For Your Consideration
Grade: C

What a bummer! I'm a big fan of Christopher Guest's comedies, especially the mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. I've been eagerly awaiting his latest effort for months, and I'm sorry to say that his "send up" of the Hollywood awards season is thoroughly unfunny despite a great leading performance by SCTV veteran Catherine O'Hara.

O'Hara plays Marilyn Hack, a woman starring in a melodramatic Jewish family drama called Home for Purim (Purim, for the uninitiated, is a Jewish holiday). Her schtick as a dying matriarch gathers the attention of the entertainment press, and before long her name - along with several other cast members - is being tossed around for Oscar consideration.

The movie's failings are certainly not owing to a weak cast. All of Guest's merry pranksters are on hand, including Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Bob Balaban and Eugene Levy. Even though all of these performers have proven themselves to be comic geniuses in the past, they all seem cast adrift here, fighting like hell to squeeze some laughs out of a hammy script that says absolutely nothing original about the shallowness of the American film industry.

Quite possibly not coming soon to a theater near you:

Death of a President
Grade: B

Banned by Regal and other movie theater chains, this incendiary mockumentary by British director Gabriel Range dramatizes the fictitious assassination of George W. Bush. On October 19, 2007 the President falls victim to a gunman in Chicago, resulting in a souped-up Patriot Act and the prosecution of a Middle Eastern scapegoat. Range convincingly blends actual news footage with fake interviews and reenactments of Dubya’s demise. But while the buildup to the assassination is mesmerizing, the long stretch afterward suffers from a preachy tone and convoluted plot twists.

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell
(Little, Brown and Company, $22.99)

I haven't read any of his other novels, but if Winter's Bone is any indication Daniel Woodrell is the poet laureate of white trash. Set in the freezing chill of winter in the Ozarks, this
potent and unnervingly violent novel concerns a teenage girl named Ree Dolly who tries to protect her younger brothers and her mentally ill mother when her crank-cookin' Daddy skips bail, putting his family in danger of losing their house.
Woodrell's prose is clear and often elegant, and it stunningly contrasts the beauty of the natural world with the savage slice of humanity with which Ree must negotiate. Men threaten her with regularity, which is nothing compared to the trio of women who beat her to a merciless pulp. The only element of grace in Ree's life is Gail, a friend who brings out Ree's latent lesbianism.
Gratuitous violence slightly undermines Woodrell's laudable craftsmanship. Like Joyce Carol Oates, Woodrell takes gruesome descriptions to their limit and then goes even further. As if following Ree on a spree of hellish, bloody adventures isn't enough, we're treated to gag-inducing images of excrement, chainsaws cutting human flesh and vomit flying in every direction imaginable.

Running with Scissors
Grade: B

Fasten your seatbelts ladies! This year’s race for the Best Actress Oscar is going to be a tight one.
The buzz has it that Helen Mirren reigns supreme in The Queen, Penélope Cruz sizzles in Volver and Cate Blanchett rocks The Good German. Now Annette Bening enters the ring with her brilliant turn as a mentally ill mother in the long-awaited film adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ memoir Running with Scissors.
As Deirdre, Burroughs’ mom, Bening undergoes radical and completely convincing mood shifts, crackling with grandiose manic glee in some scenes and slumping into blank-eyed catatonic depressions in others. And though the memoir is perhaps best known for the gay relationship between a teenage Burroughs and a man twenty years his senior, writer and director Ryan Murphy gives ample attention to the lesbian relationships Deirdre conducts after she divorces her slimeball alcoholic husband (Alec Baldwin).
Bening’s performance is undoubtedly the highlight of the film, which is entertaining and generally faithful to the book. But the script is hampered by an inconsistent tone that clumsily transitions from zany humor to pathos, and the upbeat ending feels trite after we’ve spent two hours coming to terms with the inevitability of emotional suffering.
For the handful of you who are not familiar with the memoir, Running with Scissors documents Burroughs’ relationship with his unstable mom, and her unilateral decision send him off to live with a highly unorthodox psychiatrist (Brian Cox), his dog food eating wife (Jill Clayburgh), his daughters (Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood), and an adopted schizophrenic son (Joseph Fiennes) who practices statutory rape on Burroughs.

The “way too weird to be true” flavor of the story raises questions as to whether Burroughs pulled a James Frey and elaborated on some of his material. In fact, the Massachusetts family on which he based these characters claims he’s full of crap, and in 2005 they slapped a defamation of character lawsuit on him.
Twenty-year-old actor Joseph Cross looks boyish enough to portray Burroughs in his early teens. In early scenes his delivery is wooden, but by the film’s end he effectively conveys the rage and confusion that anyone in his shoes would feel.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf, $24)

Just in time for Halloween Cormac McCarthy has published a short, spooky novel that stands a very good chance of haunting your dreams. Best known for violent revisionist Westerns like Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy uses The Road to express a bleak futuristic vision that's filled with images of scorched earth, ashy gray skies and mutilated bodies (both dead and alive).

McCarthy never specifies the events that destroyed the world. All we know is that a father and son - both nameless - are travelling on foot through America, trying to reach the ocean. Food is scarce, and they must protect whatever spoils they do find against bands of marauders who will stop nothing short of rape, torture and cannibalism.

Other McCarthy books, like Blood Meridian, can be slow going due to dense language and inscrutable symbolism. Apart from a few rigorous passages The Road is a much easier read, with extensive passages of minimalistic dialogue.

For all its hellish imagery, this is a surprisingly tender book. The boy quakes with fear at each encroaching danger, but the father is always there to hold him and ensure him that they're "carrying the fire" for the "good guys" who they're bound to find sooner or later.

What makes The Road truly ominous and urgent is the father and son's often unspoken understanding that no amount of love and respectable deeds will keep death from napping at their heels.

Marie Antoinette
Grade: C+

After scoring high marks with The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola takes a wrong turn with this biopic starring Kirsten Dunst as the notorious queen of France. The period costumes and the decadent sets are breathtaking, and the anachronistic use of modern rock music is infectious for the most part. But Coppola’s script lacks a compelling central story line, and the vapid dialogue makes it impossible for Dunst and the talented supporting cast to project anything but stupidity. This is history for dummies, but do see it if you’re in the mood for an extraordinary fashion show.

Flags of Our Fathers
Grade: C

Unless every member of the Academy gets a lobotomy, Clint Eastwood won’t bring home a fresh batch of Oscars for this heavy-handed World War II drama that questions the veracity of the iconic photo of American soldiers at Iwo Jima. The battles are riveting and horrifying, but most of the acting is flat, and the clumsily structured screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis (Crash) whips us back in forth in time for no good reason. The cast includes Ryan Phillippe and Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot fame.

Now Playing

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Grade: C

Winner of a Special Jury Prize for best ensemble at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this autobiographical film by Dito Montiel features heartfelt performances by Robert Downey Jr., Dianne Wiest, Chazz Palminteri and several teenage talents. But the strong acting can’t overcome the rambling, depressing story about children coming of age violently in Queens in the 1980s. The lengthy flashbacks play like a wimpy rip-off of Larry Clark’s Kids, and the present day sequences are nauseatingly overearnest.

Retro Book Pick for October:

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (Harper Perennial, $12.95)

While reading Portland Monthly magazine recently, I stumbled on a list of the best books about Oregon. I've lived here for almost decade and I hadn't read a single title on the list, so I decided it was time to get cracking.

I've been aware for some time now that sci-fi guru Ursula K. Le Guin lives in the Portland area. I tried reading her hugely influential novel The Left Hand of Darkness at some point but I had trouble getting into it. I found 1971's The Lathe of Heaven to be much more accessible, partly because she makes constant references to Portland and partly because the story is so trippy and addicting.

Le Guin tells the story of George Orr, an average Joe who just happens to have the power to alter the course of human history with his dreams. Frightened by the fact that his dreams come true, George visits a psychiatrist named Dr. Haber, who manipulates George's dreams for his own benefit and, in the process, kills off billions of people (to diminish a food shortage problem), eradicates racial strife by making everyone gray, and introduces alien life forms to Earth.

This slim novel is engrossing, visionary and extremely thought provoking, leaving the reader to reassess the overlap between dreams and reality.

Next up in my Oregon book adventures is Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. Though it's considerably less famous than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, many critics consider it to be his best work.

Mitchell Mania

In late September John Cameron Mitchell came to town to promote his controversial new film Shortbus. On top of a Thursday night screening and an all-day press junket on Friday, Mitchell squeezed in visits with friends he has made on his frequent visits to Portland over the past decade.
Best known for starring in the film and off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the petite 43-year-old New Yorker looked vibrant despite his overbooked schedule. Looking at his strikingly youthful face made me wonder if Peter Pan or Dorian Gray have given him a few pointers.
Shortbus, which is bound to raise eyebrows with its scenes of explicit sexuality, follows a group of New Yorkers who converge at an underground sex salon called Shortbus.
With plans for a children’s film called Nigh and a Wizard of Oz-esque fantasy called Oskur Fishman, it looks like Mitchell’s upcoming directing efforts will steer away from sexual politics.
He spoke about Portland and Shortbus in the lobby of the 5th Avenue Suites:

Stephen Blair: You spend quite a bit of time in Portland, right?

John Cameron Mitchell: I do. I feel like I’ve been coming here for over ten years off and on. I just like the vibe. I would definitely want to move here if I was thrown out of New York, which could happen with the rents there being the way they are. And a lot of people are moving here from elsewhere that I know. They’ve just had it with San Francisco, New York, L.A. and Seattle. Some people say, “Oh leave us alone. We want Portland to be the way it is.” But I think every town needs a little new blood.

SB: What are your favorite spots in Portland?

JCM: It’s more about friends. I haven’t gone out much. I have a lot of filmmaker friends here. Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes. I like the mixture of a little bit of hippie, a little bit of punk and a little bit of bookworm. It could use a little more pizzazz. But it has so much else that New York doesn’t have that I welcome. I actually worked on the script for Shortbus here. I came here for a month and wrote at the Three Friends Coffee Shop. It was a great place to work.

SB: I read that you that you didn’t want to work with big stars.

JCM: Well, stars don’t really have time to rehearse. They often want to but their schedules don’t allow it. They have a lot of handlers who want to justify their existence by creating obstacles and being gatekeepers. And stars are often very scared people because they have been shit on for so long and now they have the power and they sometimes assert themselves in inappropriate ways. Certainly not all of them. But there’s this baggage that comes with stars. I didn’t want to take the audience out of the movie by saying, “Oh, there’s Meg Ryan getting eaten out.” There’s no advantage to that with this kind of film.

SB: One of the things I really liked was how frank the sexuality was and how you integrated humor into the sex scenes.

JCM: In and of itself sex is a neutral thing. It’s what you do with it that’s interesting. I have no problem with porn. I have a problem with bad porn. But in this case because porn is so associated with sex on film I wanted my sex to be de-eroticized. And if you think about it 95% of the sex in Shortbus is unsuccessful and ridiculous and slightly desperate.
It’s funny how many people say, “It’s not what I expected. It’s more emotional and funnier than I expected.” I thought, “Isn’t that an odd statement?” Surely in their own lives sex is connected to emotions and vulnerability and humor. If it’s not, doesn’t that say something about your life? Or about American cinema because it doesn’t show that. Laughter is a way of diffusing tension about things we find irrational. A sense of humor is one of the top things that most people search for in a relationship. That’s what lasts. The bodies don’t.

SB: Are there other American films that you think are really honest about sex?

JCM: Well there’s honesty about sex without explicitness. There are lots of interesting movies about relationships coming out of American cinema. As far as being very explicit I can’t think of any that I liked that were American movies.
And very few movies outside America, too. There have been dozens of films that have used real sex in the last 10 years out of Europe. It’s a genre like musicals. But all of them are negative about sex. I understand it because the directors are working some shit out. Guilt. Abuse. And often they’re doing it in an honest and powerful way. A film like Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl is brilliant. But that isn’t the kind of film that I wanted to make, though I admired it and was very affected by it. There’s so much darkness in the world. You’ve gotta have a little mercy.

SB: Are you hitting any distribution problems?

JCM: Well we thought we would. Cannes was our premiere. All the distributors were there. We were positive that no major studio would be involved with this because they’re all signatory MPAA. They’re sensitive to boycotts and all that. But we had twelve offers from independent distributors just in the U.S. alone.

SB: And you got a standing ovation at Cannes.

JCM: Yes, at 2:30 a.m. I had actually fallen asleep. It was a good way to wake up.

SB: How did you film the sex scenes?

JCM: I asked the actors what they wanted and they usually wanted minimal crew and the cinematographer. We tried to keep the cameras as far away as possible.

SB: Were the orgy scenes choreographed?

JCM: I put couples and partners in certain spots and they discussed sexual safety issues between themselves. Some were preexisting couples so that was already inherent in the relationship. Emotional safety was important too. I asked if they wanted me to leave the room, but they always wanted me right there instead of far away at a monitor.

SB: Did any of your actors get cold feet?

JCM: There were definitely nerves, but no one didn’t want to film a scene. We all worked through it. We had been working together for a long time. It was just a matter of talking through it or taking Viagra or whatever it took. It was usually more about “Can I perform?” rather than “Will I be seen?”

SB: Obviously Shortbus alone will not change our culture, but in the long run how can we arrive at a place in American society where we’re not so tied up about sex?

JCM: I have no idea. All I can do is make my little thing for a few people, and hopefully it will encourage other people to examine language of sex or any other thing that we as a culture are afraid of.

Little Children
Grade: A-

In the hierarchy of movies about suburban malaise, this artful adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel is a notch above American Beauty and a notch below The Ice Storm. Using an unsentimental, anthropological tone, director Todd Field peels back the pretty façade of an upper-middle class New England neighborhood to reveal the sex offenders, adulterers and porn addicts that slither beneath the surface. Kate Winslet plays a miserable, overeducated housewife to the hilt, though it’s not one of her best performances. Patrick Wilson (Angels in America) and Jennifer Connelly lend solid support.

Homo Film Frenzy

The tenth annual Portland Gay and Lesbian Film Festival kicks off on Friday, October 6 and runs through Oct. 15. Visit http://plgff.org/ for the screening schedule and other info.
Here are two festival selections that I reviewed:

The Gymnast
Grade: B+

This beautifully photographed lesbian drama by writer and director Ned Farr is the darling of queer film festivals this year. Among other honors, it won Best Feature at the New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.
The Gymnast is not earth-shattering by any means. Some of the acting is mediocre, but luckily not to a distracting degree. And a handful of hokey domestic drama scenes seem better suited to Lifetime TV than the big screen
Minor complaints aside, this is a solid, provocative effort that deserves the accolades that have been heaped on it. The erotic circus atmosphere of the aerial dance scenes recalls Patricia Rozema’s lesbian carnival drama When Night is Falling, and the portrayal of a blossoming lesbian trapped in a thankless heterosexual marriage is reminiscent of the John Sayles film Lianna.
The protagonist, Jane, is a lesbian waiting to happen. Years ago an injury toppled her dreams of winning an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. Now she’s 43, working as a masseuse and trying to get pregnant before her biological clock winds down.
Jane joins up with two women to rehearse an aerial dance show that will potentially land them a gig in Las Vegas. Though she identifies as straight, she falls for a closeted Korean woman named Serena and must choose between lesbian love and a blah future with her husband.
Dreya Weber is buff and a bit gruff as Jane. Her acting lacks subtlety, but her performance is so sincere that it’s easy to forgive her shortcomings as a thespian. Addie Youngmee, who plays Serena, won’t be winning an Oscar anytime soon, either. But like Weber, she’s so likable that she ends up seeming more like a friend than a movie character.
In one of the sexiest straight or gay scenes in recent memory, Jane and Serena hang upside down, clutching billowing fabric that hangs from the ceiling. Suffice it to say that their slow, sweet kiss puts Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s famous face sucking shtick to shame.


Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma
Grade: B+

Queer Canadian cinema is on a roll.
In March the outstanding gay coming-of-age drama C.R.A.Z.Y. swept The Genies, Canada’s equivalent to the Academy Awards. Unfortunately C.R.A.Z.Y. isn’t playing at the Portland Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, but audiences can still get a refreshing dose of northern exposure by watching the deft psychological drama Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma.
Originally released in Canada in 2005, the film is a fictionalized account of real events concerning a male amnesia patient whose sole memory was that he was gay. Constructed in nonlinear order by writer and director Denis Langlois, the film is a jigsaw puzzle that comes together through flashbacks, dreams, memory flashes and the investigative efforts of a woman writing her PhD thesis on the case.
Amnesia starts off with a chilly, somber tone and becomes more emotionally accessible as the protagonist collaborates with others to try to piece his life together. As the film opens, a young man who has apparently suffered a major trauma wakes up naked in a Montreal parking lot and undergoes extensive medical testing. He’s certain that he’s gay, and he believes that his name is James Brighton.
But when he appears on television several people identify him as a Tennessee resident named Matthew Honeycutt. A trip to Tennessee churns up few memories for him, though the film provides us with a plausible and horrifying account of the homophobic hate crime that stripped him of his memory and his clothes.
Yugoslavian-born actor Dusan Ducik is easy on the eyes in the lead role, but don’t get too excited about the nude scene because he’s shrouded in shadows and there are no full-frontal disclosures. His dark and brooding presence is perfect for the character, though his overboard outburst in one scene is hard to take seriously.
Along with numerous scenes of gay clubs and male intimacy, Amnesia packs a bit of lesbian heat. In the course of her investigation, the PhD candidate has a tender bedroom rendezvous with one of her interview subjects.
Langlois so effectively enters the confused mind of his protagonist that, at times, the film rivals Memento for its capacity to disorient the viewer. But unlike Memento, Amnesia ultimately deposits a satisfying amount of concrete information in our memory banks.

Opening Friday, October 6:

The Departed
Grade: B+

Martin Scorsese’s remake of the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs takes awhile to get cooking and the ending is gimmicky. But for the most part this is an electrifying tale of cops, spies and gangsters, with all the stylized violence and visual pizzazz we’ve come to expect from the director of Goodfellas and Raging Bull. Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson are fine in the leading roles, but Vera Farmiga (Down to the Bone) steals the show as a psychiatrist who juggles relationships with Leo and Matt.

Wigging Out

The following documentary features my friend Chris, who runs my favorite video store in Portland. The film is currently showing on the Sundance Channel, and it's making the rounds at lesbian and gay film festivals across the country. It will play at the Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival at 10 p.m. on Saturday, October 7.

Follow My Voice: With the Music of Hedwig

Grade: A-

Hedwig and the Angry Inch – the cult musical about a sexually ambiguous East German punk singer – is a gift that keeps on giving.
The ingenious collaboration between composer Stephen Trask and actor John Cameron Mitchell premiered off-Broadway in 1998 and went on to become a successful indie film in 2001.
To the delight of “Hedheads,” the pet name for Hedwig fans, Portlander Chris Slusarenko devised yet another format for the musical. Slusarenko, who owns Clinton Street Video, is a record producer and occasional bassist for the band Guided by Voices.
Katherine Linton’s excellent new documentary Follow My Voice captures Slusarenko’s efforts to produce Wig in a Box, a 2003 Hedwig tribute album that benefits The Harvey Milk School at the Hetrick-Martin Institute for queer youth in New York City. The CD, which features cover songs by everyone from Jonathan Richman to Sleater-Kinney, has raised over $25,000 for the school.
On one level this is a film about music, and a damned good one at that. Linton’s camera leads us into intimate studios where Rufus Wainwright smokes as he sings, and Kim and Kelley Deal of The Breeders banter between takes of “Wicked Little Town.” In one of the most amusing sequences, a playful Yoko Ono tells John Cameron Mitchell to nudge her when its time for her to belt out the vocals for the electrifying song “Exquisite Corpse.”
But for sheer drama, the celebrities take a back seat to the four Harvey Milk students profiled for the film. Tenaja Jordan is a strong-minded black lesbian who must fend for herself when her Jehovah’s Witness family exiles her from home. Raphael “Ralphy” Ramos is a spirited Latino who attends Harvey Milk because he regularly faced abuse at his former school.
Angel Santiago is a troubled transgendered teen driven to self-destructive behavior because her parents force her to dress like a boy. Her sad tale plays in stark contrast to Mey Bun, a lesbian who overcomes many of her insecurities to become an international fashion model.
The only consistently frustrating thing about Follow My Voice is that Linton fails to provide sufficient information about the background and daily operations of The Hetrick-Martin Institute and The Harvey Milk School, an odd omission considering that the main purpose of Slusarenko’s project is to raise awareness about these organizations.