Encouragements

A friend pointed this out to me, that it was inspirational to her. It's wonderful. I guess Graham wrote it to DeMille after a piece of hers failed. Brilliant.

A Letter to Agnes DeMille : Martha Graham

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.

If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
of the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.

And she mentioned this, too, from Theodore Roosevelt--

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Alice in Wonderland

I recently saw Tim Burton’s Disney’s Alice in Wonderland trademark adventure, and I only really have one thought, which is

eh.

I had a reaction similar to my viewing of Nine, though not as vehement: they took something extraordinary and boundary-smashing and made something mundane. This is not saying it’s a successful product, as it clearly is. But I don’t think it’s a successful film.

The book is full of whimsy and nonsense, so you would think it would be a good fit for Burton. The screenwriter, Linda Woolverton (from both “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast”), has created something of a sequel, where Alice is avoiding a marriage proposal and looking for herself in the rabbit hole. We see, in a flashback where the six-year old Alice (who wears lip gloss to bed) complains of a bad dream to her father, that Alice has been dreaming of this world since she was a child. In this version, it’s actually called Underland, and ruled by an evil red queen who is a tyrant, whose sister the White Queen used to rule but has been usurped. All the characters (most from the book – the Rabbit, the Doormouse, Tweedlum and –dee, even the sad addition of a “frumious bandersnatch” – ugh) want the White Queen to be reinstalled, but Alice must save them by slaying the Jabberwocky, and, oh nevermind, I’m too bored to go on. I don’t really care.

And that’s the bottom line. Why not write a new script with characters we’ve never seen before instead of bastardizing two surprising, unexpected great works into one predictable, boring three act girl empowerment story we’ve seen before? It’s could be taken out of “Screenwriting for Dummies”. I see the impulse to make it into a kind of fairy tale with a message, like “Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast”, but the whole point of Alice, it’s enduring fascination, is that it resists those simple messages. It’s confounding and odd – and as interesting to political theorists, historians, and mathematicians as it is to children. This whole shoehorning into a coherent narrative just makes the whole enterprise feel stifled and mundane. Bonham-Carter is enjoyable to watch (probably the best thing in the film), but Hathaway is wasted (though I'm not sure what anyone could have done with that role). Depp is given a script in which the Hatter is aware of his encroaching or encompassing madness, attempting some sense of tragic realization of his situation, but that ends up as embarrassing and unneeded. Besides laying more on the back of the character than he’s designed to handle, they force him to have a truly cringe-inducing dance moment. Curioser and curiouser. Why?

Oh wait, money….that’s right. I keep forgetting. Well at least someone’s laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly, it’s not the audience. Look, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but why not just leave old stuff alone if you can’t respect it for what it is? Or give it a spin that's at least as imaginative and outlandish as the original. This has taken something large, ridiculous, and unruly and tried to make it small, easy, pat and pablum. Not an awful way to spend some time, but not a frabjous day at all.

Errors

I was listening to a "Stuff you missed in history class" podcast about the Book of Kells on the way into work this morning, something I was interested in because of the recent animated movie, and so I decided to look at some images. It certainly is beautiful.

And imagine what it might have been with the extra half inch of decoration around the rim that an overzealous bookbinder in the early 19th c trimmed off. Anyhoo, I was reading the wikipedia page, and was struck by this quote:

There are a number of differences between the text and the accepted Gospels. In the genealogy of Jesus, which starts at Luke 3:23, Kells erroneously names an extra ancestor. Elsewhere, Matthew 10:34b should read "I came not to send peace, but a sword," but the manuscript reads gaudium ("joy") where it should read gladium ("sword") and so translates as "I came not [only] to send peace, but joy."

Imagine if that actually was correct, and the quote was really "to send peace, but joy" instead of "a sword". One letter. Probably not true, as I think the gospels were in Greek, not Latin, so this was a Latin mistake, but it's amazing to think how much bloodshed might have been avoided through the ages. I won't get into religion, specifically Christianity, and how passages have been used to enslave or kill others for millenia, but it is wild to think that something like a mistranslation, or a missing letter, could change intent, dogma, rationalization, and history. It boggles the mind.

Something Else

I wanted to put up something else besides "bad books", so just letting everyone know I'm 50 chapters into War and Peace and blogging about it. I'm loving it, and reading it slowly, which is really satisfying.

Also, the show I've been assistant directing just got a "Go" in LA Weekly, and looks like it may be extending another 4 weeks. Fingers crossed. It was a good time, and I'm excited for them. Yay, team.

Bad Books

I commented on this since I thought it was so ridiculous. I have no issue with people attacking what they see as "the cannon" but this is where academia and arrogance meet to me. LA Times blog has published blurbs from American Book Review's list of bad books which includes, among others, The Great Gatsby and All the Pretty Horses. The criticism is arrogant, and it seems to be to be more about attention grabbing for having a list like this anyway. But here I am posting about it and perpetuating it.

I fell right into that one, didn't I?

RadioLab

Radiolab, from WNYC, has the subtitle "Curiosity on a Bender". I discovered it from listening to This American Life, and it's really, really wonderful. It takes a general idea and then investigates it. Or, as they put it:

"Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility."

So far, I've listened to the "Numbers" podcast, which explores how we learn numbers and the human construction of math. Fascinating.

And now, I'm listening to "Placebo", which explores just that, placebos, and then moves into how we feel and experience pain. And, as one of the hosts said "that's when my mind blew out of my face".
I'm only twenty minutes in, and they've already talked about the effectiveness of placebos in things as difficult to treat as Parkinson's, and then on to how the narrative that we construct around a moment of pain or injury can actually effect how we experience that pain. They talk about a doctor during WWI, who found that soldiers injured had less pain and asked for less morphine than people suffering the same injury at home - precisely because the soldier sees being hit in a positive way - awards, honor, glory, survival, and possibly being sent home - while the person shot in his store, for instance, sees it as loss of income, difficulty, pain...and therefore asks for more morphine. Mind-blowing!

There's so much more in that one, and both of them, to go into, but they're just two of the many. So excellent.

! Really, just !!

Smackdown '09

The Supporting Actress Smackdown for this year's Oscar nominees is up. Yours truly participating. Check it out!

Children are Bored on Sunday

I podcast in my car, and it kind of makes up for the loss of subway reading time now that I'm in LA. I have a few faves, and two short story podcasts. This is kind of funny to me, since I don't really love reading short stories. But I really love hearing them read.

If you have an extra 36:44, then take a listen to Jean Stafford's story "Children are Bored on Sunday", which touched me deeply last night when I was listening to it. Hilton Als, the New Yorker theater critic, picked it to discuss on the New Yorker fiction podcast, a monthly series where a writer chooses a story from the magazine's archive and reads it, then discusses the story and the writer. There have been some great ones. I even like the title of this episode, "Invalid Souls", which can play on either pronunciation of invalid, which that word always does. The story was first published in 1948, and I'm surprised how deeply it hit me. You can also read it in the online archive if you subscribe, but it's wonderful listening.

The action is a woman looking at art while avoiding a man she sees, but it's really about her mental state, her drinking, her collapse, and her fragility. I guess since I love the Met, where it's set, and Stafford beautifully catches these moments and the action of her mind drifting from where it should be. Also an incredible picture of mid-century New York intellectuals and what it must have felt like in that demi-monde. There's a great description of never-ending cocktail parties which weren't work, but weren't for fun, either. There was great competition, and conversation about art and ideas, people creating themselves and judging others. It's fascinating. Something about the way she was thinking really got to me. It's a beautiful story. It makes me want to read more of her stuff.

Hats

I've been wanting to write, but I've just been a mite busy. I'm assistant directing a production of Side by Side by Sondheim, which has been a great learning experience. So every workday but Friday I get up, go to work, go to rehearsal, and go home to bed. And there's rehearsal on weekends as well. So, needless to say, a few things have fallen by the wayside, writing being one of them. And cleaning my apartment. And laundry.

But I have not missed a day on my promise to write on War and Peace a chapter a day, though I have to say when I get home at 10:30 I'm not so keen on reading about a war on Napolean and blogging on it. But I am doing it. If I managed during surgery, I'm not about to stop now. And I'm not kvetching - it's enjoyable and a nice wind-down. Certainly a whole 'nother world

Anyhow, now I'm keying up to make a couple of hats. I suggested that we have a couple of large hats for the women to wear while "Beautiful Girls" from Follies is playing. And then I said "I'll make them!". Huh. So I'm skipping from rehearsals this weekend and shopping for hat supplies. I sketched them and the look something like this:



Each of the little squares will be a poster for a Sondheim show - one will have spikes coming from a large glittery white orb. I was thinking the other should be on a pagoda, but now I'm going to see if I can perhaps get a small, portable lamp and do a couple of lamp shades, and then cards will hang on fishing line from the wires. Then just spray it all in translucent glitter. Comedy. There will be pieces of fabric attached to rhinestone (if we can afford it) cuffs that will easily clip on and off the wrist. And, of course, a chin strap.

I do love a great, big hat.

For All You Writers Out There

Elizabeth posted a link to Magpie Tales, who posts a photo to prompt fiction/poems, etc. Each Friday there will be a photo, and each Tuesday you link to this link site with your piece.

Sounds like it could be fun? If it does, then link away!

Oh!Oh!Oh!

A short paean to the weather. I took a couple of cell phone pictures at work (above), which do nothing to describe the spectacular weather this morning.

LA is stunning after a rain. At least this part of LA - near the hills and the break between valley and valley. Yesterday, as it started to clear, we had three rainbows over the hill behind the lot, and the valley around had specials coming through the clouds. One building would be lit up as if glowing from inside, while next to it would be shadow. It really looked like Hollywood, as if some lighting man might step up and adjust the beam, and the whole picture would shift.

Today, it was unusually brisk as well, so it was clear, and crisp. I love these days. The Hollywood hills are a vibrant green, and the clear air makes the hills and grass look so voluptuous you want to reach out and touch them. Houses are tucked in between the trees, feeling cozy. The light is a bruise of gray with piercing sun, clouds are floating like stretched cotton on a blue, blue watercolor. Everything looks so close up it’s hard to judge distance.

Behind the studio, the hill dazzles, light changing seemingly by the moments as the clouds rush by heading west. There is a little tree that stands at the top, or that's what I think it is. When the hillside burned a couple of years ago, and transformers popped and exploded, the next day a lone tree was still on the top of the hill. It's always looked to me like a pig on a stick, so I call it the pig tree. I guess I could climb up there one day to see it up close, but I'm sure it would transform.

I am a mountain person. I love them. Take your oceans – they’re nice to visit, but from the Green Mountains in Vermont to the Hollywood Hills, I love the plush covered crags and the solidity. And it breaks up the eye. I lived on the plains until I was 12, endless corn and sky that seemed to stop at the end of every field. Mountains let me know how big everything is, but don’t overwhelm me with the impossible infinity of seas. I feel protected by mountains. Always have.

Then you look at the Valley. The mountains in front are desert hills; rocky, craggy, with bits of brush and brown as sand. Behind them, all the peaks are covered in snow, and since the snow level was down to 500 feet the whole mountain is dusted. Majestic. Your face feels just this side of numb, to remind you that you’re human, warm inside, and able to sense the elements with thermometer-like sensitivity. Outside and in your body.

365 degrees and scenes from desert to snow to tropical. It’s on these days I am ecstatic to live here. I used to hate pineapple. I had only ever had canned, so I thought it was nasty - syrupy and strange-tasting. Then my parents went to Hawaii and brought back a fresh pineapple. It was so sweet that I couldn’t believe I had ever mistrusted its gifts. And now, I can eat canned pineapple, since I know the platonic ideal of pineapple. It makes the other stuff more palatable. That’s the way I feel about LA – I know it will be brown and hot, possibly soon, and some days I won’t even see the mountains. But I’ve seen the platonic ideal, I know what’s hiding there. I want to tug on everyone’s sleeve on days like today and say “oh!oh!oh! Look at how beautiful it is! Today! Don’t miss it!”

On days like this it’s hard for me to feel anything but glee. I sit in my car and applaud.

Surgery, part deux

So, I'm still going to write about it at some point. I'm thinking it might be too early to head back to work tomorrow. I haven't tried to drive. I think I pushed it a bit yesterday. I developed a bruise, which I hear is normal, but it freaked me out. Really not loving abdominal pain, I have to say.

So today I sat home after a friend took me to buy fresh veggies at the farmer's market, took a nap, watched Antiques Roadshow, and six episodes of 30 Rock that I needed to catch up on. The other day I watched Reefer Madness, the musical (okay, not great), and Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti from the BBC about a difficult marriage.

I have to say, when you're couch-bound, the serious stuff isn't the best to watch. A friend was going to see Fish Tank, which is supposed to be great, but I just didn't think I could stomach it - no pun intended. Tanya picked me up and brought me over ther for chili and tea, and to chat during the second half of the Super Bowl. So glad they live close, and really grateful to have such wonderful friends, cuz I can get a little stir crazy.

But I did read my chapter each day - so I've done 13 so far. Only 352 to go!

Peter and the Wolf

While I was writing today's entry for A Year of War and Peace I thought for an instant that the name of the cat in "Peter and the Wolf" is Sonya. It's not--it's the name of the duck.

But that reminded me of this really special Oscar-winning short of "Peter and the Wolf". If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch.


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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This book looks fascinating - the first paragraph from this Times article:

Fifty years after Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in the “colored” ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital, her daughter finally got a chance to see the legacy she had unknowingly left to science. A researcher in a lab at Hopkins swung open a freezer door and showed the daughter, Deborah Lacks-Pullum, thousands of vials, each holding millions of cells descended from a bit of tissue that doctors had snipped from her mother’s cervix.

The book is about the story, the incredible things that have been done with what turned out to be "immortal" cancer cells, and what rights, if any, the family has to the billions of dollars that have been made from the use of the cells.

It sounds like this is becoming more and more of an issue, and mixing in that with class, race, and the last 50 years in the US, this looks like it could be an amazing book.

Fondue!

Elizabeth over at a moon, worn as if it had been a shell is giving away a cast iron Rachel Ray fondue pot.

You do not fondue Rachel Ray, she is the celebrity spokesperson.

My favorite fondue memory, aside from the sweet taste of the meat when I was a kid (ah, the 70's), was going to see Aida in the park for one of the Met's free concert. The woman who organized said she'd bring a little something, and brought a fondue pot with fruit and chocolate and a sterno. Wow. So we ate dessert fondue while watching Sharon Sweet in Aida. Pretty great.

So go visit over there and leave a comment to enter. And if you haven't visited, check out a really great blog while you're at it!

Tarot

I have a little link to a tarot card in my facebook, and here was what it said today:

Not the right time to be alone. Seek out others and be social. More interaction with world and loved ones is needed. Fill your social calendar. Need to get out and have fun. Good time to seek out relationships. Reconnection with others possible now. Find the light inside and share it with the world. Bring your talents into focus and allow others to see them. Stop being so serious and live a little.

Italics mine.

Sometimes, just good to be reminded. It's probably all hoo-ey, especially since it's electronic, but nice to be reminded that being can be light, and worn lightly.

Now, to read more Russians. Hee.

Last Station and a new direction

I went to see The Last Station with a friend yesterday and loved it. It's thoughtful, romantic, and grounded with some great performances, mostly, as noted already everywhere, Helen Mirren. It's rare to get such a sweeping romance with an underpinning of great themes and creeping revolution. Christopher Plummer was wonderful as well, and so too was Paul Giamatti and James McEvoy (who is basically adorable - there, I've said it - shallow, I know, but true). I don't know who Kerry Condon is, but great job as well. And I am a sucker for birch trees and beautiful forest scenes. I really was tense at one point about what was going to happen, so much so my palms were sweating. Avatar, I was a little nervous. This one, waiting to know if Tolstoy was really going to sign away the rights to his life's work and go against the wishes of his wife - pulse quickening.

Anyhow, aside from the majority of Anna Karenina, which I read in high school and then wrote a paper on (I had a habit of picking books and then writing on characters who die half-way through, or themes I could pick up and extrapolate - what a slacker), I haven't read a lot of Tolstoy. In September, I met a man at a retreat who was a Sufi and also taught Tolstoy. He loves War and Peace, and said teaching it actually makes him cry. That's quite a recommendation. And I've heard about the beauty and majesty of this book before.

So seeing The Last Station, I thought maybe I could read it. Then I had the idea of reading it and blogging about it at the same time. Then I looked at a version online and saw that it has many chapters. In fact, after looking at an online version, it's 15 books and 2 epilogues (although the wikipedia entry says it's 4 books and two epilogues), divided into 365 chapters. 365. One for each day of the year. Accident? I think not.

I looked around, and found several blogs where people were planning on doing this--

Reading war and peace, where a woman blogs about a trip around the world with her husband and two young sons. It was started in 2003, ended in 2005, and all I could find about the book was one of the last entries "Someone asked me just recently if it was worth the effort and I would certainly say it was. My only criticism would be that there were too many battles in it." So, not really a simultaneous blog kind of thing.

Then there is war and peace project, which is a good name, but sadly an anemic blog. Only three entries, the last one being in 2008, about chapters 1 -3.

Then there's the simple war and peace, by the promisingly named blogger "Anastasia" which will be about her feelings, tortured or otherwise (her words), started in 2000. There are no entries.

I also stumbled across reading Middlemarch, which is something I've always wanted to do as well. It looks like an online book group, and they read War and Peace as well. Interesting idea, online bookgroup, but reading is so solitary already. I guess it's a step in connecting about it, and views from people all over. I still need to read Middlemarch. And the rest of Magic Mountain, which I loved, and then got mired down during one of Settembrini's speeches about the meaning of life. In 1999.

So I entertained a bunch of names, including "war and peace 365", which sounds too much like a hip bistro, or "reading war and peace 365", which is clumsy, and I finally settled on "a year of war and peace", but sadly, it's registered, but doesn't show as a blog (!). So, the blog will be titled "A Year of War and Peace" even though it's really http://yearofwarandpeace.blogspot.com/. I'm looking for the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation since everyone flipped for their "Brothers Karamazov", speaking of other books I've started on not finished.

Before you get all finger-pointy, it's long. Really long. And remember it was serialized in the 19th century. And there was no television. And long nights. Especially in Russia.

So, I'm not sure when I'll officially start (I have surgery on the 4th of February, so I may start after that), but check back. I'll post over here once I do, for the ones of you reading here. I suppose, in solidarity with Tolstoy's views, I can look upon this as a spiritual practice. At least a practice that I will do every day. Didn't work with meditation, but hey, one can dream.

And for all you that read the blog, maybe you'll be able to feel like you've read it, or be interested in picking it up yourself. More conversation is more good.

Onward!

Or, Вперед, as the Russian translation engine on the web tells me.

Now, to buy the book....

Famous Blue Raincoat

This song just came up when I was resynching my iTunes. My late friend Lisa used to listen to Jennifer Warnes album "Famous Blue Raincoat" over and over. Right before we moved in together, in 1988, she said she had it on the turntable for 6 months straight.

Remember turntables?

Everyone thought we looked like brother and sister - similar coloring. We lost touch, but talked every few years, and then she moved back to Albuquerque and passed away from a freak illness. I'm blessed to have known her.

I can't hear this song, or any of Jennifer Warnes versions of Leonard Cohen (so almost any of his songs), without thinking of her.

Not maudlin feeling, but just remembering. I have no idea what the song's about, which is why it's so intriguing. It's the taste of story on your tongue, but you can't fully name it. It's probably about Dylan or something, since it seems like all the songs of this period are about him or Mick Jagger. Whatever it's about, it's a beautiful song. And I'm posting in memory of a beautiful woman. Very missed.

Thoughts on NINE

**{SPOLIER ALERT}**

If you haven't seen it, skip the below, unless you love reading things like this before you see movies. If not, then skip it!

This is probably the most incendiary I've been, and I know I shouldn't apologize for not being nice, but I hope this doesn't come across as only snarky. There's a reason for all of it.

I'm writing a little about NINE, which I'm sure some people enjoyed, but to me was the most disappointing movie of the last decade. I'm sure that has to do a bit with my expectations, being a fan of the musical for over two decades, and also of 8 1/2. But even though I tried to scrub that from my brain and be open to a new experience, the movie that was made did nothing interesting or original, and only managed to pale in comparison to any of the pieces it might be compared to. There are many. And on any measure it fails. I know the filmmakers didn't want it compared to the originals, but since it's not succeeding as a piece on its own either, I'm going to compare away.

NINE is based on the Fellini movie 8 1/2. 8 1/2 concerns a director, Guido Contini, and his difficulty in figuring out what his next movie will be. The movie was Fellini's ninth, so 8 1/2 refers to his feeling of it being half a movie. There are the women, the critics, the church, sexuality, self-doubt. Nine, the musical, positions Contini's struggle to make a movie against the background of his philandering and refusal to grow up. From what I can see, Rob Marshall took out any of the songs that give the musical heart, and replaced everything with flash. Seemingly mis-understanding the theme of the musical, and scared to make one, he just made a boring film recycyling what he did in Chicago. And that's what makes me angry/annoyed. There are some amazing talents on the screen. They do the best they can do, but with a misguided director more interested in surface than telling story, they were sunk. I'm just going to break this down in headings, since I can't really figure out any other way to do this.

It's a musical, so let it be a musical

Marshall's modus operandi seems to be directing "unfilmable musicals" like Chicago (if one can generalize from one film). Yes, he came up with a gimmick for Chicago - a narcissist who struggles with reality and escapes into fantasy musical numbers in her head. This worked for Chicago, along with strong, heavily borrowed choreography from Fosse, and a design aesthetic from the revival. It doesn't work for NINE. It comes of as false and gimmicky. Unlike the vaudeville numbers in Chicago, NINE's numbers are actual musical pieces that move along the action and contain the real emotion of the piece. Stinkylulu pointed out when we saw it that each person's number in the first act, when it's fun for everyone, is matched by a second number in the second act when Guido's world he's juggling is falling apart. Marshall took out several of those songs, most notably "Be On Your Own", where Luisa leaves Guido (Go find some restaurant attendant/go show her how independent/you have grown; go off and live your petty fictions/full of blatant contradictions/you can't see); "Simple", where both Carla and Claudia say goodbye (Simple are the ways we come apart/simple are the ways of love...simple enough for anyone to understand/but you); and "Getting Tall", where young Guido tells older Guido that he has to grow up (Knowing you'll have no one/ if you try to have them all...is part of getting tall). I don't begrudge him for taking them out, or at least I wouldn't have if he would have replaced them with anything besides a strip tease number from Luisa. This takes away her power and agency, and frankly, doesn't work. Cottilard is fantastic, but the number is intercut with her leaving him and telling him she can never forgive him. Both the speech and the song lose their power. I saw a Q & A with Marshall, who said he didn't think people would "buy" a standard musical so he had to figure out a way to make it believable. What he did was stifle all the songs by putting them on a soundstage, take away the imagination of the director by restricting it to one location, and cut any song that seemed a problem. I mean, in the original movie Marcello Mastraonni is wearing a sheet holding a whip and a chair "taming" all the women in his life. And you think people can't take singing? High School Musical just made billions and Glee won a golden globe for best new show. Really? If you don't want to make a musical don't make one, but don't f-ing apologize for it the entire time if you do.

Marshall isn't an auteur

This is presumptuous, but I think from what I've seen so far, it's true. Even though the musical NINE is an adaptation of movie, as a musical it's a pretty straightforward story. 8 1/2 isn't. Neither is Stardust Memories, or All That Jazz, two other movies about directors and their relationships with women, the latter a musical. Or, I would argue, another version of the director looking over his creation movies this year, Broken Embraces. Almodovar also has Bad Education, which might fit here as well. What these four directors have in common, though, is that their first impulse is film/creation. Fellini, Almodovar, Fosse, Allen all seem to work out their problems in their work. Fellini is brilliant that way. He lets his imagination have free range. He uses the camera like a telecsope, a microscope and a scalpel on himself, as well as a paintbrush and a hammer. Fosse does as well - All That Jazz is merciless.Stardust Memories I have in my head having seen it recently, and Allen references other directors and himself constantly. At the end of the film you're unsure if it's a send up of other directors, himself, or a fuck-you to the audience. What is clear, though, is that he is challenging himself formally to find something new in how he tells a story and indeed why he does. He's working it out in front of us. Nothing in NINE matches the 1:30 of quick cuts of Charlotte Rampling staring directly into the camera saying the same things in different ways. All That Jazz, which NINE has most often been compared to, is an act of a man judging himself and figuring out who he is and what his life has been. It's a mind-blowing movie, and Fosse brings all his talents to bear on it. He's merciless. And yes, there are musical numbers, which sometimes are part of the action, sometimes commenting. No one breaks into song (perhaps excepting "Everything Old is New Again"), but each song is part of the action, and nothing feels extraneous. When I was thinking about this, I figured that Almodovar is doing the same thing a bit in Broken Embraces, perhaps not working as obviously, but telling the tale of a blind director attempting to forget a lost love. It's convoluted, but within it Almodovar manages to re-film portions of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown with actors who were in the original. It's self-referential, of course, but you get the sense he's playing with the audience and our knowledge of his ouevre. With the last line, though, "The thing about a film is that you have to finish it", one wonders if he was just trying to find his way to the end of this movie and put whatever he had out there. Similarly, in Bad Education, the director within the film works in a style close to Almodovar and attempts to reconcile his past and his current work. Although some of it feels like a guessing game with him (what's true, what's not?), what's becoming clear is that any issue or emotional struggle he's having he works it out with a camera. Similar to Isherwood, he writes characters who are quite close to him, yet we're unsure what he's brought to bear from his own life and what's fictional. My point is that all the above me work out their issues in their art. The films are immediate, unsettling, entertaining, at times embarassing. And this is why they're brilliant. Why people love them. Marshall? Not taking any chances. Not working anything out. Seemingly more interested in how to make money in this genre than working anything out on film. Without that struggle, or at least the fearless spirit to try something new and out there, the story falls flat. What makes the films above work is that the filmmakers are auteurs with a point of view. I don't know that Marshall was doing anything but adapting and worrying about people seeing a musical. And that everything is as pretty as possible.
Speaking of that, where are any interesting faces? If you're going to do away with the all women gimmick of the musical, which makes it kind of wild and fascinating, then have something that reminds us of Fellini's fascination with interesting people. Or at least have fascination with something besides beauty. Was that Contini's point in this? Who he is as a filmmaker? I'm not sure they know who he is. He certainly is trying to figure that out in the film, but without using the actual medium of film to do it, the directors lost the major tool with which to make their point.

And what was that point? We're supposed to be happy that Contini can make a film again though he seems unable to have any personal relationship of any meaning? It seems a hollow story to tell. And better told and more poignant Sunday in the Park with George, if that's what they were trying to do. At least in that he's aware of what he's losing and how he can't connect and why.

I've said this before, but I had a professor say the difference between tragedy and pathos is that in a tragedy the person sees what's about to happen and is powerless to stop it. In this version, Marshall et al made Guido pathetic.

Casting

All of these people are game. I can't fault Daniel Day-Lewis. He's a great actor and he creates a character. Sadly, I can't see why any of these women would be obsessed with him. There's no spark. No warmth. He looks like a week away from rehab. And I really do like him as an actor. I just didn't get it. "Guido's Song" usually has some glee and excitement in it. Here it's all torture.

Cotillard is fantastic, but she's 15 or 20 years to young for it. We're supposed to believe that they have a long-standing relationship? First, they made him ten years older than the musical (50 instead of 40), and then cast someone who is so young they never could have shared a life together. She's great, but compare this to Roy Scheider and Leland Palmer's relationship in All That Jazz. No comparison. They were two equals who had grown up together, and knew each other's tricks. Luisa should be that for Guido. She sees him and know who he is. It gives the piece emotional depth. Why do we care if it feels like they've been married for three years and she's another starlet he married? She's brilliant at the end, but the number, as I mentioned above, feels chopped. She's great in "My Husband Makes Movies", but still didn't like the gimmick.

Hudson was good - I actually thought she did a great job, but what's this role? I thought if there was a point of view of this director and this whole piece, this character is what showed it. The whole song is about surface and clothes, and I think it's what Marshall was more interested in than the story. In the musical, Stephanie Necrophorous is critical of Contini (the trouble with Contini/He's the king of mediocrities/ a second-rate director who believes that he is Socrates....a typical Italian with his auto and biography/ a mixture of Catholocism, pasta and pornography... a superficial, womanizing, moderately charming Latin fraud....thanks to him we have boredom at the movies) to say the least. The song is intercut with Folies Bergeres. What do we have instead? Surprise! A woman who wants to have sex with him and loves Italian fashion. There are a few lines about Contini's flops in the movie, but no one is critical in a way that feels threatening, that would have brought on the crisis he's having. Especially not another woman who sees through it. Hudson was good, but it's emblematic of the miss on this.

Penelope Cruz was great--funny, sad, ridiculous in the right measure. I wish that she would have been matched by DDL. I know it's not fair to compare to the original, but just watch Sandra Milo and Marcello Mastroanni. It's brilliant. And how great would it have been, like the musical, to give Cruz a song like "Simple" to say goodbye to him? I really do love her, and she's totally game. Watch this at 7:48 for the original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y5q3MFwctw

Judi Dench - great, and her number is great, but annoyingly edited, like most of the numbers. Sudden changes in the frame that are jarring. Her character is Guido's confidante, but the number feels shoe-horned, no matter how much they explain she learned her trade in Paris. It feels contrived. She's great, as always.

Nicole Kidman - I liked her. What she comes in and does is a little too easy. The relationship is unclear, and it would've been nice to see more of her. Not a singer, but done no favors by that editing job. During the most emotional moment of the song, she's being shot full body from the back in a long shot, and there's a cut right at the end to head and shoulders in profile. What? Is it possible to have a tin ear and a tin heart?

Fergie - sounds great, but why the bentwood chairs - just reminded me of Cabaret. Like the sand, but why not on the beach. And why cut "Ti Voglio Bene"? It would have been great to establish character. Another thing of being fine if you change something, but please make it better or at least as good. And give her something to do besides glower. Edited within an inch of its life, again.

I felt overall that I wanted him to create something new, and what happened instead was a pale version of both the musical and the film, so all I could do was compare. The story was uninteresting, and it felt airless overall. Sad, really. It's based on a couple of pieces I really, really love. To be fair, it's a hard musical to pull off, but he didn't do any favors by seemingly missing the point. I would have loved to see someone who had a real point of view that's not about "beauty sexy", which just gets boring. I'm officially over that in all forms.

I'm sure Rob Marshall's a nice guy, but really, really dropped the ball on this one. If I could've picked something that took some chances and made no money, or something that felt this lifeless and pandering than made no money, I would've chosen the former. Sounds harsh, but I could just feel the fear in this movie. The fear of offending or the need to please. I mean, if you're making a film you're looking to please on some level, but you're still looking for the best way to tell that story, right? Makes me appreciate All That Jazz even more.

I just keep coming back to the only way to tell this story on film is to have the filmmaker making it really working through something. Or someone adept at faking that. That's how it would work.

I so, so wanted to like this film. I think this is the biggest disappointment I've had film-wise in about ten years.

Well, maybe somebody will tackle it again. I'm not holding my breath.

And by way of apology, it's not the most awful movie ever made. I'm sure the above is a result of my expectations. There were parts I enjoyed, and individual people--I don't think it's possible for me to hate Cruz, Cotillard, Dench, and company. I just didn't expect flat. A woman I met who liked it said "well, I just like musicals." I said "Well, I do, too, I love them, actually, and that has nothing to do with my not liking this." And I have no problem with glitzy and fun. It's just upsetting to see something with depth have the depth removed, and to no worthwhile effect. IMHO.

Saw it twice by the way.

Okay, now that that's done, I can move on.

Swish

I just finished one of the books I wrote about on my book list a few posts ago - Swish, by Joel Derfner. The subtitle is "My quest to become the gayest person ever and what ended up happening instead." And that, suprisingly, is what happens and gives the book depth.

Derfner, a musical theater composer, Harvard grad (as he reminds you), and too smart for his own good, has a great voice. I'm impressed with his ability to tell on himself; he's at times dangerously close to unlikeable. His honesty, though, and his great sense of humour, endear him to you. Or to me at least. He's human. Funny, smart, self-hating and self-aggrandizing in the same breath, he'd make a great friend.

What this collection shows more of, though, is his bravery and compassion. The essays are funny (I found myself laughing out loud a few times), and thought-provoking. The premise is that every time he does something that's super-gay, e.g. knitting, teaching aerobics, go-go dancing, casual sex, going to a gay camp, writing musical theater, he ends writing about something else, like his mother's death, his need to fit in, his anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, mental illness, why he makes art, body issues, his relationship with his partner, and more. The honesty of his writing manages to skirt the traps of facile quips and maudlin self-searching, resulting in humorous, honest, heartfelt and intelligent stories. And funny.

I was most struck by the longest, last story, in which he visits an ex-gay conference. It's probably some of the best writing I've read on it, giving both sides of the story, and leaving all intact with their humanity. He is honest about his own anger and confusion, as well as the true deep connections he feels with some of the men who are struggling with their sexuality. He's very smart about his own feelings, and how complicated the issue is, ultimately being able to love the people while acknowledging they may never agree. The man aren't cartoons, and he tells their sides exactly as they would, working out his own religious beliefs and feelings about his sexuality as well. It's sad that the majority (if not all) of the ex-gays seem like they will always be struggling, but Derfner evolves to the place where he is not condesceding or juding, and brings us along step by step on that journey.

Elton John is blurbed on the front of the book quoted that this is the best book about being gay he has ever read, and more than that it's a book about being human. I would concur in saying that the book (and the author's) heart is enormous, and through this search and its unexpected emotional journeys there is a great deal of compassion and humanity to be experienced.

Loved it.