Newest articles on The Sacramento Press written by Gary Chew

Film Review: Trek darkness shines

2013-05-17T05:12:31Z

“Star Trek: Into Darkness” film review by Gary Chew

Maintaining linkage with itself has to be one of the underlying secrets of success for the durable “Star Trek” franchise. The linkage with all the star trekking from its outset when Gene Roddenberry got the space fable launched in 1966 to the very motion picture that's just been released (“Star Trek: Into Darkness”) makes it clear its genesis was in broadcast television.

The Trek characters continue, even if they are now younger and played by others who, in many instances, weren't yet born when the series began. At present, we remain in the prequel mode of this enduring future of which Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock --- as well as the rest of the star ship Enterprise crew --- serve well the importance of justice, loyalty and honor whether it be in deep space or on a dusty street in a lonesome, desert town with two hombres facing-off with six shooters instead of phasers.

Since we're talking sci-fi, the connections made forward and backward in time are more easily, yet cleverly employed to keep “Star Trek” up to at least Warp speed. (That, in spite of the fact that “Into Darkness” introduces a new space ship that makes the Enterprise look like a toy and can go faster than the Enterprise in all its “warpiness.” Wow!

Director J. J. Abrams gives us more of Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock. The other, long-running likeable, familiar characters are also well cast. Most of the fresh Trek faces resemble the Shatners and Nimoys, etc., from those thrilling star dates of yesteryear --- thus keeping many talented people in the movie business employed and all the world's beloved Trekkies stoked, entertained and full of popcorn.

Yet another role is added to this 2013 “Star Trek.” that shows up as the character's younger self; I won't spoil you with the specifics. What's fun watching this new adventure is that (thanks to the conceit of time travel) scriptwriters Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof have drawn from an earlier “Star Trek” and reversed characters' lines in scenes that stage similarly to the other film. For example: what Kirk says to Spock in one movie is, almost word for word, the same thing that Spock say to Kirk in the other “Star Trek.” It's another savvy feat to keep veteran Trekkies on board with the new, younger actors, while giving new fans a nice, big, fat sci-fi story to enjoy. After seeing it, the latter day fan can watch the older “Star Trek” and join in on the neat knowledge about what's been flip-flopped in the scriptwriting.

By the way, it's difficult to write about all this without spoiling it for the old Trekkies or the new Trekkies.

Shouts outs for the new film again go to Pine and Quinto. Other significant performances come from Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller and Bruce Greenwood.

Since seeing the new film, I've watched the earlier “Star Trek” feature that connects most to the new release; and in all candor I must say that this latest edition makes the older film look like a slow freight chugging into the Neutral Zone. Although occasional “down screen” blurry, unfocused items in some scenes are a slight annoyance, you have no choice but to watch fast with deep interest while viewing “Into Darkness.”

Unlike my old Trekkie friend, Mike Lazar of Sacramento, I haven't watched every “Star Trek” TV episode or, for that matter, all the feature films; but “Into Darkness,” bests the bunch I've seen, which includes the 2009 debut of Pine and Quinto. I award the new “Star Trek” 3 point 5 stars … and for myself, 5 stars for figuring out a way to tell you all you really need to know about this stunningly visual 3-D movie with nary spoiler.

'The Great DiCaprio,' starring Baz Luhrmann

2013-05-10T06:13:01Z

“The Great Gatsby,” a film review by Gary Chew

The most salient point in F. Scott Fitzgerald's great novel, “The Great Gatsby,” comes when Nick Carraway admonishes Jay Gatsby: “You can't repeat the past.”

Making sure to abide by that admonition had to be what Baz Luhrmann was up to when he co-wrote and directed the Fitzgerald classic now opening across the nation. Although the story takes place as the twenties roared, this “Gatsby” has much that makes it seem as though it's actually 2013 and a grand, splashy embellishment of “Gatsbys” of the past.

That's because of the film's visual effects of recent vintage. Not only are the lavish parties thrown by Gatsby and the entire film in 3D, but Luhrmann's parade of spectacle-engorged scenes, sets, effects, costumes and crowds seem never to cease. He didn't pull out the stops as far as they’ll go when making the picture; he threw them away.

Ironically, with all the stuff Luhrmann has so cleverly created for us to see, I caught 3 or 4 jump cuts in the film … not glaringly obvious, but I did especially see DiCaprio suddenly be in a different position from one split second to the next when the camera angle changes but the same scene goes forward.

Watching the film so closely, for those reasons, I came out of the screening with a bit of a 3D headache. If you've seen Luhrmann's earlier, well-received film, “Moulin Rouge,” there must be a notion in your head about what this Australian filmmaker has done for and, mostly, to the fabricated East and West Egg, Long Island, where the narrative is mostly set.

I would like to think that if Fitzgerald saw all the films and TV shows that draw from his iconic novel, he might think Luhrmann has gone a little overboard with the jazzy, tragic story of urbane elitists who hover even higher than mere bourgeois Americans ... not long before the crash of '29.

Should you not yet know, marital infidelity is the vehicle by which “Gatsby” is told. Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) is obsessively in love with Daisy (Carey Mulligan), who is married to Tom (Joel Edgerton). Nick (Tobey Maguire) rents the modest cottage on Gatsby’s elaborate estate. Middle-class Nick is a cousin of the very well-off Daisy. Gatsby persuades Nick to cover for him and act as go-between for his covert resumption of the love affair with Daisy that ended five years earlier when Gatsby left for World War I and Daisy had yet to meet then marry Tom.

Tom is also having an illicit liaison with a poor man's wife, which allows Fitzgerald to invest his story with some of the plight of lower-class Americans and minorities.

The film is not sexy … or maybe I should say that Luhrmann hasn't made it sexy. In that regard, the script is as Fitzgerald intended.

The casting is fine. As with the “Gatsby” of Robert Redford, the character of Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), fetches and intrigues. I prefer Mulligan as Daisy to Mia Farrow's turn in that role with Redford. Tobey Maguire is slightly goofy as Nick. Sam Waterston's "Nick" is hard to beat in the tamer “Gatsby” production of the early ‘70s. Edgerton as Tom is appropriately menacing but again, Bruce Dern will be, for me, the better actor playing Daisy's coarse, arrogant spouse.

DiCaprio has turned in one of his pretty good performances here. He looks as upper-class as Redford did, and more outwardly emotional in the lead.

My difficulty also lies with part of the story of “The Great Gatsby," even though I think Fitzgerald's novel is superlative. However … the stretch of the ritzy hotel room confrontation between Gatsby and Tom has always struck me as ringing not so true. Both men are vying to ultimately possess Daisy. Their verbal exhanges come off a bit silly sounding and uncharacteristic of powerful, wealthy gentlemen who control lots of people and things. There seems to be nothing clever of either in the stand-off.

Luhrmann's take on the penthouse row in the summer heat high above New York City doesn't delete the silly from the scene, which also seems long.

Since one of the novel's greatest strengths is the author's on-the-page turn of phrase, what's best about "The Great Gatsby" available for translation to the screen that also remains, is its deep sense of tragedy and the obvious fact that money ... and as George Carlin would put it, “stuff,” most likely, by themselves, won't bring happiness to those who have leisure, comfort and opulence “to the nines.”

With a five as tops, this old sport gives “The Great Gatsby” --- vintage 2013 --- an insubstanial three.

Copyright © 2013 by Gary Chew. All rights reserved.

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Film Review: What's in a name like Mud?

2013-04-26T22:31:05Z

“Mud” film review by Gary Chew

Imagine if you can, a film actors’ school for men only. The primary acting coaches at the school are Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall ... and maybe Sam Elliott.

Now you have a good impression of how most of the men in “Mud” talk and act. “Mud” was a contentious film at Cannes last year; written and directed by native Arkansan, Jeff Nichols. His earlier film was “Take Shelter” (2011).

Two of the males in “Mud” who seem as though they might have been influenced by Jones and Duvall are in their early teens. Tye Sheridan (“The Tree of Life”) plays 14-year-old Ellis and Jacob Lofland (from Yell County Arkansas) plays his best bud, Neckbone, the same age. These whippersnappers are just aching to have a big adventure. Nichols' script gives it to these young fellows - right between the eyes.

That's because the kids happen onto Mud - played so winningly by Matthew McConaughey - hiding out on a small, tree-filled island in the middle of the Mississippi River. The boys boat out to the island seeking an inboard motorboat that's snagged in a tree on the island, after the big river bloated earlier due to flooding. Someone in their nearby town told Ellis and Neckbone about the abandoned craft.

However, the vessel isn't abandoned. The boys find clues in and around the boat that indicate there's someone using it for shelter. That would be Mud on the lam.

Mud's in trouble for shooting a man dead who beat up Mud's longtime love, Juniper; that would be Reese Witherspoon. The Arkansas State Police are after Mud's butt.

Mud tends to stretch the truth some. But overall, despite his killing that bad guy, Mud's a good man. He needs food and parts to rebuild the boat that's up in the tree. The boat is how he and Juniper will escape from the really bad guys, led by the weird head of the Texas family just into DeWitt, Arkansas, to waste Mud for Mud’s killing of the Texas man’s son who beat up Juniper. The weird, heavy-voiced daddy is done by Joe Don Baker. Remember him?

Another notable on hand for this Razorback ruckus is Sam Shepard, a retired and solitary Marine sharpshooter who lives in his houseboat just across the river from Ellis' mom and dad's houseboat. Ellis' dad makes his living off the river selling fish. Mom and Dad are on the verge of splitting up, which would put an end to Ellis and his dad living along the water - something they love. Ellis' mom thinks riverside residing is passe. She's a serious, dedicated and loving mother.

Sheridan and Lofland's roles work as the go between for Mud and Juniper somewhat like that seen with a singular teenage boy in the 1972 film, “The Go Between,” which comes from a mid 50s novel by the English author L. P. Hartley. “Mud” belongs more to the pair than McConaughey.

Young Sheridan's turn is particularly impressive, much as his role as the son of Brad Pitt's character in “The Tree of Life.” Master Sheridan may well be a future Hollywood heart throb for young women like those who confound his character so well in “Mud.”

There's lots of male-female rub going on: adult men and adult women not making out well at getting on together … lots of male-female discord as well, with teenage boys being disenchanted by how coy that girls of their generation can be regarding romance, especially considering how inexperienced young fellows can be at their awkward yet hyper-girl-curious age. Some of it is lots of fun to watch.

A subplot brings Ellis in contact with May Pearl, played by Bonnie Sturdivant. May Pearl is two or three years older and six inches taller than Ellis, but Ellis is in love. She thinks he's cool for standing up to a senior high school boy who's been hassling her.

The power of “Mud” (PG-13) is how it portrays how things are … whether in a rural community or anywhere.

Men sometimes wish to hold on to what they've had, so far … sometimes they want to take revenge on others for acts of wrongdoing. And all the time, they don't think clearly when it involves a relationship with a woman - or even a girl.

Witherspoon is alluring as Mud's obsession. She loves him, but seems unable to hold to just one relationship. Sarah Paulson plays Ellis' mom, Mary Lee. Wow. She has brief face time, but runs the show when onscreen. Ray McKinnon as Senior, Ellis' dad, shows the fatigue of a man at the end of his rope, thinking he's not a good husband or father but, as with most characters in the film, means well.

“Mud” is a subtle mix of “Winter's Bone” and “Deliverance,” without the darker moments seen in the memorable 1972 backwoods-river story directed by John Boorman.

Jeff Nichols has provided a good movie. His actors are all top-of-the-line with their performances. If you're from the South or have spent much time along a large waterway you'll sense, more so, the authenticity that seeps from an engrossing story about two young bucks who meet up with a wiry man called Mud.

Copryright © 2013 by Gary Chew. All right reserved“Mud” film review by Gary Chew

Film Review: Redford's retro radicals

2013-04-26T18:37:59Z

“The Company You Keep.” film review by Gary Chew

Robert Redford's new movie, “The Company You Keep,” needs a larger plate. It's more than dinner for Thanksgiving and Christmas, combined. Good things are on the plate but, some intended for the film, spill, in considerable measure, onto the tablecloth.

The main course cast is a gourmet repast that would waft an aromatic varietal through any movie house. Director Redford plays an anonymous, liberal attorney in upstate New York who used be a Weather Under-Ground Guy of the early 70s. Susan Sarandon has the role of Sharon, a middle-aged wife and mother in Vermont, who was, back then, a compatriot of Redford's character. He was Nick then; in this century Nick goes as Jim Grant, a “Clark Kent” kind of widower with a bright, adorable eleven year old daughter (Jackie Evancho). Mimi, played by Julie Christie, appears mostly in the third act as another Left-leaning lady who was Nick's lover.

No, Jane Fonda isn't in this one. But plenty more are in it who heft, maybe, as much gravitas as Bob, and Susan, and Julie ...

Like Shia LaBeouf (“Transformers,” “Wall St: Money Never Sleeps”), a “Woodward 'n' Bernstein” kind of newspaper reporter out of Albany they call Ben. The brash Ben shoves the narrative around a lot because he's so damned smart and perceptive, yet unsure of where his head and heart might be leading him, if at all. Dustin Hoffman doesn't need to take notes, though.

Another newbie, Anna Kendrick (“Up In The Air”), is Diana, an old girl friend of Ben's from college. She now works --- and ain't it handy(?) --- for the FBI. Continuing in a younger demographic kind of way: the newly-arrived Brit Marling (“Another Earth,” “The Sound of My Voice,”“Abitrage”) is Rebecca, the savvy, adopted daughter of a retired police official who was involved with the political chaos of his Northeastern U.S. town during Nam. The fine Irish actor, Brendan Gleeson (“In Bruges”) does the role.

Going forward, the stalwart cast roster also has Nick Nolte, as Donal, a crusty “old rad” chum of Redford's “Nick.” Mimi's current Big Sur live-in “chum” is Mac, played by Sacramento-native Sam Elliot (“The Big Lebowski”). And if that weren't enough: Richard Jenkins (“Six Feet Under,” “The Visitor”) is a reluctant, present day college prof, who, with a clearer conscience then, kept company with Nick, Mimi, Sharon and other members of this anti-war gang of heavy-handed liberals with too much cause for their own good.

Thrown in for good measure, as if any more were needed, you'll find Stanley Tucci (”The Lovely Bones,” “Margin Call,” “The Hunger Games – Catching Fire”) as young Ben's newspaper boss; Chris Cooper (“Lone Star,” “American Beauty,” “Capote”) does Nick's/Jim's younger brother; and Terrence Howard (“Crash” by Paul Haggis) as the Main Man, FBI Agent called Cornelius.

Portions of this motion picture meal clinging best to the plate are 2 scenes, in particular. One has Sarandon and LeBeouf locked in their marvelous lines for Ben's jailhouse interview with the incarcerated Sharon about her being party to a radical bank heist in 1970s Michigan that left a bank guard dead. Ms. Sarandon is more than anyone could handle with the lines she delivers. Listen to her.

The other scene also has LaBeouf ... this time with Tucci. Heavy words between the newspaper boss and his high-energy, nerd-like reporter smelling a big story, feel so real as they're tossed back and forth across the editor's desk. I've never seen Tucci in anything less than a pretty darned good movie.

With intermittent sequences with Redford --- in his dad character --- and young Miss Evancho, one can revel in the enclosing warmth of father/daughter love which could be the dessert course. (It has a plate or dish all its own, you know.) Not only sweet but pleasant, Redford and Evancho look like they're using personal emotions for their on-screen efforts.

Too bad some of the morsels slipping off the larger dinnerware include motivations of some significant characters. As I sat watching, I had the feeling that, if I'd read the book first, I would have been able to understand some of the “Whys” as well as the “Well, What About This-ses” buzzing through my head. I've always thought that that was the job a script adapter did; crafting whatever the novelist previously put down for clarity's sake that's been defined or explained by language alone. Neil Gordon wrote the book. Lem Dobbs did the adaptation.

There's something in my mind about this picture wanting to avoid seeming to be too sentimental, or sappy, that has inadvertently edged-out scenes that would be clarifying and uses the movie's precious running-time to re-emphasize other aspects of sentimentality that are made obvious early on.

Redford's film is many things. A remember-when, police procedural, medium-intensive thriller with a strong resonance for understanding family; less familial types at long last coming to a finer mellowing; motivations of U.S. anti-war activists in the 60s and 70s and their loyalty to the cause and each other, as well as how they now feel about what went down; then but of course: old lovers and their baggage, and the possibilities for younger lovers, maybe … and how much of a larger load they may take on --- according to the company they keep.

I don't believe Robert Redford's new movie can miss.

Book Review: Another film of Tulsa, maybe

2013-04-26T05:48:26Z

“A Map of Tulsa” book review Gary Chew

No doubt another really fine writer like native Tulsan Benjamin Lytal could write a story about the city in which he or she grew up, and give touching expression to that town and some of the people he or she knew while there.

But since I lived in Tulsa, Okla., for nearly 30 years, I'm partial to “A Map of Tulsa,” Lytal's first novel. It's likely I was living there when he was born.

One of my most memorable experiences in Tulsa happened after dark one evening, while I was driving home to my high-rise apartment among the tall buildings Lytal writes of when he describes our skyline. It was along the Arkansas River, near where 21st joins Riverside Drive, that I saw bright lights near the riverbank, and people under the lights with Francis Ford Coppola in the middle of them all, directing a scene for “Rumble Fish.” I freaked.

Have you ever re-read the cast list for “Rumble Fish?”

Tulsa is one of those kinds of towns, and I need to believe like Jim Praley, Lytal's protagonist, that Oklahoma's second-largest city is just of that kind ... with its empty downtown evening streets and politics notwithstanding.

S.E Hinton thought so when I was full-time in Tulsa. Apparently Francis Ford Coppola also did, according to “Rumble Fish” and his other film from the “Tulsanian” writings of Hinton, called “The Outsiders.” ( Tim Hunter was first in Tulsa in 1982, putting Hinton's ideas on film with “Tex.," if the 1949 picture with Susan Hayward titled, "Tulsa," has slipped your mind.)

But Lytal's Tulsa story keeps its lonely distance adrift, much of the time, just floating there, 10 or 12 stories above Tulsa County in the Booker Petroleum Building. It takes me deeper with more subtlety. It hangs better up there in my head.

I've also carried with me the myth of Tulsa and the days I lived there, much as Lytal did later. I also know other former Tulsans who say that.

For me, these thoughts have much to do with my being a young man in that town, and knowing the people I knew then, as well; some of them not unlike Adrienne Booker and her entourage that busily fill the Tulsa fiction - maybe mixed with fact - that Lytal has allowed himself to set down for strangers (even from Tulsa) to read.

That's not very extraordinary. People do it all the time, although not everyone, I say, can put it to the page the way Lytal does … after a close look at “A Map of Tulsa.” And what a neat city Lytal has chosen for his cartography. If Tulsa were in California, it would be called San Francisco.

Mr. Lytal. Thank you for inking in the memories.

Copyright © 2013 by Gary Chew. All rights reserved

Film Review: "Oblivion" oblivious to reality

2013-04-19T17:46:26Z

“Oblivion” film review by Gary Chew

The only thing there's more of in the IMAX movie “Oblivion” than mind-blowing computer-generated imagery are cliches. But the CGI and the, sometimes, almost deafening sound effects and music are worth the watch and listen.

This elaborate production—written and directed by Joseph Kosinski— has similarities with a less grandiose space movie from 2009 called “Moon,” directed by Duncan Jones. In either futuristic yarn, this device is used: there appear, on screen, two men who are the same person simultaneously.

In “Oblivion,” it's Tom Cruise (Jack); in “Moon” the two men seen at the same time are Sam Rockwell. And in each movie, both pairs—or should I say all “four” (?)—have been duped by the controllers of these future days of the universe that play out in close proximity to a planet called Earth.

Jack is the luckier hero, however. He has two beautiful women to be isolated with in “Oblivion” in his high-rise penthouse of luxury that sits in the clouds, miles and miles above this orb of ours that spins in a state of irradiated ruin due to decades of savage war. Less fantastic, “Moon” underscores isolation more, and was done on a smaller budget, while providing a larger takeaway.

Cruise's Jack zooms away daily in a nifty space vehicle from his nifty digs to repair downed drones. He's macho, you know, but quietly commanded by his eye candy roomie, Victoria, played by Andrea Riseborough. Victoria takes orders from another woman played by Melissa Leo, who decides if drones are to be dispatched to the surface of what's left of Earth. Leo’s character is seen and heard only on a scratchy video signal from the mother controller headquarters that’s ensconced at an even higher altitude than Jack and Victoria's residence.

So far, their mission has been to aid in the extraction of the planet's remaining resources, then ...

Jack and Victoria, in about two weeks’ time, will be discharged from their duties and proceed to Titan, Saturn's largest moon, where, these days, people go since Earth is so toxic. The couple is a working team and looks forward to a new life together; at least so far as recall allows, since both are subjected to occasional “memory wipes intrusions” by their superiors.

Memory plays an important part in how the film surprises.

On one of his forays down into the dangers of the surface, Jack saves a lone survivor from a crashed ship. She's the other beautiful woman. Her name is Julia (how Orwellian!). Olga Kurylenko has the role.

But wait, in the prologue to “Oblivion” we see Jack and Julia up, no—not the hill, but atop the Empire State Building where Jack proposes. New York City and the tall building are still intact, by the way.

What's the deal? Something tells Jack that Julia, whom he’s found in deep Delta Sleep sealed in a pod that escaped damage in the space ship crash, is more than just that … and he, personally, is a part of whatever it is he can't quite remember. And strangest of all, Jack has had dreams of Julia before he sees her the “first time” locked in the pod.

Then there are the Scavs, first seen in the film, all in black and Darth Vaderish. What are these guys up to? More is revealed as the story swishes and roars forward in all its relentlessly astounding visuals, laser zaps, explosions and pulsing, loud music (ears may require finger-plugging, intermittently).

Perfect as the Scav boss is Morgan Freeman, a nefarious-looking, revenge-stoked fellow named Beech. His brigade of future terrorists indicates that Jack and Julia are in deep 2077 doo-doo.

Marketing concepts are rife in “Oblivion.” The drones are an ironic violence, yet comic relief. Oh, the videos games to follow, because, at some moments, the drones are kind of … cute, even the ones that spin out of control and smash themselves to an IMAX oblivion.

Tha, tha, tha that's all, folks.

Film Review: Trance for the memory

2013-04-12T17:20:52Z

“Trance” film review by Gary Chew

Director Danny Boyle, who gave us “Trainspotting” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” is back with another visceral romp that may be the product of Boyle watching “Inception” too many times. Also titled in a single word, “Trance” uses hypnotherapy as its conceit instead of dreams, as Christopher Nolan did for “Inception.” Either dreams or hypnosis used in a screenplay can be awesome for keeping a moviegoer tricked and, hopefully, astounded.

Tricked I was watching “Trance,” but not so much astounded. I did feel a mild touch of shock at some of Boyle's devices to hold my attention. One that was really catchy is when a leading player in the film is shot point blank in the face. Viewers don't immediately see the extent of the wound … until the victim raises only half a quite bloody head above the edge of a counter, and continues talking to the shooter – with the still intact upper lip and lower jaw. It's then you know that the person experiencing this confrontation – that really hasn't happened – is in a trance. Such things often occur in “Trance.”

Joe Ahearne and John Hodges' script has little sense of reality. Keeping the pace at full tilt with unrelenting repetition of various effects suddenly popping into a scene seems to be the top priority. Over-the-top action and violence run a close second. And it's all deftly supported by excellent cinematography and editing, although the film's music is too frequently applied with a heavy brush.

That good, old standby, baring the skin, is another strategy for not allowing the viewer to look away much, especially when the leading lady, Rosario Dawson (“Sin City”), comes ambling down a hallway to an attentive James McAvoy (“Atonement”) without a stitch on. That would be a stroll toward Mr, McAvoy while she's looking him straight in the eye. Boyle has framed Dawson frontally, and totally fills the screen with her form – head to toe.

Then for the gals, McAvoy and co-star Vincent Cassel get a good bit of bare skin time too, although not to the extent of Dawson's. All three leading players in the film appear to have rigorous workout schedules in real life.

What's the movie about? I thought you'd never ask.

This is a multi-million dollar art auction heist movie. McAvoy's character, an auction-house employee named Simon, has hooked up with a gang of art thieves led by an intense guy who goes by the name of Franck, played by Cassel (“Black Swan”). Simon has made this liaison because of his heavy gambling losses. The stolen painting, Goya's "Witches in the Air," would more than pay for what Simon has lost at poker.

But somehow, and we don't know it for a while, the purloined masterpiece is not in the gang's getaway briefcase where Simon placed it during the commotion of the well-staged heist. Franck knocks Simon unconscious for the high dollar art going missing. When Simon regains consciousness, he can't remember what he's done with the Goya. (However, you're supposed to know, somehow, that he's done something with it). If the script hadn't required Simon to lose his memory, the movie wouldn't have reached the entertainment level it does since he has lost it … his memory, that is.

Dawson plays Elizabeth, a professional hypnotherapist who specializes in helping patients remember that which they can't. Instead of killing Simon, the art thieves allow him to make an appointment with Elizabeth so he can begin work to recall what happened to the arty loot that's disappeared.

Yip, that's the story.

But not to worry, the narrative is cleverly presented in such a way that's meant to be a high-level, quick-think puzzle in a puzzle that mostly appeals to those with a keen intellect. You know, like a chess player's?

I hate to say it, but there's no one in “Trance” whom a moviegoer can care about in terms of “the good guy,” not even the character Dawson portrays. But for some reason, I didn't take much umbrage due to Elizabeth's shortcomings.

“Trance” tries too hard and pushes all the way to excite, titillate and confound, then loses most of its steam racing to the not-much-of-a-payoff finish.

Danny Boyles' clever film asks a moviegoer to suspend way too much disbelief for the amount of “smartz” it appears to require to appreciate. Following the screening, if my memory serves me correctly, I seem to recall someone else saying that “Trance” is silly.

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Film Review: A roar well past the Twenties

2013-04-08T05:11:54Z

“On The Road” film review by Gary Chew

When Jack Kerouac began scribbling down things in a notepad that found their way into his novel, “On the Road,” he had not a notion about whether what he was creating would make a good screenplay for those flyby moments in the late 1940s of his short life

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That’s one reason I found “On the Road,” the stalled and finally available film of the same name, to linger in my head well after seeing it. It’s now showing at the Crest Theatre, downtown near 10th and K streets.

“On the Road” is another road movie from the Brazilian filmmaker, Walter Salles, who gave us that memorable two-wheeler rendition, “The Motorcycle Diaries.” Salles’ film of the Kerouac classic depressed me some, but how could it not? “On the Road” isn’t a novel, or film, by which one escapes. It celebrates the moment – the fiber of living a life, or lives, of youthful Americans altering (in more ways than one) how those bohemian sorts, living on this planet, pass their time.

Some of these men and women became rather well-known – for more than one reason. Sal is Kerouac himself (Sam Riley). Dean is Neal Cassady (Garrett Hedlund). Marylou is LuAnne Henderson (Kristen Stewart). Marylou was Dean’s (or Neal’s) first wife.

To be less confusing: Just a couple of other famous people that show up in “Travels With Jack” are Old Bull Lee or, actually, William S. Burroughs (Viggo Mortensen), and Carlo Marx, who in truth is Allen Ginsberg (Tom Sturridge). Not so famous is the part played by Kirsten Dunst as Neal’s second wife, Carol Cassady. The novel and film have her as Camille.

It’s kind of a stretch that much of all this “being on the road thing” began because of Marcel Proust, but that’s what’s messaged in Kerouac’s writing. See Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.”

So far, this suggests that the film, “On the Road,” takes us into the recent cinematic territory of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master.” In the same genre, Anderson transported some movie buffs with his earlier “There Will Be Blood.”

To put a finer point on it: A movie like “Trance” (just opening) is, let’s say, an orange. A film like “On the Road” or “The Master” or “There Will Be Blood” is apples.

I like apples. I like oranges. But each has a much different taste from the other. Hello.

And yes, arguing “taste” is sort of, uh … not so tasteless as it is a waste of time.

“On the Road” is a very good movie. I’m glad Francis Ford Coppola acquired the rights to it some decades back. Under his sensitive artistry, we’ve got – pretty much – what Kerouac gave us in the book. And don’t forget, Kerouac wasn’t writing a screenplay in the back of that flatbed truck on its way to Denver when Sal first hits the road to party with Dean and all those other restless Post WWII souls.

Kristen Stewart! Wow – really good. Really. She, Mortensen and Amy Adams are the only quickly recognizable faces in the cast. Look out, though, Steve Buscemi has a curious and very humorous cameo. “Mad Men” freaks will quickly notice that phenomenal cable series’ “Peggy Olson” (Elisabeth Moss), too. But Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund are just barely recognizable. They have only slight facial gravitas which doesn’t invade the important characters of Sal and Dean. These dudes are good, too.

I don’t think I could have handled being in the presence of guys like Sal and, particularly, Dean, for much time, but they are certainly interesting to watch and then ponder as they rush to meet living their lives head on.

So maybe “On the Road” is an escape for people like me. But I don’t want to argue about it.

After “On the Road” one might feel that, according to Kerouac, the late Forties and the early Fifties did some ‘roaring’ of their own.

The Crest Theatre preceded the Saturday matinee of “On the Road” with a lowering, then raising of the big beautiful curtain there in tribute to the late Roger Ebert. Such class. It was a thumbs-up from all who were there.

Film review: Stoked for "Stoker"

2013-03-22T16:51:35Z

“Stoker,” a review by Gary Chew

“You have to do something bad before you might do something worse,” is a good way to begin a review of a really well-made film called “Stoker.” It stars Nicole Kidman as Evelyn Stoker, the mother; Mia Wasikowska as India, the 18-year-old daughter; and Matthew Goode as her Uncle Charlie. He's the younger brother of India's father, who has just died in an auto accident as the film begins. One of the early scenes in “Stoker” is the funeral of Richard Stoker, played by Dermot Mulroney.

Very “upper middle-class” would be how to best describe the Stokers. At their lovely rural home in Connecticut, Evelyn doesn't do much. She sleeps in every morning, is well-educated and not much of a mother to her straight-A student teenager.

Uncle Charlie shows up at the funeral. India had not known she has an Uncle Charlie until he appears to mourn his brother's passing. You find out why later, but only if you see the movie.

Goode is perfect in the role. He has eyes that look through you. His demeanor as Charlie, although affable and refined, is creepy, to put it mildly; almost as creepy as India's. She's nubile, and, at a rapid pace, becoming more keenly aware of her sensuality, despite her cold, harsh, remote personality. Evelyn is usually remote as well, but more self-absorbed, and seems to be getting a lift that Uncle Charlie has chosen to hang out at the Stoker family's smallish mansion nestled among beautiful trees, with the film's director, Chan-woo-Park (“Old Boy”) neither concerned about time nor place. I like that subtle touch he gives his film.

There's much more to admire in “Stoker”: cinematography with its extreme close-ups of lead characters that make all of it seem more intimate, and striking framing of shots and camera movements. There's also excellent editing with a first-rate sound mix of dialogue, ambient sound and music. But the way Chan-woo-Park kept me nailed was with his small visual surprises that support and clarify the narrative as it shifts into higher intensity and complexity in the third act. They dazzle even more than the credits you should take note of as the film begins.

At its base, “Stoker” is about bad blood that runs in a family, or if it does run in the family, and how such a familial deficit might present itself among its members, in forms such as animalism and dementia; and in the case of the Stokers, what can happen to those who are in short supply of the bad blood that's apparently been passed down through the years.

The quote in the first paragraph is something that India claims her father said to her earlier, when she was with him on one of the many hunting trips they took (just the two of them) to shoot fowl with their telescopic rifles.

This is quite a good film that has a “bad” subject - oozing repressed sexual tension. I loved every frame of it. I'm sure Sigmund Freud would have, as well.

Opinion: Tell me the internet isn't acting like radio and TV - already

2013-03-18T21:07:07Z

As I watched the latest online trailers of soon-to-come-out movies, I dropped into the flow of sequencing from the first trailer onto four or five more. “The online set up for 'trailer-watching' has been given some thought,” I thought.

I was able to click ahead to the next coming attraction, if the current trailer was becoming a drag. I can usually make such a decision in no more than 10 to 12 seconds.

That happened on the third trailer. I won't say what kind of movie it was because you'll know my bias and form some kind of opinion as to why I don't like a particular kind of motion picture. What I'm writing about in this space is much more important than what kind of movies I like, although I've always been fond of 1994's “Ojo: The Eyeball of Fate.”

With that out of the way, I continued zip-surfing through more, and watched some of them in their absolute totality which, in many instances, lasts much longer than when it – finally – becomes clear a movie sucks. But I warn you that the more watchable trailers get as lengthy as three minutes!

Now we come to the commercial...

I began to notice that a very big, soon-to-come movie with super stars in it, and a story that's been done – oh, I don't know, maybe a million times – kept repeating on my screen, intermittently, without my having the capability to surf ahead to less recidivistic trailers.

I think you're now beginning to see what I'm driving at.

Yes, all those unknown movies you don't know about of all good and "bad" genres, with hot new actors or even old hot actors almost out of work – are what the “format” is, for (oh, let's call it), “The Online Trailer Channel.” So, this makes that darned movie preview you get to see over and over again the “Septo-Dismal” commercial you've seen or heard...seemingly also a million times.

But it’s considerably less ominous than being chained to a chair after someone has left the room you’re in, torturously leaving a 24/7 radio blaring Rush Limbaugh reruns in your ears. Shades of "Zero Dark 30."

These days, the guys who run these websites can do amazing things like latching on to the computer in your very own home and finding out stuff – stuff you may not want anybody else to know. Yes, these guys have been thinking ahead – not unlike the real pioneers of communications in the America of my radio and television days. I'll always remember them for the Communications Act of 1934.

I'm already talking to my computer as if it's really a dude in Singapore not letting me have cursor- control of my screen until he's gotten the digitally implanted stuff he's fishing for…in that whirring black box that sits on my desk…and that I paid for with my own money.

I hope people don't start having dreams about an old kitchen counter radio that watches them prepare breakfast.

Film Review: Carell and Carrey in magical standoff

2013-03-15T16:03:26Z

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” film review by Gary Chew

“That Old Burt Magic” would have done nicely for the title of the new film “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.” Much of the magic being performed in the film is done by a guy named Burt, and the 1942 song “That Old Black Magic,” would have done nicely on the soundtrack to make the connection between the “Burt Magic” title and the well-known song itself; maybe even a little Louis Prima and Keely Smith doing their recorded version of the Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer standard.

But even without the suggested re-titling, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” allows for some good entertainment with a very solid cast of well-knowns who are pretty much just right for another zany formulaic Hollywood romp to take place on the ground in Las Vegas.

There's Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Alan Arkin and the ubiquitous James Gandolfini trodding the movie boards to elicit laughter from us ordinary people who see movies in more ordinary towns and villages across America.

Carell and Buscemi play Burt and Anton, boyhood friends who got turned on to performance magic when they were 10 … thanks to a Rance Holloway Magic Set that Burt gets for his birthday from his mom. Arkin plays the Rance Holloway character. Yuck-yucks a'plenty, here; almost as funny as Arkin in “Argo.”

The rich guy's name in the film is Don Munny … that's Gandolfini playing it light for a delightful change. He owns Bally's in Vegas and has kept Burt and Anton as his headliner act for a long time. Burt and Anton pack 'em in, while the pair laughs all the way to the bank; Burt the self-absorbed snob of an entertainer and Anton the less cool, but extremely nice, man of their magic show.

But horror of horrors, a hippy-like, long-haired dude named Steve Gray is on the scene roaming the teeming sidewalks of downtown Vegas, doing acts that make the craze for Burt and Anton's brand of magic disappear like a white rabbit into a black top hat.

Caution, though. “Incredible Burt Boy” isn't for young children. Don't bring them. Carrey's acts are brought to comedic climax with occasional turns of masochism, such as not merely walking but lying on hot coals or, even more grisly, slicing open the cheek just under his left eye, then in a following scene, he himself, stitching up the laceration. The script suggests that Carrey's "Steve" is even more desperate for attention than the nostril-flairing Burt.

Ah yes, conflict; and don't think Carell and Carrey aren't savoring their standoff. Snarls and all sorts of upstaging go forward in these supremely hyped acts of being competitive in American showbiz.

Attached to the story is Jane, as she keeps reminding Burt that that’s her name … while he continues to call her Nicole. Jane is played by Olivia Wilde. She's eye candy for the movie's onstage magic acts and the film, as well.

Jay Mohr shows up (usually in a casino bar) as a working, standup Vegas comic with another incredible stage name, “Rick the Implausible” - if you can believe that. Like the director of “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” Don Scardino, Mohr is best known for television, and currently appears in the series, “Suburgatory.” Mohr also did the lead in another TV series from 2010 called “Gary Unmarried.” (That title I like.)

Speaking of serial television programs, the “Burt” movie has all the earmarks of mixing TV scripts with ones for feature films. The road this incorrigible movie is on has been traveled many times before, but it’s not too far off key from B-flat. I swiftly add, though, that its internal schtick, which makes frequent assaults on the funny bone, packs some really ha-ha moments. You'll be “lovin' the spin you're in,” watchin' “That Old Burt Magic.”

Copyright © 2013 by Gary Chew. All rights reserved.

Oscorations 2013 -- Oscars given after the TV show ended

2013-02-26T05:42:55Z

And … the winners ARE

...Jennifer Lawrence for moving up to the stage with such grace – ultimately.

...Seth McFarland for telling his “joke” about President Lincoln being shot in the head reminding me of a jerk record salesman who told me, one day in my office not long after the presidential assassination in Dallas, “That JFK got it through his head that he wasn't welcome in Dallas.” (Presidential assassinations aren't funny, from any century, Seth.)

...Chris Terrio for getting through (sort of) an acceptance speech for a best writing award (“Argo”) while being drunker than anyone ever in Hollywood. Chris' performance would've made Norman Mailer jealous.

...Meryl Streep for really cool “dress-walking” which didn't seem to be related to the frock's design or any beverage the great Streep might have imbibed at a pre-party.

...Kristin Stewart for being able to give more people, at one time, the “eff you” stink eye from a Hollywood stage than any performer in history.

...Dustin Hoffman for being the only famous movie short guy who can walk on stage with Charlize Theron and still look cool, despite the fact she can whip his butt. Mickey Rooney probably felt an urge to eat his heart out seeing Dustin in tow with the lovely Charlize.

...Barbra Streisand for making a dude almost three-quarters of a century old, tear-up as she sings a wonderful song from a film about lovers: one a left wing radical, the other a frat boy prig who, in real life, is pretty much of a lefty like Babs.

...Christoph Waltz for being the only person (or category) in “Django Unchained” worthy of an Oscar like the statue he won Sunday evening for Best Supporting Actor. The dude can even act in three-quarter time.

...Quentin Tarantino for showing grandiose paucity of humility of any so-called visionary film director at an Oscar Awards show. I'm still waiting for Quinny to do something better than “Pulp Fiction.” He made himself a tough act to follow on his first try.

...Adele and “Skyfall” making me remember how great all those early Bond scores by John Barry really were. The song “Skyfall” has done it again. Not to mention the use of Barry's “Out of Africa” theme used for the “In Memorium” segment of the Oscar program.

...Ben Affleck for covering well his obvious wrath for not being nominated in the Best Director category. Att'a boy Ben. You have a wonderful film (you directed) to talk about that came out in 2012. Tell 'em, “Ar'go jam yourselves,” Benjamin.

...Joaquin Phoenix for expressing the negative outcome of his taking the Best Actor Oscar home instead of Daniel Day-Lewis only seconds before the award is announced. (Body language, people.) I don't think Mr. Phoenix has precognition, but he sure did do a great job playing his role in “The Master,” whether anybody else thought he did … or not.

Daniel Day-Lewis, who gets TWO after-party Oscars beside the one he nabbed for “Lincoln”; those being for saying the most genteel and classy things...and for having the most beautiful woman in the room on his arm. Wow. Mr. Lewis -- truly a pro of the highest order. Counting the real one he won Sunday night and his earlier pair also for Best Actor, plus the two I've “bestowed” on him just now, push his count to “five.”

Editor’s note: The “News Digest” goes out every Tuesday morning and highlights our best stories, photos and videos from the week prior. Sign me up.

West of the West Memphis Three

2013-02-23T03:30:48Z

"West of Memphis": film review by Gary Chew

Equal justice under the law is the reason for the documentary, “West of Memphis.” Many are familiar with this recently resolved example of shoddy police work and justice in Arkansas. West Memphis is a short drive into Arkansas from Memphis, Tenn.

Three teenage boys were arrested in 1994 for the 1993 murder and bodily mutilation of three other 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Ark. The case, which has no racial aspect to it, was complex and saw no complete resolution - with regard to the young men convicted - until 2011.

The film was directed by Amy Berg, who also did the 2006 documentary, “Deliver Us From Evil,” about a pedophile Catholic priest assigned to various parishes not far south of Sacramento during the early '70s through the early '90s.

The teenagers charged with the crimes in Arkansas were convicted on bogus testimony by one of the three suspects who suffers from a mental disability and possibly, it seemed to me as I watched the film, because the trio's leader has the first name of Damien. Due to the mutilation of the victims, West Memphis authorities accepted the killings of the younger boys as a satanic ritual.

Thanks to improved DNA testing, later forensic results put the convictions in serious doubt, yet the state of Arkansas would not grant the West Memphis Three a new trial even with worldwide outcries and support from those believing the three were not guilty. People of note were involved with working to free the West Memphis Three. Some appear in the documentary: Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maines and Henry Rollins, to name five.

The film is a mountain of information to process, and much of it is confusing, uneven and disorganized. You may need a second look to sort out the real people in the documentary and their relationship to each other. Berg's use of graphics for personal identification, venues and some subtitled conversations are not enough to take the jumble out of this overly long but persuasive film.

Despite that, I urge you to see “West of Memphis.” After all, as mentioned, it speaks to the importance of equal justice under the law. Unfortunately, Berg's film indicates that, to some in Arkansas, justice is less important than politics, although near the end, one Arkansas judge (as seen in news video) makes concluding statements that tend to soothe those putting up the fight for the trio's freedom. And there's startling material that leads one to the possibility that the real perpetrator of these crimes still walks free and local authorities know who it is. But I'll let you watch the film to find out who that just might be, if you've not been able to keep up with what's new west of Memphis.

The film is now playing at the Tower Theater, located at Land Park Drive and Broadway in Sacramento.

'Safe Haven' is for Valentines

2013-02-15T21:00:04Z

Although I've often needlessly harped about the term “safe haven” being redundant, the new, so titled Lasse Hallström film is all fuzzy with warmth as well as being edgy, scary stuff that's surely an attention-holder for its two-hour run.

The Swedish director is a favorite of mine. Hallström's sentimentality occasionally gets waist deep, but I always tend to keep a spot in my head for films of his – “The Cider House Rules,” “What's Eating Gilbert Grape?” and his more recent “Salmon Fishing in Yemen” will stay with me until the synapses unplug.

The busy Nicholas Sparks wrote the novel which gave rise to the “Safe Haven” script. Sparks, who grew up some in Fair Oaks, is keen on romance that's mostly pure and lasting, usually set in the southern tier of the United States, along the coast.

“Safe Haven” is just that. After opening on a rainy night in Boston, Katie (Julianne Hough, pronounced “huff”) is fleeing Bean Town on a bus headed for Atlanta. A Boston detective is after her in the bus terminal, but she slips away.

Flashbacks show Katie, earlier, being party to a bloody altercation in Boston that has the body of man on her dining room floor. Then Katie is shown racing next door to a neighbor lady's house.

Later and several hundred miles to the south, Katie's bus stops in a picturesque coastal village. Katie takes the opportunity to “let” the bus go on to Atlanta without her. She anonymously settles in with warmth and welcome there, and what looks to be a new future for her with a young man who runs a local grocery shop.

His name is Alex (Josh Duhamel, the 'h' is silent), a widower with two very neat kids. Lexie (Mimi Kirkland) will charm you out of your theater seat. Lexie's older brother, Josh (Noah Lomax) is not charming. He's still troubled by the death of his mother, whom Lexie doesn't really much remember.

Alex still grieves the passing of his wife, but is a great dad and a push-over, I guess you could say, for the lovely Katie's sudden arrival.

The sweet warmth for Katie, now away from the “darkness” that caused her to flee Boston, is interrupted, intermittently, by the machinations back in Massachusetts to find this attractive woman who is not so sociable in her new surroundings...just yet.

Katie isn't even inclined to get tight with another slightly older woman named Jo (Cobie Smulders), who also lives alone not far from Katie's quaint shack-like digs, nestled in a sequestered wood not far from the village. Katie rented her place after landing a waitress job at a village eatery.

Eventually, there's needed girl-talk with Jo, and a budding relationship with Alex, Lexie and the recalcitrant Josh.

All the while, the Boston detective, Tierney (David Lyons), is persistent in learning Kate's whereabouts. “Safe Haven” relates his progress and movements south.

Fundamentally, “Safe Haven” is a movie for young women. The connection between Katie's and Jo is real. Both are confident and well-grounded and Alex is the paragon of good husbandry: good looking, tall, sensitive, generous, dependable. What's not to like, ladies?

Something I look for in a movie is how children come off playing their parts. “Safe Haven” shows that Hallström knows precisely what he's doing directing kids. Both Kirkland and Lomax couldn't be more natural. They give spark to the film, and not just a few laughs – especially Lexie.

The plot is presented in a way that enhances pay-off time when it comes for “Safe Haven.” But sometimes the script (by Leslie Bohem and Dana Stevens) is opaque and seems incomplete, if not a bit confusing.

This is a squeaky-clean motion picture in terms of how things appear in it: neat, but casual clothing worn by the players, all things in their place, seemingly with no problems afoot other than “what's up” with the heroine of the piece; and isn't she comely...yet, what's with the Boston detective out to find her, and how will the dreadful circumstances in Katie's past affect the film's outcome?

Then, after that all plays out, there's something else to take home with you. Interest piqued enough?

“Safe Haven” – a safe bet, for sure guys, on Valentine’s Day.

'Amour' – A dissertation on love

2013-02-04T06:33:29Z

“Amour” film review by Gary Chew

Austrian director, Michael Haneke's worthy film “Amour,” to use a terse description, defines love; the kind that is real love; totally committed and long suffering.

Georges and Anne Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emanuelle Riva) are retired teachers of consummate pianists. Both are in their 80s. Their retirement looks comfortable in their comfortable, spacious Paris apartment.

After we get to know the married couple, Anne suffers a stroke which, even with subsequent surgery, nudges the gentle and gracious woman toward her demise. What happens between the moment when Anne is first struck by the malady and up to her death is where the film stays, following a brief but blustery opening sequence.

It's not a pleasant stretch to watch --- these latter days of the lives of two music aesthetes, --- but the resilience of a relationship is what the movie is about. Nothing challenges a close association more than infirmity and, eventually, dementia. I imagine another way to define Haneke's “Amour” is that it is a moving and intimate dissertation on the proof of Georges' love for Anne.

Their daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), is the only other significant character in the cast. Huppert also starred in Haneke's 2001 film, “The Piano Teacher” which has some semblance to “Amour,' as it also painfully and uncompromisingly focuses on a music-loving man and woman who are classical pianists and declare to each other, “Je t'aime,” in describing their warped sense of emotions too often mistaken for love.

A real concert pianist makes his film debut in “Amour.” Alexandre Tharaud is cast as the Laurents’ now successful pupil who jets the globe giving praiseworthy performances everywhere he goes. He makes a brief and surprise visit to the Laurent's when he suspects something with the couple might be amiss.

Tharaud also plays the keyboard music heard on the soundtrack, mostly by Schubert, Beethoven and a Busoni transcription of a Bach piece. “Georges” and “Anne” are also shown briefly at “their” piano playing fine music.

But the film is sparse and deliberately paced, as I've found Haneke to be. He uses no music or sound under opening or closing credits. Moreover, his scenes are usually very long takes with few cuts; then when the dialogue stops, the scene continues for several more seconds with the actor deep in thought and almost motionless. Curiously, Haneke kept my attention with this interesting technique. Anyone who only appreciates the pace of 007 movies might want to take in “Stand Up Guys” playing just up the Tower Theater hallway.

Georges has a strange dream about midway through the film that comes as a surprise as being one. It sets up an opening for a later dash of magic realism, which comes at the end of this Oscar-bound film replete with flawless acting.

Being and old Jean-Louis Trintignant fan, myself, I was pleased to see, when Anne (in the film) is thumbing through old photographs of the Laurents’, that a photo of a young Trintignant appears. In the snapshot, the actor looks as if he has just finished shooting a scene embracing Anouk Aimée while Claude Lelouch's camera does a 360 of the pair for “A Man and A Woman.” Ah yes, that was 1966.

Speaking of vintage....Jean-Louis and Emanuelle look like fine wine up there on the big screen these days. Bravo!

Footnote:

If you haven't checked out the all new digital sight and sound at Sacramento's Tower Theater, “Amour” would be a good film to audition all that newfangled stuff at Land Park at Broadway.

Copyright © 2013 by Gary Chew. All rights reserved.

Film Review: Rust and Bone

2013-01-11T20:33:50Z

‘Rust and Bone’ film review

By Gary Chew

If your favorite kind of film is one that has poetic elements, yet seems almost random as it realistically unwinds, depicting hard-scrabble living, then have I got the movie for you: Jacques Audiard's “Rust and Bone,” also called “De rouille et d’os.”

A lower middle class Belgian named Alain van Versch (Matthias Schoenaerts) moves with his young son to Alain's sister's home in Antibes. It's on the French Mediterranean, about equidistant from Cannes and Nice.

Alain is scuffling for income. He's not even above thievery. But he seems to be a good father, and his sister (a working stiff) is helpful with caring for Sam (Armand Verdure), as well. Soon Alain gets a job as a nightclub bouncer. Things start to look up for the father and son.

Alain meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) at the club during an altercation that requires Alain to protect her. To ensure the woman's safety, he accompanies her home. Her circumstances then become part of the film's exposition.

After we learn that she is a killer whale trainer at Marineland, and enjoy watching her association with the black-and-white beasts that arch from the water into the air so gracefully, Stephanie suffers a horrific accident with one of the mammals, which causes both of her legs to be amputated just below the knee. As the scene is part of a Belgian-originated film by a French director, gore is not emphasized.

Director Audiard (“Le Prophete”) does make us endure her pain and suffering, as well as the anguish the mishap has brought to her life that, up to now, she's been living in her prime. Stephanie is also independent and quite lovely, but now, very depressed, angry and ashamed of the stark physical changes put upon her.

Alain had given her his phone number following the nightclub scuffle. She's not getting the support from others that she needs after the accident, and calls him. So their story begins.

Over time, after moments of suicidal thoughts, Stephanie “comes back to life” with the close attention of Alain. It seems that, when they're just off the beach in the warm Mediterranean, Stephanie experiences a secular baptism that allows her to enjoy living again, although without legs. It has all come to pass with the couple's relationship as though they are brother and sister. Alain is even consorting with other females when he's not with Stephanie. His attitude is helpful and supportive, yet nonchalant, along the lines of “you do your thing and I'll do mine.” Eventually, she implies her need for physical love. He provides it. Not having half of each of her lower limbs is no matter to Alain.

Scenes of their lovemaking are shown, without specificity, although (warning) a glimpse of full frontal male nudity is allowed by Audiard for a nonerotic scene.

Previously a boxer, Alain begins making better income with a shady manager, who arranges illegal fighting and kickboxing matches for him with other men. These events are covert, quite bloody and violent, much like rooster fights. Alain is good at it, but sometimes gets his butt kicked. Stephanie is not big for the fisticuffs, albeit becomes more sanguine as time passes.

She now walks, thanks to prosthetic legs; wheelchairs, not so much.

There is much more to this French-language film (easy to follow, with short subtitles) that unfolds with more than what one might expect, even as described so far. The man, the woman, the boy, the situations in which people find themselves in order to make a living and get a reasonably good taste of living a life - no matter what it brings, especially for the woman.

Stephanie is easy to love and for ginning up one's empathy. Alain is, shall I say, flexible in his way. It's what I love about the French. Generally, Gallic culture subscribes to the concept that people are made of numerous qualities. Alain's persona reflects from many “shards of a shattered mirror.” He makes you think, suggesting that there is some of Alain in us all.

Audiard and his co-writer, Thomas Bidegain (both did “Le Prophete”), draw a moviegoer back from the front-row action of the moment at several places in “Rust and Bone,” using silence, slow motion, the fading under of dialogue that's not really important, while the visual poetry flows, sometimes aided by music that's “not” quite appropriate to the scene at hand … and … still appearing that everything is happening in a semblance of randomness that shouts reality.

I haven't seen them all, but “De roullie et d'os” is surely one of the very best of 2012. I'd say that you make plans to see it, soon.

Copyright © 2013 by Gary Chew. All rights reserved.

Zero Dark 30: The bad guy gets killed

2013-01-11T20:09:02Z

Zero Dark Thirty’ film review

By Gary Chew

It came over me as I left the screening of “Zero Dark Thirty” the other evening. I had this sudden, silly urge to quickly whisper at two or three people working the concession stand, “The bad guy gets killed,” but thought better of it and, without a word, went outside to my car.

But as I walked across the lot, I thought to myself: “I wonder about the life histories and personal conflicts of the U.S. personnel depicted in this new film by Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”). “What is it that motivates them to such courage and risk? How much of it is for the right stuff, or is it … for stuff that isn't?”

That also ran through my mind for part of the time I was watching this extraordinary movie about the stalking and killing of Osama bin Laden.

Otherwise, what we have here is a very well-made motion picture about something quite important to U.S. citizens. It is not a police procedural. However “Zero Dark Thirty” is, mostly, a “procedural.” And dare I say it (?): “Everyone already knows how it comes out at the end.”

That's not the point, though. The point being: the film allows for a common image to be taken in by Americans on how shutting down bin Laden happened, with actors playing the roles of real American personnel, and in some cases, it seems, characters that are a composite of more than one real person. They are a curious collection: intelligent, educated, argumentative, articulate, obsessive, determined, loyal, obedient and appreciative of the importance of foul language uttered just at the right moment.

That holds especially so for the character called Maya in the film.

She's the lead character, played by Jessica Chastain, and the one I would most like to know more about. Hardly a hint is given about Maya's back story, except for a brief stretch of dinner-out girl talk between her and her “buddy” agent, Jessica (Jennifer Ehle). Their social chat is cut short by the terrorist truck bomb explosion that rocked the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2008.

Playing Maya does display the “stretch” in Chastain's acting talent. I've seen her in more than a few films over recent years. Maya could've been easily overplayed. With help from Mark Boal's script, Chastain (a native Sacramentan) keeps Maya enigmatic, except for occasional, measured outbursts of emotion watching her captives being tortured by others, learning a colleague has been blown to bits by a car bomb, feeling the tension as the raid to take out bin Laden proceeds and experiencing the nose-diving moment of de-stressing that begins to takes hold of her as the mission is accomplished.

Except for Chastain and James Gandolfini, the movie is cast with few familiar faces. They are, however, faces to remember and ones you're likely to see again. By the way, Gandolfini's part is a cameo. He plays a character who can be inferred to be another Californian, Leon Panetta. License was taken to suggest that Mr. Panetta is a good deal heavier than he actually is, though.

Accents and rapid dialogue make some of “Zero” difficult to follow. But, unless you're parsing the script for accuracy, what's going on is pretty plain to see.

Bigelow's film is significant and plays out as a rather neutral dramatization of an actual event, but the movie didn't move me as much as her Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker.” That film put you “inside” the several military personnel who also take great risks to do their job. On the other hand, “Zero Dark Thirty” has a quality like another film that also, as of Thursday, Jan. 10 (this week), sits among Oscar's Best Picture nominations for 2012 releases: “Lincoln.” Seeing either “Lincoln” or “Zero Dark Thirty” is an excellent way to get the lay of important territory in American history.

But, since “Zero Dark Thirty” seems not to have any spoilers in it … let me toss one at you that's really in the movie. Whenever the film is about to get really intense, the 007-ish music is brought up full; not composed, however, by the late, great Johnny Barry, but Alexandre Desplat.

Copyright © 2013 by Gary Chew. All rights reserved.

David Chase checks out the Sixties

2013-01-05T04:50:10Z

‘Not Fade Away’: a film review by Gary Chew

Coming-of-age films are as common a genre as a staged car chase on a hilly street in San Francisco or anywhere else in United States. This latest one, “Not Fade Away,” occurs on the other end of the continent near the Jersey Shore.

David Chase (there's that word again) is at it again … not with a successful long-running series about wiseguys in Jersey, but a two-hour feature about British-Invasion-obsessed teenage Jersey guys smitten with Mick, Dylan, the blues, long hair and amplified guitars.

Our story begins on the day a president is assassinated in Texas. A New Jersey family sits at the kitchen table, listening to and watching the aftermath of one of America's great tragedies of the 20th century.

All other kinds of hell have and continue to break loose in America, musically and in the media. Yes, we know about that, especially those who lived it, and even more so for those of us who worked in the media of the early '60s.

Douglas (John Magaro) is near to graduating from high school and lives with Pat, his dad (James Gandolfini); mom, Antoinette (Molly Price); and younger teenage sister, Evelyn (Meg Guzulescu). Pat runs a Pep Boys' auto parts business. The family is lower middle class.

Douglas is a drummer and plays some guitar, but it's revealed in the not-so-heavily-plotted, character-driven film that the dude can sing lead better than another guy in the band, who, at the outset, is up front with the vocal cords. Mick and the rest of the Stones weigh heavily on the young men's minds. But Douglas thinks even more about Grace (Bella Heathcote), a fetching girl his age whom he sees often in the hallways at school. Grace and her slightly older and much wilder (more liberal) sister, Joy, (Dominique McElligott) live at home with their successful ad-man father and mother. What we have here is a clash of classes already. And what would a coming-of-age film be without such friction?

“Not Fade Away” is fundamentally a series of scenes showing the young guys running into what most people are up against as they struggle through their late teens. “Not Fade Away” is loaded onto the machinations of those times: the Beatles, the Stones, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan (tell me Magaro doesn't look like Dylan) and less-evolved rock ‘n’ rock of the mid-to-late '50s. Then there's Rod Serling and other memorable visuals that include a quick clip of an Elvis feature, David Hemmings in “Blow Up” (1966) and a slightly longer scene with Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich as police Capt. Quinlan and Tanya in “Touch of Evil” (1958).

A highlight in the film for me was Chase's intercutting the sound of Bo Diddley doing that solid riff of his with the band featured in the movie playing the same thing in the same key. Chase has the music editing down. Of course, you can't keep still in your seat when Mr. Diddley does his thing in the black-and-white kinescope. Oh yes, handling the music: Steve Van Zandt (from “The Sopranos,” and a rock musician who hangs out with Bruce Springsteen).

Chase takes you through the changes in the characters, stressing the differences and the expected places at which some will settle. They are familiar to us, for those who remember them, for simply being there, so to speak. The sequences may also supply young moviegoers connective tissue between “that was then” … and “this is now” kinds of things.

“Almost Famous” is not too removed from “Not Fade Away,” but this movie isn't dealing with concert travel and writing a piece for Rolling Stone magazine. It's “The Sopranos” territory, but I hasten to say that only one hoodlike fellow shows up. He's a record producer and promoter. His is a difficult story for the boy band from Jersey to swallow. From the record guy, the line that sums it up is, “That's why they call it the music business.”

I had the feeling some characters in the film were bound to head west … you know (?), Los Angeles.

It's there, and then that the feeling of getting to California hits a moviegoer right between his or her EarPods. And it's where the ending, not to be divulged by me, may heft a good deal more in terms of what Chase wants you to take away from his movie, after all the high school histrionics of '60s teens, including a hilarious in-the-bathroom weed-smoking scene that's funny even if you aren't one of those who's passing the joint from one to the next.

One more clue about the close of “Not Fade Away.” The final scene, I think, seems more like something David Lynch might have directed than Chase.

Early on, you see JFK's visage on a black-and-white television screen. Much later, it's a campaign poster of RFK pasted in the window of an empty storefront on a deserted, nighttime Los Angeles downtown avenue.

Film Review: There's natural gas in them thar hills

2012-12-28T21:11:41Z

“Promised Land” film review by Gary Chew

“Promised Land” is not an effort to revive big screen bible epics. The land promised is that which is likely to have millions of dollars worth of natural gas in it. The people who own the land are being paid to promise (sign on the dotted line) that what lies below goes to a large natural gas corporation.

That's where Matt Damon and Frances Mc Dormand come in. As Steve and Sue, they're salespersons of a global-sized gas company. Their job is to persuade locals who live in natural-gas-rich regions that allowing the energy firm to bring up what's locked in the rock will make property owners wealthy. Extracting natural gas this way has come to be called, “fracking.”

Times has been hard in rural Pennsylvania, so getting small town residents to sell drilling rights to such a company seems like an easy task for Steve, originally from rural Iowa, and Sue, who lives with her husband and son in Houston.

“Promised Land” opens with Steve taking a luncheon interview for a higher position in the kind of work he does. Then he heads off to McKinley, Pennsylvania and meets up with Sue for their next project: getting more signatures from struggling landowners in a lovely, rural natural-gas-rich part the Keystone State.

Things have changed a lot in McKinley, but it's still inviting. People are nice and honest … and financially slammed. There's the too hip gas station, gun shop and grocery store owner, Rob (Titus Welliver), who seems to be more like a guy in Philadelphia than McKinley. He's just too smooth and urban to believe.

Alice is a local elementary school teacher played perkily by Rosemarie DeWitt. She's single and has returned from the city to live at her dad's place following his death. Her hipness can be attributed to doing the big city for awhile.

The venerable Hal Holbrook is a local high school science teacher named Frank. It comes out that Frank is a learned academician with MIT and Cornell on his resume, and teaching for kicks at McKinley High. This geezer could retire.

Shortly after we get to know Steve and Sue and follow their routine chatting it up with local property owners, Dustin (John Krasinski) shows up in his Athena pick up. The environment seems to be at the top of Dustin's agenda. Athena is an environmental group. Around the town Dustin goes, undoing the stoking Steve and Sue have initiated.

This is after Steve runs into Alice and engages her in conversation over a beer at the local pub. Alice seems interested in Steve, and vice versa, but for me … and I know a few things about small towns ...I don't remember any of my female school teachers being known for hanging out at the only bar in town, flirting with local guys as well as strangers from rural Iowa just in town on business.

A town meeting about fracking is held in the high school gym with a town politician running it. This comes after the local politician and Steve have a brief visit in the diner down the street, and Steve promises the pol a piece of the action for supporting the natural gas corporation's fracking around McKinley.

During the meeting, the eldery Frank takes an adversarial position on fracking in the area. He asks pointed questions of Steve. (That's just before we find that Frank has several letters after his name.) Steve could be quicker on his feet in the Q and A, as the basketball team waits for the local residents to clear the gym so the boys can practice.

Furthermore, Steve, or maybe script, has trouble with his motivation, and his values seem to contradict themselves. It's tricky trying to figure his priorities for being in McKinley: to make lots of money for himself or deep concern about small town people (like himself) getting out of their money fix.

The competition between Steve and Dustin thickens when Steve spots Alice hanging with Dustin at the pub. Moreover, Dustin is making time with townspeople as well about the downside to fracking and what he says it does to their land and water as well as their long term health.

Directed by Gus Van Sant (“Milk,” “Good Will Hunting”),“Promised Land” plays much like a made-for-TV movie that would likely never see the light of day on a mainstream commercial television network. The politics are hot stuff as the film shows in this neck of bucolic Pennsylvania woods, not to mention (of late here) in California. HBO ... the network watched by wealthy liberals ... would be a more likely platform for it to show. You'll just have to buy a ticket at the cineplex, or wait for the DVD release.

Except for some dialogue, the film is presented simply and inoffensively. The story is by Dave Eggers, who co-wrote the delightful “Away We Go” that starred Maya Rudolph and Krasinski who, along with Damon, wrote “Promised Land's” screenplay.

As important as getting more word out about fracking might be, “Promised Land” is not quite all it's fracked up to be.

The film opens Friday, December 28th in Sacramento.

Tarantino Unleashed

2012-12-25T21:25:41Z

Django Unchained

Film review by Gary Chew

If revenge is really sweet, then Quentin Tarantino has a sweet tooth. He's really indulged himself in the writing and directing of his latest screen splatter, “Django Unchained.” But Quentin has never been known to not overdo things. Fortunately though, he does make for a broader diversity of movies.

Tarantino is the movie freak's movie freak. He knows more about movies and directors, probably, than the likes of 10 Pauline Kaels. Two strong influences in “Django” are borrowed from directors Sam Peckinpah and Mel Brooks. At a recent screening of “Django Unchained,” I had to remind myself more than once that I wasn't watching “The Wild Bunch” and “Blazing Saddles” simultaneously.

Clearly, the unchaining of Django is about acquiring freedom ... freedom for the lead character, played not by Cleavon Little, but Jamie Foxx. A traveling salesman sort of bounty hunter, masquerading as a dentist and known as Dr. King Schultz, literally unshackles Django early in the film, which makes him a free man. (It's 1858.) Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz, is a learned gentleman who exhibits European sensibilities but knows how to cleverly dispatch wanted men at large in pre-Civil War America. Dr. Schultz is also a marksman.

After Django has shed his slave status, it seems like a perfect match that he and Schultz team upand make a living by killing white outlaws, then letting the legal system pay the pair for bringing in the corpses. As I said, this is 1858 but it's the good doctor and Django … not the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

Schultz learns that Django's wife, Brunhilde (Kerry Washington), was taken from her husband earlier, and sold away to a Mississippi plantation. Django doesn't know just where she is or who bought her, but he wants to find her, save her and continue their life together.
Those European sensibilities of Dr. Schultz respond to Django's plight and he throws in with the former slave to rescue Brunhilde while they do a little bounty hunting on the side

Schultz is curious also that Django's Brunhilde speaks German, since she had spoken the language while growing up by conversing with a family member of a slave owner fluent in the tongue. This gives Tarantino the opening to work in neat subtitles for the third act. There's also a thumbnail narrative spoken by Schultz to Django about Siegfried, Wotan and … you know, the princess, Brunhilde. Dr. Schultz is into German epics.

Most everyone else in “Django Unchained” plays a “good” old boy American type, the likes of which are done by Bruce Dern, Don Johnson, Walton Goggins and others too numerous and gnarly to mention. Some of these varmits even look like Sam Peckinpah.

Two standouts not in the good old boy category are Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). The Stephen character is a new kind challenge for Jackson, on which he delivers. Candie has a plantation and owns slaves, and Stephen is Candie's main man on the premises and personal assistant.

Holding to his principal artistic theme, Tarantino will have you wallowing in revenge. Those getting the brunt of the revenge in “Django” deserve what they get, but I became inured to the humor of it all, well before the film ends. To revel in the punishment of racist slave traders, a la Tarantino, carries the film near the precipice of being fascistic.

Remember Peckinpah's “Straw Dogs”? Dustin Hoffman's timid “David” is getting to “like it” by the time he's finally wasted everyone involved with the rape of his wife and invasion of their rural home.

The blood-splashing gun fights of “Django,” for me, became excessive. Watching violence to the max often desensitizes the viewer so that even more of it is needed to get the rush that it can bring to someone who's filled with righteous indignation for being repeatedly treated as
subhuman. The blacks in this film are treated so. The movie mocks those inclined to treat minorities harshly, but it could, as well, be a lesson meant for racists. How much, though, of this perspective in the film could be a motivational factor to incite violence in the deeply affronted parties? Tarantino's subtext for being a hater of racists is presented as being cool.

I was interrupted while writing this review by the horror and tragedy of the recent U.S. school massacre. Besides the shock the Sandy Hook School shooting brought me, it set me wondering if - and if so, how much - the young man who shot dead so many young schoolchildren had been exposed to media and videogame violence during all of his short 20 years of life. I don't think I would've laughed as much at the comeuppances that Tarantino puts to all the racists and Uncle Toms in “Django Unchained,” had I seen it after all those shots were fired on a mid-December Friday in Newtown, Conn.

Less significantly, it will always be that “Pulp Fiction” is a tough act for Quentin Tarantino to follow.

Two new mirthful movies to see

2012-12-21T20:03:07Z

This Is 40 & Hyde Park on Hudson film review by Gary Chew

Laughs for Americans during the winter holidays this year may be in shorter supply with domestic tragedy and misfortune filling so much of the plate. Let me put you on to a couple of new movies just now in Sacramento that give an opportunity for having a good chortle or two. They're something you might find useful.

Judd Apatow has a shiny new film to entertain called “This Is 40.” Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann return in their characters first seen in Apatow's riotous “Knocked Up.” This is another foible-filled family trek through the simple, embarrassing and humorous intimacies of a set of parents and their two young daughters.

Pete has a small record company that's not doing so well, despite the surroundings Apatow puts him and wife Debbie in. Debbie has a snazzy little dress shop where she suspects that one of her attractive salesgirls is taking from the till and looks like she might have another job on the side. The sales gal is played by Megan Fox.

Debbie is turning 40, although she claims she's just 38. Pete's dad (Albert Brooks) is looking for work and needs frequent loans from his son. Sadie at 13 and Charlotte at about 9 are struggling to come to terms with the other sister's strange behavior, given that, according to Charlotte, Sadie's body has gone weird.

Maude and Iris Apatow play the daughters and are the actual children of Judd Apatow and his actual wife, Leslie Mann. So “This Is 40” is really a family project, you see. But due to the director's really clever, sitcomish but uber blue dialogue, it's likely not what could be called your family kind of movie with a “Disney” label on it.

Meanwhile in another cinema there's “Hyde Park on Hudson,” a story drawn from 1939 when the King and Queen of England spend a weekend in upstate New York with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his extended family and several servants. It's set among the gathering clouds of America's coming to terms with joining up for a dust off with Hitler and his Nazis.

Bill Murray deftly portrays America's 34th president. Laura Linney, who never appears in bad films, plays Daisy, FDR's distant and younger cousin and Olivia Williams is spot on as the First Lady, Eleanor.

“Hyde Park on Hudson” is very humanizing of Roosevelt. Although a staid performance, Murray gives the character a dash of lightness and maybe impishness for a historical figure most associated with hard times, war and the New Deal. It's an aspect of FDR that's not to any great extent ever reflected much light before, and allows for us to see the subtle almost boyish chicanery and ego of a revered and powerful man who's pushing 70.

Roger Michell (Notting Hill) has directed “Hyde Park on Hudson” with an understated elegance that plays much like an almost perfectly filmed poem, if one could be. Jeremy Sams', supporting music, I don't believe, could be a better fit.

“Hyde Park on Hudson” will make you laugh in a quieter way than “This Is 40,” but isn't either kind of mirthful expression such a welcome emotion?

Happy holidays...whatever you call them.

Editor’s note: Every Thursday we deliver a local event guide straight to your inbox, right on time to make your weekend plans. Sign me up.

Al Stewart returns to Sacramento

2012-12-10T20:47:19Z

Al Stewart returns to Harlow's

On an evening from a Stewart concert in a city where they have good times, I strolled out of Harlow's crowd like all was hunky-dory, contemplating the rhymes of Al Stewart's provoking and image-filled songs.

I thought just then as I walked back to my car, “I hope Al returns to Sacramento. The cat does great stuff.”

That's especially so when he shares the stage with another great guitarist, one who lives just across the causeway in Davis, named Dave.

All that played in my head Dec. 18, 2011, one of those Years of the Cat, if you know what I mean.

In 2011, Stewart and Dave Nachmanoff ruled from the Harlow's platform as I sat there, rapt. I had missed out, professionally, by a few years, having slipped out of commercial radio and into TV. I never got to sit between two tables and read the labels of an Al Stewart single, or LP or CD for that matter, so it was a buzz for me to talk with him on the phone last week, just before the upcoming gig at Harlow's, Thursday evening, Dec. 13, 2012 ... sans le chat. (If French isn't your thing, “sans le chat” means “without the cat.”)

Like me (but for not as long), Stewart's been around awhile. Still, his music is fresh and sounds as if he might have written some of it only yesterday, which I think he did.

I asked him what's kept his enchanting songs that way these many years.

“Not composing what's already been done,” Stewart said. “Using language in a different manner and changing it for sound images that fit my melodies and vice versa.”

“Well, it's certainly been getting my attention,” was the only thing I could think to say back to him.

My guess is that attention to Stewart's Sacramento return this week will be something you'll pay if you show up at Harlow's early this Thursday evening. It will be, for me, Christmas coming almost a week early.

One more thing: 2023 will be the next Year of the Cat, which is also the title Stewart gave his classic and haunting song.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and the show starts at 7 p.m., concluding at 9 p.m. Online tickets are available at Harlow's or Swell Productions. Last minute, if there's still room, try your luck for a paid entry to this certain-to-be-excellent performance at Harlow's front door, 2708 J St., Sacramento.

Editor’s note: Every Thursday we deliver a local event guide straight to your inbox, right on time to make your weekend plans. Sign me up.

'Silver Linings' Plays Well

2012-11-29T00:28:12Z

No main characters in “Silver Linings Playbook” exist that aren't Type A personalities. The energy runs high for nearly for every moment of this new film from David O. Russell that's been catching some kudos. In 2010, Russell did “The Fighter.”

“Silver Linings, now at four Sacramento theaters, is a date movie with cajones that touches all the right, giddy, holiday buttons in grand style. It might be such a overwhelming crowd-pleaser and blow up enough box offices across the nation to already have an Oscar lying somewhere in wait for it.

How can a film miss that's about contemporary, stressed-out people who are waist deep in the spasms of following professional American football with competitive dancing on the side? What else is there on the TV, I ask. And I ask since I no longer have one at my house.

It's almost impossible for a filmmaker to lose making such a movie as “Silver Linings” with actors like Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in the Type A leads...and Robert De Niro thrown in for more mature Type A activity from the gray-haired set.

Then there's the music that's been dubbed-in: “What Is Life?” by George Harrison, a Christmas standard from Sinatra and a Johnny Mathis hit love song recorded well before most in the cast were born. And be ready for Stevie Wonder's “My Cherie Amour,” the song that makes the leading man in this movie go ballistic. All the buttons are touched ... and well before Christmas.

Remembering what a fetching button Jennifer Lawrence was in “Winter's Bone, the young actor fetches again as Tiffany in “Silver Linings.” As such, Lawrence really gets her tough on. In fact, she's so hard ass, you'd think that Jen was channeling Julia Styles before the cameras. But whoa, Julia Styles is in the movie, too. She plays Veronica, Tiffany's married sister.

Good casting.

Bradley Cooper rules as a mentally riled dude named Pat Solitano. Pat's demeanor indicates he might be abusing methamphetamine, but he really isn't. It's more a matter of his beating up himself for catching his wife, Nicki (Brea Bee), taking a shower with another guy one day when Pat gets home early. Pat and Nicki are split; not yet divorced, but with Pat being smacked with a restraining order.
All this puts Pat in the looney bin for about 8 months after beating hell out of the guy washing Nicki's back.

The movie opens with Delores Solitano (Jackie Weaver) picking up Pat, her son, from a Philadelphia mental facility and moving him to the family home where Pat Solitano, Sr. waits (yip, Robert De Niro).
There isn’t a more devout fan of the Philadelphia Eagles than Pat Sr. If you're a real football fan, this will make “Silver Linings Playbook” even more endearing.

Tiffany is a lovely, deeply disenchanted, unemployed widow of a Philadelphia cop. She's in much the same mental state as Pat, Jr, and having slept around with several at work, Tiffany lost her job. Pat is playing it straight not being able to get Nicki out of his head; obsessed with patching up his marriage.
Tiffany puts herself on a platter for Pat, but he (if you can believe this) “ain't goin' for it.”

There is a noteworthy sequence in the film between Pat and Tiffany when, at Tiffany's urging and cajoling, the pair focuses on a dance competition she's preparing for in which he agrees to participate.
The terpsichore the two work out together has a positive effect that diminishes the couple's disturbing mood swings … if only for a little while. These brief moments showing them develop the choreography for the contest have their characters at complete ease as they move to the music.

But the Type A personalities flail on and on, as the story moves toward an ending that (How can I say this?) has about as few surprises as one could expect from an R-rated family, holiday-like motion picture. Even a private letter sealed in an envelope that plays an important part in the plot made my early suspicions about the missive come true.

On the other hand, folks in this film are good ... and they're game. They give it their all, including the indefatigable and enduring De Niro. Supporting players provide really fine, mostly Type A backup to all what's happening up front.

I felt a little touched and a lot tired as the final gun from the gridiron … rather screen ... sounded for “Silver Linings Playbook.” But I did give thanks that Sylvester Stallone wasn't around do his Rocky thing in the film since it was shot in the City of Brotherly Love.

A Late Quartet: Attached by more than just strings

2012-11-19T00:03:24Z

“A Late Quartet” film review by Gary Chew

The title for this film is a double entendre, but so used for those familiar with chamber music. The phrase, late quartet, often describes later chamber pieces composed by Beethoven. In the case of the film's script, “A Late Quartet” also means, more ironically, a foursome in the process of disintegration while rehearsing and performing the composer's favored late quartet, Beethoven’s Opus 131. The film is now playing at the Tower Theater, Land Park and Broadway in Sacramento.

This movie is not lugubrious and distant for ordinary people; the story could as easily be placed on the arc of an evolving or dying quartet of famous rock musicians: a more common occurrence that gets much more “ink.”

What were you doing when the Beatles broke up?

Only that slender niche of classical and chamber music lovers know of the Fugue Quartet and its exemplary history of playing all the “right” and very difficult pieces written by such figures as Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Shostakovich, Bartok, etc.

The film, “A Late Quartet,” is really about five people. There's Robert, second violin (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose wife is the violist, Juliette (Catherine Keener). Peter, the elder member of the Fugue Quartet, is the cellist (Christopher Walken), and the most talented of the four is Daniel, first violin (Ukrainian actor Mark Ivanir). The fifth important character is Alexandra (Imogen Poots), a studying violinist, and the lone offspring of Robert and Juliette.

Bad health news arrives for Peter. He's 30 years older than the rest of the ensemble. Time for a new cellist, thus, Robert would like more time playing first violin parts. Juliette, who is deeply loyal to her loving, second violin husband, artistically believes the current first violinist is better suited for that chair. But early on before the story begins for the viewer, Jules (as she's called) had a thing for Daniel, although nothing ever happened.

Daniel is doing Robert and Juliette a favor by giving their daughter lessons. She has much promise. Alexandra is struck by the older, very talented, very musically committed Daniel.

Whoops.

This is a very well-written and acted soap opera laid on some of the most imaginative and majestic music ever written. But, classically trained musicians are just humans; like John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and us: the ordinary people who listen to whatever music it is that we like best.

Peter has recently lost his wife. He is the real teacher of the foursome. Walken does the film's best scene, which has Peter in the classroom teaching string players. He recounts some moments he spent with the great, real-life cellist, Pablo Casals. This spiel, done so well by Walken, makes it perfectly clear what kind of man Peter is. He shows pure satisfaction in the giving of his experience and talent to young, gifted musicians.

This is quite a stretch for Christopher Walken, who is more often seen in films “packing” and, generally, being a “memorable” hood. If you don't believe me, check him out in the recent, “Seven Psychopaths.”

The cast of players in “A Late Quartet” are as dedicated to the acting profession, it appears, as the people they portray are committed to performing great music.

Yaron Zilberman, the director, offers up his debut feature film with “A Late Quartet.” To his credit already, Zilberman has the documentary, "Watermarks” (2004), on his resume. It chronicles the story of the Hakoah Vienna Jewish swim team of the '30s, a group of women who defied Hitler.

“A Late Quartet” was written by Seth Grossman.

This is really a good, satisfying movie and you don't need to enjoy classical music or know anything about chamber music to appreciate and be taken by this winning film.

The Sessions: sex and religion

2012-11-09T17:45:44Z

The Sessions” film review by Gary Chew

The quality of decency is an interest of mine. Not so much when the word “decency” is used in the context of, “Are you decent?” but the bigger, more important meaning - being so to others.

That's what “The Sessions,” a new, frank film bringing back the solid and confident talent of Helen Hunt, presents as the entrée. It's playing at the Tower Theater, Land Park Drive at Broadway in Sacramento.

A lot of the time, Hunt is being admirably decent in this extraordinary film without a stitch on. She plays a sex surrogate named Cheryl. Her client is a devout Catholic named Mark, a role taken by John Hawkes, an actor all over the lot doing great heavies and now playing Mark, one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet in or out of an iron lung.

Mark, in real life, is the man who wrote this just-about-all true story of a forty-something guy over in Berkeley (where it was filmed) who got polio at the age of 6, and has spent just about all of his time since in an iron lung.

Mark, as we can plainly see, is still a virgin. But a part of his anatomy “speaks” to him, as he tells his priest, Father Brendan, played by the very excellent William H. Macy. Mark wants an okay from Father Brendan, so the physically challenged man can go ahead (if he's able) and become knowledgeable of a female, biblically speaking.

Sex and religion, such sparks.

Father Brendan is uncomfortable with fornication, but after earnest reflection, gives his blessing due to Mark's extraordinary circumstances. Sporting long hair, Father Brendan tells Mark, “Go for it.”

Following a few foibles, he hooks up with Cheryl, thanks to Father Brendan and Mark's physical therapist, as well as other good souls who wish to aid this grown man “without stain.” Some of the film's funniest moments take hold while the pair readies for the therapy Mark will enjoy (Maybe “enjoy” isn't the right word as this point), and from which he will benefit under Cheryl's tutelage.

My jaw dropped a bit when, after asking Mark if it would be alright to get undressed (and Mark saying, “Sure.”), Hunt as Cheryl just steps out of her clothes … all of them.

The camera work and editing of the scene don't seem concerned about which regions of Hunt's figure flash briefly on the screen. The sequence is shot without exploitation, nuance or sign of specificity. After a while people don't seem to notice so much.

Except maybe that Hunt likely maintains a rigorous exercise regimen. She's pushing 50!

You might think “The Sessions” is a sort of vulgar, tacky film about how a neat guy who can barely suck oxygen gets laid for the first time. Well, you'd be wrong about that, even though the film is rated “R,” and Mark does get laid in later sessions. He also makes an impact on the lives of women younger than Cheryl going forward in his humorous, upbeat manner. He writes poetry and for magazines.

The film seems ideal for a couple that's in a serious relationship or a good, longstanding intimate association - not so much for casual acquaintances, and definitely not with your parents. Just act like you don't know anyone else in the theater.

After becoming emotionally complex, what “The Sessions” leaves you with is much more than what's been described so far. That feat is accomplished by the principal characters in the script all being terribly grounded and decent. Some stories don't get populated with really together and considerate human beings, and since this one is taken from real events, something passed through my mind like, “These people are really cool and know themselves so well. They want to abide by the Golden Rule. That's a bit of a stretch, but a nice one.”

Several things play a part in whether or not I believe a movie is good. Most are obvious, but what this film is saying, besides the way it was written, acted and directed, etc., plays as much or more of a role as anything else in making it good.

How many really well-crafted movies have you seen that don't have much of a message, or a flawed message?

“The Sessions” is very adult. No, it is not Helen Hunt walking around in her birthday suit, but what the film presents as challenges to principal characters and the chronicling of the reactions of subsidiary figures following events in which Mark attains his … goal.

Lots of laughing comes from watching “The Sessions,” and I wouldn't be surprised if there are tears running down numerous cheek bones either. Happily, these more moving moments are as adult or mature. Not being cheesy makes this picture even better.

That which is cheesy is often cheap, but not necessarily tacky.

Positive vibes and mirth ring throughout, giving the film ever more gravitas in my book of good movies. Besides Mark O'Brien, who wrote the autobiographically true account, Ben Lewin did the script and directed “The Sessions.” Lewin is a successful, longtime writer, producer and director of feature films and television.

Backup players are well-cast and include: Moon Bloodgood, Annika Marks, Adam Arkin and Robin Weigert. Ming Lo's small role as a furtive motel clerk could cause you to laugh yourself out of your seat and onto a box without popcorn.

A decent time is likely to be spent seeing “The Sessions.”

Lincoln: Spielberg's Vital Civics Lesson

2012-11-09T17:12:26Z

Lincoln film review by Gary Chew

There are no vampires in Steven Spielberg's new film. But on seeing Tommy Lee Jones' initial scene in “Lincoln,” I thought there might be. Jones plays the cranky, Radical Republican Abolitionist from Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens. There are moments when it seems that old Thad is going to take a large bite out of some pro-slavery Democrat's neck.

My, how labels and meanings change.

That's probably not the best way to begin writing about a movie that has such important things to say about stopping a bloody civil war, freeing the slaves and, of course, reiterating the assassination of a president during this vital swath of American history.

In spite of the topic, “Lincoln” is awash with gentle humor to soften the blow of memories being recalled. They're mostly in the form of those wry and famous stories Abraham Lincoln told people ... whether they wanted to hear them or not

Two Pulitzer Prize winners had a hand in writing "Lincoln." Tony Kushner, author of “Angels in America” did the screenplay. For a rudder, he used presidential biographer and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."

In the title role, Daniel Day Lewis is superlative, drenching himself in what has become our image of the 16th president. He gets there by fortuitously being the approximate height of Lincoln as well as having facial features that are about as close to those of Honest Abe as they've come. The voice and speaking patterns Day Lewis uses sound as we would easily believe are those of Lincoln's.

There are other fine actors: Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln; Tommy Lee Jones, as mentioned; David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward; Hal Holbrook as Preston Blair, the journalist/politician associated with founding the Republican Party and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln. Among others on hand are: John Hawkes, James Spader, Jackie Earle Haley, Bruce McGill and Tim Blake Nelson.

Spielberg's penchant for presenting the lot of children in his films takes shape around young Tad Lincoln, as the child experiences those hard times in 19th century America. Gulliver McGrath plays Tad.

Gordon-Levitt, as Abe's older son, is seen rather sparingly, but one of the movie's best scenes (and there are lots of them) is a father/son confrontation between Abe and Robert about the younger Lincoln 's insistence on enlisting in the military.

Domestic tranquility between the Mrs. Lincoln and her husband is not always evident, either, as the couple recounts painful memories of the relationship. Most disagreement, though, happens in more familiar venues of Washington, D.C.

They're the political ones within Lincoln's Cabinet and public servants over at the U.S. House of Representatives in the turmoil of constructing what would become the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. After several raucous scenes of debate, some evoking audience laughter, the discord takes on some semblance of what's been going on across the U.S. these past too many months of Campaign 2012.

If you want to remind yourself of what went on the mid 1860s, it's all there in the history books, should reading be your pleasure. But I recommend seeing the movie too. It's rated PG-13, with only a few coarse words, here and there, making it reasonably okay for children to be alongside their parents seeing “Lincoln.”

Spielberg gives a vivid, but genuine-looking visual experience of the time, accompanied by John William's Aaron Copland-prone music played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It fits well.

Maybe two trite lines ought to be shouted-out to everyone who worked at getting this motion picture up on the screen...

“Thanks for the memory,” and “Thanks, I needed that.”

Cloud Atlas: once upon a time, beyond duration

2012-10-26T08:14:42Z

Cloud Atlas film review by Gary Chew

Movies are designed to take us out of ourselves. The fundamental differences among motion pictures are where they take us.

“Cloud Atlas,” insofar as what time period it is set in, pulls as far back from human existence as I remember a movie ever doing, and takes us somewhere that requires a vantage point in a time that is … I'm not sure where.

It's now playing in Sacramento at Century Greenback 16, 6233 Garfield Ave and Century Stadium 14 at 1590 Ethan Way.

"Cloud Atlas" is not just set in early history, the 19th century, the early 20th century or even three-quarters into the 20th. It's also not just in 2144, the year where much of this rather grand film occurs.

Watching “Cloud Atlas,” one sees all these times in its characters' lives - past, present and future. The viewer takes away the message that there is a connection, occasionally seeming simultaneous, that runs though them all - across an even vaster gulf of time that one could argue is beyond the concept of duration.

Halle Berry, in her role as Luisa Rey, a 1970s journalist, makes a common remark that comes close to being profound in this instance. Reading through private letters written in an earlier century, Luisa says she's “trying to understand why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

“Cloud Atlas” and its award-winning author, David Mitchell, are onto something called Eternal Recurrence.

Among other lines in the film, this string of thoughts freights even more heavily on the ear:

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present … and by each crime and every kindness, they birth our future.”

That's the “where” that “Cloud Atlas” wants you to be taken to.

As another requirement for being taken away, the movie is a multigenre motion picture, and the same actors play more than one role. Check out these players for their character count: Tom Hanks plays six; Halle Berry performs six; Jim Broadbent, five; Hugo Weaving, six; Jim Sturges seven; Doona Bae, six; Ben Whishaw, five; Keith David, four; Susan Sarandon, four and Hugh Grant does six.

“Cloud Atlas” is an action movie, an adventure, a cultural drama of history, using science-fiction and all the computer-generated visuals at hand for that kind of an extra kick. (Remember, some of it happens in 2144 - in a Seoul, South Korea, that in the film appears quite “1984ish.”). “Cloud Atlas” is as politically charged as any film I've seen this year.

Mitchell has employed even more than one writing style to push his work forward. “Grandiose” is not too immense a word to use to describe the 500-plus page book.

But, getting it all together for a book, and especially a movie, couldn't have been easy. I'd guess Mitchell has made it about as “easy” as possible for his readers, but the movie script for “Cloud Atlas” is something else.

The novel more sequentially tells the six different “Cloud Atlas” stories that mesh. The screenwriters, who are also the directors - Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski - dissolve the sequence into a clever embellishment that blurs it all to a semblance of simultaneity, which sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t work well.

Nonlinear films are in vogue, however. They are catchy, especially so for anyone who enjoys solving puzzles or finds fun in undoing layers of information or retrieving nuances from the narrative.

This is a perfect film to be party to all kinds of screen awards: makeup, costumes, set design, etc., plus the more prominent categories that movie people bestow on their artists and artisans. I think this strategy has also been called “Oscar bait.” Nothing would surprise me less than if a hefty slew of nominations arrives for “Cloud Atlas.”

Despite the complexities of the script and actors playing multiple roles, “Cloud Atlas” comes through with what is most important: what it's driving at, and delivering its message.

Leaving the theater, I paid close attention to the several people who attended the screening. My sense of their general demeanor and the comments I heard indicated to me the two-hour and 50-minute film is not always understandable, but it sure does connect, meaningfully - another way of saying, “The movie moved me.”

Language and a few actors' voices are responsible for some misunderstanding. Accents and archaic speech and patterns of speech also make it difficult to pick up all that is said. There are few subtitles, so nearly all parts of the film demand that you listen.

The blade of the cutting edge of “Cloud Atlas” is bright and shiny … and finely honed. It could be David Mitchell wants someone to know that the concept of Eternal Recurrence might exist and, possibly, a better appreciation for it is key in enhancing the chances those recurring mistakes ... as referred to by Luisa while reading vintage correspondence ... aren't made yet again.

Affleck directs a winner

2012-10-12T16:15:28Z

"Argo" film review by Gary Chew

How can a fact-based movie about an incident happening between the U.S. and Iran in 1979 make someone remember how he felt watching WWII movies near the end of that conflict? Each was much different from the other ... for many reasons.

“Argo” came off the screen at me so patriotically pulling for America.

The movie is now playing in Sacramento at Century 16 Greenback Lane, Century 14, Century Downtown Plaza and Natomas Marketplace Stadium 16.

I felt twenty feet tall in the old movie house when I was about 6 or 7 as everyone in the place felt Hollywood take us deeper into our emotions to really root for the nation. The stakes in the '30s and '40s were very high.

“Argo” did that for me - a new film directed by its lead actor, Ben Affleck. Among its producers, besides Affleck, are George Clooney and Grant Heslov. Heslov was also a writer and producer of the 2005 biopic about CBS newsman, Edward R. Murrow, “Good Night and Good Luck.”

This actual spy caper, also called Argo, happened before 52 American hostages were released by Iran after 444 days in1981 at the approximate time President Reagan was taking his first oath of office on January 20th. The mission was declassified by President Clinton in the '90s.

Argo is such a good story it seems it was concocted to, eventually, be made into a motion picture... which is just what has happened.

The film is playing in Sacramento at Century 16 Greenback Lane, Century 14, Century Downtown Plaza and Natomas Marketplace Stadium 16.

Americans didn't know for some time that the CIA and persons in Hollywood created a ruse pretending a non-existent California film studio wanted to shoot scenes in well-suited locations of Iran, using a Canadian cast and crew, for an upcoming sci-fi film production.

Six American diplomats were hunkered down at the Canadian ambassador's home in Tehran after slipping past surging, angry Iranian demonstrators who were affronted by the U.S.'s cozy connection with the then recently deposed Shah of Iran.

It looked grim for those six U.S. citizens. Tehran, for Americans, was a “take no prisoners zone.” Several phony scenarios to spring the Americans were laid out by the Carter Administration.

Argo got the call, after all: movie makers on the ground in Iran with storyboards and trumped-up pre- publicity to dupe the new theocratic Iranian government in order to get our endangered citizens back home, breathing.

Affleck plays Tony Mendez, a former CIA specialist. Mendez wrote a memoir (“The Master of Disguise”) that tells how he contrived a loopy-sounding escape scheme which he coined as an “exfiltration” of the six Americans. The terrific screenplay is by Chris Terrio.

What more could a movie script ask for than a real escape adventure on which the lives of actual Americans depend that incorporates the schtick of eccentric Hollywood types in league with the anonymous and rather glum attitudes housed in Langley, Virginia.

Let me tell you about the Hollywood types.

How about Alan Arkin and John Goodman as two rather jaded film people who, after quipping their way through why they shouldn't do this cockamamie stunt with the CIA, decide they want to help out trying to save the stranded six?

Arkin plays a fictitious Hollywood producer named Lester Siegel and Goodman's character is the late John Chambers, an Oscar-winning make up artist, who specialized in monster paraphernalia.

These two fine actors make you forget “Argo” is serious. I'd venture a guess that “Argo” might be the funniest most serious movie you'll ever see. One minute, I found myself feeling the dread of the nervous, secreted U.S. Embassy personnel; the next, I'm falling out of my seat laughing at the shenanigans carrying forth in palm-shaded Southern California with Siegel and Chambers.

The Los Angeles sendups nicely balance the backstabbing that goes on in Washington.

Hefting in the patriotic qualities of “Argo” makes the film a solid winner. The movie's title will likely never escape your memory, but you'll have to see it and hear the dialogue to understand why.

I am just not at liberty to say.

The film is rated “R.”

Lending important authenticity, actual television news film and video are deftly edited into the picture. It gave me an opportunity to see and hear old faces and voices from TV newscasts past: Chet Huntley's memorable voice; Frank Reynolds' baritone delivery and familiar face; then there's Walter himself, suggesting that “this is the way it was.” And, it was.

“Argo” is a very good movie. If I were you, I'd go see it. The film deserves almost as many stars as General MacArthur wore on his cap.

Summer of 2042 ... in Kansas: "Looper"

2012-09-29T02:40:05Z

“Looper” Chew's Bite on “Looper" starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt. Written and directed by Rian Johnson.

Please pass the manohla, we have another time travel tale ...this one about hit men.

My written comment on a card to the guy running the screening of this movie the other night said, “Philip K. Dick on steroids.” Please note the fresh review of this film from Ms. Dargis for the New York Times. She too invokes Mr. Dick’s name, but not before my own invocation of that author’s handle. Manohla might be reading my mind. She's good, but not that good.

“Looper” is covertly pregnant with visual cues and stuff...well-acted...and mounted, but comes off nonsensical due to the rapid flip floppery between “time zones” and juxtaposing a Kansas of 2042 with yet a more distant future in a very down home way that I remember as a young boy living in semi-rural areas of that state smack dab in the middle.

What’s best about "Looper" is its excellent internal scenes taken in singularity, not riveted together in the zippity-ho-hum of, now you get it/now you don’t. Or, Oops here’s a new scene to watch. And how does it connect with what I’ve just seen, and why isn’t the scene that just ended not seem to have actually concluded yet?

This is very cool. Let’s hear it for filmic shorthand.

For me, Looper" played as something that Director Johnson was needing to impress his film buds. He probably has ... and shall. I think there should be an award for a writer/director who doesn’t just pull stuff out of his arse...but from a time machine, already.

Emily Blunt is stunningly lovely while hard-edged...and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, after seeing him play really nice dudes in movies, is quite on to something as a young, macho Bruce Willis (with make up) at war with his older self.

Of course, even as his older self: Bruce be Bruce.

“Looper” will connect well with those who went, uh...gaga over “Inception” which also had Gordon-Levitt on the cast roster. Heck man, stuff flies through the air in "Looper," too. That’s likely to signal some to think it deserves an Oscar.

Even while watching “Looper,” it was hard to believe that I was, again, in Kansas ... some more. Oh if I could, just one more time, see "Zardoz."

"Killer Joe" makes you die laughing

2012-09-24T02:12:25Z

"Killer Joe" film review by Gary Chew

Something told me that William Friedkin's new film, “Killer Joe,” (now playing at the Crest Theater on K Street in Sacramento) wouldn't begin with a cool saxophone reading of jazz great Benny Gholson's “Killer Joe.” Two things tipped me off.

The poster for the film shows a piece of deep-fried chicken in the shape of the State of Texas ... and Matthew McConaughey has the lead.

McConaughey can't be beaten when he plays a plumb loco, tough-ass cowboy type, except maybe by Woody Harrelson.

Another thing I noticed before seeing “Killer Joe” was that it was listed as a comedic crime thriller. The film did thrill me from time to time, and I laughed as much watching it as I have in quite a while, but for anyone with an attitude that takes the American Southwestern mindset seriously, “Killer Joe” might seem not quite as funny.

Conversely, that's why I laughed throughout this very dark, bloody, violent, sometimes quite explicit NC-17 film. “Killer Joe” comes from a play by the Pulitzer Prize winning Tulsa native, Tracy Letts, who also wrote the screenplay for Friedkin (“The French Connection,” 1971; “The Exorcist,” 1973).

Having lived Oklahoma and Texas, Letts has his characters “pegged,” as they say in that neck of the woods. And with McConaughey, a native of Uvalde, Texas, how could you go wrong with a movie that cracks and pops not unlike “No Country for Old Men,” “Blood Simple” and the less recent “Red Rock West?” The burlesque of ten-gallon noir is at its best in the hands of “Killer Joe.”

Be ready for a short soliloquy given by McConaughey's “Joe” about how troubled it makes him that the Red River, which separates Oklahoma and Texas, is in the Sooner State all the way to the river's southern bank. That's how far some Southwesterners take their pride… on either side of the Red River.

Joe is disturbed that he can't catch any Texas fish from those Red River waters standing in the Lone Star State. Seriously.

Emile Hirsch, as Chris Smith, is in deep pasture patties trying to get his nasty old mother done in so he can pay gambling bills. That would be a $50,000 insurance policy on her life. Joe comes recommended as someone who could do away with mom quite efficiently. Oh, yes, Joe Cooper is also a cowboy-like police officer in the Dallas Police Department. The story takes place in Dallas even though the movie was shot in New Orleans.

The Smith family is comprised of the father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church); Chris' little and pretty sis, Dottie (Juno Temple) and Sharla (Gina Gershon), Ansel's more recent wife who works at a pizza joint and frequently wanders from the matrimonial path she walks with the less-than-bright Ansel. She also takes pictures, occasionally.

Every principal character in the film, except for Joe Cooper, could use a few more points on their IQ score card, I'd venture to say. Church, whom you'll remember fondly from “Sideways,” is simply stellar as the dad.

Gershon couldn't be better as the newer “mother” for the Smith family and Hirsch is solid and frenetic as a troubled and in trouble drug dealer.

Temple convinces as the vulnerable apple of Joe's steely eye. That attraction takes wing with the fact that Chris can't pay Joe upfront to rub out mama. Joe is upset about not being paid ahead of time, but changes his tune when he decides to do the crime if Dottie is put up as a retainer, if you know what I mean.

These people are really something!

Although a stage play in original form, Letts has molded the script to work exceedingly well as a motion picture, despite the generous amount of stationary banter spoken in the Smith's trashy trailer home. The Letts dialogue won't let you down, or loose, for a moment.

Just as important, the actors in the film play it for “serious.” At times I wondered if they had to stop rolling and reset because someone in the cast or crew couldn't keep from breaking up any longer. For us in the theater it was one moment, a guffaw, the next, a grimace.

Exciting external action has been added to the screenplay, it seems, since those scenes couldn't have been played on an inside theater stage - vehicular chases, alley way brutality and explosions included.

(I think I'd like to see “Killer Joe” on a stage, too.)

Then we have Matthew McConaughey's performance: smooth, cold, smart, a step ahead of everyone else in the narrative, and as polite, authoritarian and conservative as you might ever find in a character of the great American Southwest, but also deeply criminal and vicious. He is a scary, menacing hombre --- even as you laugh.

For me, it's McConaughey's best go in a role. He's done some good ones, too.

Heads up for 2013. As this is being written, “August: Osage County,” a more recent Tracy Letts play, is being filmed a bit north of his hometown, some of the locations in Osage County, Okla. “August: Osage County” is what won him the Pulitzer for Best 2008 Drama. Its cast fairly shouts with talent and fame: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Sam Shepard and Chris Cooper.

Paul Thomas Anderson: Just processing with "The Master"

2012-09-21T05:11:12Z

“The Master” film review by Gary Chew

The heavyweight films move into place this time of year. Waiting for them, sometimes, makes the summer seem long.

“The Master” is such a movie and is now showing at the Tower Theater, Land Park Drive at Broadway, Sacramento.

Autumn also often brings contention to cinema circles.

Negative reactions to Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film might cause comments such as, “What? Oh, no. Anderson's 'The Master' reminds me of Terrence Malick's 'The Tree of Life.'”

Or maybe this statement could be blurted, “Goodness, has Mr. Anderson done another inaccessible, lugubrious movie like his 2007 film, 'There Will Be Blood'?"

And surely I have to ask, how many quips will ensue on that title (TWBB) invoked by disgruntled film aficionados explaining how much they dislike “The Master”?

Those sorts of things.

To take sides on this enduring debate: what's a movie for(?), one must consider the purpose one decides to see a film at all. It is to watch girls get almost naked and hear them say words usually written by boys on restroom walls. Is it to see bad guys get the “what for” from Mr. Eastwood or Mr. Wayne? Maybe it's the desire to really have a big laugh seeing a comedic cast doing a funny script written by someone who knows how to make you giggle.

It seems these are all legitimate reasons for plopping down your money at the picture show.

Other motivations for going to movies are to drink in, with some amount of awe, the vision of a superior film director and the way in which he or she lays it all out to see: the grand acting; the clever or smart script, the nuances of it; the grandeur, maybe, of computer generated venues or ones that really exist. The buckle and the swash.

Then, in this case, is it the 70mm “The Master” comes to us?

Some work hard to raise enough money to make a artful motion picture, all the while, knowing that there's a good chance his or her labor of love might earn more trophies from off the stage than garner bucks at the box office....or...more unfortunately, not so much of either.

Such a film is called an artistic motion picture, and like other kinds of seriously imagined pieces, can cause one to keep thinking about it, and asking questions of it the creator might not want to make plain or might not even know.

Many people don't care for such movies because they're inaccessible, have a subject foreign to them, or make them feel uncomfortable.

That about says it for “The Master.” Anderson's film doesn't scream out,“This is entertainment!” It is, as I remarked about the patriarchal “There Will Be Blood,” a movie-going challenge.

“The Master” unsettles.

Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is a disturbed, unstable, alcoholic Naval veteran back from World War II … up to his ass in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Adrift and always on the prowl for private liaison with serial female companions, he happens by a convivial and prosperous-looking group aboard a ship that's just about to slip from a shore on San Francisco Bay. Freddie stows away on it, and meets its quasi-captain who proves to be the most dynamic man he'll ever know: Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Paul Thomas Anderson has two such male characters in “There Will Be Blood;” Paul Dano, as an ingratiating fundamentalist preacher (somewhat Quell-like) and Daniel Day-Lewis as a power-driven petroleum entrepreneur (indeed, Dodd-like)...though each pair of characters, in other ways, is much different from the pair in the other Anderson film.

Philip Baker Hall was Anderson's “first film patriarch” in “Hard Eight” (1996). Hall played a protective patriarch, but with a hit man past; nothing like Hoffman's character in “The Master.”

Lancaster Dodd is well-off, well-educated and has that sort of proper demeanor you'd expect from a symphony orchestra conductor breezing on stage, the orchestra having just tuned.

Mr. Dodd also has a cause. Moreover, that's what he calls it: the Cause.

He's become wealthier through the sale of books he's written about the Cause, and stirred quite a coterie of serious people to it. It's the early Fifties and Freddie becomes one of Dodd's disciples; initially because Freddie can mix the best damn powerhouse libations made of things you'd never dream should be imbibed by man or beast. Lancaster Dodd deems Freddie's intoxicating concoctions as first rate.

To put it mildly, the circumstances surrounding Dodd's life and his entourage are suggestible to Scientology which, as most know, is a creation of L. Ron Hubbard, the deceased author of a set of ideas and practices concerning a metaphysical connection between the mind and body: Dianetics.

Scientology has been called (whether it is or not) a religio-secular corporate construct. Some estimates put its current membership between 100,000 and 200,000, a majority of those being U.S. citizens. Another definition for Scientology I've read says it's an intellectually-skewed faith that holds not to spirituality, and that its fundamental good deed is motivating members to keep “processing” to be their best and to feel that new placement of themselves.

How “The Master” will sit with members of the Church of Scientology is not a difficult guess. What is it that arouses more quickly the ire of a devout person to his or her personal beliefs about living --- and life itself --- than thinking others hold those values in disrespect? All we have to do any given day is follow news reports to get the answer ... one that we already know.

It's difficult, though, to figure whether or not the timing of “The Master's” release, in the same week as another movie --- though artless, trashy and ugly --- and now causing reactive violence around the world, is propitious.

Although the Hubbardesque character is not unlike Burt Lancaster's Elmer Gantry or Andy Griffth's Lonesome Rhodes, Anderson doesn't send a message that the affable and charismatic Dodd is really bad. That would make “The Master” not confounding and simple. It is neither.

You have bring yourself to this film, not wait for it to figure out for you what's going on.

Anderson's Freddy is really about whom the narrative swirls most. Phoenix's portrayal of Quell said to me that the actor is overwhelmed and consumed by the character. Hoffman always lets his character take over, even though all of the ones he's played in movies are a dead ringer for Philip Seymour Hoffman. He always manages to make me forget that anatomical reality.

Amy Adams, another actor endowed with consummate ability, is perfect as Dodd's wife, Peggy. The sweetness usually seen in Adams' smile and heard in her voice vanishes in some scenes as she is, after all, Freddie's fundamental foe due to his alcoholism and simian-like manner, especially when he's angry with detractors of Dodd's Cause.

Until near the end of “The Master” I was unsure whether that was all to Peggy's growing dislike for Freddie until hearing Lancaster Dodd sing to Freddie Quell, in an unsteady voice, the old favorite, “I'd Love To Get You On A Slow Boat To China.”

Catherine Russell does Harlow's

2012-09-16T19:35:09Z

Music review by Gary Chew

Jazz and blues vocalist Catherine Russell came into my “sonic” view late. I'm so much the richer for that now-comfortable music connection with this native New Yorker. I know that, after scrutinizing her talent, I'm the poorer for not having heard this woman sooner. But Catherine, as they say, was a late bloomer, albeit has worked with names that have blinked on marquee lights, just like her father, Luis Russell, did. Luis Russell was Louis Armstrong's music director in the mid-forties, and was a pianist, composer-arranger and big band leader.

Catherine sings at Harlow's (2708 J St.) on Friday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. Swell Productions and Capital Public Radio (my old stomping grounds) are making it all happen. There’s a rumor that 88.9’s Gary Vercelli will introduce Catherine.

Tickets? Right here: www.swell-productions.com.

Catherine's voice is a unique mixture of what almost seem like contrasting qualities. It's velvety and smoky, yet clean and clear — so confident with the music — and spot-on with intonation. I like that.

Catherine's mother Carline Ray (a veteran jazz bassist and vocalist) brings it all together for Catherine with her father's musical experiences early in the 20th century in New Orleans, Chicago and New York City. Luis Russell and Armstrong were almost the same age, born 1902 and 1901, respectively.

I was delighted to hear how Catherine and the ensembles that back her on two CDs (“Inside This Heart of Mine” and “Strictly Romancin'”) capture the essence of different kinds of great music that are so loved by so many.

American popular songs, like “I'm in The Mood For Love” and “As Long as I Live,” are given adroit, polished readings by Catherine. Listening to other tracks, her ensemble reminds me of greats from back in the day, like Django Reinhardt, Joe Venuti and a little of the more modern-sounding Art Van Damme. And did I hear something akin to Nat Cole's incomparable and legendary trio?

Then there's blues and swing — which Catherine’s father, in a big-band kind of way, was into early on. I noticed the jump, Dixieland and straight-ahead, as well as a bit of gospel she sings with her mother. On other tracks, spicy banjo playing springs from Catherine’s ensemble, which broadens Russell's music concept even more — all of it pure American, naturally, delivered over the plate and in the pocket.

Whoa! She does nothing that’s not solid, and I think the lady could sing it all backwards and still cut it — with our loving it. I must ‘fess up, though, and say that Catherine does a Duke Ellington-Mack David song that I'd not heard: “Long, Strong and Consecutive.” It was just one of those things --- I missed.

As I've said for a long time now, “There's no time like the present.” Even if the blooming's late.

When Russell gets to Harlow's, I hope she'll sing “All the Cats Join In” and Fats Waller's “Inside This Heart of Mine.” I'll be in the audience giving her act close attention.

Gere shines in Jarecki's "Arbitrage"

2012-09-14T17:27:26Z

“Arbitrage” film review by Gary Chew

Hedge fund magnate Robert Miller has a motto, “A business must project success."

Richard Gere, who just gets better with age, plays the part in Nicholas Jarecki's directorial debut of “Arbitrage,” a story about how complicated being a type A patriarch can become.

The film is now showing at the Tower Theater, Land Park Drive and Broadway, Sacramento.

Besides tackling the trendy slant on recent Wall Street shenanigans, “Arbitrage” returns to age-old ironies of the devout, loving family man who will do anything to provide for and secure the future of his wife and family.

Tony Soprano would be the paragon of such a man.

Robert Miller is no Tony Soprano, however. It's a first class life for this billionaire empire manager in that bigger town across the river from Jersey. His wife Ellen (Susan Sarandon), is up to her ears in charities. Their daughter, Brooke (Brit Marling), works for dad at the firm. She's forthright and thorough, and looks like the person who'll be running the show when Robert hangs it up.

There is also Julie (Laetitia Casta), a French painter. Robert has invested in her because she has great taste and can spot works of art that are sure to rise in price so Robert can make even more money buying and selling. Julie and Robert are also lovers.

James Mayfield (Graydon Carter) heads another investment business, and seems to be dragging his feet about signing the contract to buy most of Miller's concern. In private, Robert appears worried about the deal stalling out.

Meanwhile, on another set of books, Miller's company actually has nary a paddle up Money Creek. Not a good thing for a man trying to sell his company while keeping that important information from his prospective buyer.

As Miller says, “A business must project success,” even when it's not.

At about signing time when Robert and Julie are motoring upstate to a private hideaway, Miller dozes off while driving in the dark night. Julie's Mercedes-Benz careens off an abutment and flips several times. She is killed. Robert is injured but not to the degree that he can't get away from the car before it bursts into flames with his companion's body still inside.

On a pay phone, Robert makes a collect call to Jimmy (Nate Parker), to come get him; no cells phones and stuff. Robert took care of some bills for Jimmy, so Jimmy owes Robert, although he is really trying to get his act together again after some difficulties with the law a few years back.

It's only a brief lapse of time before Detective Bryer (Tim Roth) of the NYPD shows up at Robert's office to ask the investment guru about his relationship with Julie, since the police are sure that she wasn't alone in her car or even driving it at the time of the mishap.

This is not a good time for Robert to get negative press regarding the death of a lovely young female artist who was burned beyond recognition in an upstate auto accident. The sale of his covertly languishing business might be put in jeopardy.

“Arbitrage” goes forward from there as an engrossing and well-sketched, legalistic, quasi-police procedural that has Detective Bryer appropriately brusque, unshaven and sloppily attired among big time, big dollar people. The film is first class entertainment, but reminded me of a really good television pilot or series the caliber of “Damages” and the short-lived but excellent, “Rubicon.”

“Arbitrage” omits essential information until it wants to let you know what that information is. It makes for a mature and curiously twisty kind of movie experience.

For me, the film was also a pleasant musical experience. Former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Cliff Martinez did the smart, well-positioned score. It fits and is most tasteful. There's even a swath of lovely music under the closing credits with pianist Robi Botes playing, “My Foolish Heart,” much like the late jazz piano man, Bill Evans, probably the coolest and best damned balladeer jazz keyboardist to ever walk the planet.

Director Jarecki, who also wrote the script, doesn't make “Arbitrage” overtly political or grossly critical of its billionaire bad guy. Gere's character is not a cardboard figure just to throw darts at. Robert has numerous facets to examine. And, as you'll find later, his wife has as well.

Innuendo as to why the film's non-telegraphed events might have occurred is quietly suggested just before the surprising and abrupt finish to “Arbitrage.”

If you watch “Damages” or “Rubicon,” you'll also find moments of delayed exposition. Such stuff can keep one awake.

David Cronenberg and the art of moneymaking

2012-09-02T22:37:21Z

Cosmopolis” film review by Gary Chew

David Cronenberg is back with “Cosmopolis” and with Robert Pattinson,
who's not a vampire but the character he plays is --- metaphorically.

The “life blood” of Cosmopolis' hero is very verdant.

The film opened Friday at the Tower Theater, Land Park Drive and Broadway,
Sacramento.

After reading the next three paragraphs, you may find yourself not
wanting to see “Cosmopolis,” but please read on through the rest of
the review before deciding.

Cronenberg's script is a string of dark, philosophical conversations
that are stretched across the spine of a shaky, almost non-existent
plot that tells the tale of a young, nihilistic billionaire capitalist
struggling in his high-tech limo and office to get through the chaos
of a near-future New York City to get a haircut.

Really.

“Cosmopolis” is replete, front to back, with aphoristic exchanges
that, initially, seem to be non-sequiturs. But close listening should
help you get the hang of the verbal shortcuts the characters speak
back and forth. Doing so will help you realize how deeply cynical and
unsettling this movie is while you (may) chuckle at the absurdity that
surrounds the strange life and times of Eric Packer (Pattinson).

And... Oh, the people the very empty Eric meets on his way to the
barbershop, hampered by the traffic congestion and disorder in the
city that are at a high pitch because the President is in town. It's
not clear whether the Commander-in-Chief is a Democrat or a
Republican. Cronenberg's screenplay (from a novel by Don Delillo)
presents a too-far-into-the-abyss society for that to make a difference.

Really.

Through nearly the first two acts, Cronenberg has trained his cinematic
sights on what Samantha Morton's “Vinja,” unabashedly refers to as:
The Art of Moneymaking. When Morton is gliding along in Eric's stretch
limo, listen even more carefully. She's been given many of the film's best
lines.

Cronenberg's tone is severe and mordantly comical.

One might draw the conclusion from most of what “Cosmopolis” suggests
that unfettered capitalism leads to madness, or as more specific lines in
the film say, “...to destroy is a creative act,”“...violence needs a
purpose,” or “...reputation rises on a word and slips on a syllable.”

My favorite was spoken by Shiner, Eric's in-limo numbers guy (Jay Baruchel).

“Do you ever have the feeling you don't know what's going on?”

The anti-mega biz scenario goes on until one reaches the point he or
she might have to consider that all this nightmarish fantasy is but a
wet dream once had in the last century by Ayn Rand.

Following Cronenberg's pummeling of big business, “Cosmopolis” loses
focus. I got the feeling that the director was tacking on stuff as the
film became more specifically about Eric and his past. It became even
more metaphorically opaque with bizarre twists to bring action into a
chatty film of well-written, intellectualizing banter that might make
some heads spin.

This is not a Hollywood kind of motion picture, if you know what I
mean. But have you ever seen a David Cronenberg movie that is?

I need to add here, though, that I'm glad there are filmmakers who
don't create Hollywood kinds of motion pictures. The word “cosmopolis”
implies “diversity.” With David Cronenberg films we certainly get that
at the cinema.

Part of the cast was disappointing. Two well-knowns should have passed
on the casting call. Juliette Binoche is seen early as one of the women
who jumps aboard Eric's office-on-wheels for a tryst on his leather seat
cushions. Binoche loses her American accent for a few phrases that put her
more closely to making love motoring down the Champs-Élyées than Park
Avenue.

Playing Benno, Paul Giamatti's scene with Eric (closing the film) should
have been re-written, with Cronenberg striving for something that gets
closer to a payoff - with or without Giamatti, whom I usually appreciate
a lot as an actor.

Sarah Gadon, also in Cronenberg's recent, “A Dangerous Method,” is seen
in “Cosmopolis” as Elise. Her character, which has plenty of pithy lines as
well, is Eric's very rich “girlfriend” whom I found as they chat on, has just
recently married Packer, in a sort of: oh-by-the-way kind of fashion. Most of
their exchanges are less philosophical and more of the kind that indicate
Eric is trying to get his wife into bed.

I will spoil you with this: she doesn't go for it.

LOL, sort of.

Ruby really sparks

2012-08-10T06:36:35Z

“Ruby Sparks” film review by Gary Chew

“Ruby Sparks” might be the “Little Miss Sunshine” for summer 2012. Or it could be this season's date movie with cajones. Either way, that means you have a good movie to see. That's likely because both “Sparks” and “Miss Sunshine” were directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Bravo.

The film is playing at the Tower Theater, Land Park Drive and Broadway, Sacramento, and at UA Olympus Pointe 12, 520 N. Sunrise Ave., Roseville.

Written by a woman who is but 28, “Ruby” is a romantic fable created by Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of a man who has directed a film or two (Elia Kazan). With Zoe's heritage and what reads to me like a superb education, I think the gal has nailed it with this script, as well as playing the female lead opposite her real-life boyfriend, the very excellent Paul Dano (He played the Nietzsche freak who wants to be a jet pilot in “Little Miss Sunshine,” LOL).

But back to the cajones. You may be ruminating on my meaning about those. Well, I'm always happy to explain myself...

“Ruby Sparks” is a mostly light, romantic fantasy set in a real modern-day world, with plenty of the neat and zippy ingredients one usually finds in date movies. “Sparks” slips into the niche that would also allow for “500 Days of Summer” (2009) with another Zoe, but spelled “Zooey” … Deschanel.

“Sparks” is low-key funny all the way, while maneuvering over to the dark side somewhere in the second-to-third act of the film. That noirish nudge gives Dano, as Calvin — a harried and somewhat reclusive, but successful novelist — the opportunity to do his weird thing. Dano is quite good at being weird.

(If you haven't seen Dano's grisly fight scene with Daniel Day-Lewis in the bowling alley sequence of “There Will Be Blood,” you haven't observed what I've come to call “acting ‘Dano-weirdo.’”)

Locked in writer's block, Calvin takes home an “assignment” from his shrink (Elliot Gould) to write a reflective page on the issue at hand (on the couch) that the psychiatrist hopes will get his patient's muse back.

For the sake of brevity, Ruby is what comes of it all. She is created by Calvin's imagination at his old clunky typewriter — no word processor at his house. You can imagine yourself how surprised Calvin is when he happens to bump into Ruby, barefoot, in a long-sleeve shirt … and not much else … in his kitchen.

Freaking out is also some of what “Ruby Sparks” is about.

Even Calvin's crass brother, Harry (Chris Messina), freaks when he realizes Calvin actually has an alive female type on the premises, who has come from Cal's imaginings. Harry wants Cal to “type” Ruby into just what a real man would want for having a really neat girlfriend. Cal isn't a cad.

Cal does type on a sheet of paper, though, that Ruby speaks fluent French. Seconds later, there she is downstairs, talking like Juliette Binoche.

But Cal hasn't told Ruby that he's writing a story about her and how he's able to “tweak” her with his typewriter that sits on a desk in his upstairs study.

It is a swimmingly good relationship Cal and Ruby are having. She's even not spending any time at her apartment, and hangs out as Cal's spacious pad with pool along with Scotty, uh, Cal's doggie. He's named after a human being with the last name of Fitzgerald

The first sign of trepidation shows when Ruby decides to make space for the pair by socializing some with others while Cal stays home. (Cal is sort of a stay-at-home kind of guy.) Ruby has also been hit on at a book soiree by Cal's literary associate, a roue named Langdon (Steve Coogan). These events put Cal back at his typewriter to tweak Ruby a bit more toward caring for him even more — just in case.

That doesn't turn out well. She is like a leach on him … clinging to him for dear life, due to the new tweak Cal, unbeknownst to Ruby, has “typed.”

It's about here that one can see where such power over another person might go if someone starts to get only a little weird, or “Dano-weirdo,” as this movie has it.

This goes even worse, and the darkness sets in to punch up the message Ms. Kazan wants to drop on your plate.

Early in the film, at his mother's urging, Cal takes Ruby for a family meetup at mom's very cool Big Sur digs. Mom, or “Gertrude” (Annette Bening), has a live-in lover, as well. Mort (Antonio Banderas) is his name. It's during this segment of the movie when “Ruby Sparks” sputters some, more like your typical date flick, and I caught myself hoping that things would pick up in a few frames. Free-spirited California beach folks could seem hackneyed to some people, I know.

Sure enough, the more creative writing creeps back into Kazan's script and takes off to a payoff and finish that … well … I don't want to tell you that part. Just know that you ought not leave the theater until after Ruby Sparks is tweaked no more. That's when the movie is over.

Fine music by Nick Urata, with good orchestrations and interesting use of the cello section, give “Ruby” some of her glitter. However, I'm still trying to figure out whether the word “sparks” in the title is a proper noun or a very vivid verb.

Will Ferrell's campaign of pain

2012-08-10T06:35:42Z

“The Campaign” film review by Gary Chew

How could a super jerk incumbent candidate lose an election running on a platform of America, Jesus and freedom? That's the ticket Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) looks to have sewn up in another unopposed run for the U-S House of Representatives from the 14th District of North Carolina. But wait a minute, isn't that the prissy local tourist business guy, Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakas), who's just thrown his hat in the ring to run against Cam?

This timely, vulgar motion picture, called “The Campaign,” is now playing at cineplexes all across this great nation of ours … and not a minute too soon, my fellow Americans.

Chris Henchy's script doesn't suggest, but rather gets in your face about how disgusted most Americans have become about the U.S. government and the absurdity of our currently sputtering political system. That disgust is what stokes laughter when seeing “The Campaign,” directed by that “Austin Powers” guy, Jay Roach.

Not only does Jesus seem to be in both fictitious candidates' platforms, but He is also referred to as an American in some of the loony rhetoric occasioning the stump speeches of Cam and Marty.

What might offend some (but hopefully won't) is that in “The Campaign,” many Americans don't have the sense God gave a goose. Thankfully and unfortunately, that's the reason the film is timely, even if
it's El Rauncho Grande in the blue language department.

It's really difficult to suspend your disbelief with the crap the Cam character pulls. That's probably why Ferrell plays him and it works so well. Same for Galifianakas, but Zach gives much the same shape to his Marty character that Jack Black does his Bernie role in the current, well-received movie of the same name. Both characters call for each actor to be precious in demeanor, exuding gay body language, most significantly when speaking or walking.

It's not clear whether Black's character in “Bernie” is gay, but Galifinakas's Marty isn't---what with a sweet, homey wife and two strapping young sons around the house.

The schtick for gayness in films and on television is rampant. And doesn't that blend well with the timeliness of the same-sex marriage issue jumping the tracks at your local Chick Fil-A and heading into the presidential election?

Two older even more familiar faces play the the Motch brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow). The Motch brothers are manipulating billionaires buying the election. My sense of Aykroyd and Lithgow in these part is...that these dudes were having a ball.

News reports have had it that “The Campaign,” prior to opening, was not amusing the Koch Brothers. Surely though, the Koch front office must appreciate the possibility the film's box office will be appreciably enhanced as more moviegoers learn that Charles and David Koch aren't happy.

Dylan McDermott, as Tim, is the Motch brothers' mendacious, big money, black-suit guy who takes over Marty's life to get Huggins into the appropriately-framed, phony lifestyle that's sure to bring up the challenger's numbers with the one-channel-media-conditioned masses.

Jason Sudekis (another SNL fave) plays Mitch, Tim's counterpart and manger for the Brady campaign. It turns out Mitch isn't such a terrible person as we're led to believe.

A few cable TV talk show personalities show up in brief clips, as themselves, delivering news about the Brady/Huggins race. Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Piers Morgan, Wolf Blitzer, Lawrence O'Donnell as well as the hosts of MSNBC's “Morning Joe” do their number.

No hosts of mainline network television news programs are included, nor any hosts or commentators from Fox News Channel.

Political hate commercials are a focus the “The Campaign.” One spot uses a video clip of Cal seducing Marty's wife. The seduction is payback for getting Cal picked up on a DWI after Cam drops by Marty's house and is served some really potent bourbon. As soon as Cal staggers from Marty's front door and speeds off in his garish campaign car, Marty calls the cops.

Try not laughing about that.

Ferrell and Galifianakas play their roles as Southerners. Ferrell occasionally slips into a pronunciation pattern that prompted me to remember how former North Carolina U.S. Senator John Edwards speaks.

A running gag in “The Campaign” is the surprising identity of a woman who plays a sassy house servant in the film. You first hear her speak without seeing her. At the close of the film, you hear “another” woman's voice (off camera) and discover that she is also she same woman who surprises you in the earlier scene. The actor's name is Karen Maruyama, a Japanese American who had a small part in “Pulp Fiction.” The voices Maruyama intones are, first, in the dialect of an Afro-American woman, and later, in that of a Latina.

Lots of laughs here.

That joke has the same effect as the famous Groucho Marx quip, “I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

Wouldn't it be fun to be a fly on the wall of a DC movie theater and all the US Congress were there at a mandatory-attendance-screening of this movie. I wonder who'd be laughing most...or maybe, even if there would be any laughter.

Heavens, there could ensue a filibuster in the section of the cinema where senators are seated.

Batman Busts Block

2012-07-20T06:52:21Z

As the sun also rises, so does “The Dark Knight,” and Gotham City has never had it so good. That big, lovable burg has citizens who'd give their lives for the town. Such a sense of community and so ... such a metropolis it is, as well.

Oops, this is Bruce Wayne's town, not Clark Kent's.

For eight years, Bruce (Christian Bale, also Batman) has been lying low as a fugitive in Gotham since what came crashing down around him in the very large second episode of “The Dark Knight.” Unfortunately, Mr. Wayne's absence has allowed all sorts of riff raff to slither into the city limits and wreak havoc for “The Dark Knight Rises,” the last in director Christopher Nolan's trilogy based on Bob Kane's characters in DC Comics' adventures of a caped and cowled crusader.

It's a summertime movie that should bust a block of any size, anywhere.

The new villain-terrorist makes the Joker look like a piece of half-baked birthday cake. Bane (Tom Hardy) is Batman's latest nemesis; and Bane, as they say, “takes no prisoners” in his brutally vile machinations to bring Gotham to its knees ... one way or another. Bane's choices are not good but the Shades-of-Darth mask he wears is great.

Bane is able to get his foot in Gotham's back door under the opaque auspices of a cunning cat burglar (new to Gotham) named Selina Kyle-Cat Woman (Anne Hathaway). What she holds allegiance to seems up for grabs. Selina, too, occasionally doesn't take prisoners, more often, instead, taking someone's expensive necklace or high-dollar watch. For me, the Cat Woman character is an improvement over Robin, Batman's former intrepid young companion of pulp.

Also new on the bat scene is Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), a well-connected, well-off woman who sits on Wayne Enterprises' board. She's in tow for rallying Wayne to make a comeback to bail water from Wayne's nearly scuttled ship of finance. There are sparks between Miranda and the out-of-shape, reclusive Bruce that allow him to get back in gear ... some of which are his neat, black bat togs.

Stalwart actors playing stalwart returning characters are the really fine Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon; the venerable Michael Caine as Alfred, the Wayne Manor butler; and just as venerable Morgan Freeman as Wayne's man over in the armoring department, Lucius Fox.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a new character to the franchise, John Blake … a rookie Gotham City police officer who gets a field promotion to plainclothesman from Commissioner Gordon. Gordon-Levitt does a solidly solemn job with a role that enjoys much face time.

Nolan has crafted another hyper-realistic motion picture slammed with CGI'd action, speed and an unrelenting Hans Zimmer music score that seems as unstoppable as Bane. It's mostly low brass and pounding kettle drums pushing the story forward and embellishing long stretches of hand-to-hand street brutality and aerial flybys among exploding buildings that take on an eerie 9/11 look. The lengthiness of such scenes approaches the inuring.

There is a pleasant break, though, in the music fare for a fancy dance party scene that's supported by strains of “Pavane pour une infante défunte” by Maurice Ravel.

The film runs two hours 44 minutes and is rated PG-13. I saw it on an IMAX screen, so it really got in my face. But isn't that what movies are for?

What's really good about “Rises” is what comic books do so well: make plain the simple, important values of giving a damn about others and the community … and not giving up on trying to make it all better. Bruce Wayne is quite an exception to what almost appears to be the rule ... as an entrepreneurial billionaire who goes to great lengths to rid his town of jerks … and all of it without packing heat … but really well-dressed for the occasion. That might be why the Bat guy has played so well for over seven decades.

“Rises” is as grim as it is pregnant with action and stress. Torture, pain and violence, with not so much blood, are generously supplied.

Mr. Allen goes to Rome

2012-07-06T06:43:48Z

‘To Rome With Love’ film review by Gary Chew

Tell me, how long has it been since you've seen a film that mentions the lead male character in a 1949 movie titled, “The Fountainhead”? Howard Roark was a man who came from the curious fantasies of the controversial Ayn Rand, who created the character in her phallic-infused 1943 novel of the same name.

Roark is recalled by Woody Allen in his latest romantic travelogue series of European cities, the newest titled, “To Rome With Love," now playing at the Tower Theater on Land Park at Broadway, Sacramento and 7 other cineplexes in the area.

First Allen took us, not so romantically, to London (“Match Point”). More recently it was Barcelona, then Paris.

Allen always has you covered when there's a need to see a movie that pokes polemical fun at certain elements of American society, like Howard Roark (Gary Cooper), or people who spend lots of time at their country club as well as touring exotic places for weeks on end.

The long suffering, curmudgeonly filmmaker takes all his movies quite personally. It's through them he gets back, rhetorically, at those who don't favor his look on life and others who do really vacuous things with their lives - as he sees it.

I guess Roark and his lover in “The Fountainhead,” Dominic Francon, would be good examples. How’s this for an opening line from Allen's new movie, spoken by an American country club member on vacation in Rome who is having a luscious lunch with fellow travelers on a sunny piazza just outside a chic Italian restaurant?

“The food's better here than in Malibu.”

Or how about Jerry, the character Allen plays in “To Rome with Love” saying, “My work's a little fast for mass appeal”?

Allen fires these and other verbal salvos among a few topical threads that include adultery, youthful promiscuity, the strain and absurdity that can come from being famous and, conversely and ironically, the satisfaction that is often found just leading a simple, anonymous, family-man life.

To get things straight in your mind for the large ensemble cast that appears in this kaleidoscopic caper, the following might be helpful.

There are young people and retired people, and others with so much fame they feel naked in front of their public while ever-gloating television media are displaying paucity of substance by asking the notables really stupid questions.

Adulterous goings-on focus on newlyweds, Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) and Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi). Less naïve participants are Anna, a Roman hooker wearing a dress that's as red as it is short (Penelope Cruz) and Luca (real Italian film star, Antonio Albanese), a fictional Italian film star.

Youthful promiscuity brings together John (a not so young Alec Baldwin), an American architect and Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), whose girlfriend is Sally (Greta Gerwig). Then there's Sally's actress gal pal, the flaky Monica (Ellen Page).

You should know that Baldwin's John-the-Architect is nothing like Howard Roark, who is also an architect in “The Fountainhead.”

The thread with more matured characters includes a former (not so mature) opera director named Jerry; his psychiatrist spouse, Phyllis (Judy Davis); their daughter Hayley (Alison Pill); Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), a harried, ersatz celebrity/family man; and a singing undertaker called Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato, a for-real Italian operatic tenor). Giancarlo is the father of Michelangelo (Fabio Parenti), Hayley's Roman love interest.

“To Rome With Love” is crammed with humorous one-liners, dialogue and circumstance, but doesn't coalesce with the flair and craft of “Midnight in Paris.” This is particularly noticeable in the foibles containing youthful promiscuity.

Although I'm sure Baldwin is an audience draw, and most assuredly a fine film actor, his part seems disconnected from that ensemble's tribulations. John's mentoring of Jack in the ways of young love seems stilted to me and almost intrusive. Moreover, the way Eisenberg plays Jack suggests that the “The Social Network” man appears not neurotic enough to comfortably settle into a Woody Allen picture.

On the other hand, Sacramento's Gerwig and Page seem as at home in Allen's script as would Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Muriel Hemingway or Scarlett Johansson. Gerwig's part puts her in a bit more subdued character than others she has done, while Page's Monica is pretty damned nutty. Nuttiness comes easily for that Allen-favored female, Penelope Cruz, doing her streetwalker swagger in the city along the Tiber.

Opera-lovers may or may not appreciate the well-staged and spoofy Pagliacci scenes as sung by Signore Armiliato, but the laughs are there for those even with a modicum of good humor in their souls.

Going on 77, Woody Allen continues to look at life, and live his, it appears, as if he were 27. Obviously, the guy was a “dirty” young man.

As Roberto Benigni might say to Woody as they whizz together down the Appian Way in a Maserati once driven by Marcello Mastroianni, “Ecco la vita, Signore Allen!” Anita Eckberg, of course, would be at the wheel.

Stone's Savage New Film

2012-07-06T06:32:08Z

‘Savages’ film review by Gary Chew

The narration for “Savages” begins with Blake Lively putting herself in a place similar to Kevin Spacey's when he opened in the voiceover for the start of “American Beauty” (1999). Lively, as Ophelia, or O for short, lays it out that her character may not be alive at the end of the movie, even though O is speaking in past tense about what's about to happen. Spacey didn't allow us to know that his character would be dead at the close of “American Beauty.”

"Savages" is playing at the Century Stadium 14, 1590 Ethan Way and Century Greenback 16 at 6233 Garfield Ave, Sacramento.

O is the live-in girlfriend of Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch). She sleeps with Ben and Chon. They're a happy family of modern-day Southern California marijuana growers. O describes her guys as Ben the Buddhist and Chon the Badass.

Mellow Ben hasn't confronted Afghanistan as the PTSD-ish Chon has. The guys are as different as night and day, but really buds. I found that a tad beyond my ability to handle in the disbelief department — two guys cool about living with and having the same alluring woman in the sack, sometimes simultaneously.

How do you say ménage à trois in Spanish?

Ben's a botanist and out front doing great things, growing hybrid marijuana with enough THC to choke a drug mule. Chon, an ex-Navy SEAL, is the other headman running their thriving California weed-growing business and its distribution. He does the heavy lifting when people don’t want to pay their drug bill.

Their weed is so good, the Baja California Mexican drug cartel wants in on the high-caloric mutation.

You can see where this is going, I know. But first Oliver Stone, the director and one of the script writers of “Savages” (taken from the novel by Don Winslow) wants to show you around Laguna Beach, Calif., (where Ben and Chon do business) and make it clear these people live lives of pure luxury and decadence in these parts, except for some of their lower echelon cartel competitors in Tijuana and farther south.

Those ordinary people have a patrón named Lado (Benicio Del Toro). Lado lifts even more weight on his side of the border than Chon in the Golden State. But Lado has a boss who kicks butt better than anyone: Elena (Salma Hayek), a wealthy, self-absorbed woman who wears her icy heart on her sleeve and (spoiler) a wig on her head.

Dennis is a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agent who plays both sides of the weed-growing-and-distribution game. That's John Travolta's meaty role. Not that all Americans are jerks, but … what a typical American jerk Dennis is. I've been told some of them are seen and heard in the broadcast and cable media.

Don't expect any of the people you see in “Savages” to be nice to each other, even though O and Ben would like to keep the negotiations peaceful, whether it's “yea” or “nay” from Ben and Chon in deciding how to respond to the Baja bunch's offer, made to the pair in a “Don Corleone” kind of way.

Blake Lively is so good at playing a victimized woman. See “The Town” (2010) if you don't believe it. O is soon abducted from the mall, taken south of the border and locked up as a cartel hostage to leverage the stateside Weed Brothers who love her very much.

They (the trio) are, as I said, a happy family; however, I don't think Stone's new picture can be called a family film (rated R with occasional Spanish phrases that are subtitled. Very strong language).

“Savages” can be categorized, though, with other films you may have seen. There's “No Country for Old Men” (2007). There's “Traffic” (2000), which also featured Del Toro. There's “Reservoir Dogs” (1992), one of the most static and probably bloodiest nonhorror films. And certainly there's “Pulp Fiction” (1994).

I have a feeling Quentin Tarantino will be in the front row for “Savages.” Stone's film has humor that's reminiscent of Tarantino's wild, cinematic blowout, which also had Travolta, memorably, in the cast.

Recall the almost macabre dialogue among Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel in “Pulp Fiction,” when Keitel's character is called in to assist the other two in how to clean up a bloody mess after someone else gets blown away in the backseat of their car. Very funny … in kind of an unfunny way.

Watch for the scene in “Savages” between Dennis and Lado in Dennis' kitchen. The conversation turns from vicious and threatening to a couple of dudes joined in commiseration about their domestic tribulations. The switch can be a laugh for you if you're paying close attention. Travolta and Del Toro nail it.

Stone has allowed for a touch of such across his film … in dialogue, strikingly changing visuals, busy but not palsied camera work … and even laying in the heaviest measures of Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, for really intense parts of “Savages.”

The film runs you through the gamut of emotions, some causing you to think about diverting your gaze from the screen for a few seconds, but you don't … then they're over and it's too late.

All of it works out, with a memorable finish by Stone that suggests that both the high-tech U.S. marijuana growers and the Baja California drug thugs, each in their own and different way, are savages, in whatever social class they find themselves.

"Lola Versus" Sacramento's Greta Gerwig

2012-06-22T06:36:29Z

Lola Versus film review by Gary Chew

I've already “seen” this movie...not a big or small screen, but in situations that developed right before my very eyes with people in my past, like almost every adult has. Now at the Tower Theater, “Lola Versus” is about the common, mundane complexities of female/male relationships; the scholarly pursuit of the subject known as the Dating-Game or Relational-Not-Same-Sex-Musical-Chairs. That's right...the field of study Woody Allen got his post-doctorate in...to go with his Bachelor's degree in Romanticism.

By the way, this movie isn't directed by the Wood-Man. But it could have been. It has some of the same Allen traits...two of which are: good entertainment and the other...a focus on young, single women.

The “Annie Hall” character in this movie is Lola, of course. Not like the 1977 Annie, but more of an “Annie Hall” you'd expect in, say...2012. The original Annie would not have a tattoo. The 2012 model totally would.

Sacramento-native Greta Gerwig is this year's “Annie Hall.” But I can't say whether Gerwig's got a tattoo or not. But I'd guess she does. She also does a good job playing her young woman character convincingly; low-key, knowing, already somewhat jaded, and interesting in an intelligent, understated sort of way. Gerwig has been convincing doing the character in earlier films.

“Lola's” credits don't indicate the film is based on actual events. But they relate to an actual 12-month break-up between the director of “Lola,” Daryl Wein and the 2nd-banana gal in the film, Alice, played by Zoe Lister Jones. The couple, having reconciled, wrote the script. Great therapy for young lovers, apparently

The narrative is basic: the guy, Luke—played by Joel Kinnaman (“Safe House”)---gets cold feet not long before the vows are to be declared... then the couple splits; both working through subsequent issues mostly by being with other people. (Think: Woody Allen and all of his movies.)

Then, Luke wants to get back with Lola, but she's saying, :”Uhn, uhn, not so fast there, big fellow.” And so on...with other partners for each, intervening.

Throw in brief moments with two older, more familiar faces. Debra Winger plays Lola's mom and Bill Pullman is Lola's dad. Robin and Lenny seem to be about right on target as Lola's parents. The trio has a very open, non-authoritarian relationship. It's almost like Robin and Lenny are Lola's big sister and brother.

One of the better “Lola” scenes is between Gerwig and Pullman...interesting, pleasant father/daughter back and forth. And Winger is always good, even when she's a few names down the cast list. Good to see her again.

Zoe Lister Jones is the spark plug in “Lola Versus”: randy and out-spoken for the higher registering laughs, while Gerwig brings humor to her character in a less intensive style; natural and fetching. Jones vibrates on some of the same frequencies Julia Louis-Dreyfus did doing Elaine in “Seinfeld.

There's not much learning to be had from this script, and how hackneyed can a screenplay get, I ask. But I found “Lola Versus” up-to-date breezy fun.

The opportunities continue expanding for Greta Gerwig. She's inching her way closer to the big time with a pretty good part in Woody Allen's next film of romantic travelogues (Barcelona, Paris, and soon, Rome). Gerwig plays opposite that “Social Network” guy, Jesse Eisenberg in Allen's “To Rome with Love,” soon to open in Sacramento.

Gerwig is surely a shoo-in for the Allen lineage, but I'm ready for this Sacramento woman to show us her reach. A well-written, intense, dramatic film might do the trick for seeing how far she can stretch her talent in front of the camera, which I've heard, likes her. How about one of those higher-paying gigs that profits her to seem like someone other than the young woman she's played, so far, quite well in films?

It would give Sacramento movie buffs more to talk about.

The Cataclysmic Steve Carell

2012-06-22T06:34:10Z

“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” film review by Gary Chew

What a premise. How enticing. There must be humor in “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” My goodness … Steve Carell has the lead. But really … the other part of the story is that an asteroid is zooming head-on into our precious planet and will surely vaporize everyone in the cast and the rest of humanity in just three weeks' time.

Eek!

Here's where it's playing in the Sacramento area:
Century Stadium 14
Regal Natomas Marketplace
Century 16 Greenback Lane
Century Laguna 16
Century Folsom
United Artist Olympus Pointe

As everyone knows they only have about 20 days to live, people in unhappy marriages take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get the hell out of the relationship … on the double.

That's what happens with Carell's character, Dodge. At a stop sign, the little wife bails from their car and, without a word, simply runs away, after she and Dodge hear an update on the car radio about the asteroid's swift approach. It's really pretty funny … as is the look on Carell's face.

“Pretty funny” runs only a bit longer, because most of “Seeking a Friend,” doesn't know what to do with its really interesting premise. “Pretty silly” gets going after William Petersen, in character as a man driving a truck, is suddenly killed by a shooter from a big black auto that speeds away.

“Trucker,” as Petersen is listed in the cast, wanted to get hit. A contract on oneself, I believe it's called. But Trucker didn't want to know when or where he gets to suddenly be dead.

Sort of dumb … or maybe I should go back to “silly.”

Wifeless, Dodge soon decides to seek out the one that got away, long ago. She's in another town. But Dodge also, inadvertently, just hooked up with a kooky gal who lives in the same building. Penny is newly estranged from her live-in boyfriend, as well. Keira Knightley plays Penny kooky.

The couple had hitched a ride with Trucker some miles before Trucker gets blown away, while he is sitting behind the wheel and relaxing at a rest stop. Dodge and Penny are unscathed and also get a free vehicle to drive after leaving their city, which was in nasty chaos with rowdies in the streets. That brief violence is neither funny nor ironic. And Dodge's car doesn't “survive” the melee.

(Yes, debuting director Lorene Scafaria's film is a road picture. She wrote the script for “Seeking a Friend,” as well as an earlier film also with strong youth appeal, “Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.” I liked it.)

Dodge and Penny then just happen onto a survivalist-military dude with whom Penny had an earlier fling. His name is Speck. Derek Luke has the role. Speck is very comfy in a neat bunker with all kinds of goodies, as if that will help. He has other macho buds holed up with him for the big collision, and just happens, by chance, to have a yard full of those tiny Smart cars seen running our streets today. Speck gives one of them to Dodge and Penny to continue their journey to Dodge's old girlfriend's house.

This is another clever way to give the pair — whose members, of course, aren't going to fall in love with each other — a new set of wheels for the pilgrimage. And with good gas mileage, too.

A brief scene at a full-bore 24/7 party bar that's surfaced due to the “visit” the asteroid is soon to make, Patton Oswalt (as a man who's had one-too-many) engages Carell's character in amusing conversation.

No reason to give anymore of the storyline, except to say that Carell really doesn't do much “funny” in this friend-seeking, end-of-the-world scenario. He's pretty dramatic in the part, and pretty good at it. I think, though, that Carell's best with low-key, nerdy comedy as seen on … well, you know the TV series he does.

For me, his best work in a feature film, so far, is “Little Miss Sunshine.” In it, Carell first showed his reach: funny, but not quite always funny. In “Seeking” Carell maintains himself as quite serious and responsible, even though it looks like he's living the last days of his young life.

At first blush, the premise suggested to me that Carell could carry off hitting that tough mark between funny, poignant, sensible (sort of) … and somewhat nerdy and unsure. The script was not adroit enough to bring those elements to a creative mix as well as the "Little Miss Sunshine." scrennplay did.

Knightley's Penny is rather “wired” and flighty as one might expect Knightley to act the part. Her energy got a bit enervating for me.

Nothing in the film shows conditions out in space or other scenes where CGI might be employed. Call it an apocalyptic date movie that's sappy … with an awkward use of genres that makes such a script a challenge to bring off well.

But I do want to say that the ending of “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is touching, and its message, which clearly subscribes to the beauty and tenderness of Grace between two loving persons, makes up for, earlier on, not having much ado about planetary cataclysm.

Worlds colliding and cults with their predictable weirdness about end-of-days notions are much in vogue for young demographics motion pictures. Here are a half dozen titles recently released: “Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene,” “Melancholia,” “Another Earth,” “Take Shelter,” “Sound of My Voice” and the one at hand, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.”

Filmmakers are getting their Armageddon on, it seems, with Mayan calendars and other doomsday scenarios blowing in the wind. Feels more like a passing breeze to me.

New Gyllenhaal Film Creates Buzz

2012-06-16T22:59:54Z

“Hysteria” film review by Gary Chew June 16, 2012

There's a buzz going on now at the Tower Theater, Land Park and Broadway, Sacramento. No, it's not a cell phone, or anything else...but a buzz among movie fans that the film, “Hysteria” is a bagatelle, or trifle.

That it is, but the movie, directed by Tanya Wexler, contains a certain amount of social importance, even though it's a delightfully entertaining movie. But, I warn you. “Hysteria” could offend anyone who continues to think women should be “kept in their place.”

The place in “Hysteria” is Victorian London... one, as many other locations during the era, that treats women for hysteria. Twenty-First century suffragettes will know what I'm talking about. And anyone who doesn't think suffragettes exist in 2012 hasn’t been paying attention to the news.

There are female politicians out there, as I write this, who are (to borrow a phrase) “mad as hell and aren't going to take it any more.” This is not a piece on politics, so I'll not linger on the modern-day suffragette's agenda, because “Hysteria” is a fun piece of cinema that shows Victorian males as very much out-of-the-loop, so to speak, regarding the needs and desires of the fully maturated female.

Queen Victoria set the standard, if you remember your British history.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is Charlotte, the more spirited daughter of the an upstanding, successful physician of the day (Jonathan Pryce). He is Robert Dalrymple. Dr. Dalrymple is what might be called a forerunner in the field of Medicine categorized OB/GYN. Actually, the good doctor doesn't handle the delivery of infants, but he does---literally---handle the external reproductive parts of women who “suffer” from hysteria, as men called it then.

His office is jammed with patients. Dalrymple then employs Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy), a young, progressive but straitlaced physician who is not so much entreprenuerial as he is inclined to make people well--- the size of their bank balance notwithstanding. He's had problems keeping his job in various hospitals around London due to his natural altruism.

Dr. Granville is a child of the middle-class.

Not long after employment ... Dalrymple has Granville handling the, uh … patients insofar as allaying the women's awful hysteria-like symptoms...if you know what I mean. There's nothing explicit shown in the scenes that depict the procedure, but no doubt was left in my mind as to what Drs. Dalrymple and Granville are doing for their good patients, if you know what I mean.

Their goal is to bring on---as the good doctors refer to it--- a paroxysm (spasm or fit) for the lady while she's supine on a small table that has an appropriately placed curtain at about the patient's pelvic region.

Tell me that you won't laugh, if you see this. If you don't think you would, you probably ought not see this film. And I suggest, if you're not one to laugh at such entertainment, don't worry about others, like me, who do.

For much of his young life, Dr. Granville's wealthy benefactor has been an intellectual wag named Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett). He's something, for sure ... and has the best one-liners in the movie. St. John-Smythe is, himself, something of a progressive. He tinkers with gadgets. He's enamored with the crude telephonic device on his desk... and has even contrived a sort of electronic feather duster.

Dr. Granville has become so overloaded administering treatment to the many patients in the office that it looks as though the doctor has, for the first time in history, developed carpal tunnel syndrome in his right hand and wrist.

It's as if a bright light blinks forth from the eyes of Granville as he fiddles, one afternoon, with St. John-Smythe's strange feather duster gizmo that, with some alterations (he opines) might be an excellent application for the treatment of females distressed with the awful hysteria that abounds in Victorian society---for some mysterious reason.

And there it is: another example of the old adage...”Necessity is the mother of invention.” I don't know how else to put it.

Fame and fortune follow Granville and Dalrymple, and it looks like wedding bells will ring for Granville and Dalrymple's younger daughter, Emily (Felicity Jones). She's a very proper and intelligent young woman who is attracted to Granville, as is Mortimer to her. Emily has taken care of her father's home since the death of Mrs. Dalrymple which occurred prior to the story's open.

Meanwhile, in another part of London, Charlotte is slaving at her personal project of taking care of the homeless, the sick and the poor. In an argument with her, Dr. Granville even goes as far as to call Charlotte a socialist.

(Such an accusation certainly rings with some heard nowadays.)

Not surprisingly, father Dalrymple is most displeased with Charlotte's efforts at aiding riff-raff from the streets of London. But he is a good bloke, just the same, if not very perspicacious especially regarding the opposite gender.

The nub of the film is what will Dr. Granville do. He's quite attracted to both Dalrymple sisters. He seems to lean toward Emily, as he is a solid, young, professional Englishman with both feet on the ground, albeit one of those progressive kind of professionals, always seeking better ways to make life better and longer for his patients.

What will he choose, after his ascension to honorable status as a forward-looking physician who is also now making large amounts of money via his practice and the licensing of his and St. John-Smyth's durable new product that’s taking England by storm?

Well ... you'll just have to go see the movie and find out.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is American film's most méchant female actor. If you don't believe me, go find that old, superlative movie, “Secretary.” She and James Spader star.

Film review: 'Moonrise Kingdom' lifts you

2012-06-15T08:13:21Z

“Moonrise Kingdom” has a curious mix of qualities. It's clever and sweet, but with every character in the film acting their part overly officious, even the children. The movie is also quite tedious, at least some of it.

It's just opening at the Tower Theater, Broadway at Land Park Drive, Sacramento.

The first third of “Moonrise Kingdom” lumbers then trudges along as it establishes a budding relationship between a pubescent boy and girl and to remind the moviegoer of the quaint eccentricities of the native inhabitants of the story's setting. The second act picks things up. And the end is quite nice.

In fact, it's very nice.

First, a little background …

New Penzance Island (a fictional place off the U.S. Atlantic coast), 1965. Khaki Scouts Summer Camp.

Scoutmaster Ward is stoked because one of his rather recalcitrant boys has gone AWOL, if that word can be used for Boy Scouts. The concerned Scoutmaster brings on the whole platoon (if that's also an OK scouting term) to search for Sam.

The twinkle in the eye of “Moonrise Kingdom” tells you, though, that there's not a lot to worry about.

On the lam, Sam has a meet-up with Suzy in a bucolic pasture after they've had time to think they might be in love with each other. They both agree and then know they must shed their shackles of being “ordinary children” either he at summer scout camp or she in a family on the island with a dictatorial father … and awful, bratty little brothers.

Will the scout troop find them? What will the local constabulary guy, Bruce Willis, have up his sleeve to rescue the young pair, just in the nick of time?

Speaking of “time” …

The movie is longer than it needs to be. The exposition could be done succinctly. Establishing the culture and attitude of people depicted in “Moonrise” can only be amusing a reasonable length of time for people sitting in a movie house, even if the characters portrayed on the screen represent the best of those who inhabit the attitudes and perspectives of folks from the far Northeastern part of these United States.

Bill Murray playing that officious, authoritarian father of young children is really funny. But the narrative needs to move along, even though Bill is not only funny, but also very good being at something that's his antithesis, it seems.

And what about a guy who can act any part? Edward Norton’s character is also a braced-up, well-meaning authoritarian. He’s the Scoutmaster.

The list goes on, with Frances McDormand, the mom; Bruce Willis, the sheriff; Tilda Swinton, the Social Services lady; Harvey Keitel as the High Pooba of the Khaki Scouts; and Bob Balaban, the film's standup, on-camera-looking-at-you narrator — who might secretly be a gnome.

Balaban and McDormand are the only suspects in this movie who are probably not playing against type.

Neat. Great bunch. But … move the story on, please.

The main characters are the boy, Sam, played by Jared Gilman, and the girl, Suzy, played by Kara Hayward. Since you may never have seen these fine young actors, Jared wears Woody Allenish specs in the film, but seems less romantic than Maestro Allen. And Kara appears to be, but probably not, a younger cousin of two established film actors, Jennifer Connelly and Emma Watson.

Wes Anderson wrote and directed “Moonrise Kingdom.” Three other creations from this Welch-born fellow who schooled at UT in Austin come to mind: “Bottle Rocket,” The Royal Tenebaums” and “Rushmore.” Now you know why “Moonrise Kingdom” is a skosh eccentric.

But to go somewhat out on a limb, I must say that I hope there's a possibility the good folk of what are termed the New England States of America might smile watching this film. “Smiling” means “really funny” for the people of New Hampshire and Maine.

Now Southerns of the USA have a movie they can see that laughs at Yankees.

“Moonrise Kingdom’s” joke carries to the end. But not long before the close, the good stuff kicks in. It's something for children of all ages … believe me.

Folksinger Peter Case: On Screen and On Stage

2012-06-05T01:48:49Z

What's neat seeing “Troubadour Blues,” Tom Weber's documentary about traveling folk singers-songwriters is that the film lists several names of venues in which these 21st century troubadours get to perform.

The West Coast premiere of the film screens Thursday evening on the same bill as a live concert given by folk singer Peter Case — one of the featured personalities in the film — at Antiquité Maison Privée, 2114 P St., Sacramento, Calif.

Tickets are $20 for this Swell Productions presentation. The screening is at 6:30 p.m., and Case performs at 8:15 p.m.

The music venues revealed in “Troubadour Blues” are much less French-sounding than Antiquité Maison Privée.

How about the Tin Angel in Philly, Ashland Coffee and Tea in Ashland, Va., Grimey's Basement in Nashville, Tenn., and Joyful Noise in Lexington, Mass.?

Then my favorites: The Gravity Lounge in Charlottesville, Va., and the Fur Peace Ranch in Pomeroy, Ohio.

What's not neat for the several folk singers seen in “Troubadour Blues” is that none of the venues sits near another, making it necessary for the talented performers to do much more driving than singing and playing.

The Pittsburgh-based Weber covers well that unfortunate, but necessary, part of the life of a 21st century troubadour. There's a lot of freeway out there, folks.

Folk singing isn't something that one gets with ease in mainstream media. The art of this timeless, unpretentious profession resides at the fringes of any era's glitz and glamor.

Weber weaves informal interviews with onstage performances, as well as very neat road signs of places you may never have heard of ... along with a few familiar ones.

Case is prominently featured in the documentary. Other performers are Chris Smither, Dave Alvin, Slaid Cleaves, Mark Erelli, Amy Speace, Gurf Morlix, Garrison Starr and Mary Gauthier.

In the film's most moving and gritty extemporaneous monologue, Gauthier touches on the gist of “Troubadour Blues.” The New Orleans-born singer-songwriter's pointed comment comes about 50 minutes in ... when she gives her description of the artist's job ...

“I don't know how to please an audience. I just know how to be honest, and so an audience can just self-select in or self-select out. I don't have a lot of moves that are audience pleasers. So, best I can do is to be honest and true. The truth is sometimes quite a challenge for some folks ... and it certainly is for me.

“I don't think we (singer-songwriters) go through much that other people don't go through or will go through. I think it's the artist's job to tell it in a way so the people have hope.

“I don't write hopeful songs, but I think other people feel hope when they know they're not the only ones going through whatever particular struggle they're going through. (Knowing) That other people go through it is helpful.

“And so artists are the ones who let everyone know that we all struggle here, that life is a challenge. And what I put into a song, I do for me ... and then I throw it out there and people go, 'Yeah, me too.' And I feel better.”

Get tickets for “Troubadour Blues” and a live performance by Peter Case at www.Swell-Productions.com.

“Sound of My Voice” movie review: Not Waco, but a little wacko, maybe

2012-05-18T07:30:55Z

Zal Batmanglij's film, “Sound of My Voice,” could serve as a useful primer for a person who doesn't understand the psychology of how cults (religious or otherwise) snare their followers. It's playing downtown on K Street at the Crest Theater.

This debut film, by a young director who's hardly written-up online, also keeps you focused with an added possibility of creeping you out not just a little bit. Creep is common to movies with youth appeal.

Batmanglij has help from co-writer Brit Marling, who takes a leading role in “Sound of My Voice” as well as producing. Marling had the lead in another slightly off-center 2011 film called “Another Earth.”

Maggie is Marling's character in “Sound of My Voice.” It's the Charles Manson or David Koresh figure in the picture. But Maggie is pretty and non-violent, albeit does exude an aura of danger.

Charisma is another salient trait Maggie projects, and it doesn't go to waste on her modest ensemble of disciples. Two of those newly-arrived apprentice disciples are Peter (Christopher Denham, “Shutter Island”*) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius, “500 Days of Summer,” “Half Nelson”). They're a live-together couple. Peter has a day gig teaching. Nicole struggles as a writer.

Peter wants to do “something that matters.” (I thought teaching did.) But exposing falsehoods for the good of all seems more to this protagonist.

Peter and Lorna are wannabe film documentarians. Their target is Maggie, who claims she's from the future---born in 2030, to be exact. Some of her “past” is part of what she professes is Peter and Lorna's future, as well as the eight or ten others who show up for Maggie's covert gatherings.

Sessions are held in the basement of an anonymous suburban home so ordinary, a memory of its likeness dissolves before the closing credits go-to-black.

The enigmatic young woman tells a story of once awakening with no memory or name, and quite penniless. Wrapped in a sheet, Maggie walks the city in a daze. She's taken in by Klaus (Richard Wharton). He gives her sustenance.

Memories then come rushing to Maggie. She begins to recall what happened in her past...or the near future of the other characters as well as people in the theater watching the film.

She's not specific about what lies “ahead” for them...indications, though, are that it isn't pretty. So the enigmatic Maggie gathers her flock closer for an under-the-radar training regimen to prepare it for what looms.

Peter is a very cool skeptic. He's sure Maggie's a charlatan. Lorna signs off on that assumption, but with less certainty. The couple's duplicitous efforts not to arouse Maggie's suspicions are as stringent as all of Maggie's disciples having to be sanitized (bodily not metaphorically) before each instructional, subterranean homily goes forward.

Cleanliness is next to Maggie-ness? No...not exactly.

Maggie's in-house handlers also keep a careful watch over the food she eats. It's grown in the kitchen. Moreover, she can't be exposed to outside germs and such. She's a stay-at-home cult leader.

Strangely though, Maggie knows of a girl who's in elementary school across town where Peter teaches. Her name is Abigail (Avery Pohl). The moviegoer is given just enough about Abigail to know that she is quite a unique child and obsessively pursues a mysterious hobby in her room every day after school.

Halfway through the film, a burly black woman appears. Carol is her name (Davenia McFadden). She's abruptly shown, alone, in a brief, disconnected scene that has her making sure, for some reason, her hotel room is spy proof for sound and video. Implications for why she's in such a dither come later.

And that's almost all I'll say about “Sound of My Voice,” except to speculate why there's been a spate of films about cults and apocalypses at a theater near you over the last several months.

These titles first come to mind: “Another Earth,” mentioned earlier; “Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene;” “Melancholia;” “Take Shelter,” (with Sacramentan Jessica Chastain) and a new one for this summer with Keira Knightley.

Its in-your-face title is “Seeking A Friend for the End of the World.” However, “End of the World” might make for some laughs in spite of itself since Steve Carell will be on hand for Earth's demise.

The words “Armageddon” and “The Rapture” are more than common in daily parlance. Some say that Mayan calendar bodes not well for the near future and voices of radical, authoritarian believers grow shriller. Could it be people in their teens, twenties and early thirties are feeling more inclined to such entertainment?

Yes, Maggie is an entertaining, warm, nurturing, yet cruel, magnetic mother-figure whose gift for insightful persuasion astounds---even Peter, the skeptic in her basement.

How could it not be that, late in the film, up jumps jealousy in a twist that would seem sweet if “Sound of My Voice” were intended to be a confection and not a cautionary tale.

Well, jealously does jump---most twistingly.

Of course, as with most films well thought-out, just what it is that you should be cautious about is what you bring to the movie, then, probably take away.

* I use any opportunity to plug a defunct cable television series
that shouldn't be on the shelf at any network...so: Christopher
Denham was also in the remarkable spy series, “Rubicon,” which
lasted only a brief season for some strange reason. Hmmm.

Avengeance Is Theirs

2012-05-04T07:15:47Z

“The Avengers” movie review by Gary Chew
I stopped reading comic books in about 1950. Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel were my favorites. I was stoked when George Reeves as Superman and Adam West as Batman made it to pictures that move instead of merely being drawn (frozen in time) onto those colorful panels on paper.

The narratives changed little. The good guy or guys and the badass or asses who wanted to take over Metropolis, Gotham City or the Earth were always there to give the story the conflict it needed: right and wrong clearly delineated.

If the two were really only that easily discerned.

It is about the same thing with “The Avengers,” a new film with action-packed serialized baggage just blowing into town at a number of cineplexes. Hand it to “Buffy Dude,” director Joss Whedon, to sweep through the hackneyed parts of any superhero story and give almost anyone the feeling that he or she is being well-entertained.

The magic is in the humor of the dialogue. I think Adam West's Batman got the bat, rather, the ball rolling really well on television. The series' silly lines subliminally told the viewer, “You know all this can't be true, but we can't change the thrust of superhero stories, so we'll just add droll humor to keep the genre alive.”

Boy, did it work. And it really works for “The Avengers.”
Various genres are given running time. They're well-represented by Whedon and his cast and crew.
Just to mention a few - you've got your gods of the ages types conflicted among steely, techno-sci-fi flying machines and other whizzing gadgets and heavy armament; charming, hip, upper class banter between Tony Stark, aka Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his erudite lady, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, in cameo). The iron guy has work cut out for him watching out for the super villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston),who seems right for Shakespeare, too.

It has been a hoot watching Robert Downey, Jr. blaze his trail. It's swell he's moved into the making of blockbusters. His continued edgy, hip 'n' flip persona was needed in the land of the really big flick. It brings back memories of his earlier outings. I suggest that Robert Downey, Jr. is the standard best to emulate by guys who want to present as being terribly hip and nonchalant for a lady.

That's a compliment. Meanwhile....
“The Avengers” is hot and cold, non-stop violence so well-crafted and pieced together, you actually get what might be called, “kick-ass segues” from one fight scene to the next as their respective resolutions are held in abeyance while yet another clash reaches an even higher pitch somewhere in “another part of town.” All of them depict force so brutal and so nearly completely bloodless, you must laugh at it to stay interested.
But don't we just love comics?

That new Hollywood Walk of Fame fatale, Scarlett Johansson is back as Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow (obviously once a hardened Communist). Mark Ruffalo plays smart guy Bruce Banner, known to many as The Hulk, a big green guy who's in need of a Valium, bad. Jeremy Renner, as Hawkeye (not of M*A*S*H), looks more gifted shooting a bow and arrow than Erroll Flynn did on a horse in Sherwood Forest, which actually was a grove of trees near Chico.

How could this not be a super superhero flick without Chris Evans as the indefatigable Captain America, who, some have indicated, might still be a virgin? Can't corroborate that, but I can report that Evans is in the movie.

Then there's Thor...
Do you remember Thor? The guy who wrote, “If I Had A Hammer.” That role is handled smoothly by the burly Aussie, Chris Hemsworth.

The whole team, which can be succinctly called the Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.), is bossed about by the man himself, Nick Fury, who's played in that special Samuel L. Jackson kind of way. (Think “Pulp Fiction” character Jules Winnfield barking commands from the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise.)

Nobody does it better, not even---I hate to say it---William Shatner.

Director Whedon makes clever spirals among the several flavors he's mixed into “The Avengers,” but some scenes among the major characters that get the details and connections organized for the narrative to push on get awfully chatty. It's like putting on the brakes of your chariot or rocket ship.

The screenplay was written by Whedon from a story by Zac Penn. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wrote the lyrics for the neat “too marvelous for words” word balloons seen above the characters in those enduring Marvel Comics pages.

I detected in Alan Silvestri's thundering music score some of the same series of tones I remember hearing when I first saw “Exodus.” The words that came to mind were lyrics put to the main theme of “Exodus,” “This Land Is Mine.” (Maybe Silverstri is a fan of the film score composer, Ernest Gold.) But there are only twelve separate music tones in any piano's octaves, so how could that be a valid complaint?

It isn't, because “The Avengers” is a damn funny movie. I laughed all the way through the first half of it. As I was leaving the cinema, though, I heard a sort of disgruntled, mature gentlemen remark, “Heck, I thought 'The Avengers' had this sexy British detective lady in it called Mrs. Peel. I want my money back.”

Leonard Cohen: Sung and Spoken

2012-04-29T21:26:00Z

‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’ Music Preview by Gary Chew

Writing an aphoristic line defining Leonard Cohen may be as simple as taking a line from a song by him.

“You live your life as if it’s real.”

It’s one of the best lines in the haunting song “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” which is also the name of the concert of Cohen works scheduled for May 5 at the 24th Street Theatre. Fifteen Northern Californians will perform the all-Cohen program through song and recitation.

Another line that might relate the essence of Cohen also comes from his pen:
“Love is the only engine of survival.”

Although Cohen isn’t describing himself with these phrases, the man offers his listeners much to think about, whether the words are quietly spoken or simply sung.

When sung, his songs are usually in a minor key, performed rather slowly with lyrics laconic, über ironic and not afraid of religious or sexual imagery. Clearly, Cohen is not out to use his talent for slipping rose-colored glasses on your nose.

Many have covered Cohen’s most popular song, “Suzanne.” Judy Collins’ performance is the one most memorable to me. It’s the one he wrote that conjures up the Statue of Liberty as well as Jesus as a metaphorical sailor “on His lonely wooden tower.” Some interpret the song to be inspired by New York City, yet there are other images in “Suzanne” that suggest it takes more from Montreal where Cohen was born in 1934.

The concert will include a less common combination of instruments for the Cohen songs. Along with keyboards, guitars, bass and drums, there is a cellist, Arthur Gould, and a wind player, Tom Schmidt.

Other musicians are Pat Jacobsen (Music Director and bass), Mark McCartney (drums), Rick Kirkpatrick (guitar) and Bill Chiechi (keyboards). Singers include Paul Emery (guitar) and Anni McCann (piano). Other vocalists are Shay Dillon, Kimberly Bass, Peter Wilson, Eleanore MacDonald, ~~Saul Rayo~~ and Stephen Holland. Molly Fisk will recite Cohen poems.

“A Thousand Kisses Deep” is presented by Swell Productions and Paul Emery. Advance tickets are available at inticketing.com, The Beat, Phono Select and the Briar Patch Co-op in Grass Valley.

Editor's note: Edits have been made to this article after publication to correct errors. Edits include an addition to Pat Jacobsen's role, the deletion of Saul Rayo in the musician list and the addition of photos.

Bully for "Bully"

2012-04-13T21:31:51Z

“Bully” film review – Gary Chew

Another polemic documentary film is here. It's called “Bully.” You can see it at the Tower Theater, Land Park Drive and Broadway, Sacramento.

Why would “Bully” not bring a feud with it?

The opposing parties are those incensed by suicides of youngsters bullied into taking their lives, and another incensed faction that believes some victims being followed in the documentary are targets of harassment due to being gay. The latter group's conclusion is that director Lee Hirsch's blunt but not excessive film promotes a homosexual life style.

To think that it's more important that people should not hear about homosexuality than knowing there are persons who can be bullied into killing themselves, seems absurd to me. But this is about the film, not what people on the latter side of this issue see as Truth.

“Bully” isn't only about gay, young people, it's about kids in public school who are ridiculed for being different. A different looking face, different skin color, a mental disorder, lack of sociability, obesity or a diminutive size are traits that often trigger bullies.

The movie says that bullying is quite problematic. Who can stop it? Teachers, administrators, parents, police, the clergy? The answer to that is almost as contentious as bullying, itself.

If one is bullied in a public education environment and his or her parents can't afford to send their child to private school to avoid peer harassment, options for a positive resolution shrink.

Bullying is not new. However, a spate of teens bullied to suicide (as media have reported in recent years) has caused many, especially parents of the deceased, to coalesce in an effort to stop the abuse.

Public school students in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas are followed in their daily routine during the 2009-2010 school year...in class, on the playground, on the school bus and in the street.

Some of the street and bus talk includes coarse language familiar to almost anyone, and just as common as bullying. Due to a few F-bombs, the filmmaker and releasing firm (The Weinstein Company) received notice, early on, that the documentary would be rated R by the MPAA.

Director Hirsch felt the film couldn't reach younger audiences with an R.

“Bully” has since been rated PG-13 after Hirsch and the Weinstein group agreed to bleep some offensive language. A few subtitles used to clarify fuzzily recorded dialogue do, however, spell out words that might be found offensive.

The picture's most moving moments come when the parents profess their love for the children they've lost, and how much they're missed.

Tyler Long (who went to the Murray County, Georgia School System) and Ty Smalley (a student in Perkins, Oklahoma Public Schools) were both victims of bullying. The boys killed themselves after enough...got to be more than enough. Tyler was 17. Ty, only11. The film focuses on their families, with vintage clips showing the boys in daily living.

Most attention is paid to Alex Libby, a public school student of Sioux City, Iowa. Fortunately, Alex didn't take his life but since he's known as Fishface at school, it's easy to imagine the ridicule that's been a part of his life. Hirsch gives us some of it.

“Bully” doesn't have much of an arc. The video casts a silent eye mostly on the families....with brief conversations among the kids, their parents and between parents and school administrators as well as board members.

Near the finish, it's clear the film is first meant for young people themselves, not necessarily concerned adults. According to the movie, when some one is about to be bullied, pressure from larger numbers of non aggressive, witnessing students that persuades the perpetrators to cut the cruelty is the most expeditious way to undermine it.

The finale shows a rally held in October 2010 on the Oklahoma State Capital grounds in Oklahoma City. The event's intent was to recruit support for the “Stand For the Silent” organization now involved with sharpening public awareness against bullying. Ty Smalley's dad, Kirk, speaks to the crowd about his son and the importance of standing up for those who suffer such treatment.

Focus on the Family, a Christian organization that also opposes the PG-13 rating, says the film encroaches on its members' freedom of religion. The faction believes that being part of the LGBT community is a sin and that Focus on the Family's faith demands that children must be sheltered from, what it claims is, the sinful nature of homosexuality.

Kelby, an Oklahoma teen and uncloseted lesbian flashes a winning personality in the film. She and Alex, who is not gay, show more than enough charisma for doing feature films, not just one about their being bullied.

On another cultural note, each Canadian provincial government rates films for its residents, not Ottawa. All Canadian Provinces initially gave “Bully” a PG rating.

Hail Canada.

On first reading that, I wondered if there is a significant difference between the bullying-caused teen suicide rate for our friends north of us and we who live just south of their border.

Film Like Dumb

2012-04-13T21:04:57Z

“Blue Like Jazz” film review by Gary Chew

You may ask yourself after watching a few minutes of “Blue Like Jazz” what a nice college-aged Houston boy and devout Baptist is doing driving his beat up car to Portland, Oregon to enroll at Reed College. His name is Donald (Marshall Allman).

The movie opened Friday at the UA Market Square, 17434 Arden Way and the UA Laguna Village 12 at 8755 Center Parkway, Sacramento.

Donald is not what most people think a young Christian man from Texas would be like. Donald's pretty hip and glib with one-liners. Since it's the lead, is probably why director Steve Taylor has Allman playing Donald as an agreeable nice guy who shows hardly any bad feelings toward people who have no faith or place of worship, even those with such an attitude emblazoned on their sleeve, so to speak.

But when it comes to his divorced mom having an affair with the, uh, assistant pastor who's in charge of “puppet ministry” at Donald's church, well, “ballistic” is the only word that comes to mind. Donald gets so fired up, that he takes his dad's offer of going to Reed College* (in that “dreadfully” liberal Portland) to get away from his mom and the assistant pastor.

Donald's dad is a reclusive, rather gnarly old liberal university professor who digs Coltrane and thinks the churchgoing former wife is dipsy doodle. Donald is cool about it all, but really unhappy about the mom affair thing with a man of the cloth.

Excuse my Freudian Slip, but I think Donald's Oedipus Complex is showing.

Thus on a lamely written motivation, Donald motors to Portland, then proceeds to become a liberal to spite his mom and her married preacher lover.

Donald first hooks up with the campus's hottest lesbian, Lauryn. She's from Kansas. Tania Ramonde plays the role. Then he gets to know the quite straight, pretty and “together” Penny. Clair Holt handles that part.

He comforts Lauryn in his dorm bed (without benefit of sex) after she gets the blues striking-out with another gal she's hot for, and who Lauryn has found is not a lesbian as she first thought.

How cool, Donald.

This is a clever way to not have any sex in the film, although there are a fair amount of gags that relate to sex and the usual obligatory (I guess) toilet humor. But “Blue Like Jazz,” in it's “desire” to hang on the periphery of “R”rated topics, is so “R” less no one even utters once the F-word.

A couple of quotes are sort of worth mentioning: the lesbian says to Donald, something like, “...you'll never see a human vagina without a credit card.” That's snappy. And from the more intellectual segment of the screenwriting team there's this: “The universe doesn't owe us any meaning. If you want meaning, I suggest a dictionary.”

That might be the only funny line spoken in the film.

Justin Welborn has the supporting role of the Pope. No, not the man who lives at the Vatican, but the “Pope” who goes around campus in a Pope costume making a gigantic ass of himself as the cartooned embodiment of a non-believing, irresponsible student activist out to, for the sake of enlightenment, give the world nihilism.

Oh no. Not another one of those. I remember the Sixties.

Thereon, “Blue Like Jazz” is a series of sequences that get sillier and sillier, but continue shallowly stereotyping their way along to say: all Christians are really dumb (except Donald) and that all those on the Reed campus who neither have faith nor attend religious worship (which is the entire student body) are even dumber.

Those responsible for this script are director Taylor, Donald Miller (that Donald) and Ben Pearson. The screenwriters have done an excellent job of fictionalizing it, as the story comes from the semi-autobiographical novel by Miller that's ridden high on the New York Times Best Seller List.

Call me crazy, but now doesn't seem to me to be a good time to release such a film, unless it's been created merely to mock and exploit the current bad feelings between the religious and those who don't choose to be. But hey, for me, freedom of artistic expression is sacrosanct even if it sucks. So people who've crafted “Blue Like Jazz,” knock yourselves out. But don't expect to me to be watching your next piece of cinema as art.

Writing the goofy, vacuous scenes must have caught up with the screenwriters in time before the team finished, so they try to bring everything around for there to be a grain of satisfaction for the audience and, hopefully, not totally insulting just about everyone who sees the movie, whatever their beliefs.

This is the worst news of all for “Blue Like Jazz.” The ending doesn't work either. The turning-the-corner attempt is like all that precedes: immature, over-their-heads, slapdash pontificating. And suddenly dumping the thinly written mockery to be replaced with a cheesy reversal toward “we're-really-cool-grownup-college-students” puts a very sour cherry on top this flick.

The movie's topic of choice has as much gravity as anything in a society. I find little room for this topic to be the butt of a joke.

Moreover, anyone I would totally disagree with on religion and philosophy for living a life, I think, would be just as put off by this dud as I was. At least, I hope so.

To categorize “Blue Like Jazz,” I'd put it in a niche all to itself: Creepy Comedic Spiritual. I'd also slug a written article about the movies as: Film Like Dumb.

John Coltrane would not be amused.

*Reed College, where some of the film was shot, is located in Portland on Woodstock Boulevard. Need I say more?

Copyright © 2012 by Gary Chew. All Rights Reserved.

Editorial Note: This is an updated version of an article posted. Edits have been made to the name of the actor who plays Donald in the film.

Nothing Fishy About "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"

2012-03-30T17:01:11Z

“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” film review by Gary Chew

“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is a movie about fishing that's not about fishing. It opened Friday at Tower Theater in Sacramento. In fact, it's a good deal like another Lasse Halstrőm's film, "The Cider House Rules,” even though each film has a story totally unlike the other.

Go figure.

Hallstrőm has his main characters (from Paul Torday's novel and Oscar-winner Simon Beaufoy's screenplay) in this 2011 film living in a contemporary world much like it is, except that those characters, although not perfect, are wholly decent.
Yes, “decent” would be the right word to describe them. Characters with such decency also appeared in Hallstrőm's “The Cider House Rules.”

Decency wears quite well, so this fishing movie that's not about fishing plays more than just well because it is replete with humorous dialogue and hilarious circumstances while being smart and political as it gently wafts a moving message right to the heart, via the brain...Not always a route taken for delivering a message.

The Afghanistan War is not wearing well in England. Some news must be generated to perk it up a bit for the Brits. Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the head man for the British Prime Minister. Patricia can do anything, and says just about anything, even to her children.

Over in the Fisheries and Agriculture Department, she brashly recruits salmon expert and avid fisherman Dr. Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor) to sign on to work a high priority project with Harriet (Emily Blunt). Harriet's string of last names takes up an entire paragraph, so we'll just go with Harriet. She is a bright mover and shaker in a distinguished London investment firm.

Sheikh Muhammed (Amr Waked) is a very rich Yemeni and important client Harriet's firm must diligently tend to. Muhammed wants to transport British salmon to the Yemeni River so that he can fish for them there and not just in Scotland, where one of his many estates is located.

Since he is so wealthy, everyone, after a few days’ time, thinks it’s a marvelous concept to have salmon jumping upstream and being caught by Muhammed and his people in Yemen.

Requirements for such a unique concept take lots of money - no problem for Mr. Sheikh, but there are domestic complications for Dr. Jones and his wife, Mary (Rachael Stirling). She, like her husband, is a busy professional with challenges now presenting themselves in her career and must fly off for several weeks for business in Geneva.

Meanwhile, the unmarried Harriet has just met a really cool Captain in the British military. It's love almost at first sight. Unfortunately, soon after their meeting, Captain Mayers (Tom Mison) is deployed to the Afghan strife.

Harriet promises to wait for him... “wait” being defined as a term commonly used in American war movies of the Forties.
Off on the salmon transmigration project go Harriet and Dr. Jones with Patricia in the wings, from where, at appropriate moments in the film, the chances for eliciting hearty chortles run high.

“Fishing” was shot in London, rural Scotland and Morocco. Breathtaking might be the best way to describe landscapes Hallstrőm puts in his picture.

Most impressive is how the cast performs. If Scott Thomas had more face time, the movie would be hers. McGregor's acting chops are fully fine-tuned. This guy is really good. Emily Blunt is strikingly perfect in her part. Amr Waked is sort of a lower-key, less amorous, technicolor Rudolf Valentino.

“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” affected me most, though, with its heart and spirit. I hope Hallstrőm's relevant film can accomplish what it seems to me is, making it possible for more of us to get a glimpse of the forest and the trees at the same time.

Jennifer Lawrence in Orwell's One-Hundred Acre Wood

2012-03-26T19:54:39Z

“The Hunger Games” film review by Gary Chew

There is no doubt as I looked at the expression on Donald Sutherland's face in the final shot of Gary Ross's mucho promo-ed film, “The Hunger Games,” that it's Franchise City for this sci-fi in the woods teen caper that reviewers in my town were not offered an opportunity to see before it opened.

The heroine of the piece, Katniss Everdeen, is played by Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence earned her way to prominence running beautiful Ozark Mountains in the picture, “Winter's Bone.” As Katniss, Jennifer is nearly a carbon copy of the hardscrabble Ree she played in the 2010 movie. Katniss can also kick ass with the best of them while maintaining a big heart for younger, underprivileged females.

She does it in the future though, under the thumb of a nasty totalitarian society that, it's implied, is the outcome of, I'm sorry to say, the American Experiment after an awful event across North of America.

It looks as though Katniss and her nearly starving family live in a poverty-stricken coal mining town that might be called Dystopia, West Virginia. It's located in District 12 of the dozen such regions of the nation now called Panem.

President Snow (Sutherland) is in charge of a motley society of people who look as though they've just been to a costume party for which Stanley Kubrick has provided everyone's wardrobe (including makeup) a la “A Clockwork Orange.”

Panem's stilted cadre of enforcers are reminiscent of George Lucas' weird robotic cops of yore in his memorable “THX-1138.”

The “important” Panemians all seem to be decadent and inclined to bloodsport since “peace” has set in. As (I'm guessing here) football is no longer played in the nation, people need their yearly Hunger Games to watch on a technologically advanced and intrusive television system.

Annually, each of the 12 districts must present a pair of young people to take part in a survivalist fight-to-the-death. Only one person gets to live...and does so, thereafter, with all the fame, assets and glory a great athlete enjoys.

The founding fathers of Panem want to keep the lower class from getting restive about their tough living conditions. They opine that citizens in the Districts having someone to root for keeps them more disposed to hope and reinforces their appreciation of how difficult it's been for Panem to attain its world stature.

Katniss volunteers to take her little sister's place when the younger girl is selected at random, as all participants are. Willow Shields has the role of the younger sister, named Primrose.

The young man from District 12 who's pulled into the Hunger Games is Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). He's had a crush on Katniss for years, but she doesn't know it. Being boy crazy doesn't appear to be her thing.

Participants or “tributes” are taken to the fabulous Capital City for preparation and survival training. It is also a time for them to get personal sponsors for provisions and other kinds of support in order to win the Hunger Games.

Among the mentors or trainers of the young people you'll notice Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy and, of all people, Lenny Kravitz doing the role of Cinna.

The media are a big part of the yearly Panem Hunger Games, primarily through interview programs on television. Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman damn near steals the film with his big-toothed impersonation of a smarmy, exploitative talk show star with a Bob Hope-ish “Monsieur Beaucaire” hairdo. Caesar's co-host is called Claudius Templesmith (Toby Jones).
Is there a waft of Rome in all of this?

When the relatively bloodless but very camera-shaky game begins, Panem’s hidden television devices monitor the chase and mayhem… Even a quiet, warm PG-13 scene between Katniss and Peeta holed up in a cave as Peeta nurses a leg wound.

It occurred to me in a crazy kind of way as I sat watching, that Panem viewers continue looking at their TV screens when the game players went to the bathroom out there in their wooded combat zone. It's the first time I've ever thought about such normal, mundane actions while watching a supposedly heavy movie about an ugly future for mankind.

Orwell and Huxley caused me to think more about how awful it must be to not live one's life without a great deal of freedom.
Speaking of the issues encountered in dystopian stories, other than providing some satisfaction for characters who have our sympathy, the film hasn't a clue what, if anything, can be done to disallow one segment of a population controlling the rest of society.

Again, the subtle yet unsettling look in Donald Sutherland's eyes regarding what he might do next to win his game tells me that everyone should be finding out soon enough.

I close these comments on “The Hunger Games” (which seems to go into extra innings, 2 hours 22 minutes worth) with a nasty headache due to the film's quaking cinematography that some think makes a movie better. I would give it a 7.2 on the Richter Shaky-Movie Scale. Any other numbers or amount of stars for this motion picture should come in well below that mark.

Another Slacker Film...or Is It?

2012-03-16T22:30:35Z

Jeff (Jason Segel) lives in a room in his mother's basement. He's 30 or so and hasn't had a girlfriend since high school. Of course, he's also unemployed, which gives him the opportunity to smoke a little weed when his widowed mom, Sharon (Susan Sarandon), is at the office.

“Jeff, Who Lives at Home,” originally released in 2011, opens Friday in Sacramento at the Crest Theater.

You would think this film is probably not about much of anything, and with Ed Helms (“The Office”) playing Jeff's married brother Pat, you've got another 90 minutes to spend in Slacker City. It's just that Adam Sandler, Will Farrell and Jack Black aren’t in it.

Two guys known as the Duplass brothers are responsible for this motion picture. Jay and Mark also did 2008's “Baghead,” which boasts Sacramento native Greta Gerwig as a cast member.

After cute-sounding music (some of it played on a marimba), our story opens with Jeff getting a call. It seems to be a wrong number. A rude dude is on the line demanding to speak with Kevin. There is no “Kevin” in Sharon and Jeff's house, upstairs or downstairs.

However, since Jeff is in search of his destiny, in a sort of cosmic order kind of way, the name “Kevin” surely must be a sign that is being given unto him.

Following another phone call, this one from his mom barking an order at Jeff, our hero sets out to seek “Kevin.”

On the assigned errand, Jeff boards a bus for the hardware store and spots another guy wearing a basketball jersey. On the back, it cryptically reads “Kevin”! The story really kicks into gear with that seemingly random event on a normal jaunt.

The places Jeff's journey takes him in his ordinary, neat Louisiana hometown continue to suggest: Yes, this is a movie about absolutely nothing.

Nevertheless, I notice that I'm being entertained.

Neat.

“Jeff, Who Lives at Home” is a slacker movie that really delivers the goods when it comes to making you feel good. And you don't even know what's coming.

The film is absolutely about something, for sure. And the Duplass brothers know exactly what that is. I think they’d like to share it with you.

"Pariah": Coming-of-Age Coming-out

2012-03-02T19:29:05Z

Unless you're an Olympic runner or a jogger, this line makes lots of sense: “Running is not choosing.”

This is a line from the new film “Pariah,” a coming-of-age story written and directed by newcomer Dee Rees, opening Friday at the Crest Theater.

Obviously, running is more often a strategy to avoid injury or pain to the body or mind. As the film closes, the thought is embellished in a writing assignment that a 17-year-old African-American girl hands-in.

The student, Alike (ah-LEE-kay), played by Adepero Oduye, lives with her parents and younger sister in Brooklyn. Arthur, the father (Charles Parnell), is a police detective. Audrey, the mom (Kim Wayans), is a secretary in a medical office. Alike and her little sis, Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse), don’t get on too well. But how unusual can it be for sisters to have differences?

What isn’t as “normal” is that Alike thinks she's a closeted lesbian. She wears boys’ clothes at school and changes back to girls’ clothes before getting home with her folks where things are tense. The stress stems from Alike's association with another girl at school and that Arthur may not be attending only to police work that often keeps him away from home well past dinner.

Office life for Audrey is average. It's her effort to keep the family collected, mainly at the dinner table, and on a traditional path that weighs heavily.

She is suspicious of Alike's sexual orientation and seeks to match up Alike with another girl her age. Her name is Bina (Aasha Davis). Her mom and Alike's mom work together. Bina shows Alike
to other social perks.

There's no explicit sex play in the film, only some tender girl/girl kissing, but the language spoken is what one would expect teenagers to use while at an urban high school, club or party

Alike's best school friend is Laura (Pernell Walker). She appears too butch for Audrey. Laura is a lesbian that's come out, and although she and Alike are just good buds, she's taken with Alike. And
to me, the way Laura shows genuine concern for Alike reminded me of the grounded, no nonsense character Janet McTeer plays but didn't receive a statue for at February's Oscar bash. McTeer played the tall lesbian who lives as a man in 19th century Dublin with a “wife” in “Albert Nobbs.”

Alike's mother takes the suspicions of her daughter further and demands Arthur confront Alike about the girl's sexual preference. As Arthur questions his daughter, he shows a need to not know the answer, and stuffs it. Audrey doesn't go for stuffing the possibility. Tempers flare. The girls are shaken by all the family dissonance.

“Pariah” is a typical, raw-edged urban drama with no big surprises. It carries with it the importance of a young person breaking free from the construct of social expectation. The film is making a clear statement, using the Alike character as a somewhat confused, smart young woman who, despite the discord and her emerging feeling, has her feet on the ground and wants to make something of herself, even if that might be what neither her parents nor society at large wants her to pursue and become.

To a person, the cast seems as if she or he is living the character and might have some personal experience in the matters at hand in “Pariah.” All are physically striking and real in their roles.

It would be satisfying to see the “Pariah” cast go onto other good roles in solid films and make some waves in the business of acting All show the talent for it.

Now, to the palsied camerawork.

I don't like it. My eyes go nuts. I got dizzy with having to watch shaky, extreme close-ups for nearly 90 minutes. It's seems appropriate for those who've watched quivering TV camerawork all their lives as well as the many movies shot in such fashion. It likely works for them.

For those unaccustomed to jiggly cinematography, I think there should be a Richter scale rating for films using this technique. You know, like: Rated-R...6.8.

I listened more than I looked.

The film is of high technical quality, otherwise. Ms. Rees has expanded the feature I saw from her shorter, award winning documentary (same title) that took favor at Sundance last year. From time to time,I believe I saw some differences in the coloration of the screened film, but that didn't present itself as a problem.

The freight “Pariah” carries are those words written by the character (or in real-time, by Ms. Rees), and referred to in the first paragraph.

“Running is not choosing” is what Alike speaks to her father after she tells him of her decision to leave home and move on to college to sharpen her writing skills. The sentence is part of a poem about breaking free. She reads all of it to her Poetry/Literature teacher.

The poem gives “Pariah” punch.

Ms. Dees' movie speaks to a young demographic. Unstable camera work is part of that scene. But looking forward, Dees might want to consider locking-down more of her shots. She has a good eye for filling a frame, and the way she writes poetry, it’s obvious she knows that, at the end of the reel, it’s the writing that counts most.

All good directors and actors say that the most important thing they're doing is telling a story.

Cronenberg Goes Freudian

2012-02-06T19:31:34Z

“A Dangerous Method”
A Film Review by Gary Chew

Not being a student of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung or Sabina Spielrein (not to mention Otto Gross), it's difficult knowing to what extent accuracy has been taken in David Cronenberg's “A Dangerous Method.” But suppose that what's depicted in this really chatty film is what happened, starting - as it did - one century and eight years ago. Right now, the film is playing at Sacramento's Tower Theater, Broadway at Land Park Drive.

Let's begin with a line spoken by Viggo Mortensen (as Dr. Sigmund Freud). With the soaring phrase of the sentence being “...the black mud of superstition,” it's easy to infer that Cronenberg continues his intellectual-like and rather kinky cinematic surveys.

With “Method” there's guilt, doctor/patient and teacher/student relationships, as well as what drives human sexuality and any connection it might have to death...all with occasional strains of Wagner quietly sounding in the background. Cronenberg and Lar von Trier (“Melancholia”) were big on Wagner in 2011. Surely somewhere in one of these movies, there's a Siegfried.

As I watched “A Dangerous Method,” I expected Friedrich Nietzsche to suddenly appear any second. But he didn't, which says something about the historical accuracy of the film. Nietzsche died a hundred and twelve years ago.

”Method” is a curiously constructed triangle of real persons in a story that has only two of them involved sexually, but all three intellectually engaged.

The intellectual part has to do with what makes human brains tick which, in turn, signals emotions and thus, actions taken...due to the kind of ticking going on. In this case, in the brain of Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Actually, Spielrein was Russian-born and became one of the first female psychiatrists.

Sabina, “almost in a basket,” you might say, is institutionalized and comes under the “talking cure” of Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Jung's wealthy, lovely and mild-mannered- yet intuitive -wife, Emma (Sarah Gadon) is with child.

After some overacted scenes by Knightly in varying states of hysteria, which seem to be a product of Sabina's earlier life with a jerk of an authoritarian father, she and Jung succumb to sex play (definitely a doctor/patient no-no).

The couple then swears-off the liaison (Jungian guilt?) for a while and Carl becomes Sabina's unofficial graduate adviser as she finalizes her doctoral dissertation (definitely a teacher/student no-no). The subject of her dissertation brings the principals closer together.

Thickening the psychological brew a bit is a real psychoanalytic pagan of a fellow called Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel). It's decadence in full-swing as Gross, in therapy with Jung, nearly persuades his somewhat religious psychiatrist to a rather anarchistic attitude of life and sex.

Does it just happen, at about that time, Carl and Sabina become intimate? Maybe a question on her final quiz should've been, “Who's treating whom?” It comes out that, like Sabina, Otto also has a very strict father.

Freud's character is held at somewhat of a distance, although it plays an important part in the script. I've never seen Mortensen better in a role.

Fassbender, doing Jung, is smooth as glass. Cassel, you'd swear, is Otto Gross, particularly if you’ve ever happened to look up information on the historical Mr. Gross. Although hardly as well-known as Freud, Gross was on a Freudian path maybe a bit before Sigmund, but apparently he wasn't nearly as well-organized and responsible as the Father of Psychoanalysis.

“Method” is much with conversation and little on action, but the historical importance of the film and its personalities, as they relate to the beginning of the 20th century and what's soon to follow (WWI), provide most of its fuel. Closing the eyes occasionally won't cause you to miss a lot of this movie, even though there's a lot to get.

A play titled “The Talking Cure” was used by its playwright for the “Dangerous Method” adaptation. He also did the screenplay for the excellent film, “Atonement.” Christopher Hampton is his name. Both his play and movie script about Freud, Jung and Spielrein rattle about, ironically, what might be called the “psycho-circumstance” of today. All the debate of how the mentally disturbed are best treated, particularly as Freudian Psychology was coming into vogue, seems to pale and fall moot, since fewer contemporary patients receive “the talking cure,” unless they can afford it.

It's more often that a cathartic shrink one-on-one is supplanted by a vial of capsules or tablets prescribed by a psychiatrist in an office somewhere.

Don't forget to sign-off on the Seroquel, Sigmund.

Two Actor Oscar Nominations for "Nobbs"

2012-01-27T01:01:52Z

Surely destined for cable on Lifetime or Oxygen, “Albert Nobbs” is now playing downtown at the Crest Theater on K Street in Sacramento. The movie is a longtime project of the renowned film actor Glenn Close. She just took an Oscar nomination for her lead performance in the film. Ms. Close is one of its producer and also co-wrote the screenplay with John Banville. “Albert Nobbs” was adapted from a 1927 novella by the Irish Realist George Moore, a male* literary figure who influenced the work of James Joyce.

It was a friend of mine who jokingly mentioned once that cable TV channels marketing entertainment for women should be lumped into a single category, and also offered up a name for such a niche. It would have a 5-letter identification like MSNBC, but instead, would be called MANDG. “It stands for 'Men Are No Damned Good,”she told me with a grin.

Any female reading this should not push my words aside just yet, for “Albert Nobbs” serves a very good purpose to identify the lay of today's land---and why---as the sexual orientation fracas and its ramifications hopefully edge forward.

Albert (Close) is a woman in waiter's garb. The phlegmatic Mr. Nobbs is by all exterior appearances

a small, retiring man who works in a mid-19th century Dublin hotel that today would rate five stars. Certainly it was a man's world then. Had there been buses to take, working class females would have been riding the vehicles' back bumpers...or walking...or hustling.

Albert recounts to Hubert (also a cross-dressing woman) that she, Albert, had been gang raped at 14. The horrific event (not shown) traumatized Albert into asexuality and threw her into a life of servile isolation attending to needs of the upper-middle class. No one else knows Albert's true gender, except maybe a little boy who occasionally stays with relatives at the hotel.

Hubert---played by Janet McTeer, who's just taken an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actress doing the role--- learns of Albert's actual sex only because Hubert accidentally sees Albert's bare breasts while in the room they're sharing. Nobbs has been ordered by the domineering hotel manager, Mrs. Baker (Pauline Collins), to let Hubert stay the night with Nobbs in the modest waiter's quarters. After all, the pseudo-religious and obsequious-to-guests Mrs. Baker apprehends both Albert and Hubert as male. The Baker role is the juiciest of the cast, by the way.

It's especially apparent in several scenes that show Close and other actors playing their subservient parts with expressionless, downcast eyes. The waitpersons seem to be hoping they “aren't present” right there on the premises among the convivial guests---until a task needs to be performed. Mrs. Baker is most strict about her help being overly deferential to patrons.

Hubert, in her closeted identity as a tall, well-grounded handyman, is married, so to speak, to another woman who lives her life as a female. On a per chance visit to the couple's Dublin home, Nobbs sees the pair together. Thus is born in Albert's head that she, too, might make an effort to enrich her life but maintain her secret.

Albert is responsible, hard-working, obedient and keeps a nice stash of saved-up cash under the floorboards in her quarters. She dreams of owning, one day, a tobacco shop. She longs to live above

the shop with a wife, like “regular” people in Dublin did then. Mr. Nobbs is a withdrawn and reticent entreprenurial lesbian who only wants to settle down to a quiet, independent life in the sexually-repressed Victorian culture.

Another worker at the hotel suffering the slings and arrows trickling down from haughty guests, seemingly inundated in their own sense of entitlement is Helen, a young, randy maid, played by Mia Wasikowska. She is the very model of the Victorian lustful female---who goes for guys. The joe she goes for is called Joe and played by Aaron Johnson. The out-of-a-job Joe happens on to employment with Mrs. Baker by repairing her non-functioning boiler in the hotel basement just as more important people are about to arrive at the establishment.

It's not long before Helen and the handsome Joe are lovers, and Helen becomes pregnant. All the while, Albert has been setting “his” derby---in a very proper way---for Helen, what with the waiter's domestic-inspiring visit to Hubert's comfy home with wife.

That's when the “Men Are No Damned Good” cable channel concept goes full-throttle: Joe gets cold feet about being a husband and father. Helen is smashed by his turn. It also stimulates Albert to pursue Helen even more (in a proper suitor-like manner) to become her spouse and the “father” of Joe's child. What happens thereon: my lips are sealed.

Another interesting supporting character in the picture is the hotel physician, played by the very excellent Brendan Gleeson. Dr. Halloran, along with some of the male help, is usually in his cups; a good man yes, but still with a Victorian perspective about the intimacies on which “Albert Nobbs” focuses.

The non-explicit love scenes are primarily heterosexual, except for some transient kissing between Ms. Close and Ms. Wasikowska. That afternoon moment, a on park bench, seems more educational on the part of Helen showing Albert how kissing done rather than anything related to foreplay.

Rodrigo Garcia, son of the famed Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Márquez, draws fine performances from his mostly Irish cast, and helps bring to our time---and probably not a minute too soon---George Moore's very un-Victorian message: what's best for a person is being him or herself, whatever Queen Victoria might otherwise think or decree.

*Amantine Lucile Dupin (aka George Sand) made me write this line into the text.

"Carnage": Albee Style, Almost

2012-01-21T02:27:27Z

“Carnage” A Film Review by Gary Chew
Sacramento, California January 20, 2012

Occasionally a play is good enough that it will eek itself into a motion picture. Since plays tend to be rather static, it's common that when they're made for cinema, people who seldom go to the Theater complain about the movie being different from most other films they see.

That can be said of Roman Polanski's new film, “Carnage.” As a play, it won the 2009 Best Play Tony. On stage it was known as “Le Dieu du Carnage” (“God of Carnage”), written by Yasmina Reza, the Paris-born Jewish playwright/actress/screenwriter of Iranian/Hungarian parentage. Ms. Reza and Polanski wrote the screenplay.

The first 10 minutes of the picture had almost put me in a snit for what looked to be a slow-rolling ninety minutes or so to come, when, all of a sudden, it didn't matter it was a movie of a play I was seeing. As Leon Russell once wrote in his best song, “... the words got in the way.”

Well actually, it was the dialogue.

And it was Jody Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly up there being the only characters in this work that speaks volumes about the real possibility that many contemporary people are determined to be so terribly“civilized” that they're savage.

I knew that what we had here at the neat, old Tower movie house at Land Park and Broadway in Sacramento was the Theater---at work. I settled in.

Who's afraid of a little carnage when it takes place in a nicely appointed middle-class apartment overlooking the big city, I ask. There live Mr. and Mrs. Longstreet (Foster plays Penelope; Reilly is Michael). Visiting the Longstreets for the first time (the couples have never met) are Mr. and Mrs. Cowan (Winslet is Nancy; Waltz, Alan).

Penelope, or Penny, is into art and saving Darfur. Michael sells products for the home. He's done well. Penny is sort of liberal and wannabe art patroness, working part time in a bookstore. She's even co-authored a book. And it comes out later, after a few scotches, that Michael might listen to right wing talk radio when no one's around. But he's nice guy.

A little higher-up the money chain, Nancy doesn't work, and Alan is an attorney who is called on his cell every 3 or 4 minutes regarding a legal matter connected with one of his clients (a pharmaceutical firm) and the sale of a particular medicine that could be dangerous to the health of a patient using it. And guess what son named Michael has an elderly mother who takes that med.

What brought on this afternoon chat at the Longstreet's is that their son, Zachary, has been smacked in the face with a stick by the Cowan's son, Ethan. It happened in the schoolyard. And Zac sustained incisor damage. Otherwise, he's good to go.

The Longstreets and the Cowans are rational human beings, living urbane, responsible lives. Each of them only wants to do the right thing. How could anything go wrong?

Stuff starts going wrong about 10 minutes in, just when I was trying to pull myself out of the snit about this being a sluggish, static stage play put to film.

This brings me to a point I like to make, now and then: dude, it's the story that's important...then the “cinemagic” or the great film director/auteur stuff follows right behind it. Some movie experts tend to forget that. Taking one more shot at this point: Have you ever seen a really visually astounding film that's well-directed in the many ways it takes, but has a script that sucks? I have.

Digression finished: “Carnage” really gets terribly ugly and you get to laugh much of the way. Nancy barfs on expensive art books. Alan's cell gets thrown in the bowl of water, just under the real tulips. In the living room, Penny gets agressively physical---in a non-amorous way---with her husband. And Michael gets out his 17-year-old-scotch for everybody in this party of four. As stated earlier, he is a nice guy.

All it is...is...just really great actors, really getting into some really juicy roles...and probably having a ball while on the shoot that was done in Paris yet, through the windows, looks like New York. And don't forget the really fine music, at the top and bottom of the film, composed by Alexandre Desplat.

My only criticism is that the role of Alan should have been played with a little less snark. The words Alan speaks do the talking. And the script is a little limp keeping the Cowans there so long for the melée. (Maybe a storm, outside, could have kept them there.) I think I would've walked out of the Longstreet digs about ten minutes after being let in---unless, of course, Liz and Dick had been the couple who'd asked me over.

Mr. Albee, your cell phone is buzzing.

Please Know: "Shame" Is Not "Shane"

2012-01-19T20:05:07Z

“Shame” a Film Review by Gary Chew
Sacramento, California January 7, 2012

You’d think seeing this film way back in 2011 that I’d probably forgotten most of it by now, but since it has such an out-of-the ordinary theme, it’s kept itself more clearly in my mind than maybe I’d really like for it to. The movie is now playing downtown on K Street at Sacramento’s Crest Theater. Its title is, “Shame.” No, I said “Shame,” not “Shane.”

“Shame” is rated NC-17. And nowhere do you ever see an image of Alan Ladd on a horse. And how could it be directed by anyone else except David Cronenberg? ...the man who also gave us such heart-warming motion pictures as the first film titled, “Crash,” “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises,” “Naked Lunch,” “Dead Ringers,” “Scanners,” “Videodrome,” “Rabid,” “eXistenZ,” “The Fly” and another favorite, “They Came From Within.”

But back to “Shame.” What you get, here are bare breasts, pudenda of both genders, fleeting glimpses of Michael Fassbender's unfettered package...and bodacious, but genitalia-out-of-frame sex-play. It all shows up just quite a lot in “Shame” for those who can handle loveless, self-absorbed coitus with serial partners; 99% of it, hetero. There’s also more than enough of---if you will---onanism implied in the film.

Fassbender is a busy boy. He's also in a movie soon to play in Sacramento called “A Dangerous Method,” displaying in it his Jungian method of acting as a professional fellow named Carl. And if that weren't enough Fassbender does a few rounds with Gina Carano in Steve Soderberg's new fast-paced action/sort-or-parody called “Haywire” now opening.

Mr. Fassbender's character in “Shame” is Brandon, a sex addict, if you haven't already guessed. But putting the, umm, cherry on top of this sex sundae, it's Carey Mulligan as Sissy. As his sibling, Sissy is a bit younger and has more issues than a porcupine has quills.
Sis's biggest problem, and her brother's as well, is that they have sex with lots of people but, more to the point---WITH EACH OTHER, too. Yip...but I don't want to write the word used to describe such carryings-on, even though the late, great George Carlin could’ve easily spewed it on a live broadcast without so much as taking one wound.

Ms. Mulligan is stellar in “Shame.” Her scene, done in almost one take, of slowly singing all of “New York, New York” in the lounge of a small, contemporary New York City club approaches the mesmerizing. It's one of “Shame’s” best.

With “Shame,” however, Mulligan seems to be slipping, onto sort
of a Jody-Foster-like victim-track---that, despite Carey being known for playing much more agreeable characters than the mighty Ms. Foster. At a fast pace, Mulligan has been showing up often in good films over recent years. Also in 2011, she was in “Drive”...and in 2010, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” and “Never Let Me Go.” She was nominated for an Oscar playing the lead in the excellent 2009 film, “An Education.”

Mulligan and Fassbender, both, have received nominations for their performances in “Shame although the film really belongs to Fassbender.
It seems the lank, muscular actor was almost destined to have gotten the part of Brandon, what with seeing him play the role of the late Bobby Sands in the gaunt and excruciating film, “Hunger.” That's Steve McQueen's 2008 picture about up-close conflict between Northern Irish captives and their British-loyalist prison guards. Fassbender, when only partially clothed in either movie, may be the skinniest, yet most svelte string bean in the garden.

He's outstanding in “Shame” and that's in spite of it not being possible to care for his debauched character. Depraved almost as much as Cronenberg's aforementioned “Crash,” “Shame's” subtle message, which doesn't come until its final seconds, is: how especial love and respect are to a bonded relationship. You have to keep yourself focused on the faces of the actors doing this last scene---on a subway---in order to pick-up on it, but...it's there.

Cronenberg has given “Shame” this very fleeting, but powerful payoff. But, it’s a good one, even for a movie that's packed with
moments that are bound to generate unease for anyone who has the courage to see it.

Woody Guthrie, Born 1912: Country Joe McDonald Remembers Him at the 24th Street Theater

2012-01-05T23:48:36Z

Country Joe McDonald Remembers Woody Guthrie's100th Birthday in Sacramento, Saturday, January 7, 2012.

Woody Guthrie was born in July of 1912. My father was born in January of 1911. My dad always reminded me of Woody Guthrie. Both men were short, wiry and grew up poorer than Job's turkey.

My father didn't play the guitar or compose songs and sing them. He worked in the oil fields of Oklahoma and Kansas, not far from where Woody did much of his growing up. My dad kept his job all through the not-so-Great Depression.

Woody WAS the Depression. He lived it. And so, a man who died too soon in 1967 lives on through his astonishing legacy of gritty, honest songs for working people. Why, you might ask. It's because Woodrow Wilson Guthrie's songs, then and now, inform ordinary folks of their importance to the success of this American Experiment that continues.

Country Joe McDonald appears Saturday in a tribute to Guthrie at Sacramento's 24th Street Theater in the Sierra 2 Center for Arts and Community. Tickets are available at http://www.swellproductions.com/pages/countryjoe.html Showtime: 7:30 pm.

This Guthrie remembrance won't be any kind of an experiment, whatsoever. A more recent legend himself, Country Joe has asked Alex Nelson, Sherman Baker and Richard March to be his special guests. Such a roster of musicians indicates lots of experimentation and research has gone before, and what you get is to just sit back and drink-in the musicianship of these talented guys saluting that scrawny but “ten-foot-tall” kid who rode the rails out of Okemah, Oklahoma, knowing so well what land belonged to whom.

On a recent trip back to my adopted hometown of Tulsa, about 65 miles north and a bit east of Okemah, I stopped by the offices of a new periodical (also online) called THIS LAND. The publication is replete with new literature and art that fits that region of the USA. Woody is prominent in the tone of these times there. An old broadcast colleague of mine boasts a son who is the poetry editor at THIS LAND.

The New York Times recently published a lengthy story about big money in Tulsa taking notice of Guthrie's contribution to American folk music, not unlike the recent and also long overdue recognition of Tulsa's own singer/songwriter, Leon Russell. It's always good going back to Tulsa one more time.

The time now is ripe for a boxcar load of Woody's songs to be sung right in front of you and your friends. Country Joe McDonald is the man to do the performance.

The socially consciously Country Joe (and the Fish), as most everyone knows, not only rattled cages back in the Sixties with just about all the other famous bands of those vigorously political days, but did a 1971 movie written by the zaniest heavy comedy group I've ever heard on vinyl, The Firesign Theatre. The film was called “Zachariah,” and starred that adroit Kansas native, Don Johnson. The movie was billed as history's first Electric Western. I saw it in Tulsa and wouldn't have missed it for the world. As I still write film reviews, I recommend you see Country Joe in that nutty Western.

I would be almost as stoked thinking about re-seeing “Zachariah,” as I'm now getting pumped to see Country Joe McDonald doing Woody Guthrie songs this Saturday at Sacramento's 24th Street Theater. Check it out. You never know, one of Woody's most attentive and loyal students, Bob Dylan, might show up.

Unlike Woody with migrant workers, my dad didn't travel West to California in the Dust Bowl Days with two of his brothers from southeast Kansas. They needed a job...bad. Both had long, successful careers with McDonald/Douglas down in Long Beach. Both of my uncles are now at rest up in the foothills near Magalia and Paradise. They, too, were a bit like Woody Guthrie.

Solving the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Puzzle

2012-01-05T21:57:50Z

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” A Film Review by Gary Chew
Sacramento November 14, 2011

The film had run only five minutes duration when something in my head told me that, before getting too comfy in my seat, maybe I should have become a member of the “mens club” sponsoring this movie screening. There was nothing to indicate such a club, and if there were, I certainly wasn't part “it. No one had asked me to leave yet. But that silent, but nagging voice persevered throughout “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” If you might not remember, it's the durable story taken from the same-titled novel by John le Carré.

This new edition of TTSS outclassed me by a least two polo fields. It's a very well made picture with marvelous players. There they were up on the screen: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon McBurney and other fine British, Hungarian and Russian actors.

But gee, what was going on with the film? At first, I couldn't tell. Then much later, I still couldn't figure out what was happening but the movie was really well done and the topic was dreadfully important: Brits cold-warring against Ruskies with those bloody Yanks helping out. No, not soldiers or sailors or marines or even air force personnel, these guys were all spooks and, as John Hurt (in the role of Control) advises a colleague in TTSS's first scene, “Trust no one.” Sure enough, they don't. Not even one another. But that's okay, because these blokes are only tacky to one another there in their isolated guys spy club. And in a most mannerly, umm...manner.

Gossip has it that someone highly placed in the Her Majesty's Spy Club (fondly and privately referred to as “The Circus”) has burrowed into top-secret data that moves through the office. The clever mole is feeding it to Moscow!

Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, the retired and out-of-favor former operative brought back into The Circus to run the investigation and remove the mole that's burrowed. The terms, “mole” and “The Circus” were brought to espionage literature by John le Carré.

Years ago, I'd seen Richard Burton in “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.” It was taken from Mr. le Carré's best-selling same titled novel. I read the book too, but since that was a half century ago, there isn't a keen sense of memory about turning its pages. However, the movie lingers a little.

I do remember le Carré's writings as a sort of an antidote to Ian Fleming's 007 escapades. At the time, Mr. Bond's capers seemed well on their way to breaking records selling tickets and moving books. Sure enough.

Shot in black and white, The “Spy Who Came In from the Cold,” was dreary, real and relevant...about a character who seemed to be, perhaps, more what a spy was during the Cold War.

Both Fleming and le Carré were spies; Fleming, a British Naval Intelligence Officer and le Carré serving in MI 5 and MI 6. Fleming wrote with style and flair; le Carré went for what's real and more internal at a spy agency as well as the main characters in it. Both authors were overwhelmingly successful.

It's taking a long time to say that...if you haven't read the book, seen the BBC and PBS television miniseries...or heard the BBC radio productions of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” the movie may not be your pint of ale...unless you enjoy watching really talented actors delivering obtusely written lines of quite abstruse dialogue as to how to neutralize the mole in their midst. Just know there are copious blanks that need filling-in as TTSS carries on. Readers of the book and avid viewers of the TV programs do have the distinct advantage of memory and thus, clarity.

I was naive enough to think that the screenplay might be crafted to bring what the story is about to those of us who'd missed the book or don't have a television set. Seems to me one of the most important efforts in adapting a novel to cinema is giving as much as possible about what and why stuff happens. Otherwise, inform the prospective viewers of TTSS that it---alone---doesn't relate enough of the story to discern what the bloody hell is going on. The notice for this could be given using much the same language as just written.

This “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is directed by Tomas Alfredson. By the way,

recent picture by Alfredson is one of the best films I've seen in the last few years: “Let The Right One In.” Capital cinema!

Looks like the scriptwriters of the new “TTSS” kept a firm hold on the book, not
making any special effort to get the story across to a moviegoer. Such is the challenge for one who adapts books to cinema.

Mr. le Carré not only plays one of the guests seen in an obstreperous TTSS holiday party scene, but is also one of the film's producers. I was wondering how much sway le Carré had over Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor when they were busy writing the screenplay.

Oh yes, le Carré is listed in the cast as a Christmas party guest. It's not clear whether or not Mr. Le Carré appears as Santa Claus (sans lines) at the spy guy's holiday bash wearing a falsified face of Vladimir Lenin..................well............

...the Santa scene worked for me. Lenin as Santa? Don't you just love irony? Especially when it shows up in a re-do of a British spy yarn about mates who love to eradicate moles and solve puzzles and riddles---in an exclusive mens club.

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy opens Friday, January 6th, at Sacramento's Tower Theatre, Land Park Drive and Broadway.

Sacramento's Year for Al Stewart

2011-12-06T21:15:21Z

In 2011---A Year of the Cat---
Swell-Productions and SBL Entertainment Bring Al Stewart to Harlow's

by Gary Chew

I've wanted to see and hear this dude in person ever since first listening to his recording of “Year of the Cat.” Now in this Year of the Cat, 2011, my wish comes true Sunday, December 18th at Harlow's, 2708 J Street, across from Sacramento's Marshall Park.

If you know the words to Al Stewart's “Year of the Cat” and have hassled with your pals conjecturing about what those gauzy lyrics mean, you know that The Year of the Cat is a stretch of time in the Vietnamese version of the Chinese Zodiac. A Year of the Cat, in terms of, uh...time passages...relates to sensitivity, gentleness and kindness.

Just about a year after the US military exited Vietnam, Stewart recorded this haunting song that has become a quiet classic. Every dozen years a Year of the Cat comes along. Looking backwards on the calendar, here are those years from recent decades since Stewart made the record: 2011, 1999, 1987 and 1975.

If you don't know the words, Google “Year of the Cat” and put your mind to the text of its fetching imagery, like (if you're a Bogart fan): “...strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime.” The lyrics are a sensual allusion of images that can hook a listener, I guess it could be said---but changes in the music might be a bigger hook.

In an amateurish way, I analyzed the chord structure to the so singable “Year of the Cat” to find how much of it might contribute to the secret of the song's strong appeal. Each time Mr. Stewart holds the note singing the last word in the title, the piece takes on a lamentably lovely tone color. That note is in strong dissonance with the fundamental foundation of the chord of notes being played on the stringed instruments and keyboards---but such a gentle, half-step dissonance it is.

Then suddenly, the chord shifts to a somewhat more somber, pure, minor chord with the same note Al has sung stressed. At that moment, that note now becomes a part of another set of notes the band has played on to. Repetition of that sequence through the song with resolutions to a brighter, major chord nails your ears to the back of your head, if the championship words haven't already captured your heart and soul---as does the girl in the silk dress who Stewart and his co-composer, Peter Wood, imagine in “Year of the Cat.”

Just hearing Al Stewart sing and play “Year of the Cat” is worth the price of admission. (Online at www.Harlows.com is where to get tickets.) But there are other unforgettable songs Stewart sings. A few are: “Time Passages,” “Running Man,” “Delia's Gone,” “Roads to Moscow,” “Song on the Radio,” “Midnight Rocks” “Lord Grenville,” “Merlin's Time,” “On the Border” and---looking ahead---“Nostradamus.”

Al's latest CD is titled Sparks of Ancient Light.

Former Michigan Govenor Granholm Lunches on 9th Street

2011-10-18T22:40:42Z

Former Michigan Governor, Jennifer Granholm cozied up to members and guests at today's Sacramento Press Club Luncheon. She and her husband, Daniel Mulhern, have written a book that was available for attendees. It's called a "A Governor's Story.

The savvy couple's lively presentation was very casual, but smooth. Mostly discussed were problems Granholm faced as governor, and how they mesh with other current as well as future strategies business and government might connect for the benefit of sharpening America's competitive skills among nations.

Granholm is soon to host a daily cable television talk show on Current TV. It will be adjacent to Keith Olbermann's "Countdown." The title for Granholm's program is "The War Room."

The former FULL time, TWO term governor appeared not to be necessarily doing cable TV talk to compete with Current TV's Mr. Olbermann or, for that matter, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. But Granholm, who also appears to be a bring-it-on kind of person, would likely take any winning numbers that come her way.

Current TV, a project of former Vice-President Al Gore, is available in Sacramento from cable providers.

Gary Chew - 10-18-11

Disclosure: No personal connection. I was a paying guest to the event. Wanted to hear Granholm, not on camera, video, or my TV set.

No Prisoners Taken Tonight @ Harlow's

2011-10-16T05:26:56Z

Taking No J Street Prisoners by Gary Chew - Sacramento October 15, 2011

You'd never know it but, Louis Prima, Jr. is a very serious man. I thought he might not be that way after my being next to some of his dad's very jumping and jiving music over the decades.

I listened to his father's music, and played it on my record shows, as well. Yes, I'm sure there are very few people who don't remember Louis Sr., and Keely Smith burning-up the room with “I Got You Under My Skin,” “That Old Black Magic” and “When the Saints Go Marching In,” to name only three.

All seriousness aside: Louis Jr. with singer Sarah Siegle and the Witnesses, do music that, if it were tooling down I-80, would come straight at you like a ten-ton truck: no slowing down and always rendered in an absolute full-bore performance. No prisoners taken tonight at Harlow's.

Actually, Louis Jr. is only serious about having a good time. And what made this good time cool was...Prima's bass man wore a circa 1958 Frank Sinatra hat. Then there's Louis' drummer who can do Mick Jagger, singing “Can't Get No Satisfaction” better than Keith Richards.

The son had nice words about h is famous father, too. And the guys and lovely gal also did two standards composed by Louis Prima, “I Want a Sunday Kind of Love” and “Sing, Sing, Sing.”

I don't want to take anything away from the great drummer, Gene Krupa, but Mr. Krupa might not have been as famous at what he did so well if Louis Prima hadn't written that tune Benny Goodman put very much on everybody's map.

At the close, I got the feeling that Louis Prima, Jr. and his ensemble felt good doing their Vegas-esque show in the Capital City of California. I think the cat would like to come back to Sac and drive his really solid, tight, ten-ton truck right up J Street---spilling joyous music all over our clean, pretty sidewalks.

The only thing that might have been questionable about tonight at Harlow's is that...everybody probably had way too much fun.

Prima, Jr. Plays Sacramento

2011-10-11T22:06:37Z

Jump Jazz Arrives Oct 15th at Harlow’s

Jumping, jiving and wailing debut all at once in Sacramento for one night only with Louis Prima, Jr. and his Witnesses, Saturday, October 15th at Harlow's. The sizzling nine piece dinner/dance group direct from Las Vegas boasts the regal Sarah Spiegel on vocals.

Two of America's greatest songwriters, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer had a long procession of famous singers record their outrageously fine standard, “That Old Black Magic.” But the Arlen/Mercer collaborative never had it so good as when a really rarified version of that super song hit #18 on the Billboard Hot 100. The names Louis Prima and Keely Smith do have a familiar ring to them, don't they? Yes, they do. I can hear the solo cymbal introduction to their solidly swinging 1958 rendition of the the Arlen/Mercer fave in my head, right now.

It's more of the same as Louis Prima, Jr. hits this city, straight ahead, taking his famous father's group further into the future with the lauded jump jazz repetoire Dad always put over the plate and in the pocket for those who enjoy good music and good times---both at the same time. Using the original charts and doing the show called " The Wildest" that the Rat Pack loved--we'll get to hear " Just A Gigolo, " " Jump , Jive an' Wail", "Sing, Sing, Sing," as well as that well-woven, "Old Black Magic."

Louis Jr., the only boy in the Prima family, was a special arrival for Louis Sr. since the younger was born in 1965 on Father's Day. The talent definitely rubbed off. And the chance to see and hear just how well it did happens Saturday night, October 15th at Harlow's in Sacramento, 2708 and J St., just across from Marshall Park. The downbeat is at 7 PM.

From Gary Chew Sacramento, California submitted 10.11.11

Disclosure: I know Mindy Giles, who is part of the production team booking- the Prima people. She asked me to write it for her. gcin