CHAPTER 110: THE VILLAGE FORTUNE TELLER

Despite all of Rousseau's attempts at escaping the annoyances of the nobility, once the rehearsal of "Le Devin Du Village" begins, he's drawn back to the music, floating around the orchestra and giving unheeded tips. In the audience, he notices his old friend, M. de Jussieu, the botanist (Bob Newhart), and Rousseau allows himself the proud puffing of his chest: "He'll think I look distinguished here."
So all eyes go on the stage, where opera is defiled by gentlemen dressed as shepherds, ladies dressed as shepherdesses, and cats dressed as sheep. Marie Antoinette can sing, but she can't act. M. De Coigny can act, but he can't sing. The Dauphin can't act or sing, but he's quite capable of becoming upset by every line he considers to be a diss to the royalty. Louis XV considers it his royal duty to talk through the performance- so that the performers don't feel too tense.
Rousseau plugs his hairy old ears with his fingers, and finds comfort among this abbatoir of artistry by fixing his eyes on a pretty face belonging to a "village maiden." To his astonishment, this girl can even sing enchantingly, and Rousseau leans to her as if to bask in the solace of music.
Then Marie Antoinette sort of halts the rehearsal.
M.A.: "Is it me, Monsiuer Rousseau? Am I flubbing lines?" She notices the arrows emanating from the philosopher's eyes are curving around her and shooting at the village maiden. "Ah! It wasn't me! It was Andree messing up!"
Rousseau shakes his head: "Not at all, mademoiselle sings like an angel made out of honey and musical notes!"
Andree de Taverney lets a proud smile escape, bows. Marie Antoinette pouts. Next to the King, Madame Dubarry's teeth give off sparks from all the gritting, as she turns to Louis XV:
"Do you agree, is that girl a good singer?"
XV: (gulps) "Girl? There are girls on the stage?"
DUBARRY: "That girl! Andree de Taverney, you know the one!"
XV: "Sorry, I was mostly listening to the sheep. Baa baa. That song."

Off to a side of the stage, the Marshal Duke de Richelieu (is anyone NOT at this rehearsal?) has noticed the Countess' jealousy and loudly says to Marie Antoinette- and anyone with ears:
"Yes, Mademoiselle de Taverney does know how to work that sweet, sweet mouth."
M.A.: "Pretty voice! I admit, she might be almost as good as me at playing Collette. Maybe she can be my stunt double?"
The Marshal needles on: "Oh, let her sing that little aria!"
Andree obediently enchants the house: "My joy, my joy is gone!" And the King's head bobs with pleasure as he lip syncs along.
Meanwhile, Madame Dubarry is vibrating with such anger that her rouge is flying off her face and splashing those around her.

Papa the Baron de Taverney (Gene Hackman) appears from behind Richelieu, to confirm that EVERYONE is here except Joseph Balsamo and Waldo. Where IS Waldo?
The Baron humbly mumbles: "My daughter does seem to be causing a stir among the crowd. Even backstage."
Richelieu says: "What do you mean backstage?" He quickly turns to see a telling bulk behind a half risen curtain, and jabs the bulk with his walking cane. "OOOF!" says a voice behind the curtain, and out pops a young man that you know as well as I do must be Gilbert, Andree's eternal spy.
TAVERNEY: "Tarnations and fizzlesticks! Gilbert!"
MARSHAL: "Acquainted with the rascal?"
MARIE ANTOINETTE: "Isn't that the gardener?"
GILBERT: "I'm off the clock!"
ROUSSEAU: "It's Gilbert! My treacherous little roomie!"
DE JUSSIEU (from the crowd): "Oh, it's that kid who would do botany with us!"
M. D'AIGUILLON (also from the crowd): "I dunno who he is! But I'm in this chapter too!"
NICOLE LEGAY (appearing out of nowhere): "Gilbert! Are you following Andree still?"
WALDO: "I'm here! Row 3, seat 14!"
MADAME DUBARRY: "This performance is over!"

At her enraged command, most of the attending music lovers quickly depart as if summoned into an alternate, less crowded dimension. The King, however, remains behind, making eyes at the spot where Andree just was. He then makes a sign to the Marshal.
Richelieu hooks an arm around the shoulders of the Baron de Taverney, says: "I do believe his Royal Majesty may have something to say to us." The two approach the sighing King.
XV: "Now I'll never know who dies at the end of this opera."
R: "The sheep. Your Majesty, may I introduce the Baron de Taverney?"
XV: "The father of that charming singer, perhaps? I've been meaning to have a bit of a chat with you, Baron."
And the King smiles devilishly at the Baron de Taverney.
The Duke de Richelieu smiles impishly at the Baron de Taverney.
And the Baron de Taverney smiles idiotically at the two of them.
"Hehe," he says. "Let's chat, then."

THE SUPER ABRIDGED MARIE ANTOINETTE SAGA- Part 2: JOSEPH BALSAMO. RECAP UP TO CHAPTER 109

It's the early 1770s, and a young Dauphiness with the unpromising name of Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) is just settling in the court of King Louis XV (Robert de Niro) after marrying the walking ineffectiveness that is the Dauphin, soon-to-be Louis XVI, (Jason Schwartzman).
Marie Antoinette quickly finds herself in a gossipy feud with Louis' mistress, the wily Countess Dubarry (Anne Hathaway), who is aided in her endless machinations by her siblings Jean and Chon (Gerard Depardieu and Evangeline Lilly), as well as the Marshal Duke de Richelieu (Jack Nicholson). At this moment, Dubarry has managed to get rid of the old Prime Minister, M. De Choiseul, (Tom Wilkinson), making way for Richelieu's nephew, the Duke D'Aiguillon, (Kevin Spacey). But while her power in that area is assured, she finds a romantic threat in one of Marie Antoinette's young companions, the beautiful but haughty Mademoiselle Andree de Taverney (Keira Knightley).
Marie Antoinette has taken a shine to Andree, and is settling her in the palace of Little Trianon. MA is also helping out Andree's noble brother Philip (Heath Ledger); her old-guard father, the Baron of Taverney (Gene Hackman); and Andree's maid, Nicole Legay (who looks suspiciously like Marie Antoinette! HMMM.) Who else has taken a shine to Andree? Ah, yes, THE HORNY OLD KING. This makes Madame Dubarry furrow her pretty brow.
That's not all. There's also this guy, Gilbert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young philosopher who's followed Andree across the country, confessed his love, and saved her life during a riot, to no avail. Andree isn't giving him the Temps du Jour. Madame Dubarry's sister, Chon, has been a little more attentive towards Gilbert- pretty much enslaving him. But it's all worked out: Chon is forcing Gilbert to work as a gardener at Little Trianon, pretty much under Andree's window.

And yes, you should know about Joseph Balsamo- aka- The Count of Fenix (Johnny Depp), a magnetic, mysterious man who claims to have lived for centuries and who travels along with his ancient wizardly mentor, Althotas (Richard Harris), in search of the ELIXIR OF LIFE, not to mention a New World Order. Joseph is cool and seductive and leads a powerful cult, but he's still got problems of his own: his beloved Italian wife, Lorenza Feliciani (Monica Bellucci). She's an astral-projecting medium who hates his guts when awake- and adores him while sleep-walking.
Joseph is in position of great power as the leader of the Freemasons, position he uses to plan his slow-burning destruction of the monarchy; instruct the gloomy surgeon Marat (Joaquin Phoenix) on the mysteries of body and soul; and attempt to recruit Jean Jacques Rousseau, (George Carlin) the great philosopher. But Rousseau has demured and instead finds himself on the side of the Court, organizing a production of his opera "The Village Fortuneteller" at the Trianon. Marie Antoinette stars!
And the opera's about to begin. So sit down and look through the playbill.

CHAPTER 109: BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE TRIANON

And so it is that the operatic operation begins.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (George Carlin) arrives to the Trianon to find the impromptu performers reading from his libretto and being all snarky about Rousseau's poetic talents. If anyone knows that author! author! is in the house, no one seems interested in an autograph.
The handsomely effective M. De Coigny greets the dusty, disheveled, conspicuously stubbly philosopher with some disappointment: "I see your make-up crew had the day off."
Courtiers in splendid dresses pass them by, their copious bling-bling flashing off mirrors with gilded frames; Monsier Rousseau's head turtles into his unfashionable collar, but De Coigny gingerly holds the old man's sleeve between a thumb and an index and drags him to the head of the orchestra, to dole out tips and suggestions.
The opera in question is "Le Devin Du Village," "The Village Fortune-Teller," full of wacky misunderstandings between a sheep-herdess named Collette and her boy, Colin. Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst), a total musical geek, is dressed up as Collette in an adorable little Bo-Beep costume, and she's waiting for her Colin, which will be played by M. De Coigny, since the Dauphin's clock cleaning is much superior to his singing.



Just then, Louis the XV makes his entrance humming and gargling and heads bend around him. He casts an anxious glance: where IS that Madame Dubarry (Anne Hathaway)? Meanwhile, Marie Antoinette taps Rousseau in the shoulder, and he drops his baton, alarmed, while she giggles and sings:
"'My joy, my joy is gone!' Just like your little magical stick, Monsieur Rousseau. You know, we performed this opera at my wedding, I'm a huge old dork about your shows. So honored! Anyway, when I say 'My joy is gone' what's my motivation?"
ROUSSEAU: "You have to understand, that line is a confluence of melody, inflection and declamation, all designed to concisely convey the character's psychology."
Marie Antoinette starts pouting knowingly when Louis the XV descends upon them: "Ah, my little dauphiness! Is it showtime already? Who's the old goat?" The King's chummy-mode isn't really making Rousseau any more confident.
M.A.: "This is the AUTHOR!"
XV: "Right, Rossini, is it?" The King winks: "Nah, just teasing, Monsieur Rousseau, I know who you are. I can totally recognize your features under the layer of philosophical squalor. There's some nice melodies in your show! Watch out:
'If she keeps on looking 'round
At the gall-ANTS in the town
She will find someone to please
A new boy for her to squeeeeeeeze.' YEAH!"
Mirrors crack, ears bleed profusely, the agonizing Angel of Music sobs in a corner.
ROUSSEAU: "Those were some interesting stylistic choices, your Majesty." He feels like a clown cutting onions: half laughter, half tears. Marie Antoinette pouts politely at the spectacle.
XV:"'So come on over, dear Collette
I say you ain't seen nothing yet
Yes, come on over to your Colin
And soon enough we'll start a-ballin''"
R: "I don't recall writing those particular lines... Lemme see that libretto!"
XV: "So tell me, my free-thinking philosopher, is it true you inject absinthe between your toenails and roast cats for Satan? Didn't you wrestle naked with Voltaire through the Champs Elysees?"
R: "Enough! My art has been insulted enough!"
And the old man storms off, but it's a category 0 hurricane, because he's impeded in his retreat by a giant dress decked with diamonds and blocking the hallway- the dress belonging to the considerably smaller Madame Dubarry. She is giddily confiding on an elegant man, whispering and chuckling in his ear with an alarming frankness that's all the more shocking considering this elegant young man is the Count D'Artois- that is, the grandson of Dubarry's beloved King, and the younger brother of the Dauphin. But it's all in the family.
DUBARRY: "Forgive us! Oh, but isn't it Jean-Jacques Rousseau? We've met! You used to provide room and board for that young man my sister Chon was so interested in!"
ARTOIS: "Did you say he provided him with gloom and bored?"
D: "Oh, my dear D'Artois, that one was beneath you and made no sense. Rousseau's here to oversee his opera, 'The Village Fortune Teller.'"
A: "If you'll be Collette, my dear Countess, I'll be Colin."
D: "What would your grandpa say? No, no. Plus, I don't sing. Plus, I fear Rousseau here hates me. Not taking well to the glamourous life, is he?"
R: "No! And I need to run out of here!"
And the frustrated philosopher ducks in between the Count D'Artois legs, which have accidentally formed an arch for escape; but his storming off is STILL interrupted because he's not fled more than a few yards when he bumps into the chest of the Count de PROVENCE- that is, the OTHER grandson of Dubarry's beloved King, and the OTHER younger brother of the Dauphin.
PROVENCE: "Why, isn't it..?"
R: "Yes, yes, you know who I am! Will you mock me too?"
P: "I was going to say I read your translation on Tacitus."
R: "Oh, did you?" The philosopher collects himself- a kindred soul in court?
P: "Yeah, it was nauseauting. Where did you study Latin? You said 'imperatoria brevitate' was 'grave conciseness' when everyone knows it means 'with the brevity of command.' Oh, oh, and in page 257 you translated 'cito sermone' as 'speaking well.' A beginner's mistake; it means 'speaking easily'!"
The pale philosopher interjects: "But I..."
P: "You should stick to philosophy. There you're decent. Except for 'Emile'! What a snoozer!"
R: "I... I..."
P: "You know the one thing you wrote that was decent? Your 'Confessions.' Hahah, wild man! Is it true you have like ten bastards around town?" And the youngster goes off laughing: "Breathe, old man, I'm just playing around." The Count de Provence exits toward the area of performance.
Rousseau stands there, shivering with indignation. Time passes. A full ten minutes later, the correct come-back occurs to him:
"Yes, ten, not counting the ones I had with YOUR MOM!"
But, as it goes with correct come-backs, by the time it shows up there's no one around to hear it.

Robertson Davies' "The Deptford Trilogy 1: Fifth Business"

Operas, Robertson Davies suggests, have their heroine, a soprano; the heroine's counterpart, a contralto; their hero, a tenor; and the hero's rival, a basso. But there's usually another character, who gets pushed down in billing but comes in to provide some fundamental bits of news, to let the hero confide in him- hence "Fifth Business," the title of the first novel in the Deptford Trilogy, which you should GO READ NOW.



A mixture of magic show, obsessive hagiography, small (Canadian) town gossip and reflective academia, "Fifth Business" reads like a confession to a crime which will only be revealed in its last pages- and if a life first needs to be explained, isn't that true of every crime? Dunstan Ramsay is a veteran of the "original" War, mocked by students who imagine him as one more eccentric puppet before the blackboard, particularly for his interest in investigating rare saints- and he not even a Catholic! Dunstan is defined by the figures in his life: Mary Dempster, the woman he canonizes through her years of madness; Paul Dempster, who grows up to be the enigmatic Magnus Eisengrim; Leola Cruikshank, the unimaginative girl who eventually abandones him for his life-long frenemy, the charismatic, succesful Paul Staunton.
Is his modest life just fifth business? You opine at will, but this is a novel of the first magnitude, possibly the finest I've read in a long, long time. Sowwy, Wheel of Time. (I am deeply embarrassed I had no idea who Robertson Davies was before randomly settling on this Canadian Gatsby, but at the sense time- what joy at stumbling onto a "new" writer I took to so immediately!)

Semi-Mute Acknoledgments

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Once more I've accrued more cultural detritus than time to tell you much about it. The situation worries me.

"The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard"- Brilliant, dystopic, experimental SF that now gets respect from the intelligentsia. A more brutal Bradbury.


"Legend of the Seeker" Season 1- Starring New Zealand's finest landscapes and the amazing cleavage of Bridget Regan, this just cancelled fantasy show based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series came from the Sam Raimi factory that gave us "Hercules" and "Xena," except it forgot to be even slightly funny.


"David Bowie- A Reality Tour"- The long-held back CD release of the fateful 2003 tour in which I never got to see Bowie because a stagehand had the gall to drop to his death just before Bowie's entrance. True story. Should have paid more attention to opening act The Stereophonics instead of talking through their set: "OMG, Bowie is coming, Bowie is coming, I wonder if he'll do 'Life on Mars?'" Moral: Better a Stereophonics in the hand than a Bowie in the bush.


Duncan Jones' "Moon"- Bowie's son grows up and naturally makes the Major Tom movie, but it's a good one, with Sam Rockwell seamlessly arguing with his clone and Kevin Spacey as a genuinely nice Hal-9000. "Dave, I'm afraid a stagehand just died. You get the night off."


Ray Wylie Hubbard's "A: Enlightenment, B: Endarkenment, Hint: There is No C"- The best damn country record I've heard since George Strait unveiled that elaborate reggae alter ego.


Joe Swanberg's and Greta Gerwig's "Nights and Weekends"- Greta Gerwig is the "it girl" of the mumblecore movement, having been in everything from Andrew Bujalski's "Lol","Hannah Takes the Stairs" and "House of the Devil". She mumbles a lot and gets naked quite a bit in this very realistic tale of a long distance relationship.



Robert Jordan's and Brandon Sanderson's "The Wheel of Time 12: The Gathering Storm"- What to say about this? The WoT, as it is known to people who don't shower, is an avant-garde literary experiment that starts with this daring premise: can one write 15,000 pages in which absolutely nothing happens? Characters still "tug at their braids" and "fold their hands under their breasts" (for maximum popping value, I guess) and woman wonder about stubborn men who won't let themselves be manipulated as they wish, and men wonder at how incomprehensible women are, and Rand continues going as crazy as he has for the last 10 books, and we visit 40 different factions and meet 10,000 characters that are entirely dimensionless, as opposed to the 5 main one-dimensional characters. A typical WoT paragraph works like this:
"Nynaeve tugged at her braid, then folded her arms under her breasts, and thought about Rand Al'Thor's stubborness. It was infuriating, his unwillingness to do what was right for Andor and the Seanchans and the Aiel and the White Tower and T'Armon Gaidon and the domane and toh and Aes Sedai and Ajah and Initiated and a'dam and the Amyrlin Seat and Gareth Bryne and RuPaul and Egwene Al'Vere and Semirhage and Moiraine and Mat and Perrin and Faile and Elaida and the wetlanders and the sheep-herders and Asha'man and Cairhien! Nynaeve realized the paragraph was already long and incomprehensible enough, but she tugged at her braid again, just to make sure it had that one extra sentence that would really contribute to the overall "expansiveness" of the tale. Then once more she snorted at how difficult Rand Al'Thor was, (for good measure), and happily received her hefty paycheck from Tor books."
To be fair, Brandon Sanderson doesn't make things WORSE- aside from a few moments that made me think he wanted to write "The Dark Tower" instead. "The Gathering Storm" is actually an improvement over most of the latter books in a series that once prided itself in wasting 800 pages to move Rand and his entourage from town A to town B two miles down the road. That dusty, dusty road where the Winds of Time move the Wheel of Time into creating the Legends of Time. Or something.

CHAPTER 108 continued: ROUSSEAU GETS READY

M. De Coigny is gone, and Rousseau is already dodging Therese's blows.
THERESE: "Don't act like the court is too good for you, I bet you'll break your spine bowing to all the nobles, I bet you'll write some perverted little poem for some fine looking lady who could be your great-gran-daughter if she didn't come from a much better stock."
ROUSSEAU: "My works make me better than any noble man, grander than any King!"
T: "Oh, if Monsieur de Sartines could hear you! You'll be writing your next ditties from the grandest cell in the Bastille."
R: "Monsieur de Sartines is a bully in the pay of my enemies!"
T: "Which means your enemies actually have MONEY. Learn from them! Oh, why didn't I marry Voltaire instead?"
Rousseau waves his hands: "Money! Money is another word for theft, those who have too much steal it from those who don't have enough."
T: "Be sure to repeat that to the King when you're drooling on his ring."
R: "That's the Pope you're thinking of! But I will! If... you know, if he starts asking my opinion."
T: "Who wants the opinion of a man who's afraid of kittens?"
R: "They can be very infectious!"
T: "You're all talk, but I know how it goes. You'll shave and put on perfume and stuff your finest silk stockings with last winter's coat and go and tell stories to the ladies about how they should 'live in the moment' and 'sleep with wise old men' and they'll laugh at you and you'll come here sighing and wishing you'd been born rich."
R: "No such thing will happen. I'll go dressed exactly as I am now, with this very same stubble, and a decent day's work of stink on me."
T: "Work? Communing with nature is not work! Wait: I'll bring out your nice suit and the razor and the perfume and that powdered wig that makes you look slightly less like a shyster."
R: "I refuse! I will not submit to superficialities! I..." She puts the wig on his head. "Fine, I'll take the wig but c'est tout."
And the philosopher abandons his wife, (not without smoothing himself, unseen, as soon as he gets to the street), hails a cabby coach, and flees swiftly from what's easily the least eventful segment of the SAMAS (so far).


ABOVE: That's the good wig!

"Captain America" (1996-1998)

ABOVE: Notice Steve Roger's projecting pectorals. Notice they come from a HIGHLY PAID, RENOWNED ARTIST. Wonder.

For better or worse, Rob Liefeld was one of the '90s biggest comic artists- and whenever I say "for better or worse", it's clear I'm leaning to the "worse" part of the sentence. A "Rob Liefeld Face" (and all Rob Liefeld's faces look exactly the same) consists of a domed head, narrow eyes, sharply descending curves for cheekbones, clenched teeth in full hatred mode, and a million little scracthes that are, one supposes, meant to add volume, but just look like a chicken farm was set loose on our character's features. A Rob Liefeld body is a hulk of muscles with little correlation to any anatomy lessons anyone has ever taken, as if one of Hitler's conceptual artists was tasked to draw the perfect Aryan super-soldier and figured no one was going to call him on a little enthusiastic exaggeration.
That's a problem, of course, when you're drawing "Captain America," as Liefeld did in the mid-to-late '90s, and Cap is fighting Neo-Nazis and you can't help but notice Cap's so fascist-looking, Hitler would have proposed marriage to him at the drop of a death's-head peaked cap.


ABOVE: From Liefeld's "Faces of White Pride."


ABOVE: Also from Liefeld's "Faces of White Pride."

So the legend goes Steve Rogers was put to a long nap by Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. after he confronted President Truman over the ethics of the Atom bomb. (Yes, they prop him up to fight in Korea and Vietnam, but mostly he sleeps with mothballs in a closet somewhere.) Some fifty years later and Steve is living with a family of "life model decoys" until an Uncle Tom-type brings him back his magic shield.


ABOVE: "You're so much weaker and shorter than me, inferiorly colored man, but there's room in this great country even for the likes of you."

Memories stir, and Captain America sets off to fight the World Party and the resuscitated Red Skull. Instead of his ambiguously gay sidekick "Bucky," Cap is now saddled with Rikki-"Don't-Lose-My-Number"-"Bucky"-Barnes, a Jubilee type modeled on someone's idea of what those MTV kids might like. There is one neat twist involving Nick Fury's patriotic allegiances, but if you believe that Marvel would turn one of its most popular characters into a skinhead leader, I've got a magic shield to sell you. This particular incarnation of Captain America, written indifferently by Jeph Loeb, didn't last long. For obvious reasons.


ABOVE: Rikki is still kicking around out there in the Marvel U. She's a'ight.

For further reading: A gallery of Rob's most celebrated achievements.

"Head Case"

Much like "Extras", "Head Case" relies on our pre-conceptions of its guest stars to make us laugh. Make ME laugh, anyway, and quite a lot. Alexandra Wentworth plays Elizabeth Goode, a completely deranged shrink to Hollywood semi-has-beens like Andy Dick, Tom Sizemore, Jonathan Silverman, Ralph Macchio and Ione Sky. (The 'Starz' do get more promiment as the series moves out of its 15 format into cable respectability for its last two seasons.)
Steven Landesberg plays the even-more-out-of-it Dr. Myron Finkelstein, who ropes girl scouts for analysis in his lonely practice next door. Their British receptionist side-kick, Lola Buckingham (Michelle Arthur), completes the menagerie.



Funny stuff, but like the best jokes, perhaps taken best in small doses. Also, Jane Kaczmarek's admission to "eating her scabs... but only after she runs out of pubic hair" might have been a bit too much.

Jack Clayton's "The Innocents"

Creepy kids have been seeing dead people for a considerably long amount of time. Jack Clayton's "The Innocents," a 1961 film adaptation of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" with a script partially written by Truman Capote, is a proud precursor to stuff as diverse as "The Shining," "The Others," and "The Sixth Sense." Deborah Kerr is still the same proper governess from "The King and I," but with a hysterical edge and some added crow's feet that makes a line like: "You're so young and pretty" a little dubious. (James intended for the governess to be 20; Kerr's Miss Giddens is closer to 40.)
Miss Giddens is assigned to take care of two seemingly cherubic kids, Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (an extremely eerie Martin Stephens), in a beautiful country state that is haunted, (aren't they all?) By what, exactly, watch and find out: it's well worthwhile. Still suspenseful after fifty years, "The Innocents" offers horror of the psychological variety as the screws are turned on the audience, so to speak, (and Miss Giddens loses hers). Tortoises bedecked with flowers, roaches crawling out of a statue's mouth, broken-necked doves: the script gets a lot of mileage out of the natural surroundings, and the canny lighting design makes a threat out of every pale face. Overall, "The Innocents" is less scary than it is unsettling- but as the abnormal sexuality of the original is brought to the fore, there will be at least one moment that will make you say: "Wow! They didn't just go there... did they?" They did.

Alexander Sokurov's "Alexandra"

Alexandra ambles through a military camp in Chechnya, serving as prosthetic grandmother to the Russian soldiers who have been baked into a kind of stupor by the stifling heat. Alexandra mumbles, complains about her legs, shushes the young soldiers if she finds them insolent, ignores all military strictures, and travels out of the camp to the marketplace in a bullet-holed village nearby. Most of all, she wants to understand.
Alexander Sokurov (who also directed the alleged-one-take wonder that is "Russian Ark") is a man of observation, so he finds the perfect screen counterpart in this portly old lady who considers every corner of the compound worthy of inspection. As Alexandra, Russian opera legend Galina Vishnevskaya gives a powerful performance, specially when she opens herself to other Chechen women- ("men hate each other, but women are always sisters," the movie declares not too convincingly.) But reducing the conflict to a question of an old woman's loneliness seems demeaning to the occupied; particularly when that woman's recommendation to the (rightfully!) upset young men who are being dehumanized by the conquering troops is someting like: "Hey, don't let your anger consume you. Instead, learn how to be a nice boy!" How would you like your invader's grandmother to come visit you and instruct you on "letting it be"?

Warren Ellis' "Anna Mercury" Volume 1: The Cutter

One reads the first issue of "Anna Mercury" wondering if the same Warren Ellis who writes "Transmetropolitan" could have written this witless "babe-with-guns" action romp: Anna Mercury dives through New Ataraxia, your average future city, like she's escaping from being cast in a Wachowski brothers movie, her big hair reminding us of Katey Sagal in her "Married with Children" days. It isn't until the very last page that Ellis sweeps the rug from under us with a neat little revelation, and THAT'S what keeps you going through the rest of the mini-series. All the same, this is not Ellis' finest work. Facundo Percio's "Heavy Metal"-type illustrations are fun, though.

Alex Gibney's "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson"

Hunter S. Thompson is an odd bird in the American aviary. Admired by the left (the impressive drug intake!), tolerated by the right (the gun fetish!) I can't think of very many other people who get eulogized by "Rolling Stone"'s Jann Werner and Pat Buchanan- but that's more or less what happens in Alex Gibney's "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson," a documentary narrated by Johnny Depp. Gibney is becoming one of our most prominent documentarians ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", "Taxi to the Dark Side," an upcoming film on Jack Abramoff), and he's very good at placing a relatively skimpy biography of Thompson within a political context that makes the good doctor seem more like the madcap biological result of the '60s and '70s than a genuine person, (genuine people are boring.) Tom Wolfe and Thompson's great illustrator, Ralph Steadman, also offer their insights. Spider Jerusalem's input must have been left in the cutting room floor.

"The Creation Situation"- Or Why I Hate the Big Bang Theory

Dear Imaginary Reader:
It's true, "The Big Bang Theory" rubs me the wrong way- like when you rub a balloon against your hair, and it creates static electricity. Oooh, I'm a NERD, I've heard of "science." The thing itself is not technically any unfunnier than "Two and a Half Men," which reruns have made me tolerate- and if I grew to love "The George Lopez Show," I'll probably end up getting used to this too when it becamse hallowed by Nick at Nite, but at this point in time, I detest it for the same reasons that other people seem to like it. I am shocked by how many "nerds" are going: "Finally we get 'represented'!" REPRESENTED? By, what, by a show that makes knowledge of simple physics seem like a social aberration, intelligence a personality flaw, and an understanding of how reality works an OPTION? If everyone spent time learning things instead of memorizing KeSha lyrics we wouldn't be caught in this wave of ignorance and superstition that seems to drown any attempts at logical thinking in public.
No, "nerds" are not "finally represented" by "The Big Bang Theory" at ALL.



But just to be ahead of the curb here's a sample of my spec script for "The Creation Situation," where I try to hit another "underserved" demographic.

"THE CREATION SITUATION"
Theme song:
"The Bible was written by God and not by men/
Even though it kind of sounds the other way now and then.
If something in it seems weird or out of fashion/
It will make a lot more sense after you watch Mel Gibson's 'Passion'!
So sit down and relax and laugh your way back to the Garden/
Where everybody's naked, but nobody gets a hard-on!
Which suits us well
Because oh hell
There is no masturbation/
So let's everybody enjoy "The Creation Situation"!



INT. APARTMENT- NIGHT
COOKIE, the hot, atheist, completely amoral babe from across the hall enters, wearing nothing but a towel. She parades before JEREMIAH the Bible-Code Geek, JOB the downer, and ADAM the nice handsome Christian guy. Jeremiah is wearing a shirt that says: "Got Exodus 33:3?"

COOKIE: "Hey guys, my shower's not working so I was wondering if I could interrupt your Bible study... Hey, you're actually playing a game!"
JOB: "It's Monopoly, the Bible Edition! Pass Go, Don't Collect $200 and go straight to HELL."
JEREMIAH: "Which is in New Jersey. With my grandma." (canned laughter.)
ADAM: "Ha! I got hotels in Jerusalem AND Park Place! Read 'em and weep, witches, which I shall not suffer to live!"
JOB: "He always wins, he's pre-destined." (mild laughter)
ADAM: "Hate the win, not the winner!" (loud laughter)
COOKIE: "Anyway, you don't mind if I take a shower over here?"
JEREMIAH: "Showers are good unless you're in that time of the month in which you are unclean and leprous from your nether parts, in which case we're not allowed to look at you lest you defile us."
COOKIE: "What's he talking about?"
ADAM: "Oh, ignore him, he's been fasting ever since he accidentally had that Devil Cake at the Pentecostal Fair." (laugh laugh) "Go ahead, use the shower. It's all Holy Water, the Pope blessed it."
COOKIE: "Thank you!"
As she goes to the bathroom, she trips over her loose morals and her towel falls off.
JOB: "OH NO! I saw her, her, her, her lands of milk and honey!"
ADAM: "If your right eye offends you..."
JOB: "I know, I know. I guess I'll go PLUCK MYSELF." (loud laughter, some coughs, Job exits, and Cookie steps into the shower.)
COOKIE (calling out): "Oh, guys, can one of you come in here and help me soap up my legs?"
Adam and Jeremiah run comically but finally restrain each other.
ADAM: "WWJD?"
JEREMIAH: "He pretty specifically said we should wash her feet! John 13!" Tries to run, Adam drags him to the floor. (loud laughter)
COOKIE: (from bathroom) "What's holding you guys? This shower is cooold. Oooh, look what it's doing to my..."
ADAM: (shrieks) "Ahh, I feel as tempted as Joseph!"
COOKIE: (from bathroom) "Who's Joseph?"
JEREMIAH: "Jacob's son? Sold by his brothers? Saw the eleven sheaves of corn? Had the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?"
ADAM: "The one who was tempted by Potiphar's wife!"
COOKIE: "Ok, that's PHAR too much Bible for one night!"
(roaring laughtrer, applause, cut to commercials.)

Anyone feeling "represented" yet?

"Extras" Season 1

"Extras" is a very brief series, more in keeping with British standards of brevity than with American super-sizing. I wish we'd had a lot more of Ricky Gervais as Andy Millman and Ashley Jensen as best bud Maggie Jacobs, as the two navigate the fine art of mumbling "watermelon watermelon" in the background of cinematic epics. "Extras" is a quiet show, and not so much a satire of the movie business as an observation of the relationships that form between people who work together at something that no one really cares much about... like "The Office". I particularly liked the fact that at least in Season 1 the show accepts the fact that a man and a woman can be friends without there necessarily being a sexual relationship between them. If it evolves into that or if it was that at one point is not important to the current moment in which- for once in television- a man and a woman can have an intelligent exchange that isn't just an elaborate prelude to fucking.
In six episodes we see Andy and Maggie bumble into backstage situations in that awkward "Curb Your Enthusiasm" way, and we also get lessons on phone sex from Kate Winslet while dressed in full nun regalia; a Christian-Bale-type tirade courtesy of Ben Stiller; Maggie appearing racist before Samuel L. Jackson; Andy tolerating Patrick Stewart's pitch of a movie where the great Picard gets to undress women at will. There's two other episodes with "stars" of decidedly more Brittanic appeal. (Ross Kemp? Vinnie Jones? Les Daniels?) Stephen Merchant as Darren Lamb, the ultimate inept agent, is a great foil. "Extras" is not exactly uproarious, but it is wonderful, observant comedy and really the shame is that there's so little of it. These people don't get to shine nearly as much as you would want them to.

CHAPTER 108: A GREAT MAN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE

Let's leave Marat philosophizing about bodies, souls and pocket watches, and check on a more accredited philosopher over at the Rue Plastriere. Jean Jacques Rousseau (George Carlin) sits at a table, mentally reviewing his refusal to join Joseph Balsamo's conspiracy. Spread before him are his biggest literary hits: "Emile," "The Social Contract" and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Gallstone."
ROUSSEAU: "Such esprit, such righteous condemnation against the monarchy, such incendiary prose, and paragraphs big enough to drown a rhinoceros! Oh, what a great writer I was! But... Am I too blame for these rebels out there, planning a slaughter? If the world drowns in blood, was it me who opened the fountains with my pen, my glorious pen?"
He's somewhere between remorse and pride.
R: "Look at this line: 'Let us unite to plan our happiness! Let us give our virtues the force others give their vices!' And naturally these fools will unite one day, and the police shall storm the proceedings, and one of them will take a book out of his pocket and say: 'Hey, we're just doing what Monsieur Rousseau recommended!' I probaly AUTOGRAPHED the book! Voltaire would NEVER have gotten into this mess!"
"That's right, he wouldn't have," says a sour voice beind him as his wife, Therese (Rhea Perlman) enters the room with a glass of hot milk which she "accidentally" drops on the open pages.



"Oooops! What, are you reading your OWN books? Are they making any more sense the hundredth time around? Getting more inspiration for the next 'best-seller'?"
R: "Please, Therese, I'm mopey enough on my own."
THERESE: "And you should be! Writing indecent nonsense, with all that sex and violence and questioning of the government..."
"You're right, you are," he says much to her surprise. "I won't write like that again. From now on I will only write happy books, with happy pigs and cuddly cats who are friends and go on constructive adventures and help widows and..."
T: "And then they rape the widows, judging by your previous literary output!"
R: "No! HAPPY BOOKS! HAPPY PIGS! CUDDLY CATS! No rapes and no revolutions!"
This scene of domestic affability is interrupted when someone rings the door, and Therese introduces a handsome nobleman called MONSIEUR DE COIGNY, a gentleman-in-waiting to the Dauphin. De Coigny is handsome enough that he will play a role in the SAMAS in the future, (don't leave unattended handsome boys around the Court too long) but for now he simply bows before Rousseau, takes a curious look around the modest room where botanic samples alternate with molding books, and says:
"Do I have the honor of speaking to the great Rousseau? I come from her Royal Highness, the Dauphiness."
At the thought of Marie Antoinette's well-known pouty charms, Rousseau reddens, while Therese is eyeing the fine example set by M. de Coigny's tight pants.
COIGNY: "Here's the story. The other day at Trianon, the King happened to sing a song of yours. He's a big fan of your lyrics. Me too! Noticing this, the Dauphiness, who wants to please her father-in-law, came up with the idea of performing one of your comic operas in the little theater at the Trianon. So I come to ask..."
R: "Don't worry. The plays and songs belong to the theaters that bought them from me and fleeced me off the profits. You don't need my permission, and those theaters will gladly play for the King."
C: "That isn't what I ask. Marie Antoinette is looking for a different kind of show. See, the KING hearts your shows, so Marie Antoinette thought it would be nice if the ladies and gentlemen of the court were part of the production, with the Dauphin and the Dauphiness playing the main roles."
R: "Monsieur, I am honored!"
"He's honestly honored," adds Therese. "Best thing that's happened to us since that time he found a gold tooth stuck in his bread."
C: "That's not all. This special performance for the King must have a special organizer, someone who has a deep understanding of the matter and the theatre, and the Dauphiness sent me out to seek such a person."
R: "sighs* "Gotcha. Yeah, I've got Voltaire's address somewhere around, lemme see..."
T: "He's talking about you, you nit-wit!"
R: "Me? At the Trianon? Impossible! I'm the misanthrope, the philosopher, the anti-establishment figure! They'll laugh their breeches off!"
C: "You can't be worried by people laughing, you who may very well be the Kingdom's greatest author. If you feel insecure, then that's what they'll pick on and laugh at. Always act like you belong wherever you are, and if someone doesn't think you belong there, then that's their problem."
R: "You've read my books, I see."
C: "Time to let all that literature work for you, Rousseau. Besides, no one will laugh when the desires of the King and the Dauphiness are at play. Are you worried that you will seem like a sell-out?"
R: "I'm worried I'll be out of place with the happy party people at court. Not my crowd. I'm sorry."
C: "You have to do something about this self-esteem problem, my man. You are the guy who wrote the 'Nouvelle Heloise'! Those court people can't put together a good sonnet with glue and duct-tape."
R: "That's why I don't go near them!"
C: "They're waiting for you, there's an apartment prepared at the Trianon. This is all an hour and a half away. The Dauphin, soon-to-be Louis XVI, knows your works by heart. We want you there!" Coigny winks: "There's lots of pretty dumb impressionable girls there!"
T: "Why didn't you tell him that at the beginning?"
Indeed Jean Jacques has been seduced by the clamouring court, but he must put his personal stamp on the affair: "Ok. I will make it to the Trianon, but I will do so by using the public transportation system."
C: "Which is?"
R: "I'll ask my neighbor for a horse and a boxcart."
C: "Do as you will." Monsieur de Coigny flashes one more handsome smile and disappears.
Therese picks up the rolling pin:
"You FOOLosopher!!!"
And the pin goes down on the next episode!

Personal

I shy away from the personal (after many lessons learned) but since this does work as a diary of sorts, I should note that recently my Mom slipped into a diabetic coma. She's with us now, but we welcome all prayers from believers, well-wishes from agnostics, and monetary contributions from atheists.

"Black Adder" Series 1

Before giving the Phantom of the Opera his second or seventeenth act (again, it all depends on how you count), Ben Elton was famous for collaborating with Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson on Seasons 2 onwards of "Black Adder" or "Blackadder" or "The Black Adder," all possibly correct appelations.



Elton wasn't around on season 1, but that's ok, William Shakespeare contributed a gag or two, and things get far better from here on out. I love "Blackadder" and upon a rewatch I realized that should the universe somehow be folded into an impossibly hallucinogenic mass, I would like for the groundbreaking and highly profitable TV Version of the SUPER ABRIDGED MARIE ANTOINETTE SAGA to scandalize people as the obvious "Blackadder" rip-off it is. Also, the SAMAS should contain maybe ten percent more Baldrick and Percy and 3% less Monsieur Richelieu.

"Fear Itself" Season 1

Takin' 'bout horror anthologies! The Mick Garris created "Fear Itself" ran some time back on NBC in an attempt to resuscitate a format that has fallen as out of fashion as variety shows, but always resurfaces under a disguise. What was "The X-Files" if not a horror anthology? What's "Dancing with the Stars" if not a musical variety show?
Mick Garris is best known for his Stephen King adaptations for TV, like "The Stand" and "Riding the Bullet." He's the poor man's Frank Darabont. "Fear Itself" features lots of "Oh, I know you" talent, (Elizabeth Moss before her "Mad Men" days, Shiri Appleby from "Roswell", Cynthia Watross from "Lost") but, and this is a horror curse, it often confuses genre with generic.



Despite the predictability of most episodes and the limitations of network television, I actually found this mix preferable to that of Garris' other creation, (and precursor to this show) Showtime's "Masters of Horror." One grizzly episode in particular, Larry Fessenden's "Skin and Bones," may well be the scariest thing on NBC that doesn't involve Jay Leno. (It's a cheap shot but I'm a cheap, cheap man.)
It's Halloween in April in HALLUCINA! But you're better off celebrating with "Trick 'R Treat".

Michael Dougherty's "Trick 'R Treat"

Ooooh, now Anna Paquin says she's bisexual. Does that mean she's TWICE as unlikely to get down with me?





In Michael Dougherty's anthology "Trick 'R Treat," Paquin plays a Red-Riding-Hood-clad ingenue drifting through an Ohio town that takes its Halloween night to Mardi Gras excesses. She's in one of four (or five, depending how you count) interconnected horror tales that nod equally to John Carpenter's "Halloween" and E.C Comics. Paquin is the biggest name here, (probably caught before her "True Blood" success by producer Bryan Singer, who directed her in "X-Men") and she's one of a group of high-bossomed party girls who must look like walking fountains to the town's bloodsuckers.



Dylan Baker is also here, and if his character is not as creepy as the one he played in Todd Solonz' "Happiness," it's not for lack of trying. Story # 2: Baker plays a school principal hell-bent on teaching trick or treaters all sort of lessons about checking your candy and proper carving techniques. The principal lives next door to a reclusive grumpy old man (excellent Brian Cox, who clearly enjoyed his horror turn in "The Ring"). Story #3: This man is in trouble in the present, and caused trouble in the past, as he may be somehow related to the legendary Halloween School Bus Massacre, which is fodder for Story # 4, involving a cruel Halloween prank that kids organize at a local quarry.
The unofficial fifth story involves the couple played by "Dollhouse"'s Tamoh Pennikett and ex-"Lost"-er Leslie Bibb as a bickering duo who forget to honor All Hallow's Eve sacred rules, ("It's Halloween, not Hanukkah," groans the girl), and in so doing anger the movie's killer mascot, Sammy "Samhain". Sammy follows in the proud tradition of the Puppets and Chucky and Troll and "It's Alive" and all those other movies with diminutive monsters that can be literally kicked across the room with minimal effort.


ABOVE: Isn't he adorable?

"Trick 'R Treat" is a glossy, often amusing movie, and a good addition to the 4-in-1 genre (Remember "Creepshow"?). Its winding nature may perhaps keep it from accelerating forward in classic horror fashion, but it's very enjoyable, and includes what may very well be the first murder by lollipop in the history of cinema. To ask more would be gluttony.

CRITERION: Luchino Visconti's "Le Notti Bianche"

After "Two Lovers" and "White Nights," you must have guessed Luchino Visconti's "Le Notti Bianche" was on its way.



"Le Notti Bianche" it's a woozily romantic movie that manages to externalize Dostoevsky's love-chatter while the camera follows the two main lovers through a small, clever, theatrical set of Italian postered brick walls, lover alleys, and bridges that seduce suicides. Marcello Mastroianni plays the quick-to-love dreamer and even though he's not entirely convincing when he claims he's shy around women, what makes Mastroianni one of the great male icons of cinema cool is that, instead of annoying us with his coolness, he lets us into his character: we become as cool as he is by watching him do his thing. Maria Schell plays Natalia, (manic and pixie-ish before they trademarked that), a wide eyed child of repression and subsequent exaggerated passion- for another man, of course, not our guy. Her erratic giddiness leads the dreamer boy to angrily refer to her as "pazza" (crazy) more than a few times, and cruel as the expression is, it's hard not to make a similar diagnosis. Jean Marais (Jean Cocteau's muse/ man-whore) plays Natalia's enigmatic lover with the matinee-looks, who may or may not return to her.



Visconti's take on the simple tale is brilliant. While the movie is openly a love story, it's also more subdued than James Gray's take: we don't need suicide attempts here. When Mastroainni wanders the white nights and wistfully measures the height of a bridge, he's not exactly suicidal- it's more like it pleases him to know the possibility is there. Emotional release comes in the form of a pub dance scene set to Bill Haley and His Comets' "13 Women," a moment as savage and exhilarating as a Fellini orgy. Watch Marcello Mastroianni bust out his inner "Napoleon Dynamite".



I also enjoyed the silent neighbors of Visconti's 'hood, the bums and barflies and lonely women who shift in the background and have lives of their own that only ocassionally intersect with those of our protagonists. This struck me as genius. One could go through "Le Notti Bianche" digitally deleting Mastroianni and Schell's parts, and still watch this second, voyeuristic, hidden film.
But the best thing in this movie, which separates it even from the Dostoevsky original, is its wisdom: Natalia's obtrusive love for "the other man" is not condescended to. The American movie might have (I should say indeed MADE) the "other man" a cheater, worthy of our contempt, manipulative. But Visconti understands that there one more than one good love story going on out in the world: the ones here are equally magic and "meant to be" and valid, they just happen to sadly conflict in time.

Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Conversation with the Devil"

"Some get spiritual 'cause they see the light, some 'cause they feel the heat"

I very much dig this song from Ray Wylie Hubbard's 1999 album "Crusades of the Restless Knights." I dig it with both shovels. It's distinctly in the humorous mode of Bob Dylan's talkin', bluesy dreaming, but hey, if you can rip off Dylan and get it right, you're halfway there.



I had a dream last night, I was cast into Hell by a jealous God
The Devil walked up and said: "You don't need no lightning rod
It hardly ever rains down here, can't recall the last storm
You ain't gonna need that leather jacket, it gets kinda warm.
There's one way in, there's no way out, looks like you're to stay
The place is a mess, it's overcrowded, more are coming in everyday."

I said: "Oh man, wait a minute, there's gotta be something wrong,
I ain't a bad guy, just write these little songs,
I always pay my union dues, don't stay in the passing lane."
And he said: "What about all that whiskey? And the cocaine?"
I said: "Well, yeah, but that's no reason to throw me into Hell
'Cause I didn't use the cocaine to get high, I just liked the smell."

He said: "Come on over here, son, let me show you around,
Over there's where we put the preachers, I never liked those clowns,
They're always blaming me for everything wrong under the sun:
It ain't harder to do what's right, it's just maybe not as much fun.
They walk around thinking they're better than me and you,
Then they get caught in a motel room, doing what they said not to do.

Now the murderers and the rapists they go in this fiery lake,
As well as most of the politicians, and the cops on the take.
And all the mothers who wait to get to KMart to spank their kids
Instead of showing them what's right, they just hit 'em for what they
did.
And all the daddys who run off, abandon their daughters and sons
Oh, anybody that hurts a child is gonna burn until they're done."

"Everybody is down here," I said. "Who's up in Heaven with God and the Son?"
"Oh, some saints and mystics and students of Metaphysics One-oh-One,
People who care and share and love and try to do what's right
Beautiful old souls who read stories to their babies every night
What you WON'T find up in Heaven are: Christian Coalition Right Wing Conservatives
Country program directors- Nashville record executives."

Now I said: "I've made some mistakes, but I'm not as bad as THOSE guys!
How can God to this to me, or can't He sympathize?"
He said: "You're wrong about God being cruel and mean
Oh, God is the most loving thing that's never been seen."
I said: "Hotshot, tell me this, which religion is the truest?"
He said: "They're all about the same. Budda was not a Christian, but Jesus
woulda made a good Buddhist."

Well, I thought about my future, I didn't seem to have much of one
I looked around to leave but there was no place to run
I said: "I don't suppose I could go back and try living again
You know, like reincarnation? I hear that's the way it's always been."
"I can't answer that," he said, "You're gonna have to wait for that response
But it's not any more unusual to be born twice than it is to be born once."

Well, it looked like I was gonna be stuck here as far as I could tell
I thought I might as well suck up... You know, what the Hell?
I said: "You know that song that Charlie Daniels did
About how you went down to Georgia and played fiddle against that kid?"
He said:"Yeah, it broke my heart, but you know, what are you gonna do?"
I said: "To tell you the truth, I thought your solo was the better of the two."

Well then I woke up, and I was lying in my bed,
I went upstairs and kissed my little boy on his sleeping head.
I took this dream as a sign from God, so I thought I'd better pray.
I said: "Don't ever speak to me directly, and thanks anyway!"
Now so much has changed about me, besides just giving up red meat.
Some get spiritual 'cause they see the light, some 'cause they feel the
heat.

"Crazy Heart" Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

"It all happens for a reason, even when it's wrong. ESPECIALLY when it's wrong."



Music producers are supposed to stay out of the way, so the consensus goes; an "overproduced" album is meant to inspire shivers, and their success is often measured by how they convey the artist's vision. "What's that, John Lennon? You want your song to sound like an orange? We'll see." But then there's someone like T-Bone Burnett, who manages to make it seem like the artists are conveying HIS vision. You know a T-Bone track, whether it's in that new Stephen King musical, or from Elvis Costello or Brandi Carlile or Jakob Dylan. I can only think of two or three other producers who can similarly take ownersip of someone else's song from the outside in- and really only two: Phil Spector and Timbaland. (Suggest names at will.) No one ever said: "Hmmm, I like this song playing now. I don't know the artist but that's GOTTA BE Steve Lillywhite producing." (Same goes for Mitchell Froom or Steve Albini or Rick Rubin or whomever-you-will. The big names of my formative rock years may date me.)

The "Crazy Heart" soundtrack is a great Burnett record. For years he's been recapturing an Americana that slided slightly out of view. Classic songs like Buck Owens' "Hello Trouble," Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" or Lightnin' Hopkins "Once a Gambler" serve as background to Jeff Bridges' impressive tracks- as though the actor was the unforeseeable heir to a musical tradition one would never have even guessed he was interested in. Bridges is good on "Brand New Angel" and "Hold On You," but it's "Fallin' and Flyin'," the duet with Colin Farrell, that will have looking for your rollicking boots. (They're hiding behind the emptied out Jim Bean bottles.)





Ryan Bingham's Oscar winning "Weary Kind" ("pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try") sums things for "Crazy Heart," much like Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler" did for its film. Can you hear T-Bone's production?

Spoon's "Transference"

Are you quite certain, love?

Love never dies, except for sometimes, so Britt Daniel and the boys from Spoon wonder "Is Love Forever?"


"Transference" is another good album in a long line of good albums. It is not an overt reaction to the relative commercial success of "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." I remember how bizarre it was when I first heard "The Underdog" at a local Winn-Dixie, (althought of course the years have made "The Way We Get By" one of those all-purpose anthems that might as well be selling tampons.) They could have stepped farther into the mainstream, might have even floated, or they could have retreated into "we hate Billboard" experimentation, but they've done neither, keeping things steady. The songs are maybe a little muddier than the ones in "GGGGG" but they're generally winners or groovers. Along with album-poppiest "Is Love Forever?" there's the equally questioning "Who Makes Your Money?" "Written in Reverse," (don't worry, it's no "Northern Song") and "Mystery Zone."


Friendly Freudian Note: 'Transference' means you re-direct your feelings from one person or event to another person or event. Like, when you're annoyed because your overbearing boss said you waste too much office paper, and then you go home to your kids and drown them in the bathtub as a coping mechanism. That's 'Transference.'

Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Love Never Dies"

ABOVE: "Love Never Dies Another Day with a Golden Mask."

Every one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's considerable instincts for greed have gone into making the sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera," "Love Never Dies," which just opened on the West End and, unless massive flopping ensues, will haunt Broadway sometime in 2011. Far as I know, there hasn't been a brazen stage sequel since "Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge." (No joke, don't laugh, that was a real serious thing, just like mesothelioma.)


ABOVE: Rich Tory Bastard! Or is it Whig? Loyalist? Royalist? Labour? I dunno, I can never tell what the hell the British are up to.

Problem:
Lloyd Webber has been gasping to get this one out for almost twenty years, and incited Frederick Forsythe into writing 1999's "Phantom of Manhattan," a novel/treatment/shit-bag which I had the misfortune of reading and included- of all the things one would want in a "Phantom of the Opera" sequel- the Phantom's charitable attempts to raise social awareness about our neighbors with physical deformities.
Problem:
There's the titular ballad here, "Love Never Dies," with a melody that Lloyd Webber has been pimping for just as long, (no one's buying). First it was called "The Heart Is Slow to Learn," then the lyrics changed and it was called "Our Kind of Love" and was the big ballad for "The Beautiful Game"- easily the greatest musical ever written about soccer and terrorism, because it's the only one. Watch "Love Never Dies" as sung by hottie Sierra Boggess, LND's new Christine. If somehow you managed to block out the words, it might even be pretty music. (Sierra's voice is not as distinctive as Sarah Brightman's, but on the other hand has a lot less potential for annoyance.)


ABOVE: This Sierra chick is actually pretty hot considering they won't let her be in movies and has to settle for 'stage roles' bollocks.



Problem:
There's that NAME, that claw-you-in-the-face-with-its-blandness name. What's wrong with "Phantom 2: His Unholy Creations"? Scan down the song list and it might indeed produce horror: "'Til I Hear You Sing"? "Look With your Heart?" "Beneath a Lonely Moon"? "Beautiful"? That's not my Phantom! I recall the Phantom's song tracks being a lot rowdier, like "Phantom Strikes Again," "The Phantom Shoves a Chandelier Down the Audience's Throat," "The Awesome Lake of Snakes," etc, real powerful stuff.
Problem:
The plot, culled from Forsythe's book and new ideas by Ben Elton, (Webber's recent to-go-collaborator, the man who gave us the genius of "Black Adder.") The Phantom of the Opera doesn't have an Opera anymore! Now he lives in Coney Island! "The Phantom of Coney Island"? What, he sings deadly arias from a rollercoaster while getting his mask full of pink cotton candy?

Everything about "Love Never Dies" is egregious, absurd, maybe even insulting to admirers of the original like myself, (we give the Tea Party a run for phanaticism), so I was there with my half mask ready to throw the new record into Parisian sewers, and, eh... you know *shrugs*
I'm sad to report, it just ain't that bad.

I expected LND to be this young decade's laugh-out-loud theatrical disaster, but we may simply have to wait a little longer until the inevitable Alice in Chains jukebox musical. "Love Never Dies" is more like one of those steady Hollywood rehash jobs, and really the bigger jeerers will be those deluded denizens of Broadway's dark alleys who still don't get why 89-year old Michael Crawford wasn't cast in the movie version of "Phantom." Anyone else who accepted the original's treacly poperetta fun will find more of the same here. True, the music is not as rousing. (Yes, I do find the "Phantom" theme rousing, as do a bunch of Finnish Goth-metal fans apparently.) But it IS some sort of comeback for Webber, the only decent thing he's done since the underrated, misunderstood "Sunset Boulevard."


The story contains a surprise or two: It's 10 years later and Raoul, (the pretty boy Vicomte de Chagney who whisked Opera ingenue Christine away from disfigured genius Erik on part 1) has turned out to be a dissolute drunk who's barfed on roulette tables all over Europe and winds up with his disappointed wife and his son in Coney Island doing shows for a Mister Y... Get it get it get it? (And don't stop to think that since the Phantom's name is Erik, Mister E. would have been even more appropriate, except that Batman's Mr. E. Nigma- aka The Riddler- might get litigious.) It builds to a foreshadowed plot twist that surprised me on first listen; perhaps because I'm missing lots of visual cues as a mere listener, perhaps because it's so over the top that it might have involved a murder-by-butler.


ABOVE: "Just because I'm wearing a mask, doesn't mean I can't see down your cleavage."

As for the score, whereas the original was very much 1880 opera, LND is fonder of Oscar Hammerstein-type operetta and boardwalk ditties. After a few listens, as it goes with these things, one gets hooked on many melodies and motifs but there's really only four or five stand-alone songs here that aren't plot props. Two are of note as necessary additions to that next "Greatest ALW Hits" package.
On the "Music of the Night" corner there's "'Til I Hear You Sing," which, as sung by new Phantom Ramin Karimloo, smells of Munster cheese but becomes second nature after LND's many reprises, encores, redundancies and repetitions.

On the "Phantom Theme" corner there's "The Beauty Underneath," the show's sole sign of musical energy, made even better when it comes poised after a punising stretch of slow ballads. Heaven help me and my terrible musical taste, I honestly love this song: May it one day get a decent cover. (BTW, the Phantom is not seducing a choirboy in this song. It only SOUNDS like that's what's going on.)

CHAPTER 108: THE MYSTERY OF THE WATCH

And so Madame Grivette, that excellent do-it-all maid who was until now entirely too unimportant for us to bother with, enters Marat’s attic. Joseph is surprised to realize that she’s not the aging crone his previous surveillance indicated. She’s only 35 or 40, a tall crooked branch of woman, with dark bags hanging under blue eyes. Once upon a less urban lifetime she might have been handsome, but here in Paris in the swinging ‘70s, all the scrubbing doors and polishing knobs has gotten to her looks, has withered and blistered her hands. And in Dumas’ land, it is ALL about the hands.
Those hands are now holding a letter, which Marat dismisses:
“Don’t need more bills. I needed to talk to you about my beloved watch.”



GRIVETTE: “Who knows, monsieur? It was hanging over the mantelpiece yesterday.”
MARAT: “Not true, I had it in my pocket all day until 6. Then I hid it under the candlestick, because I was going out among the poor and the oppressed, and they’re a bunch of thieves.” He turns to Balsamo. “Socio-economic crime, of course. Not their fault.”
G: “Then under the candlestick it must be, la la la. ” She lifts up the candlestick to reveal…
A bunch of ants playing house, but no watch. Marat slaps his forehead.
M: “Obviously that’s the first place I looked, woman! Are you toying with me?”
G: “Maybe someone snuck in here. And they were wearing a hood over their heads. And they sort of flew out the attic window afterwards. Sounds believable to me.”
M: “No, my watch is exactly in the same place as my silver chain and my silver spoon and my silver slice of silver. I’m getting fleeced here, Madame Grivette.”
G: “WhatEVER are you implying, Monsieur Marat?”
M: “What, you need a cop to translate? Because I’ll call one if my watch doesn’t appear in one hour.”
G: “And unless you can come up with evidence of these accusations, that cop will tell you all about a little legal issue called ‘slander’. The land lord had been teaching me all about that.”
Marat chomps down on his ugly lower lip: the landlord is rich, powerful, and the talkier people in town say that he’s got a little thing going on the side with Madame Grivette. Marat is not rich, is not powerful, goes to secret meetings, writes a lot of seditious pamphlets, looks like a good old terrorist and, should a real cop materialize in his attic, our young surgeon is more than likely to find new lodgings in the shady rooms of the Bastille.
Madame Grivette, seeing him cowed, shrieks out insults and makes threats and flings her arms about until a sighing Balsamo stands up, sneaks up behind her and, raising that phenomenal arm in the woman’s direction, says: “SLEEP!”
The 35 to 40 year old maid plonks down on the only available bed, where her eyes roll up and her hands dance feverishly.
M: “Yes, like in the hospital! Thank you, Master!”
Joseph silences him imperiously: “Just hand me that letter she dropped.” A surprised Marat obeys. Joseph places the letter against the woman’s suddenly sweating forehead and tells the sleeper: “Read us the contents of this letter.”
M: “That woman can’t READ. What do you think she is, a millionaire?”
Balsamo shrugs: “All souls can read in all languages.” And Madame Grivette speaks up on cue with that now familiar ‘spirity’ voice:

“’My hypocritical Hippocrates’- says the letter- “Our buddy Apellas actually sold a painting, and made fifty francs, so tonight we celebrate by eating those fifty francs at the tavern in St. Jacques. Oh, and by ‘eating’ I mean ‘drinking’, so come.
Your friend,
Jacques-Louis David, who may end up making a famous painting out of you, who knows.’”

Balsamo turns to Marat, whose skepticism is folding on itself accordion-like.
BALSAMO: “The soul is literate and sees and knows much the body hides from it.”
M: “Yes, body and soul, soul and body, we heard. Now where’s my watch? Ask her.”
“I do not know,” screams the somnambulist, jerking up on the bed. Balsamo gently lays a hand on the woman’s wrist.
B: “You DO know. And you will tell.”
The body on the bed tosses, the woman’s hair is matted with sweat around her features: “No, I won’t say, kill me first!” And then she raises again, her fingers reaching out like claws to our sorcerer who leaps away from the bed and roars: “Confess!”
Mid-motion, Madame Grivette’s body freezes, and that unrecognizable voice pours forth: “Madame Grivette took the watch.”
B: “To do what with it?”
G: “Give it to Simon.”
B: “Simon?”
G: “He lives in No. 29, Rue St. Jacques.”
B: “Fine, but who’s Simon?”
G: “A shoemaker’s apprentice.”
B: “But who is he?”
G: “MY LOVER!”
Balsamo and Marat exchange confused glances. “Why would you do this?”
Madame Grivette’s soul whimpers: “So he would love me.” The body, in turn, bursts into tears.
Balsamo stands up, pleased, rubbing his hands: “This woman has conquered a demon today, Marat, the demon of deceit. May all you’ve seen conquer your demon of pride. Otherwise, I fear for you.”

“Master!” says the surgeon, but Balsamo has left the room, leaving the sleeping woman on Marat’s bed. Marat approaches the body: “Wow! A woman in my bed. At last! Somehow I pictured it being less creepy.”
As he leans in, Madame Grivette’s tear soaked face presses against his chest, and Marat lets out a little terrified squeak.
G: “Come, Monsieur Marat! To the Rue St. Jacques! The Master obeys!”
And with the agility of a ghost the sleep-runner throws herself out of the attic and down the stairs to the steet, while the surgeon wisely does everything this moving quasi-corpse commands.

And there they are at No. 29, Rue St. Jacques, where a working man of 25 or 30 seems glad to be greeting Grivette, then mad to be meeting Marat.
The somnambulist glides past her lover to his night-drawer, and returns from it with the silver watch. As Marat's fingers close on the watch, Madame Grivette’s body spasms, and there she is awake among them.
She looks at her lover, Simon; at Marat; at the watch in Marat’s hand, and understands all.
Understanding it all, she faints again.
Marat whispers softly: “Awww. Poor thing. How you must have suffered through all this ordeal.”
He is, of course, talking to his watch.

David Allen's "Puppet Master 2: His Unholy Creations"

Not only of Bergman lives man.



"Puppet Master 2: His Unholy Creations" is directed by David Allen- who oversees the puppet action- but Charles Band is the man whose vision you should praise, or throw little dolls at. A "just-as-good-in-that-crappy-way" continuation to "Puppet Master," "His Unholy Creations"
pulls a back story out of its wooden ass. Don't you love it when film makers are like: "We sure hope we get to make a sequel, or 8, so we can explain the things that don't make sense in the original, like, for instance, why the series is called Puppet Master when the Puppet Master dies in the first scene and the puppets run around most emphatically masterless?"
It's sometime after the 'events' in "Puppet Master," only a year or two later but the costumes and outfits are very "Thirtysomething" instead of "L.A. Law" and practically sensible by my aesthetics. Back at the once-more-abandoned Bodega Bay Inn, ANOTHER group of paranormal investigators gather to look intently at things in monitors and measure orgasmic vibes. Meanwhile the resourceful puppets resurrect Andre Toulon from the local sematary, and the fleshy corpse comes shambling into the hotel gauzed up like "The Invisible Man," behaving aristocratically possesive like "The Phantom of the Opera," and calling himself, should the allussions ellude you, "Eriquee Channee." (Erick is the Phantom of the Opera's seldom used 'real' name; Channee is of course a nod to Lon Chaney, the greatest of horror actors, who played the Phantom and the Invisible Man and the Hunchbak of Notre Dame and the Wolfman and the original Freddy Kruegger.)
There's a flashback to a 1910 carnivalesque puppet-show- (oh wow, this is exactly like that "Phantom of the Opera" sequel I'll shortly rant about)- and we learn how Andre Toulon received his stringless puppetry gifts from an Egyptian magus, and how that cutesy killer Blade used to play Mephistopheles in a marionette show.



Yes, the back story of a piece of painted bark is one of the best moments here, although I nearly cried when sexy puppet Leecher is prematurely incinerated! :-( Noooo, not Leecher!



She gets replaced in the puppet hierarchy by bullet-toothed World War 1 relic "Torch". I didn't care for this addition until Torch firesomely punishes a local kid who's into whipping his G. I. Joe.
Heheheh, "whipping his G. I. Joe." Is THAT what they're calling it now?
You can watch the movies on You Tube courtesy of fullmoondirect.com, but really just catch that bit at the 7 minute point. You'll see the little boy had it coming.

Thank you Jeopardy!!!

Without you, I would never ever EVER have learned that Anais Nin was technically Cuban (though born in France). See, world, there's more to Cubans than Perez Hilton, baseball players, the Buena Vista Social Club, dictators, Gloria Estefan and people who break into the Watergate hotel.



Maybe I should get a box of tissues and try reading "Delta of Venus" again.

Fiodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights"

"And was it his destined part
Only one moment in his life
To be close to your heart?
- Turgenev




Fiodor Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" left an immense impression upon me, even if I feel like wagging a finger at him for cannily disavowing the Underground Man's psychology as abnormal and reprehensible in the prologue. Of course what makes the book a classic is that the eternally ill-at-ease, angry, insecure mad man of a narrator IS Dostoevsky- and also us the readers, if we're sane at all. It's very relatable stuff. J. D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" seems to me to be this century's- ooops, last century's- direct descendant of that crazy Underground Man in his confessional mode.



Aside from "Notes," "The Gambler," and about a third of "The Brothers Karamazov" (which I loved but lost in a city bus) I'm woefully unfamiliar with Dostoevsky's work, so after seeing "Two Lovers" I thought I might check out "White Nights," the source story.
Its hero is perhaps that same Underground Man, except now he embraces his over-thinker's urban alienation with romantic enthusiasm: "I'm a 'type', a 'dreamer'," he explains himself to Nastenska, the young girl he meets upon a bridge one snowy night. Like all dreamers, he's quick to interpret the chance meeting as a sign that love has at last come to disrupt his reclusion, and deposits his dreams at Nastenska's feet. "We've been brought together! We must never part!"
Nastenska's all like: "YES! YES! You're so right! I feel like I've known you forever, and can share my secrets at last! You're such a great FRIEND! So let me tell you aaaaaall about this douchey guy I'm into! Oh, wanna come to my wedding?!?"

What's Russian for "Ouch"?

Relatable stuff, I tell you.

The prose may be lofty- as the narrator freely confesses- but "White Nights" is eerily timeless and placeless, with hardly a moment to suggest it was written in 1848 instead of 1948 or 2008. The relatable simplicity of the plot- the way it touches almost anyone who's spent time engaged in conversation with the opposite sex- may be a reason why it's inspired a disproportionate number of film versions all over the world: "Two Lovers," yes, but also Luchino Visconti's "Le Notti Bianche," Robert Bresson's "Four Nights of a Dreamer," and, to some extent, Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise," (not to mention, curiously enough, three or four Hindi flicks)-
And the VIDEOGAME VERSION!!!- with a new ending warning us about the perils of nicotine addiction!!!
Oh, Internet, is there anything you DON'T have? Other than taste?
As a Spanish commenter says: "Forgive them, Dostoevsky, they know not what they do."