Teach me to forget

The Verona project, part XXI, Tromeo and Juliet

Mind, I was eager to see this, and annoyed when Netflix repeatedly denied it me, but I never would have imagined it as an appropriate finale to the project. In fact, though, it's among the handful of films among the 21 that I might ever choose to watch again. If you don't know Troma, I should explain that it's a low-budget studio dedicated to making the best gore/softcore shlock comedies around, and this is an apt example: plenty of squirm (let's see: fingers chopped off, at least one eye poked out, a head injury that leaves the skull exposed, an arm and later a head lopped off [same victim], and other assorted mayhem--not to mention an up-close-and-personal consensual piercing [only time I've ever seen a stunt nipple included in the credits]), plenty of flesh (including, surprisingly, a bit of genuine eros), and plenty of laughs (some of them convulsive--and some, of course, in response to the over-the-top violence).

Another surprise was the extent to which the film tracked R&J. Wouldn't want to overstate that, but much of the story is present, and occasionally they even break out a few apt lines from the play. All in all, a very pleasant surprise--and certainly one of the most fetching Juliets I've seen. Fetching: that's a word we should all use more often.

But let's face it: the project has not been remotely as successful as last winter's Elsinore Project. Hamlet is a better play, no question about that--but I wouldn't say it's an easier play to penetrate and present persuasively. I mean, come on: young love doomed by strife--should it be that tough? But with the single exception of the sublime balletic version, nothing I screened transported me, and I handed out more one-star Netflix ratings than I had given to all the films I'd rented in the 5½ previous years.

Without question, the best straight production of the play I saw was the obscure Joan Kemp-Welch-directed PBS version from 1976; easily the worst is William Woodman's wooden 1982 production.

Who (how old), when, how long? Will Keenan (?) and Jane Jensen (28), 1997, 1¾hrs.

What sort of R&J? He, a softcore Manhattan punk; she, a surprisingly well-adjusted victim of paternal terror.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? There's no direct equivalent, but the scene in which Murray (Mercutio) whacks two of Sammy Capulet's (no equivalent) fingers in a paper cutter is pretty droll; 5?

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? No, and the line is delivered by Tromeo's father, Monty Que.

Carrion flies? No.

Body count? Well, two or three among the six who die in the play: Murray and Tyrone Capulet for sure, and London (get it? major European capital?) Arbuckle a defenestrated probable. There is no Mrs. Que, but if I tell you why, you'd probably guess the big surprise ending. Also, Cappy Capulet gets his fatal comeuppance, as does another Capulet henchman. I may be missing somebody, but you get the idea. The titular two survive to make babies in Jersey.

What (else) is missing? Oh, let's just . . .

What (else) is changed? . . . leave these . . .

What (else) is odd? . . . alone.

End-of-the-play exposition? Well, yes, but it improves on WS's in that it's not recapitulation (recapuletation?) of what you've already seen or heard. Though you're pretty dense if you haven't guessed.

A dog of the house of Montague

The Verona project, part XX, Nyócker! (The district!)

This film is every bit the treat for eyes and ears (honest to god, next time I think I'll just turn the subtitles off) that it was when I first saw it, but the R&J aspect is more thematic than plot-related, unless there's something I'm not remembering in the play about going back in a time machine to kill and bury mastodons so that your community can reap oil profits millennia later. There is a sweet balcony scene, though--and also a very rough episode of verbal abuse of Julika by her father. Also drugs (provided by a sort of panhistoric combination of Friar Laurence and the Apothecary), but none to produce or counterfeit death.

Who (how old), when, how long? The animated Ricsi and Julika are voiced by L. L. Junior (22) and Andrea Roatis (?), 2004, 1½hrs.

What sort of R&J? Roma and Magyar, respectively, so as in other spins on the story, the conflict is between ethnic groups rather than families--or rather between families as ethnic representatives.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? There are actually a couple of equivalent scenes, one between a pair of adults, the other a sort of hip-hop dance-off between Ricsi and Julika's brother Simon; both scenes are quite comic, probably 2 to 3 on the scale, but not silly.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Does not apply.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Lots of fighting, no fatalities.

What (else) is missing? Da-da,

What (else) is changed? da-da,

What (else) is odd? da-da.

End-of-the-play exposition? Wonderful end-of-the-film punch line.

You kiss by the book

The Verona project, part XIXa, My Shakespeare (2005)

Not an R&J per se, but a documentary about the director Paterson Joseph's effort, with satellite moral and philosophical support from Baz Luhrmann, to stage the play with a cast with zero acting experience from the hardscrabble suburban London community of Harlesden.

A close cousin to Shakespeare Behind Bars--not quite at that mind-blowing level, but possessed of the same sorts of small victories and inevitable defeats. And one huge triumph, as an Afghan refugee whose family won't approve of her being on the stage at all, forget about kissing her Romeo, blossoms suddenly into a trouper.

Saturday night at the movies

Sabotage

(1936)

Wow! Hitch declares his independence from movie conventions governing the treatment of cute kids and puppy dogs, as well as the notion that heroes and heroines must always respect the law. Based on Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent, this is a film I'd read a good deal about, but I'm guessing it's the best Hitchcock film I entered 2009 still never having seen. Justly famous for the brilliantly suspenseful ticking-time-bomb sequence--which, astonishingly, does not provide the climactic moment. I've seen enough now (two films) of the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection to confirm that it's worth the list price of $119.98, never mind the fifty-some bucks you'll pay at Amazon if you're patient.

The recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all

The Reader

Crit

Well, something has to be the least-deserving Best Picture nomination, doesn't it? And this certainly isn't as intellectually and emotionally dishonest as the winner three years ago. But lemme ask you: if you're two dead producers and you're putting together a crack team including the playwright David Hare to write the screenplay, The Hours' Stephen Daldry to direct, Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes in two of the leading roles, and Lena Olin in two other roles, wouldn't you demand that there not be glaring stupidities, like makeup that looks Winslet look like nothing so much as the best-looking girl in her class amateurishly rendered "old and frumpy" for her high school play? Or like the kid reading to his older paramour in 1958 from Robert Fagles's translation of the Odyssey, which, wonderful though it is, was published in 1996? (Of course, there's the whole issue of the English-language film portraying Germans speaking in English and reading only English-language books [we even see Fagles's first page], but it's a little late in the cinematic game to have a beef with that convention.)

After scathing reviews in the Times and the New Yorker, I wasn't going to bother, even downtown, even with the Kate-naked factor, until two friends recommended it, and then too, the Oscar nom. Well, I don't think it merits scathing reviews, certainly: it's a faithful adaptation of an overrated novel whose two key surprises are manifestly unsurprising, and unlike Dargis and Lane, I don't automatically reject the notion that we might profitably observe the efforts of a willing Holocaust participant to maintain the protective shell surrounding a fragile, damaged psyche, or the efforts of someone who loved that former SS guard, unknowing, to come to grips with that love and its attendant guilt and horror. It's just that, as with the book, I was never compelled by or convinced by--and thus never much interested in--those efforts.

You gotta say this, though: Fiennes and Bruno Ganz are evolving nicely in the Holocaust cladistics chart: from a psychopathic death camp commandant and the Big H himself, respectively, to liberal German law academics.

Put thy rapier up

The Verona project, part XIX, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet

When this film was new, it may have been the first I ever pronounced "more interesting than good," though pretty good; I'll stand by that assessment on second screening. It is quintessential Baz Luhrmann, which is to say its virtues and its faults, its audacity and its rashness, are sometimes indistinguishable.

Baz's boldest move is to preserve (well, mostly) Shakespeare's language in a modern setting, with rival gangs--sort of West Side Story without music and dance, but also without the weak book. In that respect, it set the stage (as it were) for the more successful 2000 Hamlet of Michael Almereyda. Unfortunately, scarcely anyone here (Pete Postlethwaite as Friar Laurence is an unsurprising exception) seems comfortable with the Bard's words. Certainly not DiCaprio, and if your Romeo isn't comfortable w/ Shakespearean language, it doesn't much matter how good he looks (and he does). Danes, a year or so past her amazing performance in the short-lived My So-Called Life, is better than Leo, but inconsistent.

Still, given the low bar I've discovered these past two months, I can't but rate this one of the best--and certainly the ballsiest.

Who (how old), when, how long? Leonardo DiCaprio (21) and Claire Danes (16), 1996, 2hrs.

What sort of R&J? Cusp-of-21st-century. One strength of Danes--as it was in her TV series--is her ability to negotiate about a decade's worth of age and experience with a twitch of her face, and if her readings are not always perfect, her look is, her costumes accentuating her boyish slenderness (OK, flat-chestedness). One reading I haven't encountered before: in observing that Romeo's hated surname "is nor hand nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face," she gives a schoolgirl-suggestive spin to "nor any other part / Belonging to a man."

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 2, about as silly as can be.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Yes.

Carrion flies? No.

Body count? 4: Mrs. Montague is visibly alive in the final scene, and in one of the oddest of many odd Luhrmann lurches from the text, Romeo arrives at the crypt pursued by police; instead of encountering and killing Paris, he meets a departing priest and takes him hostage briefly to secure his entrance, warning the cops to "tempt not a desperate man."

What (else) is missing? Oh, much, much--some whole scenes are lopped, but perhaps more disconcerting are some weird truncations of scenes, like leaping from the Nurse's arrival in II.iv almost directly to "If ye should lead her into a fool's paradise . . . " and so bypassing almost all of Mercutio's and Benvolio's teasing. Or having R&J in their wedding bed debate whether it's morning or night . . . without any mention of lark or nightingale.

What (else) is changed? Oh, much, much. Probably the most radical, of course, is that the blades of the play all become various handguns (bearing brand names like Sword and Rapier). Now this is obviously something Luhrmann felt necessary to bring the story into modern times, but it causes some serious problems. First, it's impossible to stage a one-on-one gun battle with the suspense and tension of a swordfight; there's no athletic lunging and parrying in a gunfight, and the first shot has a pretty good chance of ending it. So to avoid instantaneous mortality, we have comically bad shooting (which, to be fair, works pretty well in the opening [comic] scene); or inexplicable shifts to fisticuffs (Mercutio vs. Tybalt), ended with a slash of broken glass; or a high-speed car chase (Romeo vs. Tybalt) ending in a rollover and a race for the loose hand cannon. Worst, we have Juliet, with no happy dagger to provide with a sheath, simply blowing her brains out. Yes, a gun is phallic, too, but it's not penetrative, and in that scene, penetration is called for.

What (else) is odd? Oh, much. Very cool: Mercutio's first appearance--dressed, remember, for the masque--is in full-throttle drag, which sets up an unusual hint of homoerotic yearning toward Romeo, which makes a hell of a lot of sense if you think about it.

Pretty cool: the crucial letter from Friar L to Romeo is sent by a FedEx-type courier, whose notice of attempted delivery (R is a just a few steps away, fungoing rocks with a hunk of rotten wood) fails to stick to the door, and his return the next day is a moment too late, as R and Balthasar are peeling out toward Verona Beach and disaster.

Not nearly as cool or as effective as a similar device in the operatic version I saw: Juliet begins to wake before Romeo doses himself, but he's too self-centered and self-pitying to notice. She seems him drink, and berates him for not leaving her a drop, "haply yet some poison . . . " thus preceding his "Thus with a kiss I die." She, deprived of the dagger/sheath line, says no more.

Not cool at all, just ignorant: police Captain Prince, who has lost just Mercutio to the feud, Paris having been spared, nonetheless claims to have lost "a brace of kinsmen."

End-of-the-play exposition? No, just the Prince's scolding, the final lines of which (like the first lines of the Chorus in I.i) are spoken by a TV anchorwoman.

Is it safe?

The Man Who Knew Too Much

(1934)

All that keeps the first few minutes of this film from being perfect is the absence of William Powell and Myrna Loy as the loving, drinking, teasing couple and the substitution of an annoying kid for Asta. Still, good stuff--much better than Hitchcock's American remake 22 years later, even though that version has one of Hitch's two most engaging leading men. As I recall, the kid in that one's pretty annoying too, and one irrefutable advantage of this one is the utter absence of "Que Sera Sera." Another is Peter Lorre at his creepy jolliest.

Menschen with guns

Defiance

Crit

On the basis of a trying-to-hard trailer and a soft review in the Times, I was planning to give this one a miss until David Denby talked it up the the New Yorker; glad I let him talk me into it. I mean, come on: ass-kicking Jews!

The film has stirred a bit of controversy as a victim-blamer. By showing that a few Jews were able to resist, survive, prevail, this unfortunate and wrong-headed argument goes, the filmmakers (and Nechama Tec's book on which the film is based--and gee, I guess when it comes right down to it, the Bielski brothers themselves, and everyone who took up arms with them) suggest that 6 million could have done likewise.

(A) That's poppycock, and (2) it has nothing to to with the film, which is The Ten Commandments meets The Magnificent Seven, with one of those prodigal-returning-to-save-the-day endings (I practically expected "What kept you?" "Traffic was a bitch"). In short, it's a movie, it's an Edward Zwick movie. That it's based on actual people and actual events--on actual Jews kicking actual ass--is all the better, but these are clearly exceptional people performing exceptional feats. Hell, that's James Bond leading the way!

Trailers

• Taken--Mega-schlocky-looking trailer; Liam, dude, you're better than this.

Lost

I know you hate it when I talk about personal stuff, but I should explain why there will have to be fewer Manhattan movie trips this year than in the past. First I thought it was going to be the fault of the Mets, who, because their new stadium is smaller than Shea Stadium, insisted that I must commit to 15 games rather than the 7-packs of the past two seasons. (Yes, that does seem like strange logic, doesn't it: because we have fewer seats available, you must double your purchase. But there it is.)

Anyway, that is obviously more expensive (though, because the seat available was not as good as what I had last season, not twice as expensive), so I decided that my compensatory sacrifices would be: (1) peanuts bought locally rather than the overpriced ballpark legumes; (2) a generic scorebook to last the season rather than the $5 program every game; and (3) no in-season M#s.

But then my employer announced that it was dropping the Presidents Day and Columbus Day holidays, plus the birthday holiday (yes, a birthday holiday), and adding those three days to the the year-end holidays to give us a full week plus. OK, so fine: that suggests to me that maybe I can still keep the in-season long weekends in play; we'll see. Anyway, this is such a weekend for celebration that it could not be neglected:

End-of-the-Bush administration M4

Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of underdevelopment) (1968)

IFC

Cuba, framed by the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis, but seen through the eyes of an apolitical Godardesque antihero whose biggest issue is whether he can avoid marrying, then avoid going to jail for not not marrying, the young kinda crazy woman he takes up with for a time to ease the boredom since his wife split for Miami.

The Godard parallel is not random: as with JLG, I sometimes wondered exactly what I was watching but was never quite bored with it. Intermittently bad print, intermittently inept projection-room work on focus and sound, but to IFC's credit, the free passes were handed out right as we left the theater.

Wendy and Lucy

FF

You know, it's sad enough to see Michelle Williams these days, given what she's been through in the past year in real life; but now she's gotta lose her dog? Come on!

Unremittingly grim, one of those Joblike surely-things-can't-get-worse-can-they? ordeals, but matter-of-fact, unsentimental, unflinching. And oddly, all this bad stuff happens despite the fact that, aside from one Hitler Youth grocery-store stockboy and one unhinged-but-not-necessarily-dangerous menacer, the people she encounters are all pretty decent.

La Graine et le mulet (The secret of the grain)

IFC

Think Big Night, only with Tunisian immigrants to Mediterranean France. Damn, if this doesn't make you hungry for a big old plate of couscous, you're just not paying attention. The mulet of the title, by the way, = mullet, the working-class fish served with the working-class grain, not mule, as I suggested in a coming-attractions post some time back; the French word can also be translated thus, but you probably wouldn't want to eat it.

Remarkable film: the symphonic ingredients of the main dish parallel the symphonic ingredients of family and the symphonic ingredients of an immigrant community--everything is a knife's edge symbiosis, and neglecting even the most mundane element invites disaster.

Stellet licht (Silent light)

FF

Life, death, faith, and adultery in a Germanish-speaking religious community in Chihuahua. Huh?

If you read a review more carefully or recently than I, you'd know that they're Mennonites; that that is indeed a local German dialect (Plautdietsch, Manohla Dargis tells us); and that the actors are almost all nonactors (and Mennonites). The first of those doesn't much matter, and the second and third are pretty evident, but the question I want answered is what brought German-speaking Mennonites to Chihuahua in the first place? I suppose I could do some Googresearch, but maybe some helpful reader w/ an interest in immigration and a Mexican connection could help me out.

Anyway, lovely, unhurried, funny, painful, and triumphant film.

Made in U.S.A. (1966)

FF

As I was settling in for a show at Film Forum during December's M, two guys behind me were comparing notes about how long it had been since they'd been there. "Last time I was here was for some Godard piece of crap," one said. Ah, we've all been there, haven't we?
Anyway, weighing the possibility of another Godard piece of crap against the certainty of getting home after 2 if I stayed, I bowed out. The main thing I wanted to see was Marianne Faithfull's a cappella "As Tears Go By," and I'd found that a couple of days earlier on YouTube.

Trailers

• 12--A Russian remake of Twelve Angry Men; maybe.
• Of Time and the City--Terence Davies's documentary about his hometown of Liverpool, but get this: he hates the Beatles.
• Katyn--Oh, this is gonna be a feel-gooder, ain't it? Drama, not doc.

For a hand and a foot, . . . they are past compare

The Verona project, part XVIII, Romeo Must Die

Who (how old), when, how long? Jet Li (36) and Aaliyah (20), 2000, 2hrs.

What sort of R&J? Did you not read the previous answer?

Seriocomic scale for first scene? Some humor seems inevitable in martial arts fights, but still, 8 or so.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Not applicable.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Hard to correlate all the characters, but certainly R&J (Han and Trish) survive; Han's mother is dead long before the action begins; Mac, who's as close as there is to a Paris--an ally of Trish's father and her unwelcome suitor--is snuffed, but by Trish, not Han; Po, Han's brother and roughly a Mercutio figure, is killed under mysterious circumstances (his father's call, it is ultimately revealed); and Colin, Trish's kinsman (brother), is killed in apparent retaliation for Po's death, but ultimately we learn that it was his people who did him in. So call the body count per the play's central figures 4, I guess, but all in un-Shakespearean circumstances--everybody but the young lovers.

What (else) is missing? It's another very rough approximation of R&J, so the question doesn't really apply.

What (else) is changed? Ditto.

What (else) is odd? What is spectacular is some of the fight sequences, natch, like when Han uses Trish's body to parry as attack by a female would-be assassin, since it's against his principles to "hit a girl"; or when he uses a firehose (operative and then not) against a horde of unfriendlies; or . . . well, you get the idea.

End-of-the-play exposition? Not all at once, but yeah, we get a lot of talking to clear up all the mysteries that aren't really all that mysterious.

More fun than a back full of glass shards

The Wrestler

Crit

This is a film about two sorts of pornographic entertainment, one of which I understand (why a horny guy would pay sixty bucks to have Marisa Tomei gyrate nearly naked a few inches away), one of which leaves me at a loss (why a hormonally imbalanced guy would pay twenty bucks to see Mickey Rourke and some equally attractive guy in spandex roll around on barbed wire and assault each other with staple guns and bug spray).

Actually, of course, the latter characterization is inaccurate: Randy "the Ram," being a certified good guy, is the assaultee only vis-à-vis the nonkosher weapons. (As near as I can tell, the barbed wire and the broken glass are well within pro wrestling's Marquess of Queensberry equivalent.)

Anyway, yeah, Rourke is as good as advertised, and god knows I'm a sucker for a redemption story, particularly a father-daughter one, but it felt a lot more like a movie than like a life.

Trailers

• X-Men Origins: Wolverine--Hey, wait a minute: if I'm understanding this trailer correctly, the dude is a product of genetic engineering, not a mutant at all!
• Terminator Salvation--At last, we learn that John Connor grows up to be Christian Bale.

Come, death, and welcome

The Verona project, part XVII, West Side Story

Who (how old), when, how long? Richard Beymer (22) and Natalie Wood (22), 1961, 2½hrs.

What sort of R&J? He's more convincing as a dancer than as a romancer, and her deficiencies of accent, voice, and dance have been catalogued at length, but they can still be an affecting pair at times, and Wood's love-addled-schoolgirl performance on "I Feel Pretty," notwithstanding the looped Marnie Nixon on the soundtrack, is indeed alarmingly charming.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 6 or 7--comedy is understated but present.

"Wherefore": do the film/playmakers know what it means? Not directly applicable, but the lovers waste little time fretting the star-crossedness of their love.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Three: Riff/Mercutio, Bernardo/Tybalt, and Tony/Romeo; Chino/Paris (whose correspondence is less exact than the others') kills Tony and survives, Maria/Juliet survives, and Tony's mother/Lady Montague is only an offscreen presence, though to be fair, she will not hear about her son's death until after the action of the film ends, so at best things will be unpleasant for her.

What (else) is missing, changed, odd? See below for a wrap-up of these issues.

End-of-the-play exposition? No exposition, but a too long, too obvious sermon on the Wages of Hate.

I've seen this a few times before but have never watched it from this perspective: just how R&J is it, exactly? It's far from a great film (and I wasn't around for the original stage version), but it's pretty darned close to great in terms of adapting Shakespeare. Most of the key characters and narrative elements have equivalents ranging from thematically akin (say, Doc for Friar Laurence, or Anita's tormented lie about Maria's death for the miscommunication of the play) to nearly exact (the officious peacekeeper Lieutenant Schrank for the Prince, the fire escape for the balcony). It's about as complete an adaptation of the source material as can be imagined. Unfortunately, what's missing is the language. Sondheim's lyrics are very good, but the book is mostly pedestrian. And with all due respect to Leonard Bernstein's music and Jerome Robbins's choreography, without the language, you may have a fine musical, but you ain't got Shakespeare.

A cold and drowsy humour

I'm reminded of the days when I used to screen films for a festival. This is like so many entries we received: well meaning, ill written, overacted, and barely directed at all. Somehow the filmmakers always managed to attach a few B-list and/or has-been actors (like, say, Paul Sorvino, Lainie Kazan, Dick Van Patten, Connie Stevens, and Abe Vigoda) and maybe one youngster at the start of what will be a real career (see below). But what the filmmakers fail to grasp is the slightest notion how to make a film entertaining, smart, engaging, or meaningful.

The Verona project, part XVI, Love Is All There Is

Who (how old), when, how long? Nathaniel Marston (20) and Angelina Jolie (20, and saddled with a world-class bad Tuscan accent), 1996, 1¾hrs, which was the most pleasant surprise about the film, which was listed as an even 2.

What sort of R&J? Second- and first-generation, respectively, immigrant (his family coarse Sicilians, hers pretentious Florentines).

Seriocomic scale for first scene? No analog.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? No.

Carrion flies? No, but oddly, Rosario (who has just played Romeo opposite his Gina) paraphrases the lines just before about more cuddly animals.

Body count? No one dies, though it's touch and go for a dove at one point.

What (else) is missing? See above.

What (else) is changed? See above.

What (else) is odd? It's odd that so many filmmakers so ineptly riff on material that would seem so fecund.

End-of-the-play exposition? Actually, yeah, there is, though less than in the play.

It's a sad commentary to have to admit that Underworld was the highlight of this weekend's Verona triple. (Oh, and by the way: three from Netflix again because they gave me that one-disc bonus for the third time.)

Inventory control

Revolutionary Road

Crit

OK, here's the deal: this is a story about people whose entire belief system is based on the premise that they are extraordinary, though condemned to dwell temporarily among the ordinary. Naturally, their lives, their love, and their world (not to mention their quixotic plan to move to Paris in order to Change Everything) fall apart when is becomes clear that, oops--they're not special after all, except in their ability to recognize how empty and hopeless their existence is, which, let's face it, really doesn't have much practical value, living-your-life-wise.

But because that's so freakin' depressing, what we do is, we get Movie Stars, Titanic Movie Stars, shall we say, to play the couple, and then the audience will know that the TMS are extraordinary, notwithstanding the tragic ordinariness of the characters they're playing. And thus we will give a shit about a couple whose whole deal is that there's nothing much there to care about. We will, in short, be able to have our existential gâteau and manger it too.

Or maybe not.

But enough about the film. Indulge me in a bit of bitching about a recent New Yorker story by James Wood about the Richard Yates novel whence the film derives. It's actually an interesting think piece about the novel, and I recommend it to anyone who has already read the novel or seen the film. However, it treats Yates's work--which has an enthusiastic cult following, but is obscure enough that it was until the announcement of the film project completely unknown, despite years of study of literature and particularly 20th-century American literature, to at least one person I happen to be--as if it were Anna Karenina. In other words, as a work that is so much a part of the Zeitgeist that its cataclysmic climactic event is well known even to people who haven't read it.

Now I don't think I'd have liked the film much better if I'd hadn't known from the beginning that . . . no, I'm not going to tell. Anyway, I wouldn't go so far as to say Wood spoiled the film for me. But he sure didn't do any good, and I'm guessing I'm not the only New Yorker reader who waded into the piece trusting and unsuspecting only to turn slackjawed and furious halfway in.

Purple fountains

Two things I'll bet no one else renting this this weekend wondered during the opening sequence:

1. Who's supposed to be "Romeo"?
2. Are they saying "lycan" or "lichen"?

Was it Wikipedia, Netflix, or perhaps an actual human interface event that led me to believe that this is an R&J modernization? Well, there is an ages-old war between "families" (vampyres and lycans [werewolves, as vampiric lycan-killing specialist Selene explains to recently-bitten-and-thus-lycanembryonic Michael, exactly at the moment we expect her to]), and across those forbidden lines Selene and Michael share a love demanded by nothing but the script, but that's pretty much as far as it goes. Which I wouldn't mind, except that it's a pretty lame film, too. I will say this: Kate Beckinsale is more convincing as a ballsy para-animal-control agent than she is in roles that actually call for acting. Oh, and another thing: regardless of the special effects and the makeup, you're not fooling anyone: Bill Nighy is Bill Nighy.

The Verona project, part XV, Underworld

Who (how old), when, how long? Ostensibly Scott Speedman (27) and Kate Beckinsale (29), but it turns out that there was a more R&Jish relationship centuries ago (and the R in that version is played by Michael Sheen, resembling neither Tony Blair nor David Frost); 2003, 2hrs.

What sort of R&J? Hunky & lycra-clad, respectively.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? There actually is a fair analog of that scene, and it's all for blood. (In fact, a hint of a sense of humor would have helped the whole film immeasurably. I'm trying to think of a single moment that suggests anything but an earnest insistence that we take all the goofiness 100% seriously; coming up empty.)

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Not applicable.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Oh, golly--in terms of WS's play, NA; but in the film, countless dozens.

What (else) is missing? Any sense of Shakespeare--or of recognizable drama, for that matter.

What (else) is changed? NA.

What (else) is odd? Uh . . .

End-of-the-play exposition? NA.

But what do look nice, from up close?

Alfie (1966)

Crit

Interesting to watch this on the heels of Gran Torino; as in that film, we're presented with a protagonist of whose behavior and attitudes we deeply disapprove, but we can't resist feeling sympathy for the lonely plight that his benighted nature has brought on him. One big difference in this film, though, is that there is no implicit promise of redemption from the get-go, and no such redemption--or at least nothing readily identifiable as such--ever materializes.

Somehow I had never seen this before, though I saw the 2004 remake and found it a drag. The difference in part has to be Michael Caine vs. Jude Law, the former seeming genuinely and charmingly ignorant, the latter seeming simply arch. That may not be Law's fault, though: it's one thing to poke a camera into the face of an unhappy fact of your own era and of a proponent of that fact, which he fails to see as unhappy at all; under those circumstances you can occupy the moral high ground without denying sympathetic engagement with your subject. It's a lot harder to do anything positive with a gleeful antifeminist in this century. (The same may be true of the breaking of the fourth wall: Alfie's direct address of the audience seems cheeky in the early version, tired in the remake.)

Pleasant surprises (besides just liking the darned thing so much):

1. wonderful score by Sonny Rollins;
2. instead of the familiar Dionne Warwick vocal of the theme at the end, a new-to- Cher, produced by Sonny;
3. Jane Asher as one of Alfie's "birds"--in real life at this time she was Paul McCartney's bird (and muse).
   

The demesnes that there adjacent lie

OK, seriously: next time I think it would be "fun" to include a softcore porn example in a thematic project, will someone please remind me that two of the dozen or fewer Netflix rentals I've rated one star were this and the Chinese soccer flick I watched during the run-up to the World Cup? Only my residual academic curiosity and commitment could compel me to stay to the 96th minute.

The Verona project, part XIV, Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet

Who (how old), when, how long? Forman Shane (porn actors don't have ages) and Deirdre Nelson, 1969 (OK, I guess the many Laugh In allusions, including far too many sock it to me's and beautiful downtown Veronas, are not the anachronisms I thought), 1½hrs.

What sort of R&J? Active and indiscriminate.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? Well, it's clearly supposed to be really funny . . .

"Wherefore": do the straight-to-videomakers know what it means? Nope, and they make it clear twice.

Carrion flies? Well, metaphorically and critically, it's swarming with 'em, but no.

Body count? This is kinda funny/interesting: I wouldn't want to go so far as to suggest that the "film" makers had any interest in adhering to Shakespeare's plot, but at some point it occurred to them that it would be useful to have Romeo banished (not banishèd), so we're told that he has (off-camera) suddenly killed Tybalt, who is never seen or otherwise heard of. Nobody else dies, though the titular (!) characters end the flick together in a closed casket, both having drunk Friar Laurence's potion, but now waking up and . . . oh, you get the idea.

What (else) is missing? Please.

What (else) is changed? Please, please.

What (else) is odd? Nothing so odd than that I watched the damn thing.

End-of-the-play exposition? No, I guess that's the best thing about it.

Jesus all Friday

Gran Torino

Crit

Alternate leads:

1. Christ, I didn't know there were so many different slurs for Asians.
2. Well, Clint don't do subtle, do he?
3. Damn, that is a bitchin' vehicle!

Geez, I could give you a dozen reasons not to like the film, starting with the fact that there can never be any doubt that an irredeemable racist played by Clint is gonna be redeemed. But it'd take a real gook guinea mick polack dickless nitwit pussy fuckhead not to fall in line with the program here. A stronger man than I.

I'm tempted to stop there, but I gotta say: god love that old bastard if only for being unafraid to play an old bastard. Plus this: as guilty as you may feel, I challenge you not to love and laugh at the language.

Trailer

• He's Just Not That into You--Surprised myself by laughing at a couple of lines. Might be worth it just for the Je/Ginnifer-intensive cast.
  

Oh, I am Netflix's fool

OK, so look: I don't have to tell you how much I love Netflix, how much I depend on them. (Yes, I are a edditer, but yes, I am going to refer to Nf as a plural entity.) But sometimes even their generosity can be a burden.

Two weeks ago, in reparation for a trifling delay in shipment of a disc, they sent me an extra disc, a third on my two-at-a-time-unlimited plan. So I watched three R&Js the weekend after Xmas, no prob. Two woulda been fine, but three, no prob--nice of them in any case.

But when you get one of these ad hoc extra discs, the way it works, to get you back onto your plan's regular level, is that they wait until they get two discs back from you before they send the next one. Well, something went awry and they sent me one for each of the three I returned. So this past weekend I again had 3 R&Js to watch. ("You could just hold onto one for a week," someone told me. Yeah, right. And I could, in theory, just close up the bag of Fritos and put the rest in the cupboard for another time, couldn't I?)

OK, 3 R&Js, 3 nights in the weekend. In what order? Well, one is a pretty much full-length stage production listed as 167 minutes--it's not going to be the Sunday screening, 'cause that's a school night, right? But the other 2 are very short: a modern Brazilian spinoff of the story listed at 90m and an operatic version listed at a scant 75. So which have DVD extras I can steal for a workout or three? The modernization only. Fine: that's Friday night, the long one is Saturday, and the short opera is Sunday night, so's I can get to bed nice and early and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the start of the first five-day workweek in almost a month.

Except . . . well, see below. It's about 6p.m. now, and I'm going downstairs to watch the rest. I'm at about 2¼ hours now, and we've just gotten to Juliet refusing to marry Paris after her husband has skedaddled. Clearly, as in the play, mistakes were made.

The Verona project, part XIII, Roméo et Juliette

Who (how old), when, how long? Aha! I've figured out the source of the confusion. Per Netflix, this is a 2001 production of the Charles Gounod opera that runs 75m and stars Roberto Alagna (then 37) as Romeo. IMDb confirms the existence of such a production, though it lists it as 2002 and 80m. But the Juliet in that production was Angela Gheorghiu (35, and Alagna's wife); what Netflix gets right is that it is Gounod, Alagna is indeed Romeo, and his Juliet is Leontina Vaduva, which makes this the 1994 production, when she was 33 and he 30. Oh, and that also makes it 3hrs.

What sort of R&J? She's a lot more sopranoish than girlish, if you take my meaning, but she is beautiful, and they make, if you will, beautiful music together.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 10: a totally unfunny bloodbath.

"Wherefore": do the operamakers know what it means? Yes, though the libretto is in French and the word's never used: the balcony scene was the first time I started to feel comfortable with the Shakespeare-ness of the opera, the first time they really seem to have found the Bard's spirit.

Carrion flies? No--in fact, we don't have that whole scene of Romeo pissing and moaning about his fate.

Body count? 4: Mercutio, Tybalt, and the young lovers. The crypt scene includes only R&J, so no Paris to be killed by R, no Montague to report his new status as a widower. That final scene is pretty astonishing, about which more below.

What (else) is missing? In something that riffs in a whole different genre, it's almost as interesting to point out the unexpected things that survive, like Capulet's telling the young revelers what a party maniac he used to be: what an odd thing to leave in (though admittedly, much odder when I thought the whole thing was going to be over in less time than a soccer match). Likewise, Juliet has her vision of Tybalt's ghost, lines that are often cut from productions of the play and which arguably detract from her will-I-or-won't-I-down-the-draught focus.

After the opening fight, the chorus provides even more of a plot summary than does WS's, whereupon we cut straight to the masque, which is where we first see Romeo (and where Paris--and Romeo, and we--first sees Juliet).

There's much condensation of scenes, which I suppose could constitute either "missing" or "changed": only one visit is made to Friar Laurence's cell; Juliet shows up after Friar L has scolded Romeo, and they are married. We cut straight from Tybalt's death to the bridal suite, postcoital, and after R escapes, Friar L is summoned to comfort J, basically making a sleeping-potion housecall. That's the last we see of Friar L, who, it occurred to me this time, is essentially the Wizard of Oz of the play: he makes great promises, but he comes up way short in delivering. In this version we never know why Romeo hasn't gotten the message, only that he hasn't, and as I've said, the Friar doesn't even make a too-late appearance at the crypt. What a loser.

What (else) is changed? Juliet utters the line about a coffin being her wedding bed only after she learns who Romeo is, not, per the play, as a conditional based only on the stranger's as yet unknown marital status.

Weirdly, the Nurse must have a name, and the name she is given is Gertrude, which has some pretty heavily dissonant Shakespearean associations, n'est-ce pas? Equally odd, perhaps, is that she is the object of Tybalt's flirtation.

The central fight begins not with Mercutio but with Romeo's page (here for some reason named Stephano rather than Balthasar, and played by a cute-as-a-Veronese-bug young woman, Anna Maria Panzarella), throwing around some ill-advised testosterone in the presence of Capulets (actually, now that I think of it, sort of a substitute for the unemployed comic element in the play's opening scene). Mercutio comes to the boy's much needed aid, and then things follow per the play--except that Tybalt dies in Capulet's arms and whispers to him his dying wish, which only later do we learn is that Juliet should marry Paris. Oh, and there's no Prince; the civil honcho, who first appears after Tybalt dies, is "the Duke." Don't ax me why.

What (else) is odd? How about this: although Mercutio asks Romeo, per the play, why he came between Mercutio and Tybalt at the moment of the fatal stab, in fact the way the scene is blocked Romeo is nowhere near the action when that happens. Weird.

Much of the opera's final action is odd and extratextual, and yet that is the work's strongest section, often precisely because of the changes, which are almost all dramatically intelligent. To wit: Juliet finally drinks her potion, but it is so slow-acting that we then move to the house's chapel, where J kneels and her attendants prepare her for her wedding. As she becomes progressively less steady, the guests, the 'rents, the groom, and the bishop (no mere Franciscan to perform these society nuptials) arrive. Finally she collapses in her fathers arms, and after a lot more singing than is strictly necessary, the act ends and we move to the crypt for the big finale.

For that, Romeo arrives (how he knows part of what has happened and why he doesn't know the whole story you just have to use your knowledge of the play for--and in fact, for a while there's some ambiguity about exactly how much he does know, but it turns out to be exactly the textually fatal amount), looks at and sings to the "dead" Juliet for a while, then downs his fatal draught. But pace the play's "O true apothecary! / Thy drugs are quick!" this is another slow-acting potion, which allows R to live long enough for J to wake and for them to sing a triumphant duet until that pesky little detail R has allowed himself to forget for a moment asserts itself. One really nice moment: he reprises the lark/nightingale debate from the wedding-bed scene, the lark here representing the day of their continuing love, the nightingale the undeniable night of his death. So she stabs herself--he's still not dead, mind--and when you're assuming that R's as yet unsung famous dying word will now be sung in unison, they sing not "Thus with a kiss, we die" but instead a plea in unison for God's forgiveness--a legitimately Elizabethan ontological concern, yes, given that suicide was a sure ticket to hell, but a really disorienting conclusion here.

End-of-the-play exposition? Nope, just a long curtain call.

I dunno--maybe I live another 55 years I'll get some culture, and I do admit I liked the part of this I watched tonight a lot better than most of what I watched last night, but opera is still a once-a-year sort of taste for me. I lack the critical sense and vocabulary to assess it fairly, but I also lack any ambition to acquire that sensibility and vocabulary. This was OK, take it all around--but geez, it was long!

So light a foot will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint

The Verona project, part XII

Who (how old), when, how long? Patrick Ryecart (25), Rebecca Saire (14! and looks it! and sounds it!), 1978, 2¾hrs.

What sort of R&J? He: bland; she: so very young. This entry from the Beeb's Bard-o-copia is one of only 3 R&Js I'd seen before the project, and though (because?) that was nearly 30 years ago, when I was in grad school, I would have made it the front-runner for the best of the bunch. Sadly, though, it's mostly just ordinary, certainly no better than the other BBC one inexplicably made only a bit earlier. But what makes this notable is its breaking through the midteen barrier for Juliet; I wouldn't have thought that could make such a huge difference, but it really changes everything. Saire's acting is generally in the B- range (though in the III.ii exchange when the Nurse brings the [at first confusing] news of Tybalt's demise, she raises her game to A level), but that adolescent face and carriage and that little girl's voice all raise the stakes--particularly, say, at the start of that same III.ii, when married-but-virginal Juliet, unaware that anything is awry, urges night to come asap, "And learn me how to lose a winning match, / Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods." She speaks the lines earnestly, but it's clearly academic and quite mysterious--as it would be, wouldn't it? As young as Olivia Hussey was when she played Juliet, and as well as she carries off the role, the balance of her inexperience with her sexual eagerness is never altogether convincing. With Saire, it can't help but be. And that makes a mostly B- performance about as affecting as any performance can be. Unfortunately, there's no indication that her Romeo is worth the candle. But then that would be true to a 13-year-old in first-love, too, wouldn't it?

Seriocomic scale for first scene? Unfortunately, though the comic lines are mostly present, they're not played comically, so, oh, 7.

"Wherefore": do the playmakers know what it means? Not absolutely clear, but given the production company, how could they not? Certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt. Though see below for a rather grotesque failure to understand the text.

Carrion flies? Yes--he even illustrates by snatching one out of the air.

Body count? The full 6.

What (else) is missing? For a nearly 3hr version, there's a lot of streamlining: much of the musicians bit in IV.v (a common cut, but more often hacked completely); the Nurse's revelation to Juliet at the end of III.ii that she knows where to find R, and Juliet's vouchsafing to Nurse of her ring (though when N then turns up at Friar Laurence's, she gives R said ring); R's recollection in V.i of having seen an apothecary shop--instead, he goes straight from "O mischief, thou art swift / To enter in the thoughts of desperate men" to "What, ho! Apothecary!" Swift mischief indeed!

The most disturbing deletion is the line after Juliet tells her mother, "Indeed I never shall be satisfied / With Romeo till I behold him--dead--" Uh, it's kinda important to continue that with "Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vexed." In other words, "dead," which she means for her mother to read as applying to J's wished-for view of R, in fact applies to "my poor heart [which is] so [much] for a kinsman [her husband, but Mom is to understand it as her cousin] vexed." It's an amazing and vital part of one of my favorite double-entendre-chockablock passages, and its excision suggests a serious failure in the director's reading.

What (else) is changed? A couple of locations are counterintuitive: Benvolio (who has in I.i been humbled and then cut by Tybalt), first finds Romeo in the countryside, so when R says "O me! What fray was here?" he must gesture at Benvolio's bandaged hand rather than, as typically (and sensibly) staged, the mess in the piazza. And after R kills Tybalt (stabbing him repeatedly, with malice aforethought, rather than the single almost accidental poke that seems traditional), III.i shifts from the piazza to the palace for the Prince to solicit Benvolio's testimony and pronounce R's banishment.

What (else) is odd? R & J dance at the masque in I.v, which is not unique to this production, but it seems to me that if you're going to have them dance, then you want to cut the second half of the later line when J asks Nurse, "What's he that follows there, that would not dance?"

Odd in a good way: Friar L palms his vial at an opportune moment after almost everyone has left seeming-dead J's chamber. In one other version I recall seeing J having time to dispose of the vial after drinkings its contents, but mostly it just doesn't seem to be an issue that her people are apt to find an empty medicine flask in the dead girl's bedroom.

Odd in a vile way: the Apothecary (whose "poverty but not [his] will consents" to sell R the outlawed poison--who is, in short, profit-driven) is a hook-nosed, heavily accented Central Casting Eastern European Jew. As, no doubt, he often was in Shakespeare's time, but still.

End-of-the-play exposition? No, this is handled beautifully: Friar L delivers the first five lines of his confession to the Prince outside the crypt, then we go inside with Capulet and wife, who are soon joined by the chiding Prince.

Most familiar faces: John Gielgud as the Chorus (that's a sonnet each at the start of acts I and II, if you're counting), 31yo Alan Rickman as fiery Tybalt, and John Paul as Montague, who I finally figured out played Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in I, Claudius. Oh, and it wouldn't do not to praise the performance of Celia Johnson, the most convincing and engaging Nurse I've seen thus far.

Deny thy father and refuse thy name

The Verona project, part XI, O Casamento de Romeu e Julieta (Romeo and Juliet get married)

Who (how old), when, how long? Marco Ricca (42) and Luana Piovani (28), 2005, 1½hrs.

What sort of R&J? Older, yes, but kept immature by futebol fandom: his "family" supports Corinthians, hers Palmeiras; think Red Sox vs. Yankees raised to the level of Israelis vs. Palestinians.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? After a nice prologue of little Julieta's life in green, a perfect stadium scene to open, establishing the depth of the conflict and allowing sympathy for both houses, just as in the play. This suggests a fairly close hewing to the Shakespearean plot, which, unfortunately, does not materialize.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Does not apply, although there is a nice exchange between the titular characters about how they got their names.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? One Palmeiras shirt, microwaved to shreds.

What (else) is missing? Pretty much everything but the basic love story across battle lines. Don't get me wrong: I'm such a sucker for Brazil and futebol that I liked the film a lot. But at the same time I couldn't avoid thinking how good it could have been had it followed either of two paths suggested early on. It could, for one, have carried through a serious feminist theme in which Julieta fights Brazilian paternalism to lead the Palmeiras women's team. (She does get that prize in the end, but without our seeing that she's done much to earn it.) Or it could have tracked R&J closely--not at the cost of humor, and certainly not to a tragic effect, but making much cleverer use of the obvious parallels available and steering clear of the farce and melodrama that are the weakest elements of the film as it stands.

What (else) is changed? Covered.

What (else) is odd? Also pretty much covered.

End-of-the-play exposition? The film ends with the wedding promised in the title, and the ceremony begins with one last fine Shakespearean touch, as the priest recites the first lines of the Prologue (with "fair São Paulo" instead of Verona, of course).

All that glitters

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

(1927)

Very early Hitchcock, but he already knows how to make us sympathize with the creepy guy toward whom all signs of guilt point, while despising the ingénue's cop suitor; to keep us in suspense about guilt until late in the game; but to maintain our sympathy for the suspect even if he's guilty, the other guy being such an asshole ("When I've put a rope 'round the Avenger's neck, I'll put a ring 'round Daisy's finger").

Gorgeously shot as well.