Category Archives: Movies

No, Allen didn’t get his ‘groove’ back with ‘Midnight.’ But wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?

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The Guardian celebrated it this way: “Woody Allen gets his groove back with ‘Midnight in Paris‘ after years of decline.”

If only it were true. I mean, the part about getting it back. We have a consensus on the years of decline.

I spent the first moments of 2012 watching the latter part of the film, in which Owen Wilson speaks the Woody Allen lines. Which works pretty well. It brings a smile when this younger man speaks words that you know Allen himself would have spoken 40 years ago. There’s an echo there, and you do smile, because he really used to make you laugh. As Wilson has also done, more recently.

And then there’s the central conceit of the movie, which is that… wait… SPOILER ALERT!

… which is that after midnight, Wilson’s character — the Woody Allen character (let’s go ahead and call him “Gil” to avoid this confusion) — finds himself transported to the very best time to be in Paris.

And when was that? Well, for him it is the same time that it would be for me, the 1920s. The Lost Generation, when you couldn’t swing a bat on the Left Bank without maiming a genius in the art form of your choice. So he finds himself staggering across Montparnasse from party to party with Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Dali, Picasso, and the rest of the gang.

Gil is, by his own estimation, a hack writer for Hollywood who hopes to save himself with a novel he’s struggling with. Hemingway tells him to let Gertrude Stein read it. Ms. Stein, who in real life looked like this — by which I mean to say, looked like somebody no insecure writer would hand his heart to that way — is in the film a sort of amiable den mother who would LOVE to read his book and tell him encouraging things. Which she may have done for Hemingway, but for this nebbish? I don’t know.

Anyway, this premise is loaded with possibilities, and you want to see them explored. But they are not. Allen walks up to this great idea, and then shrugs, backs away and gives us a “so what?’ ending.

And it makes me sad. I mean, this is the guy who made “Manhattan.” It may or may not have been a masterpiece, but it was funny and poignant. And how about that ending: Mariel Hemingway says, “You have to have a little faith in people,”  and your heart gets sucked into such depths in a whirlpool formed by the currents of innocence, cynicism and desire. In that moment, you forgive Allen, if only momentarily, for being such a perv and corrupting young girls. In that moment, you recognize the complexity of being human.

And with this thing, what has happened? Nothing. Gil has blown off an engagement that every viewer has wanted to see him walk away from since the first 30 seconds of the film. No conflict there. Every moment spent with the grotesquely drawn caricatures of his “present” life is tedious, and obviously pointless.

There is no depth to anyone in this film, including the protagonist. Here I am thinking “this is really cool; we’re going to meet Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Picasso,” and they are played for not very good laughs, especially Hemingway. And none of the promises are realized. None of them.

So no, he doesn’t have his thing back. But I kept hoping he would; kept hoping it would be as good as it tried to be. But it wasn’t.

Gimme my Tinker, Tailor! Right now!

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To my considerable outrage, I just realized that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy will NOT be opening tonight at a theater near me.

I’ve been waiting for this thing for a year — it’s the only movie I’ve been eager to see in much longer than that — and the release date has been put off again and again, and I was all ready for it to finally come out on Dec. 9… and it can’t be found.

I read that it was released in the UK three months ago. This is insane. I mean, I’d love to go back to England and see it, but that’s not really an option for me at the moment. I don’t hop the pond that often. It’s sort of a once-in-a-lifetime thing. So far. (I saw “The King’s Speech” at a theater in Oxford the night it opened in England — which, weirdly, was a week or so after it opened back in the States.)

Oh, well… in lieu of that, I’ll share with you this note I wrote today to my friend Hal Stevenson, before I realized the movie wasn’t being released here. Hal recently told me that he had read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold recently, and wanted to know more about le Carre and his work. Since I’m a huge fan (of his early work, anyway), I promised to share some thoughts on what else he might want to read. It’s not brilliant, original literary criticism (I call le Carre’s most acclaimed novel “awesome,” dude), but it gives you an idea to what extent I have been thinking about and eagerly anticipating this non-event.

So I share this now with you as well, as I contemplate going home and watching the original BBC series of “Tinker, Tailor,” which I own on DVD. So there, Hollywood…

Hal,

I haven’t forgotten to write to you about John le Carre..

It’s fitting that I do so today, since the new movie, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” comes out tonight.

I believe you said you had read The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Well, that was an awesome book. As literature, it’s pure and clean and complete. If you’ve read that, you’ve read THE quintessential Cold War novel. You could stop there, if you wanted to. But who would want to?

I don’t think le Carre has written anything technically better than that novel. But he’s written stuff I enjoyed more.

The Alec Leamas novel is cold, and hard. It’s like a diamond. I can find no fault with it. But while I think it speaks profoundly to the human condition, some of his other novels are… warmer. They let you care about the characters more, get into them more.

For instance, George Smiley appears in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, but as a peripheral character. And he comes across as a sort of reluctant agent of the cold pragmatism of Control, who duplicitously sent Leamas on this suicidal errand.

After that, le Carre decided to be more generous to Smiley. He had already been the protagonist of le Carre’s two books before The Spy Who Came In From the Cold — Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality. Those were short murder mysteries in the Agatha Christie mold. That Smiley worked in intelligence was almost incidental.

But Smiley comes to full-blown life in the trilogy that begins with Tinker, Tailor. That’s the start of what has come to be known as “The Quest for Karla.” Here are some brief thoughts on the three books:

  1. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – At the outset of this novel, George is already in retirement, against his will. He and the head of “the Circus” (le Carre’s euphemism for MI6, based in its supposed location near Cambridge Circus in London), known only as Control, were both canned after an operation blew up disastrously. But a Foreign Office official comes to George with evidence that Control was done in by a mole (this novel is responsible for that term entering the language) who had insinuated himself to the very top of the Circus, and was actually running the whole show now on behalf of Moscow. Smiley begins a process of backtracking through his own life and career and former colleagues as he sets a trap for the mole, unofficially, from the outside. The mole, it is known, is the agent of Karla, a mysterious figure who sort of runs his own show deep within the KGB. Karla is Smiley’s lifelong nemesis, sort of his Moby Dick. Smiley doesn’t know who the traitor is until the end – beyond the fact that it will be one of his closest associates, someone he’s known and trusted his whole adult life. The novel is about these relationships, and what they mean to Smiley, as much as it is about spies. That’s a hallmark of le Carre’s work.
  2. The Honourable Schoolboy – This second novel in the trilogy is very different from the other two. It’s sweeping, and adventurous and cinematic. The ironic thing about it is that it’s the only one that hasn’t been made into a movie (or, more accurately, TV series), even though it reads most like a movie script. It takes place after Smiley has exposed the mole, and turned the Circus inside out. George has been brought back officially into service to head the new, demoralized Circus. Trying to build the agency back up and get some decent intelligence coming in, Smiley pursues a trail of money that should lead to a top Soviet agent – another of Karla’s hand-picked people – in Hong Kong. Lacking professionals on staff he can trust, he sends an old freelance hand – a journalist named Jerry Westerby, who is sort of a half-amateur gentleman spy – to track down this second Karla agent. Westerby does so against the background of exotic locales. You get the sense that le Carre was trying to be a sort of Hollywood version of Joseph Conrad here. There is action, to an extent that is unlike le Carre, who tends to be more cerebral. On the whole, the novel isn’t as satisfying, since it’s more about Westerby and his conflicts than it is about Smiley and the characters you’ve come to care about in Tinker, Tailor.
  3. Smiley’s People – This one is everything The Honourable Schoolboy wasn’t. It’s like a reunion from the first book, and is the climactic act in Smiley’s lifelong contest with Karla. At the outset, George is in exile again from the service after the fiasco in Hong Kong. But an old Russian general, who had spied for Britain in Moscow, has been murdered in London. The Circus doesn’t want to be caught within miles of the general or his old émigré friends, and asks George to come in quietly, unofficially, and lay the general’s affairs to rest – tie up loose ends, pour oil on the waters. George discovers that the general was killed because he had possessed a secret that could be Karla’s undoing. And he spends the rest of the novel making the rounds of old friends, pulling together the strands of a noose around Karla’s neck. But as he gets closer, he comes to doubt whether that’s even what he wants to do.

Moral ambiguity is Smiley’s constant companion. He’s a good and decent man who finds himself doing abhorrent things in the service of his ideals. That is a theme in everything le Carre writes, even when Smiley doesn’t appear.

And he does NOT appear in subsequent novels, except in retrospect in The Secret Pilgrim. That was OK (as were A Perfect Spy and The Constant Gardener), but here are what I think are the best of le Carre’s post-Smiley novels:

  • The Russia House – The protagonist is so much like Jerry Westerby that it’s like le Carre saw this novel as a do-over, an attempt to get that character right this time. An amateur is recruited to act on behalf of British intelligence to make contact with a source at the heart of the Soviet nuclear weapons program – a source that insists upon dealing with no one else. But can the agent himself be trusted? And is the source for real?
  • The Night Manager – This is one you can read and enjoy without having read any other le Carre novel. It stands alone, like “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold,” but its tone is the opposite. There’s nothing cold about it. It’s very human. The protagonist is an ex-commando who, for very personal reasons, offers his services to the government to get close to, and bring down, “the worst man in the world” – a billionaire British arms dealer who sells to anyone with the right price. Not to be a plot spoiler, but it’s more of a feel-good book than almost anything else le Carre has written – sort of the opposite of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold in that regard.

I probably like those because I have pedestrian tastes. They’re not as dark as some of le Carre’s critically acclaimed work — certainly not as dark as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. By comparison, these are sentimental, but I like them.

Well, that’s an overview. I hope you’ll read some of these; I’d enjoy discussing them with you…

Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Is Gary Oldman as good? WHO KNOWS? YOU CAN'T TELL BY ME!!!!

Sometimes, change has much to recommend it

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I sympathize with Roger Ebert in not wanting to see the end of celluloid. But the truth is, I didn’t even realize it was gone to this extent in the movie world — which I suppose argues that it’s not all that great a loss.

Here’s an excerpt from what he wrote on the subject yesterday:

The sudden death of film

By Roger Ebert on November 2, 2011 8:49 PM | 79 Comments

Who would have dreamed film would die so quickly? The victory of video was quick and merciless. Was it only a few years ago that I was patiently explaining how video would never win over the ancient and familiar method of light projected through celluloid? And now Eastman Kodak, which seemed invulnerable, is in financial difficulties.

Many of the nation’s remaining mail-order company that processing film from still cameras has closed, even though stills are having a resurgence in serious market. New 35mm movie projectors are no longer manufactured, for the simple reason that used projectors, some not very old, are flooding the market…

Until fairly late in the game, however, I was a holdout. I persisted in preferring the look, the feel, the vibe of celluloid. Film had a wider range–whiter whites, blacker blacks, richer colors. Besides, I explained, satellite projection of theater-quality digital would involve a footprint containing every hacker and pirate in the world. Studios would never risk it, I promised. Yes, but why did I assume studios would use satellites to distribute first-run films?

And on and on. I insisted, like many other critics, that I always knew when I was not being shown a true celluloid print. The day came when I didn’t. The day is here when most of the new movies I see are in digital. You and I both know how they look, and the fact is, they look pretty good. We’ve shown a lot of restored 70mm prints at Ebertfest, and they look breathtaking. But 70mm is no longer a viable format. (When any industry says a format is “no longer viable,” that means “it may be better, but it costs too much.”)

We live in a time few people could have foreseen on that day in Hawaii. I now view movies on Netflix and Fandor over the internet on my big-screen high-def set, or with an overhead projector on a wall-sized screen, and the picture quality pleases me. The celluloid dream may lives on in my hopes, but digital commands the field…

I have a wonderful SLR — a Nikon 8008 — in like-new condition, and it just sits in a drawer, and has for about six years now. It’s a vastly better instrument than the little point-and-shoots that I’ve used since 2005. It gave me much truer focus, and much greater control over exposures. But now, I put up with random focus and over- and under-exposed images, mainly by the strategy of shooting so many shots of everything that I usually get one or two that are pretty decent. Because it doesn’t cost me a dime, and I have the images immediately (so that I can keep trying until I get a good one).

I used to be a very serious film photographer. I had my own enlarger and tanks and trays and chemical bottles and dryers and print-cutters, the whole nine yards, for doing it all at home. But I haven’t broken that stuff out in years. I might sometime, just for old times- sake. But it won’t be a regular thing.

Someday I’ll get a good digital SLR. But I don’t foresee ever going back to film. I find that kind of sad, but hey, the new stuff looks good.

Then they came for the people with good taste…

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I really like this treatment, in The New York Times, of the silly-sounding new film, “Anonymous:”

“Was Shakespeare a fraud?” That’s the question the promotional machinery for Roland Emmerich’s new film, “Anonymous,” wants to usher out of the tiny enclosure of fringe academic conferences into the wider pastures of a Hollywood audience. Shakespeare is finally getting the Oliver Stone/“Da Vinci Code” treatment, with a lurid conspiratorial melodrama involving incest in royal bedchambers, a vapidly simplistic version of court intrigue, nifty costumes and historically inaccurate nonsense. First they came for the Kennedy scholars, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Kennedy scholar. Then they came for Opus Dei, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Catholic scholar. Now they have come for me.

Professors of Shakespeare — and I was one once upon a time — are blissfully unaware of the impending disaster that this film means for their professional lives. Thanks to “Anonymous,” undergraduates will be confidently asserting that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare for the next 10 years at least, and profs will have to waste countless hours explaining the obvious…

No, I haven’t seen it, and don’t intend to. I mean, I saw “The Da Vinci Code,” and I’d like to have that time back. I also read Foucault’s Pendulum, which was essentially the same thing (grand, paranoid conspiracy, involving the Knights Templar, reaching back into ancient times). That one really disappointed me, because I had enjoyed The Name of the Rose.

Bottom line, what does it matter who wrote those plays and poems? Whoever it was was probably the most brilliant writer of English ever, largely responsible for the linguistic and cultural hegemony of the Anglosphere. But so what if it was Will Shakespeare or Joe Blow down the street? What’s in a name, yadda, yadda? It’s not like the actual person can enjoy our adulation today. We can’t shake him by the hand or anything. He can’t make any money out of it. Having that name, and that visage, associated with the works suits fine. And since no one will ever know that it was someone else — even if we found a document with a royal seal attesting to it, that could be a fraud itself — what’s the point?

Would it matter that Julius Caesar was actually someone else using that name? No. Gallia would still have been divisa in partes tres. (Latin scholars, help me out — I suspect that “divisa” is wrong with “would have been.” And to me, that matters.)

It remains most likely that

They may have come for Opus Dei and gotten away with it, but they’re not coming for me, not again.

The diminishment of creativity over time

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Lately, in my truck, I’ve been listening to “The Union,” a CD put out by Leon Russell and Elton John. Speaking of gifts, my brother gave it to me last Christmas, but I only broke it out recently.

I’ve enjoyed it. It’s quite good. I’ve kept it in the player for weeks. I’ve even caught some of the tunes going through my head during the day. They worked well together, although their styles remain quite distinct. When you hear the opening piano chords, you know which voice you’re about to hear.

But… there’s this sadness I associate with it. Good as it is, it’s simply nothing like what both of them were producing in 1970 and ’71, and for a short time after that. I really enjoyed John’s work, from “Your Song” through “Tiny Dancer” on “Madman Across the Water.” As for the Master of Space and Time, I doubt that he had any bigger fan than I, back during the “Shelter People” period. “Stranger in a Strange Land,” for instance, remains an all-time favorite. And who else could have pulled off his show-stealing performance at the Concert for Bangladesh?

On that subject, Leon put on the most awesome show I saw live in the early ’70s, if ever. It was in Memphis. The opening: All the Shelter People were on stage, without Leon. There were two grand pianos. At one of them sat a black guy (who really music aficionados can probably name, although I cannot) rocking out in a gospel style (or so it sounded to my untrained ear), and the Shelter People — or whatever they were called at this point, essentially a “hippie commune bonafied” on tour — were energetically jamming along with him. The music built, and built, still without Leon. It had been going on about 10 minutes, it seemed, and everybody was pumped, and then… Leon stolled out on stage. He was wearing a white suit, with a white top hat, and playing a white Stratocaster. He ambled, back and forth, playing lead over the music… then he climbed up onto the second piano, and stood there with the guitar, rocking away. Finally, he climbed down, put down the Strat, and got serious. He sat at the second piano, and he and other pianist duelled away, with the other dozen or so other people on stage rocking along with them…

It was amazing. What a showman.

People get older. Their powers diminish. Certainly, their energies do. One great thing about being a musician, though, is that you generally retain the ability to make something beautiful, even if it lacks the power of what you did that made you a star, if you were a star.

I got to thinking about this yesterday when I saw a Tweet leading me to a thing about Kevin’s Smith’s movies, ranked from Worst to Best. There were 10 of them. Fortunately, it was not called a Top Ten list. You couldn’t even honestly come up with a Top Five from this guy’s work, not if you had taste. Basically, he had a Top One — “Clerks.” Some of you who think me a prig would be surprised that I even liked that, but it was really well done. The pottymouthed script was inventive, clever, as were the acting and the direction. Not even Jay and Silent Bob wore thin, for as long as the film lasted. It made you want to see more from this guy.

And then you did see more, and you wished you hadn’t. It’s probably a good thing he’s decided to desert his oeuvre and turn to more pedestrian, formula comedy (“Cop Out,” which this list placed last, but which was at least mildly amusing).

Kevin Smith is only 41. He was born when Elton John and Leon Russell were at their peak. But he peaked with one film.

That happens, with creativity. It’s a tragedy, when it deserts the young. Look at the Beatles. Of course, the Beatles were so amazingly improbable to begin with. How could anyone, so naturalistically, produce so much material that was that diverse, from year to year, and that appealing? It was inhuman. It was the sort of thing that in a different cultural context gives rise to dark mutterings about clandestine meetings at the Crossroads at midnight.

But it didn’t last. As they broke up, it looked as though it would. Lennon produced “Instant Karma;” McCartney gave us “Maybe I’m Amazed.” George Harrison seemed to explode, having been repressed, with “All Things Must Pass.”

And that was it. They faded. Mozart died, but they lived to see their talents fade. The wonderful thing about Paul McCartney is that he appreciated that his fans loved the old stuff. So did he. (If you’d made John Lennon stand on stage and play Beatles songs, he’d have shot himself before that other guy did.) I saw him at Williams-Brice, and loved it. But, as I noted the other day, it’s sad to see him dyeing his hair, still trying to be the Cute One. That time is past, Paul.

Of course, one looks for such fading in oneself. Fortunately for me, I never hit the heights that these guys did. I was a decent writer by local standards, impressive to some people. Just enough people, in my book. It’s nice to have strangers come up and say kind things occasionally, but it’s also good to be able to walk down the street anonymously 99 percent of the time.

And as we age, things fade. First, one is no longer indefatigable. Gone are the days when, as a reporter, I could work all day, all night, and through the next morning before taking a nap (something I did frequently, back in the day).

But if you don’t rise too far, you don’t have as far to fall. I never wrote the Great American Novel (not yet, anyway), so I didn’t have to publicly struggle to replicate that for the rest of my life, while everyone scoffed. When one muddles along, one can continue more easily.

I look back at stuff I wrote 30 years ago when I find it moldering in a box, and it’s good. It has a spark, one that I lament. But it’s strange how one’s appreciation of one’s own work morphs. At any time in my adult life, I’ve thought the stuff I’d written six months earlier SO much better than what I was writing currently. Then, six months later, I’d think THAT stuff was the best I’d ever written. That has continued through my blogging years. (My old blog was SO much better-written than this one — even though it wasn’t nearly as well-read. And the stuff I wrote on this blog a year ago is amazingly better than this tripe I’m churning out now.)

What I’m writing now is the worst stuff I’ve ever written. (In my opinion, which is what counts, since I’m an introvert.) But it has always been thus. Aside from its lack of creativity, it’s shot through with typos and incomplete thoughts, mangled sentences. Because I don’t read back over it, and don’t have an editor — and everybody needs one. But I look forward, ever hopeful, to enjoying it later.

When I don’t do that any more, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Relax, I expect.

What about y’all, in what you do? As critics, do you disappoint yourselves? If so, take heart. Perhaps it will look better later. And even if it doesn’t, the stuff Leon and Elton are putting out is still quite good…

Netflix listened! ‘No Qwikster.’ I’m impressed…

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… but not overwhelmed with gratitude or anything. After all, the rates DID go up.

But the boss man there had seemed so adamantly sure that his way was the way to do it, and everybody else was an idiot, that I was pleasantly surprised to see this release today:

Dear Brad,
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.
We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.
We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.
Respectfully,
The Netflix Team

The “respectfully” was a nice touch, but unnecessary. You showed your respect by listening.

Now, about some of those videos that still aren’t yet available on Netflix…

Sorry, ladies: ‘Moneyball’ makes the Top 5 list

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After I did my “All-Time, Desert-Island Top 5 Baseball Movies” list recently, I got congratulations from several readers — readers of the female persuasion — for my good judgment in putting “A League of Their Own” on the list. And it was, I believe, a good choice.

Unfortunately, it just got sent down.

I saw “Moneyball” yesterday. Definitely Top Five material. I saw it with my Dad. He said it was the best film he’d seen in awhile, and the best thing Brad Pitt has ever done. I don’t know if I’d agree with that last part, being a fan of both “Fight Club” and “Snatch,” but the film overall is definitely one of the best baseball movies ever. (And the best acting in it, as usual, is done by Phillip Seymour Hoffman — although I thought Billy Beane’s front office staff was impressive, too.)

In fact, I’m going to put it at number four. Actually, technically — as an example of filmmaking — it should probably be at No. 2 and giving “The Natural” a run for its money. But while it is unquestionably all about baseball, it’s about other things, too. Communicating the essence of baseball is not quite its mission the way it is with the top three. It is also about change, and modernity, and the never-ending struggle between statistics and intuition. The top three are more about answering the question, “Why do I love baseball?” “Moneyball” is about that, too — but not entirely.

Hence my new Top Five:

  1. The Natural – American myth-making on the grand scale. If you wanted to put a movie on a spacecraft to explain to aliens what the game means, you’d choose this one. It’s perfect.
  2. Major League — Silly, yes, but a good complement to the reverential seriousness of “The Natural.” Hits all the buttons in explaining why the game is fun.
  3. The Sandlot — Maybe because it’s set in the days when I was a kid, and also spending hours on a sandlot — without uniforms, without adult supervision, just being kids — this really resonates as a depiction of the ball-playing experience of those of us who will never play in the majors.
  4. Moneyball — Just an incredibly well-made film, independently of being about baseball — perhaps the best on the list in that regard. While it’s about the triumph of Bill James‘ statistical method, there’s plenty here for us intuitive types to cheer for.
  5. Eight Men Out — A masterly, credible evocation of how the game’s blackest scandal came about, told in a way that you can understand motives. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Now that I look at it without the Tom Hanks one, I’m starting to wonder about “Eight Men Out.” I’m not sure this list is final. I think maybe I’ll refer this to the blog’s Ad Hoc Committee on Baseball Movies. The committee will be assigned to watch both of those again to decide conclusively which should be in fifth place.

Until then, “A League of Their Own” is sixth on the list.

The intelligent hype around “MoneyBall”

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I had never heard about “MoneyBall” until I heard a story about it on NPR yesterday morning.

Then last night, I heard Terry Gross interview Brad Pitt about it. OK, they talked a lot about “Fight Club,” with Ms. Gross asking the star how many people come up to him and say, “The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.” Not that many, actually. But the bottom line message of his being there was, “See ‘MoneyBall.”

Then this morning, I hear a review, also on NPR, from Kenneth Turan. Again, the message is to see the movie.

Also this morning, the teaser across the top of The Wall Street Journal (you know, the space devoted to football, year-round, in The State), was all about “MoneyBall.” It referred you to a big story headlined, “Baseball After Moneyball,” and a review by Joe Morgenstern, which says this film “…renews your belief in the power of movies.”

Then, in my email this morning, I get a link to the Roger Ebert review:

In the 2002 season, the nation’s lowest-salaried Major League Baseball team put together a 20-game winning streak, setting a new American League record. The team began that same season with 11 losses in row. What happened between is the stuff of “Moneyball,” a smart, intense and moving film that isn’t so much about sports as about the war between intuition and statistics.

OK, I get the message: I want to see this movie. Not only because I like good baseball movies, but because I’m very interested, as readers here will know, in “the war between intuition and statistics.”

But I have to say, I’m also quite impressed by the hype. Not just the volume of it, but the quality.

Note this isn’t your usual slam-bam action movie kind of promotion, that washes over you like a tidal wave and either pulls you into the theater or makes you run, screaming, for higher ground. The kind with lots of stuff blowing up. The kind that would never concern itself with “the war between intuition and statistics.”

This is targeted. This is more subtle. And it grabs people who are into baseball as a Thinking Man’s Game. Grabs them every which way.

Nice job by whoever was handling the media relations on this. I mean, everything they did was rather obvious, but I don’t remember the last time I saw these particular venues flooded this way for one movie. The buildup, from my perspective, was last-minute, but compete, and effective.

I may even shell out money to go see it in the theater. Which for me would be remarkable.

Madness has taken hold of Netflix

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Did you get an email this morning from Reed Hastings, head honcho at Netflix? I did. Here’s an extended version of it on a Netflix blog. I am spared the trouble of writing a full response, because an NPR blog has spoken for me:

Netflix has figured out that people are very upset about its decision to split streaming video and DVD delivery — a decision that got it in huge hot water earlier this year. Customers who had previously gotten both streaming and DVDs for a single price would now have to pay separately. If you only use one or the other, you could pay less, but if you still wanted both, you’d pay more.

The Netflix response? Separate the businesses even more. In a new blog post, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings explains that for some reason, he has concluded that separating the businesses completely is going to help people understand what’s going on. Thus, Netflix will not send DVDs at all anymore but will only provide streaming, while the company’s DVD business will happen under the new “Qwikster” brand.

Hastings seems to be operating under the premise that customers don’t really understand what’s going on; that they are angry because they think that a single business has increased its price when in fact it has merely split into two businesses that charge separately. Presumably, the idea is that making the split more definitive will make people slap their foreheads and say, “Oh, now I see. Netflix actually lowered its prices, as long as I don’t buy Qwikster! And new Qwikster is cheaper than old Netflix! I’m coming out ahead, sort of, if I don’t want all the services I used to get!”

The only problems with this approach are that its underlying assumptions are almost certainly wrong, and that it ignores major inefficiencies that will be introduced for customers who do, indeed, want to continue to use both streaming and DVDs. Now, if you want both, you have to go to two different sites with two different queues, you have to pay two different charges to two different entities, and in general, you have to have two different memberships. That’s not psychologically better for consumers. That’s buying two things which are both less helpful than the single thing you could get before.

It’s like a shoe company deciding to sell right shoes and left shoes for 12 dollars each where pairs of shoes used to be 20 dollars and thinking that consumers will notice the lower 12-dollar price but not the fact that it buys only one shoe….

Good response, and I hope NPR will forgive me for quoting it so extensively (please go to NPR and fully experience its services).

Lemme ‘splain somethin’ to you, Mr. Hastings: Neither your DVD service nor your streaming service stands alone; they are complementary. OK, so maybe the DVD service is complete in its way, as a fine service if this were the year 2001. But you and I know (or think we know) that Web streaming is the way the business is going to go, so if you are survive you have to get into that business big. Which you have done.

But here’s the critical point you’re missing: Your streaming business (which you laughably call “instant”) does NOT stand alone. It is not complete. Perhaps you’ve noticed that you are unable to get permission to stream most popular, recent titles. Therefore if your customers want a full service that will provide them with a full selection of the movies and TV shows they want to see, they have to supplement their streaming with DVDs. Which you seemed to get until, quite suddenly, recently.

If I weren’t so dependent on you, I’d drop your service now. But I got rid of my cable (or all of it except local stations, which almost amounts to the same thing), so almost all of the video content I ever watch now comes from you. It’s not the added cost, although that’s not pleasant (I dropped the cable because you were such an economical alternative). It’s the way you’ve done this.

I used to think that Netflix was a company that knew what its customers wanted. Not so much now.

Before the storm: “Irene!”

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Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as different parts of the East Coast anticipated the coming battle against the elements, and I heard the code word over and over and over, before anything had happened in the area where the name was coming from, I kept thinking of the above.

The relevant part is all in the first 27 seconds of the clip. Excuse the language. These are soldiers, heading into battle (and to sudden death, in the case of one of the men saying it), and their mothers aren’t around.

Saw “The Help” last night…

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I don’t get to the actual movie theater anymore. Even though I’ve largely cut off the firehose flow of entertainment into my house, between Netflix and the DVDs I own (most recent acquisition: a Blu-Ray of “True Grit”), I’ve got more movies to watch than I really have time for — without paying those ridiculous ticket and concession prices.

But I have seen five movies this summer, which is unusual for me. Here they are, in order:

  1. “Thor“
  2. “X-Men: First Class“
  3. “Green Lantern“
  4. “Captain America“
  5. “The Help“

Oops, did I give you whiplash there? Did you think you knew where you were going and then, WANG!, a sudden change of direction.

Well, I went to the first four with my son, because of our shared interests in comic books, and the last one was my wife’s idea. We went to see it for our anniversary last night.

I went thinking, “This is my anniversary present, because this is a chick flick,” but I enjoyed it. And not just because of the views of that social outcast “Celia.” It was just a well-told, real-life story about people. Of course, I guess a lot of things would look like that after the other four movies I saw before it. (Best of the bunch? “Captain America.” But I expected that. The one that most exceeded my expectations? “Thor.”)

Something that struck me at the end, though: During the credits, I got up and looked around, and noticed two things. Most of the audience was female, which I had expected. And most of the audience was white. I found myself wanting to interview the audience, to get their impressions, and ask how it spoke to them and their lives. Did it match their memories? How do they think life has changed since then, and how stay the same?

More than that, I wanted to ask black folks who weren’t there: Why not? I can guess some reasons why not, but I’d probably be off-base. Then again, this audience, while numerous, may not have been representative. This was out at Harbison. Demographics would have been different somewhere else. Probably.

But I didn’t bother anybody with questions. It was our anniversary.

Last anniversary, we went to a bourbon tasting at the Capital City Club. That is to say, we went out to dinner at the club for our anniversary, and before that there was this bourbon tasting that was free to members (I think I’m remembering that right), so I managed to talk my wife into attending. It was fascinating. The speaker was a great-grandon of Jim Beam, and a very colorful and knowledgeable guy.

This year, we decided on a more low-key celebration. And “The Help” served the purpose well. It was particularly meaningful because the central character has the same last name as my wife’s maiden name. OK, that’s just a coincidence, of no interest to you, but we found it interesting… sort of like the family in “Driving Miss Daisy” being named “Werthan.”

A horrorshow comparison, oh, my brothers!

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That Stan Dubinsky veck, being the sort with a large gulliver, has drawn a comparison, oh, my brothers, between the rioters in England and your own Humble Narrator’s loyal droogs.

There may be a slight resemblance to one’s glazzies at first glance, but note that those grahzny bratchnies are not dressed in the heighth of fashion; they do not wear our platties of the night! Consider that before thou dost make up thy rasoodocks.

One thing is true: There aren’t enough millicents to put their rookers on them all, much less put them in the staja where they belong…

OK, I’ll stop now. I’m just sort of randomly grabbing stuff from the Nadsat dictionary.

Says Stan (Dubinsky, not Kubrick):

Those whose attention is on the London riots of 2011 might recall that Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick anticipated all this 50 and 40 years ago, respectively.  Time to dig out your copy of A Clockwork Orange, and read or watch it again.

It’s available for streaming on Netflix, by the way. But the book’s better.

Empirical proof: Nothing comes anywhere close to “The Graduate”

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I’ve always been aware, on a superficial, untested level, that “The Graduate” stood in a league of its own, defying characterization.

I suppose you could call it a sort of dark comedy, if you like, or social satire, or whatever. But try to think of another movie that makes you think and feel anything like what “The Graduate” does. You can’t.

I had empirical confirmation of that tonight. I saw it among the “Watch Instantly” flicks on Netflix. I didn’t need it in my queue because I have it on DVD, but I clicked on it to put it in my queue just to see how the algorithms of Netflix dealt with it.

And as I suspected, it could not come up with movies like “The Graduate.” Look at the lame attempt above. “Kramer vs. Kramer?” “The Paper Chase?” Both fine films, but neither of them anything like “The Graduate.” Aside from the incidental presence of Dustin Hoffman in one of them, which is meaningless.

And please, do not mention the execrable, silly “Tom Jones” in the same conversation.

Netflix is far from infallible. But it generally does a better job than this. Take another quirky film, “The Usual Suspects.” A challenge, yes?

OK, there’s nothing exactly like it maybe, but some of these selections — “Memento,” “Blue Velvet,” a Hitchcock or two — at least get its range, landing in a loose pattern around it. I’d throw some of these out, though (“Eight Men Out?” Fine film, but doesn’t fit here), and throw in a Tarantino, or “The Professional.” None score a direct hit. But they come a lot closer than anything does to “The Graduate.”

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Trailer

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Just thought I’d share this, so that if there’s anyone among you who is as big a George Smiley fan as I, you, too, can start being frustrated waiting for this movie to come out in November. (Why does it take so long? If they’ve got it edited enough to put out a trailer…)

I was putting off posting this, after Mike Fitts brought it to my attention, until I could write a longer post I’ve been meaning to write ever since January, about my own successful Quest for Smiley (yes, Circus fans, that is an allusion to the Quest for Karla). But until I do that, here’s a picture of me standing in front of George’s actual house in London. Sort of a blog trailer, if you will. I think the picture captures a Le Carre kind of feel, doesn’t it? It was taken at dusk in winter, which is appropriate. Very Cold War.

Remember I said, in a post sent from the airport in Detroit, that I was going to look for signs of Smiley in London? Well, I did. More about that later…

I guess if you’ve seen one John Wayne, you’ve seen ’em all — according to her, anyway

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Ya gotta love this:

Michele Bachmann spent plenty of time Monday letting everyone know that she was born in Waterloo, Iowa, a small industrial town she credits with instilling within her many of her conservative ideals.

But in one interview surrounding her formal campaign rollout, the Tea Party favorite seems to have gotten a little confused about some of the finer points of the Hawkeye State’s history.

Speaking to Fox News, Bachmann said that she had the same spirit as Waterloo’s own John Wayne. One can only assume that she was referring to the movie star, who was born in Winterset, Iowa, roughly a three-hour drive from Waterloo. The problem, however, is that Waterloo appears to have much closer ties to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the “killer clown” who had his first criminal conviction there.

Hoh, boy… When they unfreeze the Duke, he’s gonna be ticked.

OK, I was kidding about that. I have only Denis Leary to go by on the Duke being frozen. But I do have a question — didn’t she launch her campaign a couple of weeks ago? She announced it at the debate…

Talk about the power of advertising — they got “Whitey” Bulger

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Well, that was quick. Earlier this week, I read in the WSJ that the FBI was trying something it had never tried before — a major ad campaign aimed at a Ten Most Wanted fugitive. Or rather, at his moll. Or frail. Or whatever they say now.

Fitting, given James “Whitey” Bulger’s pop-culture profile — he was the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Departed.”

Somebody got the bright idea — based upon the belief that Whitey’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, was not being as reclusive as he was — of advertising where women would see it. Women who just might have seen her at the beauty parlor or something. From Tuesday’s paper:

On Tuesday, the agency will begin airing public-service announcements in 14 U.S. cities during shows such as “The Dr. Oz Show” and “The View,” focusing not on Mr. Bulger but on his girlfriend, Catherine Elizabeth Greig. Images of the couple also are featured on digital billboards in New York’s Times Square.

The FBI says the advertising campaign is the first of its kind in hunting a most-wanted figure.

The duo went underground just before Mr. Bulger’s 1995 federal indictment for his alleged role in 19 murders during the 1970s and ’80s, according to the FBI. Ms. Greig isn’t implicated in those crimes, but was indicted in 1997 for harboring Mr. Bulger….

While the FBI has sought Mr. Bulger all over the world, it says the new publicity campaign explores the possibility that clues to his whereabouts may lie with friends or co-workers of the 60-year-old Ms. Greig. The agency believes she may carry on a relatively normal routine of frequenting beauty parlors, visiting the dentist and caring for or spending time with animals.

“Have you seen this woman?” asks the 30-second TV spot…

The focus on Ms. Greig is “part of a unique initiative” aiming to reach women her age, said Special Agent Greg Comcowich, an FBI spokesman in Boston. “Our hope is that a friend, or co-worker, or someone she goes to the beauty salon with or interacts with on a daily basis will see it,” he said.

And it worked. Really, really fast.

First bin Laden, now Bolger. The feds and the military are on a roll.

What makes a good “Father’s Day movie?”

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My daughter noted to me that there were a number of WWII movies on cable today, probably because that’s the TV industry’s idea of what Dads want. I like me a good WWII flick, but I think that having recently dragged out all the good ones for Memorial Day, the programmers were sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel today. The first one I ran across was the execrable “Pearl Harbor,” for instance. Boy I had really looked forward to that one, based on the preview where you see the kids playing baseball (an odd thing to be doing at 7:55 a.m. on a Sunday, but whatever) and the Japanese planes flying by at eye level. And it was visually impressive. Sort of the way “Top Gun” was visually impressive at the time. But even less well-written. And with Ben Affleck.

I saw that TCM was showing “Father of the Bride” (the Spencer Tracy version) which is the opposite end of the spectrum of TV’s concept of Dads and their tastes. I think that particular classic is more entertaining to daughters and  mothers than to Dads, though. I mean, Dad looks like an affectionate idiot, right? Now, I see, “A Few Good Men” is showing. Well, that’s a good flick, no doubt. But who is Dad? Jack Nicholson? Not a flattering picture… Oh, wait, doesn’t Tom Cruise have kind of a father issue in that? But it’s kind of backstory.

So I got to thinking: What WOULD be a good “Father’s Day movie?”

Well… Dads would enjoy “Tin Cup,” which was on today on TCM. Although it doesn’t actually have a fatherhood theme. Speaking of Kevin Costner, there’s always “Field of Dreams” — that certainly has a Dad theme (“Hey… Dad?… You wanna have a catch?” And everyone tears up.)

Speaking of WWII movies, I did record “Saving Private Ryan” on Memorial Day weekend, and watched it again a few days ago. Not exactly about fatherhood, but Capt. Miller does have a sort of model fatherly relationship with Ryan, and with his own men.

On the lighter side, “Overboard,” which TCM showed, is the sort of romantic comedy guys tend to enjoy, and the central character is a Dad, desperate for a Mom for his kids. Really desperate.

OK, it’s not a movie, but how about a “Sopranos” marathon? That’s definitely about being a Dad — and the “head of a family.” Of course, the kids can’t watch it with you. So let me see if I can come up with some better stuff:

  • “Raising Arizona.” ‘Nuff said.
  • “The Natural”… “”My Dad always wanted me to be a baseball player…”
  • “The Paper,” with Michael Keaton. A newspaper editor (whom I really identified with my younger self), struggling with balancing work and familial responsibilities in the 24 hours before his child is born.
  • “The Wind and the Lion.” The Raisuli becomes a surrogate Dad to the Pedicaris boy.
  • “Tender Mercies.” Awesome portrait of a failed Dad, trying to become a good stepdad.
  • “Life is Beautiful.” This should probably top the list.
  • “Mr. Mom.” Which the whole family can enjoy.
  • “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Why must it only show at Christmas time?
  • “Hoosiers.” Surrogate-Dad stuff again.
  • “A Man for All Seasons.” An exemplary Dad and a saint.
  • “A River Runs Through It.” Very strong Dad figure in that one — little good it did the Brad Pitt character.
  • “Gran Torino.” Yeah, he’s a dysfunctional Dad, but… the plot’s about him making up for that with the Hmong kid.
  • “Air Force One.” A Dad who’s the president, and can kick bad guy butt!
  • “Say Anything.” Dad turns out to be a crook, but it’s still a strong father-daughter relationship.

That’s a good start for the networks for next year, don’t you think? Have anything to add?

Slight delay in the end of the world

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A couple of quick pop-culture references, and Kathryn will be grateful that neither is to “The Godfather” (don’t worry, fans, I’m sure I’ll get back to the Corleones soon enough). The first is that I’m feeling sort of like Billy Jack…

I want you to know… that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I’m supposed to control my tendency to be a wiseacre, and be passive and respectful of other people’s beliefs like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see this guy… who should know to keep quiet after this weekend… and I see him speaking up again, and getting quoted, and I think of the number of months that we’re probably going to have to keep hearing about it… I just go BERSERK!

I’m referring, of course, to the news that this Harold Camping guy is saying, Oops, the Rapture’s gonna come in October now.

The second cultural reference is more obscure. It’s to The Dirty Dozen. No, not the movie, but the (much superior) E.M. Nathanson novel on which it was based. The novel is so little-remembered that I had trouble finding a full preview of it on Google Books to check my quote. But near the end of the book, when Samson Posey, a Ute Indian, tries to perform a Sun Dance to get the weather to clear over Normandy, and one of the other 11 guys starts making fun of him, suggesting he’s doing a rain dance by mistake, an Army chaplain standing nearby says “Don’t mock him, fellow! Whatever your beliefs — if you have any — do not mock him!”

Which I’ve always thought was a pretty good thought to live by. (Look, if you want a blog that quotes Shakespeare, there are plenty of them out there.) A lot of people believe a lot of unlikely things. In this case, we have some people believing something that is directly refuted by the Bible. Which is inexplicable. OK, so Camping isn’t a biblical literalist. Cool. But we’re talking about a quote attributed to Jesus Christ himself saying No one knows the day or the hour…

But I try, I really try, not to make fun. You’ll note that I did not do so last week.

But this guy is really, really trying my patience, and my resolve to be tolerant and respectful…

Bush was Sonny; Obama is more like Michael

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I said this as a comment back on a previous post, and liked it enough to say more prominently…

After reading that quote I cited in the WSJ about how the Obama administration is, ever so quietly, without saying anything overt, taking advantage of its stunning effectiveness in taking out bin Laden:

This month’s military strike deep inside Pakistan is already being used by U.S. officials as a negotiating tool — akin to, don’t make us do that again — with countries including Pakistan thought to harbor other terrorists. Yemen and Somalia are also potential venues, officials said, if local-government cooperation were found to be lacking…

… I got to thinking how this was similar to the effect that Bush’s invasion of Iraq had on thugs like Moamar Qaddafi — for a very brief time, before everybody around the world figured out that (given our internal dispute over that invasion) W. wasn’t likely to get the chance to do that ever again…

And then it hit me: In terms of the politics of projecting a credible threat that gets others to do what you want (an idea that I realize makes a lot of us squirm), George W. Bush was like Sonny Corleone. The blusterer, the guy you just know is going to jump in the car and come after you in a mad, blind rage if you touch his sister. The guy who doesn’t want to negotiate; he just wants Sollozzo dead. And ultimately, the guy who has trouble achieving all his goals.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is more like Michael. The clean-cut college kid who was never involved in the muscle end of the business, who held himself aloof from that, even expressed distaste for it. The guy who was supposed to be “Senator Corleone, President Corleone,” and not a wartime don. The guy who speaks softly and reasonably, and never utters a threat. The guy who takes out the heads of the other four New York families in one stunning stroke, right when you’ve forgotten about the bad blood. The guy who keeps on speaking reasonably after that, but nevertheless everybody respects him now, in the uomo di rispetto sense…

Not that, you know, I’m saying either president is a criminal. Far from it. I’m just using very familiar fictional characters in order to draw a comparison…