by Dean | Aug 12, 2011 | General
Cover of My Summer of Love
Re My Summer of Love (2005):
A teenaged redhead called Mona (Natalie Press) lives in Yorkshire, England with her brother Phil (Paddy Considine), a former convict. They constitute the only family the pair have, the mother in fact having died of cancer, and their residence is a pub which Phil is turning into a Christian meeting place now that he claims to have found God. Not a whit happy over this religious conversion, Mona misses the man her brother used to be and childishly weeps because of it. After spontaneously calling Phil a fake, she goes on to eventually befriend a girl named Tamsin, played by Emily Blunt, who is a lovely mischief maker. Loss and dysfunction in the family drive both girls into a warm concord which soon waxes sexually intimate despite Mona’s and perhaps Tamsin’s heterosexuality (evidenced in Mona’s case by her doomed affair with a married man). In truth, what they are also driven to is role playing, fraudulence and–when you come down to brass tacks–sin. This, to be sure, is the designation one could slap on what Tamsin, as immature as Mona, does to her lover. The outcome is lamentable.
This British film by Pawel Pawlikowskyis flawed–the doings of Tamsin and Phil are a little less convincing than they ought to be–but, too, it is aesthetically pleasing with its potent closeups and Ryszard Lenczewski’s nicely rugose cinematography. And the actors know what they’re doing at every second.
Even so, there is this: in Christian circles there are people who are self-deceived, who are unwittingly faking it. The pre-“born again” Phil was a quite violent criminal, and it turns out that the “born again” Phil is violent as well. Indeed, he is a faker, hoping against hope that he has not remained the man he used to be. But in frustration Phil screams at the other religious believers in the ex-pub, “You’re all fakers!” and the film appears to accept this as woeful truth. Tsk, tsk. Phil and all his new friends: nothing but religious frauds. But why, I’d like to know, should this be so? It has to be nonsense. Another question, possibly unfair, comes to mind: Must Europeans such as Pawlikowski be so ignorant about Christianity?
A lot of talent can be observed in My Summer of Love, but the film is a nice-looking liar. And Emily Blunt’s nudity is wasted on it.
by Dean | Aug 9, 2011 | General
On the Robert Rauschenberg exhibition at Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which exhibition ends on Sept. 11, 2011:
Most of the Rauschenberg assemblages, lithographs, etc. here offer little in the way of an aesthetic experience. Storyline 1 (1968), for example, consists of lithograph images from the Arthur Penn movie Bonnie and Clyde and that’s it: it’s utterly trivial. On the other hand, exceptions to this no-aesthetic-impact tendency are found, I think, in Sling-shots Lit #2 and #7, especially the former. Both works feature fluorescent light and superimposition. #2 dazzles us with blocks and smudges of bright color, while #7 is a black and white assemblage-cum-lithograph replete with small pop culture images. Both held my eye for quite some time.
In an essay on Rauschenberg from the Brushes with History anthology (2000), Max Kozloff mentions “hints of disaster and dissolution” contained in the artist’s work and vision. Are there any such hints in the Philbrook exhibition? Yes, as in 1997’s successful Daze, with its empty green chairs and “ruptured” pond water. But, as it happens, the further Rauschenberg moves away from hints of disaster and dissolution, the weaker his creations become. They turn into pseudo-art; they fail to speak to me.
Not at all is this true of the older (permanent?) stuff at Philbrook. These are paintings and sculptures, including the realistic The Flax Spinner by Jules-Adolph Breton, the Fauvist Nice, le Baie des Anges by Raoul Dufy, and The Artist’s Wife in the Garden by Frederick Carl Frieseke. Beauties, these. They’re resonant.
More about the Philbrook collection in later posts.
by Dean | Aug 2, 2011 | General
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It is never made clear just why Emily (Julianne Moore) no longer wants to be married to Cal (Steve Carell) in Crazy Stupid Love (2011), but that is the point at which the movie’s plot takes off. Early on, a splendid scene crops up in which Cal drives a 17-year-old girl home and all the while–knowing of Cal’s upcoming divorce, aware of current disaster–the girl nervously and silently longs to tell the man she adores him. Later, another well-done scene has a schoolteacher played by Marisa Tomei furiously rail at Cal at a parent-teacher conference for Cal’s romantic mistreatment of her, and this she does in front of Emily! Such footage is certainly to the credit of this contemporary screwball comedy directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.
Unfortunately, the film is only sometimes funny. But its narrative is fun and curious and twisty. (And preposterous.) The pacing is as good as the editing, and the picture’s look is pleasingly unadorned.
This is the first time I’ve seen Emma Stone, who, although she is talented, mildly overacts in a long sequence with Ryan Gosling. Tomei does better with the schoolteacher; it’s a comparatively small role and she works memorably hard to create a character here.
by Dean | Jul 21, 2011 | General
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The Japanese writer Shusaku Endo’s interest in the silence of God led him to provide his 1969 novel on the subject with the mere title, Silence.
The time is the 1600s. Two Catholic priests from Portugal sail to Japan to spiritually aid the Christians there and to find out why a fellow priest called Father Ferreira apparently apostatized. The shocking torture of Christians both Japanese and European has routinely occurred in Japan (at the hands of Japanese authorities) any time a believer has refused to trample on the engraved image of Jesus called the fumie. The novel’s hero, Father Rodrigues, is a godly man, but he is bothered by God’s silence in the face of the suffering he beholds–and he perforce confronts the possibility of becoming a “fallen priest” in such a treacherous land.
Is there a form of Christian “fallenness” that is justified, at least when faith remains in the heart?
Clumsy prose prevails in Silence (“Banging his head against the wall he kept murmuring monotonously: “It cannot be so . . .”), but the novel is sobering. I must ask, however: Are persecuted born-again Catholic priests really concerned about the silence–or “silence”– of God? Perhaps it depends on the nature of the persecution. Much of the novel’s meaning, in any case, is rather questionable. It is not as fine an accomplishment as the novels of Mauriac and Bernanos, who, like the late Endo, were devout Catholics. But it is assuredly religious and hardly uninteresting.
by Dean | Jul 19, 2011 | General
Cover of Clockstoppers
Clockstoppers (2002), directed by Jonathan Frakes, is about adolescents who are empowered by science for moving in hypertime, namely, so fast that everything around them appears as though it were in suspended animation. A stimulating pop piece for a while, the film delivers a narrative about domestic terrorists that is sheer rubbish. When we don’t see this narrative, we witness the film singing the praises of teen mischief (mischief in hypertime). Clockstoppers is worthless. The movie stars Jesse Bradford and Paula Garces, both undistinguished. Miss Garces often displays her navel and in one scene wears nothing but a towel but–sorry, Paramount Pictures–because she is just a kid there is no sexiness here.
by Dean | Jul 12, 2011 | General
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To me Fast Five (2011), the latest fast-and-furious item, is fairly enjoyable. But only fairly. Its best action sequence comes way too early; it’s superior to the final action sequence. It involves a train targeted by Dominic Toretto (a smug Vin Diesel) and several other criminals, and it’s explosive fun.
Nevertheless, why should the details of the movie’s plot be so crazily childish, as when Toretto’s relatives spring him from captivity by savagely wrecking a prison bus? Or when Toretto manages to free himself from chains while suspended from a ceiling? Or when a bikini-clad babe is able to get Mr. Gangster’s handprint on her clothes in order to–oh, never mind. It’s too silly to go into. The Westerns I read make a heckuva lot more sense than this thing.
Oh, well. I still had a good time at Fast Five. Director Justin Lin is talented at filming car chases, etc. FF‘s women are comely, and there are interesting shots of Rio, where the action takes place. Too bad the criminals and a couple of honorable police officers destroy the poor city.
