apocalypse chelsea: day two

queue de grâce rolls on. day one was free of catastrophe, but i have an uneasy feeling about this...

day two:

first in line was kevin reynolds' adaptation of alexandre dumas' the count of monte cristo (2002).

"my subtlety and restraint, have you seen it? i would have sworn i left it right over there."

all things being equal, it is a fair adaptation. it's much better than i had anticipated, my only previous exposure to kevin reynolds having been a couple of insipid kevin costner vehicles. guy pearce, uncharacteristically, provided the biggest hurdle for me in this one. i understand he is the villain but it's a shame to resort to such overplaying to put the point across. and, dear lord, poor luis guzman. i love the guy but in this thing he is a walking anachronism. he couldn't have taken me out of the film any more if he had reached through the screen and grabbed me by the shirt. every time he opens his mouth we might as well be on the set of boogie nights 2: the scarlet pimp-ernel. it's the one major flaw that seems to fly right in the face of the most important thing that the film gets right, and that thing is that it makes few concessions to a modern audience's sensibilities. i admire how much it plays things right down the second republic line. it doesn't resort to a lot of ridiculous CGI. it doesn't attempt to update the film in some way so the 18-25 year olds will shell out for a ticket. it's a grave mistake people often make, not realizing (or not caring) that these things only make a film eventually look dated, even more dated than by basing it on a book written in 1844. this film sidesteps those problems altogether, thankfully. i would imagine guzman's casting is just unfortunate, not a ploy, otherwise you would have seen a much more marketable face in the role. the screenplay may take a number of liberties with dumas' novel but never with the intention of modernizing it. some good work from the location scouts goes a long way in maintaining the mid-nineteenth century feeling as well.

the true ace up the film's sleeve is jim caviezel's earnestness, his righteousness. it's easy to believe in him. the film plays it in pretty broad strokes, but what you see in his eyes burns right through that. his holy innocence and his unyielding fervor in his quest for retribution are two sides of the same satisfying coin. i have only seen him in the passion of the christ (2004), otherwise, but he seems to have the market cornered when it comes to brilliant and resolute purity. seems like typecasting might be an issue. how many times can you play jesus? richard harris provides a nice turn as his fellow prisoner and mentor in the château d'if. overall, a good, not great, bit of swashbuckling action adventure.

i knew it was too good to be true, though. now the heavy lifting begins with nicholas hytner's center stage (2000).

HI!

"life is no rehearsal", the tagline says. this film follows the lives and loves of a group of young dancers chosen to attend the prestigious american ballet academy in new york. life may be no rehearsal, but maybe life could shell out for an acting coach once in a while.

i am a sucker for processes. if you can show me how something works, how it's put together, you have my attention. rehearsal, collaboration, creation, performance - i'm game. these sequences in the film are fine - interesting if you like the creative process, probably great if you love dance/ballet. i enjoy watching people put in their 10000 hours. i like the dedication to craft. i like to see artistic ideas clash and combine. when these characters are working in rehearsal studios or onstage, it can be captivating. the cast, largely professional dancers, are skilled and athletic. personally, i prefer the ballet sequences to the more overblown production number-type things, but it's all very well choreographed and executed.

HI AGAIN!

then there's the other hour of the movie, which is wretched. there is not one character that is introduced in this thing whose fate you are unsure of five minutes after you meet them. stock characters, incredibly lazy writing. paint by numbers, primary colors all the way:

chubby (in the world of ballet this means 115 lbs.), vaguely ethnic girl who gets the boot - check

token black guy - check

token gay guy - check, and a bargain for payroll as he is also the token black guy.

tough-talking diva from the street with a bad attitude - check

stern teacher with a heart of gold - check

ice princess overachiever who is troubled on the inside - check

shrewish stage mom living vicariously through her daughter - check

the boy who really understands and supports you and will wait until you're through being mistreated by that jerk - check

and on and on. i am always surprised that studios don't have to work harder to earn your money. they count on, and exploit, your short attention span and princess dreams. it was called fame (1980), and a hundred other names besides, stretching back to the beginning of filmdom. i know it's made for young people, but young people can grasp more complexity than this. and i know films like this are primarily a vehicle to display the dancing or singing or whatever else it is that these kids do but don't you find the presentation ridiculous? why don't you demand a better story in between? in this day and age, you can just go to youtube and watch endless drum battles/dance competitions/vocal tryouts/et cetera. you don't have to have your intelligence insulted on either side of it to enjoy the art, a fact that outs all of you people that claim "oh, i just watch it for the competitive parts". plainly, you're liars. reality television has exposed you all. you also watch it for the poorly scripted, poorly acted "drama", but i'll be damned if i know what it nourishes in you. if the dance is really what moves you, why aren't you just watching a ballet? if you need soap opera with your dance try the red shoes (1948) instead. final verdict - ballet should be choreographed, not story arc. as actors, they are spectacular dancers.

but, taking a lesson from those plucky kids, i shall prevail. i won't let this get me down. i will come back swinging on day three. damn it, i've gotta dance! or write. or something. talk to you tomorrow.

starlite thanksgiving update

alright, we have a date! our starlite cinema series thanksgiving screening will take place on saturday, 11.20.10 at 7 p.m. we have a different address for this one, so take a look at the facebook event page or send me a message for details. since it's getting darker, earlier these days a charlie brown thanksgiving (1973) will start at 7 p.m. followed by big night (1996). please come out if you can. it would be nice to see you.

apocalypse chelsea: day one

it begins - apocalypse chelsea.

welcome to the inaugural queue de grâce, an ongoing experiment where i turn over control of my streaming netflix queue to someone for one week. there aren't many rules to this. basically, if i watch something at home it has to be something of their choosing. the only time i can pick my own films all week is if i go to the theater. i spend a week watching through someone else's eyes and tell you guys all about it. our opening salvo comes courtesy of miss chelsea george, the misunderstood genius behind the candy-coated explosion that is something terrible has happened. she has selected twenty films for me to start with. if i need more, she is ready. she provided me with a dossier. this girl is prepared. let's get to it!

day one:

i think she's taking it easy on me to start with. a little rope-a-dope to lull me into a false sense of security? i enter our cinematic octagon to meet my first opponent...martha coolidge's valley girl (1983).

i don't think i have seen this thing in its entirety in over twenty years. you'd be surprised at how well it holds up, especially if you remember much about the cultural climate of teen movies in the early eighties. kids of the current generation who have stumbled onto it unfortunately have to view it, at least a little, as a bit of a time capsule novelty - a mall suspended in amber - and that's too bad. as decent a film as it is now, it was even more of a standout then. it was a true teen romantic comedy in a festering mass of shoddy teen sex comedies. remember, lloyd dobler was still years away. everywhere you looked around this time it was peepholes in showers, underwear up flagpoles, trips across state and international borders with the sole intent of scoring. valley girl set itself apart by just being honest, silly and simple.

don't get me wrong. it's a teen movie and hormones are running rampant. you can't go five minutes without a discussion about how totally, tubularly cute someone is, but it's populated with kids who seem real. i'm not saying it's the best character development you'll ever see, but they have heart. its contemporaries were cartoonish, at best. and we've seen the story a million times - two different worlds/romeo and juliet - but it's done sweetly, with a deft touch, and every generation should get a chance to tell its own version of the story. there a lot of little reasons to like the film. the parents are as interesting and real as the kids, frederic forrest, especially. deborah foreman is adorable and nicolas cage exhibits a dopey, heavy-lidded charm that he would do well to remember how to access these days. bonus points to the soundtrack for not making the most obvious choices (the plimsouls!). and, as if all that wasn't enough, michelle meyrink! the face that launched a thousand nerdy ships. well, mine, anyway.

if you haven't seen it for a while it probably wouldn't hurt you to go back and see it again, if only to see the lightning speed with which they get to the shopping montage (hint: opening credits). ironically, with all its valleyspeak, it's probably the most emotionally articulate teen comedy of its era. you can keep your john hughes garbage. if you need me, i'll be over on the wrong side of the tracks with randy and julie.

alright, so we're off to a good start. what's next? a 180 degree turn for neil abramson's documentary, soldier child (1998).

upon reading the description, i had high hopes for this one. in northern uganda, a religious fanatic named joseph kony commands an insurgent group he calls the lord's resistance army. to populate his army, he abducts, brainwashes and impresses children into service. it is appalling, and if you follow contemporary african political struggles you know it is also appallingly common. these children have been the victims of atrocities we can't imagine. they have done things that i think the human mind, with all its resilience, cannot come back from. this film attempts to relate the stories of some of these children, but ultimately falls short. it cannot accurately convey the scope of the horror and ends up playing like a piece of amnesty international propaganda, rather than a piece of journalism. it may be my fault. i like much more objectivity in my documentaries and just was not given it. it spends far too much time engaging in finger-wagging at the audience when we already know it's terrible beyond words and that something needs to be done. i halfway expected danny glover to say "please, for just seventeen cents a day, you can help a child in need". still, there were parts that were valuable. watching their faces when the children blandly told stories of being given a hoe to chop other children into pieces was a chilling reminder that the human animal is capable of most anything. the few details that were given about the therapy process they use to help children who escape were most interesting. i wish they could have spent considerably more time outlining the process that helps recover a mind from that abyss. there are a number of documentaries on this subject. maybe one of them treats the material in a more informative and objective fashion. this one, at least, inspires me to look for more. if you would like to decide for yourself, and you don't have streaming netflix, click here to watch it in its entirety on hulu.

so, i survived day one. a pretty good start, actually. i've read the list, though. there is danger ahead. pray for me.

trailer tuesday

this week's entry, apocalypse now (1979) marks the beginning of this week's experiment.

i'll be back later today with the first dispatch.

i feel the thunder gathering even now

extra! extra!

i am no luddite, far from it. i am astounded by the technological marvels that surround us on a daily basis and by the speed at which they develop and advance these days. when i think of what someone who is ninety today has seen in their lifetime, i almost can't adequately process it. i love the infinite possibility of discovery and am endlessly fascinated by the intersection of those ideas with people. my "if i had a time machine" list begins with the world's columbian exposition in chicago, illinois in 1893. one, i have an abiding affection for chicago. if i were a city, that's the one i would be. two, can you imagine encountering so many sights, sounds and experiences for the first time, all in one place? i know it wouldn't be new to me but to get to see so many people experience tesla's alternating current, the ferris wheel, the electrotachyscope, neon lights, indonesian music, the hamburger, quaker oats, and on and on for the first time would be amazing. i would go back there just to see their faces, the future exploding in their brains and twenty-six million people leaving the white city in twenty-six million different directions, their hearts and minds on fire, wondering "what's next?".

but.

i would choose to go there most of all because i also love the outmoded and archaic. it would be the best of both worlds, to see these ideas, now seemingly ancient, at their inception. i have such a fondness for the ideas we have discarded, outgrown. for me, it's akin to pulling for the underdog. the peculiar and particular charms of the things we have left behind hold more romance for me than maybe anything else. i think part of that stems from observing the care and craft it took to make those things. another part of it is just honoring the unique qualities of an object and its time and place. the general (1927) would not be the same if buster keaton was on a bullet train, rather than a steam locomotive. the idea of harold lloyd hanging from a jumbotron in safety last! (1923) just doesn't have the same appeal. but the thing i would hate to lose to the insistent march of time more than any other bit of cinema?

our old pal, and stalwart expository device, the newspaper.

man, i hope the newspaper in cinema never dies. i know at this point it is beyond hackneyed, but i do love it so. it's so much more than a method of delivering information to me. it's industry, it's danger, it's love. when i see a newspaper onscreen, i see an army of men and women scouring the city, unearthing stories, working into the wee hours in shitty newsrooms and at relentless printing presses, keeping the machinery moving, in lockstep with the weird rhythms of their town, getting into scrapes, sometimes getting killed, living and dying to tell, or manipulate, the truth. i see the other articles peripheral to the headline that truly make the difference, the little things in the margins that make it real. i see people gathering in the street to share information. i see a million front stoops and breakfast tables. i see empires rising and falling.

all of which are feelings i wouldn't get from seeing the same information pop up in a character's google reader. sorry, digital age. as much as i like what you have to offer, in this case, you lose. a "dewey defeats truman" mass text just isn't going to cut it. if the newspaper was good enough for orson welles, it is good enough for me. i like them in montages. i like them spinning. i like them in bundles thrown from trucks at 4 a.m. i like them in morning, afternoon and evening editions.

see that? that's terrifying. that guy could be anywhere! but you wouldn't know that if it came in a forward. you would have deleted that. then you'd be dead. good job, mobile device. thanks for nothing.

she deserved better

i don't sleep well. i never have, really. at least, i haven't since i was very young. it comes in fits and starts. two hours here or there, a part of a movie in between until i drift off again, and all of it filled with vivid, often difficult, dreams. i know a lot of people would gladly trade the nightmares for a peaceful night's rest once in a while, but i don't think i would. i would hate to sacrifice my dreams, even the punishing ones. it would make the sleep experience so dreadfully boring, i would imagine. to lay down, have eight hours go by, and then just get up again? no messages to decode? no images to ponder throughout the day? no thanks. plus, they're not all bad. in the past several weeks, i have had three or four very vivid dreams with a recurring theme. in these, women have come to me - a friend, a fictional character, a historical figure - and given me guidance, taught me things, let me know i am loved. my subconscious, of late, has been occasionally distributing these moments of comfort, wisdom and tenderness. two nights ago, i had one about elizabeth short.

if you know her, you probably know her by another name - the black dahlia. she was the victim of what is probably the most notorious unsolved crime this side of jack the ripper. they found her in two pieces posed in a vacant lot in los angeles on the morning of 1.15.47. the crime was horrific in both its clinical precision and its utter savagery. if you are unfamiliar with the case, you can find basic details here. the case has haunted southern california for sixty-odd years now and is the darkest shadow cast across los angeles' noir cityscape.

in my dream, we spent the better part of an afternoon together. we sat in a park, on the grass, for a while and then walked to a lunch counter together. her face looked just like her face in her morgue photo - broken nose, scratched and gouged face, insect bites from being left outside, those horrible slits in the sides of her mouth - i won't post it here but it's easy enough to find if you'd like a more definite idea. the only difference is that her eyes were clear and bright, like in the photo above. she was terribly embarrassed by how she looked, her jaw lolling from her wounds, beyond her control. she had to speak slowly and carefully to be understood. it was heart-rending. it made me cry a little for her and she touched my face to reassure me that it was alright. her hands were soft and cold. even ruined, she was beautiful. where she wasn't wounded, her skin seemed bright and alive. it almost makes me cry now to think about it, two days later. she wanted to tell me not to compromise myself, because it ends badly. she wanted to tell me that the mystery of her case is no worse than the things of it we already know to a certainty. she was so angry and sad about how they tricked her mother. she seemed to feel sorry for me, like she knew something i didn't. i figured she knew an awful lot that i didn't, actually. she seemed to want to protect me but couldn't because she, of all people, was too well acquainted with the fact that none of us can truly protect each other. it was enough that she wanted to. her dress was knee length, black with bone-colored polka dots about the circumference of an eraser on a pencil. it wasn't silk, but an approximation. it felt soft, but cheap, when she hugged me goodbye. i realized then that she still hadn't "made it" like she wanted to, still wearing bargain basement knock-offs. she walked up the street, turned the corner and i woke up.

and there's where i should have left it. instead, i decided to watch brian de palma's the black dahlia (2006).

there's scarlett johansson, "acting".

i don't usually spend a lot of time here talking about movies i don't like. i'd much rather use the space to tell you about something worthwhile. since that dream, though, elizabeth short has been stuck in my head and, since my subconscious' version of her was so sweet and gracious, even loving, in the face of her overwhelming misery, i feel like i owe it to her to tell you to completely avoid this film.

mia kirshner does an adequate job conveying the little-girl-lost quality you expect the dahlia to have but it's not enough to outweigh the litany of things wrong with this film. everyone else is miscast, and that's being diplomatic. the narrative is meandering and the bulk of the film focuses on a love triangle in which the participants couldn't produce chemistry if their fingers were test tubes and their heads were bunsen burners. de palma throws in a few of his stock visual flourishes but they don't actually advance the film in any way. hilary swank's accent is laughable. bulgaria, where they shot most of the film, is supposed to be a sufficient stand-in for los angeles. no one in the film possesses the kind of carriage it takes to put the jazz from james ellroy's magnificent source novel on the screen. you know everything that went right when they brilliantly adapted l.a. confidential (1997)? well, that many things went wrong here.

a gripping scene from the black dahlia!

how do you take the most fascinating unsolved crime in the history of the state of california and make it this unwatchable? the case gets the short shrift, that's how. you could excise about twenty minutes of the film and you'd have no idea it was about the dahlia at all. maybe de palma had the same dream a few years before me. maybe he really took it to heart when she said the unknown part of her story was no more fascinating than what we already knew. it still doesn't explain things, though, even if you took the dahlia case completely out. it fails as noir. it fails as true crime (i know the source novel is a fictionalized account, you know what i mean), it fails as a tangled romance. it just fails, and that's just a shame. in my dream, she was a sweet kid. i hope someday, someone does right by her.

her friends called her betty.

trailer tuesday

this week's entry is for star trek II: the wrath of khan (1982).

i have been, and always shall be, your friend.