HOT FRUIT

2008-05-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

12 weeks have passed since Stephen’s death (referenced in early March). Here are a few brief things to share for those that may check in from time to time on his wonderful blog.

For those friends, family and neighbors who have been so supportive, I thank you from every fiber of my being. You have helped me make healthy grieving possible and have brought hope, laughter and purpose back into my life after intense shock and desperation.

I’ve been learning oodles about myself, others, loss, anger, letting go and everything else that grieving has to offer. Grief has felt relentless and grinding at times and I’m grateful to all of my past and present mentors, teachers and therapists that have helped me learn over and over to have all of my feelings without becoming those feelings. Learning the dance between allowing intense emotional pain and also allowing distractions for relief has been most healing for me.

I credit all of the support and teaching I’ve received, the vigorous endorphin producing activities of a walking/biking/hiking routine and eating food regularly (especially with others) as helping me get through this tremendous loss of Stephen with flying colors.

There is so much I miss about him including the regular movie and book reviews he shared verbally and in writing. I will keep his blog up and running in tribute to him. I may add tidbits from time to time of what seems to be helping me and others as we all continue to reinvent our lives without Stephen physically in it. He gave a lot of himself to those he cared about and my life is so much better for having been with him for many years.

I’m going to walk in the upcoming Seattle “Out of the Darkness” overnight fundraising event on June 21-22 for the organization called AFSP or American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The 20 mile walk with fellow survivors and advocates will start at dusk and go through the night until dawn. Thanks to the generous support of family and friends I have raised the required $1000 for participation. I think this will be a great way for me to further honor Stephen and hang out with his long time friend Elizabeth (Betsy) who will be walking with me. I wish everyone well and thanks again. Love, Drew

2008-03-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

Stephen Michael Blair (February 5, 1974 - February 28, 2008)

(posted 3-13-08 by Drew McWilliams)

I have been Stephen's life partner for over 11 years. It is with great sadness, awe and lingering shock that I post information about Stephen's death two weeks ago from today. Stephen was incredibly genuine, generous, brilliant and humorous as a writer, friend, family member and partner. I am only at the beginning stages of grief that include a deep appreciation of and longing for his presence in my life. I'm pasting below thoughts from a close friend and colleague, Meg Daily, combined with input from me and his parents that have formed an obituary in Portland's Just Out publication.

I haven't thought through enough about if or how I should further honor him with some form of continued postings, but may consider tidbits over time about what I glean from the process of living through such profound grief including the importantance of levity. I've been a mental, emotional and spiritual health professional for a long time and have always looked for ways to help myself and others manage through the ups and downs of life on this planet. For now, I wish you well and hope you appreciate what's written below. For some very irreverant and contagious humor, please consider watching any of the Comedy Central episodes of Strangers with Candy showcasing the illustrious Amy Sedaris. Our life was filled with numorous quips from three seasons worth of episodes.

My hearthfelt thanks to family and friends for their ongoing support and comfort in dealing with the suddenness of his death. In thinking about Stephen being physically gone, I leave you with a memorable phrase from our favorite animated character, Stewie, from the infamous Family Guy DVD TV series: "Damn it all to the bloody bowels of hell!"

Sincerely, Drew McWilliams

(PS: Feel free to post a comment by clicking on the envelope at the end.)

A vibrant life cut short
Meg Daly remembers writer Stephen Blair, who died February 28 in Portland

The irony is crushing. Like Vincent Van Gogh and Virginia Woolf, whose brilliant creative temperaments were coupled with severe manic-depressive disorder, Stephen wrestled for years to subdue his demons in service of his gifts.

I first got to know Stephen over plates of pumpkin curry at a Portland Thai restaurant. At the time, he was writing for the Portland Tribune and I was the PR manager for Portland Arts & Lectures. Our talk quickly veered from business into dishing about literary media whores. I was instantly charmed by his quick wit, unbridled intensity, and hip thrift-store fashion. That lunch led to seven years of inspired, devoted friendship.

Stephen showered his friends with his trademark irreverent humor. Whether attending a party as Amy Sedaris’s alter ego Jerri Blank or showing up for a babysitting gig with “Nanny McPhee” written on duct tape across his chest, Stephen’s humor and humanity were pitch perfect.

So too was his writing. Fortunately he left us a record of his unique voice on his blog http://www.blairfruit.com/. I’d encourage any budding arts writer as well as old pros to turn to Stephen’s work for a tutorial on how to combine summary and critique in whip-smart, engaging prose.

Stephen Michael Blair was born February 5, 1974 and grew up in Vernon, Connecticut. He graduated from Rockville High in 1992 and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Bowdoin College in 1996. He is survived by his long-time partner Drew McWilliams; his parents Michael and Susan Blair; his sister and brother-in-law Patricia and William Lennox and their son Eli; as well as numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.

Gifts can be made to the Stephen Blair Memorial Staff Appreciation Fund, Morrison Child and Family Services, Development Office, 1500 NE Irving St., Suite 250, Portland, OR, 97232.

As for the questions “Why?” and “Why now?” which many of us close to Stephen are asking, answers may always elude us. That the bipolar disorder seemed to seize the reins in the end is little comfort. My heart is with Drew, as we who survive Stephen continue that most essential creative act: the art of living.

2008-02-27T22:46:00.000-08:00

A Skinderella Story

The endearing British comedy The Full Monty proved that a guy doesn’t have to have six-pack abs to be sexy. In the 1997 film a group of unemployed men resort to stripping to ward off financial ruin, triumphantly dropping their drawers in front of an enthusiastic audience.
Acclaimed gay playwright Terrence McNally (Love! Valor! Compassion!) teamed with musician David Yazbek in 2000 to create a Broadway version set in Buffalo, New York. Two years ago local director Greg Tamblyn staged the show in Portland, and from March 7 to April 13 he’s bringing his rendition to the Lakewood Theatre in Lake Oswego.
Gay Portland actor and musician Rick Lewis serves as musical director, and he plays the role of Harold, the oldest member of the strip tease brigade. He described The Full Monty as, “A Cinderella story, in an odd way.”
“I’m incredibly modest,” he said. Still he finds the final scene invigorating. “There’s something empowering about knowing that what we’re about to do makes the audience cheer.”
Just how revealing is the scene? Lewis was not entirely forthcoming when asked this question, but his coy response should pique the interest of anyone with a prurient streak: “After the show there are people who swear they have seen everything.”
Like the film the musical depicts the way the men learn to accept themselves and each other. A gay relationship develops between two of the strippers and – though there are no bedroom antics – the men hold hands onstage.
For Lewis, “Pride is one of the driving forces of the story. Harold’s biggest fear is that he’s lost the tools to keep his marriage together, and he questions what makes him attractive to his wife.”
Lewis confided that his duties as musical director are relatively easy on this gig. “The score is so fabulous. I’m not really tweaking it.” He believes his primary responsibility is to help the actors develop their interpretive skills when singing the lyrics. “There’s no reason why the music can’t have the same storytelling qualities as the dialogue,” he said.
Originally from Ohio, Lewis made his way to New York City in the 1980s. He worked with such stage luminaries as Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine and - among other musicals - he wrote The Taffetas (CQ), a hit off-Broadway tribute to The McGuire Sisters and other female singing acts.
He moved to Portland in the early 1990s. He frequently works as a musical director for Portland Center Stage, most recently on last fall’s crowd-pleasing production of Cabaret. Lewis rounds out his working hours as the entertainment and marketing director for the Portland Spirit.

2008-02-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

Stop-Loss
Grade: A-

Nine years after her very impressive debut feature film Boys Don’t Cry, writer/director Kimberly Peirce returns with this searing yet humane indictment of the war in Iraq. Ryan Phillippe is astonishingly good as a soldier who goes AWOL when he returns to his home in Texas and the military extends his tour of duty on the day he’s set to retire. Abbie Cornish, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and male model Channing Tatum deliver raw and memorable performances. Apart from a few ill-advised forays into cinema verité Peirce proves that her long hiatus from filmmaking hasn’t diminished her uncanny eye for detail or her compassion for misfits and struggling working class Americans.

In wide release starting March 28th. I'll be interviewing Ms. Peirce when she comes to Portland next week, and I'll probably post that interview on the blog sometime in mid-March.

2008-02-24T21:34:00.000-08:00

My Bologna Has a First Name, It's ....

Tonight's Oscar ceremony went pretty much according to plan, and I don't have much to say about it other than:

Yippee for the amazing Coen brothers, and I'm glad that There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton and other deserving films did not go home empty handed.

Too bad voters didn't look beyond the Pixar wizardry and recognize that the hand-drawn Persepolis is an even better animated film than Ratatouille.

I had been rooting for Julie Christie for Best Actress since I first saw Away From Her a year ago, but Marion Cotillard's surprise win didn't bother me too much since she was quite brilliant in La Vie En Rose.

Tilda Swinton's victory came as a total shock-a-roo to me. I thought the Supporting Actress category had boiled down to a three-way race between Amy Ryan, Ruby Dee and Cate Blanchett, so my hopes weren't high for Tilda even though she's one of my favorite actresses. Her irreverent acceptance speech was my favorite moment of the night.

Per usual the production pretty much sucked, with even more interminable film archive montages than usual. And I doubt I'm the only kid on the block who was hardly Enchanted by the trio of moldy Disney songs.

2008-02-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

Snow Angels
Grade: A-

David Gordon Green (George Washington, Undertow) wrote and directed this exceptional – albeit depressing – adaptation of a Stewart O’Nan novel that juxtaposes a teenage boy’s coming-of-age with a domestic violence storyline punctuated with a series of harrowing tragedies. Kate Beckinsale delivers one of her best performances as the ex-wife of a highly unstable man (Sam Rockwell, also memorable) who’s not ready to let go of his marriage. The entire cast is terrific, and Green brilliantly captures both the beautiful and the hopeless aspects of the winter landscapes. Featuring my muse Amy Sedaris in a rare dramatic turn.

2008-02-21T21:42:00.000-08:00

Penelope
Grade: C

After transforming from a precocious child actor into an irrepressible bad girl in indie movies, Christina Ricci lost her way with straight-to-video bombs like Prozac Nation and, now, this flat fairy tale about a girl cursed with a pig snout. Ricci gives it her all, and she’s backed by a very likable cast that includes Catherine O’Hara, James McAvoy and Reese Witherspoon. Unfortunately the spirited performances can’t disguise the fact that director Mark Palansky has no idea how to squeeze 90 minutes of whimsy out of a plot that ought to be confined to a brief bedtime story.

2008-02-17T13:43:00.000-08:00

Backwoods Barbie

Available February 26

A few days ago Dolly Parton had to postpone tour dates due to a back injury. She issued the following statement to the press: "I know I have been breaking my neck and bending over backwards to get my new Backwoods Barbie CD and world tour together, but I didn't mean to hurt myself doing it." Underneath the irrresistable hamminess lies Dolly's trademark folksy wisdom, a reminder to everyone not to push themselves too hard and not to take themselves too seriously. No wonder people are starting to call her the Dolly Lama.

Backwoods Barbie doesn't hit stores and downloading sites till next week, but I got a chance to hear a complete audio stream of the album at famed gay blogger Perez Hilton's website (U can too if you visit http://perezhilton.com/2008-02-08-perez-hilton-presents-6). It's more mainstream and considerably less rootsy than her recent bluegrass albums The Grass is Blue and Little Sparrow. Compared to those landmark recordings this is Dolly lite. Which isn't a bad thing, mind you.

Backwoods Barbie boasts several fun upbeat tracks, from the opening number "Better Git to Livin" to the hilarious "Shinola" (where she tells a deadbeat lover that he doesn't know "love from Shinola"). My other favorite is the undeniably hokey but catchy "Cologne" - a meditation on the hazards of wearing scents when you're having an affair.

As much as I love her, Dolly rarely releases a CD that doesn't contain one or two stinkers. There aren't any total dogs here, but the covers of "The Tracks of My Tears" and the Fine Young Cannibals' "Drives Me Crazy" feel uninspired. Also, the bland closing track ("Somebody's Everything") ends this mostly worthwhile outing with a whimper.

2008-02-16T09:39:00.000-08:00

Girls Rock!
Grade: B

Meet Laura, Amelie, Misty and Palace. Go see the new documentary Girls Rock! and you’ll join these feisty young ladies for five days of music lessons, songwriting, self-defense classes and a little bit of catfighting at Portland’s very own Rock ‘N’ Roll Camp For Girls.
Filmmakers Shane King and Arne Johnson capture a week in the life of the camp in this amiable and occasionally poignant documentary. Under the tutelage of queer Sleater-Kinney veteran Carrie Brownstein, Gossip vocalist Beth Ditto and other camp counselors the girls form bands with names like the Screaming Monkeys, P.L.A.I.D. (People Lying Around in Dirt) and the Juicy Tanglers. Over the course of the week each band writes a song and stares down stage fright in order to perform in front of 750 people.
In addition to comprehensive interviews with the four showcased campers, King and Lewis include observations from the girls’ family members and running commentary on the significance of the camp from the counselors and the camp founders. Though Girls Rock! raises extremely relevant and provocative sociological issues, its biggest flaw is often failing to probe beyond a glossy presentation of these topics.
When filming the camp scenes King and Lewis wisely stick to simple editing and camera techniques and allow the girls to provide all the fireworks. When they present statistics about teen girls, however, they kick into ballistic mode, accompanying the factoids with screaming music and 2000 mph montages of old educational films and computer animation.
We learn statistics such as, “Four out of five girls in 8-11th grade have been sexually harassed by a schoolmate.” And, “In 1970 the average age for girls to start dieting was 14. By 1990 it was 8.”
To their credit the filmmakers proceed to discuss some of these societal ills with the campers, but ultimately their coverage of serious issues feels inadequate. They devote too much time to relatively inconsequential band squabbles, time that could have been spent giving the documentary the intellectual edge it would need to be a standout film.
None of the campers or counselors discusses their sexuality in the movie, though there is a strong hint that 15 year-old Laura – a Korean who lives with her adoptive parents in Oklahoma – may be a budding lesbian. After forming a death metal group with a few other girls she demurely asks one of her new bandmates, “Will you be my life partner?”

2008-02-14T15:32:00.000-08:00

Cloverfield

Grade: B

I've been avoiding Cloverfield since it came out last month because the media kept harping on the fact that the hand-held camerawork induced motion sickness in many viewers. Then I remembered that I never get motion sickness, and several friends recommended the movie to me so I ducked into the mall multiplex today to catch a matinee. For the first twenty minutes a bunch of dipshit twentysomething Manhattanites hang out at a party, and the dialogue is so vapid that this would-be frightfest seems destined to invent a new genre: the bore-or movie.

Fortunately director Matt Reeves and screenwriter Drew Goddard get their tits in gear and Cloverfield starts generating some good scares and some truly chaotic apocalyptic vibes. The plot is equal parts Godzilla, Blair Witch and Alien, showing young New Yorkers desperately clinging to their cell phones and video cameras as they make futile attempts to escape from a gigantic monster who wrecks buildings and the smaller alien vermin that attack humans.

After the initial beast-inspired adrenaline rush Cloverfield fizzles out for awhile, but finished strong with a final showdown in Central Park.

2008-02-11T18:31:00.000-08:00

Paranoid Park
Grade: B-

Few American directors have blazed a more unpredictable career path than Gus Van Sant. After the indie sensation Drugstore Cowboy and the queer classic My Own Private Idaho, the gay Portland resident made a series of hit-or-miss Hollywood vehicles that ranged from the brilliant To Die For to the excruciatingly formulaic Finding Forrester.
Since 2002 he has stuck with low-budget experimental projects, yielding both stunning (Elephant) and numbing (Last Days) results. His latest, Paranoid Park, is a cross between Crime and Punishment and Lords of Dogtown, with a Portland teenage skate punk named Alex standing in for good ol’ Raskolnikov.
Van Sant based his screenplay on a novel by Blake Nelson. The nonlinear story follows Alex in the aftermath of a train yard skirmish in which he accidentally causes a security guard’s gruesome death by striking him with a skateboard.
Filmed at easily identifiable Portland locales like The House of Louis restaurant and the skate park underneath the east end of the Burnside Bridge, Paranoid Park employs a cast of unknowns. Van Sant tracked down some of the young actors with My Space ads, and the resulting performances often spell out the risks inherent in this casting maneuver. Most of the acting is serviceable. It’s just not memorable, and in some cases it’s downright painful to watch the kids try so hard and fail to look cool and natural at the same time.
From a technical standpoint Paranoid Park is frequently impressive. In the skateboarding sequences, for instance, Van Sant achieves a hypnotic mood with slow-motion photography and dreamy electronica music. But eventually the film’s formidable visual panache sticks out like a sore thumb because it’s all in the service of a mediocre story about a bunch of uncharismatic brats. It’s virtually impossible to muster concern for them.
There is no obvious queer content in the film, though Van Sant tosses in one ambiguous scene where one of Alex’s male friends shoots Alex a couple of longing glances during a car ride.
Next up for Van Sant is the long-delayed biopic about assassinated gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, starring Sean Penn in the title role.

2008-02-10T20:15:00.000-08:00

Roy Scheider

1932-2008

2008-02-07T17:28:00.000-08:00

XXY
Grade: B+

Even by queer cinema standards, transgendered themes still represent a new frontier for filmmakers. Fortunately the inevitability of controversy hasn’t stopped directors from making a handful of intelligent and memorable films like Ma Vie En Rose, Boys Don’t Cry and Transamerica.
Argentinean writer and director Lucía Puenzo is the latest to try her hand at gender-bending material. Her film XXY – winner of the Critics Week Grand Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival – shows three times at the 31st Portland International Film Festival.
Though it’s not a flat-out triumph, XXY is extremely gutsy, well-acted and frequently touching. Puenzo unflinchingly addresses gay and transgendered themes, and it’s hard to imagine that any member of the queer community will leave the theater unmoved.
That said, the film has a few pronounced drawbacks. Apart from a few charming and lighthearted moments, the tone feels excessively dour and, at times, a bit suffocating. In addition, some of the symbolism is heavy-handed to the point of being unintentionally hilarious. In a film that raises the topic of castration, it’s just too much to watch someone chop up a carrot.
The plot centers on a teenage hermaphrodite named Alex, brilliantly played by young actress Inés Efron. Alex grew up as a boy, but as a teenager he becomes a social outcast when he develops female sexual characteristics. Alex’s perplexed but sympathetic parents move to an isolated island off the coast of Uruguay. The film opens as family friends from Buenos Aires arrive to visit.
After a slow, the story kicks into high gear as Alex develops a relationship with Alvaro, the introverted teenage son of the visiting family. Sparks fly, leading to a truly eyebrow-raising roll in the hay in which Alvaro – who is clearly questioning his sexuality – ends up on the receiving end of an anal interchange that makes the tent scene from Brokeback Mountain look like child’s play.
Filmed in a palette of grays and steely blues, XXY exudes so much melancholy that we know there’s not happy ending in store. The developments in the second half of the film are realistic but they’re downers nonetheless, as Alex faces ostracism and violence from her peers and Alvaro discovers that his father has little room in his heart for a gay son.
But don’t pop a Prozac just yet. Despite all the bleakness XXY emerges as a hopeful and life-affirming portrait of a family that loves Alex regardless of which gender he decides to embrace.

Screens on February 13 and 15 at 6:15 p.m. & Feb. 17 at 7:45 p.m. All screenings at Regal Broadway Cinemas.

2008-02-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

The Edge of Heaven
Grade: A-

Looking for lesbian content at the 31st Portland International Film Festival? You’ll find it in this highly engrossing German drama by writer and director Fatih Akin, who took home the Best Screenplay award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The film – which is set in Germany and Turkey - invites comparisons to Babel and Crash by juggling several interconnected and emotionally charged stories. Fortunately Akin’s effort is not nearly as overwrought as its predecessors, giving the viewer room to breath and reflect even when tragedy strikes. The sensitively portrayed lesbian relationship takes place between a German student and an illegal immigrant who leaves Turkey to escape prosecution for her dissident political activity.

Screens February 8 at 9:15 p.m. & February 9 at 3 p.m. at the Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium.

2008-02-04T22:21:00.000-08:00

A Twist of Lemon

If you’ve never seen Jane Campion’s 1989 film Sweetie you’re missing out on one of the most memorable performances in modern cinema. Australian actress Genevieve Lemon tears up the screen as the title character, an emotionally imbalanced woman who chews her sister’s prized toy horses to pieces, earnestly asks a guy if he’s ever been licked all over, and defends a tree house by farting in the general direction of anyone who attempts to climb the ladder.

Ms. Lemon also appeared in two other Campion films, The Piano and Holy Smoke. Onstage she made a splash in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – The Musical, and last month she won Best Actress honors at the Sydney Theatre Awards for her current role in Billy Elliott: The Musical.

Can’t make it Down Under to hear this lady’s incredible pipes? No worries. Just mosey on over to http://www.brokenskymusic.com/ and order Angels in the City, a live CD of Genevieve and her band recorded at the Studio at the Sydney Opera House in 1999 (the CD was released in 2006 by Broken Sky Music out of New South Wales).

Lemon covers ten songs that showcase her warm, powerful voice and her intelligent interpretations of lyrics. The set kicks off with a sultry take on the Petula Clark classic “Downtown” and moves onto a sassy version of Lou Reed’s "Walk on the Wild Side.”

Other highlights include the haunting piano ballad “Blue Sky Mine," plus rollicking renditions of Lyle Lovett’s “Cowboy Man” and Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In.”

2008-02-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

Chicago 10
Grade: A-

Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) furthers his reputation as a bold stylist with this flawed but electrifying documentary about Abbie Hoffman, Black Panther leader Bobby Seale and others who faced trial on charges of inciting riots at the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention. Using archival footage Morgen skillfully interweaves scenes of peace rallies with devastating images of police brutality. To depict the trial itself he goes out on a limb with mixed results, employing motion-capture animation that’s alternately hallucinogenic and hokey. Nick Nolte, Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo and Roy Scheider provide their vocal talents.

Screens at the Portland International Film Festival on Feb. 10 at 1:45 p.m. at the Regal Broadway Cinemas & Feb. 11 at 8:45 p.m. at the Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium.

2008-02-02T00:25:00.000-08:00

Three identical pictures of Andy Blubaugh

The Pull
Grade: B

What happens when two men start a romance on the strict condition that they break up four months later? Gay Portland filmmaker Andy Blubaugh (Scaredycat) and his ex discuss the pros and cons of this proposition in an 8-minute short that features tender shots of the couple spooning in bed, a heated dinner conversation about relationships and scenic footage of a bike ride in the country. Blubaugh certainly digs at some intriguing questions about the durability of love and physical attraction, but the rules of engagement seem so arbitrary that it’s hard to muster an emotional or intellectual response to the material.

Screens at the Portland International Film Festival on February 16 at 2 p.m. at the Portland Art Museum's Whitsell Auditorium. The Pull is part of the program Short Cuts IV: Made in Oregon.

2008-01-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

It’s a Free World
Grade: A-

Veteran British director Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley) delivers a tense and absorbing drama about immigrant labor in London. Newcomer Kierston Wareing is positively brilliant as a headstrong entrepreneur who compromises her workers, friends and family with her greedy recruitment practices. Frequent Loach collaborator Paul Laverty won top screenplay honors at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

Screens at the Portland International Film Festival in the Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium on February 10 at 4:45 p.m. & February 13 at 9 p.m.

2008-01-30T12:26:00.000-08:00

Crossing Borders

Growing up in the suburbs of Portland, gay Mexican-American performer Joaquin López did his best to fit in with the mainstream white culture.
“I’m light skinned, which makes it easier to assimilate,” said López. But passing as white puts him in an awkward position from time to time. When López speaks Spanish on the job at the taquería La Bonita in Northeast Portland customers have been known to say, “You say it like you’re one of them.”
“I show them a picture of my family,” he said, “and explain that Spanish is my first language.”
Themes of ancestry, identity and assimilation figure prominently in Cuentos: Searching for My Story, a theater piece produced by the Miracle Theatre Group and the multi-cultural artist ensemble ¡Viva La Cultura! López acts, sings and plays guitar in the production along with Portland performers Rebecca Martínez and Stan Olmsted.
López helped collaborate on the project when Martínez earned a Neighborhood Arts Project Grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council. “We explore our quest for identity in Mexican-American culture in a lighthearted way,” he explained.
The narrative for Cuentos emerged from a series of conversations between the artists. “Rebecca interviewed me about growing up Mexican-American,” López said. “She asked how it felt. What hurt the most.”
Martínez, López and Olmsted drew on their musical backgrounds to select Mexican and Spanish folks songs for the show. In addition López included several songs he learned singing in a Catholic church choir as a child.
Cuentos features two songs by gay Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, though there is no queer content in the story. The show is bilingual with no subtitles, but López assures that all audience members will be able to comprehend the content.
López said he is happily settled in a relationship. When he’s not working at La Bonita he’s very musically inclined. He’s currently writing a rock album, and he’d like to record an album of Spanish folk songs. He also teaches guitar at Sowelu Theater’s summer arts camps.

February 2-23; Saturdays at 3 p.m.; Milagro Theatre, 525 S.E. Stark St.; $5-$10 ($5 for children 12 & under); 503-236-7253.

2008-01-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

For the next few weeks I'll be posting reviews of films that will show at the Portland International Film Festival (February 7-23). You can get showtimes by tracking down the festival schedule at www.nwfilm.org. If you don't live in Portland, bear in mind that many of these films will be released theatrically in the coming months and the others will hopefully show up on DVD someday.

The Counterfeiters
Grade: B+

Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky scored a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination with this morally complex true story about a group of Jewish men who secured preferential treatment at a concentration camp by making fake loot for Nazis toward the end of World War II. It’s a technically accomplished effort, with impressive acting, sets and cinematography. But as a drama it’s never completely engaging, owing to a slow beginning, some predictable plot twists and an emotionally flaccid denouement.

2008-01-26T09:37:00.000-08:00

Cat Power

Jukebox

My first exposure to Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall) was unqualifiedly awful. A good friend of mine became an enthusiast in the late 1990s after seeing several charismatic shows in Chicago. But when I showed up for Cat's gig at a small club in Portland she completely unraveled to the point that it was too excruciating to watch. She couldn't make it through any of her songs, despite her fans' efforts to cheer her on.

True to her name Ms. Power appears to be in possession of nine lives, and thankfully her near death experience eight years ago did not prevent her from pouncing out of that soiled litter box and securing a snazzy name in the spotlights. She's released two solid albums since then - You Are Free and The Greatest - and I've heard from friends and critics alike that, against the odds, she's transformed into one of most engaging live performers around.

Currently she's featured on two bestselling hipster soundtracks - I'm Not There and Juno - and this week she released Jukebox, a very enjoyable collection of cover songs (devotees will remember that she released her first covers album, aptly called The Covers Record, in 2000). So far my favorites are "New York" and a soulful take on Joni Mitchell's "Blue" that's backed by an organ accompaniment. It's worth your while to shell out a few extra buckaroos for the deluxe edition, which gets you a second disc with five extra tunes.

2008-01-22T06:13:00.000-08:00

Go Sarah Go!

The Oscar nominations came out this morning, and you can read all about 'em at http://www.oscar.com/. A few quibbles aside, I'm very pleased that the Academy recognized such a diverse crop of interesting films. And most of all I love that Away from Her - my favorite film of the year - scored an inevitable Best Actress nod for Julie Christie and a surprise but hugely deserved nod for Sarah Polley's smart and sensitive adaptation of Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." She'll lose to the Coen Brothers, of course. But this is a major career leap for Sarah, who got her start as pesky lil' Ramona Quimby on Canadian public TV and went on to great roles Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, My Life Without Me and other films.

2008-01-21T10:37:00.000-08:00

The Orphanage

Grade: B-

Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona makes his feature debut with this creepy but maddeningly convoluted entry in the haunted house genre. The elegant and intense Belen Rueda plays an adoptive mother who purchases the orphanage in which she grew up, only to lose her HIV-infected son to a kidnapper...or meddlesome ghosts...or could it be something even more sinister? Rather than pay brief and clever tributes to classic ghost movies, Bayona borrows heavily and clumsily from films like Poltergeist and The Others. And sometimes he provides so little background info that the scary bits (such as the masked freakazoid pictured above) seem random and yield minimal adrenaline jolts.

2008-01-19T11:03:00.000-08:00

There Will Be Blood
Grade: A-

Paul Thomas Anderson's first outing since 2002's brilliant Punch-Drunk Love is both astounding and confounding. Loosely based on Oil! - Upton Sinclair's 1927 muckraking novel - it eschews the source material's playful satiric tone for that of a hellfire and brimstone sermon. The story is set in the early 1900s and Anderson uses the greedy oil baron exploits of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis, totally frightening and brilliant) to comment on the ongoing rape of the earth for oil and wealth, regardless of the devastating consequences to the environment and humanity. By staging epic, devastatingly beautiful tableaux of gushing oil and oil derrick conflagrations, Anderson seems to be saying that we're not waiting for the Apocalypse. It already happened in the oil fields of Southern California 100 years ago and we're still paying the price for all that avarice. If my theories are a bit far-reaching this morning it's probably due to my dang head cold. I'm really spaced out.

There Will Be Blood is swimming in strengths, including it's loving homages to master filmmakers Terrence Malick and Orson Welles. The film is so dense that it will certainly require multiple viewings to take everything in, but one viewing was enough for me to know that I'm not wild about Paul Dano's spirited but stilted performance as a fundamentalist preacher. Considering that the film only tackles the first 100 pages or so of Sinclair's lengthy novel, the 2 1/2 hour running time seems indulgent on Anderson's part, and it feels like he's beating his agenda to a pulp by throwing in melodramatic plot twists that are nowhere to be found in the novel.

Oh, and the brooding, Shining-esque score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is magnificent, even though it's a bit invasive at times.

2008-01-16T12:17:00.000-08:00

Wedding Bell Blues: Enrique Andrade Stars in Portland Production of Bodas de Sangre

Enrique Andrade is one busy guy.
By day he’s a court certified Spanish interpreter for the Oregon Judicial Department. He’s also the proud owner of the impossibly suave voice that makes MAX announcements in Spanish.
In the queer community he serves on the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Community Church of Portland, and he volunteers at the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center.
His acting experience is limited, a technicality that did not stop him from scoring a major role in Federico García Lorca’s 1932 tragedy Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding), running February 1 through 23 at Miracle Theatre. Andrade plays El Novio, a Spanish farmer who’s too busy fulfilling his mentally ill mother’s expectations to realize that his beautiful bride has the hots for another fellow.
“I’m really angry with my character because he’s such a dumbass,” Andrade said. “He doesn’t realize the bride doesn’t love him, and he’s emotionally inept.”
García Lorca – a homosexual who died in 1936 at the outset of the Spanish Civil War – is best known for his poetry, and for his brutal condemnations of provincial Spanish life in emotionally taxing plays like Bodas de sangre and La casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba).
Milagro Theater mainstay Olga Sanchez directs the production. The opening night performance on Friday, February 1 will be performed in Spanish with no English subtitles. All other performances feature subtitles.
“The tone of the play is so dramatic that you can’t avoid heaviness,” Andrade noted. “But there are some comic elements. I just hope that people will walk away feeling something.”
Andrade isn’t sure how much acting work he wants to tackle after Bodas de Sangre. “I don’t want to overwhelm myself with it,” he said. In 2008 he hopes that romance will take precedence over his professional and creative endeavors. “This might be the year of the partner,” he said in that sexy MAX way of his.

Miracle Theatre, 525 S.E. Stark St., 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; $18-$20, $15 for students and senior; call 503-236-7253 or visit www.milagro.org. ALSO…$12 preview show on Thursday, January 31.

2008-01-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

My great uncle Frank, pictured here in October, 2007

in Brattleboro, VT with my cousins Emily & Rei and

my nephew Eli (the guy on Frank's lap)

Frank Janik: 1911-2008

2008-01-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

Putting the "Sketch" in Sketchy

Anything goes on season two of The Big Gay Sketch Show on the lesbian and gay TV channel Logo.
Liza Minnelli acquires superpowers by swilling dirty martinis and slurring diva battle cries as she protects queens from homophobic thugs.
In a spoof of the 1980s soap opera Dynasty archenemies Krystle and Alexis make out in an inflatable swimming pool after a knockdown, drag out catfight.
A man in drag plays Maya Angelou, bringing statuesque dignity to narrations of “Men Seeking Men” ads from Craig’s List. At a mail deliver joint gay and straight characters get their rocks off while watching a lusty Latino man process their packages.
Most of these sketches appear in the consistently funny season opener, which airs on February 5. If the second episode (airing February 12) is any indication, viewers are in for a very bumpy ride for the rest of the season.
Executive producer Rosie O’Donnell watches each episode from a balcony, a playful dyke twist on the crotchety critics on The Muppet Show. As the lowbrow fun of episode one gives way to painfully unfunny second installment, you can’t help but deduce that Rosie doesn’t have the world’s greatest eye for investments. First Taboo – the failed stage venture with Boy George – and now an uneven gay knockoff of Saturday Night Live and MAD TV.
The second episode hits its low point with the final sketch, an endless parody of May-December relationships in which David Furnish and Catherine Zeta-Jones vomit excessively when they contemplate the aging body parts of their partners, Elton John and Michael Douglas. Like other sketches in this episode – including a send-up of closeted Republicans – it’s written at a third grade level. It’s too stupid to be insulting and too dull to be a guilty pleasure.
A few of the cast members are terrific, especially Kate McKinnon and Coleman Domingo. But they’ll be looking for work before long unless the show’s creators can figure out how to sustain inspired silliness for more than one episode.

2008-01-07T09:02:00.000-08:00

"Tulifly" - the adorable assistant on our trip to the Lamanai ruins

Jungle Palms

View of jungle and river from top of 112-foot Lamanai temple

Belize Foto Finale

2008-01-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

Night of the Iguana. One evening we ditched our economy digs at Ruby's and splurged on a resort that harbored these cute lil' fellas.

San Pedro at night, psychedelic style. This is the town that inspired the incomparable songsmanship of Madonna's hit "La Isla Bonita."

After 11 days of perfect weather a shit storm kicked in on January 2nd.

Seeing is Belizing (Part Deux)

2008-01-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

San Pedro Town, view from Ruby's Hotel

Groovy sunset action

Crocodile Rock! Seen on river trip to Mayan ruins at Lamani

Drew and me in the shade at Lamanai

I finally found the girl of my dreams!

Seeing Iz Belizing

After 22 hours of flight delays and prolonged, near-death exposure to the horrors of the Houston airport, Drew and I finally got to bed at 3 a.m. last night. There's no getting around the cruel fact that one bad travel day goes a long way to undermine 2 weeks of R&R in the Caribbean, but we're both fairly chipper this morning so I'm hoping our spirits and our "tans" (we used tons of sunblock to avoid Lobster action) will shine through the dreary weather in Portland.

2007-12-21T13:59:00.000-08:00

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Grade: B

I wish I could say that Tim Burton's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's stage classic is "a cut above your average musical." I mean, what better praise could you give to this story of a revenge-bent barber who slits throats and leaves the leftover body parts for a purveyor of meat pies? But the quality of the songs and the storytelling is all over the map, and even the lavish, computer-enhanced production design looks hokey at times.

That said, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are terrific. With their dark-rimmed eyes and ratty black & white hair they look like human-sized skunk twins. Sacha Baron Cohen is great as fraudulent hair tonic vendor, though Alan Rickman treads overly familiar waters in a villainous role that's too close to Severus Snape for comfort. I've never been a big Sondheim fan, which probably accounts for my tepid response to most of the songs. A couple of numbers are wonderful, however, most notably the ones that accompany the shaving contest between Sweeney Todd and Cohen's character, and the ditty during the mass cannibalism scene when Mrs. Lovett (Bonham Carter) treats her unknowing customers to her tasty new menu offering: human meat pies.

All things considered Sweeney Todd emerges as an ambitious but underwhelming Burton effort, along the lines of Sleepy Hollow. It ain't no Pee Wee's Big Adventure or Batman Returns, that's for sure.

2007-12-19T11:22:00.000-08:00

Confessions of a TV Whore

It's been well over a decade since I last subscribed to cable. On a good day I get four fuzzy stations on my TV set. I'm an incurable cinephile, and I mostly use my set to watch movies on DVD. I take a pompous pride in the fact that I don't watch network TV, but today I took a glance at my compact mirror of self-deception and decided that it's time to admit that "Game Over" is flashing above my elitist little charade.

Couch time doesn't lie: In the past two months I've spent about 60 hours watching mainstream shows on DVD - shows that rarely aspire to the artsy cinematic qualities that turn HBO series like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under into "not guilty" pleasures.

Here's a glimpse at the shows that conquered my heart despite all my efforts to condemn them to the trash bins of pop culture.

Dynasty (Seasons One and Two)

A month ago, while renting a DVD at the massive Portland video store Movie Madness, I watched a bunch of clerks fiendishly giggling while watching an episode of the notorious 1980s prime time soap opera. I just had to give it a whirl and - despite frequent stretches of brain-deadening, softly lit Cinemax After Dark-esque melodrama - I pretty much fell in love with it.

These are a few of my favorite Dynasty things: When Krystle's hair bounces every time she walks...When Alexis (Joan Collins) fires a gun to ensure that Krystle falls off her horse, gets dragged on the ground and suffers a miscarriage...when Sammy Jo (the wonderful and completely ludicrous Heather Locklear) calls a stiff-upper-lipped waiter "Hot Rod" and proceeds to trash an elegant party by gyrating to the theme from Peter Gunn...when Blake recovers from hysterical blindness but doesn't tell anyone so he can spy on them...and, of course, when Krystle and Alexis wrestle, tear up fancy pillows and throw vases at each others heads.

Veronica Mars (Seasons One and Two)

Beverly Hills 90210 meets The Maltese Falcon in this occasionally lame but surprisingly fresh and intelligent drama about an impossibly cute and precocious high schooler (Kristen Bell) who sniffs out mystery cases when she's not securing valedictorian honors at So Cal's Neptune High even though we never once see her doing homework. I've heard that season three differs in structure, but in seasons one and two the writers effectively string us along with BIG mysteries (a murder case in season one and a school bus disaster in season two) that span many episodes, and also throw in lots of single episode brainteasers. My favorite character is Keith Mars, Veronica's funny and adorable PI daddy.

30 Rock (Season One)

This Emmy winner for Outstanding Comedy series doesn't really qualify as a guilty pleasure because - with the exception of one or two painfully unfunny episodes - it's very witty and almost always favors rude barbs over cheap sentiment. As the head writer for a Saturday Night Live-esque variety show Tina Fey makes fun of her own bitchiness and she gets lots of chances to show off her formidable talent for physical comedy. Tracy Morgan is hilarious and unpredictable as a mentally unstable comedian, and Alec Baldwin chews up one of his best roles ever as an insensitive-and-conservative-but-somehow-lovable-corporate-bigwig named Jack.

2007-12-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

Elf Fever

I just received a hilarious email from my cousin, Jaimie. It linked me to Elf Yourself, an OfficeMax-operated site that lets you upload digital photos onto the faces of wildly gyrating elves. You may know about the site already. If not, it's a fun place to play around for awhile.

Here are my three creations so far. One features Drew, our cats Chicklet & Confetta (sorry for leaving you out, Rupert!) and me. The second features Margaret Cho, a sketch of my muse Cleo, Steve Buscemi and Karen Carpenter. Finally we have the Jerri Blank montage with Amy Sedaris in various states of hideous ugliness.

After you watch the clips I think the site will give you a chance to try your own chance to play god with the precious DNA strands of elves!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1491225544

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1491748651

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1492235674

2007-12-14T15:21:00.000-08:00

The Savages (Grade: B+)

Like Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, Tamara Jenkins' The Savages is an exceptionally well-written dysfunctional family comedy that is alternately hilarious and devastating. While Baumbach showed a little mercy by keeping his film well under the 90-minute mark, Jenkins goes for the jugular for two full hours. If her intention is to make us feel like we're trapped without oxygen in this family trainwreck, then she has certainly succeeded. Still there's no getting around the problem that the quality of the dialogue and the storytelling drops considerably in the final stretch, leaving me convinced that Jenkins really could have hit this mother out of the park if she had spent a little more time in the cutting room.

Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman do what they do best (that is, masterfully portray the most neurotic and annoying people on earth) as a pair of estranged siblings who reunite when their father (Philip Bosco) rapidly succombs to dementia. The catch is that Daddy is a violent guy who used to abuse his kids, causing his considerably maladjusted offspring to wrestle with extremely mixed emotions, especially in regard to their caretaking obligations.

All the acting is top-notch, and the unflinching attention to the day-to-day realities of old age and senility give the film a honest feel that's hard to come by these days, even in indie films. For over an hour I was convinced that The Savages would easily emerge as one of the year's best films. It remains an impressive and refreshing effort, but sadly the almost unbearably redundant final stretch knocks it off the 2007 all-star team.

2007-12-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

Best of 2007

1. Away From Her (Directed by Sarah Polley)

2. The Host (Joon-ho Bong)

3. No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)

4. Red Road (Andrea Arnold)

5. Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud)

6. Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)

7. The Trials of Darryl Hunt (Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg)

8. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy)

9. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer)

10. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Honorable Mention (in no particular order):

Rocket Science

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Deep Water

The Savages

Stephanie Daley

Crazy Love

Zodiac

Death Proof

The Devil Came on Horseback

Fay Grim

The Secret Life of Words

Once

A Mighty Heart

Knocked Up

Hairspray

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Ratatouille

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

The Darjeeling Limited

Lars and the Real Girl

Southland Tales

American Gangster

Favorite Performances:

Julie Christie in Away From Her

Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone

Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood

Robert Downey Jr. in Zodiac

Ruby Dee in American Gangster

Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd

Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose

Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men

Tilda Swinton in Stephanie Daley & Michael Clayton

George Clooney in Michael Clayton

Jennifer Garner in Juno

Patricia Clarkson & Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl

Sarah Polley in The Secret Life of Words

Imelda Staunton & Helena Bonham Carter in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Adrien Brody in The Darjeeling Limited

Reece Thompson & Anna Kendrick in Rocket Science

Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts Vincent Cassell & Armin Mueller-Stahl in Eastern Promises

Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There

Kate Dickie & Tony Curran in Red Road

2007-12-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

Me and Marjane

Graphic novelist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi was a bit standoffish at the start of our recent interview at the Hotel Monaco in downtown Portland. But soon she unleashed her enthusiasm and discussed her creative process, her influences and some thoughts on queer culture.

Born into a liberal family in Iran in 1969, Satrapi witnessed a violent revolution and lived under an oppressive fundamentalist regime until her parents sent her to school in Austria in the early 1980s. She now lives in Paris, and has secured a spot in the pantheon of great graphic novelists with the Persepolis series that recounts her childhood in Tehran and her teen years in Europe.

The excellent film adaptation opens on Christmas Day in big cities, and in smaller locales in early 2008. Directed by Satrapi and comic artist Vincent Paronnaud, the film won a jury prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, and it is France’s official entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Here's an excerpt from my conversation with Marjane Satrapi:

Me: What were the major differences in your approach to writing the graphic novels and doing the film?

Marjane: Well when you write you work by yourself. You work all alone. With the film not only do you have to work with 100 people but you’re responsible for these people.

Me: When you wrote the graphic novels did you have a movie in mind?

Marjane: No, never.

Me: What influences did you draw on?

Marjane: My inspiration comes from everything. In the movie it was from F.W. Murnau [German Expressionist director of Nosferatu] to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas by use of the narration and the way the story is told.

Me: Are there any graphic novels that inspired you to go into this field?

Marjane: I read Maus by Art Spiegelman. I was just like everybody else. I thought comics were just for kids or adolescents or retarded adults. Then I read this book and I realized that it was a masterpiece. It frees you when you realize you can tell any story with comics.

Me: How often do you go back to Iran?

Marjane: I don’t go back.

Me: What’s your next project?

Marjane: I would really like to make another movie, and I would really like to write another book. But right now I am so empty. For me to be creative I have to have at least five hours for myself. Now with the promotion for the film I never have five hours.

Me: In your memoir you seem right at home with gay men.

Marjane: For me people are just people. I never think about who does what in their bed. If a gay guy is bad and mean he’s not my friend and I will not be nice to him just because he is gay. I have lots and lots of gay friends.
One of my favorite movie makers is John Waters. I love his stories and all the transvestites and the completely crazy words. Once I wrote about my favorite holiday movie for The New York Times and my favorite Christmas movie is Pink Flamingos I’m so fed up with all the sweetness that I need to see this movie to free myself of all of that.

Me: Do you think your outlook on gays is influenced by growing up in an oppressive culture?

Marjane: If you’re born in the U.S. in a very religious family you are growing up in an oppressive culture. You don’t need to be in Iran. It can be anywhere. I had the good luck to grow up in a very open minded family. They didn’t judge anybody. Anybody could do whatever they wanted. But people were judged if they were mean. If you don’t do anything bad to anybody I don’t know why there’s a problem.

2007-12-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

Juno (Grade: B)

Accidental pregnancies are all the rage this year at the movies. This summer we had Knocked Up, and just in time for awards season director Jason Reitman serves up Juno, a film that's gotten extremely positive press since it premiered at this year's Toronto Film Festival. Ellen Page (Hard Candy) is wonderfully snarky as the title character, a 16 year old girl who consults the want ads to handpick a pair of yuppies (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) to parent her unborn child. Garner delivers her best performance yet as the anxious and vulnerable adoptive mother, and Allison Janney is terrific as Juno's smart-ass stepmother.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody is getting raves for her script, and she just won the National Board of Review's award for Best Screenplay. Indeed the film is brimming with great-one liners and some genuinely moving scenes, but Cody's insistence on folding heaps of sarcasm and heartwarming blather into one big burrito makes for a mushy mix at times. Juno is much better than Little Miss Sunshine - last year's Little Indie That Could - but it falls short of greatness because it wants to be quirkier-than-thou and an enormous crowd-pleaser all at once, and there's just no way to do that without piling on some of the schmaltz that it sets out to obliterate.

2007-12-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

The Golden Compass (Grade: B)

Even though I adored Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, I awaited the film adaptation of The Golden Compass (the first installment) with suspicion. First the directing honors went to Anand Tucker, who helmed the lackluster Steve Martin movie Shopgirl. When he dropped out of the project I hoped a visionary director like Terry Gilliam or Peter Jackson would sign on, but instead Chris Weitz of American Pie and About a Boy fame got the gig.

The good news is that the long-awaited film looks terrific and it features great performances from Dakota Blue Richards as the young heroine, Lyra, and Nicole Kidman as the icy beauty who oversees a scheme to sever children from their daemons (everyone has an animal soul mate called a daemon in the parallel world in which The Golden Compass takes place). And after a slow start, the film wraps up grippingly with an extended series of action and battle scenes in the freezing far North.

A few themes that worked just fine on the page, however, are stilted and downright irritating in the film. In his trilogy Pullman talks a lot about "dust" and particle physics in relation to theological issues such as original sin. To his credit Weitz tries to do justice to these concepts, but he doesn't have nearly enough time to develop the ideas in a clear and satisfying fashion. I suspect that newcomers to PullmanLand could end up scratching their heads when presented with concepts that, quite frankly, are pretty fucking abstract for a family film.

The Golden Compass deserves a better film treatment. Still, Weitz has delivered a a reasonably ripping yarn with plenty of slick CGI effects to keep your eyes dancing even when those pesky puffs of dust get in the way.

2007-12-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

My cat Confetta winterizing her wardrobe

CUTE ALERT!

2007-11-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

Southland Tales

Grade: B (though I have a hunch it could improve with age)

In 2001 young writer/director Richard Kelly came out of nowhere with Donnie Darko, a film that deservedly earned a hardcore cult following. Fans waited five years for his follow-up, Southland Tales, only to hear that audiences and press members seriously hated it when it premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. A year and a half has passed, and the film has finally made it to theaters with approximately 20 minutes of footage cut from the Cannes version. If the Portland, OR market is any indication Southland will have a theatrical longevity akin to one of Lindsay Lohan's sobriety sprees. It opened on Nov. 16, and as of Nov. 30 it won't be playing anywhere in town - which is saying a lot considering that we have a ton of second run screens.

I just had to see what this cinematic abortion was all about, especially since a few distinguished national critics (Manohla Dargis of The New York Times and Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, for instance) put some positive spin on it. Like David Lynch's Inland Empire last year, it's a very hard film to put into words. All I know is that I saw a lot of inspired and playful filmmaking, and that a lot of it makes absolutely no sense.

The year is 2008, a few years after a nuclear apocalypse wiped out Texas. In Southern California an action movie star (The Rock), a porn actress (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and a law enforcement dude with dual identity issues (Seann William Scott) bump elbows with neo-Marxist terrorists and other baddies. Early on I abandoned my attempt to follow the plot and enjoyed the deliriously anarchichal tone and the hilarious supporting performances from Wallace Shawn, Miranda Richardson and Saturday Night Live alums Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz and Amy Poehler.

The last twenty minutes are a total mess, but even when Kelly wrapped things up with an idiotic line about pimps and their aversion to commiting suicide I still felt quite a buzz.

2007-11-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol

This holiday season the Portland theater company Public Playhouse takes the dick out of Dickens by rounding up an all female cast for their production of Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.
In this revisionist version of the yuletide staple, actor and playwright Tom Mula steals the spotlight from Ebenezer Scrooge and shines it on the chained ghost of Jacob Marley. Mula performed the show solo when it premiered in Chicago in 1998, and later he rewrote it as an ensemble piece for four actors.
In Public Playhouse’s girl power rendition, the company’s Executive Director, Jolin Milberg, stars as Jacob Marley, and pansexual actress Kate Mura plays the role of Scrooge.
In Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Mura said, “The focus turns to how Marley has to bring about Scrooge’s redemption. Now we know his backstory and why he needs Scrooge to be redeemed.”
Mura, 28, grew up in New Jersey and studied acting at DePaul University in Chicago. Rather than unleash yet another portrayal of Scrooge as a one-dimensional crotchety old man, she’s employing an acting technique called RasaBoxes. The technique – which is inspired by Hindu philosophy – allows actors to explore a wide range of emotional states when preparing for a role. “It gives me a broader palette to work with,” said Mura.
Mura is energetic and articulate, and she offered some engaging tales about her childhood and her sexuality. According to her mother she had her heart set on show business before she was even born. “When my mother was nine months pregnant,” she said, “my parents went to an opera. I kicked on different sides of the womb depending on whether the altos or sopranos were singing. My mom knew I’d be a performer.”
Growing up near Manhattan gave Mura an opportunity to see queer-themed plays like Falsettos and Angels in America at an early age. But of all things it was the animated film The Last Unicorn that inspired her to explore her sexuality to its fullest. “The prince says ‘I love whom I love,” Mura recalled, “and it helped me realize I could love people regardless of their sex or gender.”
Apart from her Portland acting credits – which include a recent role in 8 Views Toward Center by Integrity Productions – Mura has worked on sets and costumes for Third Rail Productions and Northwest Childrens Theater. In addition she recently acted in a local film called The Messiah Complex.

Public Playhouse presents Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, December 7-22, CoHo Theatre, 2257 N.W. Raleigh St., Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m., $14-$16 ($10 on Thursday, Dec. 13).

2007-11-24T22:48:00.000-08:00

Now on DVD

Crazy Love (Grade: A-)

In New York City in the late 1950s a beautiful woman named Linda Riss fought off the obsessive romantic advances of a man named Henry Pugach. In an undeniably imaginative retaliation he hired two men to throw acid in her face. She lost most of her vision while he cooled off at Tsing Tsing and - here's the real kicker - sixteen years later they got married and they've been together ever since. This juicy slice of pulp nonfiction is the subject of Crazy Love, a fascinating documentary directed by Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens. Linda and Henry talk at length about their cuckoo relationship, and some frighteningly timeworn friends and colleagues pitch in their memories of this tabloid sensation.

2007-11-21T12:46:00.000-08:00

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Grade C+)

I'm a big fan of Sidney Lumet's 1970s films (particularly Dog Day Afternoon and Network), and it thrilled me to hear that, at age 83, he's back in top form with his latest effort. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - a modern American tragedy by way of a heist movie - has garnered great reviews and the seasoned Oscar predictors at http://www.awardsdaily.com/ have named it a contender in several major categories. I think it's one of the year's most overrated films, right along with the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There.

Kelly Masterson's screenplay concerns two derelict brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) who royally botch their attempt to rob their parents' jewelry store. It uses a non chronological narrative style that Stephen Soderbergh used much more skillfully in his crime films Out of Sight (1998) and The Limey (1999). You'd think you couldn't go wrong with the likes of Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney and Hawke...okay maybe you could go wrong with Ethan, but he was really good in Training Day. The problem is that Lumet cranks up the melodrama so sky-high that the actors are in a perpetual state of angst that feels just as artificial as one-dimensional joyful characters in a mediocre comedy.

For all its faults, it must be said that Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is hard to shake. This particular web of greed, betrayal and violence is not spun brilliantly, but it's so insidious that you can't help but think about it and cringe the next day - especially if you're unlucky enough to remember the traumatic sight of Hoffman screwing Tomei doggy-style.

2007-11-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

Stephen Fry's documentary on AIDS airs Saturday, December 1st on the Sundance Channel

Stephen Fry: HIV & ME

Gay British actor Stephen Fry is probably best known for his uncanny portrayal of Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film Wilde.
Last year he made the acclaimed television documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, drawing on his own struggles with bipolar disorder. Now he’s back in reporter mode with the new documentary Stephen Fry: HIV & Me. The program premiered on the BBC in early October, and on December 1st the Sundance Channel will show it in recognition of World AIDS Day.
The only significant problem with HIV & Me is the title. It can easily be interpreted to mean that Fry is HIV positive, which he is not. This quibble aside, Fry has crafted a comprehensive and enlightening study of AIDS in the year 2007. He poses questions that have been nagging him, and then sets out to speak with a broad spectrum of people who live with the stigma of AIDS – heterosexuals, teens, hemophiliacs, gays and immigrants from Africa, to name a few. While visiting San Francisco he chats with Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin.
Fry wants to know: Why does AIDS rarely make headlines anymore, even though risky sexual behavior is on the rise? Do people realize that heterosexual sex has overcome homosexual sex as the most common route of transmission in new cases in Great Britain? Why- despite so many extraordinary innovations in medical treatment – do so many AIDS patients continue to feel ashamed and ostracized.
Fry reflects on his anxieties about getting tested in the 1980s, and the despair of seeing many of his friends die in hospitals. These tales are certainly relevant, but HIV & Me is most gripping when Fry steps aside and lets his interview subjects do the talking. In a horrifying sequence a group of young men explain the significance of “passing the gift” – an act in which an HIV negative man willingly has unsafe sex with HIV positive men.
In sub-Saharan Africa Fry explores a different kind of horror by unveiling the corruption of politicians and bureaucrats who get fat on AIDS donations and provide virtually no health care for the rapidly growing number of infected people. HIV & Me does not predict a hopeless future for Africa, however. Fry showcases several tireless individuals who educate children about AIDS and safe sex to hopefully reduce the spread of the epidemic in the future.

2007-11-15T15:16:00.000-08:00

Persepolis
Grade: A

Opens on December 25th:

Marjane Satrapi’s celebrated graphic novels about growing up in Iran and Austria have jumped from the page to the screen with most of their charm, intelligence and edginess intact. Except for a few color scenes, Satrapi and her co-director Vincent Paronnaud stick to simple black-and-white animation that is refreshingly heartfelt compared to the barrage of computer animated movies out there. It takes awhile for the film to strike a balance between Satrapi’s silly humor and her horrifying recollections about war and oppression in Iran, but by the midway point the story is completely engrossing on both levels, and it becomes impossible to imagine excluding Persepolis from a list of this year’s best films. Catherine Deneuve provides the voice of Satrapi’s mother.

2007-11-13T21:48:00.000-08:00

Beowulf
Grade: C-

Director Robert Zemeckis continues to lose credibility by turning a classic Old English epic poem into a headache-inducing video game. To tell the story of a warrior who defends a Danish castle against monsters he employs sophisticated but unattractive computer animation techniques that make Robin Wright Penn look like Princess Fiona from Shrek. Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone also waste their talents on the project. I can only speak for the 3D version screened for the press, but I’m betting that the 2D and IMAX versions are just as awful.

2007-11-11T22:46:00.000-08:00

American Gangster (Grade A-)

Out of all the big movie releases this fall I looked forward to American Gangster the least. Maybe it's because it seemed like director Ridley Scott's genius days were over (A logical conclusion given that most of his recent films have sucked. Kingdom of Heaven or A Good Year, anyone?). And though I admire his work in L.A. Confidential and The Insider, my tolerance for Russell Crowe and his icky Aussie machismo is very low these days. Despite these reservations I gave Gangster a whirl today, and I must admit that I was impressed. Denzel Washington is as commanding and charming as always as New York heroin lord Frank Lucas. Crowe is just fine as his foil and Ruby Dee does wonders with about five minutes of screen time as Lucas's mother. Some scenes are shamelessly derivative of The French Connection, Goodfellas and The Godfather films. But for the most part Scott turns this true story into a riveting ride, and teases out fascinating aspects of the Vietnam Era that I'd never seen in a mainstream film.

2007-11-09T14:43:00.000-08:00

Red Road

Grade: A

Winner of several major awards, including a jury prize at Cannes, this debut feature from Scottish director Andrea Arnold is a chilling, surprising and sophisticated tale of grief and revenge. In Glasgow - a city one can only hope is not as bleak and depressing as it looks in this film - an emotionally distant woman named Jackie works in a dark room with a wall's worth of TV monitors, surveying live camera footage for occasional crimes that she's supposed to report to the powers that be.

Jackie is clearly in a state of mourning, though we don't find out why until the end of the film. We do know, however, that she sees a man on camera who's been released early from prison, and this provokes Jackie to undertake a mission so strange and humiliating that we start to think she's bonkers until ... you guessed it ... we discover the reason why she's grieving in the first place. Kate Dickie is brilliant as the ubermelancholy Jackie. Tony Curran makes for a creepy-but-charming mystery man, and the wonderful Nathalie Press from My Summer of Love makes the most of her limited screen time.

NOTE: If you rent the DVD be sure to turn on the English subtitles because the Scottish brogue is often incomprehensible.

2007-11-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

Gone Baby Gone
Grade: B

Ben Affleck makes his directing debut with this dark tale about a private detective (Ben's brother, Casey) who undergoes an ethical crisis while investigating the abduction of a Boston girl. Unfortunately he only delivers half of a good movie, forsaking taut and credible suspense for convoluted plotting at the halfway point. Looking back on preposterous denouement of Mystic River, this seems to be the curse of films based on mystery novels by Dennis Lehane (Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Shutter Island - a book which also boasts some severely off-the-rails plotting - is due out in 2009). Even though you may roll your eyeballs at the storyline, you should see Gone Baby Gone for its terrific ensemble cast. Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Michelle Monaghan all turn in solid work, but the real revelation here is stage actress Amy Ryan, who is positively brilliant and horrifying as the wisecracking, drug addict mother of the missing girl. She's a front-runner for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and she deserves to win.

2007-11-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Now on DVD:

This Filthy World (Grade A)

Bumping into John Waters on the street a few weeks ago inspired me to watch some of his old movies, and yesterday I discovered that his stand-up comedy film This Filthy World just came out on DVD. Filmed over two nights at the Harry De Jur Playhouse in New York City, the show is hilarious from start to finish. My partner laughed so hard that he dredged up mucus from his lungs, and he's not even sick. In keeping with his nickname - The Pope of Trash - Waters does his simultaneously scathing and charming shtick on a set that looks like the unholiest of Catholic altars, complete with fuzzy pink carpeting and garbage cans. It's impossible to do justice to Waters' countless raunchy zingers in print. Suffice it to say that he serves up a generous portion of childhood memories, fondly recalls his influences (such as schlock horror director William Castle) and takes us behind the scenes of all of his films.

What's his most alarming confession? He's itching to murder everyone who exercises in airports and all those moronic enunciators out there who desecrate the word "picture" by saying "pit-cher."

2007-11-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

Opens Wednesday, November 21

I'm Not There (Grade C)

Until now gay Portland filmmaker Todd Haynes has batted a thousand with beautifully stylized and controversial films like Poison, Velvet Goldmine and Far From Heaven. The Village Voice named his masterpiece Safe the best film of the 1990s.
But his latest project hits a brick wall, and that wall’s name is Bob Dylan. I’m Not There – an adamantly unconventional biopic about the legendary troubadour – boasts good acting, stunning cinematography and a few other jewels that we’ve come to expect from Haynes. But it’s really pretentious, it rambles and it ultimately alienates any viewer who doesn’t subscribe to the belief that Dylan is an unfathomably complex mythical figure.
Before the cameras rolled I’m Not There generated monster buzz as a result of an audacious casting maneuver. Like Todd Solondz’s Palindromes, Haynes uses multiple actors to portray various aspects of Dylan’s identity. For the most part he avoids a chronological narrative by crosscutting between the different story lines.
Child actor Marcus Carl Franklin gets the ball rolling as “Woody,” an itinerant black boy who – like Dylan – is highly influenced by Woody Guthrie. Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw and Cate Blanchett play the singer/songwriter at various points in the 1960s, while a scruffy Richard Gere rides around on a horse in a tedious segment that pays homage to Dylan’s fascination with Billy the Kid.
All the performances are solid, but Blanchett is the most intriguing of the bunch. This is not simply because it’s a novelty to see her in drag. In fact, she captures Dylan’s nervous mannerisms so perfectly that you instantly forget he’s a she. Blanchett won Best Actress honors at the Venice Film Festival for the role, and she’s already a front runner for an Oscar.
Unfortunately Blanchett and her costars can’t make up for the unengaging storytelling, or the off-putting feeling that you’d have to study every scrap of Dylan esoterica and memorize all his lyrics to really “get” the movie.
The tone of the movie shifts so much that it becomes hard to tell when Haynes is joking and when he’s deadly serious. In interview footage Julianne Moore plays a character based on Joan Baez. The phony folk concert photos that accompany her recollections look like they’re straight out of a Christopher Guest send-up. I enjoyed the comic relief, but the lack of laughter from fellow viewers me wonder if this was supposed to be a joke or a yet another reverent bow at the Dylan altar.

2007-10-31T10:03:00.000-07:00

If you're ever in Hood River, Oregon in October or early November, be sure to visit Rasmussen Farms. Every year the good folks there choose a theme for the Pumpkin Funland dioramas in their spacious greenhouse. A few years ago they chose classic TV shows as the theme, and I snapped this photo of Charlie's Angels in action.

2007-10-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Retro Movie Recommendations

After Hours (1985)

After Raging Bull Martin Scorsese smacked his fans with one-two combo of brilliant pitch black comedies. He followed the masterful The King of Comedy with this underrated gem about a 9 to 5 office slave (Griffin Dunne) who can’t escape SoHo after a late night with Rosanna Arquette goes very very wrong.

The Naked Kiss (1964)

In Samuel Fuller’s kitschy yet hard-hitting pulp classic Constance Towers plays a prostitute who peddles Angel Foam, a libation that “goes down like velvet and comes up like dynamite." She turns her life around by teaching disabled children and marrying a local philanthropist/millionaire only to discover that he’s harboring one hell of a sicko secret. Shot in beautiful black and white by Stanley Cortez (the brilliant DP behind The Magnificent Ambersons and The Night of the Hunter), The Naked Kiss predated David Lynch’s creepy exposes of small town America by twenty years.

Score (1973)

By the early 1970s American director Radley Metzger had already established himself as a major horndog with the skin flicks Camille 2000 and The Lickerish Quartet. He outdid himself with the sensational sexploitation film Score, testing his audience’s tolerance by tossing some totally hot bisexual action into the mix. In a fictional European resort town called Leisure a swinging married couple lure prospective lovers to their home and persuade them to try their hands (and other body parts) at switch-hitting. I’ve only seen the soft-core version available on DVD from First Run Features, but if you search hard enough you might find the 91 minute original version, which contains some hard-core action.

2007-10-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

Slut Tag Central

After toying with the idea of getting tattoos for over a decade, my partner Drew and I finally took the Nestea plunge last week and got inked at a Portland parlor called Primitive Urges. Both of our "slut tags" (my friend Liza tells me that this is the popular nomenclature for tattoos in Boston) are healing well, with some nasty oozing and burning action thrown in to discourage us every time we think we've reached the home stretch.

Drew's armband is a work-in-progress. So far he's filled the circles inside the band with some of his favorite symbols, including an owl, a penguin and the Om symbol. If he's up for another round of flesh abuse he may go back to slap on a few more images.

In choosing a design for my tattoo I decided that I wanted something amusing and meaningful, and decided there was no better way to achieve that mix than to fuse two of my favorite fictional inspirations: Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz and Jerri Blank - the 46-year-old boozer/looser/user/high school freshman played by Amy Sedaris on the cult TV show Strangers With Candy.

2007-10-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

Lars and the Real Girl
Grade: B+

Director Craig Gillespie (Mr. Woodcock) takes on the formidable task of crafting a psychologically complex slapstick comedy, and he nearly pulls it off. The amazing Ryan Gosling gained 50 pounds to play Lars, a lumpy introvert who comes out of his shell when he starts dating a life-size plastic woman he buys on the Internet. The second half of the film is surprisingly moving and satisfying, but many of the early scenes resemble bad SNL sketches. Patricia Clarkson is wonderful as Lars’s doctor.

2007-10-23T22:57:00.000-07:00

Klassicks Korner

The Fox by D.H. Lawrence

The Shadow-Line by Joseph Conrad

After nearly passing into a coma while reading Richard Russo's latest, Bridge of Sighs, I decided to forsake overhyped contemporary fiction for some classics. Aside from some painfully obvious symbolism in both books, D.H. Lawrence's The Fox (1923) and Joseph Conrad's The Shadow-Line (1917) proved to be elegant and provocative diversions.

In college I read some short stories by Lawrence and at some point I made an aborted attempt to read Sons and Lovers. So unless you count watching the soft-core film version of Lady Chatterly's Lover on Cinemax After Dark I'm a novice when it comes to this frequently banned author.

The Fox is a novella, a 60 page study of two spinsters who live on a rural English farm, contending with the fox who invades their property to devour their livestock. Then a soldier on leave arrives on the scene, believing he's visiting a relative (who, we learn, sold the property to one of the women). He schemes to get back the house and land by romancing the mannish woman March and kicking Banford - the other gal - out of the picture. He's a consummate predator just like the fox, and the only major flaw in the storytelling is the heavy-handed way Lawrence drives that metaphor home.

Onto Conrad's The Shadow-Line, which I'd never heard of until I read Philip Roth's latest, Exit Ghost. In that novel Roth's recurring protagonist Zuckerman rereads his favorite literary works before he croaks. He's especially fond of The Shadow-Line.

It turned out that the final stretch of October was a perfect time to read this short novel because it's totally freaking creepy overture to Halloween, detailing the nightmarish voyage of a young captain who nearly succumbs to madness when someone sabotages his quinine supply in the midst of a deadly flu epidemic on board the ship. Heart of Darkness is the only other book by Conrad I've read, and I think The Shadow-Line is a worthy companion to that bleak masterpiece to end all bleak masterpieces. Like The Fox, the main problem is the oft-uttered significance of the title, the "shadow-line" being the line one crosses when she or he passes from wide-eyed youth to world-weary adulthood.

Now I may need a break from classics, but after yesterday's pillage of the Goodwill book department I'm well stocked for future forays into Classicsville. Among other titles I picked up Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native and D.H. Lawrence's interconnected novels The Rainbow and Women in Love.

2007-10-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

Revisiting The House of Yes

There’s black comedy, and then there’s pitch-black comedy. Wendy MacLeod’s 1990 play The House of Yes fits squarely in the second category. How many storytellers, after all, would dare make the assassination of JFK the target of dozens of jokes?

At first glance the plot seems benign enough: A young man named Marty brings his fiancé home for Thanksgiving to meet his family. But trouble kicks in soon enough when it turns out that his mother is bitterly aloof and - better yet - his sister is a mentally unstable Jacqueline Kennedy fanatic who dresses in the former First Lady’s signature pink dress and pillbox hat. Did I mention that Jackie-O, the sister, and Marty dabbled in incest as children?

The House of Yes enjoyed a long run when it opened in San Francisco, and in 1997 it made the leap to the big screen with a hilarious and scathing portrayal of Jackie-O by Parker Posey.

If you need a dose of vitriol to counteract all the holiday mirth that’s about to invade our shopping malls, check out a live performance of The House of Yes by the new Portland production company Fall Guy Theatre. Gay actor Joe Bolenbaugh – who recently appeared in Profile Theatre’s production of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles – founded the company with House of Yes director Willie Smith and two other partners. The show’s stage manager, Michael Rutledge, is also gay.

“At first I dreaded having Thanksgiving in the middle of the run,” Bolenbaugh said, “but then I figured the show is set at Thanksgiving and it would be the perfect time for people to see a dysfunctional family in action and realize, ‘Mine not’s so bad!’”

Bolenbaugh is a district aide at Congressman Earl Blumanauer's Portland headquarters. In the show he plays Marty, the brother for whom Jackie-O has the hots. Rather than replicate the campy qualities of the film, he said, “We’re going for a black comedy with a murder mystery feel. The humor comes from the desperation and the sincerity of the characters.”

Later this season Bolenbaugh and the Fall Guy gang will present Big Rock Show! – a spoof of stadium concerts – and Accidental Death of a Anarchist by Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo.

Fall Guy Theatre presents The House of Yes, November 15 through December 9 (no show on Thanksgiving), 8 p.m.Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, Theater! $20, Theater! Theatre! S.E. 34th and Belmont.

2007-10-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

Coming to theatres in mid-November:

No Country for Old Men
Grade: A

This bloody adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel is an instant Coen Brothers classic that invites comparisons to Fargo and Blood Simple. Joel and Ethan are faithful to the source material, but they graciously lighten up the book’s dour tone with dozens of quirky flourishes. The acting is tops, with Javier Bardem as a homicidal maniac with bad hair, Josh Brolin as a dim fellow who runs for his life after stealing a bundle of cash, and Tommy Lee Jones as an honest small town sheriff who tries to make sense of all the murder and mayhem.

2007-10-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

Starstruck

En route to Portland Center Stage's production of Cabaret tonight, Drew and I spotted trash cinema guru John Waters entering Powell's City of Books. At first I felt tongue-tied and weak-kneed at the prospect of talking to the gleefully twisted genius behind Pink Flamingos, Hairspray and Serial Mom, but before I knew it I found myself chasing him into the bargain section, calling out "John" as though he were my best friend in the world. His ensemble of grey clothing perfectly matched his greying hair.

In short, I told him that I love his work, and that I named my cats Chicklet and Confetta after two brassy teenage delinquents in his magnum opus Female Trouble (in the film the second gal is actually named Concetta, but I always preferred my variation).

I didn't want to bother him for long, but I did ask what he's doing in Portland, and he replied that he's interviewing someone for a book he's working on. I didn't have the heart to badger him about the details. He clearly had some shopping to do, after all.

2007-10-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

Michael Clayton
Grade: A-

Just when it seemed like intelligence and subtlety had been banished from Hollywood films, along comes a gripping and complex legal thriller that delivers plenty of suspense without resorting to hammy courtroom melodrama. George Clooney plays the title character, a recovering gambling addict who does dirty deeds for a major New York City law firm until a colleague’s mental breakdown and a corporation’s foul sportsmanship cause him to question his ethics. Tony Gilroy - who wrote the screenplays for all three Bourne movies - shows great promise in his directorial debut, drawing remarkable performances from Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson.

2007-10-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

Into the Wild

Grade: B

After everyone went gaga for Into the Wild at the Toronto Film Festival and a friend told me it was his favorite movie of the year so far, I thought a transcendent experience awaited me when I sank into my chair and waited for the lights to go down. Even with all the hoopla I had my reservations. With overwrought films like The Crossing Guard and The Indian Runner to his name, I've never been a big fan of Sean Penn's directing style. I've never read a Jon Krakauer book, so I can't tell you if this is a faithful adaptation of his true account of Christopher McCandless - the Emory University grad who gave all his savings to charity, fled from society and eventually died after accidentally ingesting a poisonous plant in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska.

This is Sean Penn's best outing as a director so far, but it hardly establishes him as a first class director. Cinematographer Eric Gautier fills the frames with lovely shots of seagulls, white water rapids, mountains and other natural wonders. As though channeling the Christopher's spirit of wild abandon, Penn throws in some brave and unconventional visual techniques, like handwritten snippets of Christophers' diary entries sprawled across the screen.

My big question is why Penn didn't take this idea further. With the handwriting and one shot where Emile Hirsch (who plays Christopher) looks directly into the camera with a knowing smile, Penn is playing the risky game that theater folks refer to as "breaking the fourth wall." These techniques are meant to shake viewers out of their laid back passive positions and urge them to take a more active role. But for most of the movie Penn sticks to fairly conventional storytelling techniques, which to my mind results in a half-assed and negligibly daring filmmaking when all is said and done. In short, I wanted to see Penn take more stylistic risks as the story unfolded to show Christopher taking more and more risks with his life.

By the time was over I didn't feel nearly as invested in Christopher's plight as I thought I would. Owing to Penn's technique or perhaps my lukewarm response to Hirsch's acting, I didn't particularly like Christopher, and certainly didn't view his death as a tragedy because - stranded out in the middle of nowhere with limited survival skills to his name - he probably would have died anyway. Penn certainly doesn't paint Christopher as a desperately suicidal figure, but that doesn't mean that his actions aren't suicidal on some level.

There's Oscar buzz about several supporting cast members, including Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook. They're both engaging, but I didn't find either performance to be remarkable. Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt, both reliable performers in general, turn in painfully forced performances as Christopher's bereft parents, and my guess is that Penn - who can be way too literal and way too solemn - steered them in this shitty direction.

2007-10-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

Dead Girls and Dying Authors

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95

A few years ago Oregonian entertainment columnist Chelsea Cain wrote Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, a hilarious parody of Nancy Drew books. Now she's taking a stab at the serial killer genre with Heartsick, a more ambitious - but ultimately far less satisfying - effort than Confessions.

That said, Heartsick has a lot going for it. In an unconventional narrative maneuver Cain serves up two protagonists, both intriguing in all their virtues and flaws. Archie Sheridan is a pill-popping Portland, Oregon detective who - two years after nearly dying in the torture chamber of notorious serial killer Gretchen Lowell - rejoins to the force to track down a killer who has strangled numerous Portland high school girls and left their bodies to be found on the banks of nearby islands and river walkways. Throughout his search he's shadowed by Susan Ward, a young journalist assigned to write a series of articles on Sheridan and the recent rash of murders.

Sheridan and his investigative team have pegged the current killer to be a man, possibly a teacher or janitor at one of the high schools. Susan stares down her own demons by revisiting her high school stomping grounds to do research, reliving memories of a sexual relationship with one of her teachers. Archie takes an even wilder stroll down memory lane. It turns out that he's developed a variation of Stockholm Syndrome, meaning that he harbors a fierce emotional attachment to Gretchen, the woman who broke his ribs, spoon-fed him Drano, carved a heart on his chest and removed his spleen.

Heartsick is creepy and engaging for about 200 pages, and then Cain loses control of her unusual plot structure, throws her hands in that air and serves up a really stupid and unexciting climax. Even when the story goes off the rails it's hard to put it down - particularly if you're from Portland because Cain does a good job evoking the local color.

Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

Houghton Mifflin Company, $26

Philip Roth - one of America's most decorated writers, with a Pulitzer and two National Book Awards to his name - is perhaps best known for the Zuckerman Books, a series of novels narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, a Jewish writer widely considered to be Roth's alter ego. Roth wrote a series of Zuckerman books in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then revived the franchise in the late 1990s with the phenomenal trio American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain.

Now he swears he's finishing Nathan off with the recently published Exit Ghost. Nathan doesn't literally die in the book, but he leaves his 11-year hideaway in the Berkshires only to face bewilderment, humiliation and the constant bothers of impotence and incontinence (caused by his prostate surgery about 10 years ago) in his old haunt, New York City. Now in his early 70s, he pines for a 30-year-old woman and tries to prevent a persistent young writer from writing a tell-all biography about a deceased writer who was Zuckerman's mentor and inspiration in the 1950s.

With themes of death and the irreversible decline of American society, Exit Ghost is hardly a light read. But considering the grim subject matter this is a surprisingly quick and enjoyable read, with zippy pages of theatrical "He Said, She Said" dialogue between Zuckerman and his temptress. Overall this is a memorable, fitting end to a literary saga, though I found the lengthy tribute to sportswriter George Plimpton toward the end to be an unwelcome distraction.

2007-10-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

Legends of the Fall

I've had a chance to listen to some of this fall's most anticipated music releases. I haven't spent enough time with them to known which are the all-stars and which will be eternal dust gatherers, but here are my initial impressions.

PJ Harvey scores big points with White Chalk, an album steeped in haunting chamber music stylings instead of the grungier sounds from previous outings like Rid of Me and Uh Huh Her. So far "When Under Ether" is my favorite track.

Annie Lennox definitely means business with Songs of Mass Destruction, possibly the best solo album of her career. Ballads like "Dark Road" and "Fingernail Moon" are exquisite, and it's impossible not to shake your butt cheeks to the infectious pop concoction "Ghosts in My Machine." Madonna provides guest vocals on "Sing."

Talk about unholy alliances! Maybe they've been pals all along and I never knew it, but I was very surprised to hear that Led Zeppelin screamer Robert Plant and demure country/folk artist Alison Krauss teamed up for Raising Sand. They do an awesome cover of Rowland Salley's "Killing the Blues," but a few tracks stray into Bland Land.

I listened to my share of The Boss in the mid-1980s, particularly my cassette of Born in the U.S.A. At some point I concluded that he was too much of a man's man for me, but over the past few years I've come to appreciate his melancholy sensibility and his musical versatility (Nebraska being my favorite Springsteen album). The new CD, Magic, marks his reunion with The E Street Band. "Radio Nowhere," the leading track and the first radio single, is my fave.

Finally we come to Herbie Hancock's tribute to Joni Mitchell. Earlier this year Nonesuch Records released a tribute to Joni with tracks by Sufjan Stevens, Cassandra Wilson and other notables, and Joni herself just released Shine, her first album of new material since 1998. Herbie's entry in the Mitchell sweepstakes is an odd one, with an instrumental track of "Both Sides Now" that bears absolutely no melodic resemblance to the original. "Court and Spark," featuring Norah Jones on vocals, is much more satisfying, and the jewel in the crown is Tina Turner's hot-as-fuck take on "Edith and the Kingpin." I also like Leonard Cohen's beatnik, spoken word recitation of "The Jungle Line, " but found Corinne Bailey Rae's "River" and Luciana Souza's "Amelia" to be total snoozers.

2007-10-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

Mala Noche

$29.95 retail or rent it

Before catapulting himself to indie film fame with Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, Gus Van Sant made his feature film debut with Mala Noche ("Bad Night") in 1985. Until now it has never had a proper home video release - it was only available on bootlegs of indubitably crappy quality.

On October 9 the Criterion Collection DVD edition hits the streets, complete with a storyboard gallery, the original trailer, a laid-back 2007 video interview with Van Sant and a documentary about Walt Curtis, the Oregon beat poet who wrote the source material. The digital transfer is pristine, showcasing the dramatic interplay of light and darkness throughout the film.

Filled with haunting imagery and clever camera work, Mala Noche is a film of undeniable cinematic merit, and several visual motifs (time-lapse transitional shots of moving clouds, for instance) later made their way into signature Van Sant films like My Own Private Idaho. Watch Mala Noche for proof that Gus was a talented stylist from the get-go, but don't expect the expert dialogue and great character development that distinguish many of his later scripts.

Though it's impressive that he took on a gritty aspect of gay culture and didn't pander to mainstream audiences, the story seriously drags in several places, and the mediocre acting doesn't make it any easier to warm up to the material. Based on Walt Curtis's memoir, the plot follows a white male convenience store clerk in his efforts to win the heart (or, if necessary, buy the sexual favors of) an illegal Mexican immigrant. Filmed in the grittiest district in Portland, Oregon, an area which - despite its proximity to some of the city's priciest real estate - is still home to several transient hotels and soup kitchens.

2007-10-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

Fright Nightz

I know I may be a little extreme in this matter, but I firmly believe that celebrating the horrifying pagan ecstasies of Halloween should never be limited to the 31st of October. This greatest of holidays calls for a month-long, blood-chilling descent into the realm of all things creepy, crawly, sick and twisted. With that in mind I've assembled a list of some of my favorite scary flicks in the hope that those of you with strong constitutions will join me at horror movie boot camp.

The Brood (David Cronenberg, also check out Rabid and Shivers)

Sisters (Brian DePalma, also check out Carrie and Dressed to Kill)

Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju)

Freaks (Tod Browning)

Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)

The Most Dangerous Game - this one inspired the Zodiac killer!!! (Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, also check out The Witches)

The Elephant Man (David Lynch)

The Exorcist (William Friedkin)

Frailty (Bill Paxton)

Suspiria (Dario Argento)

The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle)

The Host (Joon-ho Bong)

Little Otik (Jan Svankmakjer)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, also check out Red Eye and Cursed)

Night of the Living Dead & Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero)

The Others (Alejandro Amenabar)

Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro)

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer)

Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, also see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)

Shaun of the Dead - this one lands in the "spoofy scary" category (Edgar Wright)

The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme)

Alfred Hitchcock Grab Bag: Take your pick from Shadow of a Doubt, The Birds, Psycho, Frenzy etc.

Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton, also check out Beetlejuice and Ed Wood)

The Stepford Wives - original 1975 version (Bryan Forbes)

Slither (James Gunn)

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)

The Stuff (Larry Cohen)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? & Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte (Robert Aldrich)

Strait-Jacket (William Castle, also check out The House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler)

The Haunting - 1963 version (Robert Wise)

Sweet dreams, everyone!

2007-09-28T17:25:00.000-07:00

Opens today in some cities, opens soon everywhere else:

The Darjeeling Limited
Grade: B+

With all due respect to the disarming whimsy of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, this railroad romp is Wes Anderson’s most rewarding and heartfelt effort since Rushmore. The pacing is poky at times, and some of the eccentricity feels forced. But Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman have terrific chemistry as a bedraggled trio of brothers who rehash their dysfunctional family history while traveling across India by train. The set designs are charming, and Anderson veterans Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston have amusing cameos.

2007-09-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

The Return of Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell is the musical equivalent of a Transformer. After recording hugely influential acoustic albums like Blue, she hit her commercial peak with the jazzy pop sounds of Court and Spark. Then her commercial viability dwindled as she embarked on a string of experimental projects, including a collaboration with jazz legend Charles Mingus.

Mitchell announced her retirement in 2002. But now she’s sneaking back into the spotlight with Shine. With the exception of a new rendition of her own classic “Big Yellow Taxi,” it’s her first album of new material since Taming the Tiger in 1998. For the deal she joined Paul McCartney on Starbucks’s Hear Music label.
True to its name Shine opens with a luminous instrumental piece called “One Day Last Summer.” The closing track – a slick adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” – is equally impressive.
Unfortunately the eight songs in between are a mixed bag, marred at times by the preachy politics that made parts of Turbulent Indigo and Dog Eat Dog such a slog. The central theme of Shine is the demise of the environment, with additional commentary on “cell phone zombies” and the misdeeds of the Catholic Church.
Shine is at its brightest when Mitchell stops ranting and sticks to the lush Mexican rhythms of “Night of the Iguana” and the dreamy lap steel guitar accompaniment on “This Place.”

Mitchell’s unexpected return to the music business has yielded an uneven and occasionally overbearing album. On the bright side her resurrection gives fans a chance to honor her tenacity, and to decide for themselves if they’d rather listen to her Starbucks brew or vintage recordings like For the Roses and Hejira.

2007-09-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

More Double Features

Last week I posted some suggestions for double features. As the nights grow longer and colder I thought y'all could stand a few more recommendations.

The Wizard of Oz & Wild at Heart: David Lynch's Palm d'Or winning road movie makes several overt references to The Wizard of Oz, with mean ole' Diane Ladd standing in as the Wicked Witch.

Taxi Driver & The King of Comedy: Both star Robert DeNiro and both were directed by Martin Scorsese. Strictly speaking King is a dark comedy while Taxi Driver is a hellish descent into an urban inferno. But somehow DeNiro's portrayal of the delusional comedian Rupert Pupkin is just as frightening and unnerving as his portrayal of the gun-wielding Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

Female Trouble & Mommie Dearest: John Waters's cult classic and the notorious Faye Dunaway vehicle are both campy as hell, and they show mothering at its horrifying (and hilarious) worst.

The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert & The Limey: Don't miss this chance to see Terence Stamp transform from a tart, lovable drag queen to a ruthless killer.

Peggy Sue Got Married & Serial Mom: See two of Kathleen Turner's most amusing performances back-to-back. Francis Ford Coppola's charming film finds her as depressed housewife whisked back to her high school glory days, while John Waters skewers this All-American pluckiness to depict an insatiable serial killer who just happens to be the world's most perfect stay at home mom.

2007-09-21T15:58:00.000-07:00

Totally cute actor Omar Metwally (center) is about to get tortured in Rendition

Rendition
Grade: C

South African director Gavin Hood follows his Oscar-winning Tsotsi with a limp thriller that doesn’t build any momentum until it’s too late to care what happens. Reese Witherspoon makes us long for her peppy Legally Blonde days with her tired portrayal of an American woman whose Egyptian-born husband (the gorgeous Omar Metwally) gets detained and tortured by the CIA on the suspicion that he’s affiliated with terrorists. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a CIA analyst who undergoes an ethical crisis as he monitors the torture sessions. Most of dialogue is so corny that even Meryl Streep looks ridiculous in the role of a CIA heavy with a menacing Southern drawl. Opens Friday, October 19.

2007-09-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

New on DVD:

Cruising

In the early 1980s Hollywood made a short-lived effort to make gays and lesbians the central subject of mainstream films. Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean got it on in Arthur Hiller’s Making Love, while Mariel Hemmingway played a bisexual track star in Robert Towne’s Personal Best. Both films are a bit hokey, but at least they present queer characters that are interesting and multifaceted.
And then there was Cruising. Straight director William Friedkin (The Exorcist) wrote and directed this 1980 release about a cop (Al Pacino) who goes undercover in New York City’s leather bars to find a serial killer who targets gay men.
Gay rights groups argued with good reason that Cruising equated gay sex with death, and they sabotaged the production by yelling in the background and blowing loud whistles. As a result Friedkin had to spend three months finessing the sound mix. His perseverance resulted in savagely negative reviews and a pitiful haul at the box office.
After this introduction you’re probably wondering why the hell you’d bother watching Cruising now that Warner Home Video has released it on DVD for the first time. The whole film seems fueled by the idea that gays corrode morality, and as a mystery it stinks because the “resolution” isn’t even remotely satisfying or logical.
Still it’s a fascinating historical document, a nasty portrait of a libidinous gay subculture through the eyes of a heterosexual director. In the DVD featurettes Friedkin maintains that this is a thriller that just happens to take place in leather bars where guys in cop uniforms suck on nightsticks and other fellows grease their arms up to their elbows for fisting fun. You’d at least think he’d have the decency to admit that Cruising wasn’t an especially sensitive ambassador to mainstream audiences at the dawn of the AIDS crisis.
Pacino looks really cute when he first dons a leather vest, but he’s positively frightening by the time he’s wearing full S&M regalia, snorting drugs from a bandana and dancing like someone shoved a cattle prod up his ass. Like Gina Gershon post-Showgirls, he refuses to talk about Cruising to the press, and he’s conspicuously absent from the DVD featurettes.
What was he thinking when he strolled through a set filled with guys waving their bare asses in the air? Did he actually think this was his best career move since The Godfather?

2007-09-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

We Belong Together

As part of the coffee table film book project I'm working on I'm dreaming up a list of double feature recommendations. I haven't written my justifications for pairing these films yet, but here I'll try to provide a quick and tidy reason why these films complement each other as deliciously as cranberry juice and orange sherbert (you should try that combo if you haven't yet!).

The Bicycle Thief & Pee Wee's Big Adventure: Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealism classic and Tim Burton's campy road movie were made nearly 40 years apart and couldn't possibly differ more in tone, but both plots center on the devastating effects of bicycle theft. Remember to keep yours chained up tight!

Citizen Kane & Velvet Goldmine: Todd Haynes based the narrative structure for his glam rock odyssey on Orson's Welles's classic.

Airport 1975 & Airplane!: Airport 1975 is worth the price of a rental for the sight of Karen Black as a stressed-out stewardess piloting a plane. When you watch Airplane! afterwards you realize that David Zucker and Jim Abrahams didn't have to come up with any original jokes for the movie. They just had to exaggerate the ridiculous spectacles from the Airport movies.

Vertigo & Tony Takitani: Like Hitchcock's masterpiece, Jun Ichikawa's underrated 2004 gem is about a lonely and obsessive man. Tony Takitani is not a thriller like Vertigo, but it features an extended scene in which Tony hires a woman to dress in his dead wife's clothes, recalling Jimmy Stewart's manipulation of Kim Novak in Vertigo.

Billy Budd & Beau Travail: Claire Denis's spellbindingly beautiful tale of sadomasochism and homoeroticism in a French Foreign Legion camp is based on Herman Melville's short novel Billy Budd. Peter Ustinov directed the 1962 film adaptation starring Terrence Stamp in the title role.

Capote & Infamous: A lot of people dismissed Infamous because thought it was just a rip-off of Capote, which came out a year earlier. In fact it was just a matter of bad timing for Douglas McGrath, who came up with the concept before he knew about Bennett Miller's Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman. To my mind Infamous is much more fun and moving, and much more honest and explicit in depicting the author's homosexuality.

If you'd like more suggestions, rest easy knowing that my list keeps a-growin' and I'll post some more double features in the near future.

2007-09-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

The Brave One
Grade: D

Hot on the heels of Panic Room and Flightplan Jodie Foster plays yet another dykey straight woman in distress, this time resorting to laughable histrionics that merit a Razzie. You’d think that innovative director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) could pick up the slack, but this is his most muddled effort since In Dreams. The film’s only redeeming feature is the droll repartee between Terrence Howard and Nicky Katt, who play the cops investigating Foster’s vigilante killing spree.

2007-09-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

Limited release September 14

Wide release September 21

Eastern Promises
Grade: A

Two years after their triumphant collaboration on A History of Violence, maverick director David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen have teamed up to concoct one of the most accomplished and brutal mob movies in recent memory. The entire cast is impeccable, with Naomi Watts as a London midwife who unwittingly entangles herself in a Russian crime syndicate. Mortensen hits a career high as the menacing yet sympathetic Nikolai, showing jaw-dropping dedication to his craft by extinguishing cigarettes on his tongue and fighting a bloody brawl in the buff. Steven Knight – an Oscar-nominee for Dirty Pretty Things – wrote the intricate screenplay.

2007-09-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

3:10 to Yuma

Grade: B

My favorite Westerns are the ones that flip the testosterone, formulaic genre on its head. John Ford's The Searchers is great for taking an unflinching look at racism, and Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar rules because it throws men on the sideline and focuses on a a battle royale between two headstrong gals played to bitchy perfection by Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Most recently, of course, Brokeback Mountain broke free of the genre's conventions by pitting guy on guy in the amorous sense, not the High Noon gun duel sense.

James Mangold's new remake of the 1957 film 3:10 to Yuma won't be joining my list of favorite Westerns because it offers no interesting twists. It's extremely well-made, mind you, with great performances from Christian Bale and Peter Fonda (Russell Crowe is fine, but he's done the bad guy shtick so many times that it's getting a bit old). The cinematography is sumptuous, with sun-drenched vistas of the desert and beautiful twilight shots, too. The whole enterprise feels way too familiar, however, and several plot points are just plain stooooo-pid. If Crowe's character, Ben Wade, is such a freakin' threat to Western civilization, why don't the law men just shoot him dead instead of endangering six lives to bring him to a train station that's hundreds of miles away? And they don't even shackle Ben's feet, making his multiple getaways all the easier.

3:10 to Yuma is just fine for what it is, but it's pretty depressing that it's generating a lot of Oscar buzz when Tommy Lee Jones's witty and heartbreaking 2005 Western The Three Burials of Melquides Estrada didn't fetch a single nomination.

2007-09-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

A new documentary from the producers of Touching the Void:

Deep Water
Grade: A-

Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell directed this haunting British documentary about a 1968-1969 boat race around the world. The story centers on Donald Crowhurst, an ambitious family man who becomes increasingly dishonest and delusional when his voyage fails. The filmmakers piece the tragedy together with interviews, detailed maps and Crowhurst’s written records and film footage. Subtlety trumps sensationalism throughout, except for a jarringly juvenile sequence that uses cheesy horror movie effects in a failed attempt to shed light on the sailor’s descent into madness.

2007-09-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

Delirious
Grade: C

Spoofing the paparazzi and idiot celebrities is the artistic equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, which makes writer-director Tom DiCillo (Living in Oblivion) the real fool for missing so many easy targets. Steve Buscemi plays a struggling photographer who unwittingly helps a young homeless man (Michael Pitt) ascend to stardom. It’s always fun to watch Buscemi in his ratty wiseass mode, and Alison Lohman and Gina Gershon make the best of their paper-thin characters. But most of the jokes are stale, especially all the unfounded speculations that Pitt’s character is gay.

2007-09-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University

The Back 2 Skool Edition

Starring Catherine Bailey Booher as Herself

Catherine "Cat" (or in some circles "Paris") Booher is my partner's cousin's daughter. I met her ever so briefly ten years ago, and recently had the pleasure of slinging sarcastic barbs with her in Portland a month before her matriculation at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She has agreed to be a guest columnist for my blog, and today I'm introducing her snappy style to the world so that I don't have to write much, and so that students and former students alike can revel in all the trials and tribulations that the "back to school" experience has to offer. Without further ado, here's Catherine - in verse form no less!

A Little Blog About Wake Forest

I packed the car two days before

I made the drive of all drives

Waited half hour to get to my dorm

Then

I unpacked the car...

I then proceeded

To drive behind my residence

Upon returning:

Half my stuff was gone...

They call it the "Moving In Crew"

I hiked up three flights of stairs

With my pillow and my sheep...

And voila!

There was all of my stuff

Waiting for me

Ok, so I'm taking Calculus 1, Health, History (Modern Europe), Philosophy, First Year Seminar, and DANCE!!! Oh, the books, there are so many of them! And they are not really exciting! Would it be so hard to get a good book that gets the same point across? I guess not... Don't get me started on the food...

*By the way, I tried to post her photo but I'm not so good at the risky biznass of scanning.

2007-09-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

Me and Chicklet

Drew preparing to eat deformed corn

Stained glass vision of Confetta

Photoshop Phrenzy

A Psychedelic Glimpse at the

Blair-McWilliams Family Album

2007-08-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Great Performances That Didn't

Even Get a Stinking Oscar Nomination

BEST ACTRESS

Laura Dern in Citizen Ruth
Reese Witherspoon in Election
Lili Taylor in I Shot Andy Warhol
Shelley Duvall in The Shining
Sissy Spacek in 3 Women
Kathy Bates in Dolores Claiborne
Kerry Fox in An Angel at My Table
Nicole Kidman in To Die For
CCH Pounder & Marianne Sägerbrecht in Bagdad Café
Alicia Silverstone in Clueless
Mira Sorvino in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion
Bjork in Dancer in the Dark
Gena Rowlands in Opening Night
Pam Greer in Jackie Brown
Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight
Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom
Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest
Julianne Moore in Safe
Kirsten Dunst in Drop Dead Gorgeous
Ana Torrent in The Spirit of the Beehive
Amy Sedaris in Strangers With Candy

BEST ACTOR

Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas
Matthew Broderick in Election
Robert DeNiro in The King of Comedy
John Turturro in Barton Fink
Cillian Murphy in Breakfast on Pluto
John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Toby Jones in Infamous
Divine in Pink Flamingos
Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Woody Allen in Zelig
Paul Giamatti in Sideways

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Carly Shroeder in Mean Creek
Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas
Sandra Oh in Sideways
Practically the entire female ensemble in The Dead Girl, especially Mary Beth Hurt
Dolly Parton in 9 to 5
Rosanna Arquette in After Hours
Linda Fiorentino in After Hours
Sandra Bernhard in The King of Comedy
Hope Davis in American Splendor
Geneviève Lemon in Sweetie
Illeana Douglas in Ghost World
Mary Kay Place in just about anything

Nancy Allen in Blow Out

Lisa Kudrow in The Opposite of Sex
Janeane Garafalo in Romy and Michele
Beth Grant in Donnie Darko
Christina Ricci in Addams Family Values
Jane Adams in Happiness
Sigourney Weaver in The Ice Storm
Mink Stole in Female Trouble
Karen Black in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
Allison Janney in Drop Dead Gorgeous

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Hunter Carson in Paris, Texas
Matt Dillon in To Die For
Bob Balaban in Midnight Cowboy
Steve Buscemi in Ghost World
Samuel L. Jackson in Jungle Fever
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Happiness
Willem Dafoe in Wild at Heart

Please let me know who you'd like to see on the list!

2007-08-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

Trash Time!

On a good day the $10 Radio Shack antenna on my roof picks up four local stations - and for the most part the reception is fuzzier than a recently licked lollipop in a pile of cat fur. Even though I've caught up with The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Carnivale, Weeds, The L Word and other shows on DVD, modern cable TV programming remains a complete mystery to me. As a hot-blooded gay man I sometimes wish I had access to the queer networks Logo and here!, but as a film critic for a gay and lesbian magazine I figure I get to see most noteworthy American and international queer filmmaking anyway.

While browsing the DVD selection at Amazon the other day I came across a majorly slutty looking here! production called Dante's Cove. As you can tell from the photo I've posted, this is a show where clothing is optional, and all the actors look like they've been sprayed to death with PAM cooking spray so that their bodies glisten, and so they can perform Slip & Slide daredevil acts when they're humping. Needless to say my Prurience Meter redlined, and I headed straight to the video store to pick up season one.

Five words sum up my reaction. OH MY DEAR SWEET LORD. This show is a major train wreck filled with craptastic acting, totally cliched dialogue and oodles of soft porn scenes that - despite the hotness of the men and women involved - are quite boring because the characters are so lame that they fail to allure with their six-pack abdomens and perfectly sculpted ass checks.

What saves Dante's Cove from being completely unwatchable is its outrageous and playful supernatural premise. The show's prologue gives a glimpse of the island's lurid history. It's 1840, and an insanely jealous witch named Grace sentences her fiance Ambrosius to eternity in a torture chamber when she discovers him in flagrante delicto with another dude. She can't help but feel for him a little bit, so she throws in a provision that he will be released and restored to his youthful studliness if he's ever discovered and kissed by another man.

Flash forward to the present, where our dipshit hero, Kevin, flees his oppressive parents to go live with his boyfriend, Toby, on Dante's Cove. Kevin meets all of Toby's oversexed friends, including some lesbians, a guy who seems to be closeted and a straight couple who loves to get it on beneath white mosquito netting while gay guys check out their pioneering bumping and grinding techniques.

At the end of the first episode - and this is as far as I've gotten and perhaps as far as I'll ever get - Kevin goes to the basement of the Hotel Dante (where they all live and where all the crazy voodoo witchcraft shit happened in the past) to get some beer. A voice calls his name from beneath a padlocked trapdoor. He manages to open it (it helps that the padlock isn't actually locked) and find the old and decrepit Ambrosius, who forces a lip lock on Kevin, thus bringing back all the youthful Goth vigor that makes his 1840 lifestyle so fiendishly singular. Some bloodletting and mayhem ensues, but I won't give away all the details in case you want to experience this masterwork of shallow and "sexy" queer horror on your own.

Knowing me and my love for Showgirls, I'll be completely hooked after a few more episodes.

2007-08-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Alfred A. Knopf, $25

Michael Ondaatje is best known for The English Patient -the Booker Prize winning novel that made an Oscar-winning leap to the big screen in 1996. I've never gotten around to reading it, even though several friends have told me that Anthony Minghella's film doesn't do justice to Ondaatje's lapidary prose or his complex psychological insights.

I did read In the Skin of the Lion, and passages from Anil's Ghost. In both cases Ondaatje's beautiful writing floored me to a point but ultimately left me cold. The recent publication of Divisadero made a big splash in the literary world, however, and I decided to give it a whirl.

Set over the course of about a century in locations such as Northern California and rural France, Divisadero is consistently engaging and - as we've come to expect from Ondaatje - meticulously crafted. The first half of the novel explores the vast repercussions of an illicit affair between a teenage girl named Anna and an older, orphaned young man named Cooper who works on Anna's father's farm. Anna and Cooper flee, separately, to reinvent themselves elsewhere, while Anna's adopted sister, Claire, maintains a connection with the father.

Ondaatje takes us on a tour of Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas, where Cooper becomes a master card shark. Anna's journey paves the way for the rather forced transition to the book's second half. She grows up to be a French literature scholar, and travels to a French hamlet to live in the home of a celebrated writer named Lucien Segura. At this point the narrative goes back in time to chronicle Lucien's life and - surprise, surprise - all the things his life has in common with the makeshift family in 1970s California.

It would be futile to dispute the sheer beauty of the language, but Divisadero left me quite unsatisfied. It felt like Ondaatje had two separate novels in mind at some point and crammed them together for some mad creative writing/science experiment. The two plots do not reflect one another in a provocative manner, leaving me wishing that he had just published two novellas instead. And there's no escaping the fact that sometimes Ondaatje crosses the line from poetry to pretension, particularly in the passage where Anna's first person narration sounds more like Walt Whitman than a modern day American woman in her late 30s - no matter how educated she is.

In case you're wondering, the title has two meanings that I know of. First, it refers to Divisadero Street in San Francisco, where Claire lives as an adult. Secondly it recalls the Spanish word "divisar," which means to gaze at something from a distance.

2007-08-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

Now on DVD (and still kicking around in some indie theaters):

Broken English

I've been a big Parker Posey fan ever since she unleashed her giddy and bitchy star power in mid-1990s films like Party Girl, Waiting for Guffman and The House of Yes. In 2002 I even got to interview her in conjunction with the release of her Sundance Film Festival hit Personal Velocity. True, she's been in some pretty bad films over the past few years (Adam & Steve, Superman Returns and The Oh in Ohio, to name a few). But until tonight I've always stuck with her till the final credits rolled.

Broken English is the debut effort from writer director Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of pioneering indie director John Cassavetes and powerhouse actress Gena Rowlands. In a word, it sucks. It's a "romantic" "comedy" so riddled with cliches and bad craftsmanship that I couldn't stand to watch it past the thirty minute mark. At first I thought the whole enterprise would be buoyed by the good cast even if the story lacked spark. Apart from Ms. Posey, the ensemble includes Gena Rowlands, Justin Theroux, Peter Bogdanovich and Drea de Matteo from The Sopranos. No such luck. Ms. Cassavetes's lack of experience (and talent) is evident in a brain-numbing stream of boring and graceless scenes. Obviously she's trying to emulate the naturalistic techniques of her father, but couldn't her production team have sprung for an extra light bulb or two for the dim rooms where most of the scenes take place?

Next up for Parker? Hopefully she'll hit her stride again in 2008 with The Eye - a remake of a Hong Kong horror movie - and Spring Breakdown, a comedy in which she'll share the screen with Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Jane Lynch and other funny ladies.

2007-08-16T15:38:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon to Theatres:

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Grade: B+

For many kids in the 1980s, drinking Slurpees while playing a gazillion games of Ms. Pac Man was a thrilling rite of passage that caused untold amounts of brain damage. Seth Gordon’s gripping and sometimes hilarious documentary studies a subculture of adults who never outgrew this phase, focusing on two men vying for the Donkey Kong world record. The seemingly trivial subject matter churns up unexpectedly profound insights into America’s unhealthy obsession with competition. But even at 80 minutes the film feels overstretched by the final reel.

2007-08-14T22:52:00.000-07:00

Now on DVD:

The Lookout

Grade: C

This directing debut from screenwriter Scott Frank (Out of Sight) opened earlier this year to terrific reviews, and became an early favorite in the Oscar race at movie buzz websites. Despite all the good press the flick raked in a measly $4.5M at the box office, and it vanished quickly from theaters. The DVD came out today, and I rented it under the presumption that an overlooked gem awaited me. But to my mind The Lookout is a major dud, and the praise bewilders me. Joseph Gordon-Levitt - who was terrific in Mysterious Skin - plays a young man who sustains a severe brain injury in a reckless driving incident. In the voice-over narration he reminds himself to wake up every day, to take a shower with soap, to ... wait, didn't we see this already in Memento? We sure did, only Christopher Nolan's 2000 stunner was a true original, while Frank's whole film is derivative of Memento and other superior film noirs about people who are fucked in the head. You can see all the plot twists coming a mile away, and Gordon-Levitt's final showdown with a bunch of bully bank robbers plays like late night action TV tripe. And apart from Jeff Daniel's competent but unremarkable turn as a horny blind guy, the supporting cast is thoroughly dreadful.

2007-08-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon:

Rocket Science
Grade: A

Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound) won top directing honors at Sundance for this dark coming-of-age comedy about a stuttering teenager cast adrift in the fast-talking world of high school debate competitions. Like Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse and Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, the film delivers a razor sharp screenplay and a breakthrough performance by an unknown teen actor. The charmingly gawky Reece Thompson evokes all the humiliation, heartaches and transient joy that adolescence has to offer. Fargo fans can rejoice that Steve Park of Mike Yanagita fame has a hilarious supporting role.

2007-08-08T23:14:00.000-07:00

Introducing Otik

The other day my partner Drew dug up a tree root that looked so oddly human that I couldn't resist dolling it up and naming it Otik (after the surreal Czech film Little Otik, a modern day folk tale about a childless couple who raise a tree root that turns out to have murderous intentions). I used Wellbutrin and Klonopin tablets for the eyes, a coffee bean for the nose (painted with green nail polish) and a lipstick-smothered pistachio shell for the mouth. I topped off his ensemble with a red rag diaper and a cap made of wallpaper and a silver satin ribbon.

2007-08-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

The Bourne Ultimatum
Grade: B-

Yeah, the latest installment in the Jason Bourne saga raked in $70 mil at the box office last weekend and, yeah, it boasts a formidable 94% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. But I'm going to step in for a second and ask, "What's the big whoop?" I dig the international scenery and the chase scenes as much as anyone, and I thought the nervy supporting performances from Joan Allen and David Stathairn made up for Matt Damon's tedious stoicism and Julia Stiles complete lack of dramatic acting ability. But in the end Ultimatum left me cold because I felt like I'd seen it all before (if not in the previous Bourne movies, then The French Connection), and I had hoped that talented director Paul Greengrass would put a new spin on these tired old spy games.

2007-08-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

Sunshine

Grade: B-

Nothing is more frustrating than a perfectly satisfying movie that takes a disastrous wrong turn, becoming so awful in the home stretch that you can barely remember its virtues by the time you stumble out of the theater in a brain-dead stupor. Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King is one of those films, if memory serves, and James Cameron's The Abyss is another promising movie that ends, well, abysmally.

The latest offender is Danny Boyle's current release, Sunshine. Rising star Cillian Murphy (a great drag queen in Breakfast on Pluto) plays a physicist aboard a do-or-die mission to re-ignite the dying sun before the human race dies out. Despite the cool concept, a solid cast and beautiful special effects, Sunshine inexplicably morphs from an intriguing character study to a stupid monster movie that miserably fails to emulate classic deep space thrillers like Alien.

2007-07-31T09:13:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo Antonioni: 1912-2007

Jeez, it's not a good week to be a celebrated European auteur director. Bergman kicked the bucket yesterday, as did Italian maverick Michelangelo Antonioni. I've never been a huge fan, though the languid stylings of L'Avventura and The Passenger are unforgettable and by many accounts Blowup is as vital now as it was when released in 1966.

2007-07-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Bergman on the set of Wild Strawberries (1957)

Ingmar Bergman: 1918-2007

Famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman spent his entire career (and probably his entire life) obsessing about death. Well now he's dead, leaving behind a legacy of brilliant and sometimes agonizingly depressing films ranging from his iconic The Seventh Seal (who could forget Max von Sydow's chess match against Death?) to his 2003 swan song, Saraband.

My top five Bergman movies, in chronological order:

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Persona (1966)

Cries and Whispers (1973)

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

2007-07-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Grade: A

Scene: 1700s Paris.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille deserves a PhD in the Hard Knocks of Life. Left to die by his mother after she gives birth to him in a fetid fish market, he's endowed with a superhuman sense of smell that compels him to persevere through a childhood in a derelict orphanage and teen years as a slave laborer in a tannery that resembles the hottest and grimiest vicious circle of Dante's Inferno. Eventually he discovers his passion for making perfume, working alongside an Italian (played with verve by Dustin Hoffman, though his accent changes every other sentence) until he journeys to Grasse, the perfume capital of France.

Jean-Baptiste has one little problem. He's a serial killer who murders women with a swift blow to the back of their heads. To enliven the party, he then smears animal fat all over them so he can capture their essential essences to create a scent that has the power to transform the world, potentially in wonderful ways.

I missed Perfume during its blink-and-you'll-miss-it theatrical run, though I wanted to catch it because it's directed by visionary Run Lola Run helmer Tom Tykwer. It just came out on DVD, and I recommend that you check it out even if the subject matter sounds too gruesome. With its charming narrator and its restrained approach to violence and sexuality, it plays like a fairy tale - albeit a truly sick and twisted one. Jean-Claude is an unloved and fundamentally innocent creature, and young British actor Ben Whishaw summons up truckloads of evocative and pained facial expressions to make this one of the most sympathetic psychopaths ever. His performance is award worthy, though the film's poor box office reception and mediocre reviews will undoubtedly shut him out of consideration.

Based on an acclaimed 1986 novel by German scribe Patrick Suskin, Perfume is so original and thought provoking that I'm inclined to overlook it's slightly overlong running time. Several major directors took a crack at this material over the past twenty years, including Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. They both concluded that the book was unfilmable. I haven't read the novel yet, but my bet is that Tykwer's film will go down in the record books as a true original whether or not it captures the true essence of Suskin's novel.

2007-07-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

Dear J.K.

To Ms. Rowling,

Before you cast a Patronus Scrumdiddlyumptious spell on me to rid me of my buzz killing ways, let me say that the final leg of Harry Potter's magical journey through puberty is just fine. A step up from it's Half-Blood Prince predecessor, but nowhere near as inventive or fun as The Goblet of Fire or The Prisoner of Azkaban entries. And I applaud you for stretching your writing skills and your poetic sensibilities to the point where your prose seamlessly blends the no nonsense wisdom of a Weekly Reader and the tortured soul searching of Emily Bronte.

But here's what I don't get: Don't you have enough money by now to hire an editor? After finishing the book once I felt like I read it five times, owing to your habit of repeating every plot point zillions of times. Trust me, your obsessive fans will read this mother so many times that they won't need the built-in Cliff's Notes to sort out the story.

And why, after crafting seven increasingly ginormous books, haven't you figured out more ingenious ways to keep the plot moving than having Death Eaters show up EVERY time Harry, Ron and Hermione are on the very cusp of making a major discovery? The lameness of this clunker plot device is exacerbated by the fact that we know that these crazy kids will always dodge harm by disapparating to some far-off enchanted forest where they'll encounter mystical woodland creatures and hidden swords of infinite power.

And if you try your hand at another huge series, you might want to consider having less characters so that you don't have to scurry in the final stretch to mention every breathing organism that ever inhabited Hogwarts, Daigon Alley, Pivot Drive or any other Harry hot spots. I'd hate to sound pushy or whiny, but all the last minute name dropping gave me whiplash.

That's enough quibbling for now. I really, truly had a good time reading The Deathly Hallows, and - keeping in mind Daniel Radcliffe's recent au natural outing on the London stage- I'm dying to see if Harry's nude scene makes it into the final movie!! Can they show penises in PG-13 flicks, or just asses?

Please use the proceeds from my purchase to buy a butterbeer on me!

Stephen

2007-07-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

Joni Does Java

The good news is that Joni Mitchell is coming out of retirement to release a new CD. The bad news is that she signed a 2-album contract with Hear Music, the label operated by the insatiably greedy Starbucks franchise (which, to be fair, does some admirable community service work even though they're just now starting to atone for their history of screwing over coffee farmers). Here's the buzz from jonimitchell.com:

It's official! Joni has signed a 2-album deal with Starbucks' "Hear Music" label. "Shine" is the first and has a release date of September 25. "Shine" includes nine new songs as well as a new version of Mitchell's evergreen, "Big Yellow Taxi." The album is part of a series of new work from her, including a ballet based on her music, "The Fiddle and the Drum," and a visual art exhibit that opens in the fall in New York. The full track listing is:
1. One Week Last Summer 2. This Place 3. If I Had a Heart 4. Hana 5. Bad Dreams are Good 6. Big Yellow Taxi 7. Night of the Iguana 8. Strong and Wrong 9. Shine 10. If

2007-07-23T23:58:00.000-07:00

The Simpsons Movie
Grade: C-

D'oh! After firmly and hilariously establishing itself of the best TV shows ever in its first decade, The Simpsons fell into a downward spiral in the late 1990s, and has now stepped into even deeper quick sand pit with this ill-advised leap to the big screen. There are some terrific sight gags (my favorite one shows Springfield's crazy old recluse lady scrubbing all her cats on a washboard), but screenwriters James L. Brooks and Matt Groening are as miserly as Montgomery Burns when it comes to doling out zingy one-liners. The paper-thin plot finds Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie exiled in Alaska, having escaped a citywide quarantine enforced by the EPA after Homer dumps a silo full of pig shit into the river.

2007-07-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

Hairspray

Grade: A-

Against all odds the film version of the Broadway smash Hairspray is a toe tapping pleasure of bouffant proportions, giving Ratatouille a run for its money for the Best Summer Film of 2007. Recent adaptations of Rent and The Producers were critical and commercial bombs, after all, and this reimagining of John Waters's 1988 cult classic was helmed by Adam Shankman, whose inauspicious previous outings include Cheaper By the Dozen 2 and The Pacifier (starring Vin Diesel...need I say more?).

From the infectious opening number - "Good Morning Baltimore"- to the explosive finale tune - "You Can't Stop the Beat" - few hairs fall out of place, though the somber Civil Rights protest sequence feels totally out of a place in a film that redlines the kitsch Richter scale.

John Travolta's transvestite portrayal of Edna Turnblad (a character previously incarnated by Divine and Harvey Fierstein) has drawn fire from gay rights groups that believe a Scientologist has no business playing a queer icon. I say forget Travolta. Not because of his politics, but because his portrayal of Tracy's fatty housewife mom is a drag in comparison to the absolutely stellar work from Michelle Pfeiffer (as the bitch-on-wheels mother of Tracy's rival), Christopher Walken (Tracy's dad) and Allison Janney (Christian Fundamentalist freak mom of Tracy's Jungle Fever-stricken friend Penny). Longtime fans of the original film will undoubtedly chuckle at John Waters's cameo as a flasher in an opening scene.

2007-07-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

Stevie O'Hara

Drew and I recently picked up a copy of Crystal Visions, a greatest hits package from Stevie Nicks that includes a CD and a DVD. Without a doubt the jewel in the crown is the original video for "Stand Back," deemed so awful that the record execs shelved it and ordered her to make a new one. Here's a link to the notorious "Scarlett" version, complete with Stevie's hilarious commentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerIleykmNo

2007-07-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

Harry

Meets

The Mean Grrrrrslz

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Grade: B+

Eight days and counting until the seventh and final chapter of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga hits bookstores. Until then fans can take heart that the relatively unknown director David Yates has ushered a delicious adaptation of Book Five to the big screen. In their portrayals of Harry, Hermione and Ron, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are all getting worse with age, exuding less charisma than your average piece of yard debris. But it doesn't really matter since they're backed by the Who's Who of wizardly British actors.

Maggie Smith, David Thewlis and Gary Oldman are as terrific as ever, but the real tour de force performance comes from Imelda Staunton, an Oscar nominee for Vera Drake in 2004. Decked out in revolting prim and pink outfits, she brings Hogwarts inquisitor Dolores Umbridge to even greater heights of sadistic smarminess than Rowling did in the book. A damned impressive feat, considering that we're talking about a lady who forces Harry to write in his own blood. It's a hilarious and scary performance, rivaled only by Helena Bonham Carter's brief but glorious appearance as Bellatrix Lestrange, the deranged Azkaban escapee who gleefully murders a good guy during the climax.

2007-07-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon:

Talk to Me
Grade: B

After playing Clarice Starling’s FBI buddy in The Silence of the Lambs, Kasi Lemmons directed the swamp saga Eve’s Bayou and the critically panned The Caveman’s Valentine. Her new film is an alternately gripping and trite docudrama about Petey Greene (Don Cheadle), an ex-con who became a popular and controversial Washington, D.C. radio DJ at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Cheadle’s delivers a virtuoso performance, and Chiwetel Ejiofor aces the less flashy but equally complex role of Green’s mentor, Dewey Hughes. Despite great casting and a terrific R&B soundtrack, the hokey ending and lapses into sitcom schlock prove that Lemmons still has plenty of room for improvement.

2007-07-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

Ratatouille

Grade: A-

With his latest concoction, the delightful and witty Ratatouille, writer/director Brad Bird extends a winning streak that goes all the way back to his days as an executive consultant during the glory years of The Simpsons in the early 1990s. In 1999 he released The Iron Giant, easily one of the best animated films of all time. And in 2004 he took home an Oscar for the Pixar hit The Incredibles. His new feature spins the tale of Remy, a gourmet rat who follows his culinary dreams to Paris and helps save the sinking reputation of a snooty restaurant. From Remy's wild ride through a sewer to his near death experiences in the bustling kitchen, the action scenes are thrilling (though a bit repetitive after awhile). In his efforts to please kids and adults Bird inevitably stumbles on some hokey moments. But it's easy to forgive a few traces of cheap sentiment when Bird sics Anton Ego - a vitriolic food critic voiced by Peter O'Toole - onto the scene.

2007-07-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Alfred A. Knopf, $22.95

Call it the summer of the mini-novel. So far we've had terse offerings from Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach) and Don DeLillo (Falling Man), and Knopf just published the English translation of Haruki Murakami's slim 2004 novel After Dark. People who love Murakami seem to really love Murakami. I've had mixed reactions in the past, loving Kafka on the Shore but tiring of the belabored postmodern trickery of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the final chapters. After Dark ranks with his best work, mainly because he pushes the bizarre button far enough to tantalize us, but not too far to drown us in abstractions.

The story takes in Tokyo one night between midnight and dawn. A young woman, Mari, reads at Denny's, and ultimately winds up hanging out with the owner and former employee of a no tell motel (affectionately referred to by the staff as a "love hos"). Meanwhile her beautiful older sister, Eri, sleeps deeply in her bedroom while (and here's the bizarre part) events of unknown importance play out on the unplugged TV set by her bed. A business man who beats up a Chinese hooker at the love hos rounds out the dramatis personae.

After Dark is a very quick read, with lots of breezy dialogue and snappy prose that often reads like a screenplay. Eri's Mulholland Drive-esque predicament is trippy and, at times, hard to digest. By the novel's end, though,

the realism and the surrealism merge in a a satisfying and poetic fashion.