The Portland International Film Festival runs February 9-25, offering everything from Bollywood fare to Zoo, a documentary about men who have sex with stallions. Ouch!
I've been lazy about attending the advance screenings, but this morning I caught Sarah Polley's directing debut, Away From Her. It doesn't open in theaters until May, but I thought I'd post my review now for those of you who are prowling the film festival circuit. For more info on PIFF visit:
www.nwfilm.org


Away From Her
Grade: A-

Canadian actress Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter) makes her directing debut with this heartbreaking adaptation of a short story by Alice Munro. Still radiant at 65, Julie Christie plays an Alzheimer’s patient who, to her husband’s dismay, develops an intimate bond with a man at her residential care facility. Some of the opening scenes feel choppy, but Polley finds her rhythm and admirably avoids the disease movie clichés that a lesser talent would undoubtedly heap on this material. Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis and Michael Murphy round out the cast.

ODE TO RONEE BLAKLEY

Whatever happened to Ronee Blakley? In the early 1970s she recorded two acclaimed albums, sang backup for Bob Dylan and earned an Academy Award nomination for her amazing portrayal of a fragile country music superstar in Robert Altman's Nashville. After that she stopped releasing records and faded into a mostly lackluster acting career (the exception being her juicy role as an alcoholic mother in the original Nightmare on Elm Street).

Beyond her songs in Nashville, I had never heard Blakley's recordings until this week. When I learned that Collector's Choice Music recently reissued her 1970s albums, I cruised to the record store and picked up her self-titled debut. It's a masterful achievement, containing eleven original compositions that range in style from country twang to sophisticated piano ballads that recall Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell. All this time I thought she was just a sweet-voiced honkey tonk hick, and it was a wonderful to discover that she's an unsung hero who transcends musical genres. I can' wait to pick up Welcome, her second album.

Could Blakley make a comeback, thirty years after forsaking the recording biz? There's hope that she might rise again because four months ago she made a rare concert appearance in LA, performing some new songs along with her older material.

OSCAR EDITION

At 5:38:30 this morning, while I slept off a slight wine hangover from last night's decadent dinner, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled the nominations for the 79th Annual Academy Awards. In a year when several major categories are already locked, announcing five nominees seems like a waste of time. It is certain that Helen Mirren, Jennifer Hudson and Forest Whitaker will take home trophies, so I propose that other nominated actors (Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Rinko Kikuchi) stay home and save themselves limo and fashion expenses. At least there's a little bit of mystery brewing in the Best Supporting Actor race. It's terrific that voters recognized Jackie Earle Haley for his brilliant work in Little Children, and Alan Arkin could be a formidable contender for his acerbic grandpa role in Little Miss Sunshine. But who am I kidding? It will probably be Eddie Murphy all the way for Dreamgirls.

Speaking of Dreamgirls, I was ecstatic that the Academy had the sense to block this one-dimensional overblown music video from the Best Picture and Best Director categories (though the film did earn 8 nominations in all, more than any other film). Apart from this, the most surprising omission has to be Volver in the Best Foreign Language Film category. I thought it was the film to beat, but at least now the amazing Mexican film Pan's Labyrinth may have a clear path to the victory podium.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that the haunting Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple got shafted for Best Documentary. I'm all for Al Gore's campaign against global warming, but the bottom line is that An Inconvenient Truth is a lecture, not a film.

And it will probably win on Oscar night.

Finally we have the neverending Oscar war between Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese. Famously, Scorsese has never won Best Director honors even though he's responsible for a big handful of the best films of the past 30 years. So far he's won most of the critics awards leading up to this year's Oscars, but you can never count Clint out because he's so damned beloved by his Hollywood cronies. A mystifying phenomenon considering that Eastwood's cinema - though technically well-crafted - is often so heavy-handed and cliched. And after sweeping the ceremonies with Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, he simply doesn't need to bask in Oscar's spotlight anymore.

Pan's Labyrinth
Grade: A-

Guillermo del Toro's dark fantasy film has been sprouting up like weeds on Top Ten lists across the country, and I'm happy to report that it lives up to the hype. Be warned, however, that this is thoroughly gruesome stuff, filled with blood and torture - (not to mention a creepy faun and a saggy-fleshed monster that can't see unless he inserts bloody eyeballs into his palms).
The story is set at a rural mill in Spain in 1944. Though the Spanish Civil War ended several years earlier, a fascist military captain constantly employs his men to fight the guerilla resistance fighters who hide out in the woods. When the captain's intelligent stepdaughter, Ofelia, is not attending to her frail pregnant mother, she hangs out with flying fairies and the aforementioned faun, and tries to prove that she embodies the spirit of a mystical princess who died many years ago.
The acting, sets and photography are all top-notch, and nearly every scene casts a menacing spell that makes it all but impossible to take your eyes off carnage that soils both the real world and the grotesque fantasy world explored by Ofelia.
This is Mexico's candidate for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and could very well give Volver and the German film The Lives of Others a run for their dinero.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HARP

When I listen to Joanna Newsom's music, I can't help but think the 24-year-old singer/songwriter has been teleported to modern society from a Renaissance village where she rode about on a unicorn, plucking the harp that rested in her petite lap. Adding to her distinctiveness are screeching, gravelly vocals that sound exactly like my cat, Confetta, when she doesn't get what she wants.

It might seem like I'm not painting a very flattering portrait of Ms. Newsom, but the truth is that I love her to death. A few months ago a friend gave me a copy of The Milk-Eyed Mender , her first CD. It's a solid album, comprised mostly of three to four minute songs like "Bridges and Balloons" and the hit indie single "Sprout and the Bean."

Nothing on Milk-Eyed prepared me for her latest album, Ys (pronounced "eees"). Released by Drag City in late 2006, Ys consists of five tracks that range in length from about seven to seventeen minutes. A full orchestra accompanies Newsom's fervent harp playing, giving the music unbelievably lush textures that transport you to another world if you don't fight the eccentric arrangements or the admittedly obtuse lyrics.

For a video sample of Newsome playing a clip from "Sawdust and Diamonds" visit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=032nP0N-QRE

RETURN TO TWIN PEAKS

Sixteen years since it premiered on ABC, David Lynch's short-lived TV show Twin Peaks still has thousands of devoted fans craving the cherry pie and piping hot coffee served at the RR Diner. Every summer devotees flock to North Bend, Washington (where parts of the series were filmed) for the Twin Peaks Festival, and people have been petitioning for the release of Season Two on DVD for years. Paramount Home Video has finally taken pity on us, and will release the second season on April 10.

Just hearing about this Twin Peaks renaissance reminded me of my high school addiction to the show, when I traded plot theories during physics with my friend Kim, and nearly died of disappointment the night my parents forgot to tape a key episode for me. I bought the soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti, of course, and pounced on Jennifer Lynch's sucky Secret Diary of Laura Palmer when it hit bookstores. And even though the second season was inferior to the first, I was devastated when ABC pulled the plug on the show in 1991.

Lynch's prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me followed in 1992, flopping undoubtedly because mainstream audiences had no appetite for an unflinching and terrifying portrayal of the ravages of incest and sex abuse. Like the show, however, the film has a solid cult following that's campaigning for a new DVD edition that would include several scenes deleted from the theatrical release.

This past week I rented the brilliant pilot episode and borrowed a neighbor's copy of Season One. It was great to revisit a world where placid 1950s Americana meets violence and surrealism, and where FBI Agent Cooper bases his investigation on the wisdom that secrets are dangerous, and that dreams and intuition are as important and reliable as logic.

So even though I favor the first season, I can't wait to further immerse myself in the spooky Northwest lumber town when season two springs forth in April.

Coming Soon:


The Lives of Others
Grade: B+

Winner of Best Film honors at the 2006 European Film Awards, this is a bleak and compelling feature debut from writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. In East Berlin in the mid-1980s, a secret service agent finds himself emotionally entangled in the lives of the politically subversive artists he’s spying on. The acting is solid and the suspense builds to a nail-biting climax. The conclusion, alas, is tedious and mushy.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
(Houghton Mifflin Company, $19.95)

Last week a pernicious cold gave me the perfect opportunity to lie guiltlessly on the couch and read my tight little ass off. I really enjoyed Carl Hiaasen's silly Florida romp Nature Girl, and found exquisite writing and the occasional clunky plotting device in Claire Messud's hugely praised novel The Emperor's Children.
Then one of my favorite books of the year landed in my hands courtesy of my friend Linda's Yuletide generosity. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is a memoir in the form of a graphic novel. Like Craig Thompson's 2003 illustrated novel Blankets, it far exceeds the expectations most readers have of the comic book format. It is philosophical and it tackles controversial themes. It is also completely absorbing and laugh-out-loud funny.
Bechdel -who writes the lesbian comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For - largely focuses on her father, a closeted homosexual who teaches English and runs a funeral home. Soon after Bechdel came out of the closet herself, her father killed himself by jumping in front of a Sunbeam delivery truck. She harbors a guilty suspicion that her actions somehow triggered her father's desperation, but in retracing her family's history it becomes apparent that her father had long led a troubled secret life involving sex with teenage boys. Meanwhile, Bechdel's mother is a frustrated artist stuck in housewife Limbo.
Fun Home is packed with literary allusions that may frustrate readers who haven't studied Henry James, Oscar Wilde or James Joyce. The book never gets too bogged down in its braininess, though. Bechdel can be hilarious, particularly when she's documenting her obsessive-compulsive tics. In one panel a teenage Bechdel soaks in a bathtub, manipulating the faucet with her toes so that she has absolute control of the drip tally.
If Fun Home whets your appetite for intelligent and compassionate graphic novels, you should also try Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis series about growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution.