BLAME IT ON THE WEATHERMAN

Check out my review of the new WWII drama Pressure...

...online at Phoenix Magazine. Have a great weekend everybody!

STRING THEORY

Playing today at 1 p.m. at the Vail Comedy Festival in Vail, Colorado:

On a String--Our heroine Isabel (Isabel Hagen) finds herself in the title state, and the string is steadily being pulled tighter. She's a professional violist in New York, playing in a quartet and picking up solo gigs at weddings, funerals, proposals, the occasional film score.

Played by Isabel Hagen, who also wrote and directed and who really is a Julliard-trained violist, Isabel lives in a smallish apartment with her oddball musical family--pleasantly inappropriate parents (Dylan Baker and Karen Blood); passive-aggressive pianist brother (Oliver Hagen, the director's real-life brother). Her love life is a disappointing low-level mess, she suffers chronic wrist pain, and she's worried about an upcoming audition for the Philharmonic. She gets a job teaching violin to a little girl, and drifts into an attraction with her married father (Frederick Heller).

We see the strange episodes of her life, some funny, some poignant, some creepy, almost all of them awkward and tinged with frustration. Violists, I am told, are a traditional butt of musician's jokes, as in: "Q: What's the difference between a violist and a coffin?  A: With a coffin, the dead person is on the inside" or "Q: What does the viola section have in common with the Beatles? A: Neither have played together since 1969."

This movie seems to be a dramatization of this hapless state of simply being a violist. The focus is on Hagen's performance; her onscreen version of herself is patient and emotionally open, with a charming, inviting smile and manner. But she's stretched thin--Isabel is a serious, exquisitely-trained artist knocked around by her cloutless station within the classical music world.

This modest, surefooted gem has some of the flavor of minor-key indie comedies of the '80s and '90s, and the performances, both acting and musical, are impressive. It played last month at Phoenix Film Festival, and if you happen to be at the Vail Comedy Festival today, as in Saturday, May 23, you can catch it at 1 p.m. Hopefully it will go on to find a wider audience.

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A MANDALORIAN

Happy Friday! Check out my review of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu...

...now in theaters, online at Phoenix Magazine.

SISTER ACT

Happy Friday to everybody! Check out my review of the revenge yarn Is God Is...

...now in theaters, online at Phoenix Magazine.

BARACK-NID

Time for another edition of my infrequently recurring feature "Weird-Ass Old Comics." This time, we're looking at...

...The Amazing Spider-Man, issue #583, from March of 2009. This is a much more latter-day vintage of comic than I would normally collect; obviously it was the presence of President (then President-Elect) Barack Obama, sharing the cover with Spidey, that made me pick it up. But I had never gotten around to reading it.

Last week Obama was the guest of Stephen Colbert in a prerecorded interview from the Obama Presidential Center, slated to open on June 19th in Chicago. The comic was shown on display at the Center--Colbert teased Obama about having been featured on a Spider-Man cover before Obama was (issue #573, November of 2008)--so I dug out my copy and read it.

Obama doesn't appear in the comic's main story, a sweet feature about Peter Parker's long-suffering office pal Betty Brant. Betty is weary of Petey's tendency to stand her up or be late, little knowing that he's off battling villains while she's waiting.

According to an editorial note, the brief "Bonus Back-Up Feature" about Obama, scripted by Zach Wells and drawn by Todd Nauck, was a last-minute add after the Marvel folks learned from an interview in The Telegraph that Obama was a fan of the webslinger. In the Colbert interview, Obama mentioned his superheroes of choice as a kid were Spider-Man and Batman, which made me swell with pride; same two for me.

In the short saga "Spidey Meets the President!" Petey, in D.C. to photograph the inauguration, switches into Spider-Man to prevent The Chameleon from impersonating Obama and becoming President 44. When Obama realizes that, his Secret Service detail notwithstanding, Spidey is the right man for the job and gives him the green light to take action, Spidey delivers the tale's best line: "Ya hear that Chameleon? The President-Elect here just appointed me...SECRETARY OF SHUTTIN' YOU UP!"

It was poignant to see the Obama interview last week, even though I'm not a 44 fanboy. I've always liked him, but he was never anywhere near as boldly progressive as I wanted him to be, or as I think he could have been, especially if he had acted decisively early on. I'm not at all sure Biden, doddering but clear-eyed and out of  f*cks, wasn't more decisive. Even so I think that, graded on the curve of what he accomplished versus what he was up against, Obama was likely the best American President of my lifetime.

But when you see a man of Obama's poise and grace and reflective intelligence and plain decency in contrast to what we have now, it's both terrifying and mortifying. If The Chameleon had successfully impersonated Obama's successor, we might well be better off.

CAGE, FIGHTING

Check out my review of Mortal Kombat II...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

Here's my review of The Devil Wears Prada 2...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.