With diamonds

Yellow Submarine

(1968)

As the Onion put it, the film "introduce[d] children to magical world of LSD hallucinations," and so I showed it to my 3-year-old granddaughter, who loved it. And who would not?

Blame it on the pin

Otac na sluzbenom putu (When Father was away on business)

(1985)

A worthy companion piece to Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias and La Faute à Fidel! and Le souffle au coeur: kids and communism (and sex), this time in Stalinist Yugoslavia, waiting for Tito to declare independence.

Seas incarnadine

The Cove

Crit

I tried to get the author of a book I edited recently to tone down a parallel between the Holocaust and the ongoing slaughter of elephants in Africa. I tried because I know that many readers, perhaps most, will be outraged to the point of rejecting everything the book has to offer if the author clings to a stance that the worst thing humans can do to nonhuman animals has even the remotest equivalency with the worst thing humans have done to other humans.

So I tried to get her to tone it down a bit--tried but mostly failed. And now I'm kinda glad I failed (and also glad that scarcely anyone reads this, so I won't have to fend off angry commentary), because if the bloodfest I just saw--not Hollywood blood but dolphin blood, the footage captured with hidden high-def cameras planted by genuine guerrilla filmmakers--if that had nothing to do with holocaust, then we might as well abandon all pretense to being the planet's most evolved species, or even its smartest. If lancing a corralled dolphin until it spouts red and sinks, then lancing another, and another, and another, until the massacre of trapped animals is complete--if that doesn't merit the most profound censure we can summon, if the savagery that motivates it isn't the equal of that that motivated the sickest SS commandant, then point the way to the Lower Species Consulate, because I'd like to petition for a change in citizenship.

And this will be sort of a hot-button anticlimax, I suppose, but the part of the film that isn't holocaust is slave trade: the dolphins that are killed for food (mercury-rich food, incidentally, much of it falsely labeled as having come from whales) are the ones that aren't handsome enough to attract buyers for all the Sea World clones around the world. These are essentially aquatic circuses, and like terrestrial circuses, they treat their animals like the cash cows they are. The difference between intentional cruelty and good intentions is the difference between the sadistic overseer and the benign slaveowner. And I've come to believe that zoos are only marginally better.

OK, that's my annual quota of preachiness, and then some. I'll just leave you with a link to the Oceanic Preservation Society's website.

Trailers

• Cold Souls--Oh, hell, yeah, notwithstanding a lukewarm Times review. Looks far too Eternal Sunshine for me to miss it.
  
• The September Issue--Why I should care about Anna Wintour and her big fat baby is beyond me, but it actually looks kinda interesting.
  

Bad trip

Rich and Strange

(1931)

Yes and yes: an odd and mostly delightful hybrid. Bored schlemiel Fred (Henry Kendall) and his uncomplaining wife Em (the luminous Joan Barry) voyage to the Far East after his uncle gives him an advance on his inheritance. In a comedy wrapped around a near tragedy, their marriage sinks with the rise in their fortunes; as their fortunes go south, and they move from luxury liner to tramp steamer to pirate junk, they remember love. An early Hitchcock talkie, and some of the best bits are silent-style comic visuals in the first couple of reels.

Create some more blackness

Soul Power

Crit

The makers of this documentary--a sort of musical companion to When We Were Kings, about the festival organized to coincide with the Rumble in the Jungle but actually held six weeks earlier, when George Foreman suffered a cut that delayed the fight--clearly consider James Brown the star, as did the concert organizers, but with all due respect to the GFOS, some of the best bits occur off the stage.

A common theme among those involved in both the concert and the fight is the opportunity for African Americans (and Afro-Caribbeans) to return to their homeland and mix and match with the culture and musical styles of black people not hijacked and hybrided 400 years ago, and several clips show the professional musicians' fascination with the street music of Kinshasa. Brown and Don King discuss the need for black economic independence: "You can't be liberated broke," Brown summarizes. Ali tells of his amazement to find cities and not just forbidding jungle in Zaire--and of having been flown there from Paris by an African pilot and crew. He looks on unsmiling from the ring as one of the Spinners--Billy Henderson, I think--profanes the tools of Ali's trade, light and heavy bags, before climbing into the ring to spar. The once-and-future-champ baits overmatched white sportswriters about racism, something he always delighted in. Well, hell--let's just say every moment with Ali onscreen is as good as any musical moment

And the musical moments are damned good, especially Miriam Makeba, a percussion group called Big Black (not to be confused with the '80s group), and a tiger-impersonating dance troupe whose name I can't find either on IMDb or the film's official site.

To behave herself[,] naturally

The Philadelphia Story

(1940)

This has been, at one time in my life, my favorite movie of all time, and it may still be my favorite screenplay. Except for the sort of squirmy father-daughter relationship, it couldn't get much closer to perfect. According to an academic friend of mine, C. K. Dexter Haven was a minor character in the stage play, which tells me that the film is better than the play, given that Haven gets many of the best lines onscreen.

I intended to watch High Society tonight as well, but after 15 minutes or so I accidentally deleted it from my DVR while flipping between it and the Mets game (Ángel!) , so even though I saw it a quarter of a century or so ago, I can't authoritatively say that it's a pale turd in comparison. But the first 15 Sinatra-less minutes are pretty lame--not nearly as good as a Mets' victory on an 8th-inning grand slam, e.g.

I killed

Funny People

Crit

More interesting than good, but pretty good. Another brave performance by Adam Sandler, convincing as someone so self-centered that he has everything in his life except people who care. As the reviews have suggested, this continues along the road Judd Apatow has been driving toward serious engagement of questions like "What is a man, and how does one become that mysterious thing?"

In fact, trailer yuks notwithstanding, and funny moments acknowledged, this really isn't a comedy at all. Some of the biggest laughs are provided by Marshall Mathers and some peanut butter-loving dogs; what does that tell you?

Trailers

• The Time Traveler's Wife--Urk! The spewiest of high concepts. That the same high concept could have spawned a best-selling novel is a sign of the approaching apocalypse. Of course, I could change my mind with a good review.
• The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard--Probably awful, but a glimmer of hope.
  
• Couples Retreat--This too looks pretty wretched.