HEDGEHOGGING OUR BETS

Check out my reviews, online on Phoenix Magazine, of Sonic the Hedgehog 3...

...and of Arizona Theatre Company's Scrooge! with Shuler Hensley in the title role...

...running through December 28 at Tempe Center for the Arts.

PRO AND CONCLAVE

This week Phoenix Film Critics Society, of which I am a proud founding member--the last remaining founding member, I think!--announced our 2024 awards.

Brady Corbet's The Brutalist took Best Picture, but numerically the big winner was Conclave, with five awards. As usual, some of the honorees reflect my voting, some don't, but there are a lot of worthwhile movies on the list.

My own Top Ten list is still in progress, and is slated to post after the New Year.

KAIJU; GESUNDHEIT

A few odds and ends: First, check out my review, on Geek News Network, of the Jeffery Angles translation of Shigeru Kayama's original Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again novelizations from 1955...

...as well as my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Kraven the Hunter...

And here's one of the odder pieces of "For Your Consideration" movie schwag I've ever recieved; a View-Master with images of Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain's Maria:

WHY ASK Y2K?

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Kyle Mooney's comedy Y2K...

...now playing in the multiplexes.

PAWS FOR REFLECTION

Now playing at Harkins Shea:

Flow--If you see only one Latvian animated movie about a cat this year, make it this one. Directed by young Gints Zilbalodis from a script he wrote with Matiss Kaza, this wordless, dreamlike, almost free-associational feature is possibly the most visually beautiful movie of the year, and it has one of the year's most vividly drawn heroes, too.

The main character--the title character? I couldn't be sure; the title (Straume in Latvian) may just refer to the flow of the waters that sweep the characters along--is a small, dark short-haired cat with wide, perpetually alarmed eyes. The creature wanders an idyllic wooded area alongside a body of water, reflection-gazing and hoping to score a fish from some stray dogs.

Then an enormous flash flood rages through the area. The cat barely makes it to high ground, and eventually takes refuge, as the waters continue to rise, aboard a derelict boat which gathers an inexplicably diverse assortment of other animal refugees from different continents or islands: a patient capybara, a ring-tailed lemur with hoarder tendencies, a stern but protective secretarybird, a playful, irksomely guileless retriever.

It may be a postapocalyptic world through which the craft carries this oddball crew; human habitations appear to be deserted, and a colossal whale that surfaces nearby from time to time seems to be a multi-flippered mutant. Gradually the animals learn to steer the boat a little; they also learn to care and even sacrifice for each other.

If this sounds sentimental and annoyingly anthropomorphic, I can only say that it didn't feel that way to me. The animal behavior comes across believably, as does their capacity for growth and empathy. If it's anthropomorphic, it's about as low-key as anthropomorphism can be, and the subtle yet insistent sense of allegory for the human experience is moving.

Zilbalodis takes Flow into pretty epic and mystical realms in the later acts, yet on another level the movie works as an animal odyssey adventure in the genre of the Incredible Journey films, or Milo & Otis. At the core of it is the sympathetic and admirable pussycat, meowing indignantly at the perils all around, yet facing them with heart and pluck. It's not to be missed.

From the sublime to the, well, not so sublime; now on VOD...

The Invisible Raptor--In this horror comedy, an invisible predatory dinosaur escapes from a laboratory manned by Sean Astin, makes its way to a dinosaur theme park and raises bloody mayhem in the neighborhood. A down-on-his-luck paleontologist (Mike Capes) reluctantly teams up with an imbecilic security guard (David Shackelford) to battle the creature; eventually the paleontologist's gorgeous ex (Caitlin McHugh) and a local chicken farmer (Sandy Martin) join the fight.

This very crass, deliberately lowbrow but occasionally funny film is not only gory but scatological; the raptor may be invisible, but its poop, once excreted, certainly isn't. It's a polished production, directed by Mike Hermosa from a script by Capes and Johnny Wickham. The special effects are good, and the object of its spoof/homage is unmistakable: Steven Spielberg. From the look and sound of the movie to the names of the characters, not just the obvious references to Jurassic Park but also to Jaws and E.T., it's a striking testament to the master's influence.

I wonder if anyone connected to this film is old enough to remember Sound of Horror (El Sonido de la Muerte)...

...a riotous Spanish shocker from 1966, also, believe it or not, about an invisible dinosaur who makes the truly awful, squalling sound of the title. It has several elements in common with The Invisible Raptor, but I think I prefer the earlier film, if only because the cast includes the glorious Ingrid Pitt.

ROME IF YOU WANT TO

 Check out my review of Ridley Scott's Gladiator II...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

SLED ASTRAY

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Red One...

...the silly but fun holiday action comedy with Dwayne Johnson, J.K. Simmons, Chris Evans and Lucy Liu, now in the multiplexes.

STATUE; GESUNDHEIT

Hope everyone has had a safe and happy Veterans Day, and thank you to all veterans for their service!

Before this day was called Veterans Day, it was of course known as Armistice Day, and specifically marked the end of World War I; it was changed, in the U.S., to a day honoring all veterans in 1954.

A month or so ago I was in Washington, D.C. for The Day Gig, and with a few hours to kill I visited the recently-dedicated World War I Memorial, in Pershing Park not far from the White House. Incredibly, D.C. didn't have a general monument to that war until now. I took a few pictures that do it absolutely no justice at all...

Titled A Soldier's Journey, it's the work of figurative purist sculptor Sabin Howard. His technique is magnificent and the horrors of war are emotionally depicted, but the piece could be seen as perpetuating a square-jawed romanticism about war along with the horror. It's a masterpiece, but it made me feel ambivelent.

Wandering around nearby I also saw this statue of late D.C. Mayor Marion Barry...

I lived there in 1990, when Barry was arrested for drug use in an elaborate sting operation; I can only imagine how we would have laughed at the idea that there would ever be a statue of him in D.C. But he became Mayor again in 1995, proof of a much less ominous sort than what we're going through currently that sometimes there are, indeed, second acts in American politics.

A little farther away I found this statue of Jose Artigas, father of Uruguayan independence...

Coming across stuff like this is one of the pleasures of that town. At least, it is if you're nerdy.

GRANT US PEACE

Opening in the multiplexes this weekend:

Heretic--One rainy day two American LDS missionaries, young women, go to the door of an ugly, rambling house in Scotland. The resident is what would be called, in door to door sales, a premium lead: he's expressed interest in the product.

The gent in question, Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), solicitously invites the young ladies in out of the rain. They explain that, for safety's sake, they aren't allowed to go inside without a woman present, but he charmingly insists, saying that his wife will join them once she's finished baking a blueberry pie in the kitchen. So Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) follow him into the oddly cheerless front sitting room--it looks like the waiting room of a funeral parlor--and he locks the door behind them. But they can smell blueberry pie, so they aren't too alarmed, yet.

Needless to say, the two of them aren't going anywhere anytime soon, except farther into the house. This shocker, co-written and co-directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods of A Quiet Place, belongs to the horror subgenre in which one or more women are held prisoner by a maniac. Earlier examples include The Collector (1965), with Terence Stamp and Samatha Eggar, Crawlspace (1986) with Klaus Kinski tormenting Talia Balsam, the notorious Human Centepede (First Sequence) (2009) by Tom Six, or Room (2015) with Brie Larson. Heretic has echoes of all of these, but it's highly original all the same.

Although it seems to safe to safe that there's a sexual subtext to the motivations of all the captors in these movies, the overt reasons vary. In The Collector, for instance, there's a class element; in Crawlspace there's a Nazi guilt angle, and so on. In Heretic, the crazy derives from religious studies.

Mr. Reed, you see, is a fanatical questioner of all religious "iterations," and debunker of the idea that any of them represent the "one true religion" as they claim to. As the facade that his guests are free to leave whenever they like gradually but steadily melts away, he lectures them, in the manner of a raffish college professor, about the innumerable links and parallels between modern mainstream faiths and ancient religious traditions, using pop culture and popular music as analogies.

It would be a rather agreeably stimulating summary of Comparative Religion 101, if they weren't being held hostage and all. Sister Paxton even makes a brave attempt to debate her self-appointed pedagogue, but while there may be arguments against Mr. Reed's theses, the ones Beck and Woods place in her mouth seem thin and non-sequitur, which, in context, makes her desperation all the more touching. Mr. Reed, however, remains affably unmoved.

The heart of Heretic is Grant. I've always been a fan, but I've especially enjoyed his work as a comic villain in recent years in stuff like Paddington 2, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. His Mr. Reed is a good deal darker than any of these, to be sure, but the performance is still based in the diffident, apologetic, wryly sheepish Grant persona familiar from his romcom work. It's one of the best roles he's ever had, and you can feel his pleasure in it.

His two young costars are also strong. Chloe East, hilarious and adorable as the girlfriend in Spielberg's The Fabelmans, gives Sister Paxton some of the same gushy avidity. Balancing her is Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes, of more worldly background and thus more reserved and alert. Thatcher also sings a haunting cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" over the end titles.

Eventually Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton are offered a "Lady or the Tiger" type of choice, and find themselves in the basement. From here, Heretic goes full-on gothic, and gory, and the blueberry pie re-enters the tale. And as so often when thrillers tip over from literate tension into gruesome grappling, it seems to shrink the movie a bit.

Not enough, however, to diminish the value of these performances, or of the rising dread, shot through with chilling wit, that infuses the film. The sexual politics would seem to have some slight relevance at this moment in our history, too; Mr. Reed's practice of what he considers the One True Religion appears to be devout, zealous mansplaining.

By the way, as we left the press screening I attended in the Valley, the marketing company handed us small blueberry pies, custom made for the evening by Süss Pastries here in Phoenix. I took mine home and passed it on The Wife, who proclaimed it good. I can't say, however, that Heretic particularly gave me an appetite for blueberry pie for a while.

RING MAN

Even though I'm not the world's biggest Tolkien fan, for some reason I keep thinking about this today.

K

Time again for my official ask. Against my usual habit on this page, I'll try to keep it short:

If you haven't already, please cast your vote for Kamala Harris for President of the United States, and for Tim Walz for Vice President. I also ask you to vote for as many down-ballot Democrats as you can.

But if for whatever reason you simply can't do it, can't bring yourself to vote for a Democrat, or for a woman, or for a person of color, or whatever it is that's holding you back, then I ask you, for your own sake as well as for the country's and the world's: Don't vote. Seriously. Don't put that on yourself. I genuinely believe that, whatever happens, you'll be glad later if you didn't help try to send the Republican candidate back to the White House, or for that matter to empower his enablers.

Beyond that, there's not much else to say. Even if you're a staunch conservative, if you can look at the behavior and words of the Republican candidate, at any point but especially in the last couple of months, and believe that putting him anywhere near power is remotely a good idea, than our views of reality are too divergent for discussion to be helpful.

I think that Kamala Harris is an excellent candidate who stands a very good chance of being a capable President. But even if you have reservations about her, the choice between the candidates, for a reasonable person, isn't really a choice. This isn't the difference between, say, a gourmet dinner and fast food; it's not even the difference between a gourmet dinner and garbage. It's the difference between an edible meal (Harris/Walz) and toxic waste (the Republican candidate).

I spent the last two weekends canvassing here in Phoenix...

My paltry efforts amounted, I think, to pretty much the definition of The Least I Could Do. But I want to give a shout out to my terrific partners each of those days: Megan, Sue Ellen, Noah and Tim, and to all the volunteers who do this thankless, demanding work for weeks, months, years. I'm in awe of you.

EVERYTHING EVERY TIME ALL IN ONE PLACE

Opening wide in the multiplexes this weekend:

Here--A spot in a living room in an upscale eastern Pennsylvania suburb--that's the title locale of this latest from Robert Zemeckis. It's our static vantage point for, essentially, the whole movie, looking across the room through a picture window that offers a view of the big brick colonial-era house across the street. 

We see the view there before it was a living room--long, long before. As in, we see it during the extinction event that ended the Cretaceous Period, sixty million years ago. We see it as a woodland make-out spot for indigenous lovers (Dannie McCallum and Joel Oulette), and as a burial site. We see it as part of a dirt road leading up to the aforementioned historic manse, which once was occupied by William Franklin (Daniel Betts), estranged Loyalist son of Benjamin (Keith Bartlett).

After the house is built, we get glimpses of the lives of its early 20th-Century inhabitants, like an enthusiastic aviator (Gwilym Lee) whose wife (Michelle Dockery) frets about his flying. They're followed by a whimsical inventor (David Fynn) and his sexy flapper wife (Ophelia Lovibond). This guy is trying to perfect a reclining chair; his working title for it is "Relax-y-Boy." And we see the house's early 21st-Century occupants, an African-American family; Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird are the parents, and Anya Marco-Harris is the beloved housekeeper.

But the movie's main focus is the midcentury family that takes the place over after WWII: Dad (Paul Bettany), a combat veteran and a seething, disappointed functional alcoholic, his sweet, quietly unfulfilled wife (Kelly Reilly), and his oldest son (Tom Hanks), an aspiring artist. The son gets his beautiful girlfriend (Robin Wright) pregnant, so there goes both art school and her college dreams. They move in with the parents, and stay for decades.

So the movie packs in a lot of history (and prehistory), a lot of longings fulfilled and unfulfilled, and cultural references ranging from the Spanish flu to the Spanish Inquistion sketch from Monty Python. But I'll admit that when I realized we were going to be parked in one place for the whole thing--I went in not knowing this--I panicked for a moment.

I needn't have worried. Zemeckis has always been a skillful showman, and while the audacious experiment of Here is by no means an unqualified success, it certainly never bored me. The script, by Eric Roth and Zemeckis, is based on a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, and Zemeckis employs comic-book techniques like overlapping inset panels to interweave the various timelines and bounce them off each other thematically. It's an impressive and confident exercise in narrative, and it does carry a cumulative emotional punch.

There are downsides, however. The fixed point of view means that the actors tend to seem a bit far away from us a lot of the time, and when they are brought up into the foreground it somehow feels forced. Zemeckis may have been worried about this distancing too; Alan Silvestri's music, though pretty, is ladled on a bit thicker than it should be, as if to telegraph what we're supposed to be feeling.  

Much more jarringly, though, the people in Here often have an ersatz, CGI "Uncanny Valley" look to them. The leads were taken all the way back to teenaged through some sort of real-time computer tech, and while the results are tolerable, they aren't perfected in realistic terms.

It must be admitted, however, that Hanks and Wright transcend this limitation, especially Hanks. The other actors sometimes feel like cyber-phantoms, but Hanks is so vibrant that he can project his humanity right through the program. And after Apollo 13, Castaway, Captain Phillips and Sully, it's also a relief to see the poor guy stay put.

BABBITT STEW

Closing this Sunday, November 3, in Washington, D.C. is Babbitt, Joe DiPietro's stage adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel.

None other than Matthew Broderick plays the title role in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production, which I was lucky enough to see a couple of weeks ago when I was in D.C.

Strange to think that Ferris Bueller is old enough to play George Babbitt. We might tend to picture the role as the province of actors like Guy Kibbee, who played it in a 1934 movie version, or the grinning, wolfishly genial Edward Andrews, who played the character...

...in the 1960 movie version of Elmer Gantry.

But time marches inexorably on, and carries even an antic high school hustler like Ferris into the realms of complacent bourgeois middle age. And Broderick, who was born five days before I was in 1962, makes the role his own with a sort of dreamy, disassociated voice, as if he's halfheartedly playing at being an adult.

Even though it's in the third person, the book depends so much on describing its hero's sometimes barely conscious internal narratives that I wondered how it could really make the transition to the stage. DiPietro was way ahead of me. He locates his play in a library--the lovely, pristine set is by Walt Spangler--where a variety of attractive actors in contemporary clothes, in a variety of ages and races, are browsing.

The cast eventually starts reading aloud from Babbitt. Then a return cart is pushed onstage, with a large object on top, under a sheet. Said object turns out to be Broderick as we first see George Babbitt, rising from bed in the morning, brushing his teeth, having his breakfast. As George's day progresses, the readers, or "storytellers," assume the other roles. The device ingeniously allows for a diverse cast, and it allows them not only to narrate but sometimes to comment, omnisciently and often ironically, on the action. 

I was very keen to see this show, as I've been fascinated by all things Babbitt in recent years. In the early 2020s, I noticed an old Signet Classics edition of the book...

...in one of those little take-one leave-one libraries in an Italian ice place my family and I frequent, and reflected that I had never read the celebrated yarn, even though I love Lewis, and like so many people was astounded at the terrifying prescience and relevance of his 1935 It Can't Happen Here.

So I picked Babbitt up. A year or so later, I read it.

Even those who have never read Babbitt may have some idea of what it's about. The book was a sensation when it first came out in 1922, to the extent that the title character's name became a byword for a person of George's type, and his sort of behavior became known as "babbittry." 1945's Ziegfeld Follies even includes a duet between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly to a song by George and Ira Gershwin called "The Babbitt and the Bromide," in which two gents exchange the same mindless pleasantries in all of their meetings, separated by decades, the only variations being costumes and dance styles.

The book itself, however, is the chronicle of two years in the life of George Babbitt, a real estate man and loyal Republican, Presbyterian and civic booster in the midwestern city of "Zenith." A husband and father, George is a happy consumer--proud to own "the best of the nationally advertised brands"--and an unquestioning social conservative and conformist.

Lewis follows him in painstaking detail as he goes through his days, exchanging commonplaces with colleagues and lecturing his son, venturing into public speaking and local politics, throwing parties angled at social climbing and going on camping trips and business trips. A shocking crime committed by his best friend shakes him up; he has an affair and eventually even flirts with socialism, but he never really grows much as a person. 

What an extraordinary work. I had a funky reaction to it, though; I'm guessing I can't be the only person who ever felt this way about it. I can't think of one episode in the book that didn't ring true, and still relevant, to me. It's amazing and appalling, for instance, when you read the scene of the racist talk between Babbitt and the guys in the smoking-car and you realize that you could set the same scene today, one hundred fucking years later, between a bunch of awful old white guys talking among themselves, and you wouldn't need to change a word. (This scene is omitted from the play, by the way.)

But as to the general method that Lewis uses to observe his hero, I had to wonder whether, if you followed anybody around--certainly including and maybe especially me--on our daily routines and our little adventures, and accurately reported our nattering internal monologues, you wouldn't get largely the same results: the same platitudes and evasions and self-justifications. Sure, the political and social values would shift a bit, but using the banality of Babbitt's inner life as Exhibit A in your indictment of his specific values seems specious to me. It had the odd effect of making me feel a little protective of old Georgie against the snarky God's-eye-view narration with which Lewis describes him. Or is it possible that was the intention? In any case, to paraphrase Flaubert, "Georges Babbitte; c'est moi."

The stage version had some of the same effect on me; listening to a D.C. audience chuckle condescendingly at George's hypocrisies, I had to wonder how many of us, if any, saw ourselves up there, at least a little bit.

By the way, I was astounded by another detail about the book's influence. Apparently J.R.R. Tolkien, of all freaking people, was among its admirers; he claimed that the word "Hobbit" derived from "Babbitt" because "Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place." I'd love to see a sequel to Lewis in which Babbitt has to infiltrate a dragon's lair.

SWEET SISTINE

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Conclave--Ralph Fiennes plays the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who has the unenviable job of presiding over a contentious election to replace a recently deceased Pope. With liberal, conservative and shifty middle-of-the-road candidates and their factions jockeying, the sequestered old fellows can't arrive at the needed two-thirds majority.

Stanley Tucci is a liberal who insists, demurely and unconvincingly, that he doesn't want the gig, but is willing to take it and will embrace a broad spectrum of progressive reforms if elected. Sergio Castellitto is a cheerfully reactionary, Italo-centric Cardinal who still resents Vatican II. John Lithgow, playing the middle, is all wounded innocence when told that there's a bad report about his last meeting with the late Pontiff. Then there's the mysterious Cardinal (Carlos Diehz) of Kabul, who shows up out of nowhere, having only recently been appointed by the deceased Pope unbeknownst to the College.

This tale of an improbable papal ascendancy almost challenges Fr. Rolfe's Hadrian VII  for far-fetched wishful thinking. How possible, let alone plausible, any of it is I can't say. Nor do I much care. High ecclesiastical dramas are fun. Movies ranging from the naïvely pious Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) to the campy Monsignor (1982) to the wild and woolly Angels & Demons (2009) have all taken advantage of the splendor and grand theatrical ceremony of the Vatican, and the intrigues of its sumptuously outfitted habitués.

So too does Edward Berger, the German director of Conclave, adapted by Peter Straughan from the 2016 novel by the Brit Robert Harris. The movie starts a little slow, but very soon, abetted by the cinematography of Stéphane Fontaine and the fevered strings of Viktor Bertelmann's score, it becomes an exciting spectacle, swept along by Berger in a manner reminiscent at times of the great silents; he gives us carefully composed tableaux of clerics skulking about shadowy stairwells, or Eisenstein-ish masses of nuns under umbrellas, surging like tides into high-angle shots.

But Berger's eye on the settings also cuts through the superficial lushness and opulence to find an oppressive cheerlessness. The marble-paneled hallway into which Fiennes and his fellow Cardinals emerge from their austere dorm rooms during the conclave's lockdown has an institutional dreariness.  The figures in Michelangelo's Last Judgement glower down in reproach upon the Cardinals as they vote. Somehow the most hopeful presence in the film is a rather intrepid turtle.

Berger's skill is impressive, but it's the acting that makes Conclave lively and juicy, and ultimately even moving. Fiennes, always good at suffering, has rarely been so woebegone, or so wryly likable. Tucci and Lithgow could do roles like these in their sleep, and they're both crisply on point. Lucian Msamati and Brian F. O'Bryne are strong as a Nigerian Cardinal and as the Dean's sheepish aide, respectively. And as a large-and-in-charge, baleful-looking nun, Isabella Rossellini's role is almost wordless early on, but then she brings off her one big moment so flawlessly that her punctuating gesture wins applause.

REDIALING

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Arizona Theatre Company's production of Dial M for Murder...

...which plays through November 3 at Tempe Center for the Arts. I was fascinated to see ATC's production, which is revised for a contemporary audience by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher.

I've always had a soft spot for this show, having played Inspector Hubbard in it back in the '80s at the Peak'n Peek Dinner Theatre in Clymer, New York, directed by the late lamented Ben Agresti. It wasn't necessarily the best show I ever did, but it was certainly one of the most fun.

GIRL POWER

Check out my quick article, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...interviewing Vince Kelley, left, who plays Blanche in Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue. The touring show continues through October 27 at Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix.

CABINET POST

If the blessed, long-delayed drop in Valley temperatures isn't enough to get you in an October kind of mood, maybe a spooky movie can. Playing SUNDAY ONLY at 3 p.m. at Phoenix's Orpheum Theatre is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, one of the seminal cinematic creepshows, with live musical accompaniment.

Robert Weine's 1920 saga is sometimes called the first horror movie. It probably isn't, but it's a very early one, and it would be hard to find a much more influential work for the genre. This German nightmare offers iconic horror tropes--the mad scientist, the plodding enslaved monster carrying the beautiful heroine in his arms, the angry mob of villagers--probably for the first time.

The not-so-good Doctor, played by Werner Krauss, is a shabby, troll-like mountebank who works a sideshow, exhibiting a pathetic somnambulist, Cesare, played by Conrad Veidt, later memorable as the Nazi major in Casablanca. Cesare normally resides in the titular coffin-like cabinet in a perpetual snooze, interrupted only when Caligari wakes him up to feed him...

...or send him on some nasty errand. For instance, near the beginning the Doc is treated rudely by a town official when he applies for an exhibitor's license; the next morning the man is found murdered in his home. Courtesy pays.

Although these and other melodramatic devices undoubtedly seemed less corny and cliched when the movie was released, more than a century ago, than they do now, they aren't really what gives this dreamlike flick its charge. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's true power derives from the weird visual atmosphere Weine and his designers, Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Rohrig, bring to almost every shot through boldly stylized, expressionistic sets and camera angles, externalizing a skewed, neurotic mental state and imposing it on the movie's settings. It can mess with your head.

If you've never seen the film, or never on a big screen, the Orpheum show, featuring live music by Tetra String Quartet, is a terrific opportunity. Tickets range from $11 to $20. For details go to orpheumphx.com

HOPPY DAYS

This week The Day Gig took Your Humble Narrator to Washington, D.C. for a couple of quick, eventful days. I found myself giving a short speech at the German Embassy...

...and hanging out with the likes of Robert Edsel, author of The Monuments Men...

(Courtesy of Monuments Men and Women Foundation / © David Trozzo, All Rights Reserved)

I also made it to Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of Babbitt...

...a remarkable new stage adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, with Matthew Broderick in the title role.

Best of all, I got to hang out and chow down with my awesome nieces and their husbands...

For Taco Tuesday, I was taken downtown to Oyamel Cocina Mexicano, where I partook of...

...a taco filled with Oaxacan grasshoppers, aka chapulines. It was okay at best. I've since read that chapulines are said to have a tangy flavor; I couldn't detect it, or any flavor, really. It was like eating a taco full of empty popcorn kernel husks. Luckily I was able to follow it with two other tacos, one lengua and one pescado, both scrumptious.