Impressions

From the vault -Saved! (2004)

I watched Saved! on DVD a couple of weeks ago. It tells the story of Mary, a teenage girl attending a Christian high school, who gets pregnant when she tries to "cure" her boyfriend of his homosexual tendencies. Her nemesis is Hillary Faye, the Queen Bee of the school; her allies are Cassandra, the school's lone Jewish student, and Roland, Hillary Faye's wheelchair-bound brother (played wonderfully by Macaulay Culkin). Patrick, the pastor's son, is caught between Hillary Faye, who pursues him but who he dislikes, and Mary, who he likes, but who is reluctant for obvious reasons.

Saved! is a heartwarming funny film, and not at all hostile to religion. Both of the couples are really endearing. I was gad that in the end, even Hillary Faye is humanized, if not excused. She is a cautionary tale of what can happen when the pressure to be “good” becomes overwhelming. The worst thing I can say about Saved! Is that it, likewise, tries to do too much. The pregnancy storyline and the Christian school could both easily be movies unto themselves. (It's also hard to believe that Mary's pregancy would go undetected for so long.)

I think the real theme of this movie is diversity: diversity of beliefs, diversity of abilities, diversity of lifestyles. This is illustrated by the crowd that greets Mary's daughter at the end of the movie. All of them are keeping the faith, doing the best they can, and finding God within each other.

In theaters now - Run, Fatboy, Run

I'm not doing a full response to Run, Fatboy Run because so much ink had already been spilled over it before I even saw it. I don't honestly think it deserves the poor reviews that it's gotten. Yes, it follows a very typical romantic comedy form—boy meets girl, boy panics and looses girl, boy leads a meaningless existence before winning girl back from perfect-on-paper Baxter character. However, it was far funnier and more poingnant than I'd been led to believe. There are many refreshingly likable charaters. Unlike other reviewers, I also thought that Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton made a credible couple.

The “F” word put me off at first. While his character's weight gain is obvious, Pegg didn't exactly don a fatsuit. I'm unsure whether this shows that Europeans are healthier than Americans, or that everyone's body image is screwed up these days. Fortunately, the central issue is the hero's overall health—his stamina and endurance—and the titular insult only comes up once.

Like so many love stories, this is also a coming-of-age story. I totally connected to the idea of someone not finishing things for fear that they might not be deserving of the good results. I'm sure a lot of people can relate. The “wall” that people hit in a struggle, both in sports and in life, has not been visualized so well since The Animatrix. No, this is not Shaun or Hot Fuzz, but it's worth seeing in the theater.

Storywh0re from the vault - The 40-year-old-Virgin

For a long time, I resisted watching The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. While my personal attitudes are far more sex-positive now than they were twenty or even ten years ago, I expected the movie to be rooted in locker-room perceptions of sex and masculinity. I was pleasantly surprised to read so many reviews describing it instead as warm, funny and even-handed. I finally watched it last night, and what I found was something in between, although ultimately more the latter than the former.

Two years after the movie's release, the premise is probably familiar to most moviegoers. Andy Sitzer, an isolated electronics store employee, admits to his co-workers that, for various reasons, he has never had sex. In the process of trying to help him, they become his friends, bewildering him with their varied and contradictory perspectives on today's muddled sexual politics. He finally meets someone he cares about, and ironically, she decides that they should wait and get to know each other before becoming intimate. (There is one huge medical inaccuracy in the movie, but I won't describe it!)

The first thing that got my attention was how well the film captures the complexity of modern life. Andy's workplace illustrates both inter-racial and intra-racial tensions. The love interest, Trish, is a young grandmother with a complex family situation. A trip to the health department illustrates epidemic sexual misinformation, among both youth and adults, even as society becomes more sexualized. Andy's adventures in dating also feel very contemporary, from the “straight” bar where girls openly snog together to the butch speed-dating bisexual who is "transitioning" back to men.

Not all of these images feel friendly or fair-minded. The character of Jay represents misogynist attitudes that exist all across society, through the lens of the Black community. When confronted by belligerent, stereotyped behavior, he responds by acting the same way. In the end, we're supposed to infer that he has grown up, just because he shows off some sonogram footage and minimizes his own infidelity. I would have felt much more comfortable if there had been at least one more positive, or even more balanced, Black character. Then, there is the “why you're gay” discussion that treads the line between hilarious and offensive.

Also toward the end of the movie, Andy is repulsed by a seductive display from Beth, a woman he picks up when he thinks he's driven Trish away. On the one hand, it's easy to imagine how anyone might be turned off by what she's doing. It's like a pre-packaged porn fantasy that has nothing to do with Andy as an individual. It's good to see the movie elevate women like Trish instead, who are whole in themselves and behave authentically. Unfortunately, the script never quite escapes the Madonna-whore dichotomy or the old Double Standard (R, TM). “I hit that a while back”, Jay explains as he leads Andy away from Beth.

I hesitate to pigeonhole myself by making feminist critique my “shtick” as a reviewer; but this movie is surprisingly ripe for it. All of the characters struggle for self-respect and wholeness in our MySpace-meets-Girls-Gone Wild culture. Trish accepts the news about Andy's inexperience very well, but I did wish that I had been more assured of her eventual sexual happiness. (The musical number at the end also kind of lost me.) The love story and the coming of age story are the real point, and I enjoyed them.

Things that make life woth living

The beautiful Tina Fey on Sesame Street.

Apparently this episode ("The Bookaneers")is from 2007; but it is still, as they say on LiveJournal, made of win.

(Image co/ ew.com)

When TV is stupid

I caught a few minutes of Unhitched last night on Fox. I wish I hadn't.

The Tantra subplot was actually kind of funny...although I can neither confirm nor deny how accurate it might be. What really bothered me was the subplot where Rashida Jones's character Kate keeps encountering a female co-worker naked in the gym locker room

I think that many people would find that awkward in and of itself; however, Kate had to go into detail later with her friends about how disgusting the older woman's body is.

Now, I love pop culture, obviously. All too often, though, it's used to try to make women self-conscious about being anything other than the ideal. All too often, it tries to enlist women to judge each other. It is not impossible to imagine the same subplot with a naked man, but it seems less likely. More to the point, that is not how the story was written

As if that weren't enough, once Kate finally confronts her colleague with her discomfort, the other woman breaks down crying. She confides that she feels repulsive, that her body is why she's divorced, and that she's starved for physical contact of any kind. It ends, of course, with an uncomfortable, arms-only hug.

All of this is supposed to be funny.

Guess what? It isn't.

There's really nothing all that unusual about the woman in question. She looks like--if not "better than"--any number of middle-aged ladies you might pass on the street. So I can comfort myself with the knowledge that the writers of Unhitched are out of touch with mainstream America. Most people don't see each other this way...except when they do; except when they've drunk too deeply of this kind of poison, which is as endemic in advertising and popular music as it is in Story.

What's more, to the extent that anyone does go without the physical affection that they need, for any reason, it hardly strikes me as comical. Watching the woman's pain was disturbing to me. I wonder what it says that the audience was expected to find it funny. This is the kind of mean-spiritedness that passes for honesty on many sitcomes these days.

Jones was better off on The Office , even if Jim is better of with Pam.

Thanks for letting me unhitch my high horse for a moment.

Catching up with TV

These days, I seem to watch most of my television on the Internet. I doubt that that makes me unusual. Sarah Connor Chronicles ended its first season on a high note—well, specifically a low note sung by Johnny Cash—and Medium recovered from a few weak episodes with a cliffhanger that landed Alison in a moral dilemma.

This weekend, however, I decided to end my post-Oscar hiatus by responding to two new shows for you.

Canterbury's Law, the new Juliana Margulies vehicle, debuted on Fox last week. There's very little here that we haven't seen before—aside from the fact that in our post 9-11 America, making your protagonist a public defender represents at least a small risk. Other than that, we have a driven career woman who's personal life is falling apart, a wan, hapless, young male defendant, a unisex bathroom scene (without the laughs of Ally McBeal), and dramatic confrontations culminating in courtroom pandemonium. In the end, I had to agree with Canterbury's associate, who warns her that her less ethical tactics may backfire on her clients. I also found it a cheap gimmick not to reveal until the finish that she has lost a child. The best I can say about it is that Margulies and Aidan Quinn are always very watchable, and it is still probably a better way to spend an evening than any given “reality” show.

The next new thing I checked out was Quarterlife. This is a web series created my Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Swick, the creators of Thirtysomething and producers of My So-Called Life. The first online “season”--thirty-six episodes of eight minutes each—were recently combined into six hour-long episodes for NBC. The pilot got such poor ratings against a Democratic presidential debate that it was moved over to NBC's partner channel, Bravo, to finish it's run. (All episodes are now available on hulu.com.)

To be honest, I wondered at first if I would make it through the first episode; but I didn't want to be like a recently infamous Rolling Stones critic. The characters were just introduced very abruptly, and the dialog felt painfully contrived. We've seen much of this before, too—a cast of pretty young friends, both indie and yuppie, complete with one of their youthful-looking, immature mothers. As the episode progressed, however, some strong performances emerged, and I started to care about the characters. The story also dealt realistically with some very important themes—specifically, fear of success, and the often complicated connections between young adults and their parents.

The one thing that still gets me about Quarterlife is the fact that we didn't actually see the band make music until their concert. I'm around enough musical people to know that music—and not necessarily their own--oozes out of them steadily, especially when they're around each other, just for the pure joy if it. This past December, I saw a group of Nashville musicians on an independent movie set do a much better depiction of a band partying on their off hours. (Yes, you'll read more about that film eventually—MUCH more.)

In summary, neither of these shows is likely to become regular viewing for me, but I enjoyed Quarterlife better. It probably comes down to whether you prefer—or are in the mood for--Thirtysomething” or The Practice.

Storywh0re's Oscar Series - Michael Clayton (Spoiler Warning)

If I hadn't been reading Dreaming the Dark, by Starhawk, all week, watching Michael Clayton might have been a very different experience. The movie is all about what Starhawk would refer to as “power-over”. It is the power of force, coercion and hierarchy, and the societal institutions which allow some people to prosper at the expense of others; it is also the sense of estrangement between people that allows them to think such systemic suffering is okay.

The film opens in darkness, with just the voice of hotshot attorney Arthur Eden. In the middle of defending an a chemical company in a class-action lawsuit, he's had what appears to be a breakdown, stripping naked during a deposition, and rambling to the plaintiff about offering himself in atonement. The language he uses to explain himself is spiritual. He has had an epiphany, and can no longer be part of the harm that his client, uNorth, is causing. The thing that really struck me is how almost everyone around Arthur immediately tries to pathologize his experience. Only Michael Clayton, the firm's “fixer” who has been called in, even pretends to take his concerns seriously. Go back on your meds, he tells Arthur; if what you've seen is real, it will still be there. Unfortunately, Michael has problems of his own: his brother has just left him high and dry with a failed business, making it difficult for him to resist his gambling addiction.

A lot of the trappings of this movie are quite familiar—the evil company with the harmful product, the innocent victims, the noble whistle-blower, and the character at the crossroads of decision. It does have an immediacy and intimacy that not all such movies have. The characters' personal and professional lives are not neatly separate, all of their problems bleed together.

It drags for a long section in the middle, in part because Michael is catching up to learn what we already know. The black-ops hijinx that we see—especially the faked suicide—weren't convincing to me, even though such things probably happen. On a technical note, this is probably the visually darkest of all the Oscar nominees. The score reminds me of Ambient music, and gives the film a dreamlike quality.

George Clooney does a good job playing a man under extraordinary stress. It was a bigger treat for me, though, to see Tom Wilkinson. This script allowed him a more nuanced role than that of the one-dimensional Carmine Falcone in Batman Begins. (Yes, folks, it's “Six Degrees to Cillian Murphy”.) Tilda Swinton portrays great hidden uncertainty as uNorth's unethical lead counsel, Karen Crowder. That is probably believable, but somewhat cliché. Perhaps a remorseless and arrogant female villian would have been more original, or at least more satisfying.

One thing that bothered me, as someone with friends in recovery, is that Michael loses a form of sobriety at the end, and it is not given near enough importance. It amused me that uNorth outsourced legal services to his firm, and in the end, it is printing outsourced by Arthur that saves the day. Michael is used to presenting limited options to people in tight situations, and then helping them by unconventional means; but he discovers power-within—the power of personal authenticity and interpersonal connection—in time to do the right thing.

Storywh0re's Oscar Series - No Country for Old Men (Spoiler Warning)

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
- W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"

No Country For Old Men opens in the Texas desert in the 1970’s. In voiceover, Tommy Lee Jones's character, Sheriff Ed Bell, talks about how times have changed, especially the job of a local sheriff. He mentions the prospect of finding an evil beyond understanding out in the metaphorical and literal wilderness.

We see the arrest of a man dressed in black, who quickly kills the arresting deputy. He then uses a stolen police car to pull over an innocent stranger and cut them down with his weapon of choice—a compressed-air stun gun intended for cattle. We soon learn that this is ruthless hit man Anton Chigurh

It also quickly becomes obvious why Chigurh is in town. Hunter Llewellyn Moss comes across the scene of a drug-related massacre, and finds a satchel containing two million dollars. From there, a bloody cat-and-mouse game ensues that encompasses Moss, his wife, Chigurh, Bell, and bounty hunter Carson Wells.

Movie audiences are very used to seeing Tommy Lee Jones as a lawman; but this is a more nuanced performance than before. Imagine one of his U.S. Marshall characters, twenty years down the road. I enjoyed seeing Kelly Macdonald as Carla Jean Moss. I first saw this Scottish actress in the fabulous Intermission, and here she does a mean Texas accent. However, I'd have to say that the stand-out performance goes to Javier Bardem as Chigurh. His presence is off-kilter, unsettling, and yet somehow mesmerizing. Ironically, that awful late-70s haircut is part of it.

There are some interesting gender dynamics in this story. While there is a great tenderness between Llewellyn and his wife, their relationship is very traditional for the time. He makes all of the decisions, but unfortunately, he makes remarkably dumb ones, and it is hard to watch her struggle to keep up. In a way, all of the male characters are working out their (often cliché') notions of what masculinity means. Wonderfully dry, funny dialog helps punctuate this. Bell is surprisingly open with his feelings and has a relationship of equals with his wife; but Moss and Chigurh let their pride take over them. While Carla Jean is a well-drawn character, her fate is cliché. Cormack McCarthy, author of the source novel, missed a ripe opportunity there. It would have shattered expectations had she been a killer instead of killed.

The narrative shifts in the middle, from focusing on Moss to focusing on Bell. This was slightly jarring to me, especially since I had been wishing for more of Bell's story up to that point. The plot is like a small war there in the desert, which is interesting, because the recently-ended Vietnam war looms large. The importance of choice seems to be a theme. Also, each character's struggle, while interconnected, is also highly individual. The ending is startlingly abrupt and deliberately unsatisfying. We see that Chigurh suffers, on an ongoing basis, for his misdeeds; but we're reminded that life rarely gives us sweeping meaning and tidy conclusions. Instead, there is just wistfulness about the passage of time.