It's also a job

Bull Durham

(1988)

Delighted to watch this annual with two of my favorite young women, one of whom had never seen it and both of whom have the good sense to find 40ish Susan Sarandon at least as hot as Kevin Costner or babyfaced Tim Robbins. They had to hit the road first thing in the morning, so couldn't actually be guest bloggers, but I hereby invite them to comment.

(It occurs to me that the above might seem provocative, if not grotesquely self-aggrandizing, so perhaps I should make explicit that one of the women is my daughter, the other her Scary Normal lead.)

What are you afraid of?

Scary Normal

True Colors Conference

You'd think that watching twice in two days a film I've already seen a few times would make it start to get really old, but no, I seem to appreciate this more with each subsequent screening.

The writer/director and lead actor drove out from Champaign, Illinois, and stayed at the executive director/script supervisor's New Haven digs so that they could be in Storrs for these screenings at a conference that serves high school-age glbetc. kids. Friday's screening and following Q&A were excellent, Saturday's less so, but the entire visit was a gas for the exec, and hey, isn't it really all about me?

Elaine is a stitch

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

Crit

I have always gravitated toward people who wear their hearts on their sleeves. That goes double if it's a woman who also doesn't wear pants, including the 87-year-old performer Elaine Stritch as revealed in a new documentary filmed as she prepared for an all-Sondheim concert. Elaine is a stitch, starting with an impromptu two-step as she walks down the street past a booming boom box, moving along to her delighted acceptance speech for the 2004 Emmy (when she pointed at other nominees like Billy Crystal and Ellen DeGeneres and beamed, "I'm so glad they didn't win!"), and concluding with her eagerness to share a relative's summation of her 65 years in New York City as she prepares to return to her native Michigan ("You can't say you didn't give it a chance").

This documentary is not all laughter and music, though there is plenty of both. At 87 (two years ago), she shows signs of physical fragility--she is hospitalized twice during filming because of complications from an ongoing battle with diabetes--emotional insecurity, and a fresh battle with encroaching memory loss. But Stritch's irrepressible spirit surmounts all obstacles and doubts. In concert, she turns an elusive lyric into an even more delightful rendition of "I Feel Pretty" than it might have been decades earlier.

Stritch has a wise approach to pushing forward despite her increasing infirmity. She wants to wring every bit of joy, learning, and sharing she can from life, and by embracing the adventure of aging she does not give in to sadness. A consummate entertainer in her prime on Broadway, film, television, cabarets, and everywhere else, she's the kind of performer often said to possess "joie de vivre." In this occasionally poignant but always inspiring documentary, that "joy of living" is more palpable and more literally true than ever for the one and only Elaine Stritch.

Double Bill at the Cheeseblab Uniplex

Guest, blogger, and guest blogger for the weekend Gabriel Schechter:

Repo Man

(1984)

Spellbound

(2002)

My wife Linda and I are guests at Cheeseblab Central this weekend, and last night were treated to a double bill at the complex's lone film theater. Repo Man, which we had never seen (sue me!), was billed in advance, and when we requested something "lighter" as the second feature, we were treated to Spellbound (the National Spelling Bee version, not the Hitchcock). It didn't take long for me to realize that both films tell the same story--a single-minded group relentlessly pursues a harrowing target. Simply substitute words for bullets and polysyllables for profanity.

The most successful repo men, we are told, are willing to break into a car at any time of day or night. One of the spelling bee contestants whose quest we follow consults a list of words during brief breaks in action while playing softball. The pressure never ends, whether it's Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez tracking down that elusive Chevy Malibu or the children of immigrants immersing themselves in orthography. "You can know every word in a round except the one they give you," laments a defeated finalist in Spellbound. In Repo Man you can break into every deadbeat's car except for the one who shoots you, or bite the bullet in a "convenience" store.

In a way, the characters in Spellbound are more tormented than the repo men and their antagonists. They are real people, after all. When Tracey Walter's character rides the flaming car off into the night sky, it is not real. That car is the fictional embodiment of Hell, and woe betide the man who looks in the trunk. But one of our eight precious spellers is done in by "hellebore," and we feel that sudden departure more keenly.

"A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations" Stanton tells Estevez, but for true tension you have to watch the National Spelling Bee sometime. Sitting on that stage, the contestants wait for the next foreign-sounding word that might spell their doom, size up their opponents, and gaze out at the parents in the audience--the people who have sacrificed so much for them, in some cases allowing them to pursue their obsession, in other cases pushing them, pushing, always pushing. No wonder more than one of the eight expressed great relief at losing; "at least I won't have to study this any more," they sigh, smiling wryly as they contemplate regaining their childhood.

When I paint my masterpiece

Tim's Vermeer

Crit

The scholar Phillip Steadman and the artist David Hockney had written books in which they speculated about the use of optical devices by artists including Johannes Vermeer, but the inventor Tim Jenison set the task of figuring out just how such a device might be practical and just what form such a workable device might take, and then using the device to copy one of Vermeer's most famous works, The Music Lesson.

How serious was the guy? Well, he spent 9 months just making a replica of the room that is the setting of Vermeer's work, buying what he could, but making most of it--this before he ever touched brush to canvas.

His discoveries along the way, and his remarkable results, make an extraordinary case for his hypothesis. He calls himself about 90% convinced by the end, and I'd go along with that. Apart from that, this is one of those films I love that takes a topic I'm not inherently particularly interested in and leaves me fascinated.

Trailers

• The Lunchbox--What I've read about it suggests that it's pretty gooey.
• The Art of the Steal--Well, it's good to see Kurt Russell is still getting work.

Freebird

Kazetachinu (The wind rises)

Crit

Huh: while watching the opening credits and then the long, speechless first sequence, I was thinking, "I'd rather hear Japanese voices and have to read subtitles than hear familiar American actors' voices," and guess what: I got my wish. In its latest display of haphazard management (well, actually, it's a tie for "latest": it's also showing Stranger by the Lake, which I would have gone to this weekend [and which will probably be gone by next], but I learned that only on arriving at the theater today, because the website didn't list it a few days ago, and Fandango and MoviePass still don't), it does not mention on the website that (I guess) Japanese and English soundtracks are available at alternate screenings. (And that's only a guess on my part, based on MoviePass having 2 listings for the film, though they're differentiated only by showtimes.)

Anyway, this is a remarkable grown-up animated biopic driven by the tension between an essential antiwar sentiment and the glorification of the design of one of the Second World War's most efficient killing machines, the Zero fighter jet. A gorgeous, unhurried, unnervingly exhilarating film.

Trailers

• Bears--From DisneyNature, for Earth Day.
• Mr. Peabody & Sherman--Oh, hells yeah, I'm in, in 3D and Imax if I can get it. Unless, of course, the reviews are as bad as they were for The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle.

Ashes to ashes

Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus)

(1959)

Huh: Lent looms, but weeknights, having prematurely finished the Mardi Gras-ful Treme, I'm instead shivering through the ultrawintry Game of Thrones. Still, I have my Carnaval perennial to get me into the right spirit. Have I mentioned lately that this is the most beautiful film I know?