MUGWUMP

The Prestige

I guess I should mention I saw The Prestige over the weekend and, I gotta say... I was underwhelmed. It really bugs me when a movie lets the audience get ahead of it and in this case, I was sitting there for the last 20 minutes, always knowing ahead of time what was coming when it was revealed. I figured it would end with some really good final twist... but there WASN'T another twist. So when the final credits started to roll, I just sat there thinking, "What? That's it??" and when I left the theatre I couldn't help but feel that the movie thought it was more clever than it actually was.

Also... I can't for the life of me remember what ends up of the Scarlett Johannsen character. One minute, she's there... and then I don't remember. If someone else saw this and can tell me, please do.

Dog Lover's Symphony

Mike sent this to me yesterday:

"When Brady and I went to see Three Times the other week, there was a trailer for a film called Dog Lover's Symphony before it. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Today it actually saw release in Los Angeles, so once again my mind is blown.

Please feast your eyes on the shocking trailer here

And if you aren't sold yet on the merits of this film, here is the LA Weekly review:

DOG LOVER'S SYMPHONY A toxic combination of obvious bromides and talentless filmmaking, writer-director Ted Fukuda's schmaltzy, tone-deaf romantic drama sets your teeth on edge from the outset and doesn't let up for 103 minutes. Jesse Berns plays Jerry, the world's least-believable white gang member, who, after getting arrested, becomes the pet project of do-gooding defense attorney Tom (Maxwell Caulfield). Jerry doesn't want to be anyone's charity case, but when he lays eyes on Tom's pretty daughter Susan (Alaina Kalanj), ?who works as a dog trainer, he decides that maybe turning over a new leaf might not be such a bad idea. While Jerry trains adorable pooch Toby and simultaneously courts Susan, we're cruelly water-tortured by the film's anemic production value, Fukuda's incompetent direction and the dim-bulb cast's awkward, snicker-worthy line readings. Is this whole meager endeavor in fact some sort of put-on? A deadpan parody of a Hollywood boy-meets-girl fantasy? Nope. Symphony's life lessons about the importance of listening to your heart — and its pathetic use of hankie-grabbing plot devices, including car accidents and the return of long-lost deadbeat dads — are unrelenting and stone-faced serious. Early on, you start to feel enormous sympathy for the film's dog performers, who don't have any idea what an extraordinarily awful movie they're in. Their human counterparts have no such excuse. (Fairfax) (Tim Grierson)"

Obviously I'm not working this town correctly if this gets made and I'm still scrambling.

The Squid and the Whale

I ended up going to the movies yesterday to see Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels in "The Squid and the Whale" and to my surprise and amazement, I discovered that I have some deep-seated issues regarding my parent's divorce (which happened when my brother and I were in the 4th grade). I say "surprise" because I have long believed that I handled our family split incredibly well -- remembering feeling a sense of relief and satisfaction when my Mom finally left my Dad, and believing that it was a necessity if any of us were to find any long term happiness -- but this movie stirred some things up in me... forcing me to re-examine that whole period.

You don't really see a lot of movies being produced that deal with divorce and the break-up of a family in a realistic way... "Kramer vs. Kramer" is the only one that springs to mind and I saw that in 1979 -- before I could even really understand it. Maybe that's why it's always been easy for me to leave this particular chapter of my life in the past or just to simply disregard it, but there were so many moments (while watching the movie) where I just sat in the dark thinking, "wow... I remember that!" over and over and over again. These were sad and hurtful and angry and bitter moments and time and time again I recognized as incredibly personal exactly what was being portrayed on the screen. To put it simply, it shook me.... So much so that after the end credits I told the people I was with that I had to go to the bathroom, and once I got into the stall I sobbed for a few moments.

I hadn't really wanted to go see the movie, (all I really knew about it was that it was about divorce and it sounded like a real downer), but I allowed myself to be talked into going because I wanted to get out of the house and spend some time with a friend... but I'm wondering now if that aversion to that movie choice was a subconscious sort of red flag from my brain subliminally sounding a warning alarm. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

In college and during the years since I've always gotten overly-sentimental when I spend time with friends' families... envying the open showing of affection and vicariously sponging some of it for myself... but always thinking that they were the anomalies. After all, I grew up in that era where divorce was becoming so common that it was almost unusual if you're parents WEREN'T split up. My generation was taught how to feel about it... (that it was 'for the best'... that it 'wasn't our fault'... that sometimes life didn't work out the way you expected, but that was 'OK') by single-mom/divorcees Alice (Linda Lavin) on 'Alice' and Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin) on 'One Day at a Time', and even by the sage Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae) on a very special episode of 'The Facts of Life'. My emotional preparedness for real life came through lessons taught on television, and... well... I guess I thought "if Tootie can handle it, then so can I!" So I puffed my chest out, held my chin up, and didn't really give the reality of the situation much more thought than the half an hour that these shows seemed to think the topic was worth, by the end of which everything would somehow be resolved.

Anyways I digress...The movie itself is very good... well crafted and solidly acted and insightfully written.... but the movie I saw yesterday wasn't the same movie that the people who were with me saw. They enjoyed it and found humourous moments through-out it where I did not. I just felt a deep and profound sadness. And that 'surprise' at the fact that there are things lingering in me that I'm not exactly aware of.... that might surface unexpectedly when spurred on... and like it or not, I might not be ready for them.

All of this, I think, is a testament to the film, which I recommend... just... well... you've been warned.

Batman Begins

Went to see the movie last night and absolutely loved it and definitely the best Batman movie out of any so far. As a word of advice, don't sit too close to the screen or it'll be so muddled you won't be able to make out what's going on.

To digress, I think this is a real problem with the way movies get shot these days. In the "olden days" a director would frame up a shot by looking through the camera and his director of photography would shoot it for him and somehow, it made it to the big-screen with all of the important story-telling details entact. Over the last couple of decades, directors have come from the world of music videos where their shots are designed for a smaller (television) screen. Most every director nowadays even watches a miniature video screen as each shot is captured. Then when they move to post-production, thanks to digital video editing, the entire picture is cut while watching small video screens. The end result is a movie that looks fantastic on your home t.v. set, but macro'd out, disjointed, and crammed full of jump cuts in a proper movie theater. (It was exactly this problem I had with The Bourne Supremacy, which I hated in the theater but loved at home.)

Engaging Peter

No... no real new news about my movie Engaging Peter, but I'm running light on links today.