One of my favorites has passed on: the great Dennis Hopper. Although I’ve always loved Easy Rider (1969), to which Hopper brought a fine naturalistic touch as director (along with some corny artsy directorial affectations), it’s as an actor that I’ll always treasure him most. From his early work in classics like Rebel Without a Cause, Giant & Gunfight at the OK Corral to his touching turn as Billy the Kid in Easy Rider, his stoner-period phase in Apocalypse Now & Rumble Fish, his sublime comeback performances in Blue Velvet & Hoosiers & his funny, oddly likable villain-for-hire work in stuff like Speed, Waterworld, & Red Rock West, he left behind a seriously rich legacy. RIP; you'll be missed.
RIP also to Art Linkletter, passed on at 97, & to Gary Coleman, passed on too young at 42.
A friend forwarded me the link to this odd but rather excellent blog, which showcases the beauty & artistry of the backgrounds in old cartoon animation.
Yesterday I had lunch at Rincon Peruano Peruvian Restaurant, barely noticeable in a strip mall on South Alma School in Mesa. I had a big plate of Tallarin Saltado de Pollo (chicken with noodles & veggies). Delicious, recommended!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
SLOPPY SECONDS
Two years ago HBO’s long-running sitcom Sex and the City was turned into a feature film of nearly two & a half hours length. It was enough of a hit to warrant a sequel, Sex and the City 2, which is within a minute or two of the same length.
I’m not sure why the first film had to be so long, & I’m very sure that the current film didn’t have to be. A few months ago I grumbled about the length of Avatar, but in fairness to James Cameron’s film, it’s an epic about space travel, human identity & the exploitation of an indigenous race. Sex and the City 2, only about twenty minutes shorter, is about four rich women from New York spending a few days on vacation at a luxury hotel in the United Arab Emirates. The dramatic high point of Avatar is the destruction of a whole culture’s ancestral home. The dramatic high point of SATC2 is a dinner date between a married chick & her old boyfriend.
So what’s with the length? My guess is that the writer-producer-director, Michael Patrick King, is trying to create the sense of watching a whole season of the TV show crammed into one sitting, like a viewer laid up with the flu might do with a DVD box set. This approach worked with the first film, sort of, but this one plods, & the complications piled on near the end are unwelcome.
The married woman in question is Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), who hitched her dream man “Mr. Big” (Chris Noth) in the earlier film &, of course, is now starting to squirm & fidget as the reality of married life’s over-familiarity starts to set in. She accepts the invitation of her ever-lascivious friend Samantha (Kim Catrrall) to join her for a PR trip to Abu Dhabi. So do the other two pals in the circle, no-nonsense lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) & harried stay-at-home Mom Charlotte (Kristen Davis).
Much lewd wackiness ensues when they get there, but the “serious” plot strand has Carrie coincidentally running into an earlier boyfriend (John Corbett) & feeling just unsettled enough about her marriage to take him up on dinner.
No one would be likely to mistake the first film’s script for a lost work by Oscar Wilde, but King’s dialogue relies even more heavily on wince-inducing puns this time out (“Lawrence of my labia,” for one of the more sparkling examples). He also ups the ante on celebrity cameos, some of them, like Miley Cyrus & Tim Gunn, playing themselves. Liza Minelli, surprisingly spry, appears early on & performs a full-blown musical number, the centerpiece of a long sequence set at an extravagant gay wedding that might have had Mel Brooks as its planner. This is probably the most agreeable chunk of the film, but it all smells a bit desperate, really—the anxious sweat of a movie with no urgent reason, other than commercial, to exist.
I don’t wish to be ungallant, but it also struck me that all four of the stars, but especially Parker & Cattrall, were less flatteringly photographed this time, too, & far less flatteringly costumed. A couple of Parker’s hats look like rejects from Flash Gordon.
None of this is really the 500-pound gorilla in the room where SATC2, is concerned, however. The degree to which these characters indulge their narcissism & cosmopolitan acquisitiveness, even proudly defend them as if they were virtues, is remarkable even in the first film. It’s magnified quite a few times when it’s played out against the backdrop of a culture in which women enjoy not even one-tenth of the freedoms that Carrie & her friends take for granted. With certain sequences, as when the four stars perform a karaoke version of “I Am Woman” at an Abu Dhabi nightclub & the local women sing along in smiling approval, it’s hard to know whether to feel offended, embarrassed, or touched at the childish gesture of “you go girl” uplift.
A little of all three, maybe. But it’s a bit unsavory the way SATC2 wants to swoon over Abu Dhabi’s opulence & exoticism & luxury on the one hand, & wag its finger at the culture’s oppression of women on the other. This movie wants to have its falafel & eat it too.
So what’s with the length? My guess is that the writer-producer-director, Michael Patrick King, is trying to create the sense of watching a whole season of the TV show crammed into one sitting, like a viewer laid up with the flu might do with a DVD box set. This approach worked with the first film, sort of, but this one plods, & the complications piled on near the end are unwelcome.
The married woman in question is Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), who hitched her dream man “Mr. Big” (Chris Noth) in the earlier film &, of course, is now starting to squirm & fidget as the reality of married life’s over-familiarity starts to set in. She accepts the invitation of her ever-lascivious friend Samantha (Kim Catrrall) to join her for a PR trip to Abu Dhabi. So do the other two pals in the circle, no-nonsense lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) & harried stay-at-home Mom Charlotte (Kristen Davis).
No one would be likely to mistake the first film’s script for a lost work by Oscar Wilde, but King’s dialogue relies even more heavily on wince-inducing puns this time out (“Lawrence of my labia,” for one of the more sparkling examples). He also ups the ante on celebrity cameos, some of them, like Miley Cyrus & Tim Gunn, playing themselves. Liza Minelli, surprisingly spry, appears early on & performs a full-blown musical number, the centerpiece of a long sequence set at an extravagant gay wedding that might have had Mel Brooks as its planner. This is probably the most agreeable chunk of the film, but it all smells a bit desperate, really—the anxious sweat of a movie with no urgent reason, other than commercial, to exist.
I don’t wish to be ungallant, but it also struck me that all four of the stars, but especially Parker & Cattrall, were less flatteringly photographed this time, too, & far less flatteringly costumed. A couple of Parker’s hats look like rejects from Flash Gordon.
None of this is really the 500-pound gorilla in the room where SATC2, is concerned, however. The degree to which these characters indulge their narcissism & cosmopolitan acquisitiveness, even proudly defend them as if they were virtues, is remarkable even in the first film. It’s magnified quite a few times when it’s played out against the backdrop of a culture in which women enjoy not even one-tenth of the freedoms that Carrie & her friends take for granted. With certain sequences, as when the four stars perform a karaoke version of “I Am Woman” at an Abu Dhabi nightclub & the local women sing along in smiling approval, it’s hard to know whether to feel offended, embarrassed, or touched at the childish gesture of “you go girl” uplift.
A little of all three, maybe. But it’s a bit unsavory the way SATC2 wants to swoon over Abu Dhabi’s opulence & exoticism & luxury on the one hand, & wag its finger at the culture’s oppression of women on the other. This movie wants to have its falafel & eat it too.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
ROADWORKS
Out on DVD this week is The Road, last year’s film version of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. You can read my review here.
Monster-of-the-Week: This week’s honoree comes from a cruder post-doomsday vision: The Day the World Ended, Roger Corman’s 1955 melodrama about a handful of survivors of said atomic apocalypse who take refuge in a cabin & squabble with each other when they aren’t being menaced by this bug-eyed mutant creature from the next valley over:
This irritable-looking abomination was created (& played, under the suit) by Corman’s premiere monster-maker, Paul Blaisdell.
A figurine version:
This film, by the way, inspired the strange 1982 Wim Wenders movie The State of Things.
Monster-of-the-Week: This week’s honoree comes from a cruder post-doomsday vision: The Day the World Ended, Roger Corman’s 1955 melodrama about a handful of survivors of said atomic apocalypse who take refuge in a cabin & squabble with each other when they aren’t being menaced by this bug-eyed mutant creature from the next valley over:
This irritable-looking abomination was created (& played, under the suit) by Corman’s premiere monster-maker, Paul Blaisdell.
A figurine version:
This film, by the way, inspired the strange 1982 Wim Wenders movie The State of Things.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTERIES
My old New Times pal Chris Farnsworth...
...is in the Valley Wednesday evening, on tour with his hit novel Blood Oath...
...about a vampiric aide to the President. Chris signs the tome at 7 p.m. at The Poisoned Pen, 4014 North Goldwater in Scottsdale. Be there! Details here.
...is in the Valley Wednesday evening, on tour with his hit novel Blood Oath...
Saturday, May 22, 2010
TANGLED UP IN BLUE JAYS
The Wife & I are back from watching our erratic Diamondbacks take on the Toronto Blue Jays. Nice to see the Maple Leaf flying over Chase Field, & to hear “O, Canada” beautifully sung before the game. The D-bax struck the Blue Jays starter, poor Dana Eveland (formerly, briefly, a Diamondback), for eight runs in the early innings, & that, in combination with a fine performance on the mound by the D-bax starter Edwin Jackson, led to an 8-5 win for the hometown lads.
We also returned with the evening’s ballpark schwag, the Diamondbacks Garden Gnome, already on sentry duty on my bookcase:
(photo credit: The Wife)
Since the passage of the reprehensible SB1070, there has been talk of boycotting the Diamondbacks because of team co-owner Ken Kendrick’s chumminess with Republican causes. I disagree with the idea, on the grounds that while Kendrick certainly is a major donor to Republican douchebags, he’s also clearly stated his opposition to SB1070. I would have greatly preferred it if, like Robert Sarver & “Los Suns,” the D-bax had made some impressive public gesture against the measure, but I still think that boycotting the team (for any reason other than the miserable bullpen pitching) is misguided.
Even so, I hasten to point out that I bought these tickets (& tickets to one other game, in September), long before SB1070 was signed into law. Also, the seats were in the All You Can Eat Section, so even if I supported the boycott, the only way I could make the Diamondbacks suffer economically would be to go to the game & stuff myself with as many hotdogs as possible. I did my best.
We also returned with the evening’s ballpark schwag, the Diamondbacks Garden Gnome, already on sentry duty on my bookcase:
(photo credit: The Wife)
Since the passage of the reprehensible SB1070, there has been talk of boycotting the Diamondbacks because of team co-owner Ken Kendrick’s chumminess with Republican causes. I disagree with the idea, on the grounds that while Kendrick certainly is a major donor to Republican douchebags, he’s also clearly stated his opposition to SB1070. I would have greatly preferred it if, like Robert Sarver & “Los Suns,” the D-bax had made some impressive public gesture against the measure, but I still think that boycotting the team (for any reason other than the miserable bullpen pitching) is misguided.
Even so, I hasten to point out that I bought these tickets (& tickets to one other game, in September), long before SB1070 was signed into law. Also, the seats were in the All You Can Eat Section, so even if I supported the boycott, the only way I could make the Diamondbacks suffer economically would be to go to the game & stuff myself with as many hotdogs as possible. I did my best.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
PULPO FICTION
The other night I was leafing through an old edition of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea (La Travailleurs de la Mer) & I came across a picture of the Guernseyman hero, Gilliat, grappling with a monstrous octopus.
So…
Monster-of-the-Week: ...for no other reason than that Saturday is the 125th anniversary of Hugo’s death, & also that they’re kickass pictures, this week let’s give the nod to this eight-armed invertebrate menace. The beautiful third drawing—from which the second appears to have been adapted—is by Hugo himself:
So…
Monster-of-the-Week: ...for no other reason than that Saturday is the 125th anniversary of Hugo’s death, & also that they’re kickass pictures, this week let’s give the nod to this eight-armed invertebrate menace. The beautiful third drawing—from which the second appears to have been adapted—is by Hugo himself:
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
VALLEY FEVER
According to this, a feature version of TV’s The Big Valley is in the works, to feature Jessica Lange in the Barbara Stanwyck part. Is this really what the masses have been clamoring for? Odd, anyway, to think of Jessica Lange in terms of late-period Barbara Stanwyck roles.
Variety also reports that a new Gidget series is in the works. *sigh* They should get Paul Giamatti for Moondoggie; he could win an Emmy…
Variety also reports that a new Gidget series is in the works. *sigh* They should get Paul Giamatti for Moondoggie; he could win an Emmy…
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