NetflixWatch: "Away From Her," "Black Book," "Reign Over Me"

Rather than dedicating large chunks of my weekend to complaining about this week's "Friday Night Lights" (a better-than-average episode, though Landry and Daddy Landry burning his car was a stupid way to solve a stupid plot twist and it's all just going to feel like throwing good money after bad until we can just start pretending it never happened), I watched Netflix movies. For the first time since I'm not sure when, I actually cleared out all three of my Netflix movies this weekend.

So follow through after the bump for my relatively brief thoughts (capsule reviews, really) on Sarah Polley's "Away From Her," Mike Binder's "Reign Over Me" and Paul Verhoven's "Black Book."

Maybe I'll find things to say about TV at some point this week. Last week? Just plain busy.

Click through...

"Away From Her"
Director: Sarah Polley
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 73
In a Nutshell: Maybe just a Lifetime Original movie about Alzheimer's, but the best darned Lifetime Original movie about Alzheimer's you're ever likely to see. Julie Christie's Oscar nomination seems like a foregone conclusion, but as impressive as she is, the idea of recognizing her and not her foil Gordon Pinsent is ridiculous. Her performance is heartbreaking and fragile, but it's a variation on Alzheimers patients we've seen on the big and small screen before. There's a complexity to what Pinsent does here that deserves more of a salute. Polley has made a mature and confident directing debut that never feels like its her first feature, though there are one or two moments (the scene where the characters get outraged by news footage of American troops in Iraq) where the famously left-wing actress feels like inserting her own voice. This is also the most overtly Canadian film American audiences are likely to experience this year, from the accents to the hockey to the Neil Young on the soundtrack. I'm not the target audience for this movie, obviously, but it moved me. Side note: Is this Olympia Dukakis' best performance since winning her Oscar for "Moonstruck"? Almost certainly.



"Reign Over Me"
Director: Mike Binder
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 51
In a Nutshell: I can't express how much my interest in this movie dwindled once the filmmakers caved to studio pressure and changed the name from "Reign O'er Me" (a reference to The Who song that features extensively in the soundtrack) to "Reign Over Me" (a reference to absolutely nothing). This was never going to be a hit anyway -- Adam Sandler being all serious and looking like Bob Dylan? Really? -- so they might as well have stuck to their guns and kept the real name. There are plenty of reasons to like "Reign." Adam Sandler is committed to his emotionally battered character, Don Cheadle is rarely less than exceptional and the use of New York City locations is exemplary. But the movie stumbles along structurally, with the passage of time never really working. Also, writer-director Binder's female characters here -- played by Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler and Saffron Burrows -- are never integrated into the story and they only pop up when Binder the Screenwriter needs them. Burrows' character is particularly horribly written. As I said, some pieces are heart-felt, but nothing holds together.



"Black Book"
Director: Paul Verhoven
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 64
In a Nutshell: You can either mock Paul Verhoven for retreating to Holland to rediscover his craft on what is, essentially, a by-the-numbers WWII thriller or you can stop and think of when you last saw a WWII thriller as twisty and as well-executed as "Black Book." This is just an action adventure, but American audiences will shy away because they don't wanna read their movies. Weenies. Given how little interest Verhoven has in the actual history here -- all issues of religion or national identity relating to end-of-the-War Holland are superficial at best -- there's no excuse for "Black Book" having a running time of nearly 150 minutes. Verhoven is still close to a master at building tension and working with what must have been a massive budget by Dutch standards, he makes "Black Book" look like a spiffy studio production. Verhoven's also a total schlockmeister and he wastes no opportunity to make leading lady Carice van Houten bare her bosom (like he thinks himself an art house Joe Francis). Not only does van Houten have a phenomenal body, she's also up to the acting requirements of an interesting role, so she isn't just flesh-on-display like, say, Elizabeth Berkley in "Showgirls." Sebastian Koch was good enough in this and "The Lives of Others" that I look forward to seeing him rendered utterly generic by some Hollywood romantic comedy in which he plays the sensitive Euro-man who sweeps Nicole Kidman/Renee Zellweger/Sandra Bullock off their feet.

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MovieWatch: "No Country For Old Men"

"No Country For Old Men"
Director[s]: The Coen Brothers
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 85
In a Nutshell: An insight into my upbringing... I mention to my mother that the weekend plans will probably include going out to catch "No Country For Old Men." She responds by sending me an URL to William Butler Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium," the poem which gave Cormac McCarthy the title for his novel.

The poem begins:
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees--
Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

Nice stuff. Check it out.

You could also check out McCarthy's book, though the Coen Brothers film is a slavishly literal adaptation at times, taking imagery and dialogue verbatim from the source. Sometimes when filmmakers over-adhere to the integrity of a literary source, the resulting movie comes across as embalmed, like they failed to recognize that books and movies are different art forms and require different discipline. In this case, though, it's just an example of a perfectly simpatico combination of filmmakers and book. Just because McCarthy's novel is cinematic, doesn't mean it should inherently be good cinema.

But it is.

Follow through after the bump for the usual rambling.

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A frequent Coen Brothers theme has been how real people respond when movie-style hijinx encroach on their lives. Think Marge Gunderson in "Fargo." Like Marge in "Fargo," Tommy Lee Jones' Ed Tom Bell is in a profession that seems Hollywood-ready, but even though he's a Texas sheriff, he's unaccustomed to extreme drama. The thing that makes Ed different from Marge is that he's part of a long line of Texas lawmen and, as such, everything he does is infused by the heroics of the past. That past is a time where the guys in white hats shot the men in black hats and even if the men in white hats died, they died with heroic stories, they died for a reason. Set darned quaintly in 1980, "No Country For Old Men" is an elegy about how those old rules of Western nobility and principle no longer apply, that the present belongs to young folks, that it's... well, you can read the title. The movie is a logical successor to "The Searchers" to "The Wild Bunch" to "Unforgiven," but the semi-contemporary time frame changes its revisionist Western slant.

Because the book and movie are about an old world on the brink of extinction, the challenge for the Coen Brothers is deciding which conventions of the genre they want to deliver on and where they want to clearly depart. Although the film's body count is impossibly high and the gore is extreme (this is "No Movie For Little Kids"), the Coens follow McCarthy's template by cheating expectations on a few key casualties, either the way they're shown or the way they're not shown. I'm not going to spoiler anything, but expect to feel curiously unsatisfied at several junctures. That's the point.

While the blood and guts flow freely, "No Country For Old Men" finds the Coens in positively subdued form. Although it's being compared to a return to their "Blood Simple" roots, the movie is lacking in the sort of oddball camera movies and cheeky points-of-view that folks expect from the Coens and while there are certainly laughs, nobody should go in expected dark comedy. And just because the movie isn't showy doesn't mean that Roger Deakins' cinematography is anywhere below the incredibly high standard he's set for the Brothers dating back to "Barton Fink."

The performances are all fantastic, with Javier Bardem likely to earn the most kudos as unrepentant killer Chigurh. He's described in the movie as a ghost, as a man with no sense of humor, but I'm more inclined to reference Yeats' "The Second Coming," which concludes:

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Chigurh is that rough beast, that apocalyptic creature feeding on the detritus of soulless modernity. He's a man of horrifying principles, not even close to a lunatic. Whatever he is, Bardem plays it to the hilt. Bardem's difficulties reading phonetic English crushed John Malkovich's "The Dancer Upstairs" (I'd love to see Malkovich reshoot that movie in Spanish), but here, his discomfort with the language is an asset. Just as his motivations aren't over-explained, nothing of his background is explained, but Bardem's intonation, his posture, his Prince Valiant (or Dorothy Hamill?) haircut), his haunted eyes just enhance the mystery. For every second of the movie, whether he's in the scenes or not, he's the dominant figure in "No Country For Old Men," which is why he'll almost certainly be positioned for best supporting actor Oscar.

It's a confusing movie for Oscar voters. Bardem is the star, but Josh Brolin is probably the leading man. And I'd appreciate if somebody would write a really smart article about how, in the course of just a few weeks this fall, Josh Brolin has gone from a somewhat hammy pretty boy, Babs' stepson or Diane Lane's main squeeze, to being a compelling actor. I mean, good gravy, did anybody see "Into the Blue"? His performance in that movie is hilariously awful. But since last spring, he's transitioned from effective self-parody (in "Planet Terror") to just-plain good (here, "American Gangster" and fleetingly in "In the Valley of Elah"). All you need to say about Brolin's performance is that he doesn't get lost between Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones.

Because if Bardem is the movie's star and Brolin's the leading man, then Jones is the hero. See how Oscar voters might be in a bind? My initial reaction: I've seen Tommy Lee Jones do this before. Laconic law-man? World-weary Texan? Gruff but fatherly many with old-school values? Check, check and triple-check. But as I watched, I came to a second conclusion: Why do I care if he's done it before, if he does it so well every time and if he so rarely just phones it in. In general, "No Country For Old Men" makes a nice companion piece to Jones' underrated directing debut "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" and his performance here is a good compliment to his performance in that film. As I like to periodically mention, the marketing/publicity/awards team at Sony Pictures Classics should still be embarrassed for failing to get Jones a best actor Oscar nod for "Three Burials." But that's a rant of a different color.

The supporting roles are all well-filled. Who'd have guessed that Kelly Macdonald, so loveable for her Scottish accent, would be so good as a spunky Texas rose? Many viewers are likely to find the scenes between Macdonald and Brolin to be the movie's best. Woody Harrelson, Garret Dillahunt (Anybody seem him on "Life" two weeks ago? Amazing), Stephen Root, Tess Harper and Barry Corbin (sharing a single scene with Jones for the second time this fall) are all memorable.

Look, I could either continue to rave, or I could watch my DVRed "Friday Night Lights" and "Moonlight." Let's just say that as of now, "No Country For Old Men" moves to the top of my Best of 2007 list.

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MovieWatch: "The Kite Runner"

"The Kite Runner"
Director: Marc Forster
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 67
In a Nutshell: The last time Forster and screenwriter David Benioff teamed up, it was for 2005's "Stay," one of the most bizarre and misguided features ever financed, produced and then dumped by a major studio. I'm not going to try to advocate the merits of "Stay" -- it's a dreadful film, if you ask me -- but I fully expect it to eventually find a true and dedicated cult following somewhere down the road.

Forster and Benioff seem like a somewhat odd pairing to bring Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner" to the big screen.

Everybody I know has already read "The Kite Runner" and I'm usually a big advocate of the "Read the book before seeing the movie so you can be one of those snobs who's all 'Well, the book was *better*" school of criticism. But I haven't read "The Kite Runner," so I can't tell you how the book and movie compare and which of my concerns with the film are the responsibility of the book or the other way around. So it goes.

Let's just say that the movie is decent, respectful and well-intentioned and despite all of the people who have been forced to read the book, it doesn't stand a chance of making a red cent.

The rest of my somewhat truncated comments after the bump...

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While not quite on that pure fairy tale/allegory/parable level of veiled simplicity, "The Kite Runner" traffics very little on true complexity or ambiguity. It's a tale of redemption, of atonement, of setting things right. It manipulates and loads the dice at every turn, but despite the ultra-aggressive score by Alberto Iglesias, it felt less obnoxiously heavy-handed and more well-intentionally pre-determined.

Part of the problem, I'm just going to assume, is that Benioff has no space to let the narrative breath, so he has to spend roughly an hour setting up everything in the story so that in the second half everything pays off exactly as viewers will want or need it to. Hardly a prop or character or line of dialogue in the flashback to Kabul before the Soviet Invasion isn't a set-up for something to come when our initially uncertain and seemingly cowardly hero Amir (Khalid Abdalla) returns in 2000. The resulting storytelling is Dickensian in its contrivance without being Dickensian in its complexity. It was around two-thirds of the way through the movie that I realized that many of the core issues of "The Kite Runner" are the same as the concerns of Michael Haneke's "Cache," only replacing Haneke's darker, more confusing and conflicted plotting with -- not necessarily meant as a pejorative -- warm mush.

The performances, more than anything else, ground the movie, particularly the unaffected work by the inexperienced thespians playing the younger versions of the main characters. Homayon Ershadi, as the main character's initially distant and disappointed father, gives the most actorly performance, though he gets no benefit from some half-hearted attempts to age the character over the decades. I'm also always pleased to see "Hate" and "Three Kings" co-star Said Taghmaoui, though his character is a main trigger to the film's least plausible sections.

It's a somewhat consistent hallmark of Forster's work -- from "Monster's Ball" to "Finding Neverland" -- that he gets undone by the pressures of structure. "The Kite Runner" is at its best in just capturing the nuances of 1978 Kabul versus 2002 Kabul and the kite-flying scenes are gorgeous, though their inevitable reliance on computer effects places them outside of the style of the rest of the movie. When a random action movie intrudes toward the end, though, Forster is unable to make it feel like anything other than an intrusion.

If I'd written this review *immediately* after leaving the movie, I'd probably have gone a bit more negative, but the film's sweet and emotional core lingered with me for a while afterwards.

I think I could go on, but I'd rather eat lunch.

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"Friday Night Lights" gets closer to right

The bloom, as you may have heard, is off the USC rose, or maybe "Rose" (as in "Bowl," rather than should-be-a-Hall-of-Famer "Pete"). That's how I come to be sitting on my own couch on this Saturday afternoon watching the USC football game with my laptop on the part of my anatomy for which it's allegedly designed, rather than with amigos (my peeps, my crew, my homies, my posse) watching the game with an alcoholic beverage.

On the bright side, it cuts down on the amount of interruption caused by the game, interruption to a thrilling afternoon of DVR emptying. I've made it through the past three weeks of -- heaven help me -- "Moonlight," leaving me with time to catch up on "Cane" and "Life" a bit later. That, though, is for another blog post.

This blog post? About last night's episode of "Friday Night Lights," which I only got around to watching this afternoon thanks to collapsing into an exhausted heap fairly early last night.

The nutshell review: Parts of last night's episode came as close to feeling like the "Friday Night Lights" of old since the season premiere. Or maybe "since Landry became an unrepentant killing machine."

I'll go into more detail after the bump.

For a generally rapturous take on the episode check out murderous Landry apologist (but otherwise smart guy) Scott Tobias over at The Onion.

For a take that's an awful lot like mine (as per our contractual agreement), you can always check out Sepinwall's take.

For mine? Click through...

Does anybody remember Bobby Reyes? I didn't think so. I like referencing Bobby Reyes, because he was the only defensive player ever to suit up and get dialogue for the Dillon Panthers. Bobby was a great player, but he was kicked off the football team because he beat up a student, a student who mouthed off with great hostility about the football team and the team's privilege within the Dillon community.

Now I ask you: When Bobby Reyes went down, who could possibly have guessed that despite not having a defense, the Panthers could still win the state championship that same season? And, even more improbably, who'd have guessed that the nerdy student Bobby beat up would, just one year later, be the star of the Dillon team?

The evolution of Landry Clark, from anti-football nerd and outcast to local legend happened so fast that even the announcers of for the Dillon football team didn't have time to learn his last name. Did everybody notice that during Friday's episode, the Dillon play callers knew Matt as "Saracen," Smash as "Smash" and Landry Clark? He was just Landry, both when the announcers said his name and when the Dillon crowd started chanting his name after their victory. After all, what high school football crowd wouldn't start chanting the name of a player whose contribution to the climactic game winning drive was... picking up a dubious pass interference call on the game's penultimate play. "Landy! Landry! Landry!" Way to be interfered with!

Realistically, that made every bit as much sense as Coach Taylor deciding to call a passing play to a tight end without a single game-time catch ever on the biggest play of the season (unless that was a call Saracen made himself, which makes still less sense that after having been benched for the entire game he'd go off the reservation on his first play). But since when was Landry a tight end anyway? We saw him make a catch during a reverse squad (defense playing offense and visa versa), which suggests he had previously been practicing on defense. But suddenly he's a tight end, getting into the game, getting the final play called for him? It's amazing what you get for standing up at half-time and making a speech that perfectly explains the important lesson coach was trying to teach all week.

Let's just say that all season long, I've had a much easier time believing Landry as a Tyra-banging killer than accepting him as a productive member of the Dillon Panthers.

[Side note: Bobby Reyes wasn't just the last speaking character to play defense for the Dillon Panthers. He was also the last Latino. A quick glance at the website for the Permian Panthers lets me know that roughly a third of the players on the team that inspired Dillon have Hispanic sur-names, which makes sense, given the geography. We made a big deal last season about Assistant Coach Mac's problems with black players, but is anybody planning on protesting against Coach Taylor's failings when it comes to fielding a team that represents the ethnic make-up of the Dillon community?]

Honestly, though, that's all I have to say about Landry. Sepinwall goes into some depth on his frustrations involving that subplot. So I'll leave it to him. Except for to ask why nobody's thinking of poor Crucifictorious in the midst of this whole thing. Poor not-quite-Stigmatilingus.

I'm just going to talk about what worked and what didn't work in this week's episode:

The Good

Oh Coach and Mrs. Coach. How nice it is to have y'all all reunited and whatnot. I loved that Coach, always a paragon of positive marital behavior had to accept relationship advice from Mac, but also that he followed it to the letter (tulips+book club=nookie), but that it still didn't work. I'm also relieved that Mrs. Coach's postpartum unsteadiness hasn't been pushed completely under the rug (though it does seem to have been soft-pedaled since Coach got back). Really, though, any time spent between Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler is fantastic.

Way to go Matt! Saracen stood up to Smash, he stood up to Coach Taylor and finally, in his best move of the night, he stood up to Julie. Perhaps my favorite scene in the episode was the conversation between Matt and Mrs. Coach, where she stopped just short of calling him a chump for letting Julie get cozy again. I liked the return to cute, stuttering conversations between Julie and Matt, but once she mentioned The Decemberists, I tuned out. There's a limit to how much punishment I think Julie deserves for the Swede indiscretion, but I agree with my dad, who notes that until she holds bug-eyed baby Grace, Julie's in trouble.

We've always liked Glenn Morshower, because he's versatile enough to play any sort of government official or law enforcement officer you need to cast. But did we really know he could ACT? When this "FNL" run is over, I think Morshower could advance from his current status to being the go-to guy for parts turned down by David Morse. I assume there's good money in that niche.

Adrianne Palicki is so very good, because she's being asked to sell an unsellable plotline. She had one great scene with Morshower and her final conversation with Landry would have been devastating except that everything she was saying MADE SENSE.

What wasn't so good:

I'm iffy on Mexico because everything that has happened there has been out of a different series, from last week's karaoke confessional to this week's teasing near-threesome, which looked less like "Friday Night Lights" and more like the set-up for a Zalman King movie.

I understand that the producers have been swearing for a year that "FNL" isn't about football, but you see how true that is with Riggins off in Mexico. It's game night and the only players we know on the sidelines are Smash and Saracen (I refuse to acknowledge Landry). I can't figure out how they've been unable to expand the show's universe. I'd gladly sacrifice the killer Landry subplot if we could get to meet one of Saracen's Samoan offensive tackles or a Latino quarterback. I think Coach nodded to how thin his roster is when he said, "Saracen and Smash don't play defense. They don't play special teams. And last I checked, Saracen and Smash were supposed to be, supposed to be two members of an 11-man offense." Next week will we get more of Brett Weston and Calvin Brooks [that would be the second string QB and RB]? I doubt it...

Carlotta's still around. She keeps coming to the games. But we aren't seeing anything between her and Matt. That means that when the writers go back to the budding relationship in an episode or two, it'll seem even more random than it did in the beginning.

That's all for now. Back to my 3-3 football game.

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MovieWatch: "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"

"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"
Director: Sidney Lumet
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 70
In a Nutshell: When "Find Me Guilty" came out last year, there was a rush, particular among old guard film critics, to declare that for the first time in years -- a decade? two decades? -- Sidney Lumet was relevant again. For my money, "Find Me Guilty" was a confused mixture of broad post-"Analyze This" mobster stereotype comedy and broad courtroom grandstanding, satisfying as neither and ultimately more likely to be remembered for the dead groundhog curled up on Vin Diesel's head than for any cinematic merits.

Many of the same critics who saw great merits in "Find Me Guilty" are seeing Lumet's latest, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," as a new masterpiece from the director of "The Verdict," "Prince of the City," "Network," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Serpico," "Fair-Safe," "The Pawnbroker" and "12 Angry Men." That's a HELL of a resume and "Before the Devil..." isn't close to Lumet's finest efforts, but unlike "Guilty," it's at least a good movie, made extremely watchable by the performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and Marissa Tomei.

Follow through after the bump for more thoughts...

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The script, Kelly Masterson's first credit, reads likes somebody immersed in Jim Thompson and Shakespeare's tragedies, simultaneously. It has Thompson's pervasive fatalism, but in this case, the Thompsonian lone wolf (Philip Seymour Hoffman's disconnected Andy), is actually a part of a big family and it's hard to know if the inevitable danger the character finds himself in is a product of his attempted isolation or of his need to turn to family and loved ones in his desperation. Is he dragging himself down or is he being dragged down? There's a thematic richness to the movie that goes beyond its heist-gone-wrong set-up.

I was thinking initially that this was an oddly assertive performance by Hoffman, who I think of as excelling at playing characters with external weakness. But as I look at his filmography, I seem to have let "Owning Mahowny" stand as his defining performance in my mind. I don't know why that is. Here, he plays a man who has established a surface persona based around the way he dresses, the way he slicks back his hair and the way he holds his cigarette. The confidence he shows the world belies his internal turmoil. This isn't particularly fresh screenwriting, or character building, but Hoffman plays it perfectly.

The inevitable contrast is Hawke as his brother. That character is all surface torment, all exposed emotion. Even though he earned an Oscar nomination for "Training Day" and I loved him in both "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," this could be Hawke's best performance and if the movie gets any audience traction at all, he has enough showcase scenes to be worthy of another Oscar nod.

Since you can pretty much guarantee that Finney will be excellent in the role of the tormented father (even if I couldn't figure out for a second if he was supposed to be American or long-since-transplanted British), that leaves Tomei as the x-factor in the cast. My filmgoing companion and I tried to get a handle on what, exactly, her character's pathology is. Is she just a childlike woman stuck in an unhappy marriage? Is something deeper wrong with her? In either case, since supporting actress is always a tough Oscar field to fill, Tomei is completely worthy of a slot, even if most of the fanboy buzz coming out of the movie will be about her nudity -- she and Lumet seem equally proud (justifiably so) of her body.

[Several notes on supporting performances: Michael Shannon is amazing and the movie is almost worth the price of admission just to hear him say "Chico." Amy Ryan is everywhere and this is another relatively "normal" performance to off-set her "Gone Baby Gone" work. And finally, I'm glad to see that Lumet has been employing Aleksa Palladino, who five or six other people must remember as Scarlett Johansson's sister in "Manny and Lo."]

The main performances in the movie are obviously a tribute to Lumet, who captures countless moments of small human behavior even in the midst of the driving plot. About two thirds of the way through the movie, Hoffman's character turns an apartment upside down in a way that's so marvelous I could have rewatched it immediately. That's not a gift you cease to have just because you're over 80.

But Lumet doesn't understand digital cinema and I was consistently frustrated by just how awful "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" looks. There are ways to take advantage of the limitations of digital photography. The aesthetic language of digital cinema has largely been taken from Dogme and it's made up of tight close-ups and hand-held intimacy. Lumet and cinematographer Ron Fortunato resist that convention and shoot "Devil" in a near classical style. I've never seen a more stationary digital film, I don't think. So I was constantly looking at the framings and thinking that the compositions would have been nice if they weren't so darned ugly, so flat and muddy. In these moments, Lumet feels like a filmmaker who doesn't completely grasp the direction the medium has gone.

And neither Lumet nor Masterson completely convinced me that the jumbled narrative was really necessary. The non-linear storytelling keeps doubling back to show the same events from slightly different perspectives, but it's very rare that the second viewing of events provides any particular insight. Set out beat-by-beat, the plot isn't very complicated and I felt like Masterson was just giving in to the post-Tarantino hegemony of non-linear crime thrillers, rather than servicing a story.

We'll see how this movie settles in my head in the weeks to come.

[Also worth discussing, perhaps in a different forum, is the Saul Bass-esque poster, which is both brilliant and vaguely misleading. If you hop in your Way Back Machine and put the "Devil" poster next to the "Man With the Golden Arm" poster or the "Anatomy of a Murder" poster, nobody would think it implied any humor. However, in this age of homogenous posters where every one has nearly the same composition and imagery, people look at the "Devil" poster and assume the movie is a dark comedy. In reality, it's nearly humorless, at times to a fault.]

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STRIKE!!!

The Writers Guild of America announced on Friday (Nov. 2) that a general strike will begin on Monday morning at 12:01 a.m.

Over on Zap2it, we've got a pile of general strike coverage (courtesy of our better sourced corporate siblings at the Los Angeles Times).

For well-reported updates on the strike, check out Nikkie Finke's blog (assuming she isn't busy ridding the world of torture porn).

And for smart words with a personal and historical POV, there's always Ken Levine.

The first thing the Writers Guild should do on Monday is figure out whoever wrote the Keanu Reeves vehicle "The Replacements" and string 'em up.



IMPORTANT NOTE: Check the Fien Print opposes lynching in all of its forms, but I bet a sports movie about loveable underdog scabs breakin' hearts, causin' trouble, playin' slap-ass in the locker room and underminin' the efforts of a labor union doesn't seem quite so whimsically hilarious this week.

To be fair, it never actually seemed all that hilarious.

Professionally, I'm a neutral observer.

Personally, I was raised on Pete Seeger and Sy Kahn. Keep the faith, WGA.

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Hey "Heroes" -- Why so dull?

It was back in July that the Television Critics Association voted "Heroes" as its Program of the Year, the key award we present annually. Me, I voted for Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke," though "The Wire" would have been a worthy alternative.

The problems with giving such a relatively prestigious honor to a new show are becoming increasingly evident with each episode of "Heroes," which has followed up its nimble and intriguing first season with a second season that has, thus far, been nothing short of a plodding mess.

When it comes to "Heroes," I'm not yet at the point where I'm ready to drop out entirely, but after Monday (Oct. 29) night's episode, I'm left wondering how a show that did so many right things its first season has made so many poor choices so fast. Throw in a similar poor judgment spiral on "Friday Night Lights" and somebody -- certainly not me -- might begin to wonder about the quality of notes percolating down from the new creative administration at NBC. I'd be worried about "30 Rock" too, except that the scene of Alec Baldwin at the therapist's office last week was the funniest television scene since... I dunno when.

Follow through after the bump for the usual ramblings.

Click through...

So what has gone wrong with "Heroes"?

You start all over again... In my rant about my "FNL" disappointment, I reflected on who the nine-month gap between the events of the first season and the events of the second season had allowed the writers to basically throw out all of the character growth from the first season, returning to the original unevolved archetypes. "Heroes," unfortunately, did something similar. When "Heroes" began, it was about all of these characters, in disparate locations, coming to understand their special gifts and ultimately come together and save the world. After doing that, though, everybody scattered again. Yes, Matt and Mohinder are living in sin together, raising a small superpowered girl. But otherwise, for the most part, the character were all sent spinning off in their own directions. The problem: If you assemble your heroes in three or four heroic clumps, it allows you to follow those three or four narrative strains on a week-to-week basis. As it is now, the writers are stuck juggling a dozen plotlines that will eventually have to come together again, which is why you can go weeks without Niki or Hiro or Parkman, which is either bad if you love those characters, or an unfair tease if you happen to hate them. They've made no storytelling progress, only regression. Plus, since most of the characters got to know their powers last season, we've had to meet five or six new heroes and reexperience that "Getting to know me/ Getting to know all about me..." process all over again. Plus, somebody must have told the producers that Milo Ventimiglia is especially good at furrowing his brow in confusion, because they wiped his memory and he's rediscovering everything all over again. So if everything that's happened feels like a drag, it's because you've seen it all before. It doesn't help that the "Heroes" lead-in, "Chuck," is a fast-paced TV souffle.

Mo' characters, mo' problems... One week you introduce Veronica Mars as a spark-spitting killer with daddy issues and feed into the wet dreams of geeks everywhere and then she's gone? That's not maintaining momentum. Who, exactly, has been enthralled by Copycat N'awlins Girl or the Ying Yang Twins? Much less Claire's Flying Prick of a Boyfriend? We get it. He's gonna be evil. And since the revelation that the Great Hero Kensei is actually a drunk Brit played by an American speaking broken Japanese with a British accent, has anybody cared for a second about anything happening back in the Japanese past? I can't be the only person who lets loose an audible grown each and every time Ando shows up and starts reading a scroll.

You start all over again, Part II... The big reveal at the end of Monday's episode was that Peter found himself standing in the middle of Time Square looking at New York City in ruins. AGAIN! Yes, we're well aware that Manhattan in ruins is a haunting image, that it conjures up subconscious post-9/11 fears and therefore it's a potent narrative shortcut. Why not go a different direction? Why not Fake Paris in ruins? Or Fake Moscow? Or why not find a threat to humanity that can't be easily encapsulated with a single short of a depopulated urban area? I mean, it's not like ANYBODY liked the way New York City was ultimately saved last season. Why not distance yourself that dud of a finale?

But speaking of Fake Paris and Fake Moscow... If you can't go to foreign locations, maybe you shouldn't go to foreign locations. The special effects last season were always hit and miss. Sometimes the superpowers would manifest themselves in awesome ways and other times I'd yearn for the sophisticated effects of, say, "Smallville." Since the superpowers have been generally deprioritized this season -- mostly mental stuff, blackening eyes and cheesy electrical sparks -- most of the FX has been poured into... I don't know what. Most of last season's plots took place in domestic locations, Las Vegas or New York or Texas, locations that could be easily replicated in the environs around LA. This year, in an effort to expand the story, I suppose, we've been treated to Mexico, Ireland, Feudal Japan and, in the past couple weeks Fauxdessa and Mock-treal. That has mostly meant cheap sets and flat, inept green screen work. When Peter and his Irish Rose got to Mock-real last night, I think they may have been standing in front of a matte painting, while Hiro's Japanese Adventure feels like it's all been shot in the same green corner of Griffith Park. Potentially Intriguing Supposition: What if, at some point during sweeps, it's revealed that the characters who have been stuck on soundstages this season, have all just been bouncing around in a virtual world in the mind of Molly or the Haitian or somebody else with amazing mental gifts. I prefer the idea of Molly being the intellectual fabricator of the season. A young girl wouldn't know what Ireland or New Orleans or Feudal Japan or Montreal would look like, so she would invent them in the broadest and flattest of terms. If the answer isn't that, there's no excuse.

Adrian Pasdar shaved his beard... My man-crush on Adrian Pasdar's bear [EDIT: Or, well, his "beard"] is well established. Then he shaved it. In the end, it served no purpose. He was drunk and depressed, so he grew a beard? And then his kids didn't like it, so he shaved it? For that they made Pasdar look like a hobo for four months? What a waste.

OK. That's all I feel like writing.

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MovieWatch: "Dan in Real Life" and "Evan Almighty"

"Dan in Real Life"
Director: Peter Hedges
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 60
In a Nutshell: "Dan in Real Life" is a tragic-comedy, something this real-life Dan has known for slightly over 30 years.

I'd like to temporarily turn this review over to my movie-going companion, my Bubie Ida. She's 91 and she's a far more succinct reviewer than I am.

Her three-word review: "Sweet and innocuous."

Yup. That's about right.

Follow through after the bump, though, as I expand on my Bubie's basic review and also muse hopefully only briefly on "Evan Almighty."

Click through...

So "sweet and innocuous" works well for me. "Cute and insubstantial" is fine also. I may go with "harmless and contrived," though that's only if I'm feeling in a less generous movie.

Like Peter Hedges' directing debut, "Pieces of April," "Dan in Real Life" shows a confidence with family nuances, but no real gift for the mechanics necessary to make a movie run. It isn't that Hedges' movies are plotless, it's that they're plotless except for when broad, sitcom-style dramatics flair up and threaten to sink the ship.

It's for that reason that "Dan" both rises and falls on the considerable gifts of Steve Carell. Remember what I wrote about "Michael Clayton"? About movies or TV shows based on a central character irony? Well, if "Michael Clayton" was about a law firm fixer who runs into a case he can't fix, "Dan in Real Life" is based on a family advice columnist who runs into the only family he can't fix -- his own. Once again, it's a thin premise better suited to an NBC half-hour comedy than a feature film, a fact that Carell's presence only amplifies. When he's allowed to be wry, morose and, well, human, Carell is exceptional, like a less depressed version of his "Little Miss Sunshine" character. But because it's Carell and the "40 Year-Old Virgin" star is being forced to carry what could have been a much smaller indie film, Hedges feels the inclination to play about the actor's broad comic gifts. You can check off the scenes in the movie that get the biggest laughs and they are, to me at least, the ones that work the least, the ones that try pushing the movie into mainstream territory. Dan ends up hiding with his lady love in the shower and ends up falling out the window? Why?!? Dan dances like a maladjusted maniac at a bar with a slutty plastic surgeon? Why?!? I'm OK with the inference that this emotionally repressed and wounded man acts like a fool when he falls in love, but why must love knock him into an episode of "Three's Company"? And why must they undermine the rest of what Carell is doing? Suddenly he's playing his "Virgin" or "Office" characters and Dan vanishes.

The movie loses believability in those bigger moments and that's bad because Hedges is already asking for a lot of faith with the initial premise that Juliette Binoche's character would, under even the explained circumstances, find herself "in love" with the utter lug played by Dane Cook.

Cook, I need note, isn't bad. He's been written without any real redeeming features, but at least you can make sense of the guy in context. The movie is scattered with excellent supporting actors who aren't so lucky. As the top of the family tree, John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest bring decades of well-regarded acting experience to help us fill in the blanks, but I lost track of the characters played by Jessica Hecht, Amy Ryan and Norbert Leo Butz, so much so that I'm not really sure which characters were blood relations and which were in-laws. If Miramax wants to get Amy Ryan an Oscar nomination for "Gone Baby Gone," incidentally, the student would be well-served by sending out screeners of "Dan." Seeing her just be happy and normal (even moreso that in her time on "The Wire") in "Dan" shows off how great she is in Ben Affleck's directing debut. Most people won't even know they're watching the same person.

As Dan's kids, Alison Pill, Brittany Robertson and Marlene Lawston are more memorable and well-defined than most of their older co-stars.

I could go on, but let me quickly skip over to...



"Evan Almighty"
Director: Tom Shadyac
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 30
In a Nutshell: To be fair, I saw this on a long plane ride on a tiny screen. I'll acknowledge that in its wide-screen glory, it may have improved somewhat if the filmmakers will acknowledge that in a time-wasting free movie scenario, I might be more generous than I would have been if I'd paid $12 bucks to see this in the theater.

"Bruce Almighty" was already a horrible movie, a simplistic piece of pabulum that dumbed down spirituality and faith to an unbearable point. "Yes, faith is hard, but maybe more people would believe if they had divine powers and saw how difficult Morgan Freeman has it." So the sequel was never a good idea. It's not like Carell's Evan Baxter is this movie is even vaguely connected to his "Bruce" character of the same name. And it's not like Carell is really trying. This feels like a paycheck role and I'm not going to begrudge him for a second. Sure, he probably could have taken a few weeks, rewritten the entire script himself and maybe it would have been good, but why bother? If the original writers couldn't be bothered to put 10 seconds into the story, which is darned near blasphemous. I'm OK with God choosing a modern prophet, but why would God rip himself off? The Noah thing? Been there and done that. Either think up something new or don't bother.

And if you're going to cast Lauren Graham, give her *something* to do. ANYTHING. Let her be funny. Let her be sexy. Let her be defiant. Don't just let her be that wife who very briefly doubts her husband's sanity, but comes to see that he's part of something bigger. That's a role you give to Monica Potter.

I will say that I laughed out loud at "Evan Almighty" at least four times, or snickered out loud. I'm gonna stay that it was twice at Wanda Sykes and twice at Jonah Hill, playing members of Evan's office staff.

That's not good enough, even for free on a five-hour flight.

[This review was written at 35,000 feet. My apologies.]

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Why can't the Bionic Woman always be British?

Red Sox Nation is split today, between those folks who viewed 2004 as a mixture of anti-depressant and colonic -- purging decades of bad memories or past traumas and leaving only happy feelings [Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Jamie] -- and those of us who can't shake that being a Red Sox fan is about being uncomfortable even in the midst of success.

The first group is talking about a sweep. The second group is still biting their fingernails. Well, I quit biting my fingernails, but that doesn't mean that I'm at ease, even after a 13-1 victory.

But the good thing about living on the Left Coast is that for me, the game was already out-of-reach well before the start of primetime (even with the looming prospect of Eric Gagne pitching the 9th), which left me able to muse on last night's "Pushing Daisies" and "Bionic Woman," plus maybe a wee bit on other programs from the week...

Click through while I think about how to pitch the networks on my "Bionic Women's Murder Club" pilot...


"Bionic Woman" -- Usually I'd lead with "Pushing Daisies," but last night's "Bionic Woman" was pretty good, although it sported the show's fourth or fifth different tone in just five episodes and drew some rather ridiculously low ratings. Who knew so many "Bionic Woman" fans were also Colorado Rockies fans?

Given that Katee Sackhoff's Sarah Corvus has been the series' most interesting character, it's a bit surprising that the show's most consistent episode to date was Sackhoff-free. Will Yun Lee's character was also absent, plus the episode was low on Molly Price's Ruth, Lucy Hale's formerly hacking sister (whatever happened to *that* character detail) and Miguel Ferrer's Jonas. Guess what? Didn't miss 'em. Well, maybe I missed Ferrer. Instead, we got an awful lot of Kevin Rankin's techie, whose part has increased each week as producers have realized two things: First, Rankin's a very good actor and second that Rankin's funny and that the "funny" is playing better than then "dark and moody" these days. Wednesday's episode suggests a "Chuck"-ification of "Bionic Woman," full of quips, geekiness and low stakes espionage (the stakes may actually have been kinda high, but I ignore the terrorist-of-the-week plot). Much of the new tone comes, I'm assuming, from consultant Jason Katims, still far from atoning for making Landry into a killing machine.

Oh and after only five episodes, the writers contrived to make Michelle Ryan pose as a British exchange student just so that she could use her actual accent for an hour. It isn't just that Ryan seemed hotter with her British accent, because that's a weird and semi-subjective thing (though she *totally* was hotter). It's that she appeared more comfortable, more confident and more capable of being both funny and dramatic. The Michelle Ryan in Wednesday's episode is, I have to believe, the potential star the producers hoped they had cast.

Look, you cast this woman:



Now who would have thought it was a good idea to cover her up and make her speak with an American accent? Seriously, folks.

"Pushing Daisies" -- Another encouraging week. Who would have guessed that "Pushing Daisies" might actually make it through a full season? Actually, ratings have been dropping very, very slowly week-to-week, which cases me a bit of concern. But maybe there's a bit overlap between baseball fans and lovers of twee forensic fairy tales.

A one-legged woman living in a windmill sending letters on the behalf of her deceased mother to a one-armed convict reading the letters on the behalf of his deceased cell-mate? Twee-tastic! Chuck's former occupation as a stay-at-home juror for a paraplegic judge? Twee-riffic! Putting big funny sunglasses on a decomposing corpse to cover his absence of eye-jelly? Tweelicious! A one-winged resurrected carrier pigeon flying with the help of a parrot wing? Twee-diddlyumptious!

Often I mock just for the sake of mocking, but in the case of "Pushing Daisies" I mock because I love. Although I wonder how many different suits and semi-permeable membranes Chuck and The Piemaker can dance through, kiss through and dry hump through, their relationship is still swooningly sweet.

Oh and you want an example of "Good Twee" versus "Bad Twee"? Good Twee is Kristin Chenoweth singing They Might Be Giants. Bad Twee would be having them sing Barenaked Ladies.

Several favorite lines of dialogue:

** "It's a miracle bird! It's swimming in miracles, not disease." (followed later by "It's a carrier pigeon." "Diseases or messages?" "Both.")

** "Was that your boyfriend back there, the one who took a step back to let you fall?" "He didn't let me fall. It was actually a very affectionate gesture in context."

** "It's funny. You really are a one-armed bandit. Your name's not McClappin, is it? As in the sound of one hand..."

** "I'm sure it's just the mailman or a windmill to windmill salesman."

** "My name is Elsa... This is my windmill."

Jayma Mays and Dash Mihok (well free of "Cavemen") continued the show's fine supporting casting and Digby the Dog needs more screentime.

Also, while the show's production values have obviously gone down in recent weeks with the rumored budget drops, it turns out the the claymation and CG effects weren't the most important part of what made the pilot work. Good thing, too...

Other quick hits from recent viewing:

"Damages" -- As much as Glenn Close and Ted Danson and even Rose Byrne made the series perpetually watchable, the game turned out not to be worth the candle. I was neither pleasantly shocked nor shockingly disappointed by the revels in the final episodes. I just shrugged my shoulders and went about my business. And the hypothetical next season is ridiculous, since there's no way Patty would have acquiesced to Ellen's request to investigate her boring fiance's murder, knowing that that trade will eventually possibly lead to the discovery that Patty tried to have her offed. Or something.

"Journeyman" -- Was bored by the pilot. Didn't much care for the second episode. Also thought the earthquake episode was silly. But the past two episodes have begun to get into the nuts and bolts of what lets Kevin McKidd jump through time and the show has become vaguely intriguing. Naturally, nobody is watching.

"Gossip Girl" -- Next week's episode looks great, but Cindy Lou Who needs to stop doing naughty things.

"Reaper" -- Go ahead, guys. It's time to introduce the attractive female reaper character as a love interest for Sam while he deals with keeping secrets from Andi. You know you're going to do it. Get it over with.

"Big Bang Theory" -- Still watching by default, though this week's episode was somewhat better. Jim Parsons? Funny. Johnny Galecki? Not funny here.

OK. That's it for me for today...

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MovieWatch: "Control"

"Control"
Director: Anton Corbijn
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 57
In a Nutshell: Sorry. I'm going to have to politely decline to join the hype brigade on this one.

Respect the performance by relative unknown Sam Riley who does, from what I can find on the Internet, utterly channel Ian Curtis? Sure thing. Count me in.

Salute the black-and-white cinematography by Martin Ruhe? By all means. I'll even respect the eye of first-time feature director Anton Corbijn.

Here's the problem: I've seen musical biopics before. I've seen them done better and I've seen them done worse, but nothing in "Control" did anything to break the exhaustively established genre rhythms and, as a result, I was kind of bored stiff awaiting the conclusion, which is inevitable whether or not you know a thing about Curtis' life.

Follow through after the bump for more.

Click through...

While I came into the movie knowing a handful of Joy Division songs -- mostly from placement in various movies, I've gotta imagine -- the only biographical facts I knew about Curtis and the band came from Michael Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People."

Yeah, I know. I'm lame. This isn't quite as bad as when I was one of two music editors at the Penn newspaper as a freshman and I didn't know who David Byrne was, mind you. There, it was my responsibility to be vaguely musically astute. With "Control," it wasn't necessarily the movie's responsibility to inform me (I have Wikipedia for that), but surely it was the movie's responsibility to make me care about Ian Curtis and perhaps recognize why, if I cared about Joy Division, I'd recognize his genius.

In that, the movie fails utterly.

[Spoilers coming, I guess.]

I defy anybody who enters "Control" with a comparable knowledge of Curtis (comparable to mine, I mean) to leave with any awareness of what Joy Division meant to the British music scene, what role Curtis played in their success and why there are people who still care deeply about him to this day.

I am going to give Corbijn and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh a measure of credit and assume that part of what drew them (and fans of the band) to Curtis was that he was an enigma, a mystery man. He was 23 when he killed himself and he'd barely established any body of work, nor had a body of journalistic work built up about him. The movie is based on the book by his widow Debbie (played well, but thanklessly by Samantha Morton), but a major part of the movie seems to be that *she* didn't really get him either.

Riley plays Curtis as something of a lost boy, as a possible genius unable to deal with either the potential of celebrity or with the betrayal of his own body. If only the movie could have provided some context, any context, which makes it the flip-side of "24-Hour Party People," a movie that was all about context and milieu surrounding Steve Coogan's splendid performance as Tony Wilson.

As it is, Curtis is just a mopey British guy who listened to David Bowie and read J.G. Ballard. What separated him from the literally thousands of mopey British guys of the period with the exact same interests is unclear. He joins the other three members of Joy Division -- the filmmakers don't even *attempt* to make them into characters -- and they start clubbing. If you want to know, though, where Joy Division fit amidst the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, The Fall and a dozen other artists of the period, there are no hints. Again, I wonder if that ambiguity is intentional, or if Corbijn simply decided to make a movie that would only be meaningful to pre-existing fans.

If the film's look is distinctive -- every green-ish black and white frame seeming to correspond with a classic black and white photograph from Rolling Stone or an NME issue -- the narrative is crushingly indistinctive. It's that rock-n-roll biopic you've seen several dozen times with epilepsy substituted for rampant drug use, or perhaps just epilepsy drugs substituted for anything more illicit. Curtis' relationship with both Debbie and "journalist" Annik Honore are prefunctory, but Greenhalgh tries making every kiss or fight significant by tying it to the creation of a Joy Division song, which is both over-obvious and finally silly. And Corbijn's inexperience as a director becomes evident in Curtis' final spiral, which grinds on and on, encumbered by one emotionally redundant scene after another.

I've been sitting on this review for three days trying to see if my feelings toward the movie would settle into anything more positive.

I like Lauren Wissot's take on the movie over at The House Next Door and not just because I agree with her and she supplies a good Werner Herzog quote...

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Premiering on Wednesday Night on NBC...

It's "Phenomenon"...

Airing in the same time period as "Pushing Daisies" and "America's Next Top Model" and Game One of the World Series (GO SOX!), I could hardly be less excited to watch spoon-bender Uri Geller and magician/starfucker Criss Angel search for the next great charlatan.

But I *love* the excuse to post this clip... Makes me giggle every time.

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MovieWatch: "The Orphanage"

"The Orphanage"
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 77
In a Nutshell: [It's been that kinda week. On Monday, I thought "Hey, I'll blog on 'Heroes,' but then suddenly it was late Tuesday and I thought "Hey, I'll blog on, um, 'Caveman'" and then suddenly it was late Wednesday and I thought "Hey, I'll blog on the tweeness of 'Pushing Daisies'" and then suddenly it was late Thursday and then Friday. But now I'm sitting on my couch watching the Red Sox game and if ever there was a chance to sit down and blog on *anything* it was now... And, to be perfectly fair, I blogged on something every night this week, but it was all for Zap2it...Not all blogs are created equal.]

For around an hour into Juan Antonio Bayona's "The Orphanage" (or "El Orfanato"), I was wondering if this could somehow be the second consecutive year that a "genre" movie from Spain came out of nowhere to shock me and rank as my favorite film of the year? Last year, of course, it was Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," which is very possibly the finest film of the 21st Century to date. "The Orphanage" isn't quite on that level ultimately. It lacks the historical and cultural subtext that lifted "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Devil's Backbone" from their fairy tale and haunted house trappings. However, executive produced and "presented" by Del Toro, "The Orphanage" is as proficient and effective a scary movie as one could hope for, supplying both insidious creepiness and at least three or four jump-out-of-your-seat shocks.

I'll continue for a little after the bump.

Click through...

Describing "The Orphanage" is a complicated task. It's got an awful lot of "The Others" or "The Haunting" or "The Innocents" or whatever version of "Turn of the Screw" you want to highlight. It's more than slightly indebted to "Poltergeist" and "The Omen" and "Rosemary's Baby" and to "Devil's Backbone," but to my mind, "The Orphanage" is, as much as anything, like a Spanish inflected equivalent of the kind of J-Horror movies that Hollywood has been relentlessly messing up since "The Ring," including "The Grudge" and "Dark Water."

That's partially my way of saying that if "The Orphanage" doesn't end up being a surprise subtitled hit when it premieres late this December (mirroring, you can safely assume, the platform pattern followed by "Pan's Labyrinth"), plans to remake it will begin almost immediately. The friend I saw the movie with cast Renee Zellweger as the woman who returns to reopen the orphanage where she grew up and soon begins noticing some supernatural doings afoot. I don't mind Zellweger, but I'm going younger and more commercial, putting Charlize Theron in the lead of my own remake. Either way? It's sure to get screwed up in the translation.

The absence of historical context that I mentioned earlier hampers "The Orphanage" in comparison to the Del Toro films, but also, truthfully, in comparison to the best of the J-Horror movies. Part of why the American remakes of "Ringu" and "Pulse" failed is that they didn't locate any sort of American equivalent of the over-arching Japanese sense of isolation and technological alienation that infused the original. That Walter Salles' "Dark Water" remake actually *did* make the original Japanese format into a specifically American and New York-based story is why I think that movie is decidedly underrated.

One way or the other, "The Orphanage" is technically magnificent, but geographically and culturally generic by nature. The old coastal orphanage that serves as the movie's main (almost exclusive) location could be in rural Maine or Northern Washington and except for the language spoken, nothing would need to be changed. Even the parts of the story that have a time-period specificity -- one character has HIV, a group of paranormal experts come with a decent haul of technical gizmos, etc -- aren't unique to Spanish culture.

That's a quibble. Well, not a minor quibble. It's a quibble that may impact "The Orphanage" on an end of the year list. But that doesn't mean that "The Orphanage" isn't the scariest movie I've seen since last year's "The Descent."

Bayona makes the most of old-fashioned horror technique -- his framing is always impeccable and suggestive and the movie's sound design is never haphazard and feeds major parts of the plot. He uses gore sparingly, but when he wants to gross you out, he knows how.

What heft "The Orphanage" lacks in the context department, it almost picks up in fairy tale resonance. While not as obviously settled, intellectually, in a wealth of folkloric study as "Pan's Labyrinth," Sergio Sanchez's script shows the hallmarks of a man who knows his Brothers Grimm and also understands why "Peter Pan" (the Barrie original more than the Disney version) has its timeless lyricism. The movie also mines from the near-ancient tradition of stories about women whose desire for maternity leads to questionable decisions and even more questionable sanity.

And now back to the Sox. J.D. Drew has already provided some heroism, which must mean that Eric Gagne will pitch three scoreless innings for the win.

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MovieWatch: "Michael Clayton"

"Michael Clayton"
Director: Tony Gilroy
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 64
In a Nutshell: [It's been a week that I've been batting "Michael Clayton" around in my head reflecting on whether or not I actually liked it more than I initially thought I liked it. I couldn't put my thoughts together well enough because I didn't of the kernel of why it fell short for me. Then, in the midst of a comment over at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago" something clicked. Maybe not fully, but enough to write a blog post.]

Yes, "Michael Clayton" is a thoughtful and serious movie, a movie made with brains and aesthetic precision, a movie full of strong acting and cracklingly well-composed dialogue.

At its most basic level, though, it's also just a pilot for an intriguing FX or Showtime or HBO TV show, nothing more or less.

Go through after the bump for the rest of my thoughts.

Click through...

More frequently than movies, TV shows can be based on a central ironic character construction. She's a matchmaker, but she's also a divorce attorney and she can't find love herself... It's "Miss/Match." He's a shrink, but he's crazier than any of his patients... It's "Huff." He's a cop, but he's more dangerous than most of the criminals... It's too many different shows to list. Movies aren't immune to the formula, by any means, but movies are, by their nature, more narrative driven, while TV shows can be more character-driven. And "Michael Clayton" is a movie that's more character-driven.

For better or for worse, though, it's driven by a surprisingly banal character construct. Our main character, Michael Clayton (George Clooney), is a fixer for an all-powerful New York law film. He's the guy who can get you out of any situation, no matter how awful. But guess what? Michael may be able to fix anything in his professional life, but in his personal life... HE'S A MESS!!! Bet you never would have seen that coming. He was a bad husband and now he's a well-intentioned but fairly weak father. He has a by-the-numbers gambling addiction -- in the past week, I've seen the exact same underground poker den in "Michael Clayton," "Gossip Girl" and "Journeyman," suggesting that it's zeitgeisty, but over-done -- and a by-the-numbers assortment of estranged siblings (One's a cop! One's a drug addict! Yawn...). Now, suddenly, the man who has never given ethics a second though in either his personal or professional life has run into a professional problem he can't fix and it's going to change his life forever.

I don't wanna be a pill, but if you find the right under-employed movie star or well-traveled veteran TV star -- Maybe Bradley Whitford? Or Bill Pullman? Or Matthew Modine? -- and they could star in "Michael Clayton: The Series." Each week, Michael does his fixing duties for his real job, while working on the sly to root out corporate corruption and repair the tattered shards of his personal life. In a TV series, he could dedicate whole episodes to bonding with his son or fighting off the desire to place a bet.

It would take bullshit movie snobbery to begin to suggest that Michael Clayton is in any way a more complicated character than Vic Mackey or Brenda Johnson or Dexter Morgan. And with those characters, you know that each week's generic or vague procedural plotline is just a means to a character end and that something different or better will be along next week. The critics who are most impressed with "Michael Clayton" are, I suspect, exactly the sort of cinema elitists who don't watch TV.

In "Michael Clayton," though, the superficially and ironically conflicted title character is caught up in a generic and vague court case and, because this is a movie, there isn't anything else. You're stuck with Michael Clayton versus the Environmental Meanies, because that's all there is.

By just being another movie about a court case involving an evil chemical company poisoning the groundwater, "Michael Clayton" ends up occasionally feeling like a more smug version of "A Civil Action," which was already a pretty smug movie to begin with. The biggest difference is that "A Civil Action" (or "Erin Brokovich") were actually about their court cases and their political actions, at least to some degree. In "Michael Clayton," the court case is 100% a red herring. It doesn't have an iota of meaning. Why, then, not come up either with a different kind of court case involving an identical ethical crisis, or else provide no information at all about the case that's pushing the action, make it a complete MacGuffin. If you keep referring to "The U-North Case," people can either draw their own assumptions or not and you don't need to bog the plot down with generic legal procedural stuff.

[In that respect, actually, "Michael Clayton" is almost the reverse of "Syriana." Steven Gaghan's movie was so overly invested in the meat of its subject matter that the half-dozen characters experiencing Clayton-esque ethical dilemmas were somewhat undersold. I may actually prefer "Michael Clayton" to the cluttered "Syriana." A comparable movie that I prefer to "Michael Clayton," though, is Roger Michell's "Changing Lanes."]

As a writer, Gilroy made his bones on ethical thrillers [a genre that also includes "Changing Lanes"] that were too high minded to be actual thrillers. I'm thinking of things like "Extreme Measures" and "Proof of Life," both movies with more on their minds than typical popcorn movies, but also less corn than a good popcorn movie needs.

As a director of his own material, Gilroy actually proves more capable than either Michael Apted or Taylor Hackford were with the aforementioned scripts (though less capable than Dough Liman and Paul Greengrass were with his "Bourne" scripts). He coaxes a great leading performance from Clooney and good work from Tilda Swinton and the assortment of less recognizable supporting players (lots of New York theater types, I'm assuming). Depending on your tolerance for scenery chewing, you'll either find Tom Wilkinson Oscar-worthy or else you'll wonder why, in a movie where everything else is muted, he's bellowing like this was finally his chance to play King Lear. Wilkinson is such a good actor that I can't begrudge people for continuing to cast him as Americans even though he's utterly incapable of doing an American accent.

We've now reached the point at which I could keep rambling or walk away.

Since the Red Sox are obviously requiring more of my attention, I'm going to walk away.

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A Bicentennial Baby

At Ralphs on my way home from a late day at work (maybe later I'll get to a review of either "Michael Clayton" [I can't seem to review George Clooney movies, since "Ocean's Thirteen" went unremarked upon this summer since my reaction of "Meh" couldn't really be expanded to 500 words] or "Margot at the Wedding," which I saw this morning to interview Noah Baumbach [smart guy, maybe too smart] for Filter). I'm grabbing a sandwich from their deli. Turkey. Cheese. Mustard. Mayo. Tomato, just for luck.

Going through the check-out line. In front of me is an absurd looking woman -- short, well-along in pregnancy, wearing a low-cut top exposing her fake breast, skin leathery from a fake tan, could have been any age. Well, maybe not any age. She looks used up. Formerly cute. She gets carded. Strikes me as odd, both that she's purchasing alcohol in her delicate condition, but also that the register guy could have guessed her under 21. I'd have put her age closer to 35. We're both wrong.

The guy at the register looks over her ID. Perhaps a picture of a dewier, cuter, less baked woman. He comments, "Oh, a bicentennial baby!"

I don't know why he thinks it's was worth mentioning. He might just as well share memories of the Tall Ships. Actually, in this case, he might just as well be speaking Swedish.

Blank stare.

"Huh?"

"A bicentennial baby."

I don't know why he repeats it. No light goes on in her eyes. He'd have better luck reaching over, taking her head in his hands and shaking. But she giggles supportively.

"Huh?"

"You were born in 1976."

The cashier doesn't look like he has vivid memories of 1976 either. Maybe when I get to the register, I'll card him. Equally pointless.

Still no lights.

"That was the bicentennial."

"What now? Oh. Umm... Yeah."

He doesn't know what to say to that. Would it be insulting if he adds "...of The United States" or "That means its 200th birthday." What is he hoping for? "Hells yeah! Us '76ers gonna roll!" Or "Ah yes. Breast feeding. Good times."

She walks out, still mostly oblivious I'm guessing.

These are the people reproducing in the City of Angels.

Time to eat my sandwich. Turkey. Cheese. Mustard. Mayo. Tomato, just for luck.

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'Pushing' Dandelions as well as 'Daisies'

In a blog post last week, Ken Levine did a fine job of explaining why second episodes are often more complicated or challenging than pilots and why we need to cut our friendly neighborhood showrunners a little more slack.

This season has provided ample evidence to back him up. For every "Dirty Sexy Money" or "Chuck," which basically stayed on creative par or dipped only slightly in quality, there have been three or four shows like "Bionic Woman," "Journeyman" or "Big Bang Theory," which either squandered initial affections or confirmed initial dread.

I've been nervous about the second episode of "Pushing Daisies" since May. While my initial instinct -- that audiences would run scurrying from the stench of twee like Mormons from a rum-and-coke, leading the near-instant cancellation -- appears not to have come true, I still had qualitative worries.

Short answer: Wednesday's second episode of "Pushing Daisies" didn't make me as happy as the pilot, but it made me far happier than most of what I've been watching on TV these past couple weeks.

Follow after the bump for more thoughts on "Pushing Daisies" and my other Wednesday TV viewing.

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Let's look at some of the concerns one-by-one.

Week-to-Week Plot Sustainability -- How would the show handle the need to go to its forensic fairy tale week-to-week structure? So far, so good. Episode two had a mystery, but nobody put much effort into investigating the murder in question. It was more about letting the story of the crime be told. That meant a lot of monologuing, first from the victim, then from the victim's beloved and finally from the killer. The key, I guess, is in presenting that monologuing in an appealing fashion (flashbacks and fantasy sequences and whatnot), rather than in watching Chi McBride's character follow clues. If he were that good a detective, he wouldn't need Ned, would he? A bigger roadblock in the week-to-week sustainability is Chuck-Ned dynamic and their very distracting inability to make direct contact. I know I'm not the only viewer who wondered why they walk in stride together, why they walk through doorways together, why they sit across from each other at tables. I've been known to accidentally bump into people when I'm walking next to them. It rarely causes death, but then again, I lack special powers. It'd be in Ned's best interest to constantly be wearing long-sleeve turtlenecks and gloves and it would behoove Chuck to do the same. Full body spandex suits? The best ways to avoid the death problem probably aren't very actor-friendly (look at poor Wentworth Miller, who has to over-dress for his sweltering Panamanian prison just his character's pesky tattoos probably haven't vanished).

Week-to-Week Stylistic Sustainability -- Week two of "Pushing Daisies" wasn't quite as saturatedly colorful as the pilot. The camera wasn't as free. There were fewer flights of visual fancy. Those of use who do this for a living are all "Oooh, this just goes to reflect the budgetary and creative restrictions ABC is putting on the show and on Barry Sonnefeld." I wonder what people who just watch TV programming when it comes on their TV and don't think about TV for 17 or 18 hours out of every day are able to notice. I'm a big fan of the Orson Welles quote "The enemy of art is the absence of limitation." That's to say that real artists see limitations and look for ways to accomplish the same goals in different ways. If a fish-eye camera lense can convey a similar sense of disorientation as a more expensive and time-consuming crane shot, let's do that. If Kristin Chenoweth breaking into a marvelous rendition of "Hopelessly Devoted" can convey a similar sense of not-of-this-world whimsy as an extended claymation sequence, let's do that. In its second week, "Pushing Daisies" still looked and felt pretty close to unique, even if it wasn't the exact same uniqueness as the first time around.

Week-to-Week Smartness Sustainability -- In his recap over at Zap2it, my colleague Rick groused a bit about Jim Dale's voice-over and the frequency with which we were being told things they should have shown us instead. Do I think there's too much voice-over? Yup. But I'm happy to put up with three or four instances where the voice-over falls flat for the following transition from Digby licking Olive's love-lorn tears: "While Olive considered how much she loved Digby for paying attention to her when the piemaker would not, and Digby considered how much he liked salt..." That's just great writing. The characters continue to talk fast and talk clever ("You love secrets. You want to marry secrets and have little half-secret, half-human babies.") and the universe of the show continues to be mighty savvy. It's a town that features not just The Pie Hole, but also Pies R Us, Pie City and Thousands of Pies in One Place. I love that.

Week-to-Week Tweeness Sustainability -- I've heard episode two described as even more twee than the first episode. That's what happens when your plot revolves around a dandelion-powered car ("The spores car of tomorrow!) and the main guest character is a bulimic woman who dresses as a flower. So far, though, I remain tolerant of a young girl learning to say "The Jarlsberg is on the table" in many languages. I'm content with Chi McBride's character being an art school drop-out who knit himself a sweatervest and handgun cozies. And I'll even put up with a woman in a full-body cast putting on make-up and asking if her bandages make her look fat. So far, I'm right there with "Pushing Daisies."

The transition from pilot fairy tale exposition to weekly proceduralism hurt the show's charm just a bit, but McBride and Lee Pace were every bit as good, Anna Friel was even more adorable and Chenoweth can break into song whenever she wants, as far as I'm concerned. The casting of guest stars will be key going forward, but the second episode's Riki Lindhome (as Janine the flower girl) and Patrick Fabian (as the mastermind of the Dany Lion SX) slid into the show's rhythms perfectly.

I don't know if it's ever going to be possible to sit back, relax and rest assured that "Pushing Daisies" will be able to maintain its quality, but so far so good.

Other Wednesday viewing?

"Back to You" -- OK. I gave this one four weeks to stop being generic and to find some of the intelligence that Christopher Lloyd brought to "Frasier" or even some of the workplace humor Steve Levitan brought to "Just Shoot Me." I think I'm done. It's odd that Ty Burrell is the funniest part of the cast and that when he isn't in an episode (like last night's), the show suffers. That shouldn't happen if you're giving all of that money to Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton.

"Bionic Woman" -- Back on track after an awful second episode. The third episode was credited to David Eick and it shouldn't be surprising that it was the season's first episode to have any sort of consistency at all. It also shouldn't be surprising that part of why the episode worked so well was that it was heavy on Katee Sackhoff. It was also a better showcase episode for Michelle Ryan, though something has to be done to make that character stop bitching about suddenly being bionic. I get that this wasn't what she signed on for, but she needs an attitude readjustment, plus a second bionic arm, stat!

"Gossip Girl" -- Serena and Blair had better not stay friendly for long. In the short term, I enjoyed their reconciliation with its simmering underlying tensions, but the less trashy the show gets, the more it becomes "Sweet Valley High: Upper Manhattan Edition," which is a show I probably wouldn't watch. I'd have been fine with the warmer and fuzzier A-plot if the B-Plot (Chuck's Lost Weekend Party) had been as full of debauchery as the promo teasers suggested it would be. Nate's such a wet fish to begin with and I think we're much too early in the series to already be seeing Chuck's softer side.

OK. This is too long. I stop now.

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MovieWatch: "We Own the Night"

"We Own the Night"
Director: James Gray
Fien Print Rating: 60
In a Nutshell: [I saw this movie back in July for a really solid Filter magazine interview with Gray, a director I've talked to a couple times and who always impresses me as a man who may be too smart for the industry, hence his rather deliberate working pace. Because of my own rather deliberate working pace, I may have some gaps in my memory of the movie, but since it's opening on Friday, I wanted to get something up...]

A quote generally attributed to director Howard Hawks (and reproduced in so many different variable forms that it might as well have been said by Hudson Hawk) is "A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes." It's not a quote I necessarily like, agree with or would ever use and yet it came to mind thinking back over "We Own the Night."

Actually, "We Own the Night" isn't a movie without bad scenes. It falls shocking flat in its final act. But I still find it odd that the director of the understated "Little Odessa" and "The Yards" has managed to orchestrate several of the year's very finest set pieces to date.

Follow through after the bump for my actual thoughts, with only occasional spoilers.

Click through...

When it comes to New York-set period dramas about cops and gangsters, the movie that'll get the most press and make the most money is "American Gangster," but there were three or four instances watching "American Gangster," where I thought "Boy, this is just like the same scene in 'We Own the Night' only blander and less impactful." While "American Gangster" may end up being a slightly more satisfying movie overall, nothing in Ridley Scott's film can compare to the "WOtN" rain-drenched car chase and in the head-to-head battle of drug den raids, the one in "WOtN" wins hands down as well.

That Gray is out-of-touch with the contemporary aesthetic of filmmaking almost goes without saying. I've seen several critics refer to his style as "neo-classical," but I think that refers more to what he doesn't do -- showy camera moves, ADD editing, etc -- than what he does. He's a slow and methodical director who concentrates on the details -- the never-haphazard art direction, the limited color palette, the complex framing -- and that makes his ability to get these two or three masterful set-pieces here all the more admirable.

This is Gray's third consecutive movie about a polarized immigrant family in New York and it's certainly his most commercial. When Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix did "The Yards," they weren't box office draws and the movie was more about brooding dinner scenes in underlit rooms than about giving the audience any thrills. Sony is rightly playing up "WOtN" as a straight-forward, star-driven crime thriller, which is the strategy that's most likely to bring viewers to the theaters, but also probably most likely to leave viewers existing in disappointment.

Coasting off an Oscar nomination for "The Departed" and a confident star-turn in "Shooter," Wahlberg takes a big risk here, playing a character who becomes less dynamic and less heroic as the movie progresses. Although the two stars get equal billing on the poster, Wahlberg's role is very much supporting and Phoenix is very much the star, giving one of the finest performances of his career. Like the movie itself, Phoenix's Bobby is more interesting in the beginning and then goes down a conventional path, but the performance features few of the twitchy affectations that occasionally mar the actor's work.

This may be the first time I've ever really "gotten" Eva Mendes as a potential movie star. More than any other part of the movie, her subplot crumbles down the stretch, but for an hour or so, she's sultry and compelling every time the camera moves in her direction.

While it's hard to think of more than two or three bad performances in his entire career, Robert Duvall doesn't distinguish himself as the pater familias, perhaps because the role is too similar to ones he's played many, many times before.

The use of Russian and Polish enclaves in New York gives "We Own the Night" a richness that unfortunately amplifies the flaws of the last act. If you dedicate yourself to texture and specificity for an hour and then go strictly by-the-numbers for 30 minutes, that 30 minutes is going to seem even blander in comparison.

I could go on, but I want to get to Wednesday night TV and to "Michael Clayton." There's just too much to blog.

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