by Dean | Oct 27, 2014 | General
I picked up a nonfiction book from 2011 called Sex, Mom & God by Frank Schaeffer, a liberal Christian or . . . something; I don’t know what he is.
Compelled to comment on Sarah Palin’s role as defender of traditional values such as marriage and the family, Schaeffer has written that “Palin was the least ‘submissive’ female imaginable [submissive to her husband, that is]. She misused her children as stage props and reduced her husband to the role of ‘helpmeet’; indeed, he became the perfect example of a good biblical wife.” (This during the 2008 presidential campaign.)
I am prompted to wonder why a goodly number of my fellow Christians—or whoever—feel they have to write books. We’d be better off if they didn’t. That Sarah Palin has failed at submissiveness is probably something God alone should determine, is it not? The idea that she “misused her children as stage props” (“used” and not misused is the proper word here) is simply absurd, and who would believe there was any such “reduction” of Tod Palin?
For a man to criticize Palin as late as 2011 was sadly ungallant.
by Dean | Oct 24, 2014 | General
Capriciousness can become cruelty. It does with Carmen in Charles Vidor’s The Loves of Carmen (1948) based, like the opera, on the Prosper Merimee story.
The gypsies in the film, of whom beautiful Carmen is one, are truly thieves. Carmen’s Spanish lover, who finds out too late that Carmen is married, becomes one too, after the husband’s death. Will Carmen stay with the man?
This pretty-looking but often cornball and obvious period piece is rescued by the charisma and fire and gorgeousness of Rita Hayworth (Carmen). Glenn Ford is miscast as the Spanish lover, Don Jose, but Hayworth makes doggone sure she isn’t miscast. She’s even good in a fight scene with another woman, and her general energy complements the suitably staged physical conflicts between men. Artificial as it is, the movie confirms what it means for an actress to be a star in a way Jane Fonda or Debra Winger or Michelle Pfeiffer never was.
Carmen itself is flawed if rather entertaining. In any case, it offers something better than the fake spirituality of another Hayworth film, Salome.
Cover of The Loves of Carmen
by Dean | Oct 21, 2014 | General
The second episode of Jane the Virgin (on Monday, Oct. 20) was as well-written as the first. This CW series is the new Desperate Housewives—i.e. the new plebeian, seriocomic soap—but so far it’s better than Housewives. It’s livelier and more amusing and, well, somehow a little less plebeian. Too, it’s moving (in the second episode), notwithstanding the gimmicky tear falling in slow-mo from the eye of Yael Grobglas’s Petra.
Gina Rodriguez is appealingly fine as Jane, resourceful and not as conventional as she could be. Yara Martinez also impresses as a doctor named Luisa, strikingly subdued in pain and fear. Among the men, Jaime Camil never overdoes his comic vigor as a telenovela star.
The ratings for Jane have been decent. Let’s hope the show remains decent.
by Dean | Oct 19, 2014 | Movies
I don’t know much about defense attorneys, but I don’t completely buy the depiction of them, or of one of the prosecutors (David Krumholtz), in David Dobkin’s new film, The Judge (2014). There’s something utterly specious here. Still, although this legal drama is not terribly good, it isn’t terribly bad—or even plain bad—either. It has Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall (as convincing as ever), Vincent D’Onofrio (full of depth), and Billy Bob Thornton. Critic David Edelstein is right about its “picturesque” outdoor shots. It has a story of very limited strength, but at least some strength is there.
That said, allow me to comment also that I like old movies (significantly old) because they were prohibited from showing the kind of gross vomiting and diarrheal excreting that The Judge gives us. Ugh!
English: Actor Robert Downey Jr. promoting the film “Iron Man” in Mexico City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Oct 16, 2014 | Money
Drew
Riding in Cars With Boys is what finally gets Beverly Donofrio (Drew Barrymore) pregnant. The young man (Steve Zahn) who must then marry her eventually turns into a junkie; Beverly throws him out. Raising her little boy alone, she is permanently prevented from going to college, and must forever wonder whether she is a good mom or a bad one. She loves her son, but her life disappoints her. She writes about it in the book on which this 2001 Penny Marshall film is based.
Anything but disreputable, Riding is felt and attentive to character. Its comedy, however, is lame, and sentimentality sometimes creeps in. The latter might not been so bothersome had scriptwriter Morgan Upton Wood been a little less unflattering toward the young men in the film. Middle-aged men like the one James Woods plays are treated respectfully, but the young guys are either stereotypes or close to it. At the same time, Ward nonsensically compliments women on their compassion with a line Beverly’s husband speaks to his son: “Even total screw-ups they want to help.”
Zahn and, as Beverly’s best friend, Brittany Murphy, provide some winsome seriocomic acting. James Woods is quietly compelling as the heroine’s father, but a redheaded Barrymore founders. She could have been fine, but she chose to be histrionic. Too bad Penny “Laverne & Shirley” Marshall didn’t restrain her.
by Dean | Oct 14, 2014 | General
Anthony Mann’s Bend of the River (1952) is a rugged, natural beauty-loving Western, but much about the narrative doesn’t hold up.
Surely a pack of hostile men would not ride their horses into an unoccupied area with a burning campfire and thus risk an ambush from their enemies. Surely Jimmy Stewart’s cowboy would refuse the further services of scalawags who try to overturn his plans to deliver food to a settlement. And a few other befuddling things go on as well. Adapting someone’s novel, scenarist Borden Deal should have known better: The plotting makes this movie impure in a way that a Western flick like Shane is not.
Bend is a rich movie, yes, but that’s only owing to what the director, Mann, has done.
Cover of Bend of the River
by Dean | Oct 12, 2014 | General
Unpleasant as it is, Gone Girl (2014) is the misanthropic David Fincher movie I’ve been waiting for. I have no use for Seven and The Social Network, but this film, not merely unpleasant, is riveting and pulpy-good.
Does polished Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) deserve to have her skull shattered, as her hubby Nick (Ben Affleck) sort of intimates? Well, clearly their marriage has become unstable, but then Amy turns up missing and suspicion understandably falls on put-upon Nick. See the movie and you’ll know why I say “understandably.”
Astutely directed by Fincher, Gone Girl was admirably screenwritten by the woman on whose novel the film is based—viz., Gillian Flynn—and offers nicely eccentric music by Trent Razor and Atticus Ross. The acting ranges from competent (Affleck) to superlative (Pike and probably the magnetic Carrie Coon). Sex and unclothed female bazooms are there and are shot un-vulgarly.
English: Rosamund Pike at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Oct 8, 2014 | General
So far we’re waiting for the maturation of such villains as the Penguin and Catwoman and of Bruce Wayne’s Batman (if indeed it takes place) in the new Fox TV series, Gotham (on Monday nights), but in the meantime there is no mere modicum of criminal activity in depraved Gotham City. All the perniciousness gives police detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) a run for his money, forcing him to consort with future costumed personages. He makes a promise to young Wayne, for example, that he will find his parents’ killer.
The sleaziness of the police force, etc. is a stale element in Gotham, and yet the show tries hard not to be boring. It can be hard-nosed fun if also a bit raffish, and there is first-rate acting from Donal Logue and Robin Lord Taylor (as the future Penguin). Some of the female thespians could be stronger.
Selina Kyle’s first appearance as The Cat in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Oct 5, 2014 | General
Who says there will be a pre-Tribulation Rapture? It doesn’t seem quite compatible with what the Bible says about the suffering of the saints, but maybe the Christians who believe in it are right; I don’t know. The 2014 Left Behind movie has a way of making the concept slightly dubious, even though this is not the apocalyptic picture’s problem. The early footage is promising, but afterwards Vic Armstrong proves he doesn’t know how to direct the film, which is why it is rhythmless, clumsy and pseudo-clever.
Left Behind is a more successful Christian action film than the very bad Trinity Broadcasting Left Behind of 2000, but this isn’t saying much. Nicolas Cage’s commanding performance as Rayford Steele, however, is enjoyable, and the not-bad Nicky Whalen (as Hattie) is a beautiful woman. You might want to try out the movie, after all.
by Dean | Oct 2, 2014 | General
In Wild Strawberries (1959), an old man and esteemed professor gets, in a way, bludgeoned for being less virtuous than others would suspect. (He’s expressionistically bludgeoned.)
Is there anything that saves this famous Ingmar Bergman film? NO. It’s tiresome glop. When it isn’t fatuous (the despairing husband who also serves as figurative judge) it’s sentimental (the old man’s gentle eyes fixed on a remembered Bibi Andersson). Plus the protag’s selfishness, etc. is usually revealed through exposition, not drama. . . In truth, art should not be as unentertaining as this.
Wild Strawberries (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
