what i've been watching: june, part 2

In the Electric Mist: (2009. dir: Bertrand Tavernier) In the Philip Marlowe novels, Raymond Chandler managed to create a world in which the mass of humanity was darkly twisted and corrupt, where the apparently innocent were not innocent, where Marlowe retained a semblance of self-respect only by holding himself aloof and living strictly by a self-imposed code of honor. Although Marlowe himself often comes away from his adventures feeling unclean and depressed, we the readers do not; we are shielded from it by his stoicism and underplayed ironic humor, and most of all by the gorgeous poetry at the soul of him. This is all in tribute to Chandler, who was an undisputed master of his craft. His books never get old, and he, with Dashiell Hammett and a few others, spawned an industry that has erupted into monstrous proportions today.

Take, for example, James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels. I read a clutchful of these when I was early in the throes of my vigorous love affair with New Orleans. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead was easily my favorite because in it the stoical and sober-alcoholic veteran Robicheaux gets dosed with acid by Hollywood types and for the rest of the book has periodic, wonderful conversations with the ghost of a Confederate general who may or may not be a projection of his own best self. The Louisiana of the Robicheaux books is as dark and morally polluted as anything Marlowe or the Continental Op or even the easily detestable Mike Hammer ever faced, all tough men surviving in ethically slimy times.

French director Bertrand Tavernier has teleported the story into post-Katrina days and cast Tommy Lee Jones in the lead (I always saw Fred Ward, but the craggy face is the important thing, and Jones is no poor man's second). In fact, it sports an enviable cast, including Peter Sarsgaard, an actor I usually love but who is missing something in this role, some intangible but necessary thing. An almost unrecognisable Levon Helm (again, a man I love) is the Confederate general and the wonderful Kelly Macdonald gamely forces herself into the cramped little thankless role of a good-hearted but nonetheless tainted-by-Hollywood actress. In the end, in spite of the talent involved, there's something crucial lacking here. The awful seaminess of this world seems contrived and untrue, as it sometimes does, truth be told, in Burke's books. The characters are too often no thicker than two dimensions and all the acting skill in the world can't fix a story that's broken at its very foundation.



the Other Boleyn Girl: >SPOILER ALERT< This is a nasty tale of a heartless girl who seduces her sister's lover (while the sister is sequestered in confinement bearing his child, and at the behest of her very ambitious and possibly sociopathic family) using a dastardly yet effective tactic of ongoing titillation and withholding until he divorces his wife (meanwhile inventing Anglicanism) to marry her. Then, when the going gets rough, she sleeps with her own brother in a desperate bid to bear the needed heir to the throne, thereby condemning him to death alongside her, and nearly destroying her sister's life out of sheer petty selfishness.

An American film was also made from the same wildly popular piece of chick-lit which spawned this one, and I watched this British take first because the actors are top-notch: Jodhi May gives a manically spirited and eerily convincing performance as Anne Boleyn, and I always love Nastascha McElhone, even here in her non-role as watcher and Silent Wronged Woman. There's a lot of handheld camera and reality-TV private interviews in which the characters explain their motivations and feelings directly to us, and I suppose that's designed to make us feel right at home with these old Tudors, but instead it feels cheap. At the end we see the Tower today, tourists visiting the spot where Anne got her head chopped off, and that feels even cheaper.




My Dinner With Jimi: (2003. dir: Bill Fishman) Think of it as a morality tale for the fame-hungry: these are Howard Kaylen's remembrances of the most exciting days of his life, when the Turtles were touring England on "Happy Together" and hanging at the Speakeasy with the hippest of the hip, and yet the conversations are all as asanine and dull as you'll find in any high school cafeteria any day of the week. Moral lesson the second: all the hippest of the hip we come across (Mama Cass, Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, Graham Nash, Donovan, Brian Jones, the Beatles and Hendrix) are just as bored as everyone else, pursuing drugs and sex to fill the time until they can get back onstage again. Is this news to anyone? There are exactly two moments when this fatuous piece of flaccidity comes to life: the worst is when John Lennon (Brian Groh) unleashes a devastating barrage of unfunny wit against the Turtles' rhythm guitarist, inspiring him to put down his guitar and never play again for the rest of his life. The scene crackles with an electricity of mortifying cruelty and bears with it an awful pong of validity. The other is when we finally get into the booth with the spinach omelettes and the man we've been waiting for... And even then, it's not that he ever says anything profound, it just always feels like he's about to. And, frankly, Hendrix had so much damn charisma that it stretches across the years and out of the grave, and a guy playing him with enough truth (as Royale Watkins does here) is a thing you can't look away from, even when the dialogue is this grindingly tedious.

what i've been watching: june edition

Death Proof: (2007. dir: Quentin Tarantino) Kurt Russell deserves an Oscar just for the moxie it took to tackle this role. In fact, Stuntman Mike might, in another film, one that's interested in character, be very intriguing indeed. Death Proof is not that film. In fact, as a piece of cinema, I doubt that it rates highly on anyone's scale. As an homage to a cinematic era gone by, however, it's a little slice of genius. From that opening screen they used to show before all the drive-in movies to the editing glitches he inserts to mimic the hiccup between scenes that happened when they changed the reels and complete with old-film scratches, it's like stepping back in time. If only I had tinny old speakers to hang from my window-frame. He even caught the sound quality just right, although I don't know enough about the mechanics of audio to know why it seemed that way.

It's got the "id"-heavy plot that's short on sense but wallows in sordidness, which is very satisfyingly as it should be. Structurally, it's too loose and involves characters too adolescent to be truly engaging, but it's nonetheless got moments of utter, jaw-dropping fascination. My own favorite is the record-geek bit in the car as the doom-bound girls ride to their date with destiny, pleasantly drunk, all grooving to a perfect song and talking about Pete Townsend, oblivious to the autobeast hunkered and waiting, headlights off, just around the bend. Those early, creepy shots of Stuntman Mike's deathmobile at rest, too, are very effective, particularly when the girl goes out for a smoke and you can almost feel the car leering at her from its shadow in the rain.

It's too long, with a doubled plot, and the Tarantino-speak conversations between the girls don't have the zest and buoyancy of his best work, but it'll leave you feeling a little soiled (in a good way), just like those old bottom-of-the-barrel Russ Meyer double features did in the old days.


Dollhouse, the season wrap-up: (2009. creator: Joss Whedon) As promised in the wake of the initial disaster area of the first eps, I stuck with it through the end of the season. For those of you who didn't, it got good from the sixth through the ninth episodes ("Man in the Street", "Echoes", "Needs" and "Spy in the House of Love"), then put it on autocruise for the tenth ("Haunted"). The season enders ("Briar Rose" and "Omega") which apparently earned the show at least another season's reprieve from the chopping block from those mad headsmen at Fox, were wildly ambitious and very disappointing, largely due to one very important casting choice (I won't spoil it, but it's somebody we Joss-heads love playing a hithertofore unseen character we've been building up to all damn season long, and playing it underwhelmingly). In its favor, even the bad episodes have interesting things in them, and the best make good use of the unexpected in that wonderful old-time Joss way (like the revelation about Ben and Glory in the fifth season of Buffy, or Spike getting his soul back).


the New World (Massive Extendo-Version): (2005. dir: Terrence Malick) Even a devoted Luddite finds things about this new techno-age to cherish, and one of the best for me is that a movie can keep morphing long after its initial release. A few years ago I had a beautiful dream that Coppola would keep re-releasing Apocalypse, Now! every third year with a different shape and focus. It's possible that wasn't the best idea I've ever had, but here, in consolation, is another of my all-time favorites in a whopping new package. This ran 149 minutes at the theatre, the initial DVD was a petite 135, but all lovely things come to those who wait, and now we have the Big Monster Godzilla version, clocking in at a gorgeously self-indulgent two hours and 52 minutes. I accept, although I can't really wrap my mind around it, that even at its shortest it was too long for some folks' taste. However, for those to whom sensuality and the numinous are huffed up from the same feedbag, this new version is a three-hour retreat chock-full of spiritual rejuvenation.

It holds some surprises. Malick is notorious for shooting hours and days of an actor only to leave his entire performance on the cutting-room floor* (rumor has it that Viggo Mortenson, Martin Sheen, Bill Pullman, Gary Oldman, Lukas Haas and Mickey Rourke were all originally in the Thin Red Line). In this long version, Michael Greyeyes sees a great chunk of his role restored, and who knew Roger Rees was in it at all? Ben Chaplin, poor fellow, is still just a guy pulling an oar in a longboat, and we can only guess what his role originally entailed. The most important alteration is in Pocahontas' recovery from her grief over Captain Smith's supposed death at sea. In the old cut, we see her crazed with sorrow and then, apparently with the passing of time, she finds solace in good work and then John Rolfe casts his eyes on her and her salvation is complete. In this one, she is grief-stricken for a very long time and given up for hopeless by society. She decides to commit suicide but experiences a very beautiful and supremely Malickian moment of grace and her salvation rises up, crucially, not from the favors of John Rolfe, but from her own relationship with the divine. It seems so vital to the lifeblood of the story that I'm surprised Malick allowed it to be cut in the first place. No matter. It's back now, amid all manner of beauty else.

* Kills me that the cutting-room floor is only metaphorical now. I love to think of that little closet-like, windowless room with a pale, tireless person hunched over a Moviola and the floor crunchy with filmstrips.

star trek: it's all fun and games until somebody loses a planet

>SPOILER ALERT<

The first nightmare I ever had, or the first one I can remember, had Kirk and Spock in it. It involved the mixing of magic potions that looked like buckets of paint: the brown one was a healing salve and that was for Captain Kirk, the blue one was a toxin and that was for Mr. Spock. I, however, managed somehow to sit in the blue bucket and when I stood up and looked at my hands, three of my fingers were gone: two from the left hand, one from the right.

One of the many thousands of things my mother did right in raising us was that we watched the original Star Trek faithfully from the first episode to the last. I was two when it first aired, and I guess I slept through most of it, but by the third season I can remember a serious discussion between my older brother, my mother and me, about whether or not we'd be allowed to stay up for the new nine o'clock airtime on Friday nights to watch. (We were. She was and is a total champ.) I can very distinctly remember that first surreal time I saw Abe Lincoln sitting in the middle of space talking to Captain Kirk. I found the use of his word "negress" when addressing Lt Uhura slightly embarrassing although I couldn't place why. Apollo was the first Greek God I knew about because he's the only one who ever appeared in an episode. To this day I mistrust the Earps and suspect they were the worst of the bad guys at the OK Corral. You could say with some truth that everything I knew about life before the age of seventeen I learned from Star Trek, Shakespeare, or Hollywood.

Mr. Spock was my first great love, and remains one of the few fictional figures from my childhood who still resonates strongly in my underconscious as an adult. That's all prologue to the admission that I went into this new Star Trek with some trepidation, and emerged with wildly mixed feelings. On the one hand, I don't remember the last time I had so much fun sitting in a theatre. It had me from the first moments: that lovely, stoical Captain Robau (Faran Tahir) going to his death at Romulan hands, the woman in labor in the midst of deadly chaos while her husband sacrifices his life to save hundreds... I'm weeping just thinking about it. And after that, it gets downright delightful.

Here are some things I love: Simon Pegg is a brilliant Montgomery Scott, for one, and the Endorian Mud Flea vaccination scene between Bones (Karl Urban) and Kirk (Chris Pine) is hilarious. My sincerest gratitude and joy go out to Anton Yelchin and whoever wrote this script for turning Chekov into what he ought to have been all along. (Apparently this is the young man who plays Kyle Reese in the new Terminator movie, or "Kyle FRICKIN' Reese" as an outraged blogger put it in a recent rant. He seems an unlikely choice to carry the Michael Biehn sultriness, but after the perfection of his Chekov, I'll give the boy plenty of room to take his shot.) It's also exactly right, very satisfying, that Kirk gets the crap beat out of him again and again, like a repeating motif. It's the only possible counterweight to that young Kirk arrogance, and we wouldn't put up with him without it. The Lens-Flare-As-Futuristic-Aesthetic tactic is bold but works for me, and the Romulans are fantastic, with their ferociously antisocial look. I could gaze upon Eric Bana's mutated face for some hours and feel that my time was well-spent. There are fierce ice-bears! And crazy giant snow-lobsters! And how about Scottie's little sidekick, eh?

As with most fun, however, there's a downside. All credit to these guys for doing the research, learning the mythology, then creating a credible time disruption to explain the many changes they make. That said, I'm just not ready to live in a universe in which Vulcan has been destroyed and Spock and Uhura spend their time kissing. (Yes, you could argue that I've lived my whole life in a universe that didn't have Vulcan in it... but you'd be wrong.) It kills me that a whole generation of kids, maybe multiple generations, will grow up thinking that this alternate history is the true one, the important one, relegating the original, the Star Trek that thrives, a living universe inside my head, to the status of the passe, the mendacious, or, at best, the secondary. On the one hand, you have to admire any approach that brings this kind of vitality into what had become an inert franchise, but at what cost?

Consider Mr. Spock. The beautiful thing about Spock, one of the crucial factors which lift him above the meager ranks of Character and into the realm of the Archetype, is that he is, ultimately, the Man Alone. Because his Vulcan and human halves vie in neverending and always fascinating conflict, he walks alone, by choice and necessity. And as a direct result of it, he belongs to all of us. Any fantasy can be projected onto him; he can fit into almost any story; it's why so much slash fiction has been lovingly devoted to him over the years. He is a brilliant embodiment of the war between the left and right halves of the brain, that age-old moral dispute between making one's life-choices from the heart or from the mind. As such, he is a vital and never-aging animus projection whose ongoing drama offers lessons for anyone who uses the current homosapiens version of the bicameral brain.

This new Spock, I fear (very well played by Zachary Quinto, he of the impossibly kissable mouth... see above), will be reduced to the status of mere romantic hero. If he continues (in the inevitable sequels) on his current path favoring his human side over his Vulcan, Spock takes a step backward out of his previous greatness into a life of possible happiness, but little more. No doubt he will serve the Federation and Captain Kirk with loyalty and glittering hyperintelligence as before, but we as a people will have lost a hero of larger-than-life nobility, wisdom and self-sacrifice. At the risk of blaspheming, I'd like to submit into evidence the following example: remember the Last Temptation of Christ? The devil lets Willem Dafoe step down off the cross and live a happily married life with Barbara Hersey's Magdalene, and at the natural end of it he realizes with some horror that he has betrayed the very heart of what he was set on this earth to do, thrown aside his own greatness of purpose for some scant years of human contentment.

Call me alarmist, but I fear that our Spock is about to make a similar mistake.