bunch of real musicians, vocalists and instrumentalists, who came out of retirement to perform here, and they are all wonderful. (There’s a trio of elderly retired sopranos who reprise “Three Little Maids From School,” in costume yet, and they’re wonderful.)

 

 

You will not be surprised to hear that the audience (here in the Avon Cinema, a small local movie-theater on the east side of Providence) was mostly older – even older than Partner and me together (combined age 121!). This is an older person’s movie. One of the most resonant messages is this: during the credits, we see the names of the actors and performers one by one, accompanied by pictures of them when they were younger. The message is that growing old is hard, but that life is not over until it’s over.

 

 

The ultimate cliché in this kind of movie is to have someone die; it’s usually the turning point, the “message.” It doesn’t happen here. It’s not necessary. We know all too well what’s going to happen.

 

 

And in the meantime, we can still make some music.

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Book report: Martin Stannard's "Muriel Spark: The Biography"

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Over the past few months I have read quite a few biographies.

 

 

Most of them aren’t very well-written, but this is probably to be expected. Most books in general aren’t very well-written.

 

 

But it’s a shame to read a badly-written book, especially when it’s the biography of a writer.

 

 

There have been excellent biographies of writers, of course. Do I need to mention James Boswell’s life of Doctor Johnson? (Of course, most of the wit was courtesy of Samuel Johnson himself, but Boswell was the genius who remembered every word Johnson said, and who edited Johnson’s life and words into the joyfully lively memoir we have today.) And I remember that I almost wept when I read Quentin Bell’s opening sentence of the bio of his aunt, Virginia Woolf: “Virginia Woolf was a Miss Stephen.” It’s a perfect sentence: stiff, Victorian, but telling you something you vitally need to know (and probably don’t know) about his aunt.

 

 

And recently I discovered Martin Stannard’s biography of Muriel Spark.

 

 

Muriel Spark is one of my favorite authors. Well, I mean really: “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” and “Memento Mori,” and “The Abbess of Crewe.” I’d heard that her personal life was a ghastly mess, and now (having read some of the bio) I know it for a fact. (Her life was no more a mess than, let’s say, mine, but still – she’s an author, and it’s in a book!)

 

 

But Martin Stannard can write.

 

 

From only the first few pages of the book:

 

 

[Speaking of how to refer to Muriel Spark in the body of the book:] “At the risk of appearing over-familiar, I decided to describe her as ‘Muriel.’ This does not signify that she counted me as a friend.”

 

 

[Regarding Muriel’s grandmother Adelaide:] “Adelaide never welcomed Uncle Phil’s children. She was an appalling cook and there was always the danger that she might offer food.”

 

 

[Regarding Muriel’s mother Cissy:] “Cissy sailed through life like a ramshackle galleon.”

 

 

[A few pages later, also about Muriel’s mother:] “Cissy had once asked her mother how one kept men happy. ‘You have to feed ‘em both ends,’ she replied.”

 

 

Martin Stannard is a remarkable writer – probably more so for having dealt with a famously private and prickly writer.

 

 

Go read “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” if you haven’t already (the movie doesn’t count!). And then read Stannard’s biography.

 

 

And then get back to me, you old ramshackle galleons.

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Movie review: "Les Miserables"

 

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We saw the new movie version of “Les Miserables” on Saturday afternoon. I’ve never seen the stage show; naturally I know some of the music (there was a concert performance on TV a long time ago, and naturally I remember George Costanza singing “Master of the House” incessantly on “Seinfeld,” and then there was the interminable Susan Boyle).

 

 

I don’t know if there’s anyone who doesn’t know the plot by now, but if you don’t, I don’t want to spoil it for you. But it’s full of escapes and tragedy and deathbed scenes, and if your throat doesn’t tighten up at least once, you have no soul.

 

 

This is a dream cast: Hugh Jackman as the haunted Jean Valjean, Anne Hathaway as Fantine, Russell Crowe as Javert, Amanda Seyfried (whom I only knew as the daughter in “Mamma Mia”) as Cosette, and a wonderful newcomer, Samantha Barks, as Eponine. Lots of critics have complained that Crowe can’t sing, but frankly I don’t know what they’re talking about; he sings beautifully, and he is properly menacing in his role. I felt sorry for poor Hugh Jackman, though, who has a great voice, but who was forced to sing about half an octave above his comfortable range. His upper register is very weak, so the higher he sings, the feebler he sounds . . . But who cares? He’s Hugh Jackman, and I’d drink a whole tubful of his bathwater if I had the chance. (There’s a scene late in the movie when he sings a high-pitched number, and then speaks a few words in a normal tone, and I swear his voice drops four octaves as he does it.)

 

 

Let me just say a word about the wicked innkeeper and his wife, played perfectly by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter. (Honestly, what happened to Helena? She was such a fresh-faced young girl back in the Eighties. Then she started playing roles like Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter movies, and the demented pastry-cook in “Sweeney Todd.” And now this! She probably told the movie’s wardrobe department not to worry about her; she’d just bring her own clothes and fright-wig from home.) Sacha and Helena are a treat whenever they’re on the screen; they’re fairy-tale malevolent, but their stupidity and venality always work against them, and their natural goofiness makes you chuckle every time they come on screen.

 

 

You’ve probably heard the gimmick of the movie: instead of recording the songs separately, Tom Hooper, the director, made his cast sing right on the spot as they acted. This is an interesting choice; it’s what you get during a stage show, after all, and I think that’s what he was after. Sadly, however, Hooper keeps jabbing the camera into everyone’s face all the time, and it can be a little unnerving. 

 

 

But these are minor quibbles. It’s an epic story, and this is an epic production. The acting is first-rate, and the sets are just the perfect combination of stage-illusion and reality. If it doesn’t get a handful of Oscar noms, je mangerai mon chapeau.

 

 

So get out there, kids.

 

 

Aux barricades!

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Movie review: "The Hobbit"

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Partner and I saw “The Hobbit” on Xmas Eve. I’m a big Tolkien nerd, so I couldn’t stay away, but I was dreading it a little too. The “Lord of the Rings” movies were beautifully made, but they didn’t always precisely agree with the way I’d imagined the books when I read them in the 1960s, and it hurt my heart a little.

 

 

“The Hobbit” is a children’s book. It tells the same basic story as “The Lord of the Rings” – a journey, lots of adventures along the way, spiders, monsters, battles, a distant mountain in the East – but it’s jokey and cute. There are some solemn bits, but they’re solemn in a long-ago-and-far-away fairy-tale way. 

 

 

So the question was: could Peter Jackson take a funny clever children’s book and make something of it that wasn’t just “Lord of the Rings: the Prequel”?

 

 

The early reviews weren’t great. David Edelstein last weekend said that “The Hobbit” was “our punishment for liking ‘The Lord of the Rings’ too much.” Other reviewers complained of all kinds of things: too fast, too slow, too much CGI, too serious, too long. The only reviewer I saw who liked it was the FT’s Nigel Andrews, who calls it “a sort of masterwork.” He allows that you “have to like looking at folkloric weirdos with beards, hats, and bulbous noses,” and also that the first part of the movie has too many “walkies and fighties,” but it carries you along with it anyway.

 

 

I am here to tell you that Nigel Andrews was right, and I am the kind of person who likes weirdos with bulbous noses and pointy hats, and I liked it very much.

 

 

First, however, the bad news: it’s much too long. The book moves along very briskly, so Jackson really had to pump a bunch of stuff into it to make it longer: flashbacks, explanatory sequences, framing devices. He drew, not only from “The Hobbit,” but from “The Lord of the Rings” itself, and its appendices, and lots of other Tolkien material. I didn’t find it tedious – as I said above, I’m a Tolkien nerd, I can name all thirteen dwarves while standing on my head – but I wondered how Partner was dealing with it. Was he overdosing on Middle-Earth?

 

 

But no! He liked it!

 

 

So there’s got to be some good stuff there.

 

 

Are you kidding? There’s a ton of good stuff there. There’s Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, funny and very (ahem) human; Ian McKellan as a (slightly) younger Gandalf, irascible as ever. Hugo Weaving is back as Elrond, and he doesn’t look constipated anymore: he actually looks cheerful at times! And, naturally, you will find Andy Serkis’s Gollum, creepy and sad and horrible, in the movie’s best scene.

 

 

Jackson departed from the book, naturally, but his choices were mostly good. Bilbo and Gandalf are travelling with a group of thirteen dwarves. How in the hell do you create thirteen distinctive characters all at once and make them memorable? The answer: you don’t. You make maybe five or six of them distinctive, and rely on the rest of them to make background chatter. So we get to know Balin and Dwalin, and Bofur (I think), and Bombur (well, even in the book he’s the fat one), and Fili and Kili. And that’s plenty.

 

 

Jackson made the fight-scenes monumental, and dramatic, and even clever. (Barry Humphries, the comedian who created Dame Edna Everage, is the Great Goblin, a horrible creature with a huge goiter and a gift for snappy dialogue.)

 

 

But here’s the best bit of all.

 

 

In the book, about fifty pages along, Bilbo and the dwarves encounter three trolls with Cockney accents. The trolls want to eat Bilbo & Co., and have a big argument over how to cook them.

 

 

Before we went, I said to Partner, “I hope he gets the trolls right. And I hope they have Cockney accents.”

 

 

And they do.

 

 

Elbereth bless you, Peter Jackson.

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Movie review: "Lincoln"

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This past weekend Partner and I saw Spielberg’s new movie, “Lincoln.” It’s very good – but then it’s bound to be: not only is it directed by Spielberg, it’s based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about the Lincoln administration, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, writer of “Angels in America.”  The action covers the first few months of 1865: the Civil War, while still horribly bloody, is winding down, and the North is on the verge of winning. Lincoln is faced with a choice: accept the South’s peace overtures and allow them back into the Union as if nothing has happened, or ensure that the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery is passed first. If he doesn’t do the latter, the old South will insist on its slave-holding ways. If he refuses to talk peace with the South’s representatives, Congress will accuse him of holding the country hostage on behalf of the Abolitionist movement.

 

 

If this sounds dull, it’s not. Like all of Spielberg’s best movies, it seesaws between tension and calm. Its best scenes capture both: Lincoln’s ride through the battlefield after the battle of Petersburg, as he surveys the mounds of dead bodies, is captured in ominous silence.

 

 

The cast is terrific, led by Daniel Day-Lewis as a gritty folksy Lincoln, half Andy Griffith, half John the Baptist, pacing inexorably (and knowingly) toward his own death, and Sally Field as a plump frantic Mary Todd Lincoln, smarter and more subtle than any other portrayal of Mary I’ve ever seen. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives us a young haunted Robert Lincoln; Tommy Lee Jones is Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican eager to eviscerate the rebellious South; David Strathairn is a lean acute William Seward; James Cusack is a plump mustached “lobbyist” hired by Seward (and indirectly by Lincoln) to bring the House of Representatives around to Lincoln’s point of view.

 

 

The movie depicts the reelection of a popular president who is, nonetheless, abhorred by a significant chunk of the populace. This president is trying to put through a significant piece of legislation – not because it’s popular, but because it’s the right thing to do, and because if he doesn’t, he will have accomplished nothing to solve the country’s real problems. This president also faces an angry and contentious congress.

 

 

Sound familiar?

 

 

Go see this movie. It will give you something to think about.

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Movie review: "Skyfall"

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Partner and I saw the latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” yesterday. I wasn’t expecting much, frankly. The Financial Times review a week or two ago described Daniel Craig as “looking more than ever like a garden gnome who, having overdone it a little in the 1990s, spent the following decade in the gym by way of compensation.”

 

 

I’m pleased to tell you that it’s actually a pretty good movie.

 

 

Every actor who’s been lucky enough to play James Bond has done something different with the role. Sean Connery, the original, set the pace: serious but wryly funny, very physical, very sexy, heartlessly deadly when necessary. Roger Moore was Bond-the-playboy, and very much Austin Powers’s granddaddy. The others – Lazenby, Brosnan, Dalton – came and went without much impact.

 

 

Daniel Craig, in this (his third) Bond movie, gives us Bond-as-Batman: haunted by the death of his parents, noble, humorless, murderous.

 

 

Also, he has dreamy blue eyes, and a body like a Greek god.

 

 

I’m sorry: what were we talking about?

 

 

I can’t tell you much about the movie without spoiling it for you. I will say that Judi Dench is back as M, cold and bitchy as ever, and strangely compelling. We have Naomie Harris as Bond’s, um, assistant, and Ben Whishaw as a cocky young Q. We have Ralph Fiennes as a Ministry bureaucrat who turns out to be something more.

 

 

Also, we have Javier Bardem as the villain.

 

 

You know how you think of some James Bond movies in shorthand? “Diamonds Are Forever” is “the one in Las Vegas.” “Goldfinger” is “the one where they try to get Fort Knox.” Well, this one will be “the one where Javier Bardem played that blond madman.” (Seriously, what is it about Javier Bardem’s hair? He’s a very handsome man, but just give him a strange haircut and/or a dye job, and he’s the Antichrist.)

 

 

Javier doesn’t appear in the movie until about halfway through, and he’s very nasty and very memorable. He rolls his eyes and giggles unbearably. He’s sexually ambiguous in a very stickily insane way. You spend the last half of the movie wishing that James Bond would just show up and kill him as brutally as possible.

 

 

And do you get your wish?

 

 

I won’t tell you.

 

 

The first James Bond picture, “Dr. No,” came out fifty years ago, in 1962. We know the James Bond clichés by heart by now, and many of them are here: the Aston-Martin, the shaken martini. Craig even says the obligatory line: “Bond. James Bond.” It makes you feel at home; it makes you realize that, whatever else happens, James is gonna come through, guns blazing, in the final reel. But this movie also acknowledges that time is passing: Bond is getting old, and M is getting old.

 

 

But maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as Bond can kill everybody he needs to kill.

 

 

I can’t neglect mentioning the remarkable cinematography, nor Sam Mendes’s direction. Whole scenes are amazing: a dreamlike night scene in Shanghai, full of windows and reflected light; a nightmare struggle in Macao with Komodo dragons looking on.

 

 

I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would, as you can probably tell. It was too long, and too noisy, and too violent, naturally. But it was funny and compelling too, and very well-acted.

 

 

Go see it, kids.

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Restaurant review: Le Bouchon du Vaugueux

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Food in France is wonderful and plentiful, but it is generally not cheap. Even lunch at a corner bistro will set you back maybe thirty or forty euro. We lunched one day at McDonald’s (well, you need to touch home base once in a while), and even that was nearly twenty euro for the two of us.

 

 

 

As a result, we ended up eating prepared sandwiches and pastries a lot. This was not a problem, really; these are very inexpensive, and easy to find, and really pretty good most of the time.

 

 

 

But Partner and I agreed that we needed a few really good meals, just to complete our France experience.

 

 

 

Before our departure, Partner did a lot of web-surfing, and found a small restaurant in Caen called Le Bouchon du Vaugueux. The pictures were charming, and the menu was tempting. Here’s the current prix-fixe menu (a few items have changed since our visit):

 

MENU A 20 EUROS

Persillé de jambon et palette de porc aux lentilles  ou
Velouté de potiron toast au fromage de chèvre  ou
Salade de joue de porc et saucisson de volaille, vinaigrette de châtaigne.
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Carré de porc épais et moelleux , laqué à la moutarde douce et cornichons ou
Pavé de colin à la plancha beurre blanc poivre rose et ciboulette ou
Lapin braisé aux raisins et confit d'oignons.
********************************
Assiette de 3 fromages Normand ou  
Crème chocolat-café et nage de poires à l'anis ou 
Mousse ivoire aux litchis pulpe de framboises  ou
Pudding façon pain perdu au rhum.

 

 

 

(I do not translate, on purpose. I want you to get the full flavor of the place.)

 

 

 

Partner corresponded with the manager, Mme. Poussier, and she confirmed our reservation well before we left.

 

 

 

We ate there on the evening of Friday the fifth of October.

 

 

 

I will remember that meal for a long time.

 

 

Mme. Poussier welcomed us warmly. “I know, I know!” she said when we arrived. “From the Internet!”

 

 

 

We both started with the celery soup, garnished with sesame seeds and served with toasted bread and cheese. Does that sound too simple? It was very simple. It was also wonderful. (I know we should have had two different appetizers, but we’re stupid tourists, and we both thought that the soup sounded too good to pass up. It was.)

 

 

 

For a main course, Partner chose the “carre de porc epais et moelleux” (thick juicy pork steak), with sweet mustard and French-style pickles as a garnish.

 

 

 

I had the rabbit.

 

 

 

Yes, I know.

 

 

 

(My mother long ago told me that, when she was growing up, her mother would serve rabbit from time to time, and tell the kids it was chicken. Grandma’s father, who lived with them, would wait until Grandma’s back was turned and then make little hippety-hop motions with his hands. And the kids would refuse to eat it, and Grandma was invariably furious, and never did figure out how the kids knew.)

 

 

 

Rabbit, if you’ve never had it, is delicious. You can certainly make believe that it’s chicken, but it’s really like nothing else. The rabbit I ate at the Bouchon – served in a sauce flavored with onions and raisins – was heavenly.

 

 

 

Dessert? I went with the cheese plate. Partner had the grilled pineapple with chocolate sauce. Both of us were very happy.

 

 

 

When we arrived at seven-thirty, the place (which is not large) was almost empty. By eight-thirty, it was packed: a few tourists like us, and lots of very contented-looking locals.

 

 

 

The service was immaculate. Mme. Poussier had the dining room running like a Swiss watch: I saw her more than once give instructions to a waiter with a nod of her head or a glance.

 

 

 

And all of the above, with the addition of a few beers and mineral waters and two cups of coffee, ran to sixty-five euro, which is approximately twice the price of two burger-and-fries combos at a Paris bistro.

 

 

 

I am also pleased to tell you that Le Bouchon has earned a Bib Gourmand citation from the Michelin guide, which means they provide “excellence on a budget.”

 

 

 

I know, dear reader, you’re probably not planning a trip to Caen in the near future.  

 

 

 

But if you are: please go to Le Bouchon du Vaugueux, and treat yourself to a wonderful meal.

 

 

 

And, when you’re there, please let Mme. Poussier know that we think of her daily.

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Movie review: "The Master"

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Partner and I saw “The Master,” with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, on Saturday.

 

 

 

It was very – interesting.

 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong. I liked it very much, and I think I will remember it for a long time. Both Hoffman and Phoenix were very good in it.

 

 

 

But this is not a movie for everyone. It’s a character study, and not really plot-driven.

 

 

 

In brief: Phoenix plays Freddy Quill, a (probably) mentally-ill World War II veteran. He’s sex-obsessed (I’ve never seen anyone literally pound sand before), and an alcoholic (with admixtures of paint thinner and gasoline and the chemicals you use to develop photographs), and deeply disturbed.

 

 

 

In 1950, Freddy meets Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), a self-assured cult leader who’s written a book called “The Cause.” Dodd’s cult is a mix of reincarnation, Scientology, mysticism, and something that resembles Buddhism.

 

 

 

They fall in love immediately.

 

 

 

But it is not the love of human being for human being, or gay love, or anything else.

 

 

 

It is the love of a man for a German shepherd.

 

 

 

Freddy Quill is an animal. He is violent and uncontrollable. He loves his master. He disobeys him, and repents, and whines and cries and begs. He rolls with him in the grass.

 

 

 

Lancaster Dodd loves Freddy, though his wife (Amy Adams) and children disapprove. He tries to discipline Freddy, through training, and love, and everything he can muster. He sings to him. He calls him a “scoundrel.” He calls him an “animal.” He uses him as a test subject. He treats him abominably. 

 

 

 

Freddy goes feral a couple of times: he wanders away, and tries to find a life for himself elsewhere.

 

 

 

But he always comes home to his master.

 

 

 

The movie is dull and slow in spots. But the performances by Hoffman and Phoenix – and by Amy Adams – are just about perfect.

 

 

 

See it if you can.

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Movie review: “The Bourne Legacy”

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Partner and I finally saw “The Bourne Legacy” last weekend. 

 

First of all, there was this Jeremy Renner fellow, who has interesting eyes and a nice face and a very neato body. He’s Aaron Cross, a supersoldier / agent who’s caught in an elaborate doublecross / triplecross scheme, and who fights back.

 

 

Like so many modern action/adventures, it’s an extended chase scene. It is, however, an exceptionally well-done extended chase scene. It has the usual parkour stuff, but also mopeds and motorcycles and cars. Never for a moment do you lose focus, or forget the goal.

 

 

The thing that surprised me, however, is the cinematography.

 

 

There are a couple of scenes, in among the frantic chases, that are beautifully dreamlike:

 

 

-         An opening sequence in the mountains of Alaska, including a scene with Renner diving (mostly naked) in a freezing river in front of a waterfall, like every Hawaiian idyll you’ve ever seen, but at forty degrees below;

-         A violent shootout in a remote abandoned house, all white wood and long staircase and peaceful autumn foliage outside, that feels like something out of “Inception”;

-         A panic in a Manila drug factory, with hundreds of workers in pink smocks and pink hairnets running for the exits;

-         Manila itself, a Third World dreamscape of alleyways and broken rooftops and smoggy skylines;

-         An Elysian archipelago of tropical islands, and a small boat running between them.

 

 

The supporting cast (Scott Glenn, Ed Norton, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Stacy Keach) could have been replaced with nobodies, or cardboard cutouts. The movie’s all about Jeremy and his traveling companion / hostage / girlfriend, Rachel Weisz. You know it’s going to turn out okay for them (until the sequel, anyway).

 

 

Partner and I highly recommend this picture.

 

 

And we’re deeply committed to the sequel.

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Theater review: "Timeshare," at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep

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Partner and I saw the last play in the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep series, “Timeshare,” on Saturday night.

 

 

I love a good farce. I have a very childish sense of humor; I love it when people run in and out of rooms, and scream, and dress in ridiculous outfits, and hide inside coffee tables. (Of course, it has to be done well.  Silly is good; stupid is quite another thing.) Also, you need actors with good timing, who can scream, and cajole, and wheedle, and make funny faces, and do long ridiculous takes.

 

 

We were fortunate to have pretty much all of the above on Saturday night.

 

 

This is a traditional mixed-up family comedy: everyone (mother, father, married daughter + husband, unmarried daughter + boyfriend) shows up at the mountain cabin on the same weekend. Misunderstandings ensue. Two engagement rings are hidden, misplaced, given to the wrong recipients.

 

 

As in all good farce, there is a happy ending.

 

 

I especially liked the use – and subtle subversion – of stereotypes. There’s an unbearable Jewish mother, who turns out to be a convert. The whiny emasculated Jewish dad is also a stoner. The handsome black boyfriend (a shaygetz if I ever saw one) is Jewish. The banker son-in-law is as dumb as a bag of hammers.

 

 

All in all: nicely done.

 

 

(This is a brand-new play, and a very nice one. It takes a teeny bit too long to set the scene in the first act; I think we could have met the characters more speedily. I kept wanting it to be funny during the first few scenes, but it felt sitcom-watery. Once all six of the characters were introduced, however, the fun began in earnest, and there were few dull moments after that.)

 

 

I give high marks to three of the performers: Mark Cohen, the father; Anne Nichols, the mother; and Ben Chase, the goofily stupid/charming son-in-law. (He was my favorite: he’s tall and lanky, with an expressive face and a voice that goes from cornball to Yalie to falsetto seamlessly. We got a lot of laughs out of him.)

 

 

From “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”:

 

 

No royal curse, no Trojan horse –

And a happy ending, of course.

What is the moral? Must be a moral . . .

Here is the moral, wrong or right:

Tragedy tomorrow – comedy tonight!

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