milkriverreviews

Introduction to milkriverreviews

2006-12-31T21:37:00.000-06:00

This site is under construction. I hope to have this process complete soon. Until then, browse freely, but be aware much is about to change. Thanks for visiting.

This site is an adjunct to my main blog -- milkriverblog. Milkriverreviews will be restricted to my arts reviews -- film, theatre, dance, music and literature -- along with my Biospoilers Project.

All the reviews and commentary on this site are by tony gallucci, unless otherwise noted, and must be cited, along with milkriverreviews, when quoting or borrowing any portion of a review.

I strongly recommend that, before you read my reviews, you take a couple of minutes to read On Film Criticism and My Criticizing Film on my history in film and motivation for reviewing, and about my Movie Pet Peeves.

Clicking on the title in the review will take you to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page for a film. There is a link at the bottom of the review for the Rotten Tomatoes review page for the film.

Reviews will be posted here in full. As i accumulate them the earlier posts will fade into archive mode but will remain accessible via the linkbar on the left. [Note that in my construction process some links may be nonfunctional.]

If you click a link for a review, use your back button or the logo pic to return to milkriverreviews. Or click on the milkriverblog picture to return to the main site.

The main blog is here -- milkriverblog -- and contains some initial postings of these reviews, plus outside reviews, news on my personal film projects and acting, and other information on the arts, my other interests and opinion.

A secondary blog is hyperintuitive -- which is dedicated to research materials related to some plot tropes in my feature film Diogenes/Dionysus.

And finally, my writing blog, containing some of the seeds of ideas relate to my films is here -- vignettes&vendettas.

Thanks for your patronage,
tony g, milk river music & film

Gemini Ink Reviewing Class

2006-03-17T11:42:00.000-06:00

From Gemini Ink:

Do you love to watch and critique films? Hone your ability to see, think and write about cinema in this two-part class with writer Steven G. Kellman. Besides teaching comparative literature at UTSA, Kellman is a film critic and arts commentator for the San Antonio Current.

Participants will review current releases and share their accounts. Saturday, April 1 and 22, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. at Gemini Ink. See assignment and registration information here. Kellman will be featured on a panel during next week's European Film Festival at the Bijou Theater.

#15 The Review: Thinking and Writing about Film
In this workshop we will hone our understanding of the art of cinema as we hone our critical prose. “How do I know what I think until I see what I have said?” E. M. Forster famously stated. What do we talk about when we discuss cinema? What is a review? Is raising or lowering thumbs a meaningful response to film? “Criticism,” wrote Pauline Kael, “is exciting just because there is no formula to apply, just because you must use everything you are and everything you know that is relevant...film criticism is particularly exciting just because of the multiplicity of elements in film art.” This workshop will brave those elements. With a glance at the history and nature of film criticism, participants will review current releases and share their written accounts.

Steven G. Kellman is a film critic and arts commentator for the San Antonio Current, contributing writer to The Texas Observer, and professor of comparative literature at UTSA. His books include Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth, The Translingual Imagination, The Plague: Fiction and Resistance, Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text, and The Self-Begetting Novel. He received the H. L. Mencken Award for his long-running column in the San Antonio Light and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. He served as a director of the National Book Critics Circle and was the founding board president of Gemini Ink.

First Assignment A week before meeting, Gemini Ink will contact students to view and write about a newly released film. Date: Saturday, April 1 and 22, 10 am - 1 pm Location: Gemini Ink, San Antonio, Texas. Registration Deadline: Friday, March 24. CPE Credits: 6 Language Arts (all levels). Fee: $90/member; $100/nonmember.

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Theatre, Dance, Music, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Theatre Worthy

2005-12-27T16:15:00.000-06:00

Movie Madness
Does anybody else have the feeling that cellphone ringtones have become the blaring car alarms of the decade. Remember those? They were obnoxious and ultimately worthless since they went off constantly and became electronic cryers wolf? Well, ringtones won't be quite so worthless, but i suspect they will long instill the same violent reactions from those who have to listen to them constantly until there is a national backlash and ringtones become declasse.

I am one of those who thinks that cellphones, and general rudity, has quite nearly ruined watching movies in theatres (such that i tend to go on weekday nights when few people are present -- see my pet peeves posts at milkriverreviews), and so it is with some gratitude that i see in the months since i began ranting that theatre owners are taking this seriously. It's about time considering that, coupled with outrageous ticket prices, it's driving my attendance down, and i'm sure that of many others.

Instead of jamming cellphones, what if someone came up with (probably already are capable) the technology to ring every phone in the theatre that's on, say during the ads or trailers, and when the patrons answer ask them to please turn off their phone, or set it to vibrate, and that if it rings during the show to please exit the theatre to answer it, lest they be escorted out permanently.

And frankly, though i'm mr. civil rights, i see no issue with jamming phones as long as there's a huge poster out front that notifies patrons that their phones are being jammed. The patron has a choice to enter and watch the movie unimpeded like everyone else, or they can go home and watch something on satellite. Or perhaps offer that, if they expect there could be problems with kids at home, to leave their phone at the desk to be answered for emergency purposes.

The idea, proposed in the article that it's dangerous to not have one on you in case of emergency is baloney. There's always help just out the door. We didn't have these things available until recently and unless i missed it there hasn't been a rise of any kind in lives saved by 911 calls from theatergoers. We could get hypothetical all day, but i still live in an America unfettered by terrorism, despite colored warnings (which seem to have quietly slipped away lately . . . anyone else notice that?).

Speaking of ticket prices. We're paying $6 here. When i have to go to SA or Austin to see a film i'm generally paying $10 or so. Well, besides being able to dictate my viewing environs, watching at home makes better sense for a lot of reasons. My chief one would be that, knowing already there are so many films out there i can't hardly keep up and, having a bit of patience, i can buy, on DVD, most anything that comes out for the price of a ticket. Best of all, i can then watch it ad infinitum, with friends if i want, lend it out, and have the benefit of all the extras including deleted scenes, commentary tracks and documentaries.

I suspect it's the same at a place near you -- once the initial renting boom is finished, the local video rental store puts its DVDs up for sale, used mind you, but almost always in near-perfect shape, for anywhere from $5 to $10. I can collect all the big-time shows for next to nothing. And patience and keep my eyes open means i can collect the more obscure ones, and even some that are years past their rental state for close to nothing too.

Wal-Mart (which i loathe, but will take advantage of because i'm poor) has rotating specials on overstock, some of which are outstanding movies. Recently they had some classics up for sale for $5 -- undoubtedly someone misgauged whether they'd sell -- now they're special pickings for connoisseurs.

None of that of course really beats seeing a great film up on the big screen in a theatre. What beats it is the constant distraction of people who you have to wonder why they spent all that money to not pay attention and enjoy the flick. So i'll still manage to go to some films at the theatre, but the bad is rapidly overwhelming the good of the experience.

If only there was CD rentals that you could buy cheaply afterwards. Music companies might still be happy instead of declaring war on their customers.

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Zerosum (2005)

2005-12-24T12:29:00.000-06:00

Zerosum (2005) [dir. Ryan Batley]
with Alex Dunbar, Lizzie Bishop, Dan Groat, Louise Leahy, Leamann Valentine, Chris Valentine, Luke Cummings
script by Leamann Valentine & Ryan Batley
score composed and recorded by Ryan Bailey

Review
Yesterday i got to see Ryan Batley's Zerosum, a product of his Rampaging Rhino Studios, that plays like a feature film although it would technically be a short. It is a fluid little masterpiece.

Now, before i go any further, let me say that i helped film an early version, and some of that footage is in this film at the end as well as some of the sound. I also count as friends virtually everyone involved in the production. Normally i do not review films that i have been involved in for obvious reasons, other than to say skip it or check it out. I'm making an exception here for a couple of reasons. First, since it's just now on its legs you might not find anything about it anywhere else. Second, it's that good. If it weren't i'd simply not review it.

It's also 99% a different film that what i actually worked on. The original actress playing Ixchelle simply quit coming to filming sessions which necessitated new casting (including some other parts for folks who had already given months of their time), and included a switch to black and white and 16:9 framing -- all for the better in my opinion.

So let me tell you about Zerosum. It plays against a number of plot types, but in my opinion it would be hard, once the film is over, to not think of it as Romeo & Juliet. I won't give the whole thing away, but the plot involves an unspoken love interest, battling families, a misunderstood situation and final desperation.

There are three parallel stories taking place, and at first you may struggle with the relationships among the various characters, but as the stories begin to merge, each conjunction is a mini-epiphany. Ryan takes you through pieces of each story and kicks time around like a playground ball. It's only in the final sequence that you catch up and it's a stunning moment.

Jake is quietly in love with Ixchelle. They're high-schoolers, and in that stage when a lot of indulgent flirting goes on, but no one ever seems to be quite sure of who is "with" whom. And Jake can't quite bring himself to say the right words, perhaps because he, like too many guys that age would be devastated to ask and find out the girl is "with" someone else and he never caught on. So this dance is what the film is about.

Being high-schoolers they also are at least on the fringes of, and probably more deeply involved than they'd admit, the drug scene. Smoking a bit of dope is casual and just a little bit thrilling, and would mean nothing except that it requires hiking to someplace -- a ditch here -- in which their little hobby can be engaged without attracting attention or rumors.

Well Jake, played superbly by New York actor Alex Dunbar, is a bit sloppy as is his buddy/pusher Derek Goldstein, played by Luke Cummings. And in the midst of covering themselves in the movie, one gets a mouthful of mushrooms and the other, in a weird accidental payback gets a mouthful of, well, something else. And the overdose creates problems.

Enter Ixchelle, played sublimely by the replacement actor Lizzy Bishop, as confessor, shoulder, mother figure and love quest.

Over the course of the next 35 minutes we see the machinations of both their families, watch them both burns short fuses over their family lives and unrequited love, see more than a bit of screaming, punching, and piles of weed. And when the two finally, simply, run away, there is no place to go but into each other's arms. But it's neither obvious where or how, and the way it ends will not be something on your radar.

Ryan, faced with a major problem at the loss of one of his stars, made a series of superb decisions -- choosing Lizzie, switching to black and white, and using the wider frame. And let me interject that Brooke Batley as camera and editor, and Leaman Valentine as writer, both were involved heavily in the project and it's probably safe to say that when i refer to Ryan, i'm also referring to the others. At this point i have no way to know who did what exactly, but the creativity in the three heavily weighs on the film.

There is a fine poetic eye in this film. Ultimately what one will remember, besides the fine story and stunning ending, is the black and white scenes that are nothing if not classy. There are a number of shots that were made literally in the dark and brought out in post that have a cutout/watercolor effect that changes the mood of the scenes, and at the opposite extreme there are scenes that are completely whited out by the camera's automatic light sensor that only darken into normal lighting when someone steps into the screen. It is a halo effect gone wild and it works magic.

I have long been a fan of long cuts that establish either time, place or mood or any combination of those. It's not something i'd discussed with Ryan that i recall, although i knew of the young filmmaker Olli Bettesworth by then who has made a complete art of this. Nevertheless, there are a couple of scenes where the length of the cut itself tells a different story, an effective one, than would have been told by Hollywood style jumpcuts. Thank goodness in private filmmaking you're not at the mercy of someone hollering "time is money". In particular a long cut of Jake's dad, played by Dan Groat, driving along a Hill Country highway is most effective at establishing place, time, and the simmering anger we seen begin to build at the top of the scene. Filmed with a wide-angle lens it also has the effect of suggesting a circling caged lion thereby heightening the tension.

There are also several camera angles, tilted just so, that seem to telegraph that something is off-kilter. It's a nice touch. And there are some cases where it appears that funky angles are the result of filming in tight spots, or of odd moments, where the angle helps elucidate the situation -- filming from the far end of a tunnel, or from above in the confines of a shower. And more is made of the wide frame than is usual for a project of this nature. It took a fine eye to know this in advance since it's one of those things that can't be fixed in post, at least on a PC.

Finally, Ryan Bailey's score is a gem. Around these parts we know about Ryan's talent -- he's scored some shows at The Point Theatre, but this is his first film work. He'll be working on my Dragons coming up, and doing the underscoring for my film Diogenes/Dionysus. After hearing his score on Zerosum i'd have to say i'm very anxious to get him working on my projects. Throughout this film he managed the mood without being either overbearing or obvious, and he never strayed into sound that felt faked. In some way it was anither serendipitous choice by Ryan et al. that paid off handsomely.

Most amazing of all is that this lyrical film was produced on a small digital camera and put together with a standard issue production package. In the end it is quite an achievement, and a most enjoyable film to watch.

Technical Issues
Well, at this level it is always hard to quibble with details, expecially technical ones when someone is working with no budget, but . . . just so you know.

The sound is not Hollywood quality, but overall it is pretty good. Some of the issues are still being worked out and i'd expect that once a version hits festivals it'll be perfectly audible.

In total the acting is exceptional for a bunch of friends working together. There are a couple of performances over the top, but they're noticeable and easily to dismiss once you know who. More than likely you'll be so into the excellent performances that the others will have little effect.

Tags: Links, Blogs, Culture, Friends, Theatre, Film, Music, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Apocalypto (2006)

2005-12-22T21:39:00.000-06:00

Apocalypto (2006) [dir. Mel Gibson]
Review based on the first teaser trailer, released in mid-December 2005

Preview review
Okay here's the deal: Mel Gibson has a new film in the mill. For some reason the discovery and early days of the Western Hemisphere are all the rage, and young Mel just figured out he'd like to jump on the bandwagon too. At least he's wary enough to pick an underutilized tribal community for his plot and a little used part of the world as a setting. And while he might have used a possibly more ancient Mayan dialect (Lacandona is still spoken by an ever-dwindling number of folks in Chiapas) he at least settled for the modern day dialect in the fictional setting he's using -- Yucatec in the Peninsula. Although that sure looks the Palace at Palenque flitting amongst all the poorly CGed landscapes.

We're here today though only to muse on the teaser -- not even the full-blown trailer that will eventually issue from this spawning. And why, you might ask? Because like so many fine films before it, the teaser already exposes some egregious errors, my favorite biotargets as it were, and some other iffiness of the kind that will likely make the film a laughing stock among certain patrons. Not that anyone of any import reads me, but there is still time Mel, time to make amends!

Biospoilers!
First, one has to actually care i suppose, but as is the purpose of my Biospoilers Project, these warnings come in knowing that an awful lot more people than you would ever suspect are bothered by mistakes in the biological realm of picture-making. Would someone, for instance, drop a 1971 Challenger R/T into a film about the Roaring 20's? Only, if you're looking for a Lemonade Joe-style flop.

So, why then would someone use an Old-World Monkey, a species of guenon, in a movie with a centuries-ago New World location?

Worse is the one they tried to pull off, likely quite well knowing it wasn't right -- in the quick scene of a "black panther" leaping at the camera.

Well, "black panthers" are known from the New World, indeed ranging from the southern U.S. prior to the 20th century, and still range through Mexico down into southern South America. But "black panthers" are not a species of large cat, but a mutation known as a melano, a beast in which there is a saturation of black pigment (it is sorta the opposite of an albino -- for a full explanation of the biology of these forms see my essay here).

The large cat that occupies this range is the Jaguar (Panthera onca). Unfortunately the cat used in the film (likely because it was the only trained one they could find) is an African Leopard (Panthera pardus), which also has these melano mutations known as "black panthers". Too bad for accuracy that they resorted to this.

In any case, i'm whetting my appetite for the film now -- but i'm more interested in what other biospoilers i can find than in whether the film represents anything close to reality.

Trailer at Official Site
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Movie Meme Deconstructions

2005-12-12T21:45:00.000-06:00

Many regular readers of this blog will know that, for the last week, i've been compiling a list of obscure-but-great movies via reader and blogger nominations. I really thought it had about run its course and so i sent out a thanks email to contributors and others on my email list. Well almost immediately i received about 25 more nominations! Anyway, the compilation is below, but if you'd like an easily printable document that you can keep in the car for trips to Hastings or Blockbuster etc. just drop me an email here and i'll get it right off to you. I'm keeping it constantly updated -- there's now about 170 films there, some of them truly, truly obscure.

P.s. the idea was to generate a list of movies that were first great/outstanding movies, and secondarily that were obscure enough that the average moviegoer (not the average cinephile) would not have heard of. Well, as in any venture this size, we did get a number of films that i not only would have judged not obscure, but there are even a couple of well-known major award winners. But i didn't turn anyone down -- and in any case those movies are well worth seeing if you haven't already. The more intersting thing to me is that in a couple of places the idea morphed into an obscure-first mode, and the quality of film took a backseat, which then further morphed into a bad enough to laugh at mode. There's not many films in that category, but i'd suggest that you might look at some of the descriptive materials on the various sites as part of the educational process. As i said, i didn't turn anyone down, and i'm game to try just about anything myself.

One film that wasn't nominated here, but showed up on a favorite site about the same time, and worth looking at the original site to see what it's about, is Calamari Warrior -- check out Pharyngula here.

Speaking of the movie meme, here's a few intersting stats:
[I'm appending an update here that includes the films added since the initial big publication]

Total films nominated -- 157 (total of these i've seen, embarrassingly -- 19) [229/46]

Number of films with a corresponding IMdB page -- 156 [228]

Number of nominating blogs -- 27 [32]

Number of languages used in these films -- 35 [38]

Another of my continuing best/obscure movie notes: Year-end lists are already floating about – here’s a massive compilation in its early throes. From that i gleaned a list of the top-20 recommended films of the year. Although several are on my list, i have to see a single one on the 2005 list! That’s pitiful. Except that some of these are definitely obscure, several are documentaries which generally don’t play here, some aren’t due for release until today – so i’ll eventually see quite a few. But then they also list the top-20s dating back to 2000, and from that compilation of 100 films i’ve seen only 25. Although, once again, considering the obscurity of many, a quarter of them is not terrible. Most interesting is that a number of the films, 17 to be exact, on the Obscure Movie Meme list are on there, showing once again the good taste of the nominators. And remember those are supposed to be “obscure”.

Just Friends (2005)

2005-12-11T21:30:00.000-06:00

Just Friends (2005) [dir. Roger Kumble]

Review
Chris is a guy you know. He’s the overweight class clown, life-of-the-party, always-fun-guy-to-be-around that your mother adores. He’s also the ultra-sensitive guy who ends every party he’s been the life of by getting his feelings hurt, crying and leaving in a huff. And if you’re the girl he’s always had a crush on, you’re completely oblivious of that until that one fateful night when he botches his attempt to let you know and disappears into the fog of the future.

In this Chris’ case that future is running off to LA, shedding 80 pounds and becoming the darkly handsome Mr. Bigshot girls die for. That means you have supermodels clinging at your elbow, any car you’d like to drive, and the world at your fingertips. What Chris doesn’t manage to have is a soulmate, a love life, though he seems by all indications to have a “love” life.

We walked into the movie about three minutes late, sorry to say, and i think i may have missed the set up for several things happening in the movie, so if i blow something here, that’s my excuse.

Let me start out by saying that i was completely lost at the segue from fat Chris to faux-suave Chris. It took me a while to understand that this new guy who’d been on screen was the same guy who bicycled off into the snow after thoroughly embarrassing himself. Once figured out, it started to make sense. As i said, this may have been part of the setup that i missed. Or perhaps we were supposed to be completely baffled for a while.

Chris gets an order from his stereotypical and over-the-top record magnate boss to sign the blazing hot model-of-the-moment, Samantha James (Anna Faris) to a record deal (CD actually, but record deal sounds so much more substantial). Problem is, he knows her, and has dated her, once, and according to him she licked his skin off. She’s crazy, to hear him tell it.

They head off on a private jet to make her famous(er) in Paris and she sets the plane on fire, they land in his old stomping grounds (New Jersey) and have to call on dear old mom for a night to wait for a commercial flight. Chris (Ryan Reynolds) trying to escape little Miss Perky visits the neighborhood bar and finds friends he hasn’t seen in 10 years. Enter Deus ex Machina. There’s a flash of confusion before everyone recgonizes old buddy old pal and then it’s like no time has elapsed. And lo, there in that one bar are best pal and best pal’s longtime sweetheart, now wife, best old tormenter football captain (Ty Olsson), and old crush Jamie Palamino (Amy Smart; is that palomino because she's blond, or perhaps just friends-like pal-o' mine-o?). Best pal and wife are dentist partners, captain is the archetypal drunken lout (with a ridiculously shaved head meant to look like he’s bald; think Biff in Back to the Future), and crushee is archetypal barmaid/education-with-a-roomful-of-cute-kids student.

We spend the next short hour watching klutz-turned-self-centered-jerk trying to wend his way into the heart of the girl he thinks he let get away (but who really, really, really was “just friends” in all the shallow meanings of the term).

If there are problems with this movie, and there are depending on what you walk in expecting to see, they have more to do with execution than with the storyline or how it ends up, both of which are predictable, but pleasant enough in their arrival.

First, the movie can’t decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a romance. You’re thinking “okay, so it’s a Romantic Comedy!” Well, yeah it is, but in general you have to lean one way or another.

This film apparently aspires to the romantic end of the spectrum. Where it fails here is in never developing any real screen hots between the dweeb-come-home and the crush-of-his-life. The payoff would have come if they never quite connect because of their foibles but it’s obvious that they were meant for one another. Unfortunately i never bought that they were meant for one another, and the various foibles only seem to underscore that.

Then you have the comedy part. There are some extremely funny moments in the film, and a number of genuine laughs. The superbly funny moments are the kind that make my temples hurt, that make me nearly pass out. And the genuine laughs, especially the comeuppance laughs are both worth the payoff, and largely the result of the antics of Chris’ improbably young little brother Mike (who, although they apparently rarely if ever have seen each other over the years, carry on as though they are eight and ten year olds sharing a bunk bed – which is actually quite funny most of the time, but still incongruous).

The comedy issue is that too many of the bits are contrived and surreally filmed. They detract very strongly from the film. It's the contrivance and surrealness i think that actually are the causes for their failure -- they are not funny (not that every bit in every comedy works, but if it's because of technique, well then that's an easily solved problem). That’s the romance/comedy intersection at its worst. In a pure comedy we expect that some things will test our beliefs, but in a romance you expect things to be “real” and the comedy to ensue from the humainty of the characters. The schizophrenic nature of this film is jarring.

The three most interesting characters in the film are tangential to the plotline. Samantha, the fringe talent Chris is escorting across the country is refreshingly flaky, and just hits the notes enough that we partly can’t wait to see what horrifying thing she’ll do next, and then can’t wait for her exit once we determine what it’s going to be. By the end of the movie i’d decided she was just like Chris – someone who was once a terminal dweeb and reinvented herself, and was now just plain obnoxious – obnoxious enough that we could revel in her various misfortunes.

Chris and Mike’s mom, Julie Hagerty (a veteran of dozens of second-rate and/or over-the-top comedies), is also on the fingernails-on-the-blackboard scale at about a nine. Her whiny, unintentionally condescending mother's voice is not only perfect but will drive you crazy. Which means “well done.” Now get off the screen.

Finally, Mike is the real comedian of the film (Marquette is someone i've never seen, he has a short and recent film resume, but i suppose everyone else knows who he is since he has an extensive TV resume, including dozens of guest shots), though we suspect that Reynolds, cast against type, is supposed to be the funny one. Mike is that smartaleck little brother who knows far more than you ever did at his age, and isn’t afraid to let you know that. He’s a whiz at the parent-proof metaphor, and is physically twice the comedian of anyone else in the film. The film might could have used more of him.

Chris Klein, the “name” in the film and a secondary character, is not quite the hateable slick operator he’s intended to be. Mostly he’s flat as Romeo, and over the top as Lothario.

In the end, the movie has a very obvious progenitor, a film it aspires to, and among myriad pop culture references (Ashton Kutcher, the Subway guy) manages to do some lip service to (although the most obvious is the worst it could have borrowed). The film it idolizes and plagiarizes is Groundhog Day. A romantic comdey that not only worked, but is an achievement – it actually uses the surreal in service to the real and nails it.

Unfortunately the pretender doesn’t. The most obvious device borrowed, and the one which strikes the falsest note is the use of four strolling carolers -- three times. People don’t stroll around at delicious moments singing in perfect four part harmony as they walk; go to a house and sing maybe, but aimlessly stroll – no. And then of course there they are at a concert too. They are ripoffs of the same perfect carolers from Groundhog Day – where they also were obnoxious but were meant to establish a particular moment in time that we relive. In Just Friends, i felt like i was in Groundhog Day myself having to relive the moment every time they passed by.

Then of course there’s the idea that Chris has failed with Jamie, and even though he doesn’t repeat the failed day, he does manage to keep avoiding the flight home and stay another day to try again. There’s more.

In any case, the payoff is the same. Chris was the lovable dweeb, becomes the arrogant personality, and has to revert to becoming a retainer-wearing dweeb, i.e. “himself", in order to win the girl. In the end, the arrogant personality wasn’t all that unlikable, and the lovable dweeb not all that lovable, and we understand, perhaps better than they do, why they were “just friends” all through high school. And it wasn’t the weight.

Technical Issues
I've so far been unable to find any info on this, but i suppose that Reynolds actually played the part of "fat" Chris [okay, i found it, he did, it's a fat suit, my bad]. I can't imagine him putting on that kind of weight for the film, so whether they CGI'd the part, or otherwise manipulated him i don't know. I would have to think that they at least had a stand-in for some of the scenes but i find no credit for that either. In any case the resemblance is uncanny enough that it eventually makes it entirely believable once you catch on.

Reynolds has a longer film resume than i'd suspect although most are films i've never heard of. And after reading his bio, it feels a bit queasy to get too down on him for this film, he's had a run of pretty sorry luck over the years. On the happy side though, he's engaged to Alanis Morrisette (which is weird because i saw The Chronicles of Narnia right after this and she's on that soundtrack). He's also filming five more films at the moment. Let's hope he's cast in type for some because he obviously has potential.

Was it really necessary to use a greenscreen for a simple front yard shot?

And i might point out that this may be the first film in which intentionally bad singing had be looped. And not once, but twice, by two different singers doing intentionally awful songs.

And to have only two late segments with an internal dialogue as narration just blares “Scipt Error” to cover.

And on the subject of Pet Peeves, there is one of those motivated light issues, only this time instead of originating from the glovebox of a car, it’s in an airplane. Possible, but funny that it’s the only reading light directed straight into someone’s face.

If you do decide to go, stay through the credits. There is a quite funny track running alongside the credits of Reynolds/fat Chris singing some godawful pop crap. I think the funniest part is his trying to sing more than one vocal part at a time.

SUPASD
One crying baby, six high-schoolers back and forth for popcorn.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Early Oscar Ideas

2005-12-05T02:24:00.000-06:00

We're still a month-plus away from announcement of Oscar contenders, but as usual this time of year, i'm trying to catch up on the possibilities ahead of time so that i can make a list of my favorites. Having not seen a number of the buzzworthy flicks out there for now i'm just going to start listing the performances i've seen that i really liked. I'm also not sure at this point which films are candidates so i'm going with the stuff i've seen this year.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Bill Murray, Angelica Huston)[this one is apparently not in the running with a 2004 release date]

Sin City (cinematography)

Jarhead (Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, Peter Saarsgard)

Walk the Line (Reese Witherspoon)

Lords of Dogtown (cinematography, Heath Ledger)

Rent (musical, Taye Digges)

Movies that i haven't seen that i think will be in the running: Good Night and Good Luck, Munich, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Memories of a Geisha, Take the Lead

Rent (2005)

2005-12-04T23:22:00.000-06:00

Rent (2005) [dir. Chris Columbus]

Review
I went to see Rent for one basic purpose -- so that i'd know what goes on in those conversations at the right parties where everyone has been goo-goo about the play for ever.

You know i'm not a musical kind of guy. Period. Just don't like 'em. Maybe it's my Led Zeppelinish background or something. I don't know. All i do know is that to get me to approach the concept of like about a musical is to produce one that's about the story and not the songs. And even there you're treading a thin line.

So i went to see this thing knowing a) the storyline roughly, and b) it was most likely firmly entrenched in the very category of things i most dislike as a film/theatre genre.

Yep. It was.

But i have some good things to say about it. And it's going to be looks at the parts, and scene-by-scenes -- it seems the only way to look at it since the story has little to recommend it, and the focus is on the set pieces.

Some of the characters were truly likable, however shallow. Chief among them were Joann the lawyer, played by , and Collins/Tom played by Taye Digges. They earned the same cred from me here as i've heard about them from the stage version.

Everyone else though ranged from bland to in&out of character to preposterous.

The set, for what it was and was supposed to be was mostly effective, althouhg the exteriors lit like a stage were annoying.

And the music . . .

Well, i thought there were some soaring pieces here; some truly likable pieces of music. Unfortunately the ones i liked best were not major film pieces. And the ones that were set up to be the defining sections of score did not achieve the level necessaryt o make them household singalongs. IMHO. It's a shame that the script (and perhaps the playscript as well) does not tend to enthuse Red-State America or a few of the pieces might be pop radio fare. Oh well, opportunity missed.

Among the occasionally effective portions of the film are the once-in-a-while dance scenes. Two in particular stand out (in fact some of the others are just plain miserable mostly to having several main characters with zero dancing chops trying to pretend otherwise). The first is the dream sequence tango. While Mark is no dancer at all, he is at least solid enough to allow XXX to use him as a pedestal. More effective is the use of the other dancers. The group choreography is very tasty.

The second scene is the one aboard the subway with Taye Digges and James Heredia. It's a bit off the wall, but nicely done. There is an odd vector-cross in the sequence that, even for someone who doesn't know what a vector-cross is, is enough to make anyone to stop and go "What the heck happened." It was intentional but a bit jarring.

Beyond those good cop/bad cop comments i can only say the the entire movie seemed overly shallow. I never felt comfortable that there was any kind of real relationship under the melody, except maybe the Collins/Angel thing. Couple that with a plotline that has about three Shyamalan-like false endings and you have an evening of unknown pop-diva vehicle pieces that goes on way too long.

At least now i know what it's about, and can avoid those conversations.

Technical Issues
P.s. In my never-ending critique of CG-garbage: Never have i seen a worse example of the inanity of CG fire FX. Please. Burning books, scripts, trash floating gently to the street like autumn leaves. Cute. But so obviously fake as to be distracting. Of course, it's a musical. Everything is fake.

SUPASD
One note on physically seeing the film. There was a total of four of us in the theatre tonight. Myself. One young lady who sat behind me and sniffled all night, and a couple of boys who not only sang every word of every song, but whispered every line of dialogue to each other. Oy.

I propose that part of the slump in movie attendance has to do with the disappearance of theatre etiquette. It's much more pleasant to sit at home and watch on dvd and have only your own bodily dysfunctions to distract.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

A Christmas Carol

2005-12-04T07:10:00.000-06:00

A Christmas Carol (Israel Horovitz adaptation)
The Point Theatre, Ingram, Texas (dir. Kyle Andrews)

Well, this was most different. And most charming!

Over the past ten years The Point Theatre (Elizabeth Huth Coates Indoor Theatre) has put on A Christmas Carol several times. Most often this has been Dan Groat's fascinating personal adaptation and one-man show in which he plays 35+ characters from Tiny Tim to both Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley. That show is hard to match.

But no full-scale production tries. It's a different animal. And so, just a scant few years ago (2002 actually) Holly Riedel mounted just such an event. Now, i'm not going to wax about that production because a certain old codger i know was in it, however, it got great press, and was a very tight production. Certain elements of it linger in my mind long after -- especially the performance of George Stieren as Scrooge, and a range of extremely talented youngsters, many now off at college pursuing acting as a vocation.

And so, with friends Chris Snell and Travis Haring, we went to tonight's production featuring the return of one of The Point's original incarnations of Marley (Horovitz's adaptation relies on Marley almost as much as Scrooge) -- Andy Ritch.

It was extremely well directed, acted and produced. And before i go any further, let me say that, although it just opened Thursday, it sold out this weekend, and only runs through next Saturday. That means i'm urging you, if the Christmas Spirit is something you attend to, to get your reservations in now.

Let's look at the show.

First, a word about the atmosphere. The last full production viewed the piece as a drama -- there were laughs, but they were based entirely on character. No effort was made to create laughs by stretching a character. Tonight's production though looked at the whole as a comedy -- not as in a cartoon, but as a way of seeing the folly of miserliness, and as a way of keeping the mood light as we smugly watched the travails of the beset upon Scrooge. It was everything but over the top at times.

For that reason alone this show seemed to be an entirely different beast than the last. And for that reason, i can't say one was better than the other, or that either was my favorite. They both excelled at what they did.

Andy Ritch as Marley was superb. I particularly like his vocally inflective style and the way it edged toward the top without ever going over. Add to that his mannerisms and you have a fully-blown enchanting character. I believe it was this that was key in keeping the kids in the audience rapt the entire evening.

Jim Boman is new to Kerrville, and while i have already heard folks speak of him, his performance here as Scrooge was my first chance to see him. He too was excellent. His crotchetiness gave way grudgingly at first, but after his first visit with a ghost by his side it was easy to see him soften and begin the slide into the giddiness that would possess him by the final act.

Karl Bajoris, whom i first met in The Diviners and have since watched grow part by part, was note perfect as the Ghost of Christmas Past. He is majestic and bit pranksterish all at once. The designer of his hair should get an award.

Phil Kuhlmann is one of my favorite young actors -- here he plays the Ghost of Christmas Present, Old Joe and some assorted others. He has just the right facial expressions to make me crack up whenever he comes on stage, and his Old Joe did just that before he'd ever said a word. I for one am glad he expanded himself from techie.

Joe Homer does a fine job of inhabiting a wide range of characters in the play, but his Ghost of Christmas Future is so adroitly solemn that i didn't realize until afterward that it was the same person as played Old Fezziwig.

Brian Bondy i met a year ago in another capacity and i was surprised to find him onstage tonight. I'd had no idea he was an actor. He was Bob Cratchit and carried the part very, very well, including executing some difficult pratfalls. He is sincerely believable as the harried employee of Scrooge and as the warm patriarch of a desperately struggling family.

The three scavenger women are always a highlight of this piece -- they sometimes are the sole levity of the show in their scene with Old Joe -- and tonight was no exception. Joan Bryson was excellent, and the other two were as well. I'm having trouble sorting out who was who by the program and can only acknowledge Anna Weidhaft as one of them. Nevertheless, quite a riot.

I expected to see Emily Houghton as Fred's wife tonight, but i suppose she was somehow indisposed as the part was played by Stage Manager Sarah Tacey. Of course Sarah is a dynamite actress and was as sweet and charming and dismissive as the character calls for. Couple her with Charles Bryant as Fred the nephew and you have another perfect pairing. Charles is another fairly new youngster who has a substantial career ahead. The playhouse is at its most quiet when he trods onstage; he is that mesmerizing. And here, he takes what can be a rather dry character and breathes enormous vivacity into him. He and stunning Sarah simply raise the level of everything happening around them.

Among the various youngsters playing a wide range of roles, several of them playing multiple parts, there was not a single poor performance. There were some exceptional ones though -- the girls who trailed the Ghosts, the girls who always had a scream ready, were always catching us way off guard. Martha and Faith Danielson, and Emily Hensley stick out in my mind, as does Hannah Taylor as Martha Cratchit. And then there's Jeff Widener and Shelby Mossman as young Scrooge and his fiance in a truly heart-rending scene. Ethan Muhlstein as young Scrooge eloquently stole his scene; that boy has some chops. Alas, i fear that to go farther would denigrate the work of a fine cast of young players, and there is no way any of them should no be recognized for their work. Special congrats to them, and i apologize for not being able to single out all.

The set was very functional and attractive and the props time-appropriate and used continuously (all too often props just collect dust). The lighting plot was especially well-designed -- kudos to new Tech Director Dion Denevan. And Josh O'Brien's music set just the right tone throughout. Whoever's choice it was to play music as background through much of the play should also be commended. It's not a common device and has the potential to be highly distracting -- but, coupled with an excellent choice of music and just the right volume level, tonight it was a significant addition.

Finally, i'd just make a couple of notes -- critics will be critics. I was seated in the fourth row, close considering, and yet i almost completely lost the scenes that were played near to the floor -- an early scene with Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past, some of the scavenger's scene, etc. Secondly, there were some set changes that got in the way of the action on the stage -- those may have been timing errors only, but were still most obtrusive. And finally, and i know how hard this can be, but some of the younger kids need to learn not to break the wall, even while simply helping with set changes. That too occasionally distracted.

Again, a wonderful show, one i highly recommend not only because it's a fine story to begin, but because this production brought it to another level. Which makes three productions at this little theatre that have done just that, IMHO. Thanks and congrats to director Kyle Andrews, his assistant Emily Houghton and everyone associated with it.

Gunner Palace (2005)

2005-12-04T06:16:00.000-06:00

Gunner Palace (2005) [dir.Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker]

Review
You never know what you're getting into in a war doc -- there's always surprises. And there's always angles. This one, shot of members of the 2/3 FA in Baghdad -- a group of gunners doomed to daily security runs and insurgent raids -- is as open as i think one is likely to get with military coverage. And it comes across telling a story you wouldn't expect all right -- soldiers committed to doing a job, but not necessarily, dare i say rarely, committed to the mission.

They're boys, and they wanna go home.

Gunner Palace is one of those movies that's been on my list for a long time. I finally got a chance to sit down with it and not only see the movie but watch all the extras.

There is plenty of gunfire and explosions in the film -- but none are on film -- no blood, no death or dying. The firefights are just background noise. And that's the bulk of the daily life of a soldier there i suspect. And in that regard one is reminded of Jarhead -- a meditation on the inanity of waiting for fear.

The piece also reminds of Apocalypse Now in the simmering glances thrown at soldiers whenever their backs are turned, reminds of Good Morning Vietnam in the throngs of happy helpful people perhaps hiding assassins, reminds of Platoon in the sweet-faced young men playing Hendrix and riffing freestyle who turn into Dirty Harry whenever they enter a home.

The film is glimpses of evil lurking beneath the surface in striking ways, it is hatred hovering just above the surface, it is futility in every action, every word, but most surprisingly it is drenched with humanity. Who cannot imagine becoming evil when the time dictates, and crying about it later.

Be sure to watch the deleted scenes.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Hotel Rwanda (2004)

2005-12-03T07:08:00.000-06:00

Hotel Rwanda (2004)[dir. Terry George]

Review
I never reviewed Hotel Rwanda when it first came out. It's a deeply personal and moving film, and i really can't say much except wow about the film itself. About the project, i was stunned.

Now i have gotten and watched the dvd, which includes a documentary. I have not yet brought myself to the point where i can watch the film with commentary but i will.

In the meantime let me say the doc is as heart-rending as the film. And the film itself wields the same, if not more, power than it did on my first viewing. It must go down as one of the great conscience films of our time. It already is one of the great films.

Just wanted to talk about my respect for the entire production before i move on.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Obscure but Great Movies

2005-12-03T04:40:00.000-06:00

The last week of November 2005 i started a movie meme akin to what i did months before with a book meme -- i'm compiling bloggers' choices of their favorite "great but obscure" movies into one long post.

I wrote a mass email challenging bloggers i knew and their (and my) readers to post titles of films they have seen that they think are wonderful, that they would watch over and over, but which are obscure enough that the average person probably would not know them by name.

I have compiled these also into a handy word document. If you'd like one just email me and i'll send you the most current version.

Finally, thanks to all the participating blogs!

Which reminds me that most of the fun (besides watching the movies) will be in reading the summaries and justifications each of the bloggers has posted at their sites. The link to the blogs below go straight to their movie postings -- so check 'em out, and then spend some time scouting around the rest of their sites.

The list
I'm linking films here to their IMdB page. Several of the nominating blogs link their movies to other sites, many of them far more extensive and enlightening than IMdB.

Great But Obscure Movies (blogs/posts/commenters nominating)

Alien Avengers/Welcome to Planet Earth (US/1996) (Science & Politics)
American Splendor (US/2003) (Words & Pictures)
Antonio Gaudi** (Japan/1984) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Apple -- see Sib
La Ardilla Roja/The Red Squirrel** (Spain/1993) (Greg A. on Cosmic Variance)
Atanarjuat** (Canada/2001) (The House & other Arctic musings)
Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob/The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob** (France/Italy/1973) (Snail’s Tales)
Badkonake Sefid/The White Balloon** (Iran/1995) (Skookum Talk)
The Bag of Knees (US) (John Farrell on Cosmic Variance)
The Barbarian Brothers (US/Italy/1987) (deniz on Snail’s Tales)
Battleship Potemkin -- see Bronenosets Potyomkin
Belizaire the Cajun (US/1986) (The Corpus Callosum)
Beyond Silence -- see Jenseits der Stille
Black Cat, White Cat -- see Crna Macka, Beli Macor
Blackboards -- see Takhte Siah
Bliss (Australia/1985) (Spyder on Cosmic Variance)
Blue -- see Trois Couleurs:Bleu
Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom/Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring (South Korea/Germany/2003) (suzannagig-jig)
Brazil (UK/1985) (Words & Pictures/ Firefly Forest Blog)
Bronenosets Potyomkin/Battleship Potemkin*** (Russia/1925) (Skookum Talk)
The Business of Fancydancing (US/2002) (milkriverblog/10,000 Birds)
Cane Toads, An Unnatural History (Australia/1988) (Words & Pictures)
Chong Qin Sen Lin/Chungking Express** (Hong Kong/1994) (223 on Cosmic Variance)
Cinema Paradiso – see Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
Cidade de Deus/City of God** (Brazil/France/US/2002) (Hacienda del Gringo)
Cité des Enfants Perdus/City of Lost Children** (France/Germany/Spain/1995) (Skookum Talk)
The Color of Pomegranates -- see Sayat Nova
The Commitments (Ireland/1991) (milkriverblog)
Como Agua para Chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate** (Mexico/1992) (suzannagig-jig)
The Corn is Green (US/1945) (deniz on Snail’s Tales)
The Corporation (Canada/2003) (Thomasburg Walks)
Crna Macka, Beli Macor/Black Cat, White Cat** (France/Germany/Yugoslavia/1998) (points of departure)
Dark City (Australia/US/1998) (points of departure)
The Day I Became a Woman -- see Roozi Ke Zan Shodan
Dead Man (US/Germany/Japan/1995) (WoodSong)
Les Dimanches de Ville d'Avray/Sundays and Cybele (France/1962) (suzanne via email)
Dirty, Filthy Love (UK/2004) (suzannagig-jig)
Dirty Weekend (UK/1993) (Diane on Musings on story and life)
Diva (France/1981) (Shadan07 on Cosmic Variance/Words & Pictures)
Dongdong de Jiaqi/A Summer at Grandpa’s** (Taiwan/1984) (223 on Cosmic Variance)
Don't Look Now (Italy/UK/1973) (Mike Molloy on Cosmic Variance)
La Double Vie de Veronique/The Double Life of Veronique** (France/Poland/Norway/1991) (223 on Cosmic Variance)
Eat Drink Man Woman -- see Yin Shi Nan Mu
Edwin (UK/1984) (Snail’s Tales)
Escanaba in da Moonlight (US/2001) (Musings on story and life)
El Espiritu de la Colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive** (Spain/1973) (223 on Cosmic Variance)
Être et Avoir** (France/2002) (Words & Pictures)
Everyman (US/2002) (John Farrell on Cosmic Variance)
Faces (US/1968) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
A Family Thing (US/1996) (Skookum Talk)
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (US/1997) (Thoughts from Kansas/Science & Politics)
The Fisher King (US/1991) (suzannagig-jig)
Fitzcarraldo (Peru/Germany/1982) (Shadan07 on Cosmic Variance/Words & Pictures)
Floating Weeds -- see Ukigusa
The Fog of War (US/2003) (Thoughts from Kansas)
French Twist -- see Gazon Maudit
Funny Ha Ha (US/2003) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Gabbeh** (Iran/France/1997) (Skookum Talk)
Gates of Heaven (US/1980) (Nils on Thoughts from Kansas)
Gazon Maudit/French Twist** (France/1995) (Cosmic Variance/aszter on Cosmic Variance)
Geronimo: An American Legend (US/1993) (Mike the Mad Biologist)
Gertrud** (Denmark/1964) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Die Geschichte vom Weinenden Kamel/The Story of the Weeping Camel** (Germany/Mongolia/2003) (WoodSong)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (France/Germany/UK/Japan/1999) (Research at a Snail’s Pace)
Les Glaneurs et al Glaneuse/The Gleaners & I** (France/2000) (Skookum Talk)
God of Cookery -- see Sik San
Grateful Dawg (US/2000) (Crows Really Are Wise)
Greaser’s Palace (US/1972) (Shadan07 on Cosmic Variance)
Green Card (Australia/France/US/1990) (Jane Swanson on Musings on story and life)
The Hanging Garden (UK/Canada/1997) (In the Common Hours)
Harold and Maude (US/1971) (10,000 Birds/rosagirl on Musings on story and life/Words & Pictures)
Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pompoko/Pom Poko** (Japan/1994) (Skookum Talk)
Himalaya – le Enfance d’un Chef** (France/UK/Switzerland/Nepal/1999) (Research at a Snail’s Pace)
Der Himmel Uber Berlin/Wings of Desire** (Germany/France/1987) (Banana Slug)
Institute Benjamenta (UK/Japan/Germany/1995) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Jenseits der Stille/Beyond Silence** (Germany/1996) (In the Common Hours)
Johnny Stechino** (Italy/1991) (Sheila on Musings on story and life)
Kakushi Toride no san Akunin/Hidden Fortress** (Japan/1958) (Skookum Talk)
Kandahar -- see Safar e Ghandehar
Kelid/The Key** (Iran/1987) (Skookum Talk)
Khane-ye Doust Kodjast?/Where is the Friend's House?** (Iran/1987) (Skookum Talk)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (US/1976) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
The King of Comedy (US/1983) (betsy on Musings on story and life)
The King of Hearts -- see Le Roi de Coeur
Koroshi no Rakuin/Branded to Kill** (Japan/1967) (Skookum Talk)
Laws of Gravity (US/1993) (Mike the Mad Biologist)
Liberty Heights (US/1999) (milkriverblog)
The Life of Birds (UK/1998) (10,000 Birds)
Like Water for Chocolate -- see Como Agua para Chocolate
Liquid Sky (US/1982) (serial catowner on Cosmic Variance)
Little Big Man (US/1970) (Rurality)
Lola Rennt/Run Lola Run (Germany/1998) (The House & other Arctic musings/Beth on The House & other Arctic musings)
Lost in La Mancha (UK/US/2002) (evolgen/afarensis)
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (US/2001) (anonymous on afarensis)
Love Streams (US/1984) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob -- see Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob
The Magic Christian (UK/1969) (Words & Pictures)
The Magnetic Monster (US/1953) (afarensis)
The Man in the White Suit (UK/1951) (Snail’s Tales)
El Mariachi** (Mexico/US/1992) (Research at a Snail’s Pace)
Matewan (US/1987) (Levi on Cosmic Variance/Skookum Talk)
Ma Vie en Rose/My Life in Pink (France/Belgium/UK/1997) (Skookum Talk)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (US/1971) (suzannagig-jig)
Me, Myself, I (Australia/France/1999) (In the Common Hours)
Messer im Kopf** (Germany/1978) (Words & Pictures)
The Mission (UK/1986) (Court on Musings on story and life)
The Music of Chance (US/1993) (Levi on Cosmic Variance)
Mutual Appreciation (US/2005) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
My Architect (US/2003) (Banana Slug)
My Dinner With Andre (US/1981) (Crows Really Are Wise/Science & Politics)
My Life in Pink -- see Ma Vie en Rose
Nueve Reinas** (Argentina/2000) (Hacienda del Gringo)
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Italy/France) (rani on Musings on story and life)
O Brother Where Art Thou? (UK/France/US/2000) (Skookum Talk)
Once Were Warriors (New Zealand/1994) (The House & other Arctic musings/Deirdre on The House & other Arctic musings/suzannagig-jig)
Ordet** (Denmark/1955) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Otesanek** (Czech Republic/UK/Japan/2000) (OutEast on afarensis)
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc*** (France/1928) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
The Phantom from Space (US/1953) (afarensis)
Pom Poko -- see Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pompoko
A Prayer for the Dying (US/1987) (Mike the Mad Biologist)
Prospero’s Books (France/Italy/Netherlands/UK/Japan/1991) (Firefly Forest Blog)
Rabbit-proof Fence (Australia/2002) (suzannagig-jig)
Ravenous (Czech Republic/UK/Mexico/US/Slovakia/1999) (Banana Slug)
The Red Squirrel -- see La Ardilla Roja
The Replacement Killers (US/1998) (Mike the Mad Biologist)
Richard the Second (US/2001) (John Farrell on Cosmic Variance)
Robin and the 7 Hoods (US/1964) (Shell on Musings on story and life)
Le Roi de Coeur/The King of Hearts (France/Italy/1966) (Carol Perry via email)
Romero (US/1989) (Mike the Mad Biologist)
Roozi Ke Zan Shodan/The Day I Became a Woman** (Iran/2000) (Skookum Talk)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (UK/US/1990) (Research at a Snail’s Pace)
Ruben and Ed (UK/1991) (rosagirl on Musings on story and life)
Run Lola Run -- see Lola Rennt
Safar e Ghandehar/Kandahar** (Iran/France/2001) (Skookum Talk)
Salesman (US/1969) (Levi on Cosmic Variance)
Sans Soleil** (France/1983) (Robin on Cosmic Variance)
Sayat Nova/The Color of Pomegranates** (Armenia/1968) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Secondhand Lions (US/2003) (Skookum Talk)
Secrets of the Roan Innish (US/Ireland/1994) (afarensis)
Shadows (US/1959) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors -- see Tini Zabutykh Predkiv
Shall We Dansu?/Shall We Dance? (Japan/1996) (suzannagig-jig)
Sib/Apple** (Iran/France/1998) (Skookum Talk)
Sik San/God of Cookery** (Hong Kong/1996) (Birdchick Blog)
Six Degrees of Separation (US/1993) (Missy on Musings on story and life)
Slacker (US/1991) (Moshe on Cosmic Variance)
Smoke Signals (US/1998) (milkriverblog/10,000 Birds/WoodSong/In the Common Hours)
The Snapper (UK/Ireland/1993) (Research at a Snail’s Pace)
Solomon and Gaenor (UK/1999) (deniz on Snail’s Tales)
Solyaris ** (Russia/1972) (Firefly Forest Blog)
Some Kind of Wonderful (US/1987) (Becca on Musings on story and life)
Sono Otoko, Kiyobo Ni Tsuki/Violent Cop** (Japan/1989) (Banana Slug)
The Spirit of the Beehive -- see El Espiritu de la Colmena
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring -- see Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom
Stranger than Paradise (US/Germany/1984) (Levi on Cosmic Variance)
The Story of the Weeping Camel -- see Die Geschichte vom Weinenden Kamel
Street of Crocodiles (UK/1986) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Sullivan's Travels (US/1941) (Banana Slug)
A Summer at Grandpa's -- see Dongdong de Jiaqi
Suna No Onna/Woman in the Dunes** (Japan/1964) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Sundays and Cybele -- see Les Dimanches de Ville d'Avray
Sweet Sixteen* (Scotland/2002) (milkriverblog)
Sympathy for the Devil (UK/1968) (Spyder on Cosmic Variance)
Takhte Siah/Blackboards** (Iran/Italy/Japan/2000) (Skookum Talk)
The Thin Man (US/1934) (Skookum Talk)
Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines (UK/1965) (Erin Curra-Spurger on milkriverblog)
Tini Zabutykh Predkiv/Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors** (Ukraine/1964) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Tokyo Monogatari/Tokyo Story** (Japan/1953) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Tortilla Soup (US/2001) (suzannagig-jig)
Trois Couleurs:Bleu/Blue** (France/Poland/Switerland/UK/1993) (Amara on Cosmic Variance)
Truly, Madly, Deeply (UK/1991) (In the Common Hours/The House & other Arctic musings)
Tully (US/2000) (In the Common Hours)
Twelve Monkeys (US/1995) (Skookum Talk)
Ukigusa/Floating Weeds** (Japan/1959) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Vanya on 42nd Street (UK/US/1994) (Cosmic Variance/Levi on Cosmic Variance)
Vernon, Florida (US/Germany/1981) (Nils on Thoughts from Kansas)
Violent Cop -- see Sono Otoko, Kiyobo Ni Tsuki
Waking Ned Devine (Ireland/UK/France/US/1998) (Musings on story and life)
Welcome to Planet Earth – see Alien Avengers
Whale Rider* (New Zealand/2002) (milkriverblog/The House & other Arctic musings/Deirdre on The House & other Arctic musings)
Where is the Friend's House? -- see Khane-ye Doust Kodjast?
The White Balloon -- see Badkonake Sefid
Wings of Desire -- see Der Himmel Uber Berlin
Woman in the Dunes -- see Suna No Onna
The Woman in the Window (US/1945) (Levi on Cosmic Variance)
A Woman Under the Influence (US/1974) (Ijon Tichy on Cosmic Variance)
Yin Shi Nan Mu/Eat Drink Man Woman** (Taiwan/US/1994) (Research at a Snail’s Pace/suzannagig-jig)
Yojimbo (Japan/1961) (Skookum Talk)
Zatoichi** (Japan/2003) (Banana Slug/Science & Politics)

[* These films are in English, but the dialect is so strong that you may need to use the English subtitles]
[**These films are in the language of the home country. Unless you speak that language, you'll need subtitles]
[***Silent]
[Languages in these films include: German, French, Japanese, Ukrainian, Armenian, Washoe, Inuktitut, Danish, Mongolian, Romany, Serbo-Croatian, Gaelic, Maori, Spanish, Italian, German Sign, Latin, Russian, Spokane, Cantonese, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Welsh, Tibetan, Mandarin, Shanghainese, Portuguese, Lakota, Persian, Pashtu, Kurdish]

Many thanks to these participating or responding blogs: Words & Pictures, Crows Really Are Wise, Dharma Bums, Snail's Tales, The Corpus Callosum, Cosmic Variance, Banana Slug, Mike the Mad Biologist, Thoughts from Kansas, The House and other Arctic musings, WoodSong, Musings on story and life, 10,000 Birds, Firefly Forest Blog, evolgen, afarensis, In the Common Hours, Science & Politics, Birdchick Blog, Research at a Snail's Pace, 6th International, Hacienda del Gringo, Rurality, Fragments from Floyd, suzannagig-jig, Skookum Talk, and Carol Perry, Erin Curra-Spurger, Tammy Criswell and all the commenters on the various blogs.

It turns out that the Obscure Movie Meme is still a living, breathing beast. I'm going to start posting new additions here as i find them (including two new excellent posts today), with only minimal details, but links to the original posts for you to find out more. Then, i am going to add all the new nominees to the printable document list i have compiled.

So if you'd like that, just drop me a line at hurricane(a)hotmail and i'll zip it off to you.

So, first we have a fine set of additions from polymania. Be sure to check out the post there. Here are his recommendations: Brazil, Donnie Darko, Live from Shiva's Dance Floor, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Roger Dodger, Stir of Echoes, Hable con Ella/Talk to Her, Unknown White Male, Waking Life, Whale Rider.

Then we have a fine long list from Bora Zivkovic at Science And Politics. Bora had seconded some earlier recommendations but came back and added a slew of his own. I agree completely with him that the best indication of a good movie is whether or not you'd watch it again. I use that as my own guideline when buying dvds -- will it be worth it in multiple watchings to do so. Here are his recommendations: Kwaidan, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Tampopo, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Aristocats, Fiddler on the Roof, Midnight Express, Hair, Seventh Seal, Ko to Tamo Peva/Who's Singing Over There, Spaceballs, (Susan and) Jeremy, Shane, Dom za Vesanje/Time of the Gypsies, Wild Things, Good, Bad and Ugly, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Dark Star, Dr.Strangelove, Easy Rider, Mars Attacks, Charlotte's Web, Love Story, History of the World, Part I, Clash of the Titans, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Soylent Green, Deliverance, Sleeper, Underground, WR: Mysteries of Orga(ni)sm, Animal Farm, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, Young Frankenstein, Serendipity, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.

Karen at Rurality wrote to add some movies. She also suggested a couple other memes and i'll likely take her up on them later (after things calm here in a couple of weeks) -- Cult Movies and Like-It-Even-If-It's-Dumb Movies, the latter for which she's already suggested Overboard (US/1987).

Here's her additions to the big meme:
Powwow Highway (UK/1989) (Rurality)
Eating Raoul (US/1982) (Rurality)
Start the Revolution Without Me (US/1970) (Rurality)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (US/1984) (Rurality)

And Tammy Criswell inquired about finding some obscure movies. We assume she likes them well enough to nominate them:
Stardust (UK/1974)
Lisztomania (UK/1975)
Sparkle (US/1976)

Alexander (2004)

2005-12-02T04:28:00.000-06:00

Alexander (2004) [dir. Oliver Stone]

Review
I come to know this film based on the director's cut dvd (with stunningly scant special features save for a commentary track). I'm not sure i have the stomach to watch this again with the commentary track, though i'd like to hear some explanations.

I guess there might be a million reasons to lambast this thing (and dude, it has been lambasted into the last millennium), but in my mind it come down to a couple of simple issues -- it is mind-numbing and it is way too long. One or the other of those reasons begets the other.

I can't fathom why Oliver Stone, a masterful storyteller i think, can never quite get to the story in this one. It wants to just tell and tell and tell without ever getting us anywhere. And it becomes achingly confusing, so much so that it numbs, and then it's just pretty pictures after that -- lots of flesh, lots of mountains, lots of ridiculous CG blood. And so every time it seems to end, it's just a coded way of saying "wait, there's another mountain up ahead."

I watched the whole thing, but sheesh, what happened i couldn't tell you. And i doubt i could if i were to ever watch it again.

It was certainly epic, and the photography was very nice, especially when it strayed from the danged rotten CG backgrounds (i know those save a lot of money, but crap, either make them look real or give us something less epic). The technique of speeding up film in battle scenes for effect and to cover errors was all too obvious and distracting as well.

It was full of bright young stars full of very confusing accents -- an Irish Macedonian brogue? Please! Either make it understandable in flat English so we're not distracted, or give everyone accents based on location that are not recognizable.

And then ask the actors to speak up -- some of this was simply incomprehensible. Some, to their credit were simply unrecognizable -- especially Val Kilmer as Philip.

Having said that there were some excellent performances (if you can pluck the actors from their surroundings). These i think stand out -- Jared Leto as Hephaistion, Jonathan Rhys-Myers as Cassander, Connor Paolo as young Alexander, Gary Stretch as Cleitus. Unfortunately the women tended to be inconsequential, cartoonish, or merely objects.

Technical Issues
Before we get to a string of biospoilers, i have an new film technique complaint about something i can't remember encountering before in quite this way.

Repeatedly, especially from mid film to the final battle vs the elephantry, the camera does a shake associated with events it's showing. The first time or two this happened i thought it was error, that it was real shake imparted on the camera and they were stuck with an edit of the best particular cut and had to use it despite that "rumble" but then it got more frequent and regular. So i guess it was intended all along.

The idea was that any event that shook the ground would be represented by the camera -- hordes of soldiers marching, fighting, people hitting the ground, thundering horses, charging elephants.

Let me take this detour first -- i make films, or at least aspire to -- so i am not immune to trying new things, taking creative risks. But i look at filmmaking the way i look at writing -- the object is to tell a story, and anything that gets in the way, anything that causes the reader (audience) to stop and remove themselves from the story is at least a momentary defeat of your objective.

Back to the movie -- why then did this technique cause a problem? Because it jarred me from the story.

If it had been that the story was always being told from the viewpoint of a single person, that one individual would then feel those jolts and they could be represented by the camera as such, well then okay, i could buy that, and perhaps might not be removed from the scene. But the movie is told in omniscient third person -- the camera is your eye/our eye watching the scenes. And because we are watching from afar, then, it makes no sense that we feel the effects of the event. Now i can imagine someone thought that if they drew us into the scene successfully then it would be as though we were there. Quasi-novel idea, except that they failed in bringing me at least so fully into the story, and when the jarring began all i could think about was the jarring of the camera -- and of course there were no cameras then. Had this been a documentary or cinema verite look at Vietnam, well then it's possible to accept the jarring the camera.

And one simple anachronism (in addition to the jarred camera rant above). Early in the film i caught a portion of a statue in the background that looks very much like a copy of Michelangelo's David. I suspect it was partially obscured so it wouldn't look like David, but it was enough. Of course the film predates that work by about 1830 years.

Enough said?

Biospoilers
Many.

While horses can live 30+ years on occasion (and i've had one that lived 27 years), the useful life of one is more like 17 years -- from about age 3 to 20 and that might be stretching it a bit. In terms of using at full gallop in raging battles the lifespan ought to be considered shorter. Now from a historical standpoint i have no idea what we really know about Alexander's horse but, based on the dating of the film, and his apparent early age and known age of death, i'd say he rides this horse about 20 years or so, and it's obviously a quite mature horse when he forces his dad's hand into buying it. Impossible? No. But it seemed a bit of stretch.

The best horse in the film though is the white one painted to look like a zebra -- in a scene that contains a real lion. Why not a real zebra? They're available.

The more egregious biospoilers involved snakes -- three particular instances. One, considering how much conquering and discovering was yet to occur, it was odd that the initial snake used in the film with young Alexander was a Ball Python, a species found only in central and west Africa, in territories hardly know at the time, though trade is a mitigating consideration.

The second involves the albinos and the masses of yellow-brown snakes on the palace floors -- these were all Corn Snakes, species native only to North America.

And lastly, in India a soldier is bitten by a python (non-venomous) and dies within seconds. The snake-healer was too late, and not smart enough to say "get up ya pretender, twas only a pith-on".

Then there was the CG eagle, cobbled together apparently from film of a real eagle and some CG visionary. Besides the standard wrong voice, it included the wrong tail, wrong wing motion, and the now standard moving too fast for the scenery CG specialty. There is little worse in the CG world than inventing birds and faking fire -- luckily this film had no explosions.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Sideways (2004)

2005-12-02T04:26:00.000-06:00

Sideways (2004) [dir. Alexander Payne]

Review
Well, i came to this some time after its Oscar nomination and loss. When i was doing my pre, post, and redux Oscar critiques i didn't give the film much due, largely because the critical backwash was pretty lukewarm. Or should i say it balanced out a bit lukewarm -- some reviews were scalding, some ice cold. In any case, i made only a perfunctory effort to see the film in a theatre, and being shut out managed to watch Million Dollar Baby instead -- another movie i wouldn't have tried to see but it was all that was available to me that particular day (i have to drive 60 miles to see a top-flight movie generally).

All that to say, it took me until it came out on dvd to get a handle on this contender.

I can't say i was not entertained. The movie is certainly a funny, and satisfying, look at a range of characters -- none of whom seem really meant to spend time with another. I bought into each, cared about each at some level, and enjoyed the film -- though similar to my dislike of Million Dollar Baby's boxing, the world of wine-tasting to me is both foreign and pretentious. It is however, a decent enough vehicle for this story to unfold upon.

In retrospect though it is a film i would have considered an Oscar contender only if there were not the likes of The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby. I am not beyond loving small independent quirky films, but this one did not cover enough emotional or intellectual territory to beat the elegant story-telling of MDB (which is where i think The Aviator lacked somehwat as well). Had i seen it in advance of the ceremony i probably would have railed a bit more about how it came to be so considered, even in an ackowledged weak year for film.

The delights of the film are many, but a plot device and a performance stand out in my mind. I was especially impressed by Sandra Oh -- her Stephanie carries some scenes without overwhelming, she never comes across as false, and she carries herself from scene to scene in such a way that you can almost see the color of her aura. The device is the ending of the story, the distant look at Christine with no hint really of her expression or of what comes next. It is a perfect ambiguity. And it left me unsure of whether to root for Jack or not.

Biospoilers
Essentially a perfect film in the biology category, as it was filmed on location, and using natural background. I detected no foleyed sounds that struck falsely.

However, there is a funny story included in the deleted segments section of the dvd. The director recounts how, in a scene in which Miles has to spend the day alone, he is driving and aimlessly playing with the radio when he hears a thump, a whine, and comes to the realization that he's hit a dog. We see a dog run off, tail between its legs. Well that scene was later deleted. Then, in a scene which was set up to be a sort of payoff, we see the dog again, only this time it's laying on the side of the road dead with a vulture pecking on it. That scene had to go as well.

Two issues present themself. First, the "dead" dog (what looks like a stuffed version) is radically different looking than the dog we saw run off.

The second has to do with the vulture. Kudos here to Payne who, based on the explanation at least, tried to get the right thing done. But, as he explains, he found out it was illegal to use native birds as trained animals and so they resorted to what he labels a "Paraguayan" Vulture. Undoubtedly at some point someone told him the bird came from Paraguay (which he uses to set up a one-liner), but the bird is one of the Yellow-headed Vultures (so much so that in the scene it appears to have a breeding-season enhanced yellow head). Apparently only the Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture, Cathartes burrovianus (related to the Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura, that would have been the native version) has been recorded from Paraguay, so that's what this should be, assuming that the bird actually was from Paraguay. It would have made a heck of a biospoiler in the movie -- but alas was cut in the final edit.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

WSAG 2006 Nominees

2005-11-30T04:54:00.000-06:00

Here are my current nominees for the World Scholar-Athlete Games in Rhode Island, June-July 2006:
+ Applied for; ? Considering; X Can't

Ingram Tom Moore High School, Ingram, Texas
Summer White (theatre)
Taylor Danielson (theatre)
Whitney Wilson (theatre)
Lillian Beaudoin (theatre)
? Cadi Hawkins (theatre)
Garrett Whitten (theatre)
Meggie Nidever (theatre)
Kevin Fowler (theatre)
Holly Riedel (theatre coach)
Roy Burney (theatre coach)
Marie Cearley (theatre coach)

Abilene High School, Abilene, Texas
Logan Pringle (theatre)
Martin Fergus (theatre)
Clay Freeman (theatre coach)

San Marcos Academy, San Marcos, Texas
McKenzie Fergus (theatre)

Georgetown High School, Georgetown, Texas
+ Thomas Boydston (photography) [Accepted!]

Churchill High School, San Antonio, Texas
+ Brandon Blair (soccer)
? John Baumann (writing)

Our Lady of the Hills High School, Kerrville, Texas
Peter Navarra (theatre)

Westwood High School, Round Rock, Texas
Brittany Parks (dance)

Clements High School, Sugar Land, Texas
Taylor Overbey (baseball)

Highland Park High School, Dallas Texas
? William Lawson (lacrosse)

Westlake High School, Austin, Texas
Daniel Miro (lacrosse)
Andy Fredericks (golf)

Tivy High School, Kerrville, Texas
Phillips Wagner (golf)

Clark High School, San Antonio, Texas
Eric Weiss (soccer)

Spring Woods High School, Houston, Texas
+ Joel Burkholder (dance)

Reagan High School, San Antonio, Texas
Nick Berger (track)

Taylor High School, Katy, Texas
Scott Lupton (theatre)

Austin High School, Austin, Texas
X Max Greenblum (track)

Marcus High School, Copper Canyon, Texas
? Josh Klotz (baseball)

Emma McNairy (choir)

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

2005-11-27T04:45:00.000-06:00

The Bourne Supremacy (2004) [dir. Paul Greengrass]

Review
This is a quite wonderful film. I liked it better than The Bourne Identity, though that too was a fine piece of work. In the end, i think the stories both hold up well, but i liked the physical sequences better in Supremacy. Matt Damon i thought was better at his moves, whereas in the first film, much of it had to be faked with film speed and cut technique -- and the technique itself was obtrusive.

Biospoilers
The issue: Only one that i noticed. While running through the streets of Berlin, the filmmakers apparently wanted an ominous predatory sound and what they got (while a flock of pigeons burst from a rooftop) sounds all the world to me like a Goshawk, though it's rendered a bit digitally. A Peregrine might have been believable, but a Goshawk is pretty strictly a forest bird. I can't say that another European Accipiter species was not used, but i suspect that most of the possibilities are also largely forest-dependent birds.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Bio-Dome (1996)

2005-11-25T04:48:00.000-06:00

Bio-Dome (1996) [dir. Jason Bloom]

Review
This is an absolutely atrocious Pauly Shore vehicle. Unfortunately it belongs in that great pantheon of movies that purport to use science as a plot device, but that so mangle the science involved that it's no wonder people find ID believable. Anyway, i got stuck watching this (best i not explain the circumstances, we'll be here all night), but luckily didn't have to watch the whole thing. So the fact that i picked up only a couple of biospoilers in no way means that the movie wasn't loaded with them -- i suspect it was.

Biospoilers
The issues: Two things that i saw. First, a TV show depicting a pair of lek-squabbling male Sharp-tailed Grouse. The narrator talks about them going south for breeding. First, in this hemisphere, nothing goes south to breed; and secondly, Grouse don't migrate anyway.

The second problematic ID involved a nectaring Eastern Tiger Swallowtail that was called a moth. It ain't.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Texas Thespian Conference

2005-11-23T04:51:00.000-06:00

We had a great trip to Corpus Christi for the Texas Thespian Conference last week, leaving early Thursday morning and returning late Saturday night. Holly, Marie and Roy took 26 of their kids to the conference and invited me along (to drive a van for one thing -- but also because they're the best of friends).

As i said we had a great time -- but i can double that for "me". It was a blast, and i got to see our kids excel, some great performances by other kids, including some knock-down plays (which i'll talk about later), and got to meet and interact with some just plain wonderful people. Of course there were some of those "little" things -- but they didn't happen to us, and just make for some great stories to tell later.

I won't remember right off all the kids who went, but i'm going to start listing them here, and will add to the list as i remember -- 26 is a lot of names. Lillian Beaudoin, Meggie Nidever, Whitney Wilson, Patrick Wade, Irec Hargrove, Garrett Whitten, Summer White, Shana Baldwin, Kevin Fowler, Kaleb Dworsky, Rachel Wood, Mindy Cox, Amanda Givens, Chelsea Wirth, Cadi Hawkins, Dustin Ficker, Suzanne Attridge, Vladimir Merritt, Erika Melendez, Allyson Widener, Jeff Widener, Annalisa Belec, Lindsey Morris, Mari Aleman, Erica Goodman and Hilary Bunker.

Whitney and Cadi performed What is this Feeling from Wicked for their Duet Musical Performance competition. In the first round i thought they were excellent with their main competition coming from Tyler Sheaf and Lindsay Prouse (doing Suddenly Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors), Heather Hunt and Drew Newby (Marry the Man Today from Guys and Dolls) and Megan Connally and Marylin Nahas doing a piece from Mame. Another couple who did a song from Into the Woods was also excellent, but those first four are the ones that advanced from the group. That also made them national qualifiers. Whitney and Cadi were also national qualifiers in 2004.

In the finals round, to pick a first place and a rep from the group for the all-convention showcase, i thought those same four were the best of the ones i saw (Connally and Nahas changed their song to Marry the Man Today for the second round). And i thought Whitney and Cadi were exceptional. But the showcase winner was a couple that i did not get to see compete, though the other sponsors were not impressed. Their showcase was very nice however.

In our other competitions probably the best performance was in solo musical performance by Shana Baldwin. She did not place in the end, but Roy thought she was fantastic. I know that one of the great highlights of the week for me was just watching her after she came out of the competition, she was simply beside herself about how well she thought she'd done. It's been a long, long time since i've seen a kid glow like that. She will advance next year.

I also attended the solo musical performance finals and saw a number of exceptional performances -- notably Logan Pringle, a blues-belter from Abilene High School who sang a song from The Last Five Years, Kelly Little who sang a piece from Beauty and the Beast, and Scott Lupton from Katy Taylor who also did a number from The Last Five Years. I nominated Scott and Logan for the World Scholar-Athlete Games. I would have with Kelly, but i didn't catch her school and she left before i could talk to her (so if anyone knows her . . .) .

I was able to attend a few workshops -- you have to make constant choices between seeing plays going on, and a wide range of workshop topics. The best were choreography workshops by Monroe Moore, a guy who, according to his bio, is accumulating kudos and dance companies faster than Osama changes cellphones. I attended his first session thinking it was going to be a technical workshop. Instead he simply lined up forty kids and started teaching moves. In an hour's time he had those kids, many of whom had obviously never danced at all, doing a complete minute and a half hip-hop/jazz routine, and doing it tightly. I took Holly and Marie to one of his later sessions and we watched the same magic happen. I know that i'll be looking for choreographers once Perfection gets off the ground and he'll be at the top of my list along with Kim Willett.

That's also how i found Joel Burkholder, a talented and extremely hard-working kid from Spring Woods High School (and living on the same street where we used to live when my brothers were going to school there). I nominated him for the World Scholar-Athlete Games as well.

I also attended a Swing Dance workshop and a Stage Combat with Broadswords workshop and gained from both.

Of course one of the most intriguing parts of any gathering like this is the opportunity to see plays. You get to see completely new works, and perhaps as importantly, you get to see new stagings, new variations, new blocking, and new talents. All of those things happened for me last week.

Let me work my way up so to speak.

Let's start with a new play What I Did on My Spring Break. This was the winner of a student playwright/new play production award. It was written by Meriwether Snipes of Taylor HS. Essentially what happens is a family on spring break gets stuck at an odd hour in New Orleans and has to find dinner and survive the streetlife. Now because some of the commentary in the script is a bit snarky, they felt obliged before the show to state that it was written before the hurricane and that no ill will was intended.

The entire play takes place sitting at a table in a New Orleans restaurant. There is a constant dim background soundtrack of people talking and music playing. It is a nice touch. A family, parents, daughter and quite young son, finally get seated after a wait, then wait even longer for service, only to have few choices because it's near midnight. All the dialogue ensues from the humor of the situation, or from the youngster being tutored by his cynical sister in the art of identifying the sexual persuasions of the folks that pass by.

There was obviously a fine talent involved in coming up with the idea and executing the script. If i have a considered opinion it is two-fold: one, that the writer learn about exposition and how to limit it, and second how to create stage action when the scene is limited. The only real action was a waiter (an excellent actor by the way) coming and going with generally bad news.

Now on that second point i am going to possibly cut some slack. My understanding going in was that this was to be a staged reading. If that's what was taking place (sans scripts) then i think they did a fine job of spicing up the staging by adding the table and the traveling waiter.

The next play i saw (and didn't get to finish watching because of a conflict -- everyone present was divided into two groups, i was in the other group -- more explanation later) was Memorial High School's The Diary of Anne Frank. I went because a Vistan, Bryant Roark, was running the lights. I haven't seen him since summer, and i wanted to see his show. I thought they were very, very good. The set was appropriately tight as were the Franks' quarters, and the arrangement was especially conducive to the scenes. And i have to say the lighting was perfect. If i had quibbles, they were: a) some of the business was mimed and some included props, i could not determine a grouping that would justify this; and b) while the acting was excellent, there was a general lack of dynamics between the characters -- we could not tell who loved who, who was afraid of who, and outside an occasionally yelling at, could not tell who was angry with whom. Perhaps they were in the early stages of production on this piece.

Next i would list Steel Magnolias -- this is a favorite piece of mine, for many many reasons. I have seen it done incredibly well, and seen it mangled like a pitbull on a one-legged chicken. This particular staging -- on the main stage by Lumberton High School was not the best i've ever seen, but it was mighty close (and a disclaimer -- i did not see the entire piece, but i can't imagine anything being messed up after what i saw). I really have no specific quarrels with any part of it, except to say that the actors were not uniformly well-versed. Still, i'd wished i'd been able to see the complete show.

WASP (of which the acronym is of the uppity white folk epithet variety) is a play written by Steve Martin and bears a significant amount of the signature non-sequiturs and pungent social commentary you would expect from him. I found it hilarious. Austin McCallum's production was a bit raw, you might even call it sloppy at times, but that added more than detracted. The staging, part in mime, part in slowmo, part just as if it were an ordinary play, and part in surreal silliness, was excellent. It was replete with one-liners that would easily be absorbed into contemporary lingo if the play had more currency. I particularly liked when the boy asked his dad for a bicycle. The dad said that was a luxury and asked if the boy knew what a luxury was. "Of course you don't. A luxury is something you get to specifically annoy everyone else."

My second favorite piece of the week was a mainstage production by Austin High School of The Speed of Darkness by Steve Tesich and directed by Billy and Annie Dragoo. Joe has a nice family with a fantastic view of a mesa. He also has a successful construction business, and is named Man of the Year. But he also was a war hero, and will talk about neither the war nor being a hero, not even to his wife or daughter.

Then Lou, the object of his heroism returns while following the Vietnam War Memorial replica, the Wall, on its tour of the country. And he visits Joe of course, and gradually spills all too much. The results of the conscience cleansing are tragic, and we are left with the daughter's boyfriend to explain, without really explaining, what has transpired.

The play was heart-rending. The actors, each and every one were note-perfect. There was never a moment when the three adults did not seem to be just that -- forty-plus year old survivors of society. It was a stunning tour de force. The set was magnificent, from a backdrop of a cloudy sunsetting sky, to three pillars of worn housewood painted like a flag, to the simple set that featured, more than anything else, a well-stocked bar.

I have only one quibble -- the script. The script itself did not live up to the performances. In a bit of oddity, the program tells of how everyone involved with the production was so taken by and sold on the script, yet the following page tells of how it was a huge Broadway flop for Tesich.

I think it was weak in two spots. Once early in the first scene it quickly devolves into exposition to avoid bringing us, living and breathing, into the play -- it keeps us at a distance far too long. And then in the final climactic scene Joe, finally baring all about his "heroism" -- resorts to overly dramatic exposition and again we are shoved away from actually being in that living room experiencing all that turmoil. The high drama would have worked if he was reliving rather than telling. It's an odd way to begin and end. But it's the fault of the script not the kids. If that was the playwright's intent, then it was a bad choice. One would hope that someone who has tasted Broadway would learn that it's better to leave some things in the closet than to tell too much.

Finally i was bowled over by Never the Sinner. This was a mainstage production by Denton Ryan High School. This take on the Leopold and Loeb murder scheme of 1924 Chicago was written by John Logan. The kids were directed by Jeanene Abney, Karen Gossett and Scott Thompson. Had i not been doing the security thing i would have gone to see the second production. It was simply amazing. The actors first and foremost were just fabulous -- each and every one. The blocking was outrageously creative and perfectly effective. Overall the set was a marvel. I cannot say enough about this production.

Problems -- only two small ones. The lighting plot was confusing. The speakers were often in odd shadows or darkness, lights preceded or followed action in strange ways. Now i can't tell you if there were genuine lighting problems going on, or if this was designed this way. What i can tell you is that it was very distracting -- and that's the very last thing a lighting plot should be. It's okay to be a little creative, but not to wreck the scene.

The second thing, and i consider this quite trivial, but important: there was a shelf system at the front right of the set that held some items that were important to the development of character. It's obvious that it needed to be present. However a couple of times a character sat on the ramp behind it and was largely obscured while talking -- from my vantage point i had to search to figure out where the dialogue was coming from and i think that was not the intent.

Otherwise though, this was a simply magnificent piece.

I worked security for an hour on Friday and a couple of hours on Saturday. That's part of the duties of a chaperone. On Friday, virtually nothing happened on my watch, but Saturday was different. First a school sponsor approached me because, while waiting for the mainstage show to start in the big Selena Auditorium, a student from another school, sitting a few rows behind her, had blurted out an offensively racist statement. She wanted me to handle it since she was too upset to do so. I found the young man, and his sponsors and we retired to a backstage office and had a bit of a talk. Naturally his explanation differed from hers, but it was clear he knew he'd been ugly and that she'd been offended. He seemed like a nice kid, and i left it to him and his teachers to find a proper way to make amends.

The conference was pretty strictly run -- occasionally too strictly in my opinion. Then again if you have good kids there's little to worry with. None of our kids did anything untoward. But those that made serious errors in judgment ended up in Thespian Jail. While i was guarding backstage doors, the jailed were allowed to come through for the purpose of using a restroom. They weren't shackled but you'd think they had been. It was four girls -- they'd been caught at four a.m. with a boy in their hotel room. Um-mm.

Later a security guard came by with a name tag to ask if we'd seen anyone without one, or knew who the young man was. We didn't. Each attendee has a name tag and it's mandatory to wear it. You get fined if you don't. Well, the story on this particular nametag is that the kid was streaking in the hotel with only his nametag on. Apparently it came off and now he was in a heap o'trouble. We figured it was more likely a prank -- some kid gets stripped and then shoved out of his room and locked out. I don't think that story would have impressed the conference nazis though.

One of the interesting things about the conference was that everyone was divided into two groups -- blue and gold. Each group had a different program with a different schedule. The odd part is that it wasn't just the scheduling that was different, but the choices were different as well, so that some workshops and plays were only offered to gold and others to blue. Of course everyone was occasionally miffed at not getting to see something they wanted to, but since some of those same folks were guarding the doors it was relatively easy to do what you wanted to -- and if i may say so it would have been ludicrous not to be able to do so since i never saw a workshop, play, or event that was full to overflowing. Overall there were so many choices that everyone was pretty scattered out. I think the division may have been a bit of an overreaction.

Sponsors were given three-copy tickets to hand out to kids who broke the rules. This i thought was a bit excessive. Now some of the things you could be ticketed for -- alcohol and drugs -- at least made sense. But getting a ticket for an "unauthorized gathering" was both trivial and vague -- it smacked of teachers being allowed to penalize groups they didn't like, rather than applying a firm rule for everyone. Anyway, i had a good time writing out fake tickets to both kids and sponsors for random acts of randomness. And i heard no complaints about kids being ticketed -- i suspect the judiciousness and caring endemic to theatre and its teachers prevented many tickets from even being written (exept mine of course).

I suspect i will be back to this post to add some events and stories as i remember them, find the programs, or find the notes i wrote here and there. I'd especially like to honor the actors in the various plays that i thought were really good.

Zathura (2005)

2005-11-12T23:27:00.000-06:00

Zathura (2005) [dir. Jon Favreau]

Review
Zathura is worth a visit, especially if you have kids.

In a theater with about 20 kids (and their parents) tonight -- there was constant laughter and the enjoyment was palpable. That ought to be enough to recommend this film.

But i'm going to recommend it anyway. Is it a great film? No, but it's darn enjoyable from start to finish, with enough little twists to keep you thinking (when the heavyhandedness doesn't keep you from thinking anyway).

Danny finds an old game in the basement of the house where he, his brother and sister and father have just moved. The house is supposed to be a fixer-upper, but it's a pretty dandy starter.

The entire movie has a very retro feel, despite contemporary references every third minute, and some obvious nods to the 21st Century -- the cars (though dad drives a rather enviable old Falcon), cellphones, and movie and sports references that bring you right up to date (and any movie that references Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen is going to get a serious look from me).

The retro touches that play major parts in the plot are the dumb-waiter, the 50s style alien rocketships, and the game itself. It's a very nice mix.

Did i say rocketships? Well, the idea is that by playing the game, one with a space theme, tin rocketships, and yellow-edged aged playcards, you become a part of the game. When a card warns of meteors, it's not kidding.

In the course of playing, the boys discover that they have to "win" the game, play it to completion, in order to return safely home. Of course, nearly every card involves a roadblock, or a timewarpblock, of some kind. Just when the Zorgons (did i say Zorgons?) are about to blow the place to smithereens an astronaut who's been floating in space for fifteen years eating astronaut food from tubes comes knocking, makes a couple of big saves, and then is part of a sorta surprising plot twist that aims the kids on the trail back home. One wonders how a guy flotas in space for fifteen years though and shows up with a two-day stubble.

Sorta surprising only because the major faults of the movie lie in being overtly obvious -- telegraphing the astronaut plot way too heavyhandedly for instance. There are way too many story-fillers in the way of extended reaction shots of faces not displaying a lot of reaction. There is way too much melodramatic overbearing score.

This story was written by Christopher Van Allsburg, who also wrote the other movie floating around out there about playing a board game and getting caught up in it -- Jumanji. That one was one of the worst films ever committed to eternity on celluloid -- in addition to being just plain unentertaining, it also suffered from ridiculous special effects. I worried about both of those things going into this film, but the trailer was intriguing enough that i thought it'd be worth a shot.

Where Jumanji was worst at the endemic SFX error of distorted perspective, Zathura tackles it nicely. For one -- even the space SFX have a bit of a retro look to them. That has the effect of lowering expectations perhaps. Nevertheless there are some nice viewpoints -- considering you're watching a multi-story house floating among asteroids.

Among the other problems are the usual poor green-screen resolution, a doubled effect with mismatched sizes and focus, and rotten fire FX. Those are routine mistakes. Why directors can't figure out to avoid them altogether is beyond me.

Of the actors, Tim Robbins is excellent as the dad. Too bad he had only a few minutes early on and a brief scene at the end. Kristen Stewart as Lisa, the sister, is frozen most of the time, which is good because she adds little except for one nicely conceived little subplot worth a few laughs. She does play the "leave-me-alone-i'm-in-love" older sister well, it's the "i'm-your-older-sister" older sister that misses. Dax Shepard as the astronaut has some really swell moments, but "look-at-me-i'm-acting" creeps in too often. He is a decent foil though in the brotherly wars that erupt over how to play the game. And the wish upon a star scenes are worthy of the arc they're provided.

The two brothers, on screen virtually the whole movie, Josh Hutcherson as Walter and Jonah Bobo as Danny, also have some fine moments. But they are raw. A more exacting and/or compassionate director should have drawn much better performances from them. What you get is certainly not distracting, you enjoy the movie without focusing on the actors, but i wonder what could have been.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

MAS*H

2005-11-11T23:26:00.000-06:00

I went to see M*A*S*H tonight. Phil Kuhlmann was hilarious.

Pampell's Spoken Word

2005-11-09T23:14:00.000-06:00

I'd been hearing quite a bit about the redesigned/reopened Pampell's Drugstore. That's a turn of the century buidling with an old-fashioned corner drugstore soda fountain. When i moved here in the last millennium it was stil going strong, but foundered soon after. Since then it's been an antique store, almost a Christian kid's hangout, and mostly shuttered. But it's open again with a working fountain -- and it has nightly entertainment. Wednesday nights had been reserved as spoken word nights and that's what i've been told rocked -- especially this kid Conan, who is the one i saw at the Schreiner Coffeehouse last week. So after rehearsal tonight i stopped by expecting some fireworks. Conan was there but said nothing. There was a young lady with a fine voice, and the barkeep who played a tight bass, doing a mostly private little thing on the stage, back to us three audience members. It kind of frittered away after that and i left. Not sure that that's what's been bragged about. I won't be bragging on it until i see something more substantial than that.

2006 Season at The Point

2005-11-08T23:16:00.000-06:00

They have announced the 2006 Season at the Point Theatre. It looks like this:

Same Time, Next Year
February 3 - 18 plus Valentine's Day, Feb. 14

Lone Star/Laundry & Bourbon
March 24 - April 8
Sunday Matinee, April 2

Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
May 25 - June 10

The Magician's Nephew
June 15 - July 1

Cinderella
July 13 - July 29

Harvey
August 3 - August 19

Streetcar Named Desire
September 14 - 30

Miracle on 34th Street
December 1 - 16

Jarhead (2005)

2005-11-06T23:18:00.000-06:00

Jarhead (2005) [dir. Sam Mendes]
with Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Saarsgard, Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx

Review
I knew going in that there was a critical backlash of sorts about this film -- labelled everying from vapid to senseless, it had occupied a non-space in my need-to-watch pool. Normally i'll avoid a film getting those kind of raves -- at least until the DVDs arrive. I chose to see this anyway -- in part because i've been starved for a good big screen pic, and podunk here has been bereft of anything worth seeing for some time (and sadly, this was the highest rated of the seven films currently showing here) -- but also because i have become a full-fledged Saarsgard fan. I was itching to see if he's continued his string of superb portrayals.

And so with a mix of critical trepidation, and hope that a performance, or more, might shine, i went anyway.

It was well worth my time. Let's start with where so many critics got off the train -- the supposed shallowness (and to be fair, by the Tomatometer at RottenTomatoes.com, where you should shop for reviews if you don't already -- link on the sidebar -- it's about 50-50 between critics who like it and those who don't).

Coming from the personal memoir of the same name, the film chronicles Anthony Swofford's life as a grunt Marine picked to go through specialized training to become a killing machine -- a scout sniper. That is, either you're so worthless that you're instantly expendable, or you're damn good, both as a shot and as a calculating machine that has no qualms creating "pink mist" -- blowing a guy's brains out at 1000-yards.

The Marines quite literally get their machine -- really machines -- in Gyllenhaal, playing Swofford, and his spotter, Saarsgard (what's the odds of having two guys play leads who both have double-a's in their names?). Only they endure six months of duty in Iraq Part I without ever getting to squeeze off a shot -- no kills for them or anyone in their group, though death is all around. What the Marines end up with is a little bit of insanity. Gyllenhaal blows his cork and nearly kills a squadmember, Saarsgard saves his for back home -- we don't know if he overdosed or what but the clear implication is he sniped himself.

The issue, for the filmmaker at least, is to create, in an hour and a half, the conditions that lead to the winding tight of these guys and their subsequent implosion.

I suppose the critics want six months of talk among a bunch of semi-literate but quite intelligent guys as they discuss Gyllenhaal's ever-present Albert Camus, or perhaps late-night in-the-bunk emo sessions as each discusses his fear of death, or maybe the one-on-one's as each finds out his girlfriend's been with someone else.

Those go on you know, they are atually the long moments that ease daily life in a place where you can't just cruise to the 7-11 for a pack of camels, or find a quiet corner or room to yourself to work out frustration. But the film is about the building of that very inability to escape and what it does to young minds, minds that are never prepared, ever, for war.

So, as these guys traipse through the crusty desert, seemingly always one berm away from the war, they endure not only the boredom, the scorpions, the lack of action, and stifling nothingness, but they have to endure each other. And therein lies madness.

It struck me early on that the military juvenilia that bombards you at the beginning of the movie -- the every-other-word-cussword, the graphic putdowns, the new names for things you thought were already well-enough named -- was a bit on the heavy side. Not because it doesn't go on, but because it really isn't that prevalent. There is real conversation that takes place besides taunts and putdowns and demeaning-as-process. But there seemed to be a focus on it, and a heavy focus.

Aaah, i thought, he's making these guys raw so that we can see them grow. I thought. But no, they don't grow, in this regard at least. One could argue that a couple even regress. By the time the film was over i was so numb from the cussing, the sheer onslaught of ugly imagery, that i left thinking that was about the lone criticism i would have of the film (amongst a handful of minor technical quibbles). But after a night of thinking about it, i think differently.

Yes, it was out of balance. Absolutely. But the film benefits from that imbalance. Again, the objective should have been to create that slow trail to insanity, but with little time to accomplish it. And so while condensing six months of hell into an hour an half was possible visually, it had to also be so aurally. And i think Mendes nailed it. On the road to crazy one doesn't dwell on the little pleases and thank-you's or the grand late-night discourse's on life-after. It's the insults, and the wrongs-done, the what-could-i-have-been-in-the-states' that carve holes in the brain and camp there. Ultimately war, and this film, are numbing.

Is it vacuous at the end? Are there no grand statements on life there? I would ask, how vacuous must it have been to train and seek a target for six months only to have your plug pulled? What grand statement need there be except -- hey, this stuff happens?

Is this a great movie? Is it even a great war movie? It doesn't quite stick in my craw the way a Platoon or Apocalypse Now does -- but those were about the war of my generation, they have resonance to me personally. And how many folks claim Iraq I/Desert Storm as a war anyway? Much less the war that defines their generation? I don't have that answer.

The performances were excellent about across the board. Jamie Foxx was superb. Chris Cooper is a guy i sometimes think is incredible -- this was not one of his incredibles, he looks just a little bit light in the pockets to pull off his tough-guy-in-the-desert persona.

Jake Gyllenhaal i think is becoming a fine, fine actor. Donnie Darko is one of my favorite all-time films, but i'm not sure he was excellent in it. Here he borders on excellent/superb. I think he really pulls off Swofford here as was intended. If the movie doesn't die a critical death, he may get some mention for this.

Saarsgard is, i think, overdue for some big recognition. I thought his turn in Shattered Glass was magnificent. And here he tops it. Unfortunately, Jarhead is a Shattered Glass kind of film in that i think it may not be on very many people's radar. Competition in the next couple of months may spell out what chance these guys have for awards. Maybe there's a chance. I think Saarsgard's are enhanced by the fact that he'll be up for a Supporting Actor nomination in whatever, and he very nearly had as much face time as Gyllenhaal. He was remarkable every second.

As a brief aside, one of the interesting things about making films is seeing something you think you invented/created show up somewhere else. Diogenes/Dionysus has an odd life for me in that i wrote the script several years ago -- i considered it then, and do now, a completely original product -- and so unlike anything else that i thought it could actually catch everyone asleep. Of course, since that time, i have seen little snippets of things in a dozen films that i thought/hoped were mine. And of course, they are. Especially in the way i have them combined. But in Jarhead there is a fairly critical plot element that i believe was mine first, that is used there, that knocked me breathless when i saw it. I'm not exposing it here, because i don't think anyone else will ever connect them or even see that it's the same thing. But i saw it, and it blew me away in the film. That tells me that it should, in my telling of it, have the same effect. Can i say yippee . . . ?

Technical Issues
I have a couple of quibbles. I am a SFX freak as some folks will know. The ethereal CG grandiose background kind of thing irks me -- we've already come to accept it as a kind of style, but i don't like it. It doesn't look real. Part of the problem is that it always has perspective problems. You'd think that in all of the great studios they would have one guy with some math in their background who could get that right. But nooooo. Not many opportunities here, but a couple of them are awful.

Secondly, and i can't believe Industrial Light & Magic is responsible for this, but they're who got credit -- the machine gun bursts at the final bonfire are simply ludicrous. Fire is still the FX that no one has gotten right. NO ONE. But gun bursts shouldn't be difficult to fake well enough to get by with. These are just plain awful.

There was a goofy continuity problem that someone should have caught and would have been easily fixable also. At one point Jamie Foxx's character is talking while the camera is off him, then it pans to him and he turns to the camera and stands -- the voice is still going, ut he's not talking. Two seconds of delay would have fixed that.

My last comment has to do with military cooperation on Jarhead. It's common knowledge that you have to have a flattering script to get cooperation from the US military -- by which i mean free helicopters, tanks, gunships, etc. I am presuming from this film that they had cooperation or else they spent a lot of money. And that means that some brass committee thought that this film depicted the Marines in a good light. Or else they knew that the 25 16/17-year-olds in the theater last night would be hoo-awing all night, whooping and hollering, and going "yeah" every time someone spit out a derogatory slur or they showed a dead Iraqi.

Which means this is a recruiting film.

Coupled with the trailer for Annapolis before the show i felt like i was in a high school cafeteria on career day.

I guess it was inevitable that in the midst of a real war of a generation, there would be pro-military films on someone's production line.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Los Lonely Boys

2005-11-04T23:26:00.000-06:00

Los Lonely Boys was a band i once saw play for about 20 folks who were completely disinterested until the band fired up. then there were 20 people dancing on the gym of one of Austin's biggest coliseums, all alone, to LLB. i've been in love with them ever since.

i hear word today, besides the note that they're opening for the Stones and that tickets to their own concerts are going for $45, that their second album is due out in a few weeks. it comes with news of record label artistic squabbles -- which is never good news. but i'm all drooly waiting to see if they've managed to avoid a sophomore slump. . .

raulrsalinas

2005-11-04T23:25:00.000-06:00

one of the great elders, raulrsalinas, was featured at Wednesday night's coffeehouse series at Schreiner University, co-sponsored by Kathleen Hudson's Texas Heritage Music Foundation and Tom Wells' Speaking Truth to Power Series. i backed up Kathleen on siyotanka and dance drum as she read from the works of Leonard Peltier. that's become something of a tradition for us as we annually open up this event dedicated to Native American Heritage Month. the surprise of the evening was guest artist Stephen Bruton, a monster guitarist, who played a few tunes of his own then backed up raul with some jazz inflected acoustic guitar. Bruton produced raul's new CD which is blistering set of words over jazz sax and other tasty instruments from Austin's homegrown best. the CD smokes. also present was Reverend Goat Carson a relocated New Orleans street dude who played a calling song on his harp made of a horse's jaw. as Kathleen would say -- eclectic.

Jonah Priour

2005-11-04T23:23:00.000-06:00

i've been bragging a lot lately about the Ingram theatre kids. here's a note from yesterday's West Kerr Current about Jonah Priour who's gone off to Harvard to continue his career:

Reviews for the play, as well as for Jonah's performance, were stellar. . . "I knew that Cambridge audiences have a reputation for being tough, being in the midst of so many renowned venues for theatre," Priour said. "In the end, I was propelled by a fantastic director and an extremely gifted cast, whose talent and craft were simply remarkable."

"It was because of the history that I carried though -- memories of the genuine artistic brilliance of people like ITM Theatre Director Holly Riedel, the rich learning atmosphere of the Point Theatre, and all my friends and teachers back in the Hill Country -- it was my Ingram values and training that made it even conceivable to step out on the stage opening night."

"I hope, for this reason, that the arts continue to flourish in the area, as they provide such a strong springboard for young individuals with high aspirations. And i hope that all of the people with such diverse and amazing gifts, who continually come out of the Hill Country are perpetualy encouraged, so the world can see that big things really do come from small places."

Jonah was making his debut as a freshman in the first show of the fall season in the lead as Willi Graf in The White Rose.

Shake Russell

2005-11-04T23:21:00.000-06:00

back when we were in our early playing years one of those guys we followed some was Shake Russell (actually Shake AND Dana Cooper). we hosted him at our coffeehouse in the mid-70s, occasionally opened for him, and liked his stuff. it was good cruising around music. i wouldn't exactly call him an influence or a mentor, because we were headed a different way musically, but hearing him brings back a flood of memories, and all his old stuff is till the most singalongable stuff out there.

so tonight, the Roddy Tree B&B across the river here is hosting a outdoor concert with Shake and Mason Ruffner, and i keep stepping outside for a few minutes to just listen and soak some of that in. he was just doing Deep in the West one of those songs i did for quite a few years. i was just thinking i ought to pick that one up again.

Vanities

2005-11-03T23:27:00.000-06:00

I managed to get to the last show of Vanities the other night and it was exceptional -- the girls were on fire -- congrats to Lillian Beaudoin, Meggie Nidever, Whitney Wilson (three exceptional talents you'll someday know lots about), Summer White, Suzanne Attridge, Holly Riedel, and Director Marie Cearley for an outstanding senior showcase.

It seems a bit silly for me to sit here and tell you, from guaranteed-podunk, Texas, that we have a dramatic program at the high school here that would be hard to match anywhere else. Even if you knew that, officially, they were in the top 16 programs in their class last year would not render the truth clearly enough. But i want to say, as i said problematically last year, these kids, guided by the exceptional talents of Cearley, Riedel and Roy Burney, are just stunning. Their resumes include blistering productions of Grease, Persephone, The Crucible, Vanities, Macbeth, and Les Miserables -- those shows alone many, many a high school theatre addict would die for. You will see more of these Ingram kids.

2006 World Scholar-Athlete Games

2005-11-01T23:27:00.000-06:00

One of the great thrills of my life -- indeed i have to rank it as one of the finest summers ever -- i was able to participate in the first-ever World Scholar-Athlete Games. Two of my players also attended, Tommy Olafson and Amy Grace Tharp. Amy played for the eventual games champion (the team i coached finished third in that same comp). The deal is though, that for two weeks, thousands of the most intelligent, idealistic, well-spoken and charming young folks from across the world were part of a community of vision unlike anything i had ever witnessed nor, despite my own idealism, ever thought possible. The vision of Dan Doyle and countless others made something truly magical happen. Now we three went for soccer, but by the time it was over we'd discovered some intriguing politics, i'd arranged readings for budding writers and displays for budding artists, and compiled an anthology of their work. That has apparently blossomed (now including Photography, Dance and Culinary Arts) and the idea that scholars could be athletes has bloomed into the most fantastic collaboration of sports and art on the planet as far as i am concerned. One of the products is the new Center for Sports Poetry. After the exhilaration of that summer my team hosted and fostered National Sportsmanship Day and we worked hard at nominating and qualifying 13 players to attend the second World Scholar-Athlete Games in 1997. One of those was so enamored of the whole idea that he went on to compete at the Ireland Scholar-Athlete Games in 1998. I had planned to attend to coach again but circumstances dictated otherwise. Nevertheless i had some great kids experience something they'll never again see. Why all this now? Well, it's time now for the fourth edition. The third was held in 2001, but they've held off a year for this next edition to have it coincide with the 20th Anniversary of the Center for International Sport. I'm thinking about a bid again myself -- and i know a bunch of kids and teachers who ought to be a part of the experience [update: i've now nomintaed 19 exceptional kids and may nominate more]. See more about it for yourself here:
World Scholar-Athlete Games

Our Town

2005-10-25T23:29:00.000-05:00

Had first rehearsal tonight for Our Town with the Ingram Thespians -- that's a great bunch of kids and wonderful actors. We're way short of rehearsal time for this somewhat difficult piece, but the kids bring a lot to the table -- indeed several already had their lines down tonight -- and i suspect this will be one fine show.

Roy Burney was there -- the first time i've seen him since his "episode" with his gall bladder/pancreas/other gooey internal stuff and i'd have to say he was looking pretty good. He does have some more tests and stuff going on but it appears they've ruled out the ugly C word. But of course no one has pinned anything down. Worse, and this would be Roy's sentiment i think, he had to give up his role as Petruchio in The Point's Taming of the Shrew, the first time in some 40 years of acting he's ever had to quit a role. Will update as they pass on more news.

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)

2005-09-06T00:34:00.000-05:00

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) [dir. Asia Argento]

Biospoilers
In Fictionalized America. Might be okay, might not: This film caught my eye early on because of the story it was based on. I have not yet seen the film, but i have a copy of the trailer. The kid in the story is severely abused and has recurring nightmares which are intended to be symbolic, and feature lots of red birds and red feathers. Well a CG version of one dream shows a parade of Northern Cardinal still lifes. They are truly red, would occur in the places the movie takes place and look real. Some dreams however have red crows. Despite the famous Blackfeet chief named Red Crow, and the actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman, there are no red crows of any species in nature. But the birds in the dream are quite clearly red and quite clearly crows. Now, in a dream anything goes as far as i'm concerned, but i'm hoping it doesn't lead folks to believe there are actually red crows.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Biospoilers from the Listservs

2005-08-29T00:20:00.000-05:00

Biospoilers
Notes collected from BirdChat, TexBirds, UMichBirders and BirdWG05(AZ/NM) Listservs and the Internet Movie Database (imdb)

Over the years i have caught snippets of conversation from the birding listservs about one of my favorite topics -- bird songs out of place at the movies. After naming my project "Biospoilers" and starting to collect notes on these things i decided to return to the archives of the various listservs to see what else i could scare up. Below are the examples i came across from those who were fairly certain both of their IDs and that something was amiss. I can't vouch for any of these. I hope some day to check each of these out by DVD and verify them. Until then here's some things to ponder . . .

Here's the key:
The Movie [or in some cases TV show, commercial or song] (date of production when known) -- the actual bird (or other critter)heard or seen, with notes if it was identified as something else or something else about it is peculiar (the purported location of the scene) -- the author of the listserv posting when known

Babe (1995) – Tawny Owl (Sydney, Australia) – Byron Butler

The Birds II: Land’s End (1994) -- Starling identified as a Black-naped Tern, Laughing Gull identified as a Brown-hooded Gull (North Carolina) – Mary Beth Stowe

The Bourne Identity (2002) – Eastern Wood Pewee (France in winter) – Suzanne Vedder

Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) – “first robin of spring” (England, where their version of “Robin” is basically non-migratory) – Ronald Orenstein

Carousel (1956) – Northern Mockingbird, despite its name out of range at the time of the setting of the film (Maine) – imdb

Charlie’s Angels (2000) – Troupial identified as a Pygmy Nuthatch (some west coast island) – Craig Bateman, Bryn Martin

D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994) – geese flying but ducks are quacking – imdb

Dancer in the Dark (2000) -- White Wagtail, Fieldfare, Song Thrush, Blackcap, Blackbird, Willow Warbler (US) – imdb

Dances with Wolves (1990) – Sandhill Cranes identified as geese (the West) – Kurt Knebusch, imdb

Dead Poets Society (1989) – European Starlings honking like geese – imdb

Ethan Frome (1993) – Red-eyed Vireo singing (Maine, dead of winter) – imdb

George of the Jungle (1997) – Capuchin Monkey (Africa) – Bryn Martin

George of the Jungle 2 (2003) – cockatoo (Africa) – imdb

The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) – Barred Owl, Boreal Owl, Common Nighthawk (Africa) – imdb

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) – swallows (Netherlands in winter) – imdb

The Great Gatsby (1974) – House Finch (Long Island, not present there until the 1940s) – imdb

Highlander (1986) – Red-winged Blackbird (Europe) – Melanie Hopkins

Jurassic Park (1993) – Wood Thrush (Montana badlands) – Kurt Knebusch

King Arthur (2004) – Harris’s Hawk identified as a falcon (England 1,000 years before Columbus located Harris’s Hawkland) – Bryn Martin

Kiss the Girls (1997) – Great Kiskadee (Durham, North Carolina) – Oscar Carmona

Lost (2004) – Kookaburra, loons, American warblers, screech-owls, Polar Bear (Pacific Island) – Bryn Martin

Mary Poppins (1964) – American Robin (London) – Frank Gibson

The Mating Game (1996) – Hudsonian Godwit nest in a tree (North Carolina) – Bob Lewis

Moulin Rouge (2001) – lovebird, but it’s a canary song (Paris) – imdb

Murder She Wrote – Common Loon, Western Screech-Owl (Charleston, North Carolina) – Nancy Newfield

Northern Exposure – Black-capped Chickadee identified as a Siberian Tit/Gray-headed Chickadee (Alaskan bush) – Jacco Gelderloos, Bob Tarte

Outbreak (1995) – Capuchin Monkey (Africa) – Bryn Martin

PCU (1994) – Gray-crowned Crane identified as a Whooping Crane – Craig Bateman

Planter’s Peanuts commercial – Acorn Woodpecker identified as Pileated Woodpecker – Don Richardson

Black Point (2001) – Wood Thrush (Pacific Northwest) – Chris Cooper

Pride and Prejudice (1940) – Eurasian Collared-Dove (Europe) – Wim Vader

Quest for Fire (1981) – Black-capped Chickadee, Pileated Woodpecker (prehistory, and thus presumably not in the US) – Hank Burchard

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) -- Willow Ptarmigan (Peruvian jungle) -- Terence Lee Schiefer & Tony Leukering

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) – Common Loon (Peruvian jungle) – Tony Leukering

Robin Hood (1991) -- Eurasian Collared-Dove (Europe) – Wim Vader

Robin Hood (1991) – White-throated Sparrow (Britain) – Sandy Ayer

Scarlet Letter (1995) – Scarlet Finch (Massaschusetts) – Richard Stern

Scream (1996) – Canyon Wren (night in a suburb) – Cathi Tomsen

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – Cactus Wren (Maine) – Ed Stonick

A Simple Plan (1998) – Hooded Crow (US) – Doug Von Gausig

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (song) by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – Chestnut-brown Canary and Ruby-throated Sparrow – Mark O’Keefe, among others, would like to see these two anywhere!

Tarzan – Kookaburra – many commenters

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Theatre, Dance, Music, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

The Biospoilers Project

2005-08-17T00:08:00.000-05:00

What the heck are Biospoilers and where did they come from?

Common Loons, Kookaburras, American Coots and Common Moorhens in Tarzan as monkeys; every raptor that ever flew having the voice of a Red-tailed Hawk; Boreal and Great Horned Owls in everything; and silly California Quail in MASH.

As almost all birders know, Hollywood has little use for accuracy in the background noise they use in film. In fact, birds in the foreground are pretty random as well; as are mammals, reptiles and fish, and who knows what else. There are times when i’m glad i’m not a serious botanist – film must drive them bonkers.

I always had this idea of moving to Hollywood to set up a business to provide natural history accuracy to films -- a business offering directors a full library of recordings of the birds appropriate to the region and time of their movies (and counseling against using improper species just because they sound spooky); maybe even offering to travel to exotic locations to get complete Foley recordings in situ, etc.! Yeah, that’s the ticket. I could charge thousands of dollars of course.

Oh well, i just never got around to it.. But that idea evolved into writing a giant expose about the inaccuracies of film biology and some years ago i began making a list to that end. What you'll find below is a preliminary compilation of some of this effort (to be updated as i find my notes and see new erroneous depictions) .

Here you’ll read about the things i've found, plus contributions from birding/cinephile friends and, more recently, as a result of requests online to the birding community which has responded enthusiastically. (And i might as well do this disclaimer thing now too -- i've been compiling this and relying on the wisdom of friends, and also of strangers, and i haven't always had the chance to double-check some of this info. The provider of the information is listed along with their thoughts in the post “From the Listservs.” The ones i initiated carry my initials.)

Biospoilers? Well i concocted the name for a dual reason – bird sounds, even birds themselves or other animals, out of place can spoil a film for a connoisseur the same as any other error – planes in the sky over spaghetti westerns, touchtone phones in Roaring 20s settings, out-of-sync voices. It’s also in line with the usual meaning of spoiler – that a reviewer may give away plot points or the ending – and thus a warning is offered – if you read these before you see the movie you’ll already know what’s coming.

In general, movies made in the settings where the fiction is taking place fare the best assuming they don't add stuff from sound effects collections. Locally obtained Foley FX is usually pretty good. And simple background sounds in synced recording on actual location can be nothing but perfect unless anachronistic (for instance House Sparrows in a revolutionary era US colonies piece. Why? Because House Sparrows, though common across the country now, were not introduced from Europe until the 19th century.)

Here’s some egregious examples: In The Deer Hunter, the guys go hunting in upstate New York. There is a brief scene of a deer in a shaft of sunlight – it’s a Red Deer, native to Europe and Asia. After they kill the deer, the dead animal is a native White-tailed Deer. Oops.

You’ll see comments in the Listserv post about the birds in Tarzan, but those aren’t the only errors. Even as a kid i knew that Tigers, Boa Constrictors, and prehensile-tailed monkeys were not found in Africa.

A favorite of mine are the scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark and sequels when Indy gets tossed into the obligatory room, pit, what have you, full of snakes. The snakes are from a wide variety of species, but more importantly from a wide variety of continents, causing me at least to wonder how they got there.

There’s more. Lots more. And you probably have some stories yourself. Please feel free to add them in the comments or email me, and i’ll add them to the ever-growing list here.

The problem begins with substituting a film location for the purported location of the story. If action takes place outside there will almost always be background species not native to the fictional area. Top that with directors who want their film to sound “natural” and you may have almost anything added.

Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology thankfully is asked to provide appropriate sounds on occasion, but any sound library may be queried about some of the standard sounds listed in the first paragraph above – especially when a director wants something spooky, nighttimish, “Western,” or jungly.

As you read through these separate reviews (a couple of which praise the accuracy of a film), you’ll encounter some film terms perhaps unfamiliar to you. Here’s a rundown: sound effects usually refers to recorded sounds from an outside library, the rights of which are purchased for use in the film, SF or FX or SFX are just shorthand for sound effects; CG means computer-generated, as many of the “spooky” animal sounds in use today are; Foley effects are sound effects specially created in a studio or out of doors, specifically for use in a specific movie, this often refers to sounds like glass breaking or footsteps, but often a director wants “outdoor” background noise and this will be specially recorded at the film location and added later.

And one final note before i direct you to the indidividual reviews and listings. In my research on this i have found some other sites which discuss an example or two. If you find some such with new information, i’d appreciate knowing about it.

Here’s a couple of sites with additional info as well. Unfortunately you either have to check it out movie by movie, or have some specific idea of what you’re looking for. I was able to glean a few things from IMDb, but not nearly what i suspect is on there.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb, imdb) listing of movie goofs is at:
http://us.imdb.com/Search/goofs/

And MovieMistakes.com is at:
http://www.moviemistakes.com/

Some Random, Miscellaneous but Related Notes:

There is an ad floating around in central Texas magazines in which the Wimberley visitor’s bureau brags on the area as a wilderness getaway and a wildlife haven. There is an appropriate scene of kayakers on the river floating past a flock of inappropriate domestic ducks and geese. -- tg

What actually made me think of this wasn't a TV show or a movie, but a brochure. It was for kayaking with Orcas and I picked it up when I was out in Washington last fall. In addition to the marine mammals, it listed a variety of other animals you could see, including the Bald Eagle. But pictured on the brochure was an African Fishing Eagle. – Bryn Martin

One would expect the National Audubon Society to be an especially good arbiter of accuracy. However, i fondly remember the much-anticipated first photographic field guide to North American Birds – only, under the heading Spotted Owl was a picture of the considerably smaller Elf Owl; and perhaps funnier, the Black-headed Oriole was represented by a picture of an African Black-headed Oriole – funnier because, despite the similarity in name, they’re not even in the same family. A revised edition was on the shelves pretty quickly. -- tg

Or how about the golf scandal from last year? A network producer admitted to plugging in bird sounds to add to the ambient sound during cutaway shots. -- John Lowry

All right here they are, the posts where you can learn more -- but beware, they're not called Biolspoilers for nothing!

Coming soon -- additions to the list from I and the Bird and Tangled Bank readers.

And a complete review with, yes there are, biospoilers of March of the Penguins.

Notes from the Birding Listservs**

M*A*S*H (1970)**

The Outsiders (1983)**

Guinevere (1993)**

Wild America (1997)**

Caracara (1999)**

Finding Forrester (2000)**

Vertical Limit (2000)**

The Harry Potter series (2001-2004)**

Harry Potter's owls**

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)**

40 Days and 40 Nights (2002)**

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)**

Guess Who (2005)**

Everything or Nothing (2005)**

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2005)**

This post featured on: I and the Bird #4 and The Tangled Bank #35

Tag: Birds, Nature, Science, Environment, Film, Culture, Reviews, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

2005-08-13T00:15:00.000-05:00

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) [dir. Tim Burton]

Review
Plaza Theatre, Kerrville, 12 August 2005

A bit heavy on the sweet and frothy

The good part is that you can sit through the icky parts because the good parts balance them out.

I saw Willie Wonka many years ago and have never much felt like i wanted to see it again. Now, i kind of have that itch to refresh my memory on what exactly is new, what is borrowed, and what might be blue.

So, Willie is a bit of an unsavory character -- he's working out oedipal issues by making chocolate -- but creepy is not how i remembered him. So Tim Burton has that effect on things; to push them over the edge into a realm where you're left wondering about motive. And in this chocolate factory version anyone who is the least bit suspicious is simply sucked up into some machine and spit out the front gate.

So the good part is that the only truly innocent patrons -- Charlie and his mesmerizing grandpa -- are the winners here. And the good part on top of the good part is that Charlie and his entire extended under one roof family is charming, without quite crossing over into saccharine. The grandparents are all a genuine hoot. And everyone is a dynamite actor. And so, it's with some anticipation that we await those little scenes in their house (quite a character in itself).

But Johnny Depp, and i blind myself to my respect for the guy, is creepy occasionally, but mostly he's just not really with us on this mystical journey. It's not a dialed in performance, it was sent by postcard.

I am a fan of Depp's -- notably in Edward Scissorhands and What's eating Gilbert Grape. But lately i'm not so enamored of his screen personae. All too many folks have insisted to me that his Cap'n in Pirates of the Caribbean is magical. Nope.

So what else . . . the candy room was bit short on the perspective . . . the oompaloompahs, interesting but hardly fascinating.

There was a nod to Scissorhands, and Adam & Eve, and who knows what else. But most of the insides were too obscure to follow, and the adult nods created few laughs in the theatre where i watched. The kids? Well i didn't even know kids were in the theatre until the lights came up.

So, while it was interesting, it wasn't interesting enough and i doubt i'll ever watch it again -- though i might dig up the early version.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Bad News Bears (2005)

2005-08-06T21:27:00.000-05:00

Bad News Bears (2005) [dir. Richard Linklater]

Review
Plaza Theater, Kerrville, Texas, 5 August 2005

Bad News All Right . . .
Here's what's important:

The movie is the same as the original, except: a) the kids have not only picked up a lot more language, but now they actually know what it means; b) racism, misogyny and cruelty are now officially back in the national repertoire; and c) you'd think there would be some kid actors with personality out there who might like to be in a classic tribute movie with Billy Bob Thornton (unless c is because the parents of kids with personality actually read the script containing a and b and figured there were better ways to get in the business, or that maybe X-Box is not so bad a diversion after all).

Okay, the kid playing Tanner makes such a deal of throwing his glove, and stopping baserunners that you get a tiny soft spot for him -- but up close, in person, naaaah. And the Kelly character? Is there a more flat performance around? Not even in The Bad News Bears Go To Japan.

Billy Bob. Well, he has moments, but early in the film he's just line reading.

So, okay, i'm on this jag about how the world has changed lately, and i mean lately, and not to society's benefit. But let's say you recognize this, you're a parent, and you've accepted kids will run across these things. Do you really wanna pay $6 (or whatever the gouge rate is in your town) to have your 12-year-old learn all these vile putdowns and provocations? Not unless you wanna spend the fall visiting your progeny in the principal's office.

The original was funny, i think, because it was unexpected -- but also because it had heart. Here, it is neither unexpected nor heartwarming. In fact, i'm still trying to figure out exactly who was the protagonist. I'm thinking maybe it was one of the Hooter's waitresses . . . maybe.

Positives? Well, i can think of one -- the dialogue was well-written. In a movie that depends on so many one-liners, you'd think stilted speech would be a natural by-product, but somebody got that part right. But what's it worth if you don't want your kid to see the movie anyway.

I got to quit getting my hopes up.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Sin City (2005)

2005-08-06T00:04:00.000-05:00

Sin City (2005) [dir. Robert Rodriguez]

Review
This review comes much later, after i've absorbed what i thought about a movie that i was so looking forward to that i risked raising the expectations bar out of my own sight.

Early trailers were dazzling -- both for their snippets of storytelling, in 50s noirish tones, together with obviously pioneering, and starkly beautiful graphics. And, it was not only loaded with actors i envy, but all the actors were ones i envy. These days it is hard to find a movie that doesn't have someone in it that i loathe, and must thus avert my mind while they are onscreen.

But not Sin City.

So there i was, fidgeting 10 minutes into the film, something i rarely do. Within 30 i was ready to get up and walk out, something else i don't do. But i stayed. I'm glad i did, if only for the one time experience (since i won't be watching the movie again; and that's me saying this two months after watching the film, and listing it as a favorite -- if it's a favorite, i think it's best left that way strictly as a memory, and not from reanalysis).

And after all this time, and discussions with the occasional other who has seen the film and whose opinion i value, here's what i come to more than anything else:

I think the difficulty in watching the film comes in the faithfulness of its translation from comics to celluloid. That was an issue for Robert Rodriguez, to stay true to the page -- and perhaps that is the right angle, for it's that very noirish look and method of storytelling that made those graphic novel comics so compelling.

Most comic book characters removed to constant animation tell a full story just as a fiction filmed movie would.

But in this case, each frame dictated a scene, a complete scene. And therein, i think, lies the problem.

When reading a comic novel, one moves the eye from frame to frame, but in the process, the mind is mulling the possibilities, processing the scene shift, and filling in the blanks of the story. Comic writers use this in order to produce the sting, the setup, so common in their stories.

Only, while watching film, one doesn't have the time to do that processing. And in this case the result is a jarring disorientation while you try to fill in the blanks at the same time you're picking up the clues in the scene unfolding before your eyes. And on the big screen, arguably the place to see this film, there is no pause or rewind button to make those allowances.

Perhaps that was a conscious choice for another reason -- that to fill in the blanks would require doubling or more the running time. After all the film is about several plots all converging into one oversized denouement. Perhaps it's a story that can't be told in one attention span. I don't know.

What i do know is that months later, i'm still sore that the movie did not turn out to be the movie i wanted it to be. I am still awed by the attempt, and awed by the graphics, and enraptured of the devices and the acting, and still am having trouble pinpointing where the movie fell through my visceral cracks. But it did.

Maybe there's a director's cut somewhere . . .

Preview, March 27, 2005
Speaking of much anticipated movies, there's Sin City! which i've been in love-at-first-sight with since i saw the trailer several months ago. It's due out on April 1 (hope that's no omen), and looks headed for the local theatre, which is always a shock -- good film in Neanderville, TX!

The advance reviews are almost uniformly good, so here's hoping . . .

The advance scoop at Rotten Tomatoes.

Update, Sunday March 27: from MSNBC

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

2005-08-05T00:12:00.000-05:00

The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) [dir. Jay Chandrasekhar]

Review
Okay, i'm not really reviewing this thing -- i can read reviews and they are uniformly horrible. And I hated the TV show anyway, and, and, and, well, there's this one thing see.

I love General Lee . . . the car that is. My favorite car ever is the Dodge Charger, and the fact that one starred in a TV show (despite being orange, and having a confederate flag on it, and being named after a drunk xenophobe -- that's three violences done to an otherwise fine piece of machine) just elates me.

So i thought about holding my nose and going anyway, and i'm struggling hard, but i think this will pass . . .

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Lyle Lovett at the Movies

2005-08-03T00:14:00.000-05:00

The most recent issue of Texas Music has a series of articles about Texas musicians in film. Headlining of course is Willie Nelson, but Lyle gets a pretty sweet article as well. There is no compilation there of his work. Soooo, since i keep track, here's a list of Lyle's work on film (if anyone knows of things i missed, please fill me in):

Bill: On His Own (Page, 1983) -- as singer on the beach
Farm Aid '87 (1987) -- as himself
Always (Spielberg, 1989) -- soundtrack Cowboy Man
Major League (Ward, 1989) -- soundtrack Cryin' Shame
South of Wawa (Boyd, 1991) -- consultant
The Player (Altman, 1992) -- as Detective DeLongpre
Leap of Faith (Pearce, 1992) -- soundtrack Pass Me Not
The Crying Game (Jordan, 1992) -- soundtrack Stand By Your Man
Mad About You (Jacobson, Reiser, et al., 1992-1999)-- soundtrack Nobody Knows Me
Short Cuts (Altman, 1993) -- as Andy Bitkower
The Wild West (Merill, 1993) -- set?
Luck, Trust and Ketchup (Dorr & Kaplan, 1993) -- as himself
Willie Nelson: The Big 6-0 (1993) -- as himself
The Firm (Pollack, 1993) -- soundtrack M-O-N-E-Y
Pret a Porter (Altman, 1994) -- as Clint Lammaraux
Quiz Show (Redford, 1994) -- soundtrack Moritat/Mack the Knife
It Could Happen to You (Bergmann, 1994) -- soundtrack She's No Lady
With Honors (Keshishian, 1994) -- soundtrack Blue Skies
Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995) -- soundtrack You've Got a Friend in Me
Bastard Out of Carolina (Huston, 1996) -- as Wade
Lyle Lovett Going Home (1996) -- as himself
2 Days in the Valley (Herzfeld, 1996) -- soundtrack Nobody Knows Me
Dear God (Marshall, 1996) -- soundtrack Straighten Up and Fly Right
The Kennedy Center Honors (Frook, Lukinson, et al., 1996) -- as himself
68th Academy Awards (Margolis, 1996) -- singing You've Got a Friend from Toy Story
Breast Men (O'Neil, 1997) -- as Research Scientist
The Apostle (Duvall, 1997) -- soundtrack Soldier in the Army of the Lord
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam, 1998) -- as Road Person
The Opposite of Sex (Roos, 1998) -- as Sheriff Carl Tippett
The Kennedy Center Honors (Horvitz, 1998) -- as himself
Not In Our Name: Dead Man Walking -- the Concert (Ames, 1998) -- as himself
Hope Floats (Whitaker, 1998) -- soundtrack Smile
Roger Miller Remembered (1998) -- as himself
Clay Pigeons (Dobkin, 1998) -- soundtrack Teach Me About Love
Cookie's Fortune (Altman, 1999) -- as Manny Fortune
Where Music Meets Film: Live from Sundance (McNamara, 1999) -- as himself
An All-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash (Horvitz, 1999) -- as himself
Mumford (Kasdan, 1999) -- soundtrack Till it Shines
Stuart Little (Minkoff, 1999) -- soundtrack Walking Tall
For Love of the Game (Raimi, 1999) -- soundtrack Summer Wind
Where the Heart Is (Williams, 2000) -- soundtrack What'd I Say
Dr. T and the Women (Altman, 2000) -- music producer, composer
61* (Crystal, 2001) -- soundtrack Nobody Knows Me
Last Stand of the Tallgrass Prairie (2001) -- host
Kissing Jessica Stein (Hermann-Wurmfeld, 2001) -- soundtrack Gee Baby Ain't I Good to You
3 Days of Rain (Meredith, 2002) -- as Disc Jockey
Our Country (Goldmann, Melton, et al., 2002) -- as himself
The New Guy (Decter, 2002) -- as Bear Harrison
Live By Request -- Lyle Lovett (Jordan, 2003) -- as himself
Hunter Goes to Hollywood (Ewing & Pearce, 2003) -- as himself
Willie Nelson & Friends: Live & Kickin' (Brien, 2003) -- as himself
Be Here to Love Me: A Film about Townes Van Zandt (Brown, 2004) -- soundtrack composer
Sound Stage Presents -- Lyle Lovett (2005) -- as himself

And Lyle was scheduled to be in Altman's A Prairie Home Companion (due 2006) , but had a concert schedule conflict and couldn't make the filming. I have no other word on what he might be doing next.

He has also appeared, in some cases multiple times, on Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Austin City Limits, Mad About You, Dharma & Greg, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Sin City Spectacular.

Some notes: First, i've now seen everything he's done in fiction films, and these things come to mind -- none of those characters is Lyle. He's someone different everytime, and none of them is the Lyle i know/knew . . . just for those of you who have asked. Second, the Lyle that's in some of the documentaries is Lyle, at least onstage Lyle. I haven't seen all of those though, and in particular am intrigued by the documentary Going Home.

Next, my favorite film in which Lyle acts is The Player. It's an Altman tour de force. And i like Lyle's performance, it's just not enough of him in there. My two favorite Lyle movies for the sake of Lyle are The Opposite of Sex and Bastard Out of Carolina. My favorite movies in which Lyle has a soundtrack song would be The Apostle, Crying Game, & Toy Story.

Finally, it's been fun tracking his career over the years. I gauge it by three eras -- how he's identified by the kids i work with: A) were the years in which all the kids knew his and Roberts' songs, but especially Lyle's; B) the years in which Robert was better known among the kids, and Lyle was better known among them as "that guy with the hair" or that guy who married Julia Roberts; and C) the current, in which he's known as "isn't he that guy with the flaming marshmallow in his eye". Well, i've done my best to cure that by teaching my kids his music.

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

2005-08-03T00:09:00.000-05:00

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) [dir. Wes Anderson]

Review
Swimming with Sharks

Finally getting around to seeing some of the movies that came out while i was locked up for the summer, or otherwise unable to get to. It seems like there's a bundle of them out on DVD already.

The first is The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. This Wes Anderson film is simply, cynically, brilliant. I will be watching it over again, and probably posting more commentary on this post, but i'd have to say that my first reaction is that it's near flawless.

Seu Jorge is a manicly inspired touch, Owen Wilson (who i dislike) is perfect, Jeff Goldblum (who i dislike) is perfect, Cate Blanchett is delicious, and Bill Murray may have reached some pinnacle here. I like Bill Murray (though he's done some awful stuff) and this movie is all about the things i like most about him. If i could own Bill Murray, this is the version i'd want.

Biospoilers
While i think my Biospoilers reviews could be adapted to almost anything, this is the way movies ought to be made. If you can't be accurate make it up -- completely. The juicy common names here are perfect, as perhaps only a working taxonomist might recognize, and even the momentary taxon dispute is subtly on target. Had only Jacques himself lived to see this.

Quarrels? None.

I'll be checking out the other DVD goodies also, and reporting back.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Shark Tale (2004)

2005-08-03T00:08:00.000-05:00

Shark Tale (2004) [dir. Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson, Rob Letterman]

Review
This fish don't swim.

Well, okay. Here's another of those movies i anticipated perhaps too much.

I'm not generally an animation kinda person, but i have really gotten into some of the recent stylistic types -- namely Toy Story, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, and Finding Nemo. Since Nemo had such a great story i figured Shark Tale just might live up to it.

But no, it doesn't.

It has some funny bits. I liked DeNiro. And i liked the setup -- guy falsely gets credit for heroic deed only to suffer the consequences of the lie (although the lesson learned is not exactly heartwarming).

But Will Smith's fish Oscar is rather squirrelly, and by that i mean the animated character just isn't right. I don't know, it's just not there. And of course, buying into him is the movie. So, what's left?

Well, there's the long dull expository sequences, not something i would expect in an animated film -- although Howard the Duck comes painfully to mind.

The way i figure it animating the passing of gas is just a way of saying the comedy isn't working so let's at least make the 3rd-graders giggle. Only, there either weren't any present or it doesn't work on them either.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
Tags: Culture, Reviews, Movies, Film, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

40 Days and 40 Nights (2002)

2005-07-30T00:33:00.000-05:00

40 Days and 40 Nights (2002) [dir. Michael Lehmann]

Biospoilers
Two quick notes on this flick: First there is a computer-degenerated bird voice near the end of the film that is incredibly familiar, but something about the context and/or the way in which it has been manipulated leaves it hanging on the end of my tongue. The species may or may not be out of context, but (with a nod to recently departed Robert Moog) whatever species it is is not known for carrying a synthesizer around with it. The second instance, and one for which the dear audience-member may make their own decision about whether authenticity is necessary, occurs in a hallucination as Josh Hartnett's character is gliding over a field of mammary glands and encounters a flock of geese -- which quack like ducks (a familiar film failing).

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
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The Oustiders (1983)

2005-07-27T00:19:00.000-05:00

The Outsiders (1983) [dir. Francis Ford Coppola]

Biospoilers
Folks who know me well know that for several years i have been collecting instances of poor biology in film -- i call them biospoilers. The idea is that folks with a natural bent can be annoyed, distracted, and just plain bummed out by the license taken by filmmakers. I have an unfinished webpage devoted to this, and will eventually hone it and sent it out on the blogorail.

I bring this up, because girlscientist has just put out her regular Birds in the News feature (which is an especially fine roundup of recent news anyways -- check it out here), and in it is a link to a site which talks about the owls used in the Harry Potter films. What's creepy is that i just today came across a mention of this site birderblog.com and was about to add it to my blogroll!

So, last week we were having movie night for the kids here and chose The Outsiders, the Francis Ford Coppola dramatization of S.E. Hinton's novel. It was the breaking vehicle for a slew of young actors including Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell. Of course, even though it was my DVD i hadn't watched it, and hadn't seen the film in many years, so i was taking notes.

The locale is Oklahoma, exactly where is not a part of the movie, so that's a non-issue. And the Barred Owl (Strix varia) used in the old church scenes is reasonable for the geography. It's not a bird that normally is found inside buildings though, like a Common Barn-Owl (Tyto alba) might be. So i guess to make up for that, or in pure serendipity, the voice they use for the owl when the boys spook it from the church is a barn-owl voice. Later they use a Great Horned Owl's (Bubo virginianus) voice for it.

The other goof is that a bunny plays a cameo role, first to establish the "wildness" of the place, and later as a potential meal. Well, the native rabbits of the area might include Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), Desert Cottontail (Sylvilagus auduboni) or Black-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) depending on where in Oklahoma we are (though it looks mostly like Eastern Cottontail territory) -- but most definitely not the European Hare (Oryctolagus cuniculus) that was used. At least they used a plain brown one instead of a pied version in some nod to authenticity.

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The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)

2005-05-27T00:29:00.000-05:00

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) [dir. Peter Care]

Biospoilers
In Fictionalized Savannah, Georgia. At least the director knows they goofed on this one: Okay the movie involves an attack by Mountain Lions that kill a kid (that's a spoiler in its own right, sorry). But that is not the issue. The lions are in a wildlife park, and in a way the story is plausible, even though we wildlife people know that such attacks are rare. It is a plot point in the movie, and thus was not casually thrown in. The real issue is about a dog. The two buddies in the film find a dog hit by a car, and grief over the dog is also an emotionally-charged plot point. The dog dies in situ and one of the boys carries it off. Well, when you watch the film you'll see the dog is suddenly stuffed -- as in taxidermied (and poorly so). It looks ridiculous. I'd have just written it up as being poorly done and been done with it. However, since i'm doing the film thing, and liked the movie, i watched the film again on DVD with the director's making-of commentary, and there, when this particular scene arrives, is a pretty funny explanation. The dog that was "dying" as the scene begins was a trained dog that lies down and pants on command and did fine. But apparently they had done so many takes that the dog got tired of cooperating, and refused to be carried off, looking dead, to end the scene. The taxidermied dog was a fast make-do job and it just didn't work. It was so bad, and the director noticed, that they eventually cut out most of the scene where the dog could be seen. Unfortunately, enough of the scene had to be used that anyone will see the stuffed sub. So, at least i'll give them credit for knowing . . . and the movie is really pretty good. Online credits incidentally consider this an American film. It does have a US setting and American actors, however in the two video stores where i have seen it it is in the foreign film section. I believe it may be Canadian in production origin, though oddly the only different version available is Argentinian. Go figure. (P.s. see the listing for Everything or Nothing for some hint of similar troubles with animal actors).

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The Harry Potter Series (2001-2004)

2005-04-29T00:25:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter
I: and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
II: and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
III: and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Folks who know me well know that for several years i have been collecting instances of poor biology in film -- i call them biospoilers. The idea is that folks with a natural bent can be annoyed, distracted, and just plain bummed out by the license taken by filmmakers. I have an unfinished webpage devoted to this, and will eventually hone it and sent it out on the blogorail.

I bring this up, because girlscientist has just put out her regular Birds in the News feature (which is an especially fine roundup of recent news anyways -- check it out here), and in it is a link to a site which talks about the owls used in the Harry Potter films. What's creepy is that i just today came across a mention of this site birderblog.com and was about to add it to my blogroll!

Biospoilers
Fictionalized England.

Just to name names: Well, you can't hardly have the wrong critters in something that's completely fictional. Science fiction actually is the line you draw where anything goes i think. I just wanted to put these in here, because they have apparently popularized Snowy Owls (Harry's companion du jour) to such a point that there is an educational campaign to point out that it's not legal to possess owls as pets, even the adorable Snowy Owl Hedwig (adorable unless you have one on your arm . . . i promise). I am pretty fascinated by the range of owls they use in the film (apparently all trained individuals).

The species i was able to ID, and there are glimpses of others that are too short to positively name, are:

Common Barn-Owl, Tyto alba

Snowy Owl, Nyctea scandiaca

Eurasian Eagle Owl, Bubo bubo

Little Owl, Athene noctua (interestingly this bird has been identified by some as an Elf Owl, Micrathene whitneyi, but that seems an unlikely choice, and the brief look in the film to me looks more right for Little Owl (especially considering i spent years trapping and banding Elf Owls; in addition, as Laura Erickson has noted on her excellent page on Binoculars.com, in the books, the bird is supposed to be a European Scops Owl, which the filmed dude is not; another site claims that the bird is considered a Eurasian Pygmy-Owl, Glaucidium passerinum).

Great Gray Owl, Strix nebulosa

Tawny Owl, Strix aluco i am not certain of this one, though i believe i have the ID right -- again based on a short look; some sites claim this species is in the film.

In the US, many of the promotional material showed a Great Horned Owl, Bubo virginianus, a species that does not appear in the film. This is probably because the American promo materials were produced in the US and illustrations of that bird were readily available to the artists working on the materials.

See also my post here about The Outsiders and its owls.

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Guess Who (2005)

2005-03-26T00:07:00.000-06:00

Guess Who (2005) [dir. Kevin Rodney Sullivan]

Review
All right, there are a lot of things to tackle on this film. Let me start first by saying that i enjoyed it. There were lots of legitimate laughs, some winning screen relationships, and i appreciate the tackling of tough subject matter, which mostly worked.

Many reviewers i suspect are doing one to three things: a) attacking the tired interracial comedy of it all; b) lambasting it as cliche; and/or c) going apoplectic over the acting chops of Ashton Kutcher.

As for tired interracial comedy, here's where it differs: it has taken a classic (if severely dated, not really good enough to be "classic", and now seemingly superficial and undaring) film and updated it by way of current thought and situations. And doing so, for the most part, without kowtowing to the usual stereotypes and "offensive" humor that make thinking folks wince.

Instead it shows (as the original intended to do) that what are the foibles of human nature cross all barriers. This was never so apparent as in the dinner scene in which Kutcher is goaded into telling "black" jokes he has heard. It's the reactions to the various "styles" of jokes that show this range. The humor is not the jokes themselves, but in the way different people view them in context of their own situations. And thus different cohorts of guests find various things funny.

As for cliche, well i think simply the genre "romantic comedy" is cliche. Beyond that, once one has acceded to make a movie of that type, one has to do some original things with it. And i think for the most part the filmmakers succeeded here, with the homage to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner coming only in the premise.

The entirety of the piece will be compared, i'm sure, to the Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers duet. While the first of those succeeded pretty much across the board, and the second also was funny if over the top and episodic, they both depended on sight gags, pratfalls, and neat little twists on the predictable. Guess Who has only the occasional pratfall and sight gag (a couple of them truly bad) but rises higher in the third category in that the twists on the predictable mine below the surface, are more than momentarily funny, and they further the relationships on the screen rather than simply use them as setups.

I can't make enough of the relationships. That between Bernie Mac and his wife, played by Judith Scott, that between Ashton Kutcher and his girlfriend (and the daughter), played by Zoe Saldana, that between Mac and Kutcher, and that between Saldana and her sister, played by Kellee Stewart, all are played with a profound depth of loving (sometimes grudging) respect even when they are at odds with each other.

Okay, so i used the word profound with regards to Ashton Kutcher. That brings up the third critic's object of scorn.

The fact is that Kutcher is no Brando. But this is a comedy. A freakin' romantic comedy. Does a guy have to go from enormous rage to intellectuality to tears in one flick to get any credit?

All right so i couldn't bear to watch any of his juvenile looking for cars things. He turned me off. But with Butterfly Effect (which i stumbled into without realizing who was in it) he gained some small acceptance from me. He can be funny. And best of all, it comes easy to him, he doesn't have to do stupid human tricks like Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey or any of the recent bumbling fools who i think just aren't funny (see below). His comedy is based on delivery, and it's smart, and it is truly funny. And he can act beyond spitting out a line. He is comfortable in this role. And from it i'd expect more out of him than i've seen in Owen Wilson, or Sandler; though Carrey, as obnoxious as he is, does have some minor chops himself.

Defining moment (Spoiler): Bernie Mac stealing Kutcher's halfness-wholeness explanation to regain his wife, leaving a fumbling Kutcher with nothing to say and setting up the soul-searching breakup.

Overall: A good, if not great film. Strengths -- honest laughs, deeper than usual relationships for a romantic comedy, mostly honest portrayals, the three female leads/support (while the two men get star billing, the women are uniformly excellent). Weaknesses -- inability to deal with adult sexula mores as easily as it dealt with race, inability to avoid stupidity like the song & dance number at the ceremony (choreographed waiters indeed), inability to avoid using fireworks (we don't need raging metaphors), one too many Kutcher as black linguist stunts, and the NASCAR thing just doesn't fly. If you go, don't miss the credits, with a continuing, funny gag.

Some Notes on the State of Comedy
Let's return briefly to the unfunny comics of late, starting with Jim Carrey who i simply can't abide. The problem there is he is a better actor than comedian, and as long as he sticks with things like Eternal Sunshine he may do well. His comedy, like Kutcher's, is best when it has some intelligence. Dumb and Dumber? Well, dumb. And not funny. And neither is all the toilet humor. Man in the Moon was promising except it too had to find the lowest common denominator.

The reason this is important now is that there were two trailers before Guess Who for comedies starring Will Ferrell. I don't watch TV so a lot of these people come to me first via movies. Ferrell i first saw and recognized for some humor in the parody clip of George Bush at his ranch. Very funny. Bu his other things that i sought out -- not funny. And so here're back-to-back trailers of him in comedies -- Kicking & Screaming and Bewitched.

Kicking and Screaming piqued my interest because it's about coaching soccer. Ferrell is the coach from hell. Bewitched is not so much a movie take on the old TV show as something of a parody, with the "actors" being a pompous divo and a real witch.

Here's the thing. Trailers are almost always funny, or dramatic, in a way that the movies themselves have trouble living up to. They are 2 minute distillations of the best a film has to offer. So when there's NO laughs in a comedy trailer one doesn't have to wonder about paying the admission later. Neither of these were funny. Cross Ferrell off the list.

So, along that line it was interesting to find this article in the New York Times about the "funny cabal" of current comedians, which not only didn't mention Kutcher (i guess he's not in because he's got a hot date), but heaped praise on some of the most unfunny folks out there, including Owen Wilson (who not only was in another unfunny trailer tonight [Wedding Crashers], but whom i can no longer look at after i read a blog this week that called him penisnose).

Go figure.

Technical Issues
The filming was good overall. There were a couple of scenes that were blocked more like stagecraft than filmcraft but for most folks it won't seem too out of whack. Oddly the film is shot at what looks like a little over 4:3. Finally, there were times when i just wanted to scream FOCUS THE CAMERA. How is it, that with professional DPs someone can't either get the camera focused, or recognize that in dailies and reshoot?

Biospoilers
There are only three birds picked up on the soundtrack. Two are nightbirds appropriately shown in night scenes, and the third is a day singer appropriately shown in the day. The first is a Whip-Poor-Will which would be okay for the New Jersey region of the film, and the season is okay for it as well. The cityscape might be iffy but not unheard of. Number two is the ubiquitous night owl of moviedom, a Boreal Owl, radically wrong for location at least at that season. The third is an unidentified passerine, probably a fringillid of some sort, but i can't place it and can't vouch for authenticity. Perhaps some reader can butt in. All three are foleyed in.

Followup
Hollywood's Funniest Clique from the New York Times

More from the New York Times

Update: The show led the weekend box office, so i guess now it has to be critically savaged. Unfortunate.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes

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Lords of Dogtown (2005)

2005-03-26T00:05:00.000-06:00

Lords of Dogtown (2005) [dir. Catherine Hardwicke]

Preview, March 26, 2005
When the trailer jumped up on the screen (the last one prior to the feature tonight -- a good sign) and The James Gangs' Funk #49 was blasting i knew that whatever film was about to preview was at least about good taste, and about my "era". It was.

And it was also about one of my most anticipated films -- The Lords of Dogtown. Based on the true life story of the Z-Boys, surfer/skater heroes of the down and out Dogtown at Venice Beach, the story itself has been daring someone to take hold and film it.

The legendary documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys notwithstanding, there is promise in the feats of these kids -- like Miracle, a story of triumph, unlike Miracle, about a group that not only conquered but literally changed the world they were a part of.

For one thing, and you know when i have a connection i let it fly, it is directed by Catherine Hardwicke. She's one of three classmates from "those" years who have gone off to make big in Hollywood. The others, Robert Roy Pool and Dan York, went straight at it as producers/writers. Catherine came the long way 'round, working as a production designer (for which she won awards and raves) before coming into her own film by way of her own story -- Thirteen.

That story was powerful enough to have apparently gained her an in as a director and this is her first resultant project. That it was about a group of my heroes (in the youth idolization sense) was gravy. And it's of Catherine's time as well, and judging by the brevity of the trailer she nailed the flavor in much the same way that Dazed & Confused (that other story of my formative years) did. I often wonder if everyone has a film or films that so accurately captures their own time, their own lives?

The trailer is ripe with flash, filled as one would expect of a surf/skate film, with broad vistas, sobering real life stunts, and the promise of youthful wildness and memory. Here's hoping that the film lives up to it. I can't wait.

Due June 3, 2005.

Official Site

Spin article genesis

Z-Boys.net

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About Saving Private Ryan and censorship

2005-03-01T00:03:00.000-06:00

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The FCC announced today a decision about the inherent “indecency” or “obscenity” of the movie Saving Private Ryan, which was famously pulled from 66 affiliate stations for a special Veterans Day showing. The stations were afraid the FCC’s recent fine-heavy crackdown would head their way.

I said yesterday that i don’t like cusswords. Further, i generally don’t use them – the exception being when i play a character on stage or in film that cusses. And as a writer i have used them for characters that i think WOULD cuss. But i don’t like the things, generally thinking them unnecessary.

[My deeper viewpoint, expressed many thousands of times over the years to kids i worked with or coached, is that cusswords have a place in our culture. They are used as a sort of major punctuation, an uber-yelling of a sort to indicate extremeness in some situation. And for that reason, when folks use them we tend to become hyper-aware and focused on what is being said. They have a use – an important use.

Of course, like sex, drugs and alcohol, when kids first discover these things and build up the courage to try them, they tend to get a bit too comfortable and overuse them. Kids like to cuss. But they also have antenna alerting them to when and where they can get away with it. If they don’t develop that skill then what they think of as being attention-getting use actually is the opposite. While a kid who never seems to cuss and then lets one fly gets everyone’s attention, a kid who cusses constantly will quickly be ignored as just a kid with a foul-mouth. Constantly cussing adults are the same. We consider them vulgar (which really means common, not profane) and remove them from the range of our listening.]

Quite a long time ago i spent a lot of time thinking about stuff like this. I was always a rebel of sorts, and may be more so today. So i had my wild times. And that involved the adolescent ritual of cussing whenever there were no adults in sight. In my day, word was you could get arrested for it.

Probably most red-blooded Americans have drawn some line at some time about where censorship should begin versus where it actually is. And most everyone knows that it differs from place to place. Not only is the cuss-quotient in New York different than in Waco, it also differs in Ingram, Texas from the middle school courtyard to the math classroom to the youth group at First Baptist to the ragged bar on highway 39.

What has begun to bother me (again) are the whys and hows of censorship. In the decision, the FCC declared that Saving Private Ryan was okay because the context of the vulgar language was war and there it is okay (thereby negating the great sweeps week panic of Fox, and unjustifying the loss of advertising dollars from all those local stations – and remember that these stations pulled the shows NOT because they themselves considered the language too raw to broadcast, but becasue they wanted to avoid fines).

I actually believe the argument is correct -- to a point. The context of war is obscene itself, and we know that soldiers in the worst situations of their young lives can be quite linguistically graphic. And that, further, not many people would begrudge a kid using the f-bomb when he’s being blasted by Nazi machine-gunners. (As an important aside, the FCC ruled that, despite the many complaints about the violence in SPR that violence is not covered in its indecency standards and was thus a non-issue. That conundrum is probably where the greatest arguments, and i predict the ultimate demise of the standards, may lie.)

The problem (and the hypocrisy) comes here: The commission determined that the language WAS NOT indecent or profane. I’d like that to settle in for a second. Because of the context, it was NOT indecent or profane. Okay, context is this. If you say, “I bought an ass to guard my herd of goats,” i say context keeps the admittedly mild “ass” from being profane. But if some bloke is in your living room watching your TV and you say “I got some ass guarding my remote,” well the context has edged itself toward a more vulgar reading. If however, you tell your father to “Kiss your ass” and weren’t talking about your goatherd or your couch-potato friend then you’ve slid even farther. If you ask him to take the remote and shove it up there (see i’ve crossed one of my own lines here) then it is even more so, i think. And oddly enough, when used as a descriptor for the human anatomy in its realest sense that may be the worst offender yet, though perhaps the most benignly correct besides the one in the pasture.

On the other hand, i can’t think of a way in which you could use the big f-word that would not be profane. It can be a useful word, mind you. But it is always profane, in that i have a thousand friends in front of whom i would dare not utter the word IN ANY CONTEXT. (A couple of scripts i’ve written – Neanderville Balks at the Millennium and Junior High – both have scenes dealing with folks having difficulty relaying the word. In one, a teacher just can’t bring herself to say or write the word which she has heard a student utter and thus can’t get him disciplined because she can’t articulate the problem.)

My point, you’ve been waiting a long time for this, is that some things, in their linguistic context, are profane or indecent or obscene no matter where or when or by whom they are uttered. As far as i’m concerned, using the f-word in war is still profane. I might even argue that it’s a comment on the profanity of war itself. In any case it’s still a cussword, a particularly graphic and/or brutal one, and (generally) whenever it’s used it’s making that hyper-statement that makes it so useful.

Why then deny it’s overall use, except by soldiers in war. Part of the issue, is that kids were awake at a time the movie was being viewed. Fine. If it’s okay for kids to learn/understand that soldiers cuss in difficult circumstances (and by extension that it’s OKAY for they themselves to cuss in those situations), and perhaps even to learn that war is obscene, then why can’t that be extended to other situations?

Why can’t a kid learn that a detective coming into a vicious murder scene can be equally forgiven for emphatically expressing his disgust with the same word. Or that a young lady realizing she’s about to be shot or raped can utter that same exclamation with forthright justification.

The slippery slope, is that the argument?

Perhaps my biggest curiosity in this (really it’s a sort of anger, but i’m trying to calm down) is that what we really are doing is teaching kids to lie. To teach them that it’s okay to cuss as long as they don’t get caught. As long as the teacher doesn’t catch you, as long as your parents don’t hear it, then okay. Or if you’re a soldier, okay.

Or why else not have TV shows where junior high kids are spouting off every three seconds. And all you old fuddy-duddies hold on to your indignation, your “not when we were kids” hypocrisy. Yes we did.

I’m tired of our society being geared toward teaching kids to lie and cheat. I can trace an awful lot of the ugly things we do to this. And this is no anti-social screed. I’m talking about other folks’ complaints about what’s wrong with youth. I think our kids are just fine, if we’d just stop TEACHING them to do wrong under cover of "the way to get ahead," "competition," and "the American way".

Some time ask me about current educational “technique” teaching kids to cheat, or about tattoos on employees where i work (and this is not what it seems either).

I gotta stop before my head explodes.

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Million Dollar Baby (2004)

2005-02-20T00:01:00.000-06:00

Million Dollar Baby (2004) [dir. Clint Eastwood]

Review
In between engagements in San Antonio today i had a few hours to spare and decided to try to catch another Oscar level movie. Unfortunately the Oscar movies i most wanted to see, Hotel Rwanda and Vera Drake, were both at times that didn't fit my schedule. Two others i wanted to see, though for entertainment/enlightenment, The Aquatic Life with Steve Zissou and Bad Education, were also misses by scheduling. And i checked three theatre complexes.

None too happy, and realizing that if i spent any more time looking around i wouldn't have time for anything i settled on Million Dollar Baby.

It was really a tough decision. I almost went to the bookstore instead. I've never been a fan of Clint Eastwood. He's in the same pantheon where i keep John Wayne and James Coburn -- the pantheon of "actors other folks rave about that just don't do anything for me." And i'm not a boxing fan either, Howard Cosell ruined that for me long ago. Howard has his own pantheon -- which we won't describe here.

Perhaps the only reason, or reasons, i bought a ticket and went in were a) it was a nominee so i thought maybe i should be able to talk intelligently about it; and b) Hillary Swank -- whom i could be in love with if i were about 4 dog-years younger.

And so what happens. I start to take notes as usual. And about 60 seconds into the movie i am so completely absorbed that i never write another word.

I thought The Aviator was exceptional though i was disturbed by a number of flaws (someday i'll get my review of it posted). It was such a flick though that it was my way-out-in-front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar.

No more.

Million Dollar Baby will henceforth be one of my favorite all-time movies, and my new Oscar vote. Eastwood is on my list of directors/actors to check out from now on. And well, Morgan Freeman and Hillary Swank are imprimaturs on any film they're in. They get my votes too.

I'd love to talk about specific scenes and nuances but to do so gives away parts of the film that i'd rather you see for yourself. So i'll save the spoilers until after it's out on DVD and half the country has seen it.

About all i'll say to wrap up is i don't think you'll ever regret seeing it.

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Film Pet Peeves

2004-12-25T20:31:00.000-06:00

There are quite a few standard movie tricks that come about out of cheapness, sloppiness, or ignorance that truly bug me. They often are such that they cause me to completely drop out of the story being told. We all have these things i'm sure -- especially if you're involved in a field in which the story purports to take place. Some of us have to endure these things in practically any movie.

I'm a biologist by training, and much of what i do and have done involves the auditory and visual identification of wild critters. Because of that i have a keen interest in critters that appear onscreen -- whether real, intended to be real, or intended to be flights of fancy. The problem for me has to do with hearing or seeing something that has no place in the story -- that stops me dead in my tracks. Few movies do it right. The most common error is one made simply of convenience -- we hear the birds of the area singing in the background of a film made on location. When that location is different than the location of the story a disconnect happens. For instance, in one of my favorite films of all time, Rob Roy, the story perfectly handles the highlands of Scotland such that i am totally immersed in the film. Until, that is, Rob ventures into the castle courtyard of the Duke of Argyll. Then, in the background, is tha jawing a Blue Jays and the cooed song of a Mourning Dove, two birds found only in North America. Luckily the film draws me back into the highlands proper after that.

Well, that's my number one pet peeve in the movies. Originally thinking i might become some sort of biological consultant to the film industry i began collecting all the examples i could find (and thousands of recordings of my own). I called these Biospoilers, and have devoted a separate essay to them, and another here, as well as appending a Biospoilers section to any of my reviews for film which i found to have errors, or occasionally did something very right in which i offered my commendations.

But there are other things that bug me as well. So here are some more of those Film Pet Peeves (some of these compiled from a previous blog post):

a) Non-motivated light: The type that makes me most nauseous is that phantom light that spotlights the actors in a car being driven at night. I'd much rather hardly see them with maybe some green dim glow from the meters, than have them bathed in perfectly placed light -- especially for the shotgun rider.

b) Fake labels on cans: This was brought to mind by a scene from The Business of Fancydancing where for the most part just the right tone is set with some incredible set-dressing. Then suddenly we see Mouse making a "bathroom-cleaner sandwich." The problem is the can has a green construction paper wrap on it that looks like, well, a last-minute green construction paper wrap. It takes someone no time at all to create a computer mockup of a label that will prevent rights difficulties -- so why not do it. It is the single major false note in an otherwise beautiful movie.

c) Overuse of/fake handheld camerawork: It seems rather odd doesn't it that in order to get a handheld camera effect folks don't just, voila, hand hold the camera. Instead you get this fluid head camera motion that all too often is so repetitive, cyclical and rhythmic that it creates motion sickness -- i assume it's computer driven, and perhaps is programmed to be random. But it doesn't look handheld -- it looks fake. And i think that's because the computer system has exact frame movement limits. Hands don't have those. Handheld by itself can be overused, but add it to that faux motorized effect and it simply overwhelms -- an example? -- the otherwise outstanding The Bourne Supremacy.

d) CG or overlaid fire effects. Now i suppose someone has managed at some time to do fire well. If so, then i was fooled all right. The issue is, if it's really possible to do it right, why is it done so poorly so often. It's obvious isn't it that fire and explosions are often done with CG because of the potential for injury and damage, and i imagine it's both very expensive and requires lots of paperwork and safeguards. Yet, with the state of CG today you'd think that someone would really become good at this. Instead we get major issues of two types that make most (if not all?) CG fire effects look truly ridiculous. The two issues are ones of density, and ones of scale.

Fire is a bit quirky and random to completely fabricate, so most effects are done with photo overlays, sometimes enhanced (this was done in Jarhead, where they came closer to, but not quite, right). Unfortunately, whoever is doing this uses single flames, photographed and then apparently doesn't consider scale, or is too cheap to match the necessary scale. And single flames are almost always too thin to look like real flames would in nearly any circumstance. So i'm waiting for someone to come up with perfect fire, while much appreciating those directors/ producers who understand it can't be done and make the effort to use the real thing to make it look right.

e) You'd think that someone who would go to great financial expense and extremes of expertise to creat certain CG effects, would know to do it with all the effects, lest we get hodge-podges of perfectly wrought animals mixed with ludicrous crap a la The Chronicles of Narnia.

Set up for a sequel

Greenscreen/Bluescreen

Bad dialects

Blatant foreshadowing

Fake handheld camera

Fake camera jarring

CG birds and butterflies

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Ocean's Twelve (2004)

2004-12-19T23:59:00.000-06:00

Ocean's Twelve (2004) [dir. Steven Soderbergh]

Review & Technical Issues
Plaza Theatre, Kerrville, 18 December 2004

12 Deus ex Machinas: Not a full review, not worth the effort.

Okay, i saw it Saturday. It's a decent film, with some cool CGI, a host of newish camera angles, some actors in roles a little out of the ordinary (unless you saw Ocean's Eleven: The Rehash), and some odd plot twists; however, the finale depends so much on so many contrivances that it probably should have been named Ocean's Twelve Deus ex Machinas. Just a huge letdown at the end when you realize that all of what you were watching was to set up a silly fist and switch itself only seen in brief flashback and voiceover. It all felt very cheap and dissatisfying (how about the private conversation to set up the sting, that of course was only a setup for something that's already happened that they were already a part of -- it's kind of like eating a spaghetti dinner, and then discussing with yourself later how you're going to eat a hamburger for the meal you've already eaten -- okay then, you watch it and tell me it's not -- of course, what it was was a device meant purely to set up the audience, and is, perhaps the worst non-parody break of fourth wall i've ever seen). And the penultimate denouement, Tellour's capoeira through the "random" laser field in the museum, is especially disgusting for it's total improbability (of course with CGI lasers added after the dance, how could he possibly be zapped?), and the idea that it's being shown as it's being told in flashback (the explanation might take 20 seconds, the flashback is like five minutes -- i.e., ridiculous). As i said, hardly worth the effort to write about. I'm not recommending it to anyone.

P.s. the Julia Roberts as Tess faking Julia Roberts is neither original nor particularly satisfying, though it might qualify as cute.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
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Santaland Diaries

2004-12-12T00:04:00.000-06:00

Santaland Diaries (11 December 2004)
Zach Scott Theatre, Austin, Texas

This Grinch is stealing Christmas (read no further if you want to keep yours safe)

Review
Okay, i try not to give bad reviews. If i think something is that bad i simply don't recommend it or leave it off my favored lists, and waste no time spewing about garbage. There are occasional exceptions - this is one. And the fact that this is a scorching review has less to do with the actual performance than with the situation.

For years i have been watching the abundant reviews and ads for Santaland Diaries at Zach Scott Theatre in Austin. I have often been tempted to drive down just for the show - the reviews are that salivating. But i never managed to make it - the season being what it is. Then one of my favorite Austin actors Martin Burke, the star of SD, bowed out this year to another favorite Austinite of mine, Rob Williams, to even more wildly loving reviews.

I was in Austin for a tight series of interviews and auditions and, while eating across the street from the theatre a couple of hours pre-show, realized i had enough of a gap to catch the show. I quickly sketched out an itinerary, and then headed across Lamar to get a ticket to assure i could get in.

Brief interlude - i am big on privacy, rebelling more and more lately against the onslaught of information prying that goes on daily around us, to us. Why does everyone need so much information? Greed. Now back to our regularly scheduled review.

I approach the Zach box office and say i'd like a ticket for the 5:00 show. Before i could reach into my pocket i was asked for my name. I gave it, but as i was spelling it realized that i really didn't want to be doing so. I know now i shouldn't have. Then i was asked for my phone number. I was silent a moment and then said, "i don't have a phone," which is the truth, but which answer i would have given even were it a lie. A lady sitting in the box office then turned to me and said, across the room, "Sir, we have to have your phone number," thereby accusing me of lying (which was okay since i gladly would've lied anyway, but somewhat unsettling nonetheless). "Why would you need my phone number?" i said. "So we can get hold of you in case there is a problem with the show," she said, lying again. My willing dispersal of my phone number is a license for them to sell me something - probably season tickets. I said, "You know, i drove 2 ½ hours to get here, i'm in town for other reasons and just thought i'd see a show. I just want a ticket. . . (thinking pause) . . . The show is a little over two hours off, and you'll call me if there's a problem?" "Well, sir, if there is a problem we need to get hold of you." "Well, i don't have a phone, which i told you a second ago, no home phone, no cell phone. I do have a work number, but i don't feel it's right to give you that because it's not mine." "Well, we'll need an email address then." "An email address? You know what, i'm not going to drive home, 2 ½ hours away, to check my email, and then drive back here, another 2 ½ hours, and be here in time for a show that's about 2 hours away."

I think she must have sensed that i was about to grab my money back (which i had handed over in the course of the inquisition) and they would lose out on my cash - they are after all a mercenary operation, and she said, knowing they (like all modernly greedy theaters) have a no-refund policy if something should go wrong and they had to cancel the show and i failed to make it home to check my email - she said, "Okay, we'll sell you a ticket, but you have to understand where we're coming from."

Well, no i don't, and sorry it was such a painful moment for you. What it is, is just plain stupid. What a good little obedient theatre should do is realize they are in the entertainment business, that they are trying to show people a good time. More than any advertising or word of mouth or unsolicited email or season-ticket-panhandling phone calls, what makes people come to the theatre is the enjoyment they have had before.

And mine was ruined for the day.

I spent the next two hours getting more and more incensed over what had transpired. So much so that i already knew that if either of those people were around, if i saw either of them point me out to someone else, as in "That's the guy," if there were even the tiniest provocation i would make a scene in that theatre they would never forget. I don't know if i'm a good actor, but i make a good scene. Ask me about it some time.

Luckily, i simply fumed through the show, looking for things to gripe about (and there was plenty).

So, you see my review is more about the theatre. Here's the first of the constructive notes that should always accompany a "professional" review. If the theatre insists on asking for people's names so they can bombard them with solicitations, then fine, do so, do it politely and nicely. Most people these days are oblivious to where all their names show up. Indeed, some people would die to be on Zach Scott's list. But not me. So, if someone says politely and nicely back "no thank you" then there should be no more talk, the cashier hits a nice little default key, hands over the tickets, and everyone is happy. The current homeland security style makes for a bitter patron.

So let's move on. This is a professional theatre. That means people are paid for their performances, and that costs money. Crew costs money. Everything costs money. So expect to pay. I can't say i was overwhelmed by buying a $40 ticket. I had noted in the ads that tickets were $28-40, so i assumed that only good front-area tickets remained. I did the old internal math thing about "How does someone with a family do this kind of Christmas merriment?" But it was not my worry.

Then i got seated. Back row, next to the aisle (maybe that was the premium, just in case i had to upchuck?). I now realized the $28 tickets were for children under 3 and the deaf-blind.
This is theatre in the round too, so i should be treated to it from different angles, at least a fourth of the time directed at me, which ought to make at least $10 of my $40 good for something.

Now, here's where things can get tangled in the review process, and i want to be sure i cover the angles so that i'm fair, and you can judge for yourself. The "show" lasted about an hour and a half. A little on the slim side timewise for a mainstage production, a $40 mainstage production, but i've been entertained for that long and felt fulfilled.

Except that, and some people may not beef at this, the real "show" - that is Santaland Diaries by Dave Sedaris - the show i came to see was 42 minutes long. How, you may ask, do i know this? Well, because when the "show" had been going on for 30+ minutes and there was still no sign of Santaland Diaries i pulled out my watch specifically to time the show (see, i had read in the Chronicle that it was an hour and a half show, and i started to wondering . . .). So i timed it - 42 minutes. The "show" therefore missed qualifying by two minutes for a UIL high school One-act Play. For $40.

Oh yeah, there was another 38 minutes of "show" but this is what it was: Meredith McCall singing a few Christmas carol parodies, followed by Rob Williams doing his world-famous making-a-bologna-sandwich-with-my-feet routine (eat that . . .), followed by the prelude to the "show," a song about masturbation by McCall (who sings beautifully about the wonderful things she can do by hand, while Jason Connor tickles her ivories) that apparently had absolutely nothing to do with Christmas (and was, in fact, pretty much a ripoff of the slam piece "I Am Stalking Myself"). All of this takes place with the actors' backs to me - in fact, the bologna piece i had to watch via overhead projector, which is just as well -- lucky the aisle seat for me. Oh yeah, as you can tell, i was getting in the Christmas mood by then.

So the show starts, i'm quite fully ticked off by now, and in comes Rob Williams, again actually, but sans bologna and pickles this time. Perhaps with a more pleasantly set up experience i might have enjoyed his performance more. He is quite the manic little elf, his delivery is choice, and he plays the yucks well, ad-libbing as necessary. My complaint is that the set is little more than the radio piece as originally done by author Sedaris. That it's delivered in its entirety to the audience, with Williams assuming his own persona in place of Sedaris, rather punctuates this. Is it funny? Yes. Is it Christmasy? Yes. Is it redemptive? Well, not that it has to be, but yes it is. But outside of the singular joy of watching Williams flitter about there is no overriding reason for it to be performed on a stage. More enjoyable? Yes. But more enjoyable for 42 minutes at nearly $1 a minute, no.

Did i mention that McCall at one point comes out the door next to me in the aisle, and the follow spot includes me, and that it is so bright i can't quite gather what's going on, don't know for a moment that she's there next to me, that i'm suddenly lost in that glaring spot with the entire, packed place looking at . . . me? or at least me too? That i feel silly looking at her, so i just sit there staring out. That i wanted to jump up and say, "Hey did any of you other folks hand over your name and phone number to these blokes, and still give them $40 -- or did you guys get a $12 discount for the personal info?" But i didn't. I just took that humiliation the way i'd taken everything else that day . . . and vowed i'd never return.

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Theatre, Dance, Music, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

Theatre Etiquette for Newcomers

2004-11-06T01:24:00.000-06:00

A GUIDE TO PERFORMANCE ETIQUETTE
FOR NEWCOMERS TO LIVE THEATRE

Live theatre is a demanding medium for both the performers and the audience. The actors and actresses have only one opportunity to produce a line or make a move. They pride themselves in presenting a program you will enjoy; one you will be so absorbed in as to forget they are merely players in a drama. The audience has expectations as well -- to enjoy the show without distraction. Since theatre is live, there is no chance to "rewind" to catch a missed line. Even minor noises and distractions can mar, or even ruin, an otherwise profound evening for both actor and patron.

Over the centuries, as performance art has matured, a number of unwritten rules regarding etiquette have evolved. As the years have produced potential new problems, so has common sense dictated a modified approach for stage settings. Below we summarize some of the common "rules of thumb" in the hopes that doing so will make you a considerate theatre-goer -- one not likely to stick out as a "sore thumb" novice. We hope this immeasurably elevates your own theatre experience as well. Break a leg!

Stage time
The theatre has long prided itself in being an event that happens on time. Most theatres close and lock the doors just prior to curtain time to prevent people from wandering in late. If you don't make curtain, in general, you don't get in. In places where you can, it is still considered very rude to arrive late. Once the curtain is up and the lights down you should remain seated until intermission or the end of the show. It is considered rude to leave and return to the theatre during the show. Opening and closing doors may ruin the ambience.

Seat noise
The house usually opens about 30 minutes prior to curtain. Arriving early allows you the chance to pick a good seat and to settle into place. The extra time is good for removing coats and jackets, setting purses away, chatting with friends, getting yourself in a receptive mood for the show, and reading the program to familiarize yourself with director, cast, plot and music. Once the lights go down, try to remain as settled as possible. Squeaking chairs, program page flipping, and coat and jacket noise can be unnerving for the cast and annoying to the audience.

Food and drink
It is okay to eat and drink during a show (if house rules allow), but be conscious of the noise you create.

Talking and whispering
Please refrain from talking or whispering audibly during the show. Although most show-buzz is caused by intelligent conversation and interested questioning, the sound of the human voice is among the very most distracting of all theatre noise. It's best to refrain until intermission or post-show when such commentary can be addressed with gusto among the company of friends.

Children
Your kids are among the most important of all our patrons for they represent the future of theatre-going. We welcome them with open arms. Realize however, that they present special problems. A child that is uninterested in the particular presentation may grow restless and inadvertently noisy. There is no real cure for this except choosing, very carefully, the shows which you attend with children in tow. Should your children become noisy please deal quickly with the noise or have them wait outside. Another problem is restroom use. Some shows may go over an hour without an intermission. Please make sure your children have used the restroom prior to curtain, so they do not leave during the show. Crying babies can be very disruptive. If you have a very young child with you, please sit at the end of a row, and leave immediately if the baby begins to cry or chatter. You may return when the baby has resumed sleeping or is unlikely to cry out.

Miscellaneous
Shakespeare never had to deal with electronics. We do. Please turn off all cell phones, beepers and watch alarms before the show starts. We'd hope that you could use your time in the theatre as a retreat from the pressing needs of the world. If, however, you are set up for emergency calls or need to be available (because of kids, etc.) please leave your beeper or phone in the box office with instructions. We will come get you if there is an emergency. Be aware that video cameras make noise, may interrupt someone else's view, and usually violate royalty agreements. Please do not use them. Flash cameras are disastrous in the course of the play. When the show is over you may ask an actor to pose on stage for you, but please don't take pictures during the play.

Applause
In community theatre no one is paid for their acting. It is a labor of love with few rewards. In addition to working hard to provide a quiet stage, it is polite to applaud the actors and actresses for the effort they have expended behind the scenes for your entertainment. Truly outstanding work may be rewarded by standing as you applaud, calling the actors back to the curtain for more appreciation. The actors often appear on stage or in the reception area after the show. Please give them a few minutes to recover backstage and change out of heavy costumes. Posing for pictures and signing autographs is a reward for a job well done and most actors and actresses are thrilled to fill such requests.

We're certain that, as you observe longtime theatre-goers in the crowd tonight, you will detect a certain dignity and sophistication about them. This "air" is what gives live theatre its ability to entrance the audience in ways that movies cannot. We sincerely hope you are fulfilled by your experience, and that someday you will join us as players and technicians on the stage.

Thank you,

The Hill Country Arts Foundation

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Les Miserables

2004-10-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

Les Miserables (September-October 2004) [dir. Roy Burney & Marie Cearley]
The Smith-Ritch Point Theatre, Ingram, Texas

What, exactly you missed . . .

Review
(via Letter to the Editor, Kerrville Daily Times)
Les Miserables, Directed by Roy Burney & Marie Cearley, Produced by Holly Riedel
Performed by the Theatre Department of Ingram Tom Moore High School
30 September - 10 October 2004

Editor:
Before I rant, I need to provide a disclaimer. I have played some small part in the events I am about to discuss. I don't believe that lessens what I am about to say.

This late summer-early fall has seen what I believe to be the best three-show combination (hopefully about to become four in a row) to have graced The Point Theatre stage in quite some time. And yet, there has been little fanfare about these works. That is in part because of a supposed Daily Times stricture about reviewing student work, and two of these pieces have been of that level (so to speak). That level as would pertain to the ages of some principals, but not that level in terms of mastery. And it is a shame that more print was not devoted to the efforts of some truly worthy kids.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was simply a masterpiece, and yet it was directed by a student - Jeff Scott of Texas Tech -- as a graduate project. Then Taylor Danielson was the middle-school-aged lead of The Diviners and provided a stage presence not seen among youngsters here since perhaps Graham Douglass (himself about to rise to a whole other level in Cabaret).

And now, there is the Ingram Tom Moore High School production of Les Miserables, the musical version of Victor Hugo's sweeping novel. If Woolf is one of the most difficult dramatic pieces of the American stage, then Les Miz is the most difficult of musicals. Director Roy Burney is right on the money in describing it as virtually an opera.

Burney, along with assistant director Marie Cearley and producer Holly Riedel, have accomplished something I dare say no other Hill Country company could do - they rounded up 40 willing bodies and in a month and a half produced a chorus of astounding power and emotion, and willed them into not only singing a difficult libretto but made them storytellers of the type that can keep any audience spellbound for over two and a half hours.

It is an artifact of what they have achieved that in all the performances thus far, the audience has risen, en masse, to its feet long before the final song is over.

It is, quite simply, a wonder to see 40-plus high school-aged kids perform at such a level, and enjoy themselves so fully in the moment. They will leave Tom Moore with a memory few other students will manage, whether it be through sports, through band, or through class. One of the things folks will see in abundance at one of their performances is the bond these kids have made in coming together to produce a wonderful product. They seem very much in love with each other, with themselves and with life; and have every right to be proud of what they have created.

It's been mentioned, but it needs to be trumpeted - the school district has no choir program. So, in addition to blocking and directing the play, the directors had to teach the kids to use their voices in service of the story.

The leads are just stunning: Jonah Priour as Jean Valjean, Gary Givens as Inspector Javert, Aaron Hutto and Whitney Wilson as Monsieur and Madame Thenardier, Lillian Beaudoin as Cosette, Cadi Hawkins as Eponine, Ryan King as Marius, Meggie Nidever as Fantine, Taylor Danielson as Gavroche, and John Ferguson as Enjolras, have moments ranging from great power to hysterically funny to deeply tender.

Take special note of the garden scenes at the Valjean house, the rousing party at the Inn at Montfermeil, the night scene at the barricades, the wedding party, and the final scene from Valjean's impending death to the rousing ending chorus. If you're not cheering, laughing and crying then you wouldn't have been one to read this letter about kids performing at their very best.

Perhaps the most credit needs to be given the players who don't get the spotlight so often. Some of them, 20 strong, played seven or eight different parts in order to fill out the huge cast list. The crew, led by Kevin Chipman has made the scenes seamless. And the lighting and sound, professionally handled by Gary Priour and Tony Young both enhance the entire production without intruding upon it - I can think of no higher praise for their work.

Finally Carol Priour's six month adventure in creating the 200 costumes worn by the actors has paid off handsomely - and beautifully. Seeing her creations may be worth the price of a ticket alone.

Congratulations to all. Make a point to take in this show. It'll make you a regular patron of Tom Moore works.

You have three days left to see what inspired kids can create. Shows are at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

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Cabaret

2004-10-06T00:02:00.000-05:00

Cabaret (15-30 October 2004) [dir. Sarah Tacey]
Smith-Ritch Point Theatre, Ingram, Texas

If it looks too good to be true . . .

Review
It was early in the century. Trouble was brewing. A new patriotic wave was sweeping the country.

Life marched on. Love blossomed in unexpected places. Conversation ensued over the smallest of pleasures.

And in a tiny club tucked away on a small street, there was music, an emcee with an eye for the libidinous, dancing girls (and boys and simians), a beautiful orchestra, and furtive phone calls in the middle of the night. It was fun, and everyday folks were oblivious to the goings-on just outside the doors of the Cabaret. But why should they worry? Life was good.

Or was it?

In a time eerily reminiscent of the early part of the 21st century, 1930's Germany was awash in Nationalistic pride, and the populace bought easily into placing blame for the plummeting economy, immigration, and industrialization of the workforce, and was easily sold on the idea of saving the country from itself. Cabaret wasn't written as metaphor, but oh what this resoundingly successful musical has become!

So, there was this Cabaret in Berlin, and pleasures could be had, and pleasures were available for the price of a drink and some laughs. And it was the boys who provided the drink, the emcee who provided the laughs, and British chanteuse Sally Bowles who provided the pleasures.

And in wanders American novelist and vagabond Cliff Bradshaw, unwittingly providing material support along the way to someone he'll come to despise. And despite some proclivities he's trying to escape in order to rejuvenate his writing, he falls in love with the London songbird.

As love stories go, there's a little of everything - the sweet, the sordid, the uncertain, the unrequited. As musicals go, it's heart-rending bittersweet memory, foot-stomping über-catchy song, and searing, soaring irony. As history, it's the ultimate in stories unlearned.

So don't be afraid, meine Herr und Fraulein! Bienvenue, come sit in our little dive, drink some wine, smile at a dancegirl (or boy), laugh and sing along, and be prepared for a little trip through history.

The Point Theatre's version of the award-winning musical Cabaret stars Graham Douglass as the emcee, Tommie Howell as Sally Bowles, Ryan Bailey as Clifford Bradshaw, and a chorusline of Point regulars, irregulars, and newcomers as the denizens of the Cabaret and Fraulein Schneider's flophouse. Join them for a night of mesmerizing magic, melody and melancholy.

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Scott Rotge & Myles Smith

2004-09-07T23:55:00.000-05:00

Scott Rotge & Myles Smith (September 2004)
The Inn Pub, Kerrville, Texas

From Melancholy to Melismatic

Review
Once in a while a smallish country community produces the likes of a decent performer; stage, music or some such. It's no secret that as quiet as central Kerr County appears to the outside world, more than its proper share of talent has gone forth to tell the world that the hills are a goldmine of talent. Two young local songwriters are next in that line if their acoustic performance at the Pub at the Inn of the Hills Monday is any indication.

Tivy High graduate Scott Rotge and Ingram Tom Moore grad Myles Smith held court at the Pub's weekly singer/songwriter night - just the two of them on their Alvarez and Fender acoustics -- and put on a relaxed night of original pieces ranging from the melancholic to the downright inspired silly.

Rotge is the more travelled performer, with a full-blown electric band and a widely-touted, well-produced CD. Smith has emerged in the last year and half, mostly on the local bar scene, but also with gigs as far afield as San Antonio.

Rotge tells that he attended Smith's first public gig at the River Road Ice House, and from there was born something of a mutual admiration society. Smith has opened for Rotge's band, but Monday marked the first time they have shared a stage as equals, swapping mostly originals for three hours.

Let's get the complaints out of the way: the pub was mostly empty (though those there were most appreciative) - these guys will someday have a big audience, now may be the time to hear them before rowdy college crowds find them; the two need to sing together more often - there were occasional backups of each other's choruses, especially on the few covers, but they complement each other so well, that it's a shame to not hear more of them together (even if this was a new combination gig); and finally, well, the beer drove them into the sillier things late, but also took away some of their ability to hit the right notes: old entertainment maxim - a few make a frog a bird, one more makes a bird a frog.

The two are both high tenors with similar timbre to their voices. While the melismatic Rotge knows how to stretch an emotional moment with his whiskey smooth croon, Smith's smoky edge is perfect counterpoint.

Their original tunes match their personalities and their vocal chords. Rotge pens love songs born of watching girlfriends head off for college, losses of family, and the universal theme of waking up alone. Smith has seen way too much of life for his youth, or else has an unerring eye for the irony of love and loss; I think probably both.

Rotge played a number of songs written for his planned second CD. Although his first CD originals sounded even better acoustic than they do to my ear with a band (although my taste runs to listening rather than dancing, his quite tight band sure make the songs danceable), his newer pieces have a ring of newfound songwriting maturity and vary more than the earlier songs, edging towards blues and acoustic folk (aka the Americana cliche, which really has no real definition or use), and even including a minor-keyed gem “Cold Rain” which he says will be on the new CD.

In any case, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety and depth of the new songs, especially the aforementioned “Cold Rain,” “Old Man,” “Believe” and “Outside”.

Besides my wishing for more duets, Rotge might add another flavor to his fine originals with a tasteful acoustic lead, and some light acoustic percussion, congas perhaps. Just my ear.

Both Rotge and Smith have, perhaps intuitively, mastered some of the most difficult skills for young writers to come by - storytelling, phrasing and unique melody. Rotge especially has a handle on melody, and that's appropos to his mellow, soaring voice.

While Rotge's stories are more structure-oriented and focused on heartbreak or pure love without resort to specifics, Smith has the ballad down cold and enlivens his stories with the touch of personal experience. And Smith has near-perfect phrasing and knows when to stretch the limit of the measures he has to play with.

Smith's originals, such as “Over You” tend towards the melancholy, with pictures painted from nights in darkened rooms, evenings on the river, and days on the road. Take “It Ain't Easy Bein' Me” with the songwriter's envy line “Ought to be a town somewhere named for how I feel.” [Myles has informed me tonight that this is a Chris Knight song not one of his -- sorry for the error -- December 17, 2004]

When he strays from the straight smoky ballad (perfectly apt for his voice and style) he goes straight to humor.

“As a songwriter you want to write something that will touch someone . . . then you end up getting drunk . . .” Smith said. From there he wandered into “The Bubblegum Song”. In this song, a sweet-without-being-sappy story of love gone turns a big corner in the final verse. It's the kind of denouement that excites large crowds of drunken college boys, and makes its point quite . . . well, you'll have to hear it. Some might say the song was written to set up that final verse for laughs and guffaws. I don't know how the song was written, only that without the last verse, it's a darn perfect love song. I have to wonder if that last verse wasn't a drunken afterthought. Regardless, there is something deeply personal, personal in the loss, in the song long before it turns ribald.

Between the two they covered Robert Earl Keen several times (“Dreadful Selfish Crime,” “I'm Coming Home,” “Corpus Christi Bay”), Smith added a little Brandon Rhyder, Rotge nailed a version of Johnny Cash's “Folsom Prison Blues,” and Smith put a whole new voice on Steve Miller's “The Joker”. My favorites in the someone-else's-songs department were Smith doing Ryan Adams' “Come Pick Me Up” and Rotge's silky version of Randy Rogers' “Lost & Found.” All in all, they showed excellent taste in covers, all complements to their own originals.

No dates are set for another go, but keep your eyes and ears open for another evening of this combo of fine young writers at some local venue. They'll be worth your time, and the day may come when tickets will be hard to come by.

Tags: Culture, Reviews, Theatre, Dance, Music, Links, Blogs, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews

The Diviners

2004-09-01T23:57:00.000-05:00

The Diviners (September 2004) [dir. Ryan Bailey]
The Smith-Ritch Point Theatre, Ingram, Texas

Quietly Lusting for Water and Salvation

Synopsis
In a tiny Indiana town named Zion, mired in the depression, that which gives life takes it away. Buddy Layman is the town idiot, but a charming one. What's left of Buddy after his mother saved him from drowning is an innocent but boundlessly curious mind, and a compelling gift for sensing water coupled with an intense fear of it. The rest of the town meanders through the mundane chores of getting by day to day - conversations about bicycle tires take half a day, you can't eat at the cafe until you've said your prayers, and youngsters learn to dance at the otherworldly hands of those who've seen the world via US Army boot camp. And of course, they bemoan what they lack - rain for crops, enough future brides and grooms for all, and a preacher for their weekly salvation. So when the slipping preacher C.C. Showers, looking for a way out of his salvation, stumbles into town looking for an anonymous job, the locals immediately pin on him the badge of savior. What comes next turns everything upside down, as C.C. makes a connection with idiot boy Buddy in a way no one else has and finds more in his heart than family would have you believe is there. Seeking to cure his constant itch, and its reminder of the fate of Buddy's mother, C.C. rids Buddy of his hydrophobia. In this rarely-performed allegorical play, that which gives life takes it away in the same astounding final instant and leaves us pondering the worth of salvation of any stripe. This unforgettable play, directed by Ryan Bailey, features Taylor Danielson in his first lead role as Buddy Layman and Leaman Valentine as the backslider C.C. Showers, and a cast of a dozen Point veterans and newcomers as the people of Zion, Indiana. September 3-18 at the Smith-Ritch Point Theatre, Hill Country Arts Foundation, Texas Highway 39 just west of Ingram, Texas.

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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

2004-08-06T23:51:00.000-05:00

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (August 2004) [dir. Jeff Scott]
The Smith-Ritch Point Theatre, Elizabeth Huth Coates Pavilion, Ingram, Texas

Who's Afraid? I Am, George . . .

Review
Edward Albee has been taken to task for many things over the course of his (now long) multi-Pulitzer career, but one thing he has not been hounded about is the sheer intense engagement one gets from being a part of his plays.

While the casual theatre-goer might balk at being “involved” in a play, Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf involves in another way -- audience as voyeur. There is ne'er a moment in this three-hour production in which the observer is not pruriently uncomfortable - just uncomfortable enough to not want to leave, to crave what happens next.

In that regard, The Point's current production of Woolf is superior to the film version that starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. In the film one could distantly watch without fear of being caught. In the stage version there are moments when you feel like shrinking behind a curtain as one character or another approaches the seating to deliver a monologue.

Jeff Scott is directing this piece as part of his graduate theatre program at Texas Tech University. He has picked a winner, albeit a difficult piece to “win” with, and has pulled off a grand staging with Point vets Roy Burney (as George), Holly Riedel (as Martha), and Ella Johnson (as Honey), all inhabiting their characters exceptionally well, aided by a superb performance by HCAF newcomer Caleb Straus (as Nick).

The play centers on the idiosyncratic relationship of Martha, the daughter of a university president, and her husband George, the not successful enough associate history professor at the same college. Both are alcoholic, somehow love each other despite being viciously condescending of each other's station, and enjoy intellectually tormenting all who stumble into their path.

This particular night, Nick, a new biology professor, and his wife Honey, perhaps as ditzy as her name might imply, join George and Martha for a post-party hobnob. Nick is ambitious, George is wary, Martha is ready for anything, and Honey just likes brandy. All of them want children, sorta, and, well that's part of the story . . .

Through three hours of mind games, the most intimate details of four lives are exposed and used as bludgeons, until they take a nasty turn. George and Martha must deal with a major turn in their lives - Nick and Honey are humiliated into retreat.

The cast works the piece as though it is an ensemble and no character takes a backseat to any other.

Burney takes his finest turn since . . . well, he's no had no dearth of powerful characters to portray - Macbeth, Lion in Winter, etc. His wide-ranging moods - from tempered, to attack-mode, to humiliated, to exhausted - perfectly follow the mood swings of the play. The conflict in George is easily seen in his reaction to the various demands of Martha. Often the words he spouts are not the thoughts he is trying to elucidate, just as should be the case. The whole evening is a game - What's My Lie. Burney carries this off so well it's almost a pleasure to watch though you wish all too often he'd stop. But perhaps that's the idea - to not like the wrong person. George/Roy is a pro. And the speed and inventiveness with which he wields his scalpel, makes the play all the more stunning for its metaphorical carnage.

Riedel also should take a bow for her best role since The Crucible. As Martha she is powerful in her dominance - “I wear the pants in this family because someone has too” - yet constantly vulnerable in her need for some warmth in her life. The conundrum is that she claims, convincingly, that George is the only person who has ever given her that; and yet her derision envelops him. At once stunningly dignified in her party dress, she changes into an outfit she thinks flatters her and Riedel uses it to every little advantage, from raising George's ire, to prodding the young Nick. I dare say she is completely convincing as the two-headed dragon Martha; best seen in the later scenes when her mushrooming lies begin to take on a melodramatic air as she is forced to invent on her drunken “feet” to keep up with the incessant prodding by George.

Straus is unknown to us here, but not lacking acting chops by any means. He's a theatre major at McMurry, and is the son of Fredericksburg theatre teacher Bob Straus (who most will remember from The Crucible at The Point). Straus is a fine discovery for us, as his Nick, the real villain of the play, is note perfect. As the young biology prof he masks his ambition well at the beginning, but he is not camouflaged well enough to dissuade his big-game hunting hosts. The transition from happy newcomer to “warned” suitor is drastic and disarming. It is not clear until the end of the play exactly what George and Martha are up to, but when the hammer falls, it's on Nick, and Straus slides quickly down the emotional slope from brash, cocky chromosome-fiddler to disenchanted also-ran. One might be concerned, but Caleb plays Nick's age well; it's a shock to find out how young Caleb really is.

In many ways, Johnson has the most difficult of the roles. Her Honey is relegated to a bystander in the conversation much of the time, and a great deal of what we eventually know of her comes from simply observing her oft-times silly reactions (“Oh, violence, violence!”) to the situations (though she has a couple of outstanding emotional sequences). The real power of Johnson's portrayal is that she so effectively elicits our understanding with so little verbiage. She is ditzy all right, but she has a soul too. Of all the cast, Johnson makes the widest swing from near-sober to drunk and does so with exuberance. She makes it quite clear she's the lightweight drinker of the group, and her tipsy blurtings change the tenor of the play several times in the late going. Note especially the seemingly perfectly alert and cunning “forgetfulness” she displays at her most inebriated. Maybe she ain't so ditzy after all . . .

Scott has produced an exceptional piece of work with what may well be the most difficult play on the American stage. It may also be the most intense and demanding play on The Point's stage in many moons. When you leave you'll be absolutely drained, but it's not the three hour running time that does it - it's all that hiding behind the imaginary curtain as you peer into the deepest recesses of these folks' psyches. You'll not regret a minute of it. Would there be more productions like this on local stages.

In addition to director and cast, the play no doubt runs as smoothly as it does thanks to the efforts of Marie Cearley (stage manager), Zach Tiedemann (stage crew), Patrick Wade (lights and sound), and Brian Crabb (set construction). Crabb and Johnson also did scene design (perfectly über trashy) and Cearley and Riedel were responsible for costuming (Honey's outfit is a peach!). Kirk Rogers designed the lighting; James Harris the poster; and Teri Valentine did layout. Riedel is the show's producer.

The show runs Thursday to Saturday, August 19-21, and Friday and Saturday, August 27-28. Show time is 7:30 p.m. - three acts and two intermissions. Reservations are recommended. Don't miss this one.

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The Ratings

2003-12-30T02:33:00.000-06:00

40 Days and 40 Night 2.9

8 Mile 3.5

Adaptation 3.8

Alexander 1.5

All the Pretty Horses 3.3

Amarillo by Morning 3.5

American Beauty 3.8

The Aviator 3.2

The Bad News Bears (1976) 3.3

The Bad News Bears (2005) 1

Bastard out of Carolina 3.1

Best in Show 3.6

Big Wednesday 3.3

Billy Elliott 3.6

Blackhawk Down 3.8

The Bourne Identity 3.2

The Bourne Supremacy 3.4

Bowling for Columbine 3.1

Bully 3.0

The Business of Fancydancing 3.2

Center Stage 2.9

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 2.5

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe 3.0

Clinton's Last Days 3.8

A Clockwork Orange 3.4

The Commitments 3.9

The Company 3.2

Conspiracy of Silence 2.5

Crutch (2004) 2.7

Dancer, TX Pop. 81 3.0

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys 3.5

Dazed & Confused 3.4

Dogtown & Z-Boys 3.8

Donnie Darko 3.4

The Door in the FLoor (2004) 3.4

The Dreamers 2.6

Elephant 3.5

The Emperor's Club 3.2

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2.5

Fahrenheit 9/11 3

The Final Cut 2.0

Finding Nemo 3.7

Friday Night Lights 3.0

Groundhog Day 3.4

Grudge 1.0

Guess Who 2.7

Hable con Ella/Talk to Her 2.9

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 3.2

Heavyweights 2.0

Ice Age 2.5

Igby Goes Down 2.9

In Bloom 3.4

The Incredibles 3.5

In the Bedroom 3.2

Jarhead 3.2

Just Friends 2.4

The Last Samurai 3.5

Latter Days 3.2

Les Miserables (Concert) 3.5

Liberty Heights 3.9

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou 3.8

Like Water for Chocolate 3.3

The Lords of Dogtown 3.2

Meet The Fockers 2.5

Memento 3.6

Michael Collins 3.0

Midnight Cowboy 3.9

A Midwinter's Tale 3.5

A Mighty Wind 3.0

Million Dollar Baby 3.5

Miracle 3.0

Monsters Inc. 3.2

Napoleon Dynamite 3.4

O 3.3

Ocean's Twelve 2.4

One Day in September 3.2

The Opposite of Sex 3.1

The Outsiders 3.2

The Party 2.7

Pirates of the Caribbean 3.0

The Player 3.5

Ray 2.9

Reason Thirteen 3.4

Rent 2.4

Rob Roy 3.8

The Rules of Atrtaction 2.0

Santa Clause 2 2.1

Saving Private Ryan 3.0

Secondhand Lions 2.5

Se7en 2.9

Shakespeare in Love 3.7

Shaolin Soccer 2.8

Shark Tale 2.4

Shattered Glass 3.0

Sideways 2.6

Sin City 2.5

Skins 2.9

Sleepers 2.5

Smoke Signals 3.7

Spiderman 3.4

Spiderman 2 3.4

Spin 3.2

Sweet Jane 3.6

Sweet Sixteen 3.6

Thirteen 3.6

This is Spinal Tap 3.7

Tigerland 3.7

Toy Story 3.8

Toy Story II 3.8

The United States of Leland 3.4

Volcano 0.4

Waiting for Guffman 3.6

Walk the Line 3.4

The Weekend 3.0

Whale Rider 3.9

What About Bob? 3.1

What's Eating Gilbert Grape 3.5

The Wonder Boys 3.5

Y Tu Mama Tambien 3.0

Zathura 2.5

Los Lonely Boys

2003-08-15T23:35:00.000-05:00

Los Lonely Boys (August 2003)
CD Release & Blues on the Green, Austin, Texas

Not Gonna Be Lonely For Long

Review
Henry, JoJo and Ringo Garza - Los Lonely Boys to those already fans of their incendiary shows - may have raised the stakes in the Texas rock-n-roll wars with their eponymous semi-debut CD. I can't think of a stouter entry since ZZ Top put their scorching trio on vinyl back about 1970. And trying to match a recent album I've heard that approaches its near perfection would lead me into other genres - say to Ruthie Foster's blues gem “Runaway Soul” or Denice Franke's Texas-roots “Comfort” or anything lately by Eric Taylor.

Now before I dish out too many more encomia let me get you in on some of the skinny.

The Garza brothers hail from San Angelo, thank Jesus Christ first on the CD, are such favorites of Willie's that I don't know of a recent show of his they haven't opened, and they cite as part of the “brotherhood” Carlos Santana, and in “sainthood” Stevie Ray Vaughan - both important last points as you'll see.

They hail as well from the proverbial “musical family” growing up filling in in Ringo Sr.'s conjunto cum rockband, doing the road bit between Nashville and Texas on the time-honored disenchanted migrant picker's route, and growing up cross-culturally fed by Norteño/Tejano, cumbias, corridas, and the long thread from Richie Valens through Jimi Hendrix and latter-day purveyors of guitar fire - like Stevie Ray - and, one would suppose, blues and gospel (their sisters prefer the latter).

It's amalgamations like that that have fed genius-level musicians for decades - half the “pain begets art” formula, and half the “master-apprentice” formula (despite the apparent genealogy of the licks, they credit dad as their biggest influence). I also detect a pinch of obsessive adolescent garage bandology, and a smidgen of prodigy involved throughout.

I first became acquainted with these guys' work at the Get Up, Stand Up event in Austin the winter of 2002-2003 (they've been getting press since the summer of 2001, and hot press since summer of 2002). They took the stage last, after a lengthy parade of Austin favorites including Guy Forsyth, Patrice Pike, and Ruthie Foster and Cyd Cassone filled the cavernous court with song. By the time the Boys were up, 75% of the crowd had left, without knowing, of course, what they were about to miss.

While the soloists were belting their couple of songs each, the brothers stood behind the stage mocking martial arts moves and trading laughs easily with the other stars. When Los Lonely Boys finally got up for their short set it just wasn't enough, and they kept on playing until there were literally janitors mopping (or was it leaning on their mops and listening), and tables and chairs being stacked and wheeled out of Burger Center. Nevertheless a hundred people remained, dancing across the gym amongst the debris, until someone pulled the plug. Guy Forsyth even donated some wailing harmonica to most of the songs.

Since then they've been Willie's pet project (although the friendship dates further back), had June 10 declared Los Lonely Boys Day by the then present-in-state Texas Legislature, have had a full performance schedule including a month-long cross-country tour, and have Austin on its ear, with word spreading faster than Henry burns up picks.

So what would that matter for a review of a CD? Well, the rarity of a CD actually capturing the onstage fire of a hot band; the rarity of a CD that rocks beginning to virtually the end; and the rarity of such talent gelling in one magic moment is why.

This CD is not the first for Los Lonely Boys, though it's being touted as a debut effort. A self-produced disc was sold out before I knew of them. This project, aided by Willie, comes courtesy of Pedernales Records and OR Records New York and was released August 12.

Let's start with what you get musically. You get Ringo on drums. You knew that. You get JoJo on six strings of bass, and Henry mans the Strat. They all sing.

The big thing you get on CD that you don't get live (at least in my experience) is Reese Wynans on organ and piano. Wynans adds depth to every song, and the touches are classy, filling in harmonically much the way the boys' voices meld. I'm not sure that the keyboards are missed on stage - the trio is so thick musically that you get a stonehenge of sound, though I did miss Guy Forsyth's harp on CD. It is one of the curiosities of the album that Wynan's contribution is so keenly beautiful, yet LLB is still perfect without it.

Willie adds a little electric gutstring guitar on “La Contestación”, and there's some sweet added guitar work by John Porter here and there, as well as additional percussion by Diego Simmons. All is tasteful and tasty.

Then there is the matter of the vocals. Perhaps it's genetic, who could ever know, but the voices of these guys are elegant. There is distinctly an edge there, but what an edge, on top of fat voices that ooze from your subwoofers. Something like honey on a chainsaw. Their harmonic style slices you to bits, but you enjoy every sweet second of it. As far as I can detect the harmonies are reduced to melodic thirds and fifths - no wavering, modulating, melismatic, weaving harmonies here. And therein is a great deal of the magic. No frills, none necessary, just those cutting lines. How long they will be able to maintain this as style without venturing elsewhere is anyone's guess, but for this one CD anyway it is perfect beginning to end.

And what an ear for, and singularity in molding, melodies.

Lyrically there is yet more strength. The Garza brothers get songwriting credits for all the songs, with occasional help from manager Kevin Wommack, Phil Roy, and Jim Tuttio. Liner notes never tell the extent of the “co-“ in the writing scheme, but it's obvious from the Garza-only pennings that they have all the chops they need.

Two things stand out in their wordsmithy. First is the dang-near flawless phrasing - perhaps the most difficult concept for young songwriters to come to grips with. Here, you'll not find a syllable rushed or out of place.

Secondly, there is a more personal and beautiful aspect to their repertoire. It is the effortless change from English to Spanish and back.

Inevitably, from households in which there are no longer “primary” languages, notably late-twentieth century households that honor both Mexican cultural background and Texas/American upbringings, had to come children whose grasp of both languages and cultural influences is not a matter of “switching” but of expressing oneself in the way that best covers the soul's moment.

And some day that had to wend its way into the music of that generation. Here it is in both raw and pure form.

You get several bilingual songs - more like bi-evocative songs in which language is the very vehicle that drives you to say “Yeah, that's right.” Take “Heaven”, “Nobody Else” and “Dime Mi Amor”. Of the remainder you'll find “Onda” (all but an instrumental with extended drum and guitar solos; and an occasional refrain), and the wrapup ballad “La Contestación” in Spanish. And there's a few that depend on English (“Hollywood”, “Tell Me Why”, “Velvet Sky” and “More than Love” -- a pitch-perfect take on a 50s-style girl-melter).

And please, don't mistake the multilingualism for the code-switching “Spanglish” radio-hybrid stuff that has become more fad than means of communication. Where that finds its way into music is in the mostly pretending-to-be-cute novelty songs like “Hey Baby, que pasó”. Nor is it butchered gringo Spanish. Everything here is impeccably real with the aura of effortlessness that comes from living the song and the languages.

The two songs on the CD most likely to venture into hardcore radio play are the first two - “Señorita” and “Heaven”. The latter is likely already their best known tune. It certainly has their most distinctive stamp - a churning rhythm startup, an über-catchy one-line refrain “How far is heaven?”, and a screaming lead.

I'd have to say that “Nobody Else” and “Velvet Sky” have all the right things going for them as well.

Normally I wouldn't saddle a fine new band with comparisons to influences, real or imagined - that ought to be saved for wannabes. But in this case it comes naturally to say that some here will immediately remind the listener of SRV (“Tell Me Why” and “Crazy Dreams”, and the Stevie Rayesque opening of “Nobody Else”), and some of Carlos Santana (“Onda” and, more subtly, “Real Emotions” and “Señorita”), and the sharp ear will catch a nod to Hendrix too. The comparison is easier because the brothers acknowledge those masters up front. But what really comes to mind is how masterful is the work on which they, Henry in particular, can be tied to SRV and Santana (where Ringo also adds his own time signature to the master's recognizable tone). JoJo pretty much puts his own stamp on the six-string bass.

In the end, what you figure out is that the reminders come from tone and mastery of technique, but that the songs are uniquely Los Lonely Boys'. In fact, by the end of the songs I've forgotten the influence and am infatuated by the singularity of the songs themselves.

In my mind, there is only a single weakness on the CD, one song, and not such that it is unlistenable, but that it seems too far out of place. The CD is a smart boiling-pot of styles and influences, so it is really difficult to single one song out for its difference - but the final song “La Contestación”, while lyrically as elegant as anything on the disc, and showcasing the guys' voices superbly, “sounds” like it's trying too hard to be a pop song.

That's a hard charge to make, since the rest of the CD has such integrity, so I won't make it. Had this been on someone else's weaker attempt I would have made that charge stick though.

I can't put a finger on the exact musical indignity performed here but the song has an “American Idol” flavor that I just can't take as the way to end an otherwise magnificent CD. I am just as certain that there are those who will consider it the best song on the disc. So be it. Regardless, I stand by my original assertion that this is a stunning CD; one that I hope introduces a fine new trio to a nation of hardcore music fans whatever their generic taste.

Check them out further at http://www.loslonelyboys.org

Pictures from Blues on the Green, Austin, Texas, August 2003

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Big River

2003-04-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

Big River (April 2003) [dir. Ryan Bailey]
Playhouse 2000, Cailloux Theatre, Kerrville, Texas

Sometimes at night you look like a long white train . . .

Review
Big River; Directed by Ryan Bailey; Starring Austin Owen as Huck Finn, Clifton Fifer as Jim, Graham Douglass as Tom Sawyer, Mac Anderson, Peter Lewis, Kristen Sandlin, Jenni Duke, Graydon Vaught, Wes Bourland

Well, this show is long over, but i had to say that it is the finest single production i've ever seen by Playhouse 2000. A brand new stage in the remarkably redone Cailloux Theatre certainly helped some, but the show itself could have been performed in a vacuum and been brilliant. Ryan Bailey of course deserves huge credit for making this work. There were a ton of nuances there that could only have come from a dash of creative magic. And Austin Owen and Clifton Fifer were nothing short of magnificent. I got goosebumps during their duets. Add in Jenni Duke to make a trio and a whole gaggle broke out. Ryan and Austin are both heading off for the big world. All the best to them, we haven't heard the last of either.

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The Snags & The Mulletov Cocktails

2002-01-25T23:29:00.000-06:00

The Snags & The Mulletov Cocktails (January 2002)
Schreiner University, Kerrville, Texas

Students actually show up for S(C)U event!
by tony gallucci, The Mountain Sun

Review
Okay. There's a bunch of punks in the county. That's why we got this new curfew thang. But some of the local school punks are doing the music punk thang, and they're too old for some curfew thang anyway. Then you got the punks from neighboring Band-dare-ya County, where you wouldn't think there was a punk thang, but there is, `cause The Snags proved it Friday night at Schreiner, the local University that used to be a college.

The Mulletov Cocktails started thangs off. They got their own crowd of people to listen to them. They been selling their own CD Food Stamps, Fast Cars, and Full Nelsons to them it looks like, cause some of them showed up. What a concept. Schreiner students at a student function. Whoa!

Well the cocktails, Dusty Bahlsak, who points at himself a lot in one of their songs and calls himself Junior, rips the raw out of his tidy little Fender thang. Sawyer McReynolds bagged a twelve-point buck in that same song -- probably just beat the dang thang to death `cause his hands don't sit still long enough to hold a gun without shootin' up the whole county. Then there's screamin' bass-dude Jesus Xavier “Tiny” Jiminez III. He can pedal around the fat-strangs like Lance Armstrong, even if he don't spell his name like them other Jimenez' I know.

So the MCs do two of them punk thangs really swell. They do the raw thang like punk was made to be. You don't know when they're gonna end a song, `cause they probably don't know, and it works great. Then they do that humorous thang so well that that's all they do. Don't mess with the success thang.

They leave no friend unturned as they pound on Tanya the Tattletale, Matt Stotz, Scott Kamis and Sammy Gonzales so hard them people better find another place to live. Half of them probably got permanent wiretaps after the Cocktails ratted on them digitally. I can already hear those tunes being played in the courtroom.

Check these out: I Think My School Is Mean, Gimpalicious, The Ballad Of Dietert Chapel, Mulletov Cocktail Stomp. And, oh yeah they got somethang with the Mullet deal, that tasty (I didn't say tasteful) ditty from hairdresser hell.

Anyway, they're funny. You'll laugh. Go see `em. Try Solid Gold on Thursdays. That's where they tear it up sometimes.

Okay then, there was this bunch of guys from Band-dare-ya. The Snags. Yo. If the MCs hit the raw part of punk on the nose, then these guys nailed the tight, po'ed part of it like a highway jackrabbit.

This is them. Eric Brown was the ultra-swov-ay lead vocal dude -- no instrument but the old voice. Fred Jennings was Mr. Rubberman, flying all over the stage, flying all over that red Strat fretboard, doing the psycho backup vocals, doing the personality thang. Brandon Childers was the bass player from the real world -- mistake him for the local computer geek and then he rips your throat out with his teeth. Dan Ersch never said a word, just flailed them drums like there was somethang valuable down in there and he had to get to it.

Now which one of those guys is the brain behind the group, ain't no telling. Ain't no telling. But I got a sneaking suspicion it was the rhythm guy, James Mazurek. He's the one that did the shy-guy-with-his-back-to-the-crowd thang. I think he said a couple of thangs, but the other guys put him up to it, I`m sure of it.

So anyway, these guys scream. They are tight, tight, tight. They were what they call the old counterpoint. Cocktails' raw to Snags' tight. Cocktails' hilarious originals to Snags' hard covers. And you know what? It was one fine night of punk. Better than that, it was one fine night of music. `Member that -- music.

So, Eric dude can wail. And it ain't just that he's pitch perfect. `Cause he is. He nailed everythang. That means he didn't miss a single note. The best part is, every once in a while his voice came dripping through those augmented power chords and reeling runs. The boy can sing. He could do Tony Bennett if he wanted to, but why waste an instrument like that.

And Jennings. There was smoke coming from that boy. He's tight. He nails the covers, adds his own flair, and can just scream whenever he wants to. Childers pounds out whatever he wants, and sometimes matches the Fred dude note for note. James the brains knows his stuff inside F out too. And if he weren't playing the el-shy-o he'd step up there and do a little dueling thang. Ersch? Well, one look you know he's got the chops.

And if that weren't enough, the wildman of the Nords, Dreadmoon's Daryl the Koerth steps up and rips a few tunes with them. Then Sawyer from MC does the same. THEN, both of them hit the mikes. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I already told you it was music. It was.

So, before I tell you how they laid a new level on Velvet Underground's (Lou Reed's if you gotta know) Sweet Jane, and before I tell you they pulled out the stops on the Dead Kennedys, Radiohead, Buzzcocks, Nirvana, NoFX, and the Beach Boys, before I tell you that, I gotta tell you that their originals were as good as anythang I heard all night, and they better start doing more of those. More. Lots more. Stuff like The Teletubbies and Bandera Sucks. More.

So I was gonna tell you somethang else, but I already told ya. But more. More Big Pimpin', California Girls, Uber alles Kalifornia, Sugar High. More.And more He's Scott Kamis, Mullegeddon, and Tanya is a Tattletale. That's what this place needs -- a little edge.

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