Political Actors

Janeane from Des Moines is an unusually and cutting new movie that essentially pulls a Borat on the GOP contenders for President in run-up to the 2012 Iowa Caucuses.  It opens with a clip from ABC News where Diane Sawyer introduces footage of a desperate and emotional Iowa housewife named Janeane Wilson begging candidate Mitt Romney to "save small families" because they are falling apart.  The rest of the movie tells the story leading up to this moment, as we watch Janeane, a religious conservative Republican simultaneously going to candidate events to decide how to cast her vote and trying to keep her personal life from falling to pieces.

The secret is that Janeane Wilson is actually Jane Edith Wilson, a highly-talented Los Angeles-based actress who grew up in Ames, Iowa, and who fearlessly plays this character and takes her straight into the belly of America's political beast, sitting down in a diner with Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Rep. Steve King, questioning Gov. Rick Perry's wife on her way to the campaign bus, lobbing questions to Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich on the campaign trail.  Off the trail, "Janeane" faces her husband's layoff and their subsequent loss of health insurance, her alienation from her grown children, the potential loss of her house and a serious threat to her own health.

All of this done with a straight face, no winks, the only clues to the deception being the end credits which lists both actors/roles and politicians playing "Himself" or "Herself."  Knowing that the politicians have been duped by Janeane creates an initial feeling that the enterprise might be unfair.  It's a grueling road through Iowa, pressing the flesh and trying to master retail politics.  But as Director Grace Lee had said, the politicians are themselves all acting.  When Bachmann attempts to pander to Janeane by blaming President Obama for the rise in tax prices we see that moment when Bachmann looks to King for affirmation of her contention, not sure if she should run with the lie or not.  She does.

The main question Janeane ends up asking all the candidates regards healthcare, and the GOP candidates give her nothing to go on, just platitudes about health savings accounts (not a solution for the laid-off) and lowering costs (which Obamacare attempts to address).  What Janeane learns is that Planned Parenthood, which she's disparaged as a death-factory, is her provider of last resort, and the Obamacare the candidates want to kill is actually the solution.  This may be the first feature film where Obamacare is kinda the hero.

As a friend of Grace Lee and family, I may be biased in favor of her sensibility by familiarity, but from what I hope is an objective filmmaking point-of-view, I think she's created something new.  It's a combination of documentary, mockumentary, drama and agitprop, all executed with technical skill and beauty.  When seen in the context of Lee's previous features, both The Grace Lee Project, a very funny documentary investigating the proliferation of Asian-American women sharing her name, and American Zombie, a metaphoric mockumentary standing up for zombie rights, Janeane for Des Moines is essentially an essay on "What's the Matter with Kansas?"  Why do conservative Middle Americans vote against their own economic self-interest and well-being?

While the passing of the recent election is probably not doing a ton of favors for Janeane's shelf-life, and already the 2012 GOP candidates feel like characters trapped in a time capsule as the media discusses potential 2016 candidates like Rubio, Christie and the younger Paul, conservative Middle America hasn't suddenly vanished with the reelection of their Antichrist, President Barack Obama.  This movie will remain relevant and cautionary.

Unless or until, of course, the Affordable Care Act becomes a part of everyday life and the benefits are felt by all.

Not So Funny

It turns out that Mitt Romney is flat out lying when he says government spending has "exploded" under President Obama:



Ah, Willard. How do you know he's lying? His lips are moving. And then, of course, sometimes he laughs:



WTF with that? Garry Wills has some thoughts:

Everyone has noticed by now the non-laugh laugh of Mitt Romney, a kind of half-stifled barking. But what does it mean? It is blurted out as abruptly as it is broken off. Is it a kind of punctuation, part comma, part full stop, part interrogatory mark? What, if anything, is it trying to convey? Why does it seem more like coughing or burping than laughter?

Does it mean: “I know you are saying something critical about me, and I don’t know how to answer it, so I’ll just pretend that you did not mean it seriously”?

Or: “I want to show I am just a regular fellow, so I’ll try out my regular-fellow laugh”?

Or: “I hope you will take what I just said as something humorous, though I doubt it, but I’ll see if I can start a laughing chain reaction”?

Or: “I want to change the subject, but there is no natural way to do that, so I’ll just throw in this comic rictus as a non-sequitur”?

Or: “The Cheshire Cat could evanesce by leaving just a smile behind, so maybe I can avoid attention by disappearing away from my laugh”?

James Lipton has some ideas how Mitt can "fix" it:

He is so obviously "acting" after all.

Almost Surprise-less

I started this blog six years ago on another Oscar night, when Crash won Best Picture, surprising some who thought Brokeback Mountain had it in the bag. So without any further adieu, here's my notes on tonights Academy Awards.

If there were any surprises at this year's Oscar ceremony, they were:

(1) The Artist did not sweep all it's nominated categories, losing a number to Hugo (while retaining the big ones)

(2) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo won two of it's categories, in both Film and Sound Editing, not too shabby

(3) While not a 100% surprise, I think after the SAG Award win by Viola Davis for Best Female Actor (The Help) there was some expectation that this fine actress would finally be rewarded with Oscar gold, especially since her movie has a Best Picture nomination and that of the victor did not. However, Meryl Streep finally won again 30 years after her previous win for Sophie's Choice and I think it was due to five factors.

• Most importantly, she played a significant historical figure convincingly and aged tremendously in the role as well. That's pretty much a recipe for an acting Oscar.

• Second, the 17 nominations have been touted heavily this year, pushed by producer Harvey Weinstein and his p.r. machine, so it's a bit of a career award as well.

• Third, The Help has taken some hits from the left tarred as being too Civil Right-light. I think this is unfair considering how Hollywood traditionally makes serious "issue" movies, but it could not have helped.

• Fourth, some thought Viola Davis' role was not large enough to be Best Female Actor and more of a supporting role, although that view is really only supported by the trailer for the movie, which over-emphasizes Emma Stone's crusading white girl character, while the movie is clearly Viola's story in the main plot, giving her the V.O., the beginning and the end.

• Finally, the Academy is generally old, male and white...and Meryl is a lot closer to their demographic than Viola. One can only hope her .

At this point I find it hard to get up in arms about any Oscar slights. My three favorite films of last year, in rough order, were:

1. The Tree of Life
2. Shame
3. Bridesmaids

So there were a few nominations in the bunch, but no wins. But I still got to enjoy these movies and I expect to see them again long before I rematch The Artist, which I did enjoy, albeit not at the same level as these three.

As the director and lead actor of The Artist (both Oscar winners tonight) might say:

C'est la vie.

Game of Anticipation

Now that I've read four and a half George RR Martin A Song of Ice & Fire books, being just about in the middle of the one that came out late last year, it's strange to look at the new HBO teaser trailer (#2, with a lot more imagery) for Game of Thrones Season Two.

On the one hand, I'm so incredibly super-psyched to see these characters made flesh again. Tyrion, Danys, Jon, Robb, even fucked-up Cersei (as played so well by Lena Headley), and now Melisandre (being played by Black Book's awesome Carice Van Houten) and fucked-up Stannis.

On the other hand, these characters are like ancient history to me now. When Season One ended after the 10th episode, I was so insanely eager to know what happened to next to these characters, I read A Clash of Kings which is the basis for this upcoming season, and it's a doozy. If they get all the plot in and pull off a huge mother of all battles, it could be the best season of TV since The Wire.

But then I read A Storm of Swords, which the series creators/showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss say is too big for one season and will be split in two. And A Feast for Crows, the slower one that opens up new character veins in entirely fresh locations, and pissed off some diehard fans by splitting in half the simultaneous chronological events with popular characters that Martin held for the fifth book, the one I'm currently reading, A Dance with Dragons.

So I'm 3,500 pages down the road in this epic saga from the events that will kick off this new season in March. Some of these characters...well, they're almost like ancient history.

I will say this: if you love Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, as the Emmy and Golden Globe voters did or maybe even more, this is the season for you. We left with his father making him Hand of the King - the job in which the last two holders have died while serving, Jon Arryn (who's suspected murder sets off the whole series and plots) and Ned Stark (who everybody thought was the series lead for the run). Thus far the only power Tyrion's had is as much of his family fortune as his father allowed. Now he has real power.

I'll also say that my favorite book, the third, A Storm of Swords, lives up to it's name. It's not just the violence, it's all about the costs of war, not just to the characters but to the land, the people. The ending is like, three corkscrew twists that blow your mind to pieces. And while I'm so glad they'll take two seasons to tell the whole story, it's painful to think that's maybe three more years away.

So here's to the return of the champion series. As excited as I am for the March return of Mad Men, the rich world of Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce is not really a fair match for the massive tapestry of Westeros and lands beyond.

Winter is coming. Just in time for Spring.

Catchy

I'm liking the way Joseph Gordon-Leavitt is making his choices:

Go, Vermin!

A Coupla Flicks

Happy 2012. I'll open the year by mentioning two movies I've seen over the past week that were both terrific experiences, for wildly different reasons: The Descendants and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (a.k.a. MI:4).

The former was made for a fraction of the cost of the latter and features, to my eye, zero special effects. It's what should be a small movie by today's standards but it feels big, due to the Hawaii locale, some key shots of some very important (to the plot) land in Kauai, and the care with which the moments unfold. All that, and George Clooney.

It's interesting to me who loves and does not love the movie. Although it's the closest thing to a traditional drama (or maybe "dramady") amongst the movies I've seen this year, none of the senior citizens I've spoken with about it really cared for it. Also, it's not as impressive on a screener as it is in the theater, as it's all about small significant moments, detailed expressions, the communal theatrical experience pays off with different audience members picking up different touches at different times, laughter building, shared sympathy during the tougher moments.

I took my 12-year-old, who's growing more sophisticated in his movie tastes, and we both enjoyed it, and both had the same favorite character: Sid. He's a guy who tags along with Clooney and his daughters as they go to hunt down the man who Clooney's learned has been sleeping with his comatose wife prior to her life-threatening jet-ski accident. Sid is an iconic laid-back Hawaiian surfer dude, always smiling, always on his own stoner wavelength, with some of the best lines in the movie and a little secret of his own. Everyone seems to agree that it's great to see Beau Bridges again, as Cousin Hugh, a lynchpin of he plot/sub-plot convergence around a land deal that Clooney and family are being forced to make due to changes in Hawaiian property law.

As for Tom Cruise and company, SEE IT IN IMAX. There's nothing like climbing the side of the world's tallest building, in Dubai, with special agent Ethan Hunt and a gigantic floor-to-ceiling screen. The key stunt sequence was actually performed by Cruise in the location, no joke, and it feels different than a CGI greenscreen fest.

I've seen MI:1 (directed by Brian DePalma) and MI:2 (a rather neutered John Woo) but missed MI:3 (J.J. Abrams). I found the first one to have exciting moments and an interesting false-flashback twist, with the opening credits, a suspended Cruise scene and the climactic helicopter-in-Chunnel sequence being the best parts, but the second one did not even feel like a Mission: Impossible story -- there was virtually no teamwork, lynchpin of the weekly series. Aside from Thandie Newton, not much to recommend it. This one appears to be the big winner of the series.

What makes the new one work is the emphasis on teamwork (it's even underlined at the end), great casting of Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner and, thank the cinema gods, the inspired choice of Brad Bird as director. This is Bird's first live-action feature, but he made my favorite (hands-down) Pixar movie, The Incredibles, which recalled and spoofed 1960's James Bond-style spy thrillers as much as superhero tropes. Unlike some action directors, Bird doesn't over-cut the exciting stuff. As I'd say for David Fincher, the camera is always in the right place. There are touches that seem to be his, like a fluttering glove stuck to the side of the Dubai building, Ethan tossing a tip on a table, little things that make it more fun and more real.

While I can't claim to be an expert in this movie series, what struck me was that, as in all good adventure movies, the best laid plans go awry and inspired improvisation has to save the day. What feels different about this one is the understanding that cutting edge technology will almost always have kinks -- it comes with the territory, no room for grousing, just try and move on. It starts with a Russian pay phone that delivers the mission message to Hunt but doesn't self-destruct on time until Hunt gives it a smack and includes loss of wireless signals, botched mask-making, trying to do a retinal scan on the side of a moving train.

This is essential the Silicon Valley experience, something Bird is close to due to his time up in NoCal at Pixar. As a colleague of mine once said, "It's not cutting edge software unless it crashes."

That spirit gives the movie it's moxie. And the IMAX chase through a desert sandstorm doesn't hurt either.

Here's to more good flicks -- along with more aggravating politics -- in 2012. Thanks for reading in 2011, and I hope you'll keep returning to Nettertainment to ride it out, as long as I'm posting.

PS: They finally caught Omar!

Just the Facts, Ma'am

It's like a piece of television history dying off like an old oak tree. R.I.P, Harry Morgan:

Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the acerbic but kindly Colonel Potter in the long-running television series “M*A*S*H,” died on Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96.
...

In more than 100 movies, Mr. Morgan played Western bad guys, characters with names like Rocky and Shorty, loyal sidekicks, judges, sheriffs, soldiers, thugs and police chiefs.

On television, he played Officer Bill Gannon with a phlegmatic but light touch to Jack Webb’s always-by-the-book Sgt. Joe Friday in the updated “Dragnet,” from 1967 to 1970. He starred as Pete Porter, a harried husband, in the situation comedy “Pete and Gladys” (1960-62), reprising a role he had played on “December Bride” (1954-59). He was also a regular on “The Richard Boone Show” (1963-64), “Kentucky Jones” (1964-65), “The D.A.” (1971-72), “Hec Ramsey” (1972-74) and “Blacke’s Magic” (1986).

...

Mr. Morgan’s television credits were prodigious. He once estimated that in one show or another, he was seen in prime time for 35 straight years. Regarded as one of the busiest actors in the medium, he had continuing roles in at least 10 series, which, combined with his guest appearances, amounted to hundreds of episodes.

Wow, talk about a prolific career. It's a face and delivery a number of generations grew up with.

Another end-of-the-century moment, about a decade later than originally scheduled.

Moneygoodness

Moneyball is the best kind of throwback movie, one that feels completely new because it's tackling a subject that hasn't been done by a big movie before and it doesn't bobble the ball. It's a 1970's movie in tone, the kind of high end Robert Altman-type picture with long lenses, a quasi-documentary feel, but looking at great, unvarnished performances.

It feels very, very honest, not just for the naturalistic shooting style, but also because it's a true baseball movie, one of the rare true baseball movies, because it isn't about winning. Baseball, as anyone who really knows the game will tell you, is really about losing and how you handle that, how you tackle that, how you come back from that, and how it happens over and over again. No team in baseball is World Champion forever, no manager has a perfect record, and if you're successful only 1/3 of the time you get up to bat, you're the best player in the game most years.

Brad Pitt carried this project, this adaptation of Michael Lewis' book, from when Steven Soderbergh was going to direct it with a Steve Zaillian script to the current version directed by Bennett Miller (building nicely on his debut feature, Capote) with the Aaron Sorkin rewrite, and he was smart to do so. His Billy Beane, the major league draft who turned down a full Stanford scholarship to underperform all expectations as a player and sought redemption moving up the scouting ranks to General Manager of the then-hapless Oakland A's, is a great, driven, relatable movie character. We're with Pitt the whole way, infusing the leading role with character touches, an easy, flawed guy to root for, especially when he picks up Jonah Hill's Peter Brand character, based on a real-life Ivy League Economics Major who taught Beane the Bill James way of looking at evaluating players, capsizing the entire value proposition of the player salary game.

I'm sure this movie will work fine on a big TV with your Pay-Per-View, HBO, Academy Screener, whatever. It's not spectacularly filled with special effects. It doesn't rely on a throbbing soundtrack or familiar pop tune. It's all about character, story, and how we battle big to make good on regrets.

And it's a pleasure to be in a theater with Beane, Brand, Coach Art Howe and rest of the players. It's actually about something.

Working Help

The movie version of The Help, so to speak, works, which is both surprise and a relief. It's the best kind of Hollywood common reader movie, a.k.a. "middlebrow" entertainment designed to enlighten as well as, ultimately, uplift and delight. In the tradition's best movies -- say, The Best Years of Our Lives, To Kill a Mockingbird, there's enough complexity that we accept the movie as a truthful reflection of a problematic real world era.

We accept the flattening of historical complexities into good guys and bad guys in return for the superior performances of actors like Viola Davis, who holds the movie together as focused voice and biggest journey, the journey of self-respect that was the foundation of the Civil Rights Era and resonates in the ongoing struggle today.

While being fairly labelled as Civil Rights light, it's effective in bringing painful questions back, including what led up to the era.

Slavery, America's original sin, was about the complete denial of a human being's identity, the person as property, that identity to be bought and sold no matter how many times it breaks up a slave family. The uneasy truce that followed the Civil War for 100 years was essentially a recodification of the old system, with personhood still denied by an epithet, by the devilish nerve to kidnap young men and women in the night and hang them from trees.

The biggest historical news moment in The Help is the shooting of African-American rights activist, Medger Evers, happening in the very town of Jackson where the movie's set. Considering the tripling of death threats against the President when Obama took office, there's something palpable about the film for our time, a safe place to think about a time when America was not as fair, in law or custom, as it is now. As the film has a comedic heart, its irony is more ultimately more positive than negative, but it's an emotional experience throughout, in large part due to the exemplary cast of women.

Viola Davis' Abiline is given the main voice, not Emma Stone's Skeeter although the trailer would have you fooled into thinking it's all through the white chick's eyes. Davis, 41, has won two Tony's and was nominated for an Oscar for Doubt, so I think the only question is whether she gets nominated in the Best Actress category or the more likely chance of dominating as Supporting Actress. There's an argument to be made that it's an ensemble piece, but you can't submit Stone as Best Actress without betraying the story. I haven't read the book, but saw that it uses three voices -- Abiline, Skeeter and Minny -- which the filmmakers wisely consolidated into Abiline.

Davis is the lead, with Stone close behind and the terrific Octavia Spencer as the rebel, Minny. I loved seeing Jessica Chastain playing the opposite of her idealized mother figure in The Tree of Life, Allison Janney is great as Skeeter's mom, Sissy Spacek and Cicely Tyson are welcome anchors at the senior end, and Stone does come out of this a leading lady who can act, is naturally attractive in an interestingly non-bombshell way, and may just be the current smart it girl of her young generation.

I don't want to post the trailer because it's both misleading and spoiler-filled. Just trust me that you don't have to feel guilty going to see it. Even white Liberal guilt.

Someday, it'll probably be a musical.

Dinklage for the Win

With the 2011 Emmy Award nominations today, is there any doubt who is the greatest sentimental favorite in the bunch? Peter Dinklage (per my reading) is the only member of the Game of Thrones cast to win a nomination, as Best Supporting Actor in a Dramatic Series, and as Tyrion Lannister, the witty, nay brilliant dwarf son hated by his father (the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms), disliked by his sister (the Queen), loved by his brother and wrongly accused of murder, he steals every scene in which he appears.

As his role is expected to grow in future seasons, this is the perfect time to give him the award. A full list of reasons come from People's website, and if you haven't yet seen him in the role or just want to enjoy some great moments again along with some smart actor commentary, here you go:



C'mon, justice of the Gods.

Smart Code

I'm sure it'll be viewed long into the future on all kinds of devices, but since it's only been in theaters two weekends you still have a great opportunity to see the new mindbender sci-fi movie, Source Code, in a movie theater. It's good to see there for a number of reasons.

For one, it's legit. A good "what if" science fiction concept, a few really controlled settings, and these big long shots of the train moving into the city of Chicago and, repeatedly from all different angles, blowing into smithereens. Lots to think about, and then "boom" again. Until he gets it right.

For another, it's the second feature from director Duncan Jones, who's Moon with Sam Rockwell was reportedly another excellent picture. That one had very little budget, this one is clearly at another level, and one imagines the next one could be very big. In the Christopher Nolan vein, Jones appears to be a cinematic Brit who makes some highly suspenseful sequences, has a good eye for shots, and still delivers an engaging story. Even though Source Code is one of those brain-twisters where someone will post the inconsistencies and impossibilities on IMDB, the logic is good enough that you stop worrying about it and go along with the character's emotional ride. Kudos to writer Ben Ripley.

The third reason to see it is Jake Gyllenhaal delivering his best (to my mind) leading man job to date, the first one where I felt he was completely snapped into the role and I was with him all the way. I've loved him in more character work, like Zodiac and, of course, his really brilliant work in Brokeback Mountain, but I like him as the sci-fi hero, a driven soldier in a hellish purgatory that he's forced to work out the way he's being told by Vera Farmiga over a television monitor.

It's a nightmare situation, leavened with the opportunity to repeat and, standing out in the thankless girl role, Michelle Monaghan. They do have a repartee reminiscent of 1940's screen dialogue rhythms, especially in the variations, sometimes subtle, in the repetitions.

Ultimately what gives Source Code resonance is the core value of the "do-over." It's a common wish for one to go back in time to change something, thwart a negative outcome. Fixation on this wish can lead to questions of free will. Is it better that we have some sort of destiny to blame -- or thank, thus absolving ourselves of responsibility, or is Free Will the only way out of the trap of predetermination via genetics, upbringing, God's will?

My favorite image in Source Code is of Gyllenhaal's head on the tracks, like a Perils of Pauline cliffhanger from movie theaters circa 1914, the ultimate expression of pre-destiny. History is just a train rolling relentlessly down the tracks on its fixed schedule (the overhead shots of the train approaching the city, passing other trains) and it'll run us over sooner or later. Universal human mortality -- you keep trying to stumble away, frantically try another blind path to a distant solution, rail at your fellow man, yet there you find yourself on the train again, and the only break in the inevitable forward motion is when -- bam! -- the lights go out for good.

Not with a whimper, but a bang.

Here's the trailer. It's not exactly spoilerish but does explain a lot of the basic premise, which maybe is a good thing. But be forewarned:



Looking forward to more exciting stories from director Jones.

Family + Wrestling

Win Win is a one of those movies you can overpraise too easily. It'll probably play great on Netflix, shot fine but not memorably, a deft suburban comedy with issues of real pain but ultimate faith in family and community, even if you're taking your lumps. Just a very solid and engaging character-driven story in the best sense -- never character-wallowing, but thankfully about recognizable people, and inhabited by a very, very fine cast of mainly New York actors.

Paul Giamatti, one of the greatest character actor leading men of all time (I mean, American Splendor and John Adams?), is just so naturally empathetic, even when he's making a questionable decision. Amy Ryan is great as his wife and they're great together, his friends Bobby Carnavale and Jeffrey Tambor are hilarious, and as the alternate family, Melanie Lynsky (starred and started in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures with Kate Winslet) is by turns infuriating and moving, the legendary Burt Young is the grandfather with early dementia, and the new kid, the wrestling prodigy, Alex Shaffer, has big, big future ahead of himself.

Director Tom McCarthy made The Visitor and The Station Agent before this (neither of which, I'm ashamed to say, have I seen through yet) while acting in things like The Wire and Little Fockers. He's clearly carving out a very nice spot for himself as a solid storyteller that great actors want to work with, and he gives them plenty of time to rehearse. A less juiced version of the Woody Allen model? Good for him, what a relief from all the superhero movie trailers and 3D kids animated movies. And anything with a thin young waif-warrior throwing a punch and knocking out a 250 lb guy. One with 1000 movies, sure. Not 100.

If you believe stories are being moral tales, tilted reflections that in some way inform how we live our lives, teach us certain choices, and you want to laugh a little and be moved a little, this is a flick for you. You'll think about it afterwards, about Kyle and how he handles himself. About what the grandpa wants and how important that is.



About paying someone to fix that water heater.

Good Woman

Liz Taylor, RIP. She proved that she walked the walk, from early gay friends (McDowell, Clift) to her unmatched contribution to AIDS awareness back in the dark days of the 1980's.

And her friends remember her for it.

F'Real

The Fighter is a great movie and I wasn't expecting it. It's director David O. Russell's most sustained and successful film, with a great story wrapped in a true indie spirit, shot in the streets and gyms and crack dens of Lowell, Massachusetts.

It's based on the true story of a great boxer, Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg), who's a solid guy in every sense, but he's 31 and has his last shot to be more than a stepping-stone. His half-brother, an ex-boxer named Dickey Eklund is his trainer, but he's in it for the crack money. His mother is his manager, and she's toxic as well. In the trailer it looked like Christian Bale's astonishing performance as Dickey might overturn the narrative ship, but it's actually just an extremely sharp and powerful reflecting subplot, particularly during a point where the story bifurcates, and when it reunites it's with a vengeance.

As much as its a boxing movie, it's about family, asking what do you owe your fellow family members, and what do they owe you. Melissa Leo's transformation in her role as the mother is a departure from anything I've seen her do before, the hair and outfits and the shoes, but also the incredible specificity she achieves in how she so expertly applies guilt, shame and loyalty in dealing not just with her two sons but her seven heinous daughters as well.

Amy Adams is the other big name in the movie, has a notable upgrade on the noble girlfriend role, and she gets Lowell, gets to curse, and actually has an impact on the story. She and Wahlberg make a convincing couple in their love scenes together, very sweet. It's a tribute to Wahlberg's success here as a leading man that all those around him are getting accolades, while he holds down the fort with quiet decency and a body he trained for four years to play the role.

Wahlberg evidently held the movie together over a long gestation as well. It makes sense for him to go back to Massachusetts, as he did so well in The Departed. When you see the real Micky and Dickey for a few moments at the end of the movie, it all makes sense.

These two guys appear to be exactly who they are in the movie. Two inseparable brothers, one who's silent and steady, the other who can't shut his mouth.

True love.

I Love Actors

They can be crazy in real life but the good ones are so good, understand human behavior even if they aren't book smart, and some (Jesse Eisenberg, obviously) are both. The grand old man on this one is Robert Duvall, arguably the best living American movie actor, but the guy I relate to the most is Mark Ruffalo:



Annette Bening has rank here, but all smart smart actors, better exchange than the men on balance. Helena Bonham Carter seems like she'd be a blast to hang out with and Nicole Kidman has more depth than I expected:



One of the pleasures of awards season: the roundtables.

Shirley, You Can't Be Serious

Leslie Neilsen, R.I.P.



Anyone else have such a complete 180 degree late career switcheroo (from unremarkably stolid dramatic to spoofy comedic actor) and have it last as long?

Jill Clayburgh

Always classy and working until nearly the end, actress Jill Clayburgh has passed at the relatively young age of 66, after a twenty-one year struggle with leukemia. She made her name as a new kind of archetype in the mid 1970's, every-woman feminist roles that emerged trailing the movement, neurotic and flawed and human, resistant to caricature, overdue to reach American screens. Her signature film, Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman (cheekily named in homage to Jean-Luc Godard's A Married Woman), for which she received an Oscar nomination, was important to women like my mother during that era of emerging/emerged liberation:



Bravo.

The Shat

He's so the man, profiled in this week's New York Times Magazine, in the Kentucky horse world he loves so dearly, with stuff like this:

What makes him content, besides the money, is the adulation he gets from his fans. People thank him for the years. Six-year-olds, 20-something bloggers, old ladies. “Bloggers think I’m cool,” he said. “I wish I knew what it was about me that was cool so I can repeat it. I’ve been in front of people their entire life. Oh, there are so many iterations of William Shatner.”

Nice accompanying video as well:

Love. That. Shat.

Daddy's Home

There are entertainment careers and then there's the career of Dennis Hopper, just passed at 74, who was an actor, director, photographer and headcase with the biggest ups and downs imaginable. Having hit Hollywood in the late 1950's he acted beside his idol, James Dean, in both the landmark Rebel Without a Cause and the blockbuster, Giant, then got himself banished due to Method acting on the set of a Henry Hathaway movie. Later reinstated by Hathaway himself, Hopper went on to ignite the Hollywood youth movement with his independent release, Easy Rider, which was not only Hopper's directorial debut but also made the long-struggling Jack Nicholson a star. No doubt directors like Scorsese and Spielberg have Hopper to thank for getting their breaks, but with his second film, the ill-fated The Last Movie, Hopper trashed it all in a drug-fueled orgy of endless principle photography and long-gestating over-editing that again made him a pariah.

After getting kicked out of the town of Taos for his psychotic behavior and pulling a gig on Apocalpyse Now -- like Giant, the over-budget scandal of its time, he went on to accidentally direct the low-budget Out of the Blue when the original director crapped out, doing a terrific job also acting as a ne'er-do-well dad just out of jail, mirroring his own struggles. He lobbied hard for and secured the indelible role of Frank Booth in David Lynch's 80's milestone, Blue Velvet, breaking some unknown gas and murmuring, "Daddy's home..." as he molested Isabella Rossellini. Colors was probably his biggest-budgeted directing effort, also in the 1980's, and he had the lead villain role in -- again the most expensive Hollywood picture to date -- Waterworld.

Along the way his accomplished photography and art world cred included a long friendship with Bruce Connor, in the very top tier of mid-20th century underground filmmaking pioneers.

A few months ago, Matt Zoller Seitz put together this terrific docu-video on Hopper. Enjoy:



I'd say, "Dennis, we hardly knew ye." But I think we did.

Proximity

At first glance Up in the Air appears to be about rootlessness, and that's certainly part of the mix. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, the peripatetic airline passenger pursuing a milestone number of frequent flier miles as he zigzags around the U.S. firing people who's bosses outsource the unpleasant task to his Omaha-based firm. Along the way he picks up a romance with the "female version of you, but with a vagina," played by the pitch-perfect Vera Farmiga, a young apprentice played by newcomer Anna Kendrick who is on the verge of bringing webcam layoffs to the firm and thus grounding Ryan short of his goal, and even his niece's wedding in upper Wisconsin. In the winter. In slush.

What makes Up in the Air (based on the book by Walter Kirn but considerably altered) resonant in our recessionary times are the real-person interviews, fitting right into the story but made up of recently laid-off workers who were given the chance by director Jason Reitman to say what they wish they had said at their own point of termination. (In the management-capitalism-speak of the movie, they are told that they job "is no longer available," as if the losing worker was expecting to purchase it, like an airline ticket or an a/v receiver.) And while the dialogue and scene changes are filled with wit that plays so well with Clooney in the lead -- his best performance since Syriana and much more of a play on his iconic charm -- the romance and the comedy are leavened with the pain that's happening on our nation's Main Streets (or Main Corporate Parks), and tinged with loneliness that follows you out of the theater.

The big theme of Up in the Air is actually proximity, an exploration of the choices we make as to how close we want to be with family, friends, lovers, as well as the ways in which both globalism and technology are collapsing distances which leaves us with a surfeit of proximity and a deficit of human warmth.

On one hand, Clooney is the perfect expression of his firm, which brings life-changing (often ruining) decisions made in the corner office by your cubicle to you from halfway across the country. The movie sides with Clooney's in-person approach against Kendrick's T-1 firings plan, but a step back and there's a cost anyway, to society and, in a certain way, to Clooney himself. He's inured himself to rich human emotion, distanced from his sister and her family, tripped up by his own inexperience when he actually tries to reach for real emotional closeness, a man who thinks his home is the network of modern airports and airplanes since his own home is barely a shoebox.

This is a modern movie where critical decisions are revealed by Blackberry Messenger and no one looks back. Where clothes are kept on open steel kitchen shelves for easy packing and survival skills include knowing which line to choose at TSA. Where major corporate moves are abstracted into the ether by contract and boarding pass.

While the movie leaves it up to us to come up with our own solutions, there is one moment where Clooney asks a firee to question why he dropped his dream career to pursue a corporate one, and proffers that he should return to that vocational path in order to earn back his own self-respect and that of his kids. Is that a glib feint on the part of the movie, the Hollywood idea that if you follow your dream, you'll be better for it in the end?

I have no idea the number of Americans who lost their job or their business in this recession that were indeed following that dream -- the bakery or graphics company or auto dealership that went out of business as the result of this year's round of nightmarish cutbacks, but I can't help wondering if there's not a new/old community-based economy on the way, or if that might not be the only solution. Cut the cable but keep the Web service, remove the main house phone line but keep the family cellphone plan, give the quick-service restaurants a run for their money.

Is there some way our new connectivity and recession-honed consciousness can lead to a new (Middle) American societal rebirth? Are the ruralpolitans signaling hope for the future?



Or are we just waiting for the next wave of the baton from our corporate overlords?