Wednesday, October 26, 2011

almost famous: almost perfect




There exists a small but important category of films which try to capture a moment, past but treasured, in the life of a music scene. Ken Russell is a frequent romper in this sandbox, his forays ranging from Tommy to the Music Lovers and beyond. A few of my favorites, off the top of my head, are 24 Hour Party People with its diligent and very funny portrayal of the Manchester scene, and Todd Haynes' flawed but enchanting (and homoerotically epic) Velvet Goldmine, which brings to life the vibrancy of those early Glam Rockers. Almost Famous is for those of us Americans who fell in love with music when it still came on vinyl, those of us who remember the magic of the gatefold and the inner sleeve and spent our Sunday evenings with one ear glued to a transistor radio while Casey Kasem announced the week's American Top Forty. Cameron Crowe will never again make a film anywhere near this good. How could he? It was the movie he was born to make,-- all the others are some kind of filler,-- and there's hardly anything wrong with it.

These days I am hard on Philip Seymour Hoffman. I would not, for example, have handed him a gold statue for his overweening, overmincing, truly annoying portrayal of Truman Capote. Not that Capote wasn't the Monarch of Overween and Overmince, but PSH made it look like a heavy and difficult task, whereas Capote always made it look easy. (So, incidentally, does Toby Jones in Infamous, released --or, rather, swallowed,-- by the studio at the same time as Seymour Hoffman's biopic.)

Still, I would without hesitation give him an Oscar for this, his Lester Bangs. Although he's got maybe thirty lines in the whole picture, his readings are both hilarious and heart-breaking, and keep wonderfully true to the man himself. Nostalgically, that means something to me, as there was a time when I, too, wanted to be Lester Bangs.

While I'm at it, let me wax on awhile about other performances. Kate Hudson did one thing wrong: the opening "stewardess" routine. It may be the way it's filmed; anyway, something rings untrue about it. In the context of a lesser performance, the glitch might have gone unnoticed, but in a two-hour tour-de-force during which it's the single false note, it stands out. I'd have given her an Oscar as well, sure, and Frances McDormand, too, who brings wit and depth and intensity to a potentially thankless role as the unhip mom.

This is my favorite thing Billy Crudup ever did, and I can't think of anything he's ever done badly. Has he given a bad performance, ever, in anything? And Jason Lee is perfect as the arrogant lead singer, because he's more than that, and less than that, all at once and without contradiction.

Almost Famous makes me want to fall in love with music again. From the opening scenes it captures that magical shibboleth music was, maybe still is, when you're young. Only back then, there was this mystical ritual after you got your long-awaited record home from the local record-store (which usually had a headshop upstairs): the stripping off of the thin plastic overwrap, the smell of the cover, open it up, look at the secrets of the gatefold. Slip the record out of its sleeve, feel the weight of promise as you glance at the lyrics. Slip the vinyl out, look it over. Is there a secret message scribbled anywhere? Once the Replacements wrote "We're sorry, Portland," in the lacuna at the end of the last song. We were all overjoyed when we found it. It was an apology in reference to their last drunken debauch at Satyricon, a legendary show during which Tommy stripped off his clothes (my friend Tres ended up with his green polyester houndstooth jacket, another friend got one leg of his green polyester houndstooth pants), and my co-worker Rebecca got to drum awhile because the whole thing was so drunk and disorderly. The apology was on the Don't Tell a Soul LP and they played at Roseland that tour. They were on their best behaviour, and it may have been their dullest live performance ever.

But I digress. THEN you put the record on, generally with headphones the first time. And if it was any good, if it was Zeppelin or Lou Reed or Pixies or fucking Jane's Addiction, it might change your perception of reality for good, like an acid trip does, flip all the switches in your brain the other way and then sometimes, if you're lucky, not all of them get switched back into normalcy, and you're looking at the world through the pane of a different window.

That's what Almost Famous is about. About the hypnotically numinous promise that rock and roll held out,-- holds out, I reckon; I'm just too old to see it anymore,-- and the inevitable disillusionment which comes crashing down in its place after the high is over. But the sweetness of the movie's nostalgia is not twee at all, and Crowe manages to give us an autobiographical piece that is funny and unpretentious and non-egotistical, a full-on piece of magic.

robert carlyle film festival: eragon


Stefen Fangmeier is an accomplished Visual Effects guy around Hollywood, and this is his maiden voyage in the director's chair. It is also a knock-kneed, by-the-numbers, teen-aimed fantasy that has not one iota of that visceral id-muscle which fuels Harry Potter or the Twilight series. It follows the Joseph Campbell playbook fairly carefully, charting a normal lad's journey into his destined True Love and True Work, both found in the same dragon. She is his Dragon; he is her Rider; this was Destined from Before Time. (The Dragon's egg will not hatch until it is in the presence of its Rider. Also, if the Rider dies, his Dragon will follow, but not necessarily the other way round.)

Observe the checklist: family (in the form of a very nice uncle played by Alun Armstrong in an entirely futile performance) gets offed early by evil forces trying to keep our hero from his fate: check. Beautiful anima-figure sets it all in motion by stealing the egg and casting it into our hero's path, then recurs to set our minds at rest that although his dragon is his soul-mate, he'll have an appropriate screen at which to project his libido: check. Gruff and wizened mentor arrives: check... in the form of Jeremy Irons, in a very fine albeit, again, wasted performance. Boy and Dragon have adventures, check, pursued by the evil minion (Carlyle) of the evil king (Malkovich, annoying as usual. Luckily, his screen-time is minimal, and he's usually playing off Carlyle, who makes up for his sucking-void lack of presence).

Carlyle is easily the best thing about this whole mess; he is the eerie warrior called Durza. Nearly impossible to kill, the look on his face when he takes an arrow through the forehead, a mix of ecstasy, triumph and Schadenfreude, is utterly chilling. That's the best moment. You can fast-forward to that, then turn it off afterwards. I'd tell you how it ends right now to save you the time, but the ending is so unextraordinary that it's gone completely out of my mind already.