Friday, January 27, 2012
I'd rather be lucky than smart
By Edward Copeland
More than two years after it was announced that Michael Mann would direct the pilot for a possible new HBO series written by Deadwood mastermind David Milch and starring two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman (Kramer Vs. Kramer, Rain Man) and three-time Oscar
nominee Nick Nolte (The Prince of Tides, Affliction, Warrior), that series — Luck — makes its official debut Sunday on HBO at 9 p.m. EST/PST, 8 p.m. CST. The premiere episode of Luck's nine-episode inaugural season actually debuted in December following the second season finale of Boardwalk Empire. Mann and Milch both serve as two of the series’ executive producers and Hoffman bears the title of producer as well. Thanks to my good friends of HBO, I've seen all nine episodes of Luck and will be able to post full-fledged recaps the moment each episode has finished airing. For now, I offer this brief, spoiler-free preview of the series that I've found to be a nice addition to the HBO family of dramas. Having that unmistakable rhythm of Milchian language resonating in my ears again certainly pleases me. On top of that, Luck captures the excitement of horse racing, particularly in a Mann-directed/Milch-written sequence in the premiere, like nothing I've seen before. As someone who enjoyed going to the track (even being clueless as far as handicapping horses goes), watching Luck made me miss being able to go. With only its brief run of nine episodes as a barometer, the show's forecast looks good with its future chance at greatness hovering around 75%. Luck isn't there yet. It's no Deadwood — but few things are. More importantly, it's no John From Cincinnati either. As I write this, the first two episodes are the only installments I've watched more than once but, unless I missed others, viewers will get through all nine episodes with only two utterances of cocksucker. 
What makes that racing sequence in the Luck premiere mimic the experience of a real race parallels the premise of this new drama. The race gets shown from the various perspectives of those involved in horse racing and Luck tells those sides outside of race scenes as well. Its large cast encompasses owners, trainers, jockeys at different points in their careers, jockeys' agents, track veterinarians and the serious gamblers — and those just include regulars. The world David Milch has created also will cross paths with other track officials and employees. In their own ways, the horses develop distinct personalities as well. While scenes occur away from the fictionalized Santa Anita Park that serves as the focal point of the series, all stories lead back there in some way. As for that race sequence, much of the credit for it has to fall to Michael Mann's direction and the editing team of Michael Brown, Hank Corwin and Kelley Dixon. The cutting of that race should earn the pilot next year's Emmy in that category now.
Mann steered two of the '80s most influential crime dramas to the airwaves — Miami Vice and Crime Story — though he hasn't produced for television since the short-lived Robbery Homicide Division in the 2002-2003 season and he last directed for TV when he helmed the 1989 telefilm L.A. Takedown. It's not that Mann has been loafing — he's directed and/or produced several feature films including Heat, The Insider, Ali, The Aviator and Hancock. The Insider brought Mann three Oscar nominations for producing, directing and co-writing the film. He also was nominated for producing The Aviator.
Milch created Luck, which marks his first new work to air since John From Cincinnati. He wrote a pilot for a series called Last of the Ninth in 2009, but no one picked it up. Milch forever holds a place in the hearts of quality television fans as the maestro behind the prematurely ended Deadwood, whose two two-hour wrap-up movies never came to be. Milch has received an astounding 24 Emmy nominations for writing or producing for Deadwood, Hill Street Blues, Murder One and NYPD Blue. He won four Emmys, two for writing NYPD Blue episodes and one as a producer of that series when it won outstanding drama. He earned his fourth Emmy (actually his first) for writing a Hill Street Blues episode.
In addition to Mann and Milch serving as executive producers and Hoffman as producer, Luck's behind-the-scenes producing team also includes Carolyn Strauss (Game of Thrones, Treme) as executive producer; Henry J. Brochtein (The Sopranos, where he also directed) as co-executive producer; and Eric Roth (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Forrest Gump and Oscar-nominated writer of The Insider, Munich and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) as co-executive producer.
Hoffman is the series' ostensible lead, though Luck boasts 13 regulars in its opening credits who all get screen time as well as many recurring characters. In fact, in the premiere, some of the other character get more scenes than Hoffman's character, Chester "Ace" Bernstein. We meet Bernstein first as he leaves federal prison after serving three years. The audience won't learn why Ace, a wealthy man who has spent his life operating around gambling enterprises and organized crime, ended up incarcerated in the first episode other
than the fact he took the fall for other people. While imprisoned, he spent $2 million to buy an Irish race horse, using his faithful driver/bodyguard Gus "The Greek" Demitriou (Dennis Farina, star of Mann's Crime Story) as a front, acting as the thoroughbred's owner. One of Luck's strongest assets proves to be that chemistry between Hoffman and Farina, especially in the duo's late-night bull sessions in the hotel suite that Bernstein calls home. They board the horse, named Pint of Plain, at Santa Anita, the race track located in Arcadia, Calif., about 14 miles northeast of downtown L.A. Bernstein's motivation for picking Santa Anita turns out to have two purposes. The first figures in with long-term plans he's had to purchase the track and add casino gambling while getting even with some of his shady business associates, played by guest star Alan Rosenberg in the premiere who's joined in later episodes by Ted Levine and Sir Michael Gambon, returning to a character closer to his Thief in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover than Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films. The second reason resides closer to Ace's heart. Santa Anita serves as the home track for a talented and temperamental Peruvian-born trainer, Turo Escalante (John Ortiz).In my eyes, Escalante — and Ortiz — could prove to be the breakout character and actor on Luck. Ortiz's name may not be as recognizable as Hoffman, Nolte or even Farina, but he's worked with some big name American directors since making his film debut in Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way in 1993. He also appeared in Ron Howard's Ransom, Steven Spielberg's Amistad and Ridley Scott's American Gangster. Luck's
premiere doesn't mark Ortiz's first time being directed by Mann either — he acted in the 2006 film adaptation of Miami Vice as well as Public Enemies. Ortiz also executive produced and repeated his stage role in Philip Seymour Hoffman's directing debut, Jack Goes Boating. The play originated as an off-Broadway production by the theater troupe LAByrinth, where Ortiz served as co-artistic director. It's impressive, but if Luck succeeds,
Turo Escalante will be the vehicle that launches Ortiz's career to the next level. Not only does Ortiz give a phenomenal performance, but Escalante, by far, shows himself to be the most fascinating part of the series as well as the character that interacts with more of the other players than anyone else, including the track's head veterinarian Jo Carter (Jill Hennessy), who turns out to be Turo's secret girlfriend. As with everything created and written by David Milch, he implies key things as much as he verbalizes them. Viewers will get the distinct impression that Escalante may be covered in infinite layers that could be peeled and examined in future seasons. In the meantime, Turo will be there, lashing out at jockeys for not following his instructions on how to run a horse during a race — even if the horse won anyway or acting as if he's a polite servant to a new horse's owner. Ortiz, as the best performers on a Milch show must know how to do, is as adept at making Escalante funny as frightening and even touching when needed.
Nick Nolte, whose stardom took flight on television in the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, returns to the medium for the first time since for Luck — just days after receiving his third Oscar nomination (his first as a supporting actor) in Warrior. As Walter Smith, the
grizzled veteran horse trainer-turned-owner from Kentucky, Nolte's role on Luck plays as a supporting one as well. In fact, he's absent from one of the nine episodes. Called "The Old Man" by many at the track, Smith shares something in common with Ace
Bernstein: the first episode plants seeds of a mystery surrounding his story. In Walter's case, it has nothing to do with a prison sentence, but questions concerning the origin of his "big horse," Gettn'up Morning, that will be resolved rather quickly though the issue will hover over Smith and Gettn'up Morning through the show's short season. Walter also has an important decision to make about the horse — picking the jockey who will ride Gettn'up Morning once he's ready. The two main contenders are his exercise girl, Irish lass Rosie Shanahan (Kerry Condon), who longs to be a jockey, and Ronnie Jenkins (real-life National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens), who used to be a great but has moved into a universe of drink and drugs. Condon should be familiar to longtime viewers of HBO dramas from her role as Octavia on Rome or to moviegoers as Tolstoy's daughter in The Last Station. While acting isn't Stevens' first career, Luck isn't his first role. He played the famous 1930s and '40s jockey George Woolf (who happened to be based out of Santa Anita) in Seabiscuit. 
Trying to keep Ronnie Jenkins sober and secure him the mount on Gettn'up Morning is his stuttering agent Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind) who also represents an apprentice jockey at the track, Leon Micheaux (Tom Payne), also
known as Bug, the name given to most beginning jockeys because the asterisk by their names in racing forms resembles an insect. Joey's career as an agent isn't going well and we get hints that his personal life has crumbled into disarray as well. Leon hails from Louisiana and has problems maintaining the weight he needs to qualify for races. He also doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut — so he manages to keep pissing off Escalante, much to Joey's annoyance. Leon also has a mutual attraction with a certain red-haired girl — who may become a professional competitor down the road. Kind's a familiar face from film and television including his regular role on Spin City, his recurring role as Larry's cousin Andy on Curb Your Enthusiasm and as troubled Uncle Arthur in the Coens' great A Serious Man. Leon may be from Louisiana but Payne hails from England and most of his credits so far come from British TV. Payne's best-known work in the U.S. may be the film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
The final quartet of regulars belongs to a syndicate, but it's not the kind of syndicate that's crossing your mind. It's just the name given to a group of serious gamblers who
pool their money so they can make bigger bets that cover more options and, hopefully, reap big benefits such as the more than $2 million payout that would go to someone lucky enough to correctly handicap the races involved in the Pick Six contest in Luck's premiere. The four men make for a colorful group, to say the least. The unofficial ringleader, Marcus Becker (Kevin Dunn), suffers from a variety of health conditions that force him to use a wheelchair and take frequent hits of oxygen from the tank attached to it. He's rude to everyone and seems as if he were born in a cranky mood. The true brain of the group belongs to Jerry Boyle (Jason Gedrick), who possesses a true gift for picking the right horses. Unfortunately, he likes to gamble all
the time so anything he wins at the track he's liable to lose that night playing poker at a casino — and when Jerry gets tapped out, he becomes easy prey for a track security guard (Peter Appel), who works as a loan shark on the side. Marcus calls Jerry a degenerate, but the two of them have a special relationship that's almost
like a father and son or two close brothers. The other two members of the group truly are misfits and you have to wonder how Marcus has let them hang around. The first is Renzo Calagari (Ritchie Coster), who lives on disability checks that he takes straight to the track. The newest member that Renzo has recruited is Lonnie McHinery (Ian Hart), a man who never gets the point of what's going on and has stumbled upon a bankroll supposedly from two women who are paying him to be their personal gigolo. Dunn has been a familiar face in lots of movies and TV shows since the mid-1980s. Even though he didn't have any scenes with Nolte, he also appeared in Warrior. Gedrick has appeared in a lot of television series either as a guest or in shows that didn't last long. He was the murder defendant in the first season of Murder One and one of the police officers in Boomtown, the NBC series that started out great until they mucked with its premise and destroyed it. Coster and Hart, like Payne, are Englishmen playing Americans. Name any crime procedural on TV and Coster has more than likely played a role on it. On the big screen, his films include Let Me In, The Dark Knight and American Gangster. Early in his career, Hart took on the role of John Lennon in two films in a row: The Hours and the Times and Backbeat. He's also made four films with director Neil Jordan including The End of the Affair, where Hart was especially good as a private detective with problems of his own.Even with such a short season, Luck — already full of award winners and nominees in front of and behind the camera — attracted even more for recurring guest roles including Oscar nominees Joan Allen and Bruce Davison and Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl. There's also guest appearances by Barry Shabaka Henley, Jurgen Prochnow and W. Earl Brown (Deadwood's Dan Dority).
When the credits roll for the first time on Luck, in case you don't recognize the song playing beneath the images and artists' names, it's a trimmed version of "Splitting the Atom" by Massive Attack. Below are the lyrics, the show uses. Click here and you can see the video on YouTube for the complete song. Every listing of the lyrics (including the captions) insists that the band sings "eternited leave." I find no evidence of such a word as "eternited" and almost changed it automatically to eternal, assuming it was a misprint but apparently songwriters Robert Del Naja and Damon Albarn invented a word for their song.
The evening it chokes, the candle, it burns
This disguise covers bitter lies
Repeating the joke, the meaning it dies
It's easy, don't let it go
Don't lose it
The bankers have bailed, the mighty retreat
The pleasure it fails at the end of the week
You take it or leave or what you receive
To what you receive is eternited leave
It's easy, don't let it go
It's easy, don't let it go
It's easy, don't let it go
Don't lose it
As readers who have followed any of my previous series recaps know, my format has evolved. The first show I covered was the great fourth season of The Wire, but I basically just regurgitated what happened with a little criticism tossed in. I didn't go crazy and learn all I could about Baltimore.
My recaps for the first seasons of Treme and Boardwalk Empire pretty much followed the same pattern until I noted historical moments on Boardwalk Empire I suspected casual viewers wouldn't get, so I added explanatory links. For the second season of Treme, I started seeking explanations to references that I didn't get and each recap became like a puzzle, adding the context of real New Orleans events, info on the music — I even began to learn the geography of that city without ever having been there. When the second season of Boardwalk Empire premiered, I beefed up those recaps as well, not only on historical points and characters but even the origins of words and phrases.
Now, I start the nine-episode run of Luck. The recaps will evolve as I write them, but I suspect that if you didn't know the ins and outs of horse racing and betting before the show premiered and parts of the series leave you in the dark, I'll do my best to help fill in those gaps as I learn as well. The first recap ended up in two parts, but that had to do with exposition I believe. I do have to say it's probably a good thing that AMC didn't think me worthy enough to receive Breaking Bad screeners or I probably would know how to make crystal meth.
Luck premieres on HBO Sunday at 9 p.m. EST/PST, 8 p.m. CST with each of the subsequent eight episodes in the nine-episode first season airing at the same time.
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Labels: Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Coens, Curb Your Enthusiasm, De Palma, Deadwood, Dustin Hoffman, Farina, Gambon, HBO, Luck, Michael Mann, Milch, Nolte, P.S. Hoffman, R. Scott, Spielberg, The Sopranos, The Wire, Treme
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Friday, December 24, 2010
The "O" Word
By Josh R
I have one rule when it comes to reviewing films: I try not to use the “O” word. With one notable exception, I’ve stuck to my guns even when writing about films that I knew had some serious “O” love coming to them — whether my verdict was hot (Happy-Go-Lucky), cold (Rachel Getting Married), medium (Doubt) or a sub-arctic blast of untrammeled bile the likes of which could plunge North America into its next Ice Age (oh, Babel, the frosty times we’ve had.)
My reasons for this are threefold. Like Mr. Copeland, who uses the dreaded word more than I do but has always managed to keep it in its proper place, I’m not sure exactly what awards handicapping has to do with legitimate film criticism. You want odds, go to Vegas; a review should read like a review, not a scouting report. In the second place, reliance on The “O” word is an excuse for laziness; it’s easy to take the convenient shortcut of “So-and-so gives an Oscar-worthy performance!” rather than actually discussing what made a performance great — the latter requires not only effort and imagination, but a decent working vocabulary. For the record, none of the excellent contributors to this blog — fine writers and analysts — have ever been guilty of the sins described above. As for some of the critics whose opinions most often wind up as single-sentence blurbs in print ads, well…using the “O” word will definitely get your name in the paper.
Finally, to frame any discussion of a film’s merits within the context of “O” implies that The Academy Awards are the ultimate barometer of quality in the motion picture industry. Which is just silly. For the record, I actually like The Oscars — albeit on the same level that I enjoy Dancing with the Stars and Olympic figure skating — but to view them as the yardstick by which we should measure artistic success in the cinematic medium is kind of like viewing Wikipedia as the ultimate authority on global history and culture. Lily Tomlin once described The Oscars as “classic American kitsch,” and that’s an apt assessment — equal parts glitzy industry trade show and highly entertaining spectator sport, the proceedings are informed as much by politics, popularity and pettiness as the vagaries of subjective taste. They’re impossible to take seriously. For all those who maintain that The Oscars are everything that they purport to be, I’ll offer up this in response: You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
As it happens, I have nothing against pigs — they make for some good eatin’ — and I’m not so scandalized by the fundamentally absurd nature of The Academy Awards that I can’t follow them obsessively once the politicking and pageantry kick into hyperdrive. Nor do I take my highfalutin ideals about film criticism quite so seriously that I can’t forsake them every now and again. When I bandied the “O” word like a verbal volleyball in my vivisection of La Vie en Rose, it was because I specifically wanted to address the manner in which certain folk were bashing one Oscar hopeful’s performance as a means of promoting the candidacy of another. I’m going to station the coveted statuette front-and-center once again in my discussion of The King’s Speech, because I’m really not sure how else to talk about it. As it happens, this stately biopic chronicling King George VI’s ascension to The Throne of England — a climb made rocky by virtue of the speech impediment he had to conquer en route — is a well-made, enjoyable film. It is also a film that feels as though it were conceived and executed for one purpose and one purpose alone — namely, to be nominated for (and win) Academy Awards. Some films are made for love, others still for money; it’s clear that some love went into The King’s Speech, but it’s not some little shoestring indie that was made without expectation or ulterior motive. Even when it achieves something greater than its aims — which, thanks to the resourcefulness of Colin Firth, it very often does — every frame seems to be flashing the words For Your Consideration.
The plot plays almost like an inversion of Shaw’s Pygmalion; when it was being pitched to studio execs, it was probably described (in Oscarspeak) as My Fair Lady turned inside out. Instead of the common flower girl being drilled in elocution so she can pass for royalty, in The King’s Speech, a Royal is taught to speak in such a way that he becomes more acceptable, as both a leader and figurehead, to the common man. In the tense, uncertain days leading up to WWII, Firth’s Duke of York (Bertie to his intimates) is second in line to the throne and a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time player in the theater of public relations. Lacking the polish and glamour of his brother Edward (Guy Pearce), he is hampered by a nasty stammer that rears its head at inopportune moments, making him a bit of a national laughingstock. Ironically, the dapper, microphone-ready Prince of Wales can barely hold a candle to his stammering sibling in the character department. As proof that image often trumps truth, it the conscientious, level-headed son — possessed of all the qualities necessary to shepherd his subjects through a period of war and strife — who is treated as an object of ridicule, while the feckless, wishy-washy Prince of Wales is a figure of adulation.
Egged on by his supportive wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), Prince Albert seeks out the services of the Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), whose methods prove as unconventional as his manner — he treats his new charge as he would any other patient, starting with his blunt refusal to address him as “Your Highness.” It’s an uneasy relationship that eventually develops into a bond of genuine trust and friendship — soon to become of vital importance to the nation when the heir apparent abdicates the throne in order to marry an American divorcee. In order for Prince Albert to assume the mantle of King George V, his must literally find his own voice — one unmarred by defect.
Defect is something which is not much in evidence in the film itself, and that’s very much by design. With golden goodies on the brain, director Tom Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler play things safe, safe, safe. To be fair, The King’s Speech is not the only film in the marketplace blatantly trolling for Oscar gold — that’s a characteristic shared, to varying degrees, by most of the films released in the waning months of the calendar year. If the syndrome feels more pronounced in this context, that’s a reflection of how few risks Hooper and Seidler have taken, stylistically or otherwise, and the extent to which their product adheres to the rules set forth by the Oscar playbook. It ticks off every box on the list (British accents, check…based on a true story, check… costume & art direction that are pure period porn, check…), and has been cast to the gills with the sort of performers whose very participation bespeaks Class with a capital C; blink-and-you-miss-them bit players include Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Jennifer Ehle, Timothy Spall, Eve Best, Anthony Andrews and Claire Bloom. There is nothing unexpected or even particularly creative about the way the material’s been shaped; as lush as the design aspects of the film are, it’s fitting that the dominant color is brown. The filmmakers know exactly who their audience is, and The King’s Speech works on the level it’s supposed to — it has no personality, but it covers its bases.
A film that exists purely on the level of Oscarbait is not such a bad thing when it furnishes an opportunity for great actors to strut their stuff, and if The King’s Speech lacks something in terms of inspiration, that’s not a trait shared by the performances. After his deliciously over-the-top vamping in Broadway’s Exit the King, Rush adroitly shifts gears with his subtle, finely calibrated turn as the quietly charismatic speech therapist. Logue is someone who can stand toe-to-toe with both King and Court, but without raising his voice or going in for grandstanding; given the actor’s occasional penchant for scenery-chewing, it’s nice to see him pull in the reins and portray a character on a smaller, more human scale. The film also provides a refreshing change of pace for Bonham Carter, who’s spent most of the past decade studiously avoiding the type of period, literary-seeming roles on which her early reputation was based. It can’t be much fun for an actress to go through her career feeling like a Victorian dress-up doll; that said, her more recent efforts (primarily for her husband, Tim Burton, an unparalleled visual stylist who has never really seemed to grasp what constitutes good acting) have favored a style based in feverishly antic caricature, emphasizing the grotesque and with less-than-scintillating results. Commercial success aside, it’s not a style which showcases her talents to best advantage — and has produced more than its fair share of squirm-inducing moments, of the ilk that have sent other actresses on the prowl for good divorce lawyers (if there’s any better grounds for trial separation than Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight, it’s Alice in Wonderland and Sweeney Todd.) Here, Bonham Carter is back in Merchant Ivory mode, and delivers a fine, understated performance — one which actually allows her to display some backbone beneath the period fashions she models.
As fine as the entire cast is, The King’s Speech belongs — as well it should — to The King himself, and Colin Firth once again demonstrates that he is among the best, most indispensable actors working in films today. The thing that distinguishes Firth as a performer — as evidenced by his stellar work in projects as diverse as the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’ Diary and A Single Man — is the remarkable degree of emotional transparency he brings to characters who make it their business to keep their emotions in check. He doesn’t need to resort to showy effects to reveal what a character is thinking and feeling; he communicates it through the slightest of inflections and gestures, so that even while his countenance remains stoic, the inner life of the character is brought into full and glorious focus. I’m not a fan of strenuous acting; when I watch the tightly clenched whirrings and grindings of Daniel Day-Lewis, I often have the sensation of being able to feel the tension in his face and body, to say nothing of his vocal chords — apart from My Left Foot, it’s an approach that has always felt distinctly unnatural (there’s a school of thought that asserts that if it looks painful to do, it must be brilliant.) Firth lives on the opposite end of the spectrum — he achieves his effects so simply that you’re never conscious of any element of artifice; because you don’t catch him acting, everything he does seems to be rooted in truth. It’s why his work as the grieving professor in A Single Man had such devastating emotional impact; if The King’s Speech, staidly packaged little Oscar vehicle that it is, doesn’t quite allow him to go to those places, the actor still manages to give the impression of having created a characterization which feels completely fresh, unhindered in any way by the limitations of the material. Without him, The King’s Speech would be a nice, pleasant little film which would linger in memory about as long as your average morning cup of coffee. Because of what Firth brings to it, it exceeds its own ambitions.
Given the nature of this piece — and how many of my own rules I’ve broken in the process of writing it — it wouldn’t be fitting to let Mr. Firth off the hook without one mention of the “O” word. For anyone out there looking for a quick, blurb-able soundbite of the type I’ve grown to loathe, just this once I am willing to oblige. Colin Firth delivers an Oscar-worthy performance.
God, I feel dirty now.
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Labels: 10s, Colin Firth, Day-Lewis, Gambon, H.B. Carter, Merchant Ivory, Oscars, Pearce, Theater, Tim Burton
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Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Vomit, excrement and political subtext for good measure
Alexei Sayle, Alexei Sayle’s Stuff (1988)
By Iain Stott
And The Iron Lady and vomit are never very far away from the text and subtext of Peter Greenaway’s 1989 masterwork. The former of which, along with copious amounts of excrement, nudity, bullying, torture, and cannibalism ensured that the British iconoclast’s film had a tough time with the world’s classifiers and censors. In particular, America’s MPAA, who slapped it with an X rating which, if it had been accepted, would have near as dammit crippled its commercial potential. Instead, it was decided to distribute the film unrated (albeit, with a cautionary note). However, no matter how many buttons Greenaway pushes, there’s very little in the film that one couldn’t see today, 20 years later, on the anniversary of its U.S. opening, in some celebrity reality TV show or other, in which various C list celebs, has-beens, would-bes, and never will-bes demean themselves horribly in the hopes of gaining enough publicity to prolong their ailing (and never more than mediocre) careers for another year or two.
And whilst the public’s tolerance for bodily functions and torture may have changed somewhat over the past two decades, the consumerism, capitalism, and general political climate of the society that Greenaway here satirizes mercilessly has not, unfortunately, despite global financial crisis, changed a great deal at all. Thatcher, Reagan, and Bush may be long gone, but their “greed is good” legacy lives on. And so, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is as sadly relevant today as it has ever been.
The film opens with a scene of scatological horror, which introduces us to The Thief of the title, an excellent-as-ever Michael Gambon, whom we first encounter as he is force-feeding dog excrement to a debtor, whose naked, shit-smeared torso he proceeds to piss on. The scene introduces us to a number of the film’s main themes: humiliation, bullying, food, helplessness, inaction, and bodily functions. And all the while this stomach-churning action occurs, ironically, in the car park of a swanky French restaurant, Le Hollandais; the head chef of which is The Cook of the title (Richard Bohringer).
As the action moves inside of the restaurant, which we soon learn that The Thief has recently acquired, the tone of the evening becomes decidedly more relaxed and jovial if no less menacing. The Thief holds court over his goons and other hangers-on, as fine wines and food are consumed (mostly unappreciatively) in sumptuous surroundings. He discusses food and etiquette, upon which he is often corrected, quite foolhardily, by his Wife (a brave Helen Mirren). And it is with her, as she exchanges furtive glances with a bookish chap at a neighbouring table, who is set to become Her Lover (Alan Howard), that the main action of the film commences.
It is lust at first sight. An interrupted and ever so tentative tryst in the ladies’ lavatory soon leads to ever more adventurous encounters. Aided by The Cook and his staff, over the course of a week or so, the two lovers sneak off to the kitchen between courses for a liberating grope or two. But inevitably this suicidal behaviour could only ever end one way. And so, when The Thief discovers of the infidelitous behaviour of His Wife, who subsequently goes into hiding with Her Lover, he proves that he will stop at nothing to gain vengeance, vowing, impetuously and unthinkingly, to kill and eat his love rival.
A spot of child torture later – a scene that will have the majority of viewers wincing, gagging, and cowering from the screen — and he has his man. And, with torture being his thing, and his having a distinct dislike for all things intellectual, he is soon shoving pages from the Lover’s favourite book (about The French Revolution) down the “Jew’s” throat, eventually and painfully snuffing out his life. But, His Wife herself is soon concocting her own sweet revenge. And… well that would be telling, but suffice to say that it will certainly prove to be rather apt.
Now, from all that, the political allegory should be quite clear, or at least reasonably so: The Thief is Thatcher, although pretty much any political leader or ruling party would fit, no matter what foot they kick with. He leads with an iron fist, mercilessly ignoring the wants, wishes, and needs of those around him; with
bourgeois conventions doing a decent job of covering, for the most part, his capitalistic thuggery. He takes what he wants and disposes, messily, of everything that he doesn’t. The Wife, on the other hand, represents the British people (or any people really). She dabbles with and increasingly embraces the left-wing ideologies introduced to her by Her Lover. Ideologies attacked mercilessly by The Thief in much the same way as Thatcher waged her unfathomable war against the trade unions during her tortuous and seemingly endless tenure as Prime Minister. The Lover is representative of the intellectual left, the idealists, the would-be revolutionaries. His courting of the Wife is supported by The Cook, who is representative of the opposition, of (old) Labour. When The Thief crushes the Lover, The Cook aids the Wife in her revenge, essentially enacting a revolution.
But, this being a Peter Greenaway film, the real pleasure is to be found away from the subtext, away from the human and the political. Formally, it is a quite exquisite piece. The images, divorced from their grubby context, have a grand abstract power and playful, seductive exuberance. The camera pans and tracks elegantly from room to room, with each one having its own colour scheme. The neon blue of the car park gives way to the seductive, calming green of the kitchens, which in turn leads to the blood red of the decidedly opulently draped dining room, before finally reaching the clinical white of the toilets. With each room impeccably laid out with consummately detailed production design. Jean-Paul Gaultier’s fantastic costumes, which mirror the clothing worn by the Officers of the St. George Militia of Haarlem, who appear in the Frans Hals painting that sits prominently in the dining room, mirroring the action below, change colour as their wearers move from one room to the next. All the while, the action is underscored by Michael Nyman’s ethereally seductive reworking of his 1985 composition, Memorial.
And that, I think, is what gives the film its lasting appeal, what makes it such a unique experience – the juxtaposing of the elegant with the inelegant, the saintly with the sordid, and the immaculate with the soiled. Quite simply, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a masterpiece.
Iain Stott is an aesthete cum dropout with a fine art background who, when not living his life vicariously through the work of great (and not so great) artists, can be found blogging at The One-Line Review.
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Labels: 80s, 90s, Gambon, Mirren, Movie Tributes
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Crazy like a director
By Edward Copeland
My first exposure to Wes Anderson were the great Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, films original and entertaining enough to make me think I had a new young filmmaker to look forward to. Then came the misfire The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou followed by the dreadful Darjeeling Limited and it began to look as if Anderson was repeating himself to very diminishing returns. With Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson goes in a completely unexpected direction and this delight may be the palate cleanser he and I both needed.
Based on a Roald Dahl book that I've never read, Fantastic Mr. Fox is an animated film, but not like the animation we've been conditioned to see of late. Not the multi-dimension, computer-designed Pixar magic, not the old-fashioned two-dimensional type pioneered by Disney or even the popular Japanese anime. Anderson has went back to an older style and chosen stop-motion animation and enlisted a class of top-notch voice talent and breakneck pacing to create something more than just a family film.
George Clooney voices the title role. Imagine Ocean's 11 retold where Danny Ocean is a fox, his crew is made up of woodland creatures and the objects of the heist isn't the loot of a casino but chickens and cider, and you get a general idea of the story of Fantastic Mr. Fox.
As the film opens, Mr. Fox and his bride (Meryl Streep) get caught as they try to steal some chickens. As they hang in a cage, Mrs. Fox reveals that she's with child. Fast forward to 12 years later where the Foxes are living the woodsy version of a suburban life with their insecure son Ash (Jason Schwartzman), jealous of an athletic visiting cousin (Eric Anderson). Unfortunately, Mr. Fox has that old itch. He tries to satisfy it by purchasing a larger tree home in a shady neighborhood that his friend Badger (Bill Murray) warns him against.
What's really eating at Mr. Fox is not where he lives, but how he lives. He misses the game. Stealing chickens from farmers is in his nature and he convinces his dense possum pal Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky) to help him do, in the best of thieves' cliches, "one last job." It's actually three jobs and one thing Fox didn't count on was that one of the victimized farmers, a ruthless man named Franklin Bean (Michael Gambon), will do every thing short of nuclear war to get revenge.
In addition to the wonderful sets and characters with their meticulous detail, there also is a very nice instrumental score by Alexandre Desplat.
Stop-motion may be a pain-staking process, but at the pace Anderson moves the film along, it sure doesn't show. Fantastic Mr. Fox also proves to be the first time Anderson co-wrote a script with someone other than Owen Wilson (this time it's Noah Baumbach) that actually turns out to be a success. Fantastic Mr. Fox is just plain fun.
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Labels: 00s, Animation, Disney, Gambon, George Clooney, Murray, O. Wilson, Pixar, Streep, Wes Anderson
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Harry Potter and the half-baked script
By Edward Copeland
With the arrival of each new Harry Potter film, I've made it clear that I've never read any of the books yet I've been amazed how each installment grew in depth and quality once they got rid of director Chris Columbus from the first two installments. The previous entry, Order of the Phoenix, slipped a little and was the first of the films that felt to me as if it had been condensed to the point that a lot had been left out from the book. However, Imelda Staunton's delightful performance, the best in the entire series, more than made up for that film's flaws. This time, with director David Yates returning to helm Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the first time, even including the Columbus efforts, where I watched most of the time bored and dumbfounded.
As with all the other adaptations, the Half-Blood Prince was written by Steve Kloves, the man whose great work as writer-director on The Fabulous Baker Boys inspired J.K. Rowling to select him to adapt her books to the screen in the first place. However, the Half-Blood Prince plays like a muddle. By the time it reveals who the Half-Blood Prince is, I still had no (and still don't have any) idea what that really meant and what its significance was.
As in Goblet of Fire, Harry's friends Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint, Emma Watson) stay pretty much segregated to the sidelines except for one sequence where Grint proves quite charming and funny when Ron becomes enchanted by a love potion. Daniel Radcliffe still does fine as Harry, but this time out the heavy lifting seems to be handled even more than usual by the veteran British pros such as Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman.
The actor who shines the most in this outing is the series' newcomer, Jim Broadbent, playing a former potions professor that Dumbledore (Gambon) lures back to Hogwarts because of the connection he had to Lord Voldemort back when he was just a student named Tom Riddle and hadn't turned to evil. Every note Broadbent strikes — fear, guilt, excitement — seems just right. He's really the only aspect of the Half-Blood Prince that saves it from being a complete bore.
Director Yates' pacing is way off here. The atmospherics are solid as usual, but I don't know why this chapter came off as seeming so messy. The final book in the series is being broken up into two movies, so perhaps that will eliminate some of the problems of leaving things out, but it concerns me that Yates has been entrusted with the reins once again since his two efforts have been the weakest non-Columbus outings in the film series.
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Labels: 00s, Broadbent, Gambon, Maggie Smith, Rickman, Sequels
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Thursday, December 20, 2007
No wizard left behind
By Edward Copeland
I've never read a Harry Potter book and I've never seen one in a theater, but the quality control of the film series has amazed me. I caught up with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and, while I think it slips a little from previous films, it's still good and it may contain the best performance in the entire series from Imelda Staunton.
Staunton is a true hoot as Dolores Umbridge, the new professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts and the teacher from hell, inflicting strict discipline with a smile and a giggle, as she tries to change Hogwarts in the name of "educational reform."
This film continues the series' trend of growing darker with each new installment, but it doesn't quite connect emotionally the way it should, especially when a beloved friend of Harry's bites the dust. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was much better at interspersing the dark dealings with burgeoning adolescence than Order of the Phoenix does.
The rest of the cast is solid as always and Daniel Radcliffe seems to grow in talent with each new appearance as Harry. His cohorts Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint, Emma Watson) don't get as much to do in this outing, but the rest of the cast of British adults shine as always, especially Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.
If Order of the Phoenix didn't quite wow me as much the earlier films, especially the last two, it may be that they've condensed what is a large novel so much that something is lost in the translation.
Director David Yates' pacing is fine, but he doesn't bring the flair to the series that Mike Newell or Alfonso Cuaron did, though he certainly betters Chris Columbus' start. We should all be grateful Columbus didn't keep directing the films, because I fear the quality would have suffered in his hands.
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I've never read a Harry Potter book and I've never seen one in a theater, but the quality control of the film series has amazed me. I caught up with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and, while I think it slips a little from previous films, it's still good and it may contain the best performance in the entire series from Imelda Staunton.
Staunton is a true hoot as Dolores Umbridge, the new professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts and the teacher from hell, inflicting strict discipline with a smile and a giggle, as she tries to change Hogwarts in the name of "educational reform."
This film continues the series' trend of growing darker with each new installment, but it doesn't quite connect emotionally the way it should, especially when a beloved friend of Harry's bites the dust. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was much better at interspersing the dark dealings with burgeoning adolescence than Order of the Phoenix does.
The rest of the cast is solid as always and Daniel Radcliffe seems to grow in talent with each new appearance as Harry. His cohorts Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint, Emma Watson) don't get as much to do in this outing, but the rest of the cast of British adults shine as always, especially Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.
If Order of the Phoenix didn't quite wow me as much the earlier films, especially the last two, it may be that they've condensed what is a large novel so much that something is lost in the translation.
Director David Yates' pacing is fine, but he doesn't bring the flair to the series that Mike Newell or Alfonso Cuaron did, though he certainly betters Chris Columbus' start. We should all be grateful Columbus didn't keep directing the films, because I fear the quality would have suffered in his hands.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
This isn't Chicago after all — it's London
BLOGGER'S NOTE: In order to truly compare and contrast why the original British miniseries of Pennies From Heaven is superior to Herbert Ross' 1981 film version starring Steve Martin, many spoilers are necessary. So, if you plan to ever watch either and don't want plot details revealed, read no further.
By Edward Copeland
When I recently reviewed the 1981 film version of Pennies From Heaven, I guessed that the original British miniseries would work better and feel less truncated and now that I've seen it, I see that my intuition was correct. Whereas the movie focused so heavily on Steve Martin's version of sheet music salesman Arthur Parker that it seemed odd when other characters burst into song (or more accurately burst into miming songs). The 1978 British miniseries while still focusing on Arthur as the main character (here played by Bob Hoskins) also makes the characters of his wife Joan (Gemma Craven) and his eventual lover, schoolteacher turned prostitute Eileen (Cheryl Campbell) equally pivotal, so their musical turns make sense. In fact, the viewer meets Eileen before Arthur even does.
Also, the very minor character of The Accordion Man gets much more development and significance as played by Kenneth Colley in the miniseries version. Granted, it's easier to add depth when you are given six episodes running between 70 and 90 minutes each than when you are trying to squeeze everything into a two-hour film, but even then some of the choices the film version made seem counter to writer Dennis Potter's original vision. In the DVD commentary track of the miniseries' first episode, director Piers Haggard discussed the insistence by Potter for the first song to seem to come out of Hoskins' mouth be the version of a song by a female singer. Haggard told Potter they could find a rendition by a male singer, but Potter would have none of it because his goal was to create as much dislocation for the viewer as possible. The title for this post comes from a moment late in the series when Arthur goes missing, wrecking his music store ahead of time, leaving the impression of foul play. Joan tells the police investigator that Arthur couldn't have just gone missing because "This isn't Chicago after all — it's London" and that draws real contrast to the movie version which is set in 1938 Chicago as opposed to 1935 England as in the miniseries.
What really provides the crucial difference in making the miniseries superior (though I still prefer Potter's miniseries of The Singing Detective with Michael Gambon) is Hoskins and his portrayal of Arthur versus Steve Martin's Arthur. While both Arthurs certainly are selfish, Hoskins' Arthur proves much more sympathetic as a "right bleeding washout" who "dreams of a world where songs are true." Even more important, with a few exceptions, the miniseries avoids the film's tendency to make each musical number a lavish production that wouldn't seem out of place in classic 1930s movie musicals. For the most part, the songs are staged within the confines of the period setting. (An interesting television note, which was slightly distracting at first: All interior scenes are on videotape while exteriors are on film, but you get used to it after awhile.)
The plots of both versions mainly follow the same throughline, though the miniseries has room to add more story strands that didn't make the film and is all the richer for it. For one thing, the evolution of Eileen from naive schoolteacher to hardened prostitute seems less abrupt in the miniseries than Bernadette Peters' Eileen was able to do in the movie. In fact, Eileen in the miniseries becomes the hardest, most calculating character of them all, not only embracing prostitution as a way to make ends meet but even eventually committing a murder of opportunity. The character of Joan also gets much more to chew on in the hands of Gemma Craven than Jessica Harper got to work with in the movie, where she was entirely prudish and only turns on Arthur late and suddenly. The TV Joan has true misgivings about her husband from the beginning, including fantasizing with her friends about killing him. Even more touchingly, even after her betrayal sends him to the executioner for a crime he didn't commit, she still loves the cad anyway.
The miniseries also downplays more of the romanticized moments of the movie. Whereas Arthur and Eileen's first encounter is framed by a heart in the movie's image, the miniseries stays closer to its theme by inserting the new lovers within a piece of sheet music that Arthur keeps peddling. The pimp Tom, so well played in a single scene by Christopher Walken in the movie, only appears in one episode of the miniseries, but that allows him to achieve more importance in the hands of Hywel Bennett and to even interact with Arthur. The main plot turn, namely Arthur's arrest and conviction in the murder of a blind woman, plays much better in the series. The movie shows you the murder immediately, so you know that The Accordion Man is responsible. In the miniseries, you don't know for sure that Arthur didn't do it until a later episode when the guilt-ridden Accordion Man starts confessing to strangers and is haunted by the dead girl. In fact, it appears that Arthur has an alibi at first, making me think that perhaps he will get off without being implicated, but that still comes about once Joan talks too much about his unusual sexual preoccupations.
Hoskins truly is remarkable, especially for those more familiar with him from his later film work. He's much slimmer, but his more ordinary bloke plays much better than Steve Martin's, who never quite sells the idea that he's a complete putz creating his own catastrophes. It's also interesting to note how even nearly 30 years ago, British television was so much more mature than its American counterpart in terms of language and nudity. (If you ever longed to see Hoskins nude...) Pennies From Heaven the miniseries is well worth your time, especially if you've seen Herbert Ross' version. It makes clear what could have been.
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Labels: 70s, Gambon, Musicals, Steve Martin, TV Tribute, Walken
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Thursday, June 28, 2007
You must pay before you get them back again
By Edward Copeland
What happened to Steve Martin? He used to take such chances and even when they didn't work, such as is the case with 1981's Pennies From Heaven, his willingness to try something new was impressive. Now, he seems content to just coast through lame remake after lame remake and sequel after sequel to the same lame remakes. Will the great Martin ever return?
I recently caught up with Herbert Ross' film of Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven. While this curiosity has much to admire, it really doesn't quite work, especially when you think of Potter's great British miniseries The Singing Detective starring Michael Gambon, which had similar ideas but executed them so much more successfully. Martin plays failing sheet music salesman Arthur Parker, whose own depression almost rivals the Great Depression the country is suffering through at the time. Arthur is stuck in an unhappy marriage to a frigid spouse (Jessica Harper) and he often fantasizes of huge musical numbers as he tries to shake up his life for the better while he's hampered by his own innate selfishness. I should correct one thing: EVERYONE in the film fantasizes musical numbers, which I think is part of the problem. If it were only Arthur who had these dream-like diversions, it would make more sense, but nearly every character does the same thing, making the conceit seem even more like a gimmick than it is.
While The Singing Detective found the perfect balance between the dark and the light, Pennies From Heaven doesn't seem to pull off the balancing act as well. (There also was a miniseries of Pennies From Heaven prior to the film, but I haven't seen it.) It's a shame that something as imaginative as this movie
doesn't work out better. Still, there is much to like, from Martin's melancholy performance that doesn't downplay the fact that his character is a heel to the production numbers themselves. There's also a great one scene appearance by Christopher Walken, dancing up a storm as a man who meets a fallen schoolteacher (Bernadette Peters) in a bar and hastens her decline even further. Unfortunately, the visual flights of fancy don't come close to making what should be cruelrealism feel ever crueler. Instead, it just makes you impatient to get back to the dance sequences, since they are the touches that work. Fortunately, I see that the miniseries version starring Bob Hoskins is available on DVD, so I look forward to watching this soon and see if that explains better where this film version went wrong.
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Labels: 80s, Gambon, Musicals, Steve Martin, Television, Walken
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Saturday, December 16, 2006
Stranger than fact
By Edward Copeland
When filmmakers decide to tell true stories, they have a tendency to combine real people into composite characters and change facts to suit their dramatic purposes. Often, these things can be forgiven. Other times they cannot and that is the case with Emilio Estevez's Bobby, which creates a fictional world in the Ambassador Hotel, the site of Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 assassination, without apparent rhyme or reason, and burdens the movie with an ensemble where capable actors are an endangered species, not that there are any full-blooded characters worth wasting on performers with talent anyway.
The RFK assassination, while certainly well known and talked about, has never been given as much detail as other shootings of political leaders, so I was surprised to learn that five other people were wounded when Sirhan Sirhan opened fire on the presidential candidate in the hotel's kitchen. You always hear about John Connally being wounded when JFK was killed and while Tim McCarthy and Thomas Delahunty have faded from memory, everyone knows that James Brady also took a bullet when John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan. I've never seen anything that mentioned the other victims of the RFK shooting, which makes Bobby all the more infuriating because he gives their wounds to fictional creations instead of the real people who were shot. On top of the substituting of fiction for fact, Bobby also gets hampered by Estevez's frequent use of actual news footage of the time. The footage of RFK and other 1968 events are so compelling, I couldn't help but wish that he'd opted to make a full-fledged documentary instead. We keep being jerked away from the real footage to the manufactured one, overpopulated with a large cast of underwritten characters, many of whom are played by weak performers such as Demi Moore as a boozy singer, Ashton Kutcher giving perhaps the worst portrayal of an acid-dropping hippie since an episode of the 1960s Dragnet, Helen Hunt as — hell, I'm still not sure who she is supposed to be or why she's in this movie.
This doesn't even get to the subplot of Lindsay Lohan deciding to marry Elijah Wood so that he would be sent to Germany instead of Vietnam or Shia LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty as would-be campaign volunteers who decide to spend the day of the California primary on a drug-induced excursion. Anthony Hopkins and Harry Belafonte get some nice, quiet moments, but their story doesn't add up to much either and, surprisingly, the performer who comes off best is Sharon Stone as the hotel manicurist who is married to the hotel manager (William H. Macy), who is boinking switchboard operator Heather Graham on the side. Sound like a bit much? It is.
The only scenes that really seem to work with any sense of drama are those set in the kitchen with an all-too-brief appearance by Laurence Fishburne as the head chef and Freddy Rodriguez as a member of the staff obsessed with that night's Dodgers game. Rodriguez also serves the function as the man who first leaned down to the wounded RFK in that widely seen photo, though of course he's fictionalized and has no connection to the real person. Still, the kitchen scenes seem to be the only ones that come alive with any discussions of real issues as opposed to standard boilerplate melodrama that afflicts the rest of the pointless characters.
Estevez obviously aspires to make an Altmanesque portrait of a time and place. I met Robert Altman, I wish Robert Altman had been a friend of mine but Mr. Estevez, you're no Robert Altman. Hell, you aren't even Paul Thomas Anderson as far as pretenders to the Altman throne go. Estevez does have some nice moves and shots as a director but as a screenwriter, he sucks (and I'll be kind and not even mention his acting appearance as Moore's husband).
I keep coming back to the idea of how much better Bobby would have been if it had been an actual documentary. A cursory Internet search seems to indicate that many of the people who were really at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968 are still alive and their stories certainly have to be more compelling than the silly ones Estevez has concocted. Many comparisons have been made to the late, great Altman and the parallels proliferate, only minus top caliber actors, a marginally interesting script or a sure hand behind the camera. Hell, Estevez even creates the character of a foreign journalist, only she's from Czechoslovakia instead of England and she's certainly no Geraldine Chaplin. He even swipes a bit of the Upstairs, Downstairs element from Gosford Park, only Robert Kennedy ends up being the murder victim instead of Michael Gambon.
Even if you went into Bobby blind, odds are you'd guess that all these seemingly disconnected characters would somehow end up in that ballroom at the same time to see RFK just as all the characters gathered to see Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) sing at the climactic rally in Nashville. Now, how so many of them end up in the hotel's kitchen pantry to get fictionally shot in Bobby is beyond me. Because the fictional footage proves so boring, watching this movie ends up playing like it's "Waiting for Sirhan."
In a strange way, the story unfolds in such a mindnumbing fashion, you grow impatient waiting for RFK to get shot — not that Estevez offers anything illuminating there. Once it happens, the movie turns mostly into a musical montage of reaction shots, interspersed with some of RFK's speeches. He even is so imaginative to pick "The Sounds of Silence" for the soundtrack. I suppose I should be surprised that Harvey Weinstein suckered the waiters and the florists at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association into nominating Bobby for best drama, but I know better. Then again, maybe the focus on kitchen staff hits too close to home for the HFPA to ignore.
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Labels: 00s, Altman, Belafonte, Demi, Fishburne, Gambon, Hopkins, Sharon Stone
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