fine whine

So now it's 2006. Our plans fell through, and Jessica and the cat abandoned me so I rang in this year by myself (well, I suppose the people apparently detonating small explosives count too since they sounded awfully close).

Which isn't that big of a deal, anyway. It's just another night; one that divides the days dates are written with a twelve at the beginning and one number at the end*, and then dates with a one at the beginning and that old number plus one at the end. Big deal. I write about ten checks a year.

I watch a lot of movies, though, and tonight was no exception. First in the lineup was the 1976 Bad news Bears and, even though it maybe wasn't an out-of-the-park home run, it wasn't just a caught pop fly.

Enough with the baseball terminology. Thankfully the movie doesn't dwell in it, instead focusing on some well-played kids (even if they can't play the game all that well) and a surprisingly good Walter Matthau. He's an actor that has turned in many a good role (Hopscotch is one of the more underrated gems of the Criterion Collection) and here as a casual alcoholic he's just as good as ever. His changes of heart may be a bit sudden, but never as jarring as they might otherwise be in the hands of someone else. The kids, though, prove to be just as much up to the task, including an impressive Tatum O'Neal (who, in doing nothing impressive after Paper moon, may have been cast as the 'old pro' brought in to help out the amateurs in something of a canny, if unintended move), though many a fair-haired buck-toothed boy gets mixed up with another. The movie stands apart from other underdog movies for many a reason, and most make it worth watching. I may check out the remake sometime, just to see what seasoned vets like Richard Linklater and Billy Bob Thornton can do with the same material, but I'm in no hurry. This one's good enough.

To end the year on a more serious note, I next watched Woody Allen's Hannah and her sisters. This wasn't the first time I'd grabbed it at the library; I'd often checked it out but had lighter fare to watch first, or just wanted something less, well, less about three sisters and their romantic entanglements in New York City. But in Woody Allen's hands it's not nearly as bad as something sounding like that could be.

After all, imagine Nora Ephron tackling the same idea. Or don't.

The way Allen writes it it's touching, clever, intelligent and funny, and well worth watching. Almost every character is convincingly fleshed out, and Woody's neurotic nebbish has rarely been more believable. Michael Caine is a bit creepy as an adulterous husband, and it's difficult to pin down if he's playing an American or Brit or someone from somewhere else, for all that matters. In the end it's not about where everybody came from, but where they end up and how they get there that matters, and everybody, Woody and Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest and Sam Waterston and Michael Caine and Max Von Sydow (whose severe artist criticizes TV at one point, his comments no less timely now than they were then; the title of this post is a quote from the scene) and Carrie Fisher and all the rest make for a great movie about love and families and everything in between.

I split my viewing of it, however, to catch the yearly ball-dropping in Times Square. I'm no longer certain why I do this other than to know the correct moment the year turns, since my watches and clocks are all different. I don't care about the people on TV, don't watch the flavor-of-the-month performances and interviews before and after the drop, and don't want to think about all of the garbage littering the Square after the millions file out.

They mentioned that a literal ton (2000 pounds) of confetti was to be thrown on the crowd, they with their big balloons and streamers and promotional hats and stupid, stupid, stupid '2006' glasses, and I could see the few empty inches of pavement behind the announcers (somehow I ended up seeing Carson Daly instead of Dick Clark. The new year came anyway) already covered in garbage even before the climactic last moments.

And for what? Some of those people had been standing around since noon, and that's not even considering the travel time that most of them, out-of-towners, also endured. And without public restrooms, apparently. So they came all that way, and waited all that time, and they couldn't give a crap.

Har har. Happy New Year, for what it's worth.

* I refer, of course, to the dreadful 'month day, year' notation that has so caught Americans' fancy. Why, oh why, ask I, can't we use the much nicer, more logical 'day month year' that so much of the rest of the world uses?

I've been doing some thinking. My earlier dismissal of the recent War of the worlds may have been a disservice to a $200 million grossing film with A-listers on both sides of the camera. A movie that bad deserves far greater attention.

I haven't changed my mind. It's most likely the worst movie made this year that I've seen so far. What we need to ask ourselves is: what went wrong?

Was it Tom Cruise's off-screen antics and the whole Scientology debacle that distracted me? Nope. While he may be a raving loon in his personal life that hasn't impaired his acting abilities too much. His agent might need to brush up on his skills though, as Tom makes a very, very unconvincing blue-collar New Jersey native, let alone a card-carrying stevedore.

Moreover, he's the person the latter two thirds of the movie shows. Of all the people to care about... him? And two kids, and Tim Robbins?

While I harbor no ill will toward any of them (though his son's character played by Justin Chatwin isn't particularly interesting, or fleshed-out convincingly) I find the need to wonder why, with an entire planet in turmoil, we only see the briefest glances at what the rest of the population is experiencing. Such a small focus works when you've got a smaller-scale situation, like, oh, three guys on a boat and the giant shark trying to eat them, but when an unknown number of giant alien machines is tearing up cities willy-nilly (I believe we know there are at least four, based on how many are shown at any one time) there's literally a world of possibilities for people to follow and scenes to show.

Perhaps screenwriters David Koepp & Josh Friedman wanted to make sure Spielberg didn't repeat his 1941 mistake of too many characters and too much bloat*. But they took away too much. Spielberg knows how to handle reasonable groups of people in horrifically dramatic situations (like the Holocaust, though the Nazis and the aliens in this film are at once very similar and yet so different) but here he seems unable to juggle more than three people at a time.

At one point our protagonists are running to get onto a ferry, along with a throng of several hundred other people. Somewhere in the chaos they meet "Sheryl" and a child with her, though no explanation is give as to who she is other than someone Tom's character knows. She disappears from the action quickly enough, though, and isn't mentioned thereafter. Extra characters in Saving private Ryan were treated much better.

In Ryan we can find a much better example of following a small group of people against the backdrop of a larger evil, but in this case they're all believable soldiers, not a pretty-boy dockworker, an overprecocious little girl, fifteen stereotypes wrapped up into a fifteen year old, and a survivalist who might have just gone a bit over the line. All the time I watched it I was aware that these people were actors acting, and never bought into the suspension of disbelief at their characters, let alone the special effects behind them.

Some of the CGI was painfully obvious, too. Physical sets looked pretty good, and however the rich neighborhood/jet crash was put together it looked quite convincing, but far too much of the movie looked much too fake.

And I feel the need to point out that the back windows of a mid-90s Dodge Caravan do not slide down like that. They just don't. They can't. I realize that it was probably necessary for filmmakers to fake so they could fly a camera around, inside and outside of the minivan, but it was all the more distracting, and equally pointless.

Some of the effects sequences were pretty impressive, but almost all of them ran on as long as a painful Saturday Night Live sketch, well past making the point. The emergence of the tripod creature from the ground is one such scene. Likewise the eyeball tentacles late in the film, seemingly a cross between the water tentacle from The Abyss and something much more sinister.

I won't even address the jarring discrepancies in the aliens' technologies, other than to mention that they've mastered intergalactic travel and an incredible form of personal transportation, yet they rely on inefficient designs and needlessly complex solutions to easy problems. Want to clear out a bunch of people from a planet? Why zap them individually when you could just pulverize the buildings and wipe out the people en masse? Or why not build bigger death rays, say, the size of more than one person at a time?

The fact that at least once 'terrorists' were mentioned shows that everyone's still well aware of the whole 9/11 thing, but was this really necessary? I suppose I'd need to find an overprecocious ten-year-old and ask him or her what the first guess at a big attack would be, terrorists or space aliens.

Maybe I should read the book. I'd bet that ol' H.G. had New Jersey in mind when he wrote it a century ago. You should read the book too, or watch the old movie, or listen to the radio adaptation. Just skip this one.

* And not enough entertainment. If you haven't yet watched 1941, don't. It's a disaster/war/comedy/farce with a cast numbering in the 50s and jokes numbering in the low 10s.

War of the worlds may have been ripe for remaking, but this year's attempt wasn't a worthy successor to the 1955 award-winner. It wasn't even as good of a movie.

It wasn't the worst movie we watched tonight, but it's definitely among the top three. The other two were Dead presidents and Benny & Joon. That last one was least worst of the bunch, but by no means a fantastic film.

Compared to the other two, though, it was fine art.

Some bits of it are pure brilliance. The idea of a poker game with non-monetary bets and raises is quite well done, in no small part due to the great cast. The way Sam makes mashed potatoes and grilled cheese are classic scenes, too, though nothing in comparison to Johnny Depp's Buster Keaton work. Aidan Quinn is just creepy, though, and far outshined by everyone else on screen. The screen is a bit muddled by the cinematographer's choice of filters and whatnot for the lenses: most of the movie is shot through a mesh (basically a pair of nylons) and the higher-fidelity of the DVD presentation makes that practice all the more visible and distracting.

More distracting, though, was the first four-fifths of Dead presidents, which resembled more The deer hunter than the heist movie that the commercials I remembered would have me believe. Chris Tucker shows that he can, in fact, act without being completely annoying, but little else is all that noteworthy. I much preferred Chris Rock's serious turn* in New Jack city when I watched that last week. But not by much.

* As opposed to every other role he's apparently ever played (save maybe for CB4, which I haven't seen), such as Dogma which I also recently re-watched.

Look around on the web and you discover many interesting things about Woody Allen's Purple rose of Cairo:

• It's supposedly Woody's favorite movie, of the ones he's made.
• It garnered him a nomination for the Academy Award for "Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen", his fourth winless nomination since sharing the honors with Marshall Brickman for 1978's Annie Hall. He would win again the next year with Hannah and her sisters.
• It probably didn't make enough at the box office to cover its $15 million budget.
• Irving Berlin's "Cheek to cheek", the song that underscores the opening titles, was used in the soundtrack of one film in the 1980s. This one. It was used in ten films during the 1990s. It is from the movie Top hat, with Fred & Ginger, as seen at the end of Purple rose.
• Michael Keaton* was originally cast in Jeff Daniels's role. Woody fired him after seeing his early footage.

But those are just bits of trivia, facts and hearsay, and easily found ones at that. You'd do far better to actually watch the movie, an eminently enjoyable, whimsical romp through the escapist nature of cinema and the whole movie-going experience.

It's delightful and fun, startlingly so for a movie set against the bleak backdrop of the Great Depression. Having avoided reading anything about the plot before watching it, everything in Purple rose was a surprise for me, and I think I enjoyed it all the more for it. So I won't ruin the plot.

One thing I feel I must point out, however, is that while Woody does not appear in the film, even in a bit role (at least that I could see), Mia Farrow has mastered his nuances and cadences so well that her lines often sound as though he could be delivering them, except that they lack most of his neuroses. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something noticeably odd. Mia does a fine job, and Jeff Daniels rises to the challenge of acting with her. Everybody does well, though, especially the ones onscreen.

I can't recommend this film highly enough. Grab some popcorn, if such is your inclination, kick back, and watch a wonderful movie.

* Keaton is of course better known for his portrayals of Batman, which I have also recently re-watched. His first turn in the rubber suit isn't all that bad, despite several telling signs that it is a product of the late 80s (Prince songs prominently figure in several scenes). It seemed to be a decent start for a franchise, if not a bit long on stylization and short on warmth. Unfortunately his return in 1992 was the beginning of the long downward trend of the franchise, with Burton given a freer hand for style and the unfortunate choice of two of the stranger villains, one of whom is as repulsive as he is implausible. Moreover I must wonder about the vehicle choices in the latter film: the police drive Chrysler K-cars (not know for their reliability or horsepower) and the same VW Jettas seem to appear noticeably many times, probably just repositioned and repainted on the tall but claustrophobic street sets.

Attack of the killer tomatoes! has some very amusing bits, including the outrageously hilarious tiny meeting room and the titling of San Francisco footage as "New York"*, but overall, it both tries too hard (naming a reporter Lois so as to allow a Superman joke later) and is lazy (commercial gags about a blind traffic cop and Jesus as a spokesman have no bearing on the plot) at the same time, and it all comes off as too many winks and not enough nostalgia. Attack is supposed to be a parody of and homage to B-movies of the 50s and later that used sparse sets, slapdash writing, stock footage, and creative-but-low-budget effects to try to tell a story in something of an earnest fashion.

I'm not certain it's entirely possible anymore to make a B-movie like that in this post-ironic modern day and age (or is it ironic post-modern?) with pure intentions. All of those black & white clunkers were amateurs trying their best at their one shot at the big screen. The 'stars' of Attack of the killer tomatoes! aren't trying to act on screen; they're trying to be outrageously funny. It doesn't work. Like I said, many a moment is funny, but overall you've gotta love this film to like it.

* Later they show a slide of what might be the Golden Gate bridge, and title it "New York?". This, my friends, is comedy.

I can but wonder why Disney considers 1971's Bedknobs and broomsticks to be a suitable film for children. Having watched it today for the first time since I was a child, I can't say that I appreciate it more now than I did years ago. Based on what I see now, I'm not sure I should have even seen it as a child. Set against a backdrop of World War II, the story weaves in some pretty heavy themes:

• child abandonment and the death of a parent (the three children are orphans of a sort)
• wanton and unchecked pollution (Miss Price*'s motorcycle spits out a cloud of foul yellow smoke)
• witchcraft (well, that one's obvious, but the scene where the witch joins the children in a post-prandial prayer stands out)
• dishonest clergy (the priest seems to have plans to somehow acquire Miss Price's land and estate, and seems to be faking illness to avoid military service)
• blackmail (the children know Miss Price is a witch and hold it over her for better food and a bed knob)
• obvious drug trip overtones (the psychedelic flying bed sequences)
• confidence games and scams (the Professor sings a song about selling 'cures' that don't work and charms that do nothing, though he sells only one broken trinket to the smallest child)
• wasting food (the Professor cracks eggs and pours milk on the head of one of the bystanders)
• mail fraud (the Professor didn't expect his correspondence course spells to actually work)
• illegal squatting and disobeying government orders (the professor has appropriated a nice mansion vacated by people more squeamish about the unexploded bomb in the front yard)
• taking children to pawn shops (Portabello Road, obviously the Disney backlot, seems to be where people sell things when they're down on their luck, but still ready to dance away their sorrows)
• art forgery and other misrepresentation of goods (Portabello Road)
• vandalism (again, Portabello Road, wherein the youngest child defaces a bust with a mustache, and the older boy breaks a couch)
• racial segregation (the tedious and interminable Portabello Road dance sequence is segmented many a time, but never integrated. Turbans and steel drums don't mix)
• threatening children with violence (a knife is held menacingly against one of them)
• children swearing (well, if "bloody" counts)
• a general disregard for the reality of physics and other science (nevermind witchcraft and a flying bed or breathing and dancing underwater, but talking animals? Give me a break)
• a disregard for proper grammar and speech (besides the children, the animals speak very poorly and do not set a good example for an impressionable audience)
• cheating and other poor sportsmanship (the animals' soccer game is brutal, particularly on the referee)
• theft (the professor steals the king's medallion, and the smallest boy stole a book from the Professor's squat)
• encouraging cohabitation (the shopkeeper is happy to think that the professor and Miss Price are shacking up without being married)
• butt-kicking (the witchcraft-animated pair of shoes kicks the witch in the rear end)
• overt sexual innuendo (one long shot has the Professor giving a large sausage to a pussy-cat, hmmm)
• cruelty to animals (he steps on its tail)
• general war-is-hell kind of stuff (shooting, fisticuffs, and whatnot, albeit with spectral solders on one side and scared Germans on the other)

All that, and it was rated 'G'. Go figure.

* 'Eglantine Price' seemed such an odd name that I was forced to run some anagrams on it. The most promising ones I found, well, weren't that promising.

• I nip a neglecter
• Certain peeling
• I pin a recent leg
• Inelegance trip
• Pelican integer
• Near nice piglet

Of course, "Eglantine" is merely an anagram of "Inelegant", but is it really that simple?

If I instead use 'Miss Eglantine Price' I also get:

• Mantlepieces rising
• Single priest cinema
• Grim penis latencies
• Replaces meningitis
• Angelic Mister Penis
• Genitalic primeness

Genitalic primeness, indeed. To think, this movie is for kids!