CHAPTER 116: VIRGIN BLOOD

It is the very next afternoon, and Joseph Balsamo (Johnny Depp) sits in his office in the Rue Saint Claude, doing a Sherlock Holmes routine on an unsigned letter brought in by his man Fritz (Daniel Craig).
JOSEPH: "Large, agressive writing: Must be a noble. Shaky letters: Must be an old man. And it's misspelled and illegible: Must be a politician. Ah, no need to consult Lorenza. The letter is from the Marshal Duke de Richelieu, and he intends to drop by in half an hour or so."
The tinkling of a crystalline, desperate bell interrupts the detection, and Joseph solicitously goes to see what's going on with Lorenza Feliciani (Monica Bellucci). Down spiraling staircases made of pure darkness, he marches to his beloved's prison- issuing his command of "SLEEP" before entering the secluded apartment, then double-checking with more "SLEEP!" because an awake Lorenza is an invitation to a clawing.
The beautiful Italian maiden, clad in a rich sleeping gown, has stumbled to a couch in her magnetic sleep and, according to Dumas, bears a favorable comparison with the Ariadnes of Van Loo.


ABOVE: And here's an Ariadne from Van Loo. Work of art.

I prefer to think it's more like this:


ABOVE: And here's a Monica from Italy. Work of art.

Joseph delights on heaving, despairing bossoms, so he tenderly ogles her as he enters the apartment, eventually drawing Lorenza out of her somnolence. Her eyes open, her gaze is disoriented for only a moment as she sits upright: then she smooths back her long, black hair and exhibits such general poise that Joseph feels a slight pang of alarm. "You can sit next to me," she says coyly.
J: "Next to you? Lorenza, I want to spend my life at your FEET!"
L: "Sit down, all the same. I have something to tell you, a favor to ask."
J: "Say it, name it, fortunes will be spent satisfying your wishes."
L: "No money needed. Sir, you know full well my despair, my anguish in this prison, you know my youth is wasted in one long, silent scream."
J: "This was your call. You made me do this."
L: "And if I made you do this, then who can I turn to but you? And so I need that small favor." Her voice breaks slightly: "Let me see somebody else. Anyone. Just a human face before I die. To feel like I've had a friend. Let me walk about outside, just a little bit. I'm so lonely!"
J: "But Lorenza, I have confided so much in you! I'm mad, because I'm in love, and so I tell you my secrets. You know that my master Althotas has discovered the philosopher's stone, that he's close to discovering the elixir of life. You know my companions and I conspire against the monarchies of this world. If you told anyone, we would be burnt as witches, or hung as traitors. If I let you free for half an hour, you would run to the police, wouldn't you?"
"YES! Yes I would!" Calm and collected Lorenza disappears- that was a brief cameo. She screams: "What do you expect? JUST LET ME GO OUTSIDE, PLEASE!"
He shakes his head: "I would only allow that with your promise to be a loving, devoted wife."
Her eyes rove unconvincingly: "I... would try? Maybe. Who knows, with time!"
J: "Yeah, I'm going to need a little more effort than THAT. You must take a solemn oath before God, an oath that would damn your soul if broken."
She pulls at her hair: "What do you want me to swear?"
J: "Swear you will never disclose Althotas' secrets."
L: "Yes, yes, who cares, I will swear."
J: "Or my political ploys."
L: "That too."
J: "And that you will never leave me. We will swear in a Church, at the Altar, upon the very Host of God!"
L: "NO! That's... That's sacrilege!"
J: "It sure is, if you're planning to break the oath." He sighs. "But I can do something for you, which will cheer you up. In eight days, you will have a companion, a friend, as you wish."
She gasps: "Where are you taking me?"
J: "No, I'm bringing the companion here."
L: "You... You're going to imprison someone else with me? You're going to bury someone alive for me? Until now I was sad for myself, and now you want me to be sad for others too! To have a friend here, and watch their skin grow pale and death creep up in their eyes, watch them break their fingers trying to dig through the walls! Do you have a heart, Sir?"
J: "It would be a HAPPY companion!"
L: "Oh, you meant a guard, then!"
J: "Won't you understand I'm trying to make you happy? A friend might help with your boredom."
L: "You think I'm BORED? I'm not BORED! I'm DYING!" And with this she crumbles to her knees before her stunned captor: "Then do me another favor instead." She looks up and there's a bright, ecstatic smile on her face: "You will make me so happy!"
J: "Which is all I want."
L: "I know you have ways of making someone die painlessly, quickly. I know you've done it in experiments, on rats, on small animals. You open their veins, poison them, take away their air, and you've done it in the name of science. Can you do the same for me, in the name of love? Please? Can you kill me?"
She's trembling, and Joseph's hands dig into her shoulders: "Kill you, Lorenza? How could I kill the only thing I love?"
L: "I'm not a THING," she screams, and twists away from under his grasp: "This is it, Count de Fenix, Joseph Balsamo, Acharat, this is the day when I get life or death."
J: "You'll get LIFE. But life in HERE."
She backs against the all-too-familiar wall: "That's not LIFE. You don't have that to give, do you?" A long sigh escapes her body, as her right hand tremulously searches her sleeping gown: "I did not wish to commit suicide- may God forgive me." She extracts a thin blade from her bossom- there's a deadly flash of steely light- and she stabs her own breast.
Joseph screams at the blossoming burts of blood, as he rushes towards the falling girl. His right hand seizes her around the waist; the other tries to stop the blade's second plunge: Lorenza Feliciani gives an agonizing yelp of satisfaction as she stabs Joseph's left hand through.
Joseph roars, rips out the weapon and sends it clattering off to distant corners. With his bleeding, open hand, he commands: "SLEEP!" Be it her pain or excitement, Lorenza's eyes remain fixed on him. "SLEEP, DAMN YOU!"



The maiden finally gives in to a spasm of pain and exhaustion, and shuts her eyes. With his own wounded hand pressed against his shirt, Joseph opens Lorenza's gown. The wound is not particularly deep, but blood runs freely down her body.
"I'm going to kill Fritz," Joseph mutters. "How did she get that knife?"
He presses many a secret panel on the wall and rushes out of the room, up stairs, one destination in mind: Althotas' alchemical hall of wonders.
A few floors above, that ancient wizard dozes off in his wheelchair, only to nod awake as the noisy trap-door to his death lab is pulled open by his pupil.
ALTHOTAS: "Is that you, Acharat?"
J: "No, it's a very confused Pere Noel. I don't have time now, Master."
He rushes to a cupboard in which vials and phials and other -ials await, and pouring a small green ointment on his left hand, he throws gauze and three or four little extra bottles into a satchel, while Althotas rolls to his side.
A: "You know in a week I shall be a hundred years old! Time runs out! Procure me the blood of an innocent child, the last drops of blood from a virgin female! It is all I need to finish the elixir of life!"
J: "Did I not say I was in a hurry?" He kicks the wheelchair against the wall, stamps on the trap door through which he entered, off to administer first aid.
Althotas screams after him:
"BABY BLOOD! VIRGIN BLOOD!"
J: "I heard you, you creep!"
A: "BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!"

CHAPTER 115: A SWEET DAD/ DAUGHTER MOMENT

Andree (Keira Knightley) runs away from all that awkwardness to the very end of the covered alley, where Nicole is subserviently circling the Baron de Taverney (Gene Hackman) and the Marshal de Richelieu (Jack Nicholson). The Marshal bows to Andree as if she was already a Madame Pompadour, as if the carcass of the Countess Dubarry had been dragged up and down the banks of the Seine. This makes Andree re-coil, and her dad puff up with an undeserved sense of merit.
Still, the recent victory over Gilbert's self-esteem has made the girl gracious, and she graciously invites her father and the Marshal into her apartment, which is gracefully ornamented with grace, a new clavichord or a harpsichord or whichever, and not much else.
Richelieu pokes a little at the clavi-harpi-chord and then jumps into the very important matter:
"Mademoiselle, I bear compliments from his Majesty, a great music fan, who was forced into a relative coldness during the recent opera rehearsal because, to put it bluntly, his outspoken enthusiasm might have made you the target of much jealousy at court."
Andree blushes.
R: "Yes, and also, His Majesty has assured me that he never saw an ass that banging."
Andree blushes extra: "PARDON me?"
R: "AND he has charged me with presenting my dear, dear old friend, the Baron de Taverney, with a little box which... Oh, but I should let your father do the honors while I slink away. Leave a tender moment alone, says I!"
Which he does, gently letting the door close behind his old, manipulative self as he exits.
Andree watches in awed, flattered confusion, while her father takes his turn nervously tapping the keys of the clavichord or harpsichord or acchordion or whatever.
TAVERNEY: "Andree, remember when you were a tiny lil' girl, and I brought you all sorts of little bonbons?"
ANDREE: "Never happened."
T: "...Here's a box full of jewels!"


ABOVE: So I naively looked for "pearl necklace" on Google Images. Oh boy.

And the Baron pops open the small casket, which causes momentary blindness on father and daughter: Andree's present is a set of pearls, joined by twelve inmense diamonds, which must have cost about the same as Belgium. When Andree adjusts her eyesight to the jewelry, she starts squealing and hyperventilating in a girlish manner that would put feminism back 60 years if feminism had even been invented:
A: "OMG OMG OMG!!! They're soooo beautiful, Daddy!!! NO, NO, NO, it has to be a mistake!!! I can't wear these with anything!!! We can't... shouldn't... accept these!!!"
T: "Tarnation and fizzlesticks! An ingrate child!"
A: "What does the King mean by this gift?"
T: "He's honoring my service to the nation!"
A: "Yes, Father, I am sure the King was thinking about your patriot games when he was giving me a pearl necklace, but I doubt the rest of the court will leap to that conclusion!"
T: "Meaning?"
A: "Father! They will... make assumptions... about the nature of the friendship between the King and I. I feel SCRUPLES!"
T: "Scruples? Never heard of them. Is that like cramps? A 'female thing'?"
Andree has not quite stopping blushing through all this, and now she mutters: "Philip, why couldn't you be here now?" Her father, somewhat sensing the need for subtlety, lets his tone soften.
T: "You miss your brother? Oh, what advice would he give that I can't give? Obey your King and shine! Be the Queen of Taverney! You will make your brother's fortune- and your sweet loving Dad's. With your simple, friendly touch you may bestow happiness upon the King's old age, restore the Crown to greatness, make France come alive before the world, make the World all but crawl with peace and harmony!"
A: "Yeah, but exactly how friendly does that touch have to be, I wonder?"
The Baron coughs: "Well, my daughter: life is a like a dish of creme brulee: You gotta put some sugar on it, and then you gotta heat it up a little."
And if Andree could blush any more, she would die of sheer blood-shock to the face, so let us close this chapter before that happens, not without first noting that, not far from the apartment, back in the covered alley from which we came, Nicole Legay is quite engaged in conversation with a nobleman, and we're about to learn of the tragic outcome of this conversation.

Josh Rouse's "El Turista"

Earth got its present swollen form from a gluttonous excess of sadness: Why add to that the fact that I always get blank stares when I bring up Josh Rouse? It makes things a little worse for everyone, and it's an outrage: the man is clearly among the finest songwriters of his generation, and there's a rich catalogue to back me on that, ("Nashville," "1972," and "Subtitulo" are the gems you inexplicably don't have in your collection.)



He passed from his "Dressed Up Like Nebraska" story-telling phase to classicist pop-country song-writing, then threw a little soul in there, but after a divorce and a move to Spain, the Rouse you're likely to encounter now is more interested in- not necessarily SPANISH sounds, that would make too much sense- but soft salsa rythms, Brazilian bossa nova, loungey Vincent Guaraldi jazz that might accompany the chillest afternoon with the Peanuts gang. His Spanish singing in about half the "El Turista" tracks is quite laughable, (consider it a reverse Penelope Cruz effect), and the effect overall too breezy and slight, which makes this merely good and not one of his classics. But even though sometimes his relaxed feel can slide dangerously close to somnolence, this is music you'll want when you're checking out those sudden Ibiza dawns.



I've made him sound boring, but let me dig around, because I do want to share some of my favorite songs with you. Pardon the horrible You Tube audio- I suspect you know where to find awesome versions.

Here's "Carolina" (with a little funky Peanuts intro, incidentally! I know this is cheating- anyone with a "Carolina" song is already more than halfway to my heart.)



"Directions" is Rouse's biggest hit to date, (if "Grey's Anatomy" hasn't used it, I'll nibble on my sombrero). "...stay out all night and get high with your friends/ wonder why you don't get a-one thing done..."



"Sad Eyes" is not only Rouse's best straight-ahead ballad: it's one of the best love songs of the 2000s. (With a suggestion of extra-marital hanky-panky to spice things up!) Look up the album version. This song benefits from a full string orchestra to come knock the tears right out of your face.



So perhaps you've gathered he's a fine pop singer-songwriter, but take his subtle story-telling in a song like "James" from "1972." Happy sounds/sad lyrics is trick #3 on the song-writing text-book, but happy sounds/SUBTLY sad lyrics is even better. To the sound of a party, saucy whoops included, Rouse attaches this chorus:

"James can't stop hangin' out in the bars
He's on top, breaking all the ladies' hearts
JAMES AIN'T GOT A PROBLEM WITH ALCOHOL...

Without much trickery of inflection, Rouse makes that classic last line of denial a devastating snapshot of a man who's on his way to dying.

"He hung the phone up and defeated his own life:
Disappeared into the nearest neon sign."

James McTeigue's "Ninja Assassin"

The Wachowski Brothers continue their stylized, CG-heavy critical free-fall. Now it's "Ninja Assassin", (directed by "V for Vendetta"'s James McTeigue), a movie that's bound to make the night of anyone interested in red paint, buckets and buckets of red paint emanating from hundreds if not thousands of shuriken-dismembered bodies. Morally repulsive, (ninjas stealthily pee in your morals!), the "story" follows a "good" murderer called Raizo (a KOREAN celebrity by the pop-ready name of Rain) as he teams up with an inquisitive AFRICAN-AMERICAN agent (Naomie Harris) and her BRITISH boss ("Coupling's" Ben Miles) at the BERLIN offices of "Europol," where, apparently, thousands of JAPANESE ninjas have convened to murder a RUSSIAN diplomat, his HINDU wife, their HONDURAN nanny, and their ESKIMO dog. I think that's what was going on, the gushing torrents of stylishly-colored blood kept me from seeing anything.

"Ninja Assassin" came from a hasty draft written by the usually good J. Michael Straczynski ("Changeling", "Babylon 5", Countless Comic Books).

Jose Saramago's "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis"

Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
- Fernando Pessoa

And here a double meaning trips right into the hole of translation. The above Portuguese means, in intent:

"I'm nothing,
I will never be anything,
I don't even want to be anything.
Other than that, I have all the dreams in the world."

It also, by one of those curious vagaries of most languages, LITERALLY says:
"I am NOT 'nothing'.
I will never BE 'nothing'.
I CAN'T want to be 'nothing.'
Besides, I have in me all the dreams of the world."



I find that incidental double wealth to say much. People who are thought to be 'nothing' are NOT nothing, nor can they be as long as they have EVERYTHING within them. Pessoa is considered the greatest Portuguese poet of last century, (perhaps the greatest ever, after Camoes, the Lusitanian Dante). He delegated his work to a series of personas which embodied his different philosophies and styles, and one of these sub-poets, who came fully equipped with a biography, was called Ricardo Reis: as is the hero of Jose Saramago's first big international success.



In Saramago's "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis", (a work that may be best described as "Death in Venice" with Portuguese iconography and a Jorge Luis Borges fetish), Reis is an expatriate who returns to a gloomy Lisbon in 1936 (a year after Pessoa's real-life passing). Reis wanders about the halls of a luxurious, haunted hotel, entertaining a fling with a maid he can never hope to allow into his caste. At the same time, he is stalked by the advice-giving ghost of Pessoa, (who is, after all, his REAL self already deceased), while falling in an observer's sort of love with a languishing beauty named Marcenda, whose left arm is paralyzed.

A crippled left? Too obvious a symbol, you say? After all, the city outside is already groaning semi-lifeless under the weight of fascism (enthusiastic commentators note that there's no one like Hitler for speaking about peace.) Saramago's digs at a country he finds stagnant are plentiful, as are the literary puns, about a third of which I am quite certain I missed, not having a particularly extensive background in Portuguese lit. (Aside from Pessoa and Camoes, Eca de Queiroz is the only other name here that even plucked at the strings of memory- and him very feebly.) Almost by accident I recalled that the book Reis reads in his hotel room, "The God of Labyrinths" by 'Herbert Quain,' is just an invention of Borges. Paying homage with an exaggerated generosity, "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis" is indeed all labyrinths and mirrors, dead poets leaving their dreaming echoes behind-
but those dreams are all the life anyone needs to have inside.

Joe Johnston's "The Wolfman"

"Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright."
- Curt Siodmak, in "The Wolfman"'s 1941 script



Whenever I think of a proper British gentleman of the old school, I think of Bernicio del Toro. It's an instant reflex: "Jane Austen novel? We MUST cast Bernicio first! THEN we'll see if we can get Colin Firth."



In Universal's recent attempt to resuscitate "The Wolfman," (one of those venerable monster franchises Abbott and Costello were always running into) Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, the prodigal son of castle-dwelling patriarch Anthony Hopkins. Talbot has returned with his handsome-ugly face to mourn the mysterious death of a brother and get shamelessly close to his dead bro's fiancee (a tastefully semi-nude Emily Blunt, with a very small role.)



Soon there's a full moon, gnawed villagers start popping up, and Talbot is bitten by a fast moving half-canine creature. Make-up master Rick Baker ("Wolf," "An American Werewolf in London") treats us to a modernized variation on the familiar metamorphosis: teeth lengthen, claws pop out of crackling fingers, the back arches, shagginess and howling ensue.
Not much more to say: "The Wolfman" is predictable but its old-fashioned scares are well-timed, and a certain kind of old-fashioned horror fan will enjoy it more than the bad press and unintimidating box-office suggested.

The Rolling Stones' "Out of Our Heads" and "December's Children (And Everybody's)"

The first few stumbles were fine and all, but it's between "Out of Our Heads" and "December's Children (And Everybody's)" that the Stones came into their own as a substantial source of originals.
Although "out of our heads" may be an excessive boast considering the dominance of R&B covers, songs like "The Last Time," "Satisfaction," "I'm Free," "Get Off of my Cloud" are at the marrow of this Rock and Roll beast.



"December's Children" also contains the wonderful, wonderful ballad "As Tears Go By." One man's sappiness is another's delight: To me it represents a maturing in sound and intention that announced that the Stones would go on rocking- but could also do anything else they well damned pleased.

They're Just Horny

Everyone's always going on about unicorns and how "unreal" they are, like they're somehow an impossible, mysterious violation of every law of reality...



I don't get it. What the hell is so magical about a unicorn? It's just a horse with a horn! A prettier rhinoceros! It's a pony with a birth defect, for Pete's sake!
A deer is a horse with TWO horns! Now, that's pretty freaking fantastic. Go look at one of those before Ted Nugent eats them all. But don't be all like: "Deer. Antelope. Goat. So boring... HOLY SHIT A UNICORN!!! MY MIND IS BLOWN!!! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE ANYMORE!!!"

Clint Eastwood's "Invictus"

Here at Hallucina we LOVE Clint Eastwood like the mean-but-well-meaning right-wing grandpa on Mom's side. (Woody Allen would be the funny-neurotic left-wing grandpa on Dad's side.) Allen and Eastwood both refuse to join the Sweet Druggy Oblivion Home for Grandpas, and still prolifically say shit about life and its complexities. Eastwood is a much better director than Woody Allen these days, but he's equally capable of stepping on an audience's patience, and in "Invictus," there's a long go-nowhere third act that gets boring in the way to being inspirational.




ABOVE: A Proud Example of the African Race.

My problem with Eastwood's "Invictus," (aside from the non-suspense nature of its real-life origins) is that there's two informational/educational movies at odds here.
One is a historical movie, about how Mandela's policies of racial re-conciliation were wise and trumped retaliation. (YES, we know this, forgiveness is better than revenge and hatred, and it takes a very special kind of good person to truly forgive. Like Nelson Mandela. You get Nobel Peace prizes for that stuff. You can't expect everybody in the country to behave like that. This is why hate never goes away too far.)
The other is a sports movie, about a team of WHITE South Africans beating a team of New Zealanders. It's not a very exciting sports movie because Eastwood isn't at his best when filming sports action, and because rugby kind of sucks, and because we know how it turns out anyway. There's a bad stretch that feels like at least half an hour long where we're treated to:
Cut to field.
Cut to bar reactions.
Cut to street reactions.
Cut to field.
Cut to bar reactions.
Cut to street reactions.
Cut to field.
Repeat awkwardly.
You get the idea.
So let's recap. This is a movie about the evils of racism where we're forced to watch, (and ROOT for), a rugby game where a bunch of NAMELESS WHITE GUYS + 1 token black guy stomp down on a team of NEW ZEALANDER MAORIS called, if the irony isn't too much for you, the ALL BLACKS. (Because of their shirt colors.)



Morgan Freeman gives a good Nelson Mandela impersonation. Matt Damon's Afrikaans accent, I'm assured by people who would know, is decent. "Invictus" is an intelligent, important movie in the racial dialogue- they should show it at high schools. But it's kind of no touchdown for me.
Or whatever the hell they call it in rugby.

Below is that famous "Invictus" poem by a Victorian broke-ass, one-legged, young-dying poet named William Ernest Hensley. This is the poem that Nelson Mandela clung to through his prison years. For years I told people this was a WALT WHITMAN poem, because I'm an idiot and love to spread disinformation. Walt Whitman did contribute something with a CAPTAIN on it to the literary world, but so did Herman Melville and J. M. Barrie.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Walt Becker's "Old Dogs"

So Leo Tolstoy says that old age is the biggest surprise in a man's life. It's also, according to "Old Dogs," the most embarrassing one. Like, say you're John Travolta or Robin Williams and you're hanging out with your puppy-eyed Disney kids at an Applebee's-type place, and you're trying to flirt with the hot-on-a-curve waitress, and she's like: "Oh, you must be these kids' GRANDPAS! Do you want to see the senior menu? We have complimentary walkers for ancient people like you. Do you need a nappy, Granpappy?"


ABOVE: "I'm not that old, will you knock it off?"

No, wait, you know what's the most embarrassing surprise in a man's life? To be comically mistaken for a homo when you're hanging out with your best friend!


ABOVE: "I'm not gay, I just like to pitch balls at my buddy!"

No, no, ACTUALLY, the most embarrassing surprise in a man's life is to have a tanning booth accident and then go out and everyone stares at you and assumes you must be some kind of COLORED FOLK! Hindus and Mexicans will approach you and ask for the nearest turban/ taco outlet!


ABOVE: "I'm not a darkie! This comes off, I swear!"

Actually, pretty much nothing beats the embarrassment of getting golf-balled in the groin, and then amorously approached by a gorilla.
YES, the MOST embarrassing surprise in a man's life is to be Seth Green.

Rob Marshall's "Nine"

Rob Marshall's "Nine" is not the embarrassing disaster you heard about, or more likely didn't hear about because it was such a disaster. It's not a 10, but it's actually a well-made movie that happens to have no audience whatsoever. I can't imagine the pitch meeting: "Let's revive an old show about Fellini that had no hit songs and even musical lovers rarely stop to think about!"
Where is that magnificent "Les Miz" epic? Shit, "Miss Saigon" could be pretty topical, Kathryn Bigelow should look into that!
No, this movie wasn't made for money, it had to come out of love, and that's why I'll defend it.



It was never going to be a blockbuster.
To get to a place where you can fully appreciate and understand "Nine," the viewer has to fulfill an awful lot of requirements:

1-You have to love musicals AND the ladies. That alone is a toughie. I'm "That One Straight Guy Who Looooooves Musicals" TM and I can tell you this isn't a frequent occurrence.

2- Say you pass that test: you have to accept that it's not one of those toe-tapping musicals AT ALL. This is a movie about depression and insecurity and the music is only ok, the lyrics are competent but not witty, there are no famous ballads or stirring themes and really the only fun song is the newly tacked-on
"Cinema Italiano," sung by Kate Hudson.




3-You have to know that "Nine" is an award-winning 1982 musical by Maury Yeston and Artur Kopit, adapting the 1963 Federico Fellini classic "8 1/2" that starred Raul Julia.

4-You have to have seen and liked "8 1/2" AND not think it's a sacrosanct cow AND be ok with taking on the motif (see Woody Allen's Stardust Memories").

5-You have to know that the titular "Nine" is a sort of joke. "8 1/2" was Fellini's counting of where he'd gotten to in the career process of making that difficult 8th and a half movie that wasn't coming along. This is a movie about not being able to make a movie and then making a movie out of that very inability, and it's inspiring because it's a great movie and shows you that human creativity should not be bound by dogmas and prejudices. "8 1/2" is Fellini's film, you tag this musical on it and you get a "NINE." See?



6- You have to deal with the fact that this is a movie of a play that was already a movie, that it's about a movie-maker not being able to make a movie, instead of a stage musical about a stage-musical-maker not being able to make a musical. It's also mostly about things we infer that happen offstage. That's a lot of layers of removal and it makes for a kind of cold film.

7-You have to be familiar and at ease with globality, because most of "Nine" is pretty foreign, particularly Italian (Sophia Loren) but also British (Dame Judi Dench), Spanish (Penelope Cruz) and French (Marion Cotillard)

8-You have to know a little about Italian cinema and specifically about Fellini's work and "8 1/2"'s own convoluted symbology and relationship with women.

9-You have to assume that it's 1963 and everyone thinks Italian neo-realism is super sexy and trendy and Cineccita is THE place to be at.



If you can handle all that, THEN you can sit back and enjoy the sights and ponder about artistic creation and bow at the weird altar of Daniel Day Lewis' acting, which is, you know, AWESOMELY OVER THE TOP, as always. He's one of the greats, actually interested in ACTING, as opposed to just inventing a persona and finding roles that fit that. Marion Cotillard is also memorable and even Fergie's kind of cool. Penelope Cruz shows off with a sexy singing number- and then she fucks it up by TRYING TO SPEAK ENGLISH WITH AN ITALIAN ACCENT!!!
*plops over in comic strip mode*

As you can see, "Nine" is a pretty difficult business proposition, doomed from moment one. There's five people in the world that might like this movie, and I'm three of them.
But a bad movie? Nein!

Brian Michael Bendis' "Elektra: The Scorpio Key"

UGH. I won't offend your roving eyeballs with examples, but Chuck Austen is a terrible artist, clearly overly interested in those ugly stick dolls beginners use to learn proportion, and his work in 2001's "Elektra" is enough to discourage one from Brian Michael Bendis' typically decent parallel take on the Iraq War. Seriously, this is some of the most pathetic art I've seen in a professional comic book. Far better are Greg Horn's hot-blooded covers, examples of which you see here. Except someone should really inform that guy that women don't usually smuggle bowling balls under their slinky red dresses. No, not even Greek ninjas.

Isabel Coixet's "Elegy"

Surely you've heard me say this before: I think Penelope Cruz is fascinating; a beautiful, stunning actress, capable of pulling you into her emotional world while conveying intelligence like few people can.
That's, you know, in SPANISH.
Then she goes and speaks English and fucks it all up.



English-speakers can perhaps sense that in Woody Allen's "Vicky Christina Barcelona," but since she practically rescues that movie, I want you to go look up an otherwise indifferent international co-production called "Don't Tempt Me," where you can see in bi-lingual mode how the same actress can go from enthralling to uninteresting with a simply switch of language. What's the problem? She loses her natural energy and wit in the process of trying SO HARD to pronounce things right; she goes from an actress to a model, and since she's got a banging body but kind of a curious frail bird's head, the average American movie-goer might well go: "She's famous for what again?"
I'm trying to reassure someone who doesn't speak Spanish that, despite an overwhelming lack of Hollywood evidence, she's genuinely talented. The character Cruz plays in Isabel Coixet's "Elegy" is a decent place to start.



Consuela Castillo is a beautiful 24-year-old Cuban-American student (yay! Cubans!) who (of course) becomes the willing subject of lecture lust to 62 year-old Professor David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) in this tasteful, thoughtful adaptation of Philip Roth's novella, "The Dying Animal." (Kepesh is Roth's recurring character from "The Professor of Desire" and the mammarymorphing "The Breast")



Like the dude in "She's Out of my League," Kepesh is unable to accept his luck (the numbers don't add up!) and so he nudges and prods at the relationship, neurotically refusing happiness, and hiding the girl from his small circle (the total GMILF Patricia Clarkson, Peter Saarsgard, and Dennis Hopper, in one of his last performances). Mostly, Kepesh is embarrassed by the fact that he's only finally confronted with true love in his old age. We're told that Bette Davis says old age is not for sissies. We're told that Leo Tolstoy says that the biggest surprise in a man's life is old age.
Then there's a plot twist that makes Kepesh realize that you better love whenever and wherever you find it-
and of COURSE it's all that classic masturbatory fantasy of the old teacher who gets approached by the beautiful sexy life-giving worshipping young woman and Philip Roth is a big old mysognist and this and that-
but what the hell, he's honest. It's how aging men feel about the sexual vibrancy of a youth they can't recover. They either try to repress it, destroy it, ignore it, or somehow fantasize that they might get a taste of it.
*shrugs*



Director Isabel Coixet worked closely with Roth and script-writer Nicholas Meyer (who also adapted Roth's similar "The Human Stain" for the screen) to soften Kepesh' jerky possesiveness in the novella (in particular, his ravenous fixation with Consuela's breasts) so instead of a predatory cliche we get a nice May-December romance for grown-up audiences. It's a small, well done movie that never achieves great revelations or insights beyond its source material, but a certain crowd gets to congratulate itself on watching something elegantly aware of death that has minimal farts or car chases.

Oh, and you see Penelope Cruz' boobs, which I'm sure Philip Roth very much enjoyed.

So Now Glenn Beck May (Or May Not) Be going Blind... And Christopher Hitchens May (Or May Not) Be Dying. HUGE RANT. May Enlightenment Ensue???

Dear Imaginary Internet Moron:
It surprises me that I'm even tempted to comment (a.k.a. rant) on the baffling public reactions to the recent tandem news that Christopher Hitchens and Glenn Beck may be facing health troubles from their respective corners.
You bunch of Internet Morons.



Christopher Hitchens doesn't have cancer of the esophagus because God is punishing him for being an atheist. He has cancer of the esophagus because he's a smoker and the carcinogens triggered the abnormal development of cells in his body. The man is 62. Without the cigarrettes and the hard drinking he may have lived 10 more years, sure, but I guarantee you they weren't going to be the funnest years of his life anyway. I'll rather spend 60 years at a great steakhouse than 70 perfecting my knitting. Charles Atlas lived to be 80, and he was in awesome shape the day they put his body in a coffin.
People DIE.



Similarly, Glenn Beck isn't (maybe) going blind because God is making some ironic comment on his political myopy or his famous fake-tears, or (as one Yahoo poster hilariously states) "punishing him for being a Mormon and not a Christian." He's going blind because of a genetic defect, and because with the passing of years most people lose their eyesight, unless they get killed too soon to notice that. Rush Limbaugh doesn't need a cochlear implant as a poetic punishment for his hypocritical bullshit, and Roger Ebert didn't get jaw cancer because of his positive review of "The Fast and Furious" or because he stubbornly kept on saying videogames weren't art until he caved in and admitted that they might be.
These things happened because they're all HUMAN BEINGS who, you know, GET SICK AND DIE. Just like YOU will.
There is a great alarming moment in an understandably unpopular Bob Dylan song called "Disease of Conceit" in which he tells the listener, in that direct, bemused and prophetic voice Dylan has mastered:

"If your delusions of grandeur and an evil eye
Give you the idea that you're not going to die
Then they bury you from your head to your feet
From the disease of conceit."

One of our saving graces as humans is also one of our great intellectual traps: the general need to create overarching stories, to explain to each why things happen. It gives us the pretense of a hold on existence we don't really have.
According to the book of Job, one of the more penetrating bits in the Old Testament, it's a sin to attribute misfortune to God, or claim you know why God is doing something. It's "THE THING YOU MUST NOT DO." It's pride, it's what it is, and I don't quote that as the religious person I'm not, but as the humanist I am. We don't die because God punishes us, but because we're shoddy pieces of easily corruptible clay.

"IRL", we go because our bodies are prevented from functioning correctly, not to satisfy plot lines. Nice ladies die on their way to Church because some asshole hapenned to plant a bomb in the vicinity. A great murderer becomes an emperor and rules our reality and religion, and his exact twin with the same moral attributes dies at 35 because he happened to share a hotel bath towel with someone who had some naughty germs. If there is a grand design, the 100% failure rate of mankind's historical prophecies should tell you that we've yet to stumble upon it. Accept that with humility. Some good people die young, some good people die old, some bad people die young, some bad people die old. More often than not, there is no such thing as good people or bad people but just people who we impose our judgment on. I can only imagine someone very young and inexperienced would say that people get cancer because of their outspoken atheism; nice religious people get cancer every day.
What they have in common is what needs to give you pause, buckaroo. You'll get it too, one day.
Not that the joke didn't spring to mind immediately: "What? Glenn Beck is going blind? Not mute? Damn." But it's a JOKE, relegated to joke status. To direct honest personal hatred toward another human being most of these Yahoos will never meet just makes me sad.
You don't want to see ME cry, do you? *reaches for the Vick Vaporub* Don't make me use it, Dear Imaginary Internet Morons. Stop being mean.

****

A few (a lot more) extra words on Hitchens and Beck, two dudes which I like and dislike for different reasons and are similar in their polarizing effect even among their respective fans- (and I don't suppose there is much overlap outside of HALLUCINA.)


I find Christopher Hitchens smug.
Not because of the atheism. Pbbt. Please. I suspect that most human beings are mild atheists, or largely unconcerned with big issues of meaning, and they sporadically become believers in times of great change or stress. This is what facilitates religion as a social tool; most people readily accept it because it so conveniently provides them with answers they can't be bothered to seek out on their own. ("Please, Padre, Pastor, Prophet, tell me what my ideas on the meaning of life should be. God is coming to 'make everything all right', whatever that is? Sometime soon, but probably never? Ok, fine, now I can go back to making pastries or designing websites or building bridges.")
I'm not being smug myself, I think that's a perfectly fine way of dealing. I do the same with politics and economics, two fields I'm not very informed on or care greatly for, so I take my views from other people who seem smart, logical, sensible and not blatantly insane, and those people tend to be moderate liberals and moderate conservatives who have the capability of understanding the other side's point of view without devolving into shrieking sloganeers and who are, most of all, interested in the happiness and well-being of the largest number of people possible. By contrast, I care a lot about religion, philosophy and the meaning of life, and that almost always turns one into a Blake-ish or Miltonian one-man-religionist, with complex views we will not trust to someone else's umbrellas.
I suspect that atheism, (like homosexuality) can only bother people who themselves are atheists at heart, are deeply conflicted about it, but are within a religious system and are struggling with it. Otherwise why care? I believe in the theory of gravity; if someone comes to me and tells me there is no gravity, I drop an apple and watch it fall and say: "Well, there goes that argument." If I sit there going like: "That bastard is taking my gravity away! He's making gravity disappear!" then there are clearly some unresolved questions within me- if I have to defend gravity, it's because it's very weak. Should someone come up to me and DEMONSTRATE why the theory of gravity is flawed I will not cry or put my fingers in my ears or crucify him, but say: "Damn, you're right, I didn't know that, I hadn't thought about it that way. THANKS!" But if they come to me and say: "The theory of gravity is false because Isaac Newton one time cheated on his wife" (the sort of logical leap people like Glenn Beck make) I would have to dismiss that person's opinions, because he's clearly not thinking at the same level I am.



As I said elsewhere, Hitchens' religious argument in "God Is Not Great" is flawed because all he does is explain that people can be easily manipulated into violence by using religious slogans, and then he admits that the same people can be manipulated into the same violence by using anti-religious slogans. It's not that God isn't great; it's that violent, unthinking mobs aren't great. Well, NO SHIT, Rutherford Penshaw! (He does a far better job of explaining why it is incorrect to think that the Koran is somehow the direct tranlated word of God and is instead a patchwork "localization" of Jewish and Christian sources, but is that really so new? Most Muslim historians are well aware.) Hitchens doesn't have the philosophical, historical, or neurological background to explain why God isn't great. (or Isn't.) He's a political intellectual and can see how people are controlled by politics and what he's really attacking is religion as a political tool.
What I dislike about Hitchens is how right wing his mentality is, even as it comes under a left wing banner. He's a staunch lover of unbendable rules, like most conservatives, and unwilling to admit to mistakes. In particular, his defense of Bush and the War on Iraq long after it was clear it was counterproductive made me lose faith. Plus, he's a curmudgeon, and I'm a youthful curmudgeon, and we don't like competition. To conclude with this dude: Good luck with that esophagus crap, that's gotta suck. Hitch, I'll buy "Hitch-22" in your honor.



I find Glenn Beck phony.
He's another thing. He's clearly not a writer and an intellectual like Hitchens, he's an entertainer and a humorist. He's closer to Stephen Colbert in that sense. He puts up an entertaining show, and that's all. What's alarming is how his fans assume that he has any political authority or knowledge just because he says what they want to hear: "Obama is a Communist! Where is our Patriotism? I love this country so much and I see it going to hell!" What I really don't LIKE is that I suspect he's smarter than he claims to be, and he's just giving the folks the stupid show they crave.
(We live in our silly cubicles of time- there's NEVER been a moment in the 30,000 or so years of the homo-sapiens outbreak in which somebody wasn't howling about our shitty leaders and our countries going to hell and how young people aren't worshipping the old gods. That's called HISTORY- it's just how it works.)
Everytime I catch Beck he's making sentimental appeals that bypass actual logical connections. ('As a lawyer, Barack Obama worked in a lawsuit involving ACORN. THEREFORE, he's connected to an event in which, many years later, in another city far far away, a FAKE entrapping hooker was helped by some random employee to get a tax break.' Beck's words: "I'm not saying he's responsible for tax fraud" (eyes roll meaningfully) "I'm just saying look at the people he associates with."
DUDE.
Politicians are forced to associate themselves with everybody, including many horrible people by necessity. The only people who can afford to choose their associates to perfection are people who live very private lives, and those people only have two or three friends, and even those disappoint. I'm sure I've "associated" myself with horrible people plenty, stood in the same room with complete assholes, and tolerated the conversation of the cruel and the ignorant because it's part of being a social being. I worked for Barnes and Noble on a summer job. I'm sure they've cause the destruction of many a rainforest and the suicide of a small town bookstore owner or another, but whatcha gonna do?
OH OH OH
You know who worked with ACORN as a COMMUNITY ORGANIZER? *I* did, rather briefly. Just like Obama was (incorrectly) supposed to have done. Why, because I was some evil scheming socialist trying to help the millionaire crack-whores and the welfare queens in Glenn Beck's imaginary ghetto palaces?
No way, that's something that someone nice like JESUS might want to do.
I did it because I needed a fucking JOB and they were hiring. It was just a non-profit society that helps people, and they recruit interns and young go-getting people and stuff. Very nice people most of them, who want to help low-income people live a little better. I hated my experience with the New York ACORN- not because it was some evil corrupt organization, (although I kind of thought they were, and I found some of the extreme left talk of "stickin' it to the man" kind of dumb) but because it was sad and kind of dangerous that I had to go to the ghettos all the time, and it was low-paying, and they talked a lot a lot about unionizing but when the low-paird Acorn workers themselves tried to unionize the big shots stomped them down. At the end of the day they were just a corrupt organization like every other organization large enough, and they were in cahoots with the supposed evil right-wing land-owners they were fighting, all in the grand scheme of putting the unwanted (the elderly, poor, the black) in ghettos away from the nice New York neighborhoods, and THEN collecting rent from them. If you want to see corruption, envy, greed and distrust appear, just give me any five unrelated nice people, a room, and a few bucks to distribute between them.
The point is, if someone had come to me and told me: "I don't like YOU because you worked for a company that had a branch in Missouri that had a janitor that turned out to be a serial killer," I could only stare at your idiocy. How is there any connection? Leave that for Michael Moore...
Or Glenn Beck.
It's all the same guy to me.
The same attention-grabbing slogan-pushing bullies howling out from the TV.
To me, Beck is exemplified by his appropriation of Thomas Paine. His thinking? "Famous Founding Father! People love "Founding Fathers"! America, Hell Yeah! We need someone like old Tom Paine to fight terrorists and atheists and socialists!"
Wait... You mean Thomas Paine the socialist atheist who encouraged terrorism? THAT Thomas Paine?



All that tells me is that he didn't think about it too hard, didn't bother to look up who Thomas Paine was, and just wanted to cash in, because, tears and all, he really does not care that much.
(I myself love Thomas Paine, actually: just don't think his political assessment of the British colonies in the 1700s has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the current state of American politics. By contrast, I think every high school kid should read "The Age of Reason" in which Paine dismantles religious assumptions far better and more compassionately than Hitchens does.)
To conclude with THIS dude: Good luck with that blind shit, that's gotta suck. I sympathize, I'll probably go blind too. Or maybe it will be diabetes for me. Diabetes and blindness, in some sort of combination? Either way I can't imagine myself hitting 50 without some doctor going like: "Yeaaaah, it's the big C. Buy a wig and write your will." Some crap's gotta malfunction soon. That's life. (Death.)
Beck, I'll buy "The Overton Window" in your honor.

Well, no, I probably won't, but maybe some people will click on the links below? If they have made it this far down, which would shock me.

"Dispatches from Cuba"

Dear Imaginary Reader:
A cousin of mine recently saw herself forced to visit the Cuban Embassy in Washington D.C. (Or rather "Interests Section"- it's not considered an official embassy.) A thoroughly depressing experience by her account: sad Fidel posters from the '60s, no AC (so that the clerks don't get used to capitalistic comforts), and very strict security (so that they don't defect, duh.)
Knowing that I thrive on this shit, she brought me back a magazine published by the Cuban government for EXILES, a hilarious notion that is symptomatic of current Cuban policy: "Please, COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY MAGGOTS, we're amenable to your tourism after all! Bygones be bygones! Bring DOLLARS!" Typically enough, the 'latest' issue the embassy had was almost a decade old. *sigh* Ay Cubita de mi alma. The magazine is called "CORREO DE CUBA" and it's a wonder of hilarity. Move aside, Dave Barry!
You can imagine the sample articles because they've been the same for decades: "Che's Spirit Lives On in Today's Pioneers!" "Cuba's Health System Voted the Best in the World- Even Though Somehow Cubans Are The Sickest Looking People Outside of the African Continent." "Havana: A Beautiful Museum of Old Cars!" (as though the ubiquituous rotting '59 Buicks were a collector's indulgence!)
It's the crossword that killed me. Lately I've become a crossword aficionado, and I decided to test my capacity for nostalgia. GOODNESS GRACIOUS, the thing was planted with subliminal- and not even really THAT subliminal- messages! Get your clues here:
"To go back, as in 'I would like to go back to Cuba'." (RETURN)
"How the Cuban educational system is." (EXCELLENT)
"An 'uncle' that 'molests'." (UNCLE SAM!)
"A famous wall built by our Communist friends." (Trick clue! You thought it was the Berlin Wall, but the answer is actually the GREAT WALL OF CHINA!)
"The most beautiful beach in the world." (VARADERO)- (That one actually may be an undisputable fact.)
"What Cubans like best." (FREEDOM)
"When a wheel goes around, it does a-?" (REVOLUTION!)
"What you will see on the face of a young Pionero." (SMILE)

Jesus, after doing that crossword I was practically catching the next shark back to Cuba.



The general Cuban mentality is best captured by the following mind-blowing quote that, as the above mentioned Dave Barry would say, I AM NOT MAKING UP. IT IS FUCKING REAL. (Dave Barry would NOT say THAT.)
This is what a DIRECTOR has to say upon the Havana premiere of a then-new (shitty) documentary made out of forgotten Castro interviews from the '60s, giving us yet another sycophantic glimpse at Castro's charismatic, easy-going, fascistic personality:

"At first, I was going to do a documentary in the 'Yankee' style of showing both sides of an issue, but then I talked to my financial backers in Europe and they said: "Oh, we already hear bad things about Castro, why don't you just show the good things?" And that's how I got it made!"

In the "Yankee" style of showing both the good and the bad aspects of THIS issue, I will say "Correo de Cuba" was printed on nice, glossy paper and contained relatively few typos.

ay ay ay.

Guy Ritchie's "Rutherford Penshaw"

(There was a quasi-joke on Season 3 of "How I Met Your Mother" which went something like this: "And what's the deal with Jude Law? He's in, like, EVERY MOVIE." (off blank stares) "Or was. Like, a few years ago.")
WELL, Jude Law was just in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," and now he's in Guy Ritchie's latest, "Rutherford Penshaw."



It's Victorian London, (we could tell by the bowler hats). Jude Law stars as Dr. Stanton, who solves convoluted crimes involving Freemasons, the Anti-Christ and possibly Jack the Ripper, while accompanied by his dear friend, an idiot-savant boxer called Rutherford Penshaw (Robert Downey Jr.), and the fetching Elaine Sidler (Rachel McAdams), the latter there mostly to reassure us the boys won't be incarcerated for buggery any time soon.
The titular Rutherford Penshaw is a great martial artist with the ability to stop time, Matrix-like, in order to cause the biggest damage to his brawny opponents. He's also prone to accidents involving huge elaborate sets, in stunt-heavy scenes that Buster Keaton might have cried over.



Guy Ritchie is a great action director, but he's sort of bad at talking us through the mystery part of this case, or communicating any sense of urgency about the crimes commited- (whatever they are, I couldn't quite follow). Mostly one watches for the chemistry between Penshaw and Dr. Stanton, in those comfortable scenes where the actors let themselves rest at ease among the expensive scenery.
But let's talk about the morbidly obese elephant in the room: everything about Penshaw's persona, his deductive method, and the symbol-heavy adventure he's embroiled in brings to mind ANOTHER popular character, and I would be amiss not to point it out:
Yes, Dear Imaginary Reader, it's all hugely influenced by Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, down to the "Angels and Demons" clues.

Oh, Penshaw also has some elements from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes," but maybe I'm reaching there.

Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."

Dear Imaginarium Reader:
Any movie featuring Tom Waits is slightly cooler than its reputation, but also much rougher than it should be. "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" features Tom Waits. It's perhaps all you need to know as far as preparation.





Terry Gilliam's latest borrows from classic fairy tales better than "The Brothers Grimm" did. It also references the backstage theatrics of one of my personal classics, Marcel Carne's "Children of Paradise," as well as Shakespeare's "The Tempest." Certainly the still imposing Christopher Plummer is here in full Prospero regalia as the wizardly, immortal Doctor Parnassus, who heads a traveling troupe formed by Andrew Garfield, (next in line for the Spiderman role), an annoying-as-usual but well cast Verne Troyer, and Parnassus' beautiful, beloved daughter Valentina, (Lily Cole, a model-turned-actress with an unusual full-moon face that reminds me of the work of Russian artist Maryna Bychkova.)






Anyway, Doctor Parnassus has made a bet with Old Scratch, (Tom Waits- isn't this movie perfectly cast?) If the good Doctor can claim five saved souls, he gains immortality- but he loses Valentina if the Devil gets five souls. In comes the charming rogue played by Heath Ledger, and the movie stops being a movie and becomes "something to talk about." Overshadowed by Ledger's death, few people saw the flick for what it was and instead couldn't help but dig for omens: "We first meet Heath seemingly dead, hanging from a bridge!" It's very difficult not to do that, but even more difficult to point out that Heath is mediocre in this movie, alarmingly jittery, as though his mind were set on getting The Joker right and he was here just re-paying Gilliam for previous debts. Either of the three actors that briefly swoop in to salvage the movie from its unfortunate production are far better and more in control. Johnny Depp, Jude Law or Colin Farrell might have managed to hold the movie emotionally together all in different ways. (Depp in particular made me forget my slight disappointment in his Mad Hatter.)
There's really no Terry Gilliam flick that doesn't come with problems, he's famously cursed, but "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" has the earmarks of an eventual cult movie- in the sense that it has many, many 3-in-the-morning "WTF" moments. The imagination certainly is here, and the special effects have a (deliberate?) old-fashioned clumsiness that makes them likable, but it's all really messy, Gilliam has done this before ("Baron Munchausen" pops up), and the script isn't all in, the dialogue wavering between the magical and the crushing cliche, (Verne Troyer's witticisms might be on loan from a Wayans Brothers movie.) The forced replacement of Ledger is reasonably explained, but it only underscores that we need to sense a continuity for us to care about a character's fate. It's impossible to physically connect Colin Farrell's climactic moment with Heath Ledger's previous adventures: it just feels like it's all happening to another person in the same outfit. (This is the same reason why, good as "I'm Not There" was, I could only relate to segments of it, and couldn't bring myself to fully believe in Bob Dylan as a character to invest emotions on.)
So, hmmm, it's a mess. But I'll rather see Terry Gilliam messy than, say, Chris Columbus doing everything antiseptically right.

Angie Sage's "Septimus Heap- Book 2: Flyte"

While we're up in the air... Here's "Flyte."

One of the pleasures of returning to a fantasy series, however meager its literary contents, is the sense of being initiate to a coded world. In the sequel to "Magyk," Septimus Heap is fully aware of his identity, Jenna is officially the Queen, (which doesn't stop her from leaning on Sep's shoulder in a manner which anticipates a near kiss somewhere around book 4, and full Consumation by book 6). The frequent BOLDING of Magykaaaaal spells is back; it looks like the author is Spluttering all over the page. Sep's evil brother Simon captures Jenna for unclear reasons, tries to revive the even more evil DomDaniel for even more unclear reasons, a cute dragon is introduced, and late in the novel (much too late) Jenna's origins are adumbrated. Again, the most charming part comes post-script, in a series of "bonus" explanations of completely marginal characters. (You may not need to know where, say, the innkeeper from Chapter 5 went to Innkeeping School, but that's some of the loosest, funniest writing "Flyte" has to offer.)

Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air"

Then again, Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" is ALL airport decisions, but a fine representative of how classic Hollywood recipes can still work if the ingredients are top-notch.



Reitman's third film is closer to the white collar world of his first, "Thank You for Smoking," than to the tortured-teenage-talk of the charming "Juno." Based on a novel by Walter Kirn, "Up in the Air" uses constant airport layovers as a metaphor for the emotional homelesness of Ryan Bingham, a "downsizing specialist" played by George Clooney. Corporate overlords too guilty to face a fired employee's righteous anger or sadness hire middlemen like Ryan. He flies from city to city, accruing mileage, working up to the Holy Grail of being an American Airlines elite member, all so he can land on some office and smoothly (George Clooney does everyting smoothly) deliver the pink slip. The slip is accompanied by bullshit reassurances like:
"Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's BECAUSE they sat there that they were able to do it."
(Remember how Alexander the Great got unceremoniously fired by a mid-level manager, and then read "The Secret" and got the inspiration to conquer Persia? I'm glad you don't because it never happened.)
But the times they are a-doing what times do, and Ryan himself is suddenly threatened by the appearance of plucky, next-gen Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, one of the best things about, alas, "Twilight"). Natalie has figured out that Ryan's airplane trips from firing site to firing site are preventable company expenses, and convinces Ryan's boss (Jason Bateman) to make the new media shift and start firing people over the Internet.
The relationship between the old-school white guy and the webcam green girl reminded me of the one between Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams in "State of Play." (This movie similarly points out that technology does not replace the human touch, but that, on the other hand, it can make the human touch reach wider.)



While Natalie trails Ryan and learns about the emotional toll of depriving people of their livelihoods, Ryan establishes airport-motel to airport-motel sex appointments with his female counterpart "just-think-of-me-as-you-with-a-vagina" Alex (Vera Farmiga, who's beautiful and alluring and all but whose role here did not really clamor for a Best Supporting Actress win; Anna Kendrick was much better). Through sharp, funny dialogue, and classy filmmaking, we learn that the journey means nothing if there's no one there to share it with.
Well.
We knew that already, we didn't learn it, but honestly, some lessons are so obvious and yet difficult we have to re-learn them all the time.

---

Having fallen into unemployment recently, I more than related to the pained, surprised reactions of the people Ryan and Natalie fire. Wish the movie had hinted at a solution, or shown the after effects of being "let go" but it doesn't. Downsized faces of (seeming) non-actors parade before us and the most reassuring thing we get is that: "Well, at least getting fired helped me realize how lucky I am for my loving wife and my children and now I realize I was neglecting them for my career."
Awwww. This allows us to walk away from this movie with some of that shiny movie-dust on our shoulders, but without a job, the children die of hunger. Give it as little as three months of you interviewing and Craiglisting and no job materializing, and your loving wife is going to be on you like a rabid dog on a lazy tail, trust me.


ABOVE: MY GOD, THIS WOMAN! #41

Happy Bastille Day from the SUPER ABRIDGED MARIE ANTOINETTE SAGA!

Vive La Revolution, Citizens!

Jim Field Smith's "She's Out of My League"

There are no leagues in love. Leagues are for group games. Love is about connections.



Casting is the problem with "She's Out of My League," a mostly serviceable comedy that explains itself away in the title. It's about a guy (played by Jay Baruchel) who starts going out with a girl (played by Alice Eve), and he begins to worry that "she's a hard 10 and he's a 5" as his constricting circle of harrassing harpying friends keep on telling us.
*sigh*
Thing is... Alice Eve is a pretty girl, sure, but she doesn't really seem out of Jay Baruchel's league at all. By Hollywood standards, she's kind of a 7 or a low 8. He's kind of a 5, but if he worked on his pecs he could be a 6. Maybe even a 7 if they like to make love with the light out. Mathematically something can be arranged.
See how silly it is to reduce relationships to objective numbering?

The whole movie caved in for me because I kept on being told how inmensely hot this girl was and I just felt like: "Actually supporting actress Krysten Ritter has no boobs but she seems much more interesting than the main girl who, honestly, keeps getting plainer and plainer the more I stare at her and her angular jaw and her picket-fence teeth and her vanilla looks."




If a girl is out of a guy's league, it means she doesn't like him. He doesn't exist to her, he's the caterer at her soirees. But if the girl notices the guy and the guy notices the girl, they're in each other's league. That simple. Why complicate this with the incessant input from an annoying cast of forgettables, and then end it all in a- cliche of cliches-decision at the airport?
The first horrible script I wrote had a "decision at the airport," which is how I knew that it was horrible.
Oh, me and my inability to cash in on some hack work!