Don't Try This at Home: The Peking Acrobats

For some time now, my dad has expressed an interesting in seeing Chinese acrobats. We were intending to go more than a year, but I intended up becoming quite ill the day before the performance so we were unable to go. But at last, we were able to make the trip to McCarter Theatre today and see The Peking Acrobats perform.

The Peking Acrobats consists of a troupe of 25 performers who dazzled the crowd with acrobatics, contortions, balancing acts, juggling, dancing, cycling, and so forth. As one little girl excitedly exclaimed at the performance today, seeing The Peking Acrobats is like a trip to the circus. In addition to the acrobatics the circus atmosphere was further reinforced with the live musicians that were on scene to set the tone. In addition, some of the performers played clownish roles with silly physical comedy jokes that I didn’t care for too much, but the children in the audience found hilarious. There was even one act that involved several of the performers dressed up like dragons that were more like big furry dogs, so even the animals aspects of a circus was covered despite the lack of pachyderms. (Of course, I’ve never actually been to a circus, so perhaps this performance is more like what I expect from the circus rather than what a circus is actually like.)

Considered a family event, the theater was full of all kinds of children – young and old – as everyone stared in childlike wonder at the feats displayed before them. (And the woman in front of me forgot adult manners and kept tapping on her husband’s shoulder with commentary and questions using her regular speaking voice.) I’ve never heard so many oohs and ahhs in one place before, along with astonished gasps, “wows!” and “amazing!” You’d be hard pressed to find a person in the crowd who wasn’t blown away by this performance, which received a standing ovation from a packed house. Just when the audience would think they had seen all the performers could do, the acrobats upped the ante. Think it’s amazing that a woman can balance a full wine glass on her nose? How about more than a dozen full wine glasses? How about if she stands atop a wobbly step while balancing the glasses? How about if she climbs a ladder while maintaining balance on her nose? How about if she then pulls out a ribbon for each hand and starts twirling without so much as sloshing one drop of liquid from those glasses?

Indeed, the acts on display were often so intense as to induce fear in me for the performers. In particular, one sequence required a man to continually stack chairs upon one another and then perform acrobatics from atop them all – some 20 feet in the air without a safety net and without a single person on stage with him. I was terrified he would fall and have no one there to catch him. He didn’t but still. There were a number of times I was afraid someone was going to break a bone in their attempt to entertain us all, especially considering how all of their equipment is pretty bare bones and intended to be taken apart easily. These performers showed not only bravery but extreme flexibility, strength, and stamina (the show was two hours long with only one brief intermission).

My only complaint about the performance was a subtle one that most people would not notice or be bothered by. Besides the opening and closing sequences, there were few acts that featured the male and female performers together. Instead, there would be a men’s act followed by a female’s act. That would be fine if it weren’t that the first several sequences seemed to be very disparate for the men and the women. The male acts featured thrilling, flashy acrobatics involving leaping onto poles and jumping through hoops while the female sequences involved juggling plates and expressive dances involving paper parasol twirling. Both were mesmerizing in their own right, but there seemed to be a subtext that male acrobats are daring while female ones are graceful. This was further reinforced by the men wearing brightly colored red or yellow costumes while the women were dressed in cooler blues and greens; even the music became softer when the women were on stage. As the show progressed, however, the differences between the male and female acrobatics lessened and the finale involved both set of acrobats performing virtually the same feats.

The Peking Acrobats were only at McCarter for this one night, but you might be able to catch them some other time. Or you can apparently buy a DVD of one of their performances and be wowed at home.

Movies for the Seated Superhero, Part Deux

As loyal readers of this blog may recall, a couple of months ago a friend and I had a movie night with the theme of movies based on comic books/graphic novels. To refresh your memory, below is the list we came up with originally (with one addition). Note that this is by no means an inclusive list of all the movies made based on comic books, just some of the ones we were more interested in seeing.

Well, we re-visited the comic book movie night idea recently, so I’ve bolded the movies we watched this time around and I’ll discuss those below. While I usually try to avoid spoilers on this blog, in this particular post I will not be doing so as I have things to discuss that involve giving away lots of details about these movies. So if you like to go into your movies with little expectations, you are duly forewarned. (However, you can still read the “basic plot” paragraphs without getting any spoilers.) Also note that while I obsessively-compulsively alphabetized the list as I tend to do, I will discuss the movies in the order that we watched them rather than alphabetically.

Batman (1989)

Batman Begins

Batman Returns

Captain America: The First Avenger

Dick Tracy

The Dark Knight

Hanna*^

The Incredibles*^

Iron Man 1 & 2

Persepolis

RED*

Salt^

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World*

Sin City*

Sky High^

The Spirit

Superman Returns

Tales of the Black Freighter

Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles

V for Vendetta

Wanted

Watchmen

X2

X-Men: First Class*

^These ones are not actually based on comic books, but they are action/adventure/sci-fi/superheroes so we felt we could add them to the list.

*These ones were movies we watched in the first batch and were discussed previously on this blog here.

Iron Man

Basic plot: Wealthy Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), owner of the weapons-manufacturing Stark Industries, is your stereotypical playboy until a visit to Afghanistan to see his products in action goes haywire. Stark ends up captured by a shadowy terrorist group known as the Ten Rings who hold him hostage in a cave for months, demanding that he re-create for them a missile originally developed for the U.S. armed forces. Instead, Stark uses the equipment and materials they supply to build a super suit that will act both as armor and weapon – as well as Stark’s only hope of survival. Once he escapes and returns home, Stark decides to make a new and improved suit. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing both domestically and abroad that may call for Stark’s new-found philanthropy and vigilantism.

I have to admit I wasn’t too keen on this movie when it first came out. It’s not that it looked particularly unappealing; it’s just that it didn’t look particularly appealing. But then it got both critical acclaim (it was even nominated for two Oscars) and audience raves (including amongst my family members, most especially from my dad and my brother-in-law). But after finally watching it myself, I still came away with the feeling that it wasn’t particularly appealing nor unappealing. There was nothing specifically off-putting about the movie, but there wasn’t anything that makes it very memorable to my mind.

Overall, it seemed that the Iron Man story relies on a lot of common comic book and movie tropes. For instance, there’s the wealthy guy turned vigilante angle (not only has this been done before, but it’s been done so much that Ranker.com actually created a list of the 20 richest comic book characters); the token African-American character (I honestly didn’t see much of reason to have the character of Rhodey in the movie other than the desperate attempt to fill a racial diversity quota, although I have a feeling based on the Iron Man comic storylines that his character becomes more developed in the later movies); the token “girl Friday” character in the ridiculously named Pepper Potts (again, it felt like a desperate attempt to fill a gender diversity quota as character development was lacking here also. And seriously, after years of Tony barely remembering Pepper’s existence and Pepper having to deal with Tony’s one-night stands, we’re suddenly supposed to believe that these two have a thing for each other based on one dance at a party?); and so forth. It’s almost as though someone just pulled out all the elements of successful comic books and action movies, threw them together haphazardly, and then hoped for the best. According to IMDb, the movie’s script was not entirely written when filming started and the actors often had to ad-lib lines. This perhaps contributed to the overall feeling that the movie is half-baked and the characters are not fully developed, despite some fine actors enlisted for the movie’s main roles, including Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow both of whom I’ve admired in past roles. Again, it’s not that there’s anything particularly bad about the movie, it’s just that somehow it all didn’t come together and settle just right to make a compelling watch.

The beginning of the movie did seem to drag a bit for me, with the long focus on Tony Stark’s capture, building of the original armored suit, working on improving the suit, and finally testing the changes made. It seemed like a lot of build up before the story really got going (and then it was fairly predictable). However, I could see how engineers like my dad and my brother-in-law would really enjoy this movie because of all those details. In the end, my friend summed up it best with a shrug and the comment, “It’s an origins movie.”

Sky High

Basic plot: Will Stronghold is about to start his first year of high school, but not just any high school – he’s attending Sky High, the school for teens with superpowers. As the son of two renown superheroes known as Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston), who also double as successful realtors as their cover, Will is expected to be amazing but he has yet to exhibit any superpowers. On the first day of school, Will is drafted as a sidekick rather than a hero, and he fluctuates between worrying that he is just a late bloomer and that he’ll never have any superpowers. As Will and his fellow sidekicks learn about hero support, trouble begins brewing and it’s more than just bullies, puppy love, and the brooding outsider who seems to have it out for Will.

This Disney movie is a cheesy production aimed for families with tweens, but it’s surprisingly good compared to the tons of other dross that Disney puts out for this age group. (I am a huge fan of Disney’s animated feature films, but the vast majority of their live-action movies are just terrible.) Yes, the movie is certainly corny, particularly the ridiculous villains who seemed to be pulled straight from Power Rangers. (Seriously, have you seen some of the villains from Power Rangers? It’s mind-boggling how a show this bad could be popular for so long.) But the movie is also a great spoof on common comic book/superhero elements. For instance, there’s a scene early on when Will’s friend Layla comes over and calls Will’s father “Commander” in reference to his glasses-less face. He remembers his slip and puts his glasses back on to complete his realtor disguise. It’s of course a pass at how ridiculous it is that in so many comic books, the other characters can’t figure out that the alter egos are actually the superheroes (a.k.a., Clark Kent puts on his glasses and no one can tell he’s really Superman!).

Furthermore, the movie has some really good lessons in it without being overly didactic or moralistic. There’s the overarching message about everyone having a role to play given their talents, even if they usually feel more like sidekicks than heroes. There’s also more typical high school dramas and challenges, such as trying to find a place where you fit in, realizing the value of old friends, and doing what’s right even when it’s not necessarily what’s popular. Will sums up both the superhero storyline and the underlying themes succinctly by saying: “In the end, my girlfriend became my arch enemy, my arch enemy became my best friend, and my best friend became my girlfriend. But, hey, it's high school.”

The Dark Knight

Basic plot: Picking up where Batman Begins left off, Gotham City seems to be cleaning its criminals off the streets thanks in large part to the efforts of millionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and his vigilante efforts as the Batman. Criminal convictions are further solidified by the police work of Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the law work of Wayne’s long-time love Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her new boyfriend Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Just as the mob and other criminal syndicates are despairing about their future endeavors, a new criminal known only as the Joker (Heath Ledger) arrives on the scene, provoking the others to kill the Batman if they want their troubles to end and also inciting anarchy in general.

I originally saw this movie the weekend it came out, and it was an interesting experience as I was on a beach vacation at the time. Every night we went out on the boardwalk and saw ads that they were going to be showing the movie out on the beach the night it was released. We had all seen the first movie (of the Nolan’s Batman movies, that is) and were excited for the second one. Furthermore, we thought seeing a movie out near the ocean would be fun. But when the night finally came around and we saw the movie, we realized that a movie projected onto a screen on the beach was a better idea in concept than in practice. At first, it was so hard to hear the dialogue over the crashing of the waves. Then those in charge finally figured to increase the volume but by then a fog had rolled in and any brightly lit parts of the film were so intensely bright that it was hard to see. So, all in all, I thought it was a good movie but worth re-seeing as I was obviously missing parts here and there, either audibly or visually. But then – I started having nightmares about the Joker. No exaggeration, these were some crazy hardcore nightmares. I would wake up in the middle of the night in panic and need to look around to assure myself that the Joker wasn’t anywhere near. This was all very odd because I actually found the Scarecrow in the first movie far more terrifying than the Joker while actually watching the movie.

Since we first decided to do a comic book themed movie night, my friend has been saying we really needed to include The Dark Knight to our pile of movies to watch while I was resisting for fear of Joker-induced nightmares again. Finally, I relented and was able to catch some of the finer points I missed out on the first time. And, so far so good - no nightmares about the Joker this time around. Fingers crossed!

In the end, it was also good to re-watch the movie as the newest (and last) movie in the trilogy is scheduled for release in July 2012. While I remembered most of the basic plot of The Dark Knight, I did not remember the crucial detail of the ending being that the Batman was taking the blame and willing to be the one hated so that Gotham City would have the “white knight” hero image in Harvey Dent preserved. Apparently the new movie will pick up eight years after the events of The Dark Knight.

Speaking of the upcoming movie, The Dark Knight Rises, I stumbled upon an article recently that noted Selina Kyle’s comments in the trailer sounded like a 99% person speaking to a 1% person and went on to speculate if the movie was a commentary to some degree on the Occupy Wall Street movement. I can’t find the exact article anymore that I read, but here is another that touches upon the idea and another that talks about Nolan’s aborted plan to include OWS protestors in the film itself. I bring this up in reference to this post because in the original article I read, someone pointed out in the comments section that The Dark Knight also had a social-political commentary about the PATRIOT Act. Once I read that, I recalled immediately the scene in which Bruce Wayne enables Lucius Fox’s cell phone-sonar technology on the entire city and Lucius worries that Wayne has crossed a line.

Wayne: Beautiful, isn't it?
Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
Wayne: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is *wrong*.
Wayne: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
Fox: At what cost?
Wayne: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.
Fox: This is too much power for one person.
Wayne: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.

In the end, everything works out with Wayne refusing to use this spying technology again, but the negative implications seem to be clear. (Of course, I say “seem to be” because some apparently saw the movie as towing the Bush administration line.) Watching the movie a second time, I picked up more on how the Joker is often referred to by Gordon and the Batman as a terrorist, so it’s not just the one scene with the cell phone that makes the point, even if it is all somewhat understated.

There are also more heavy-handed commentaries on human nature that arise as a result of the Joker’s actions. There’s certainly negatives seen, as in the mass panic the Joker creates with his threats to blow up hospitals and murder people daily unless his ever-changing demands are met. But there are also positives, such as when the ferry hostages come through and refuse to sink to the Joker’s level when given the false choice to become killers or be killed, despite the Joker’s assertion that “You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.”

As I’ve already indicated by quoting from the movie twice, there are some great lines in this movie. There’s both the deep (“The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming.” - Harvey Dent) and the funny (“Let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands; and your plan, is to *blackmail* this person? Good luck.” – Lucius Fox). And of course, there’s the fabulous last lines from Gordon: “Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we'll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.” Cue dramatic music here.

Now that I’ve praised the movie, I’d like to point out the couple of issues I had with it. For starters, I found it ridiculous the first time and I still find it ridiculous for there to be such a long scene of the Batman taking out the Joker’s henchman while concurrently fighting off the SWAT team because they haven’t yet realized that the hostages are forced to dress like the clowns and hold guns. Seriously, if Batman was hooked into Lucius at the point, why not just have Lucius radio the intel into Gordon and thus also the SWAT team?? That seems far more productive than everyone getting hurt for no reason. But I guess the creators didn’t want to skimp on the action scenes for that segment of the audience who wants a good fight scene. My second contention was that the rise and fall of Harvey Dent felt rushed. My friend noted it was a “waste of a villain” in Two Face because of how he appears and then disappears again so quickly. Unfortunately, you get the feeling that the creators planned to bring the Joker back for the next movie but that’s obviously no longer probable as no one will want to try to replace Heath Ledger.

Speaking of the cast, there is excellent acting all around, although obviously most especially from Heath Ledger in his last* and legendary role, proving without a doubt that movie viewers were interested in more than just his pretty face. I was glad to see Katie Holmes replaced with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Even though I wouldn’t say this was a fabulous performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal given her other work, it was still a vast improvement from Katie Holmes. (I have to note that even the second time around, I’m surprised by the bold move to kill off Rachel. I recall how the first time, I was convinced it was another ploy like Gordon’s earlier “death” and we would see her re-appear but no.)

While The Dark Knight was nominated for and won plenty of awards, the fact that the Academy didn’t even nominate this movie for best picture is a signal of how the establishment still considers comic book movies to be a film genre like horror or chick flicks that isn’t worthy of critical notice.

* That is if you only count fully completed movies. Ledger was working on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at the time of his death. Luckily, given the weird nature of that movie, his role was able to be completed by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. And while some said that it was obvious where the movie was tweaked to make this work, I thought it flowed perfectly as though it had been intended to go that way all along. And, although I found that movie odd, I enjoyed it much more than any other Terry Gilliam film.

Watchmen

Basic plot: In an alternate reality 1985, costumed vigilantes have been specifically banned by Congress from fighting crime but that hasn’t helped decrease the terror that people feel as the world powers inch toward nuclear war and total annihilation. Meanwhile, a former costumed hero is murdered, setting off a chain of unalterable events involving the remaining band of past vigilantes.

To start off any conversation about the film version of Watchmen, I have to be fair and note that I absolutely love love love the book Watchmen. And I have to admit that I had been resisting this movie because I knew it would never live up to the book and how wonderful it is. In the end, I have to say that, yes, the movie will never be as great as the book, but it was still pretty good. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised because I was expecting to dislike it, but it was a fairly decent adaptation and I think it was a little extreme for Alan Moore to so completely wash his hands of the movie. (The credits state only that Watchmen was co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons without mention of who the other co-creator was, because Alan Moore really hates derivatives of his work that much).

To get into the specifics, I liked the beginning credits with the montage of rapid scenes showing this alternate reality and the super-brief history of both the Minutemen and the following Watchmen. However, as much as I enjoyed this, I couldn’t help thinking that this – along with a few other parts – would be extremely confusing to anyone who hadn’t read the book. And while a large part of the audience for Watchmen was most likely those who had already read the book, any movie based on a book will also have non-readers in the audience as well and it doesn’t serve anyone to alienate viewers. One notable instance of this was the 2005 film version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. After the 1995 BBC miniseries, the director was probably right to not try and do another very faithful adaptation as that was already done. But when he chose to make the move very arty, he also sacrificed some of the story. I remember watching this movie with a friend who had never read the book or seen the previous film versions, and she was constantly getting confused as to what was going on. Of course, the 18^th century social rules and manners probably didn’t help. (It’s always funny to 21^st century viewers to see the Bennet sisters in shock and fear that that their bumptious cousin Mr. Collins talks to Mr. Darcy without having first been formally introduced. Oh, the horror!). But from her confusion, I realized that I only knew what was going on because I knew the story of Pride and Prejudice backwards and forwards.

But I diverge, back to Watchmen. Another one of these moments of potential confusion was near the end when we see the newspaper man and the boy who reads the Tales of the Black Freighter comics amongst those about to die in NYC, but the viewer would only recognize these characters if they had read the book as the whole pirates comic parallel story is passed over here. This is not without good reason since the movie is already two and a half hours long and it would never all fit, but that parallel story was one of the things that made the book so amazing. (The director did, however, also make Tales of the Black Freighter as a separate animated movie, although I still haven’t seen this one.) I suppose these characters showing up, however, is more of an Easter egg for loyal Watchmen fans than a moment of confusion for the non-reader.

Among the others things I liked were the musical choices, with lots of good period pieces depending on the scene and the timeframe it was depicting. Speaking of which, the film did a pretty decent job with all the flashbacks. Flashback scenes can be messy and in a movie like this where there’s so much switching back and forth between the present and the past, there’s potential for the viewer to become easily confused. I don’t think that was the case here, although again I already knew what to expect in this regard. Another thing I liked that was even the graffiti seen on the walls of buildings in the book was to some extent included in the movie. Some of the other imagery from the book is also left intact, particularly the iconic smiley face with the drop of blood on it and, to a lesser degree than in the book, the doomsday clock. It really is the little details sometimes.

There was also some really great acting involved in Watchmen. Jackie Earle Haley was good as Rorschach, especially considering that this actor has the tricky task of spending most the movie behind a full face mask and still has to connect with the audience and display emotion somehow. Billy Crudup had similar difficulties because Dr. Manhattan shows little emotion, but he did a good job expressing what he could as the character and he was particularly phenomenal in the flashback scenes before he was turned into a giant blue being with superhuman powers. In fact, I was surprised to find I really liked Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan because I had seen him interviewed on Jon Stewart when the movie was first released and I didn’t get a good feeling from him at that time. At first I didn’t like Patrick Wilson as Dan because I didn’t feel like Dan was that, well, for lack of a better term, dorky. But then when I saw him transformed as he eased right back into his role of Nite Owl, I really, really appreciated this actor above all the others. However, I really wasn’t a fan of Malin Akerman playing Laurie, although I will admit that as Laurie was my favorite character in the book (close second in Dan though, then followed by Rorschach), I had really high expectations for this actor. Although I can’t quite put my finger on it, something about Matthew Goode as Ozymandias kind of irked me, but I guess given that character’s role in the plot, perhaps that was as it should be. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian is great about being the jerk he should be, and that one scene where he cries to his mortal enemy, realizing that man is the closest thing he has to a friend, while also simultaneously laughing that life’s a joke is an amazing piece of work. All the other characters are played just fine, but nothing worth writing home about.

As I’ve already mentioned several times that this was a movie based on a book and that I loved the book, I think it’s worth pointing out some differences between the story in the two mediums.

- Things that specifically stand out to me from the book that didn’t make it into the movie (some of these are small details but I noticed their absence):

1) Dan telling Laurie that everything that is happening in the world makes him feel so impotent. I specifically remember this one because it felt like an overstated metaphor as it comes on the heels of Dan not being able to sexually perform. It was one of the few moments in the book when I felt Moore was a little heavy-handed.

2) Hollis also being found dead at one point, I think further fueling Rorschach’s belief that someone is out to kill costumed heroes. When I was looking up some stuff about the movie online to write this post, I found someone posted on YouTube a deleted scene that shows Hollis Mason’s death and Dan’s reaction to it. While these scenes were pretty brutal, I’m glad to see that at least I remembered correctly. It’s also funny to see that this person comments at the end that if the director was going to make cuts, maybe the long sex scene should have been one of them. (See my comments on that below).

3) Rorschach being caught and the police mocking him because he wears lifts in his shoes to make him seem taller.

4) Rorschach telling the psychiatrist in prison about how he got his mask and the real-life story of Kitty Genovese being a motivator for him becoming a vigilante. I also feel like he talks more about his mother, perhaps about her death, at this point.

5) I remember that when Jon is on Mars thinking about his life and noting how all time is happening for him at the same moment - past, present, future all jumbled together - he remarks about it’s such-and-such date and Janey is leaving him, followed by a line about it’s so-and-so date and Laurie is walking out on him. I remember thinking what a hauntingly sad juxtaposition that was.

6) I feel like in the book Jon takes Laurie with him to Mars to have their whole confrontation sooner, like right after Laurie first moves in with Dan, not after their adventure rescuing people again. I was pretty sure that Laurie went to Antarctica with Dan and Rorschach, not meeting them there later. Maybe it’s a feature of the different ending (see below), but I thought there was more time where they were all sitting around knowing that Ozymandias’s plan was going to happen and not being able to do anything about it, but it hadn’t actually happened yet. In fact, I seem to recall that in their desperation and fear, Laurie and Dan end up randomly having sex (again) somewhere in Ozymandias’s house.

Speaking of Dan, Laurie, and sex, I find it funny that with all that has to be cut, the director decided to leave in a particularly long sex scene with the two of them. It’s certainly not unjustifiable given these characters and their actions in the book, but when you limit the explanation of the Keene Act – a huge deal in the Watchmen universe – to a few brief wordless flashes in the opening credits, maybe you should think about reducing the length of the sex scene instead?

Oh, and Laurie’s costume in the movie is much more ridiculous and objectifying than how she was depicted in the book – and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Check out this great critical article (which includes pictures of the two different costumes) on how Zack Snyder sexually fetishes Laurie in the film I was actually thinking along these lines in the scene when Laurie and Dan first decide to go out adventuring in their costumes again - Dan is downstairs working on Archie when Laurie comes down the stairs in her sexed-up costume and the camera takes a long pan on her walk down the stairs. Hey, Dan isn’t bad looking either and the Nite Owl suit really buffs him up but we don’t get any similar visual for him – and he’s the one that really misses being in the suit and rescuing people. Indeed, his costume is tied to his identity and his sexual potency, so maybe Snyder should really have put the focus on him in that scene instead.

7) Missing are of course the great, ground-breaking, and unique inter-comic text from the book (i.e., Hollis Mason’s autobiography, newspaper clippings, etc.). Obviously this would never work in a filmic fashion but I still miss it. At least Rorschach (via his journal) and Jon still get to narrate some parts.

- Things that happened in the movie that I can’t recall if they actually happened in the book (anyone with a copy of the book handy want to help me out?):

1) Laurie and Dan being attacked in a dark alley by hoodlums (and defeating them) on the way to see Hollis Mason.

2) Rorschach being harassed and threatened in prison by the inmates because he put so many of them there. Specifically, I do not recall him being responsible for a man’s arms being sawn off, which was a particularly gruesome scene. (And for the record, while I am not a medical professional, I highly doubt that if a man’s arms were sawn off, he would immediately fall to the ground dead. I think he would bleed out over time. Look at how many war veteran amputees are out there; obviously instant death isn’t the result of loss of limb. There could possibly be the implication that he merely passed out from the pain and shock, but Rorschach’s “1-0, 2-0” remarks makes it seem like we’re meant to believe that inmate has died.)

I’m of two opinions about this whole Rorshach-is-such-a-badass-even-a-prison-full-of-inmates-out-to-get-him-doesn’t-frighten-him idea. Part of me thinks it’s in line with his character. With the other costumed heroes, we can see how they managed to hang the costume up after the Keene Act and live arguably normal lives to some degree. Rorschach was the only one who could never do this, refusing to ever give up the costume or the vigilantism. (It’s worth pointing out that while the movie doesn’t explicitly say so like the book does, we can kind of tell even here that the costumed heroes all know each other’s identities except that no one knows who Rorschach really is.) We see in these scenes how he is Rorschach, even when you remove the mask. He has so embodied this being that nothing stops him from exacting his form of justice.

But that brings me to my second opinion about these scenes. Rorschach, as we clearly learn from the story about the man who kidnapped a little girl and what Rorschach did to him in return,* doesn’t seem like the kind of vigilante who would let criminals live to see prison. However, he did spend his time in the early Watchmen days as Dan’s partner, and Dan isn’t the kind of guy to ruthlessly exact his own brand of justice, so perhaps it is believable after all.

3) *Another case in point of differences between the book and the movie is that in the movie, Rorschach splits this guy’s skull open in another gruesome scene; in the book, I think Rorschach burned him alive or left him handcuffed for the dogs to eat as “an eye for an eye” punishment. I don’t remember the axe to the head in the book and I think that would have stood out to me more.

4) Speaking of the prison and the attendant gruesome murder scene there, I do not recall either the mass panic at the prison or Laurie and Dan coming to bust Rorschach out of jail in the book. However, I do recall that Rorschach goes to prison and then that later he goes to Antarctica to confront Ozymandias with the others, so he must have gotten out of prison somehow and I can’t remember how else he does.

5) Obviously, the ending is different in the movie but I had been forewarned about that. I think that Jon-is-the-weapon-of-mass-destruction rather than the giant-alien-squid-thing-is-the-weapon-of-mass-destruction change works just fine, although I do feel like it does shake things up a bit. For instance, how did the Comedian find out about this plot? I felt like the ending with Ozymandias’s plans and motivations was rushed over too quickly.

6) Also, at the very end with Dan, Laurie, and her mother, the movie does not acknowledge that costumed heroes are still a no-no in this alternate reality and that Laurie and Dan have to hide their identities as they do in the book’s ending.

There's probably more differences between the book and the movie than the ones I listed here, but it's been several years since I read the book last so I don't remember them all. These are just the ones that particularly stood out to me. In the end, the movie made me nostalgic for the book and I want to read it again now.

I could talk about Watchmen – the book especially but even the movie – forever, but I’ve tripled the amount I wrote about this movie compared to the other three and this post has gone on long enough so I better stop here.

Fly Me to the Moon: Boeing-Boeing

My sister and I have both been watching ABC’s drama Pan Am with some interest. So when the Paper Mill Playhouse sent out a brochure of their upcoming season including a comedy set in the 1960s and involving stewardesses, we thought this might be something worth checking out. Of course, Boeing-Boeing shares basically no features with Pan Am beyond the time period and the occupation of some of the characters, but it was a highly entertaining production that I would recommend.

As you may have guessed already, I knew basically nothing about Boeing-Boeing before seeing the play, although my wise cousin did mention that the play had been around since the 1960s. Indeed, she was right, as the playbill informs me that it was written by French playwright Marc Camoletti and premiered in Paris in 1960. It was soon after adapted into English by British playwright Beverley Cross and appeared on London (1962) and New York (1965) stages. In 1965, it was made into a movie starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis. According to the playbill and Wikipedia, in 1991 the play was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most performed French play in the world with 19 years on the French stage and seven years on the London one, amongst others. (The success of the play even resulted in Camoletti writing a sequel called Don’t Dress for Dinner, which was also produced at Paper Mill Playhouse back in the 1990s.) In 2007, Boeing-Boeing was revived in London and by 2008, it had returned to New York. And for four weeks in 2012, Boeing-Boeing is on stage at the Paper Mill Playhouse.

Paper Mill’s production of Boeing-Boeing was top notch.* The atmosphere of the theater was exactly right from the beginning, with Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” playing from the speakers before the curtain rose to the playhouse’s typical pre-show “fine print” (no photography, no smoking, there will be an intermission, etc.) being announced as though it were a flight attendant’s welcoming message (‘Thank you for flying with the Paper Mill Playhouse’). The costumes, makeup, and hair styles are all perfect for transporting the viewer back in to the 1960s. The set design was magnificent, with a detailed (but not too detailed) look at Bernard’s Parisian apartment – an apartment so elegant that my sister was jonesing after Bernard’s crown molding and split-level dining/living room.

But speaking of Bernard and his Parisian apartment reminds me that I have yet to give a basic run-down of the play. So here goes:

It’s 1960 and playboy Bernard has perfected his relationship status – he is engaged. To three women. This way, he reasons to his visiting friend Robert, he will never have to endure monotony. All three women are flight attendants – American Gloria with TWA, Italian Gabriella with Alitalia, and German Gretchen with Lufthansa – so they are never in town at the same time and thus never need to know about each other. Bernard invites Robert to sit back and kick up his heels while Gloria heads out after breakfast, Gabriella flies in for lunch and out again before dinner, and Gretchen wraps up the evening. But Bernard’s perfectly timed out plans quickly go awry when the time tables are changed on him, and he needs Robert’s help – along with the help of his own long-suffering French maid Berthe – to juggle all three women and keep them out of sight of one another.

Obviously, this play is meant to be a comedy (specifically a farce***). And it is certainly is. I can’t recall the last time I was in a theater where the whole audience was uncontrollably laughing for the vast majority of the play. In fact, if I had one complaint about the play, it would be that all that laughing was bad for me, as I was recovering from an illness and every time I laughed, I ended up coughing again. C’est la vie.

Beyond the situational comedy that arose from such an absurd plot, the play also has its fair share of physical comedy, which the actors all pulled off with perfect grace. At first I was a little put off by the exaggerated, over-the-top accents of the women (including Berthe), but then I realized that this was an intentional thing to add to the comedy and I went with it. Paper Mill has been marketing the play with the tagline “Hijinks are in the air!” and that is certainly a fitting summation.

For a feel of the play, Paper Mill has released a video montage of scenes from the play. To be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with this montage on first view. I’m not sure if it’s the scenes chosen or if it’s the absence of audience laughter for the great one-liners, but seeing this video certainly was not as appealing as seeing the play. I’ve included here for some context, but I’m more inclined to say: Go out and see the play for yourself! And hurry, because the production is only ongoing for two more days (and that’s including today!).

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*This should be no surprise. Whether it was The Secret Garden with our aunt when we were kids, Cinderella as a birthday treat for my sister, or Steel Magnolias to satisfy our Gilmore Girls fangirl** yearnings by seeing Kelly Bishop live, my sister and I have never been disappointed with a Paper Mill Playhouse production.

**Did you know that no less an authority than Merriam-Webster Dictionary considers “fanboy” a word but not “fangirl”? I could go into a feminist diatribe here but I’ll just leave it at that. Make of it what you will…

***An audience guide provided by Paper Mill Playhouse describes farces in detail, including some history of the form. Some tidbits include, “Farce differs from standard classical comedy in one major way: it is an exaggerated, broad form of comedy based on unlikely situations and highlighted by contrived and improbable plot twists. … The driving force behind a farce is fast action, brisk dialogue, visual effects, mistaken identities and convoluted and complicated plots. … It is a comedy that exists purely for the sake of generating laughter in the audience. … Like all good farces, the play invokes laughter by the violation of social taboos, but the characters and values under attacked are eventually restored to their conventional positions.” So, all’s well that ends well, although all is well throughout in a manner of speaking because it’s all meant for a laugh.

We are the Champions: Medieval Times

I debated whether or not I should include this outing on this blog at it's cheesy compared to what I usually write about it, but I finally decided that this could qualify on the "and entertainment" component of the blog's mission. Today's outing was to Medieval Times, the entertainment chain that purports to bring spectators back to, you guessed it, the medieval times through a dinner feast and jousting tournament. As far as I can remember, not much has changed about the Medieval Times since I first went as a child, nor does it vary much from location to location. I guess when you have a good thing going, you stick with it. There's actually quite a bit of dinner theater to the spectacle, in that there is a whole story involving the king and his quest for peace, which is inevitably broken, but mostly it's the atmosphere and the clanking swords that we care about as viewers. There's also some fun moments where we get to see the effects of what must be months and months and months of animal training -- a falcon flying gracefully above the crowd and horses who do fancy trots and other fascinating movements. My friend and I were both seriously astounded by how magnificently these animals performed, especially given the noise and lights that came from the crowd.

Besides Americans' *entirely accurate* (read: not at all accurate) view of medieval Spain, one of the things I find most fascinating about Medieval Times is that you could easily convince me that it is actually an elaborate sociological experiment. We are all aware, at least on some level, of the psychological shortcuts that allow us to see the world in terms of "like us" and "not like us." Them against us often becomes the resulting attitude. This can be ill-applied when it comes to differences such as skin color or ethnicity, and racist attitudes prevail. We also see the "them against us" mentality in more trivial aspects of life, such as choosing a sports team to root for (although some people do get quite carried away with this as well), But Medieval Times brings this to a whole new level. The them vs. us mentality emerges simply by handing someone a colored paper crown.

See, there are several different knights in the Medieval Times tournament and to simplify matters, they are all referred to by their color (green knight, red knight, etc.). Spectators are seated in color-coded sections and given a corresponding paper crown to wear. And, amazingly, before the knights even appeared on the scene, people began getting wild fan attitudes about their knight. We were seated in the yellow section, right next to the blue section, and a bitter rivalry was soon struck up between the two colors. Blue and yellow spectators were shouting (and cursing) across to one another. And the tournament had yet to begin; likewise the knights still had not appeared, so there was absolutely nothing to base our undying fervor upon such as skill or even something trivial like looks. Right before the tournament was about to commence, our server came by and told us which knights were our allies -- all were on our side except the green knight, who we should boo. I then had to point out that we had apparently been wasting our time booing the blue knight for about half an hour, and our server replied that we could boo him, too, if we so desired. And so the bitter rivalry continued on the rest of the night.

Every time a knight came out into the arena, the crowd in his corresponding color went wild even before he started competing. Meanwhile, the poor princess, the only female character in the whole spectacle, had hardly anyone cheering for her as she had little to do but talk to the king, make a toast, and hand out roses to the winning knights. But when those same knights in turn tossed roses into their corresponding crowds, again their color's crown-wearing fans went wild. When it came down to one-on-one jousting tournaments after the all-in games, you could actually feel the crowd's enthusiasm waning when their knight wasn't amongst the two knights fighting. Seriously, it was amazing to me how quickly people could become invested in rooting for their "team" (so to speak) and thus I am convinced this is all some social experiment on racist attitudes, mob mentality, and etc.

Oh, and for the record, our yellow knight was ultimately named the champion, so clearly we had been on the winning team all along and our fervor was not without reason! ;)

From Russia with Love: Swan Lake

While many have speculated whether the success of the movie Black Swan would contribute to more spectators of the Swan Lake ballet, I have neither seen nor particularly wish to see Black Swan. I have just wanted to see Swan Lake for some time now, so I was intrigued when I saw The State Theatre would be live broadcasting a production of the Swan Lake from The Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, Russia. A friend and I decided to check out this performance, with this far more friendly commuting option!

Very loosely, here’s the basic plot: Swan Lake opens with a birthday celebration for Prince Siegfried. Later that evening, the prince stumbles onto an enchanted lake. It appears to be populated with swans, but they are really young woman who are under a spell and only become their true selves at night. The prince spies Odette (the “white swan”), the most beautiful of these women, and immediately falls in love with her. The next day the queen presents various princesses from other countries to the prince, hoping he’ll pick a bride amongst them, but Siegfried is loyal to Odette. However, that’s when the evil Rothbart appears with his daughter Odile (the “black swan”) who looks remarkably like Odette and tricks the prince into believing that she is indeed Odette. From here, different productions diverge on the storyline so I won’t provide any more details or give away any spoilers.

The story of Swan Lake, like most fairy tales, is a bit silly. (If you don’t know this about me already, I’ll note for the record that I am not much of a fan of fairy tales). But the story is somewhat secondary here - the plot is just some weak glue to hold together a bunch of otherwise unrelated dance sequences. While many critics of musicals charge that the songs are unnecessary, they generally do help to further the plot, even if they make it more long drawn out and flowery. Here, however, many of the dance sequences do nothing to further the story along. Sure, it makes sense for Odette and Siegfried to have a clingy romantic dance together to indicate that they are attracted to one another. But everyone else in the story has their moment of dance also, even when they don’t seem to say anything more about the story. The black swans, the white swans, the courtiers, the prospective brides and their attendants, and so on, all have long dances to execute that don’t push the action forward. This is not a criticism of the ballet; this is just a statement. If you like strong plots, you will probably not like this ballet (and perhaps not any others). If you like to see beautiful dancers dancing beautiful, you will more than likely enjoy seeing this ballet performed.

Before I go into specifics about this particular production we saw, I should note that I’m treading into unknown waters here. Unlike art or theater, where I feel I have at least some background to bring to any critique or appreciation of a particular work, I have hardly any knowledge about ballet. I’ve only seen two other full ballet productions – The Nutcracker at a local dance studio and The Swineherd at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. I have very little awareness of what kind of training and work goes into a great ballet performance, let alone specific knowledge of technique. So, short of a dancer falling flat on his or her face, I’d be completely unaware of a performer’s flub. Also, because I am unaware of what is a more difficult move comparatively, I am awed by flashy, quick moves – which may or may not be the most difficult ones if you were to ask the ballet dancers.

That brings me to my one and only criticism of this production of Swan Lake – I was not overly impressed by the performance of the prince. For instance, he often appeared to be playing second fiddle to Odette/Odile. No doubt there’s tons of physical effort and talent on both parties’ parts whenever a lift is involved, but it looks far more difficult and interesting to the viewer to see a ballerina balancing on one leg mid-air than it does to see the man just holding her there. Again, this may be an issue with me not knowing what are the more complex steps, but I found the court jester to be a far more entertaining dancer to watch. His leaps, jumps, and quick successive pirouettes looked far more difficult and, as I said, more interesting to the spectator than anything from the prince. Indeed, I found the jester to be more impressive than either of the nominal male leads, although at least with Rothbart I got the impression that this was a very talented performer but the role did not call for an excess of stunning moves. That being said, overall I was mesmerized by the dancers and their skill. The visual feast is further spread with lavish scenery and costumes. I particularly liked the costumes for the white swans – basically the standard leotard and tutu in white but with a soft, fluffiness to them that really evoked the image of a swan’s down. A modest feathered headdress completed the look. And, the music, originally composed by Tchaikovsky, is absolutely stunning and fits perfectly with each and every dance step.

Watching the ballet on the big screen was an interesting experience and, as I mentioned somewhat flippantly earlier, is a good way to see a ballet you would not otherwise be able to see due to geographic distance. Another plus to see the ballet this way was that you could very clearly see the performers up close. Even if you were stuck in a back row, you’d still be able to see the expressions on the dancers’ faces. There were also a few behind the scenes moments, such as when we could see the orchestra in the pit warming up for an act or when the dancer performing as Rothbart was interviewed during the intermission. The only down side with this way of seeing the ballet was that you saw only what the videographer allowed you to see. There was a good mix of shots of the whole troupe versus panning into a lead character, but it’s different than being able to take in the stage in its entirety and choosing where you want to focus at each moment.

Before the ballet started, The State Theatre also provided a brief “Pre-Performance Insight” with Douglas Martin, who is a member of the American Repertory Ballet and has danced Siegfried to his wife’s Odette/Odile in a previous production of Swan Lake. Unfortunately, the pre-performance part made it a bit tricky as people kept piling into the theater looking for their seats prior to the ballet beginning and making quite a bit of noise in the process. Those already trying to listen to Mr. Martin and shushing the newcomers didn’t actually do much to help the auditory problem. However, all and all, this was an interesting talk, which really did provide some insights. Martin discussed the history of Swan Lake, illustrated some frequently used pantomimes that we might see in the production, and explained some of the very difficult training that went into his wife’s performance of Odette/Odile. This made me really appreciate even more the performance I saw later of this dual role. As he pointed out, the ballerina has to play very different personas in this one ballet – sweet, innocent Odette has soft, delicate movements that are sometimes skitterish like a nervous bird while cunning, duplicitous Odile has sharper, quicker movements that are determined. But Odile is also attempting to mimic Odette’s movements, so you see that as well. It is certainly quite an undertaking, and, as I mentioned, I appreciated the ballerina’s every movement all the more after Martin described how painstakingly his wife practiced and perfected every detail, down to every hand flutter. No doubt Mariya Aleksandrova, who played Odette/Odile in this production, did the same, for it showed in her performance.

While Swan Lake was only available to see at The State Theatre today, their broadcasts continue with three other ballets and three operas over the next few months, so there’s a good chance you might find something you’ll like. Already, my friend and I have decided to go back to see La Boheme there, so stay tuned here for more updates…

Foodie Movies Redux

As I’ve mentioned on this blog, several months ago a friend and I had a food-themed movie night. We ambitiously culled a long list of food-related movies, of which we only managed to watch a handful. Since that night, I’ve been able to add a handful more of these movies to my already-watched list. Now checked off the list, so to speak, are Tortilla Soup, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, Eat Pray Love, Mildred Pierce, and Julie & Julia. (These are listed not alphabetically, as I am usually wont to do, but in the order in which I viewed them.) Below are some of my thoughts about these movies; feel free to join the conversation by adding to the comments section!

Tortilla Soup

Note: This is the Mexican-American version of the earlier, Ang Lee-directed movie, Eat Drink Man Woman.

Restaurant owner and chef Martin (Hector Elizondo) is a widower with three grown daughters who live with him. Leticia (Elizabeth Pena), the oldest, is an uber-religious chemistry teacher who fills almost every stereotype of the spinster schoolmarm, right down to her rigid buttoned-up attire. Carmen (Jacqueline Obradors) is a successful businesswoman who is less successful at personal relationships and who secretly (or perhaps not so secretly at times) wishes her father would let her become a chef like him - only that instead of being a purist like him, she likes to make “mutt” creations that blend the culinary tastes of several cultures. Maribel (Tamara Mello), the youngest, has a carefree spirit but the sense that she is constantly ignored by her family and sometimes even by herself. Their elaborate family dinners are sometimes attended by the girls’ love interests and by family friend Yolanda, a newly divorced single mother, and Yolanda’s family - daughter April and mother Hortensia.

I went into this movie expecting a good performance from Hector Elizondo, whose character of Dr. Bell on Monk was top-notch, and was not disappointed. Indeed, all the cast excelled at really inhabiting their roles fully and making me feel like these were real people. Raquel Welch as Hortensia was a wonderfully funny character, in line with a character you’d expect to see out of Dickens or Austen, with an over-the-top performance as a woman ridiculously bent on trying to snag Martin as a husband but unawares that she is not in the least bit subtle in doing so. And, for the Veronica Mars fans out there, look out for a small role played by Ken Marino aka “Vinnie Van Lowe.”

The movie is rife with funny moments as well as touching ones, and I’d bet money that you won’t find at least one of Martin’s (and Carmen’s) many elaborate dishes mouth-watering. There’s a little something for everyone between the comedy, the family drama, the romance, etc. Without giving away too many spoilers, I was personally happy that the ending was one of those ones where not everything is tied up neatly in a bow but you’re also not left scratching your head wondering what on earth that bizarre open-ended conclusion meant. And likewise, I was happy to see that not every woman’s happy ending saw her happily married off. Overall, I was very pleased with this movie and would recommend it.

Nina’s Heavenly Delights

After her father’s sudden death, Nina (Shelley Conn) returns to her Indian-Scottish family in their home city of Glasgow after three years spent in London where she ran to when her parents tried to arrange her marriage to Sanjay (Raji James). She has hardly any time to grieve before she learns that her father used his beloved restaurant, the New Taj, as collateral in a gambling bet and now half the restaurant belongs to Lisa (Laura Fraser), her younger brother Kary’s girlfriend. Lisa and Kary are ready to sell the restaurant to an eager buyer - Raj, the owner of a competing restaurant and father of Sanjay. But Nina also discovers that her father entered the restaurant into a prestigious televised cooking competition and made it into the final round. She manages to convince Lisa to hold off selling the restaurant until after they make a go for the trophy. As Nina teaches everything her father taught her about cooking to Lisa, she finds herself falling head over heels for Lisa.

I was a little hesitant about this movie because it was labeled a “romance;” I’m not the hugest fan of romances as a genre - either in literature or movies - although there are notable exceptions. Mostly, I think I can like a romance if there’s more to it than just the romance - for instance, a historical backdrop or witty characters. With Nina’s Heavenly Delights, there is certainly more to the story. There’s the very nature of love, death and grief, the pull of family obligations versus the need to be one’s self, and, of course, cooking itself. I felt as though the movie were more about family and the competition, with a side of meaningful glances between Nina and Lisa to remind you that, oh yeah, this is movie about these two falling in love.

Overall, I was really engaged with this movie and rooting for the New Taj to succeed in the competition. The scenes of Glasgow (and the Scottish accents) were an added bonus. For the most part, the filming of the cooking and food scenes was top-notch. There was even a vibe of sexual tension between two women via working in the kitchen in Nina’s first lesson to Lisa about mixing spices - “it’s all about the chemistry, and the chemistry has to be right.” It’s not quite the food fighting scene in Fried Green Tomatoes, but you clearly get the point - one that Lisa makes earlier “The couple that cooks together stays together.” However, there was one scene of cooking where for some reason the director decided to add an overlay of words labeling the ingredients in the dish. It was only done this one time, which I think added to the oddness of doing so. A much more elegant scene was one where the shots of food bubbling were interspersed with shots of pages turning in Nina’s cookbook of award-winning recipes, handed down from her father.

Nina’s drag friend, Bobbi, was a little too over the top for me, although I must acknowledge that he made a good foil to Nina in that he clearly wasn’t hiding his sexuality. Still, I would have been okay with fewer scenes of him and his “chutney queens.” On the other hand, Auntie Mamie was a delightful minor character who I would have liked to see more of as she added humor to every scene she was in, no matter how briefly.

As I already mentioned, I liked this movie overall, but it did feel like it could have been a little longer and more fleshed out. There was some aspects (i.e., the decisions made by Nina’s brother Kary) that could have used a little more explanation. There also needed to be more time for growth in some of the characters so that their actions seemed more realistic and less scripted. For instance, I have a hard time believing that Nina’s mother, who three years earlier was so traditional as to arrange a marriage for her daughter, is suddenly so accepting of her children’s decisions to be so modern and Scottish. I also couldn’t see Lisa putting Nina to the test at such a crucial moment. While I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it, it didn’t feel “real” like Tortilla Soup.

Eat Pray Love

Based on the best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love tells Liz’s story as she copes with her messy divorce by taking a year off to visit Italy, India, and Indonesia. I enjoyed the book when I read it several years ago but didn’t really have any interest in the movie as I didn’t feel like it was the kind of the book that would transfer well to the screen. Essentially the story is about Liz and her transformation and it isn’t exactly plot heavy, so nothing about that screams Hollywood. But I ended up receiving the DVD as a present from someone who knew I liked the book, so I gave it a shot.

Besides the feeling that this wasn’t a story to be told cinematically, this movie had one other huge handicap against its favor: Julia Roberts. I don’t care that she’s an awarding-winner actor, I can’t stand her in general and specifically in this role. For starters, she’s just wrong for the part physically - she was a tad too old for the role but, even more so, she’s too stick thin for anyone to legitimately believe a) her having a “muffin top” from eating too much in Italy and b) Felipe saying she is the perfect kind of woman who looks thin from a distance but has something to hold on to up close. But even if I could overlook that she doesn’t physically fit the part, I’ve never seen her in a movie where she convinces me for more than a minute that she’s anyone other than Julia Roberts. She doesn’t ever inhabit her roles and her characters all come across as behaving the same way. Tackling Liz is even harder because she’s not a character; she’s a real and complex person, and a person who has shared intimate details about herself to the world through her book. And Julia Roberts did not deliver. To be honest, it wasn’t just her either; despite some other big names in this movie, no one stood out as acting particularly splendidly, excepting the actor who played Balinese medicine man Ketut, who I just loved, and the actor playing Tulsi, the young Indian girl Liz befriends who is forced into an arranged marriage against her wishes. A minor pet peeve, but it was annoying to find that Richard from Texas didn’t have a Texan accent nor did Sofi from Sweden have a Swedish accent. Come on, people, at least *try* to convince me that you’re the person you’re pretending to be.

Like I said earlier, the book isn’t full of plot devices but mostly Liz’s internal struggles, so this makes it a hard movie to make. So much had to be specifically narrated (an okay technique when needed, but if half your movie needs to be narrated, maybe you should left well enough alone with the book) or conveyed through expressions and looks (which Julia Roberts always seemed to get wrong; she was smiling broadly when she shouldn’t be happy and looking apprehensive when she should be happy, she barely reacted at all throughout Richard’s long and moving history, and she’s apparently incapable of making it through a movie without pitching a screaming fit). The movie also invented a character played by Viola Davis who represented *all* of Gilbert’s family, friends, and co-workers back home and functioned as a sounding-board and “straight man” (if you parody the borrowing of terms for comedies used here for dramas) that Liz could talk about some of her emotions without constantly narrating.

However, the movie was very good for showing us the beautiful scenes of the places Gilbert visited. If there were anything missing from the book, it would be actually seeing the places Liz writes about with such passion. The movie helps you feel like you’ve actually traveled to these places and seen the ruins in Rome, driven through the crowded streets of India, and inhaled the tropical sea breezes in Bali.

A few more pet peeves arose as I watched the movie: it’s been a while since I’ve read the book, so perhaps someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall Gilbert being randomly approached by an elephant in India, Felipe and Liz meeting because he ran her off the road, Felipe’s son coming to visit them in Bali, or, most importantly because the movie makes it a huge dramatic point, Felipe and Liz breaking up right before she’s meant to leave for home.

Let’s just hope Hollywood doesn’t try to take on Eliizabeth Gilbert’s sequel, Committed.

Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) is a mother who will do anything for daughters. But eldest daughter Veda (Ann Blyth) is a spoiled brat who always wants more. To have some extra money to buy Veda more and better items, Mildred goes from making cakes and pies for the neighbors, to becoming a waitress and working round the clock, to buying a restaurant, to expanding that to a chain of restaurants. Still, Veda is never happy and wants more money always. To add a bit of mystery to this story of mother-daughter struggle is the fact that is being told in flashbacks as Mildred is held at the police station after being suspected of murder.

This framing device used to tell the story allows the movie start with a shocking murder, but there’s plenty of twists and turns along the way so the viewer isn’t in the know all along. This is film noir/melodrama at its finest – it could easily become ridiculously at any point but does not. I think it part because the whole production holds on to the idea that, despite all its plot points, this is first and foremost a story about these people and what they are like at their cores. Therefore, it is a great character study. To say that Joan Crawford’s acting was excellent would be an understatement as she won an Oscar for this performance and is legendary for this role. Still, it’s worth saying that she is phenomenal as Mildred Pierce and her supporting cast does not disappoint either.

However, that being said, I’m not the hugest fan of Butterfly McQueen as Lottie, Mildred’s maid. While I can’t exactly place my finger on a specific why, something about her whole character feels borderline racist - perhaps it’s just because her character is so silly when everyone else is so serious. (Of course, the character of Ida also provides comic relief, albeit she does it by having sarcastic zingers, rather than just acting like an airhead.) At any rate, McQueen’s squeaky high-pitched voice irritates me in Gone with the Wind and it’s not any better here. That may sound petty, but her voice really does grate on my ears unpleasantly.

As I mentioned earlier, this movie is very much in the film noir style with flashbacks, voiceovers, a femme fatale (of a different sort), and moody black and white filming. Also, there are some fun cinematic shots with the use of mirrors. Overall, it’s visually appealing as well as providing an engaging storyline.

It’s worth noting in a post on food-related movies though that this is one of those movies only tangentially related to food. Unlike in Tortilla Soup where mouth-watering dishes are presented as feasts for the eyes (and temptations for the stomachs), we don’t see much of the food here. However, the movie does have some good lines about its preparation. For instance, in voiceovers Mildred explains, “I felt as though I had been born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married.” She later continues this narrative with, “In six weeks, I felt like I'd worked in a restaurant all my life. In three months, I was one of the best waitresses there. I took tips and was glad to get them. And at home I baked pies for the restaurant.” Or there’s this exchange:

Mildred Pierce: “You look down on me because I work for a living, don't you? You always have. All right, I work. I cook food and sell it and make a profit on it, which, I might point out, you're not too proud to share with me.”
Monte Beragon: “Yes, I take money from you, Mildred. But not enough to make me like kitchens or cooks. They smell of grease.”
Mildred Pierce: “I don't notice you shrinking away from a fifty- dollar bill because it smells of grease.”

Interestingly, after watching the original, I found out that there was an HBO miniseries re-make with Kate Winslet, but from the trailer it looks like all they did was sex it up so I’m not sure that I would check it out.

Julie & Julia

This movie promotes itself as having been “based on two true stories” and thus tells dual side-by-side stories of women living in different eras and places. We start with Julia Child (Meryl Streep) in 1949, having just moved to Paris with her husband and trying to find something to do with her spare time. She finally settles on cooking, managing to enroll herself in an all-male professional class at Le Cordon Bleu. From there she moves on to teaching French cooking and writing a cookbook. Meanwhile, in 2002, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a tired New Yorker who is emotionally drained by the time she comes home from her job dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. Her tension release at the end of the day is cooking (one stress coping mechanism that she and I apparently share!) and over time she and her husband land upon the idea that she should write a blog in which she attempts to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s seminal cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in 365 days.

I have to note from the outset that I did not know very much about Julia Child (and nothing about Julie Powell other than that she had this quest to cook all of Child’s recipes) going into the movie, so I really can’t say if it was historically accurate or not, but it was certainly an engaging movie.

It certainly was an interesting concept to show these two stories, based on books written by each woman, side by side. The two women certainly share some similarities and some ups and downs, and somehow the movie pulls off jumping between two time periods, two continents, and two characters (and their supporting casts) without seeming choppy. An interesting thing I liked about each story was that while the stories were ultimately about the women, both had very supportive husbands who helped them to find their place and succeed at it. While this movie, like any other Nora Ephron movie, will inevitably be seen as a “chick flick” at worst or “women’s movie” at best, I feel like it hits the perfect note of gender equality by portraying stories in which neither men nor women are objectified, demonized, or cast to the sidelines.

All around, the movie is filled with excellent acting, although I have to admit I am a bit puzzled by Amy Adams’ accent (or lack thereof, to my ears at least).Iif her mother is from Texas (and heard over the phone with a drawl) and Julie lives in New York, wouldn’t she have at least one of those accents or some sort of mix of both? It’s a small thing, but Meryl Streep so completely changed her vocal patterns to become more like Julia Child that it stood out to me that I didn’t hear that as much in Amy Adams as Julie Powell. Both women, however, did change their appearances a lot to fit their roles.

While food is certainly a large part of this movie, I don’t feel that it was as much in the centerpiece of filming as in some of these other foodie movies like again, Tortilla Soup. Also noting my own preferences for more grains and vegetables than meats (especially red meat), the particular dishes that were shown did not exactly shout drool-worthiness to me, even though I’ve been a huge fan of every recipe I’ve tried from my own French cookbook (and pretty much everything I’ve eaten while in France). The scenes of Paris, however, do make me long to visit that city again....

The only downside to Julie & Julia was the ending. Without giving away any spoilers, I wasn’t 100 percent in love with the movie’s conclusion although I’m not quite sure why. I think I would have liked to see a *little* bit more of both Julia’s and Julie’s successes.

To sum up this lengthy post (if you’re still with me here), if I were a film critic apt to give grades to movies, Tortilla Soup would get an A, Nina’s Heavenly Delights a B, Eat Pray Love a C-, Mildred Pierce an A+, and Julie & Julia an A.

Take the Plunge: The Big Bad Swim

On Black Friday, Amazon.com had a giant DVD sale and I ended up buying quite a few DVDs for myself. (I could not resist the temptation.) One of these was The Big Bad Swim and I’ve now had the time and opportunity to finally watch it. I should point out from the outset that there was definitely some very bad marketing involved with this movie, particularly with the cover trying to sex things up with some headless bikini-clad babe taking up the upper half. If you have a quiet indie movie on your hands, you are appealing to the wrong audience right there. I would have passed right by this movie if I saw it in a store with that cover. Luckily as I was looking online where I could see the top billing more prominently, I noticed that Paget Brewster (who I just love as Emily Prentiss in Criminal Minds) was in it. That fact led me to check out the movie’s synopsis and reviews and finally conclude that I would very likely enjoy this movie.

The Big Bad Swim follows the lives of a bunch of Connecticut residents taking an adult beginners’ swim class at the local rec center. Everyone has their own story about why they are there – Carl (Kevin Porter Young) is too terrified to even touch the water but he wants to be able to take his son to water parks and swim with him, Paula (Liza Lapira, recognizable to NCIS fans as Agent Lee) is past beginner’s but wants to meet single men and has a particular eye on the instructor, Martin and Joanna (Todd Susman and Darla Hill, respectively) just got a pool so they want to be able to use it, etc. While we see all these people throughout, the movie focuses largely on three characters – Noah (Jeff Branson), the swim instructor who’s clinically depressed; Amy (Paget Brewster), a high school math teacher in the midst of a bitter break-up and starting a fling with a younger guy (Michael Mosley, now seen as Ted on Pan Am); and Jordan (Jess Weixler), a part-time casino dealer and stripper whose dealing with a younger brother and his friend obsessed with filming a documentary of her life. It’s this last story that is perhaps the weakest because I feel like we get to know Jordan the least and don’t really understand her background or motivations.

The Big Bad Swim is definitely a “slice of life” film, giving us a look at these characters during a very specific time frame only – the six weeks that the course spans. The movie does a great job of giving you the feeling that these are real people with several factors going into this impression beyond just the story lines - the excellent acting (Paget Brewster is remarkable as expected, but everyone else really gets into their role as well), how even the side characters have rich back stories, the lines that sometimes sound fumbling (you know, like real speech instead of scripted zingers), how not everyone looks a supermodel, and the slice of life aspect of the film. Because it is only a slice of life movie, you feel sorry when it’s over that you won’t get to spend more time finding out about these people and what other adventures (no matter how small or arguably mundane) life has in store for them.

As a small independent film, some parts of the movie occasionally look less than professionally polished (and I’m not referring to the ones that are intentionally done that way because they are meant to be the boys’ documentary) but overall this is a very well done movie that could have benefited from a better marketing team.