Musings

After my riding lesson I ran a few errands, and then treated myself to a movie. I’m an Anglophile and I love the nineteen twenties and thirties so I wanted to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day before it disappeared. It’s a slight little movie, and I don’t think it’s going to be around for too long.

It’s a great cast — Francis McDormand, and my personal heart throb from Persuasion and Rome, Ciarán Hinds, and the delightful Amy Adams from Enchanted. There’s some great music, and wonderful evocation of period. The director reminds you nicely that this is 1939 and the war is coming. The story is very predictable, but it ends up being comforting rather than annoying. It’s funny, sometimes when you can predict every step it becomes like a story the audience is telling along with the characters, and it creates a sense of community and shared experience. That’s what happened for me with this film.

My biggest objection is that they didn’t really take enough time to develop the three boyfriends who are pursuing Delysia. They became cut out figures, and stand-in’s for familiar stock characters. Perhaps they did that so the Cirán Hinds character would stand out more.

If you aren’t expecting too much this was a delightful way to wile away a couple of hours. I’m hoping to get to Leatherheads in the next few days. Guess it’s my week to sigh over very attractive men.

My dear friends, Janice Gelb www.smofbabe.net and Stephen Boucher are in town from Australia, and I’ve been spending as much time with them as work will allow. After all, they live a world away, and to see the people rather than their phosphers is just wonderful. Stephen is green chili fanatic so we’ve been enjoying Tecolote for breakfast, and a number of fine New Mexican restaurants. When Janice and Stephen are in town we also go to a lot of movies. So, my reviews of the two I’ve seen this week.

Thursday night we ate an early dinner at The Shed and headed off to see THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES. I had an interest in this because my management company handled the option and I think they were also involved in developing the film. It’s a kid’s movie so some of the messages were pounded home with a ten pound sledge, but overall I enjoyed it a great deal. It was very charming and would have been lyrical, except the director seemed to think it increased tension if he had all the characters yelling and screaming all the time. It got very wearing, very fast. There was also a rather odd note struck by the event that brought the mother and son together. I don’t want to say more because it would be a spoiler, but once some of you have seen it we can discuss it.

The creatures were apparently right out of the illustrations in the book, and some seemed a bit like muppets, but some of them were just devastatingly beautiful. In particular the flower fairies and the sprites.

I have to say that as a movie experience it worked better than Jumper.

Last night I drove through a New Mexico February blizzard to join George, Parris, Stephen and Janice for Chinese food at Chow’s. Then most of us went off to the late feature of IN BRUGES. I had really been looking forward to this movie. The trailers made it seem funny, with wry, smart dialogue and quirky characters. Unfortunately this was not truth in advertising.

There are some great snappy scenes that make you laugh, but they are few and far between. Our protagonist is bored senseless by Bruges, and unfortunately the writer/director sells that all too well for the audience. I found myself actually thinking about just leaving and driving home. It also wasn’t a comedy. It’s dark and brutal, and the characters seem to have no consistent… well, character. It seems to change from scene to scene in the interest of setting up for the zinger. The event that is torturing our protagonist are deeply affecting, but I don’t think you can overlay comedy aspects on an event of such gut wrenching power. The result was that it’s neither funny, nor do you completely grasp the pain our hitman is enduring.

The movie really only came to life when Ralph Fiennes arrived on the scene, and then it was really violent. I don’t mind violence, but it has to make sense. If I wanted to kill someone I certainly wouldn’t run through the streets of Bruges blasting away. Maybe this was supposed to make the character seem more quirky, but to me he just seemed stupid.

So far the only movies that I’ve really enjoyed are ENCHANTED, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, JUNO and MICHAEL CLAYTON.

Melinda

So, from Tinsel Town I’ll write about a movie. On Wednesday night Steve Gould and Laura Mixon-Gould invited me to a sneak preview of JUMPER. There was going to be a big part of the New Mexico folk on Thursday night, the official opening night, but unfortunately I was on an airplane to L.A.

It’s a tremendous thrill when a book writer gets a win. It’s tough to make a living writing prose, so you give a big cheer when a writer gets a piece of Hollywood money. Jumper is also one of those books that has long, strong legs because it speaks to young people about issues that torment and define their lives. It’s an emotionally powerful book.

I’m afraid the movie missed that emotional power. It was fun, I really liked the two young men playing David (Hayden Christensen) and Griffin (Jamie Bell), there were some terrific set pieces. Where it failed for me was in motivation.

The most powerful relationship was between the two young men. I wanted a movie where they teamed up much earlier, and worked together much longer. They had great chemistry.

What didn’t work was the love story because it felt sketchy. Here’s my arrogant fix — I would have had David returning home frequently to woo this girl. He has money, he can jump, why not spend time with her? The movie was trying to do so many things early in the film that it lost the emotional drive. We’ve got David learning to teleport, then using it to rob a bank, then a fairly long run of scenes about how great it is to be rich, young and carefree. Finally a fly lands in the ointment, and _then_ he goes home to look longingly at the girl, and evenutally hook up with her.

Finally Griffen shows up, and then things just start to rock.

I hope this movie does really, really well. It’s a fun two hours, and I didn’t find Christensen wooden. He was playing against a guy who got to chew the scenary, and that’s always hard. What I’d really like is the further adventures of Griffen and David.

Some of the reveiwers have complained because the director didn’t explain the “rules” of jumping. It’s always a gamble. When you explain you can end up stopping the film dead in its tracks. If you don’t explain you risk the audience tuning out. It’s why it’s so hard to do science fiction well on screen whe you only have two hours.

I’d still say go and have fun. Because it’s based on a very fine book, and let’s give a writer a big win.

Melinda

Went and saw Michael Clayton with George last night. I’ve now seen three of the nominated films and I liked this one the best so far. The performances were wonderful, the direction excellent and the script was a perfect little clockwork piece where everything was set up in advance so nothing came out of left field.

I am fascinated with structure — how books and movies and television series fit together, how one wrong piece can undermine an otherwise good piece of work, so when I see it done well it makes me want to stand up and cheer. I had that feeling last night. The first season of VERONICA MARS is another example, as is season five of BUFFY

The studio sent me NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, but I haven’t been able to face something so downbeat. I don’t think I can make it through THERE WILL BE BLOOD. I’ll wait for George to give me his report and then I’ll have several points of feedback.

Now we just have to wait and see if the strike gets settled and we actually have an Academy Awards.