tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77522460433794734182024-03-15T21:11:58.173-04:00Stub HubbyMovie Ticket Stubs. I have kept mine. All of them. SINCE 1990. Read on...Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comBlogger1442125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-40002159742900762792024-03-10T12:00:00.139-04:002024-03-13T11:06:40.691-04:00Wonka [2023]<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkWzAsBy68MK8VWUXLkNPVUDSm8zWgE6n35O485s55xMpIy1Kup4e1HyIjPbwnKhP3rQEVdbjSHUndulsyK99cShVjYDxYxDTC3tkxNenzvqYOPFmZhc-oCbgSkmQW7jFmeP9i7Nr8gRu2Vu9kBIgxIOkPIkKBvd2fT__S2pCIfEyrCuWsBmCsNH2JLW0n/s755/wonka_ver17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkWzAsBy68MK8VWUXLkNPVUDSm8zWgE6n35O485s55xMpIy1Kup4e1HyIjPbwnKhP3rQEVdbjSHUndulsyK99cShVjYDxYxDTC3tkxNenzvqYOPFmZhc-oCbgSkmQW7jFmeP9i7Nr8gRu2Vu9kBIgxIOkPIkKBvd2fT__S2pCIfEyrCuWsBmCsNH2JLW0n/s320/wonka_ver17.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>I am not a particular fan of the 1970s <b>Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory</b>, so that wasn't a draw for me. I only agreed to watch it because the team behind the <b>Paddington</b> movies made it, and my wife and kids liked it. The Roald Dahl novel tells some of the story of Wonka's beginnings, there's plenty of room for an origin story. I'm supportive of this movie being a musical too. I am disappointed in some of the other choices, and the results. <b>I didn't like it.</b> I may not have even finished it if my kids weren't with me.<p></p><p>Mild Spoilers Ahead: Maybe other people have less distaste for this, but I hate Dickensian stories where innocent, kind-hearted, naïve protagonists are tricked into/press-ganged into perpetual slavery. Did the filmmakers think the cartoonish performances from Oscar winner Olivia Colman and Tom Davis (as Scrubitt and Bleacher) would dilute/soften the peril? It didn't for me. Was the song where all the wage slaves sing about their perpetual toil supposed to make their fate seem less sad and permanent? Again, not so much.</p><p>Then there's Noodle (Calah Lane). Am I crazy but is this offensive - her uncle kidnaps his newborn niece from his sister-in-law, then attempts to murder the baby, and then she's condemned to perpetual slavery, and this is a Black girl?!</p><p>Beyond Scrubitt and Bleacher, Wonka's other adversaries are the three evil chocolatiers in London. The dynamic between Wonka and Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickelgruber remains static until the very last possible moment of the movie: Wonka attempts to sell his chocolates, the SPF use their corrupt power to challenge Wonka. Wonka refuses to give up, SPF challenge him again, forward, reverse, forward, reverse, until SPF finally bribe Wonka, then double-cross him and attempt to murder him twice.</p><p>There's plenty of movies where the hero or the adversary are outsmarted by their rival. It can be a fun surprise once or twice, but after too many setbacks, the audience gets tired. "After being fooled over and over, why can't they think more than one step ahead for a change?" <i>(This was my complaint about the later Bourne movies. The corrupt intelligence hive back in America refused to think two steps ahead, the franchise just became stimulus/response/outsmarted over and over.)</i></p><p>Wonka repeatedly is challenged by SPF, culminating in Wonka opening his first shop...without anticipating that SPF would challenge him as they had been doing over and over. We in the audience all did. By the time Wonka is nearly murdered the second time, I felt he was too dumb to deserve to survive. All this from a character in the beloved Gene Wilder movie where Wonka is characterized as a unpredictable prankster who outsmarts everyone.</p><p>Maybe you think I'm not being fair. After all, <b>Paddington 2</b> was my favorite movie of 2017, and Paddington is unjustly sent to prison in that one! That's a fair point, but <b>Wonka</b> felt more to me like <b>Paddington 1</b>, whose only flaw was Nicole Kidman and her too-creepy plot to murder Paddington and stuff him for a museum exhibit. We couldn't show her parts to our kids because it was too dark. All the murder and enslavement in <b>Wonka</b> hit me the same way.</p><p>I am okay with bring in the minority on this one. Maybe everyone else was charmed by <b>Wonka</b>. The songs were good, the cast charming, even if there's no explanation for the panoply of accents. All the murder and slavery left a bad taste in my mouth. <b>My Stub Hubby Grade - D</b>. <i>(streaming on Max)</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-19086872823731121422024-03-08T11:14:00.001-05:002024-03-13T11:22:08.153-04:00Kung Fu Panda 4<p> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbMQb56gSYvjXSj7sKlpaei5QQ4FuaHVW0aCT_6h45HqCTtuosH1Sm1iGuqrUqJ0QEOW53JRkUL0LSYLozUrY5_PTv2CfP4lq5NHQnRQ5ljNzw3tZbTUfR5l80NyyFzvReDKgI40ZRf1iJulmSLvOHYJuDFvHHKhofGfCW5HC148si-9uoPa3VqrRJNALY/s3648/20240308_154021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbMQb56gSYvjXSj7sKlpaei5QQ4FuaHVW0aCT_6h45HqCTtuosH1Sm1iGuqrUqJ0QEOW53JRkUL0LSYLozUrY5_PTv2CfP4lq5NHQnRQ5ljNzw3tZbTUfR5l80NyyFzvReDKgI40ZRf1iJulmSLvOHYJuDFvHHKhofGfCW5HC148si-9uoPa3VqrRJNALY/s320/20240308_154021.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another screening where we almost got the<br />theater to ourselves!</td></tr></tbody></table>Our first Kung Fu Panda in the theater! The charm and comedy is intact from the first movie. I especially liked the bar brawls set inside a tavern perched atop a rocky outcropping - every shift in weight from the patrons (and Po) sent the entire tavern building teetering to and fro. I just wish the story of Po and his (not) unlikely apprentice Zhen (Awkwafina) weren't so transparent to parents. The key to kids movies is to keep Mom and Dad interested too. I appreciated single moments for me, like when Po is chased by bull police officers, and they tiptoe through a China shop, but it would have been better if no one within the movie were surprised to discover Zhen the pickpocket is actually a great successor to Po's Dragon Warrior. <b>My Stub Hubby Grade- B-minus </b><i>(Matinee at the Millerton Moviehouse on a day off from school)</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-21992845624939654032024-03-06T11:06:00.017-05:002024-03-13T11:12:51.133-04:00Robot Dreams<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtNoFzefOIYStkAhMtFtGGSvwzk2cKMGq3yxckkIgSckhJzFnwj5jhMM5tNC9HH22aESUAB9Tkkmp6dMnNlV9uWNdrT4OafyeAN70e3E8sc0T9hbU3Rbyl9HxwIvO1VsIJL9aw3SLqBpP412FcSVuz_ezg_OotyRmbsjcRYXdYN0pwyC0VUVUj8bHhG-aV/s4000/20240306_192707.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtNoFzefOIYStkAhMtFtGGSvwzk2cKMGq3yxckkIgSckhJzFnwj5jhMM5tNC9HH22aESUAB9Tkkmp6dMnNlV9uWNdrT4OafyeAN70e3E8sc0T9hbU3Rbyl9HxwIvO1VsIJL9aw3SLqBpP412FcSVuz_ezg_OotyRmbsjcRYXdYN0pwyC0VUVUj8bHhG-aV/s320/20240306_192707.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>A charming and delightful animated fable, set in early 1980s New York City. The movie has a melancholy streak a mile wide, and I would call it a European sensibility, Director Pablo Berger is Spanish, and it's important to understand that this movie is very Euro, even if it's very authentically set on the Lower East Side. I found myself wondering "Where is this movie taking me? How can they land this plane without breaking anything?" That can be distracting; I was kept on my toes for most of the 102 minutes. My kids loved it. I have heard that some kids found it to be too sad. <i>(Special Sneak Preview ahead of the Oscars, where it was up for Best Animated Feature, screened at the Triplex)</i><p></p><p><br /></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-28577788147330824542024-03-02T13:09:00.137-05:002024-03-04T13:45:31.725-05:00Dune Part Two<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglmOaKpxTgCN8cdiCPYMUtnZfw0MghEIsYXhuKTXdDxoMsowfDsLuQH0AAGX0m7WxnMtGbypELOM7ws0vktnNlAgrfrFCL1k8G4SeHrgfm7vK2ejpTNieMT4qqEYB4IJV5ghDeiayFmRy1SlRC-ZTFeXW2LUq1uUujUH53jbbZTCnWYo78_VG94kg_3_vA/s755/dune_part_two_ver13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglmOaKpxTgCN8cdiCPYMUtnZfw0MghEIsYXhuKTXdDxoMsowfDsLuQH0AAGX0m7WxnMtGbypELOM7ws0vktnNlAgrfrFCL1k8G4SeHrgfm7vK2ejpTNieMT4qqEYB4IJV5ghDeiayFmRy1SlRC-ZTFeXW2LUq1uUujUH53jbbZTCnWYo78_VG94kg_3_vA/s320/dune_part_two_ver13.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>DUNE! <b>Lord of the Rings</b>-level mastery of the craft. Storytelling, visuals, performances. A beloved sci-fi novel adapted on an epic scale. An audacious big swing from Denis Villeneuve that pays off. <div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>"The best movie I have ever seen or ever will see." ~~my son, Saturday night</i></b></div></blockquote><div><p>Audacious, because he made a nearly 5½-hour two-part movie. Part 1 did not feel long, and with Part 2, he felt no need to rush towards the end. Paul and Jessica's assimilation into the Fremen is shown at a leisurely pace, with occasional skirmishes with the spice farmers to keep the energy levels up. I suspect a director less bold would not dare to make us watch so much.</p><p>I try not to take for granted that all the scenes of sand worms, of the dragonfly-like flying machines, the mining equipment raking the sand - none of it exists. All done in computers. Making this movie, all in broad daylight, with sand dunes, sand clouds, sand everywhere, all in the computer. The turbulence from the flying machines blurring our view of mining equipment in the distance, all faked. A new pinnacle of achievement. Even the blue eyes of the Fremen are subtle enough to be present without distracting.</p><p>As a lover of science fiction books and movies, I have always longed for a movie with scenes on an alien world that look like they take place under an alien sun. During an extended gladiator sequence on the Harkonnen's homeworld, everything we see is shown in high-contrast black and white, as if the Harkonnen's black star does not radiate the same bands of the visual spectrum as we enjoy on Earth. It didn't look like black-and-white film, it looked like everything was lit by a black sun. It was brilliant (pun intended).</p><p>One area that is hard to do well are the visions and voices that Paul experiences. We're told that his dreams and visions are of a future that could be, and we hear voices that may be the Bene Gesserit witches collective mind (or something), but the risk of showing mysterious visions with no clear provenance or reality, is that too much of them may confuse the audience as much as Paul. I think the main theme Denis Villeneuve was getting at is, in order to overthrown the galactic tyranny and be the savior of Dune, a holy war is necessary, and in the war many will die. The dreams are Paul's way of understanding that sacrifice, and preparing him to be able to make that sacrifice. Paul comes a long way from the oversleeping teenager awoken by his mother at the outset of the first movie.</p><p>Zendaya is spellbinding. Did you ever watch a couple onscreen that generate so much palpable heat, that you feel kind of embarrassed to be watching them looking at each other? That's the level of chemistry Zendaya and Chalamet have for each other. Which makes Zendaya's role as Paul's "best friend who remembers where he came from before he got big" so successful. She becomes his confidant, but then he begins to draw away from her. I loved that Paul did not talk too much, indeed, it felt like pages of dialog were cut out, and for the better. That made his final words to her "I will love you for as long as I breathe" so important and memorable, with what follows. We know she knows how ugly he's becoming in order to save her world. By the end, it's hard to tell if she refuses to accept the necessary sacrifices he makes to wage holy war, or whether she's only heartbroken that they had to be made.</p><p>If there is a misstep in Villeneuve's <b>Dune</b>, it's some of the all-star casting. Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, they are all stars, they all grow fine beards, but they also have meaty parts. Rebecca Ferguson, also a movie star (who first grabbed my attention in a <b>Mission: Impossible</b>), does a great job calibrating her journey from anxious mother striving to protect her son to calculating witch whose intentions are unknown. Christopher Walken, on the other hand, could have been a good choice if he had been used more. He could have demonstrated the iron will necessary to be the Emperor of the galaxy with a scary/strong presence. Instead, he says and does little, until a brief speech at the very end, that was delivered much like the "watch up my ass" monologue in <b>Pulp Fiction</b>. Indeed, his daughter (Florence Pugh) had much more to do, but I kept thinking about her as a movie star. The same goes for the witch that seduces the baron's nephew: Léa Seydoux is a talented actress, but she's also a movie star who is too much for a two-scene role. Sometimes small parts need talented character actors.</p><p><i>(Great Barrington Triplex, with Henry and friend)</i></p></div>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-74736518307063805252024-02-24T09:56:00.148-05:002024-02-26T10:29:19.984-05:00Drive-Away Dolls<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoylJTGz0wubQ9PQ7IfFVnTbFMdxkUkKukKyUSC9OdKjs0QSDcRLYFoZFVvIZ-YUiQoBIvUptT9VC57FM3BIEvqTgMRC9YTdjqfuve77NeCwi5MZbSDgu-yJ9On0yBB7OKmIEnCYWqJi48nSZ-xKAYLgGlUlyPopCUEKRY_WpVeXaz0FInFJpWYUUaqkMc/s755/driveaway_dolls_ver2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoylJTGz0wubQ9PQ7IfFVnTbFMdxkUkKukKyUSC9OdKjs0QSDcRLYFoZFVvIZ-YUiQoBIvUptT9VC57FM3BIEvqTgMRC9YTdjqfuve77NeCwi5MZbSDgu-yJ9On0yBB7OKmIEnCYWqJi48nSZ-xKAYLgGlUlyPopCUEKRY_WpVeXaz0FInFJpWYUUaqkMc/w216-h320/driveaway_dolls_ver2.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>If I didn't know this movie was directed by one of the Coen brothers I would have said "this movie feels half as good as a Coen brothers movie" and guess what, it <b><u>is</u></b> half a Coen brothers movie.<p></p><p>The night before, I saw <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2024/02/next-goal-wins.html">Next Goal Wins</a>, a adorable take on the 'crummy sports team finds its purpose with a grouchy new coach' movie. I wrote that this is an easy type of movie to do well, if some critical ingredients are included. Another type like this? the 'buddy road trip movie where they're unwittingly carrying a McGuffin that the cops and the mob are trying to get ahold of'. Like the underdog sports movie, if you include the right ingredients, it's pretty hard to mess up. So what's missing? Because it's a Coen brother movie, you don't have to worry about the cleverness or the zippy dialogue or the texture. Plenty of those. I've been struggling to identify why the movie feels lifeless. I think the missing ingredient is <b>energy and pacing</b>. It lacks forward momentum. </p><p>Jamie (Margaret Qualley) is a freewheeling spirit with charm and a Texas twang, who breaks up with her girlfriend (Beanie Goldstein) in the middle of sex. Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is uptight and suffering a yearslong dry spell since her last breakup. Through a ridic coincidence (that could have been made more plausible), Jamie and Marian end up driving a Dodge Aries from Philadelphia to Tallahassee with the McGuffin in her trunk. </p><p>I found it bizarre that all of the driving scenes with the two women were all one-shots, with no shots of both women at the same time. Their conversations just cut back-and-forth and back-and-forth the whole time. Why can't we watch both of them in the conversation at the same time? There have been tremendous innovations in the world of conversations while driving, there's no reason why they couldn't, so why did they choose this? It's a chemistry killer.</p><p>The two inept mob henchmen who are pursuing them only reminded me of Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare in Fargo. The big one and the little one. The talky thinker and the big lug. Bickering on their road trip. Unprovoked murdering.</p><p>There's a phenomenon where an actor is cast in a famous director's movie, and they calibrate their performance towards a place they think is what is appropriate for that director's style. The most famous is when an actor is the protagonist in a Woody Allen movie, and they proceed to do their Woody Allen impression. </p><p>I don't know anything about Margaret Qualley, except that her mom is Andie McDowell, the worst actress of the 1990s. Does Qualley always talk like that? If it's her real voice, it's hard to complain. If it's put on, she's trying way too hard to be either Everett from <b>O'Brother</b>, or Edwina in <b>Raising Arizona</b>. </p><p>Geraldine Viswanathan is a favorite of mine from her work on the TBS show <b>Miracle Workers</b>, and not just because she's goddamned gorgeous. Now I'm starting to worry that she mostly plays uptight women for a reason. I'm worried her main acting crutch is scrunching her eyebrows together or bulging her eyes out. I hope there's more to her than that.</p><p>Four or five times interspersed throughout the movie, psychedelic interludes alluding to the contents of the mystery McGuffin stopped the movie's forward momentum, foreshadowing a revelation at the end of the movie, in a distracting and confusing way. Just a bad choice that's deeply out of character for a Coen brother!</p><p></p><p>Is it a truism that a cliche only becomes a cliche when it's done badly for the first time? Last night I realized that the over-the-counter conversation with a folksy clerk appears in every Coen brothers movie. <b>Raising Arizona, </b><a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2007/11/no-country-for-old-men.html">No Country For Old Men</a>,<b> O' Brother Where Art Thou</b>, and now <b>Drive-Away Dolls. </b>Sometimes deadly serious, sometimes not. With Margaret Qualley's Texas accent, she could have told the folksy man across the counter "I'm a Dapper Dan man, damnit!" and it would have fit right in. </p><div>I don't like to come to this conclusion, but I suspect the fundamental flaw in <b>Drive-Away Dolls</b> is that it's a rom-com stuck inside a 'road trip flight from the Mob' movie. The budding romance between Jamie and Marian (pun intended) feels heartfelt and genuine, and I'm sure the young lesbians of the world are going to love their story. The road trip parts have been done better in other movies, even in other Coen brothers movies. <b>My Stub Hubby grade: C</b>. It would get a full letter bump if I were a lesbian.</div><p><i> (Triplex Great Barrington, while Em is out of town with the boys)</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-73594788119541393322024-02-23T11:52:00.021-05:002024-02-24T11:56:34.386-05:00Next Goal Wins<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjst77r2Js1aA9noflkEpN89nMnfPNT0RzYUgY7Ah8okboadLMMJcQ73jvloPsNfa5hLS3hxxezJIZE_vRQc8wZ8cMBrI5sfOVl50adL-zJhU9ADmPVkXl9f3q25MZJD4HFj-wDnhtKOLLLrJmlaOryLI7RTDGOsZQmU7JM8ho7JimVtC9MymLTO_so8Op0/s755/next_goal_wins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="504" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjst77r2Js1aA9noflkEpN89nMnfPNT0RzYUgY7Ah8okboadLMMJcQ73jvloPsNfa5hLS3hxxezJIZE_vRQc8wZ8cMBrI5sfOVl50adL-zJhU9ADmPVkXl9f3q25MZJD4HFj-wDnhtKOLLLrJmlaOryLI7RTDGOsZQmU7JM8ho7JimVtC9MymLTO_so8Op0/s320/next_goal_wins.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>What a delightful little movie. It's so simple and has been done plenty
of times before, but all you need to do is have an eccentric cast, and a setting
with tons of character, and it's hard to go wrong. I'm not sure if Michael
Fassbender is funny or not. It may be that Taika Waititi was just excellent at
presenting him in a good light? When you play a perpetually grouchy/depressed/alcoholic character, it can be hard to tell if you are funny or just a Serious Actor? I also appreciate the twist
at the end, which I should have seen coming. Maybe I was having too much fun
to anticipate it. <b>My Stub Hubby Grade A</b>, but the level of difficulty is low. <i>(On Disney Plus with the whole fam. We all loved it!)</i><p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-69571459727101771802024-02-20T10:51:00.102-05:002024-02-21T11:23:09.835-05:00Maestro<p>Another movie about an artist and his long-suffering wife needs to be more different than this. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjra0YSOcXB9-3WIe_MzZk8xYs1m_2zmg0lv6C4faMBOAmm1TDvN8tFFOopH9B0XR0paj4JxTwbVAOB2gG3A75xvRAZ74tK3IU8WfPZVt74ZxuKb7pVveS_uuqt72jIu7ho5WWwGbpH3MP6T8OikXpTPvDklwGJ0BAoxfUO3DIgKb5n86N7uvfMlP4vNfiF/s755/maestro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="604" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjra0YSOcXB9-3WIe_MzZk8xYs1m_2zmg0lv6C4faMBOAmm1TDvN8tFFOopH9B0XR0paj4JxTwbVAOB2gG3A75xvRAZ74tK3IU8WfPZVt74ZxuKb7pVveS_uuqt72jIu7ho5WWwGbpH3MP6T8OikXpTPvDklwGJ0BAoxfUO3DIgKb5n86N7uvfMlP4vNfiF/s320/maestro.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>Carey Mulligan is great as Felicia, Bradley Cooper is very good as Lenny, and looks a lot like Bernstein. The nose is only distracting in one scene, strangely enough. The movie overall is overrated. It's another movie about a selfish troubled genius with substance abuse problems who puts their spouse through the wringer while having lots of extra-martial sex.<p></p><p>There's a lot to admire about Bernstein's work, and Cooper enjoys sharing his brilliance with us, but the movie is decidedly about his marriage first. The best thing about the story of their marriage is their performances. Mulligan plays a wife devoted to her husband's genius better than anyone. That doesn't bring anything novel to the story. It just makes all the unspoken moments Mulligan shares with us so special.</p><p>Why is it overrated? Just because it's a movie about a famous genius, and it's half in black and white for some reason, and everyone in it is upper class high society, that doesn't automatically make it Important.</p><p><b>Maestro</b> reminded me of the <b>Fosse/Verdon</b> miniseries, and not just because Mulligan and Michelle Williams look alike. That show also dealt with the power dynamics in a creative power couple, and did it better. </p><p>The wandering camera and oblique shot composition felt arty for its own sake. Why is that guy's head half out of frame? Why is that lady behind a drapery while delivering her lines? Where is the camera going now? Nobody knows. The camera seems to reluctantly follow the action, like Cooper is desperate not to make a cookie-cutter mainstream biopic, and every muddy, overlapping conversation is like a parody of an Altman film. Then the script occasionally reverts to plainspoken revelations, like when Felicia finally snaps at Lenny on Thanksgiving in their Dakota apartment, yelling at Lenny exactly who he is and why, while the Macy's balloons float by outside. Then later, after a movie full of deeply expressive and subtle reactions, Felicia has lunch with Lenny's sister (Sarah Silverman) and just explains prosaically how she feels and why.</p><p>Also baffling is the one scene of magical realism, early in the film, where Lenny takes Felicia <b>into</b> his musical <b>On The Town</b> and they become integrated into the sailors' ballet. As a metaphor about their courtship and budding romance, it's nice, and it's a showcase for his music and the choreography, but it doesn't happen again. All the other examples of his music onscreen are diegetic live musical performances. Nothing is actually staged. And many people expecting acknowledgement of his most famous work will be disappointed. It feels intentional that <b>West Side Story</b> is not really in the movie. It's only mentioned tangentially, and its (instrumental) music only appears on the soundtrack briefly, as the score to a minor bit of action. </p><p>Is the music amazing? Yes. Is the epic seven-minute shot of Lenny conducting impressive? Yes, if I knew why the camera moves where it does. A seven minute shot with no cuts should not leave me wondering "why is it circling around him counter-clockwise, then circling back the other way?" - I should just be thinking about the drama. <b>My Stub Hubby grade: C-plus </b><i>(on Netflix, at home alone with the cat)</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-84836754124289382672024-02-17T08:09:00.071-05:002024-02-20T08:30:14.382-05:00The Taste Of Things<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRLaBn1pHH9kVF6xqCHjQ2R15uV4u-9QoNpibuSrPWtPHKSQRN-YGOfJiLcZVVl4bnCuipzo9wNrofDezZRb-SEHRZv9xyjzJ58fbpFMgAlVIJuh0tACQPV7vxHxZtIrCSWKGfWNebDA8rVekJFDlbFGoCRBfoKeT8tjLDCukyQTjk2xzJLOToH58xVpEV/s755/la_passion_de_dodin_bouffant_ver2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRLaBn1pHH9kVF6xqCHjQ2R15uV4u-9QoNpibuSrPWtPHKSQRN-YGOfJiLcZVVl4bnCuipzo9wNrofDezZRb-SEHRZv9xyjzJ58fbpFMgAlVIJuh0tACQPV7vxHxZtIrCSWKGfWNebDA8rVekJFDlbFGoCRBfoKeT8tjLDCukyQTjk2xzJLOToH58xVpEV/s320/la_passion_de_dodin_bouffant_ver2.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><div><b>The Taste Of Things</b> opens on a chef unearthing a root vegetable in the garden. We're at a French country manor, sometime in the early 20th century? The first 40 minutes of this film show the preparation of a gourmet French meal by Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and her assistants, and its consumption and appreciation by the Napoleon of French recipes, Dodin (Benoît Magimel) and his four fellow gustaphiles. </div><div>The meal is prepared by Eugénie without fuss or import, but efficiently and professionally. No measuring cups, spoons, or timers. Many gorgeous copper pots. No yelling. Eugénie just dumps in salt and pepper, pours half a bottle of wine in a stew pot in a very specific and deliberate technique. Many entrancing closeups of cooking food. I hate the phrase "mouth-watering" - has anything ever made your mouth actually "water"? - but I did moan quietly when Eugénie dumped her chopped vegetables in the roasting pan with the rump roast drippings.</div><div>After the meal, the five men enter the kitchen to heap praise on Eugénie and lament that she could not dine with her. She is not their servant by any means. They clearly are a tight-knit group and feel nothing but mutual respect for Eugénie and the magic she conjures in the kitchen. She responds that she participates in the meal with them, communicates with them, through her food.</div><div>Dodin and Eugénie have cooked together for 20 years: Dodin writes recipes, and Eugénie executes them as only she can. Dodin understand her cooking as an expression of her love and understand of his soul. While they are very close and affectionate, they are not married, and Eugénie is reluctant to accept his proposals. She feels their relationship is already defined in the kitchen.</div><div><div>This movie brought me such happiness. It also made me want to be a better husband, or maybe just more romantic, or more French? It definitely made me want to sit and be served a delightful French meal.</div><div><b>My Stub Hubby grade, A+</b> for pure joy of the delights that food can bring us. As one of Dodin's friends remarks over post-dinner wine, "Man is the only creature that drinks when he is not thirsty."</div><div><i>(Triplex Great Barrington, with a nice and quiet 50+ crowd)</i></div></div><p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-76830737970119670042024-02-12T13:36:00.001-05:002024-02-13T13:38:11.547-05:00225 Savage Good Playlist<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_0UmUARmyv_VeFVOHQVteVQv_ja6KaYAS0FGcleQWOFwtf2Ee-42SCFCs_OYdqJ2MpxkgfUAmNKJZ8dVWIgx9uT23uUk7sgVC1eKfzMy1yP1NnLOsQgwigNJQh5tHE_KRzgpvgfXqknlp2FKatM1f55iDwX3pfzLKIii0XKzKpIK9uyaoDF9IFJuSoJoi/s500/225FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_0UmUARmyv_VeFVOHQVteVQv_ja6KaYAS0FGcleQWOFwtf2Ee-42SCFCs_OYdqJ2MpxkgfUAmNKJZ8dVWIgx9uT23uUk7sgVC1eKfzMy1yP1NnLOsQgwigNJQh5tHE_KRzgpvgfXqknlp2FKatM1f55iDwX3pfzLKIii0XKzKpIK9uyaoDF9IFJuSoJoi/s320/225FINAL.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When working on a new playlist, I add every song I might want to use, including multiple songs by the same band, instrumentals I might use as the final track, and so on, and after I have 25 or more songs in there I think about selecting, sequencing, keeping it under 80 minutes, and including 50/50 men/women. <i>(I also am aggressively adding a Beatles song to every playlist until every great Beatles song that's never appeared on one of my playlists finally makes an appearance.)</i> Every once in awhile, my working collection gets so big I decide to assemble more than one playlist at the same time (<i>see 93 & 94, 105, 106, & 107, and 111 & 112</i>)<p></p><p>In the case of 223, I had 40 songs in the inbox already before I noticed I had ~35 guys and only 5 ladies. I then added 20 songs from women to get the ratio right. 60 songs means three playlists!</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijDjwEVBM7xpMHE5WnWsGwI6F3OrvC3e2fiNEev5H_CUPtKD_2Dv6KrYmwH6cPrsFU7TzW6N5qZcJlmyCaKTACNgnyBjYWMdPiev1qIoyCySpTaoJe2d3i3OsgcvshyphenhyphenV-GVJG48JCdb5tajwXgvm8fI8kDa6hwMtne-fQHVZwD5UrfNdHzclIUxVnRkWW2/s649/225_back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijDjwEVBM7xpMHE5WnWsGwI6F3OrvC3e2fiNEev5H_CUPtKD_2Dv6KrYmwH6cPrsFU7TzW6N5qZcJlmyCaKTACNgnyBjYWMdPiev1qIoyCySpTaoJe2d3i3OsgcvshyphenhyphenV-GVJG48JCdb5tajwXgvm8fI8kDa6hwMtne-fQHVZwD5UrfNdHzclIUxVnRkWW2/w494-h640/225_back.jpg" width="494" /></a></div>Sequencing three 20-song playlists with near-equal men and women, and no repeated bands, is too hard <br />for me to do off the top of my head. Sometimes I do my sequencing in IRL with little strips of paper - 83 and 208 are examples of this. For fun, I've included my final sequences strips of paper below.<p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-60356520759205330952024-02-12T13:34:00.001-05:002024-02-13T13:36:40.863-05:00224 Never Ever Ever<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMz4nsmZlbmPrnUMbNXJx30v4rekUbJPW0DmBYjKfZC18XeMYpOhYNunFerRiuiXPRI9UU-VSDjmWlj81j4BPJBRKEBEcW77lkXXO_nnA1hgsEuYIwyqTaf4dYckLE0nKJjME83aA0LsmZ5pUr7VMPFUgo1ez786XE5Nnt0-_FysgM2xs-xBQ5hqcA6hTl/s500/224FiNAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMz4nsmZlbmPrnUMbNXJx30v4rekUbJPW0DmBYjKfZC18XeMYpOhYNunFerRiuiXPRI9UU-VSDjmWlj81j4BPJBRKEBEcW77lkXXO_nnA1hgsEuYIwyqTaf4dYckLE0nKJjME83aA0LsmZ5pUr7VMPFUgo1ez786XE5Nnt0-_FysgM2xs-xBQ5hqcA6hTl/s320/224FiNAL.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When working on a new playlist, I add every song I might want to use, including multiple songs by the same band, instrumentals I might use as the final track, and so on, and after I have 25 or more songs in there I think about selecting, sequencing, keeping it under 80 minutes, and including 50/50 men/women. <i>(I also am aggressively adding a Beatles song to every playlist until every great Beatles song that's never appeared on one of my playlists finally makes an appearance.)</i> Every once in awhile, my working collection gets so big I decide to assemble more than one playlist at the same time (<i>see 93 & 94, 105, 106, & 107, and 111 & 112</i>)<p></p><p>In the case of 223, I had 40 songs in the inbox already before I noticed I had ~35 guys and only 5 ladies. I then added 20 songs from women to get the ratio right. 60 songs means three playlists!</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaefRT3-wUt69LkocU8e7kG-aSin5fnnuQm8D5umGvggVjMyIiz0LUtZICGxcub_rv6UXmBdMtAgzFa4euzcA8HM29yZlFhlfLRnXvgdMEYQP0lzhm7AQjDS6cXehFvk2Mi5wb3BUEUunyu0Waoxpp9fjVgYksab-eVc7p3ot1Nnzc2W3mdp0hdcceMEc7/s651/224_back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="651" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaefRT3-wUt69LkocU8e7kG-aSin5fnnuQm8D5umGvggVjMyIiz0LUtZICGxcub_rv6UXmBdMtAgzFa4euzcA8HM29yZlFhlfLRnXvgdMEYQP0lzhm7AQjDS6cXehFvk2Mi5wb3BUEUunyu0Waoxpp9fjVgYksab-eVc7p3ot1Nnzc2W3mdp0hdcceMEc7/w492-h640/224_back.jpg" width="492" /></a></div>Sequencing three 20-song playlists with near-equal men and women, and no repeated bands, is too hard for me to do off the top of my head. Sometimes I do my sequencing in IRL with little strips of paper - 83 and 208 are examples of this. For fun, I've included my final sequences strips of paper below.<p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-71355489253850646892024-02-12T13:23:00.001-05:002024-02-13T13:34:30.063-05:00223 Look What You've Done<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihu0CAqE0Ehxutb0cqGlnfRqR8Be5uZOUhWLzcQwYiwrjPK5JB1Kli4mz8TLif3ZOeAZzIOdjCK9XKtYL3BlVnWSsV1DO4ehNAy3nJw_F4fbRc1rzMJQ6ODB9fjT2EpS401Iq8m7Cq0tW_oV8AxjjVuCapoW7fjlYQmzAunayLUxiw12sG5DoWzCDC3WnO/s500/223FINaL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihu0CAqE0Ehxutb0cqGlnfRqR8Be5uZOUhWLzcQwYiwrjPK5JB1Kli4mz8TLif3ZOeAZzIOdjCK9XKtYL3BlVnWSsV1DO4ehNAy3nJw_F4fbRc1rzMJQ6ODB9fjT2EpS401Iq8m7Cq0tW_oV8AxjjVuCapoW7fjlYQmzAunayLUxiw12sG5DoWzCDC3WnO/s320/223FINaL.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When working on a new playlist, I add every song I might want to use, including multiple songs by the same band, instrumentals I might use as the final track, and so on, and after I have 25 or more songs in there I think about selecting, sequencing, keeping it under 80 minutes, and including 50/50 men/women. <i>(I also am aggressively adding a Beatles song to every playlist until every great Beatles song that's never appeared on one of my playlists finally makes an appearance.)</i> Every once in awhile, my working collection gets so big I decide to assemble more than one playlist at the same time (<i>see 93 & 94, 105, 106, & 107, and 111 & 112</i>)<p></p><p>In the case of 223, I had 40 songs in the inbox already before I noticed I had ~35 guys and only 5 ladies. I then added 20 songs from women to get the ratio right. 60 songs means three playlists!</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGlYQ0sDwJUorGxH0txBJScPnDi-kpNywojgLIdU6fG_4ZjA5-CMsa2mU8VX8ABB-1FtMvq5fSoaA2ApY3w61lCzcLW4li4lp24clHuHN2wCUbzBielTz78i3wIJ4kMbFD6-B0ObRFjBoylU4kbG-RjKWjicx6Erw2rValA9SngBLDpU-ZmmoA-5OiWOyp/s834/223_back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGlYQ0sDwJUorGxH0txBJScPnDi-kpNywojgLIdU6fG_4ZjA5-CMsa2mU8VX8ABB-1FtMvq5fSoaA2ApY3w61lCzcLW4li4lp24clHuHN2wCUbzBielTz78i3wIJ4kMbFD6-B0ObRFjBoylU4kbG-RjKWjicx6Erw2rValA9SngBLDpU-ZmmoA-5OiWOyp/w384-h640/223_back.jpg" width="384" /></a></div>Sequencing three 20-song playlists with near-equal men and women, and no repeated bands, is too hard for me to do off the top of my head. Sometimes I do my sequencing in IRL with little strips of paper - 83 and 208 are examples of this. For fun, I've included my final sequences strips of paper below.<p></p><br /><p><br /></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-36684999986010218322024-02-04T09:56:00.001-05:002024-02-08T10:25:26.539-05:00The Holiday [2006]<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr5hjPrjG5qRlQO2X0cT3mx78Cd5IqXNOYWe3a3fjPQe2w3rnNk_BPgxvuvwDSGY4allrlUfbzQP961TQAJZxpNnNbBN_neeVCanhA7D2XUB1Dz-KbiFCb2pyAahfS9r-kSSE-6oBPaZRTs6X1ScRt-xDIEXAnadVap1iH2MT_aiwTv71wa4h9I6qoFovS/s755/holiday.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="516" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr5hjPrjG5qRlQO2X0cT3mx78Cd5IqXNOYWe3a3fjPQe2w3rnNk_BPgxvuvwDSGY4allrlUfbzQP961TQAJZxpNnNbBN_neeVCanhA7D2XUB1Dz-KbiFCb2pyAahfS9r-kSSE-6oBPaZRTs6X1ScRt-xDIEXAnadVap1iH2MT_aiwTv71wa4h9I6qoFovS/s320/holiday.jpg" width="219" /></a></div>It's too bad Kate Winslet insists on making good movies, because I like watching her, and I have a lot more time for romcoms than to watch her playing a Nazi or getting boned on a tumble dryer.<p></p><p>I don't know if Jude Law is really a cad, but I can't help but think of him as one. Maybe that reputation developed since this movie came out in 2006, but in 2024 he's too sus to be trusted as a earnest, drunken widower.</p><p>Hans Zimmer's score is aggressively staid and persistent. I never complain about a score, but this one was plastered over seemingly every scene, and felt cloyingly old-fashioned.</p><p>Nancy Meyers was only 56 when she made this movie, but you'd think a 70 year old nun directed the movie for how chaste it is. Any potential sexual energy to Law and Diaz' relationship is completely tamped down. I liked the reversal when Diaz asks Law to kiss her again, and then suggests they have sex, but she barely starts walking towards the bedroom when the scene ends. I was hoping she'd throw her bra at him as she walked away, or drop her pants, or something? What year <b><u>is</u></b> this?</p><p>I have been a fan of Rufus Sewell since the 1990s, and as I said above, Law is too charming to be the widower acting in good faith. I would have much preferred Sewell as the widower and Law as the cad. Think about it: Sewell is also handsome, but five years older and less of a dreamboat, so he would seems less like an automatic romantic prospect for Diaz. That would make their matchup less expected.</p><p>You can't cast Kate Winslet as the sad dishrag whom the cad strings along, and have Eli Wallach comment on how she's supposed to be the leading lady, in the same movie. I don't mind Kate Winslet being lovesick, but she's presented as if she's a Plain Jane, which is confusing, because she's so gorgeous. She's a Gen Xer named "Iris" for crying out loud. Is this a normal Gen X name in England, or an ugly girl's name? Compounding this problem is Jack Black. He's not presented as a potential romantic partner for Winslet right away, so we are left to think maybe he's destined to be just per pal. Then at the end, he suddenly suggests they date, and she gleefully jumps into his arms?! Were we supposed to feel mutual unspoken romantic attraction all this time, because it wasn't there. Never mind that Black's character needed to be 20% better-looking to not be insulting to Kate Winslet. They've made Black as handsome and well-groomed as they could, and he knows how to be charming, but let's be serious. Before this movie, her three previous leading men were Patrick Wilson, Johnny Depp, and Jim Carrey. Maybe if he was a foot taller I wouldn't have been shocked.</p><p>This is just what I needed for my flight, and I love watching glossy, expensive rom-coms, but <b>this one needed some retooling. If only they'd call me and my wife ahead of time. C-minus.</b></p><p>I love watching what other people are watching on airplanes. At one point me and my seatmates were watching:</p><p></p><ul><li>25A <b>When Harry Met Sally...</b></li><li>25B (me) <b>The Holiday</b></li><li>25C <b>The Office</b> (the one where Jim lets slip that Pam's pregnant) </li></ul><p><i>Netflix, United Airlines from Las Vegas to Newark</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-88591316881945615652024-02-02T10:29:00.130-05:002024-02-12T11:08:46.721-05:00Dumb Money<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJwF2PT6N2ejyTKLWX0d9Ts8O4y295uSJbtkknL9E4YwkY_B3FxMbbQYJzGXK2Cv8iB_UwTbnCd-LctmbGW7JBBSRBcBBRHJ4bBHCf-Ai3h3Bz_jsRqrjtyPzYZrbnk34t7TCC0sSWZdUsIOdaZTtWb6ye4CUFcDGVPP5eXNs76GkvquT94ZRx4SpBhC7d/s755/dumb_money.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJwF2PT6N2ejyTKLWX0d9Ts8O4y295uSJbtkknL9E4YwkY_B3FxMbbQYJzGXK2Cv8iB_UwTbnCd-LctmbGW7JBBSRBcBBRHJ4bBHCf-Ai3h3Bz_jsRqrjtyPzYZrbnk34t7TCC0sSWZdUsIOdaZTtWb6ye4CUFcDGVPP5eXNs76GkvquT94ZRx4SpBhC7d/s320/dumb_money.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><p>All the recent-history true story movies that sound like Michael Lewis books or Vanity Fair articles that Adam McKay is involved in (<b>The Big Short, Vice, Winning Time, Bombshell</b>) all either look too preachy and boring, or they've cast movie stars as real people and I won't be able to immerse myself in it. And I have no interest in the last season of <b>The Crown</b> - 25 years is too soon to be dramatizing Lady Diana's life and death.</p><p>Then there's <b>Dumb Money</b>. I saw the trailer for this in the fall and thought it looked like fun: a bunch of Wall Street weasels on the run! A few weeks ago my brother-in-law recommended it to me, so I downloaded it to my phone for my flight to Las Vegas on February 2.</p><p><b>I ended up loving it.</b> The charm and specific personalities of the striving Americans who put the short squeeze on Wall Street give the movie a rude and funny vibe, like a term paper written by a hungover frat boy. All the cursing and the very raunchy music on the soundtrack ("WAP" makes me blush!) helps.</p><p>America Ferrera's single mom nurse, Anthony Ramos's retail wage slave Marcos, and the coed (Olivia Thirlby) trying to claw her way out of student debt are manning the barricades, led on this plebean revolt by Roaring Kitty (Paul Dano) a stock market analyst/hobbyist on Reddit, who inspires a nation of dumb money investors to buy up GameStop shares and hold them, and hold them, and hold them, to squeeze and bankrupt the billionaire investors (Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, Vincent D'Onofrio, Sebastian Stan) trying to drive GameStop out of existence.</p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe the best movie ever about The Internet, the movie does a terrific job of chronicling how a community can coalesce online around an idea and spark a wildfire that changes the real world in the process. Such a ridic idea is only watchable because it really happened.</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Notes: Dumb Money takes place during the 2021 lockdown, and they use that period to help place the movie in time and give the story immediacy. They only talk about COVID itself obliquely.</li><li>Comic Relief: Roaring Kitty's brother is Pete Davidson, a reprobate with a heart of gold who delivers your Doordash fast food while sipping and nibbling off the top, while stealing/borrowing his brother's car.</li><li>Roaring Kitty lives in Brockton, so I appreciated the Massachusetts touches, and I also appreciate they didn't try any Boston accents.</li><li>Shailene Woodley, what are you doing? I admit I haven't seen a lot of her work, but her two movies in 2023 (this and <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2023/12/ferrari.html">Ferrari</a>) both feature her as the mother leaning on the kitchen counter while the guy gets to do stuff.</li></ul><p></p><p><i> On Netflix from Newark to Las Vegas on United</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-77558446904307922852024-02-02T09:43:00.067-05:002024-02-08T09:56:09.427-05:00Frances Ha<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVeI0NM0-FxtKOtxyO4kc29l7czxvFCTK6_93tfFU-rRPp6S6eX2t2EVfSSPXFK1PJzmR7yS4BF8Wp08oJ1k3Npy-tmQOkWQpnuElh3u-zDtcFkxdIiX0cV6K2w9IEFx-K1tsbzOn6U1BsTKz7600Dz2eqfvTkSWSSdKeIzT5S_RdTaqvYUIXKiAJJjVvJ/s755/frances_ha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="481" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVeI0NM0-FxtKOtxyO4kc29l7czxvFCTK6_93tfFU-rRPp6S6eX2t2EVfSSPXFK1PJzmR7yS4BF8Wp08oJ1k3Npy-tmQOkWQpnuElh3u-zDtcFkxdIiX0cV6K2w9IEFx-K1tsbzOn6U1BsTKz7600Dz2eqfvTkSWSSdKeIzT5S_RdTaqvYUIXKiAJJjVvJ/s320/frances_ha.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>Is it a sign of middle age that the lives of aimless 27 year-olds seem generationally different from me, when, in all fairness, I also made foolish choices and had no direction until I was, like, 30? Actually I had direction; but just because I was executing on a plan (career, marriage) doesn't mean I had my shit together. It just means that my regrettable choices were well-organized. <div><b>Frances Ha</b> is like Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach challenged themselves to tell the story of a hopeless case who refuses to take care of herself...and still have sympathy for her. After I got over my reflexive judgment of twenty-something Millennials in New York, I began to enjoy <b>Frances Ha</b> for its (mostly) show-not-tell character study. <p></p><p>There's something about indie movies on a budget that I find rewarding. Actual location shooting. Shooting inside real apartments. Talented actors that I've never seen before. A lovely travelling shot of Frances running down a city street that plainly was shot from the roof of a van, but also perfectly choreographed to a Bowie song. The camera turns to reveal Frances running just as the drums enter "Modern Love".</p><p>After I saw <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2003/07/seabiscuit.html">Seabiscuit</a>, I wrote "<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue Light", HelveticaNeue-Light, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">motion pictures were invented to film horses racing</span>" and I gotta say, an actress running down a city street while the camera paces her is a special effact. It's Production Value.</p><p>Sometimes I miss the total absence of closeups. I am used to long master shots as budget-savers in indie movies, but it does make the actors job harder.</p><p>I enjoyed the brisk passage of time - the story advances weeks and months in a simple shot or two with unfussy economy. </p><p>Does the movie suffer from too many metaphors for Frances's personality, head space, socioeconomic rut?</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Cooking eggs for her new, seemingly rich friends;</li><li>Chaotically seeking an ATM for cash to pay for dinner because she can't do banking;</li><li>Soaking in the tub far too long to avoid thinking about life</li></ul><p></p><p>I kept asking myself why Frances didn't just get a job at Starbucks. No one in her circle talks about straight jobs. Is this her foolish refusal to abandon an aesthetic life? She doesn't seem satisfied to be a starving artist - she eats too much for that. Or is it just youthful ignorance of reality. When her mentor, full of unspoken empathy and kindly mom energy, offers her a straight job to help ends meet, the best possible lifeline, Frances shifts uncomfortably and nearly whines "that sounds hard". Every time she is forced to reveal her hopelessness, she instead lies about new prospects. </p><p>These were moments when they almost lost me -moments where I cringed so hard I nearly turned away from the screen. The dinner conversation with Mamie Gummer and friends, for example, was masterfully written. </p><div>The ending felt abrupt and unearned, like they knew where the movie should end up but ran out of time or imagination to get it there. I'm going to give <b>Frances Ha</b> a little bump because I'm a Gen Xer with little patience for people like Frances. <b>My Stub Hubby Grade B minus.</b></div><p><i>On Netflix, United Airlines flight Newark to Las Vegas</i></p></div>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-8720430748878330732024-01-20T08:46:00.358-05:002024-01-24T14:57:15.189-05:00Poor Things<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh_BJah1cAi6Y2B7qSb900jFG0W8PA770Ogg4rhu4BvbhvdVhFI95GyLWFfWkePBiehIo9p2f3TU5auwEwYJ1XpqHO3PDfNF5lpiGO5XE3H1kdBTsDH-l8ql6-lI2022wVrYl1BigtImlebJH1ySktu0_WeFBC8N4CBXenowflED36u4pbnZJVAXQGirkQ/s755/poor_things_ver3.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh_BJah1cAi6Y2B7qSb900jFG0W8PA770Ogg4rhu4BvbhvdVhFI95GyLWFfWkePBiehIo9p2f3TU5auwEwYJ1XpqHO3PDfNF5lpiGO5XE3H1kdBTsDH-l8ql6-lI2022wVrYl1BigtImlebJH1ySktu0_WeFBC8N4CBXenowflED36u4pbnZJVAXQGirkQ/s320/poor_things_ver3.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><br /><i>OR, The Bride Of Frankenstein Goes On a Picaresque Adventure!</i><p></p><p>I usually find picaresque movies tiresome: I couldn't find any interest in what happens to <b>Barry Lyndon</b>, and why did we have to watch <b>Forrest Gump</b> running across America for no reason? Bella Baxter's cross-Europe adventure has points to make, and only wears out its welcome after a worthwhile journey, like a great cruise with one too many ports.</p><p>Emma Stone is brilliant as Bella, a woman created by mad scientist Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Over the course of the movie Bella emotionally develops from a pre-sentient baby to a fully formed intellect. Her subtly organic performance evolves along with her character. It must have taken careful calibration, but the result doesn't feel calculated, it feels natural, like a flower opening. Bella's look - long uncut hair, no makeup, and untamed eyebrows -suggests a person who doesn't look like anything <b>for</b> anyone. When she wears makeup for the first time late in the movie, it's shocking, and if an actress can convey "I feel weird wearing makeup", Stone does it.</p><p>Bella begins life as a science experiment only, on high-contrast black and white film, living in "God's" sprawling townhouse like a preemie in a well-appointed incubator, or a newt in a terrarium. (For Lanthimos, a director whose use of extreme fisheye lenses, abstract music, and fantastical production design is distracting and abstruse, calling the mad scientist/father figure "God" is a little on the nose, don't you think?) "God" contains her to the townhouse, attempts to kindly control her, but he comes to love her like a daughter and subsequently permits most everything. "God's" kindhearted lab assistant Max (Ramy Youssef) falls in love with Bella as she gains self-awareness. When Bella is given some liberty in her intellectual adolescence, she escapes into the real world with Baxter's lawyer, the dissolute cad Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo).</p><p>This same story could have been told if Bella Baxter was a time traveler, or an escaped cult member, or an alien in woman's clothing, or a cat transformed into a person: how does an adult raised in seclusion react to being dropped into the patriarchy the rest of us have been soaking in our whole lives? Actually, the cult survivor example (see <b>The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt</b>) wouldn't apply here because Bella is the <i>alpha</i> of her story. Cult members are dominated by their leader. Bella never responds to the implied or direct oppression of men. She just does what she wants, whenever she wants, and doesn't care what you think.</p><p>The men of the world are represented by Wedderburn. He spirits her away from her seclusion, because he finds her to be an intriguing object, then a sex object, then a puzzle to be solved, and finally he attempts dominance over her. But her indifference to his (implied) patriarchal role is her superpower: he is amused, then confounded, then enraged, then destroyed by it. He expresses this emotional chaos by drinking and impotently lashing out at everyone else who opposes him. These moments are used to comic effect, especially when he lamely attempts to murder an elderly lady, who strikes him in the throat with her cane. As he's dragged away, he chokes "I'll be in the bar..."</p><p>Speaking of chaos, it's unfortunate that, until the last minutes of the movie, the story sidesteps an important and inevitable truth of women who defy their men: <b>physical and mental abuse</b>. Bella repeatedly embarrasses and defies Wedderburn in public, in private, and steals a fortune in gambling winnings from him. Wedderburn repeatedly soars into a rage over her ignorance of her supposed obligation to subjugate herself to him. Yet <b>he never strikes her</b>. In one scene, when she behaves poorly at a restaurant, he drags her away and squeezes her biceps too hard, but that's it. </p><p>As I said above, she is immune to the patriarchal control that men take for granted, so mental abuse doesn't work on her. But I kept waiting for Wedderburn to strike her, at moments when anyone would expect a man like Wedderburn to do so, and it never happens. In fact, there's a moment featured in all the promotions for the movie where <b>she </b>slaps <b>him </b>across the face, and it's played for laughs: he's so surprised to be abused by a woman that he forgets to feel any pain, he looks sideways for a moment and just says "Ow."</p><p>That's the question I would put to the moviemakers: Wedderburn is central to Bella's relationship to Men and the world overall. Therefore, it's out of character for Wedderburn to not beat "his" woman. If you're trying to tell the story of the human condition, it belongs in the movie. Especially when he physically lashes out at everyone else in the movie? Are we supposed to believe he attacks everyone else because he has realized attacking Bella would be ineffective? If so, I didn't connect those dots. Maybe making him also a punchline muddles the metaphor.</p><p><i>(I was glad not to be thinking of Ruffalo's 5+ performances as the most famous rage monster in movie history, Bruce Banner/The Hulk. I only hope Lanthimos wasn't either. )</i></p><p>Dafoe is terrific as the scientist who comes to love his experiment like a father and daughter. The character is an exploration of the Dr. Frankenstein idea: Why would a scientist attempt to reanimate a man from dead body parts? We learn that Baxter himself was the subject of his own father's inhumane experiments, that amounted to torture and mutilation. Dr. Baxter himself looks like Frankenstein's monster, with giant scars criss-crossing his face, and an inhuman jawline distorted by we-don't-want-to-know-what. Baxter reveals these inhumanities scientifically, as if they were irrelevant to any emotional attachment to his father. However, unlike his own father's experiments on him, Baxter is kind to the point of 'spoiling' his daughter/experiment, both figuratively and scientifically.</p><p>This review is incomplete without discussing the rampant nudity and all the intercourse. Bella discovers her clitoris when she's barely an adolescent, and after she escapes "God"'s townhouse with Wedderburn, she wants to explore the pleasures of the real world. This consists solely of gorging herself on delicious food until she (literally) pukes, and having an infinite amount of intercourse. Emma Stone is very naked many times in the movie. We see everything except Ruffalo's penis in one intercourse montage. After she finds herself penniless in Paris with the useless Wedderburn, she immediately turns to whoring to make money. As Bella is ignorant of all learning and has no skills, she's not qualified for much more than manual labor, and whoring is the best-paying manual labor she can get. The movie doesn't bother to show her applying for anything else. I can't call out the movie for cynicism when I complained so much about the lack of abuse four paragraphs ago. </p><p>The lessons she learns from the johns, the madam, and the whore with a heart of gold who goes down on her arrive at the point where <b>Poor Things</b> starts to belabor its point. The movie is not slow, not too long in hours and minutes. <b>Poor Things</b> explores ideas about women and men and their place together in new, interesting, and fun ways, but by the 100 minute mark, the points all feel made already. In the last half hour, Bella discovers that the only way to escape Marriage is through violence. The bow tied on the movie at the end feels very convenient, tidy, and out of character with the rest of the film.</p><p><b>My Stub Hubby grade: B-plus.</b> On a frigid, windy, 9 degree night at the Beacon Theater, Pittsfield. 2 hours, 21 minutes. <b>Rated R</b> for strong and pervasive sexual content, graphic nudity (Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, many French whores, and full frontal nudity of four or five French johns), disturbing material, gore (mostly eviscerated corpses in a surgical theater, but also two brief explicit surgery scenes on live patients, and Bella stabs a corpse in the eyeballs repeatedly)...and language.</p><p><b>Rated R [barely] </b>How did this movie avoid an NC-17 or whatever is above "R"? We never see actual penetration, I guess that's the line they didn't cross. Movies like this make the ratings seem silly. There's plenty of comedies with zero sex or violence or gore, with three swear words that are also "R"!</p><p><b>OSCARS WATCH</b>: You know how The Academy has occasionally rewards long-overdue performances to veteran actors for roles that we all agree aren't as good as their classic stuff? Al Pacino in <b>Scent Of A Woman</b>, Sean Connery in <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-untouchables.html">The Untouchables</a>? Emma Stone could be the same thing, in reverse: she won the Oscar in 2016 for <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2016/12/la-la-land.html">La La Land</a>, a charming but slight rom-com, then went on to far superior work in <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-favourite.html">The Favourite</a>, and <b>Poor Things,</b> and...who knows what's next. If she only wins that one Oscar, the Academy may look back in embarrassment that they pulled the trigger so quickly on Stone's career.</p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-49186767133701533652024-01-15T14:49:00.033-05:002024-01-31T14:56:12.879-05:00222 Hazelnut Silence<p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li> Three O'Clock In The Morning / <b>Dexter Gordon</b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkmoxPh9X5UviJFzdEqRsrOb0bSkDu97b2jdvRHBKcMaRtzJLU8JZFDqQCild8jmTdJ3jqiywnL-9GyrTHA5dGOdj8hNiMLn5o-0FI5G6O9jfCd1mmNSXtjarRFhcpvaWgwbDBkveVzFlqRv-F_HTGuDHTIG9y5HlgdxJ6mvw1awrt3_ev7PKYvnzDZzNh/s600/222_final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkmoxPh9X5UviJFzdEqRsrOb0bSkDu97b2jdvRHBKcMaRtzJLU8JZFDqQCild8jmTdJ3jqiywnL-9GyrTHA5dGOdj8hNiMLn5o-0FI5G6O9jfCd1mmNSXtjarRFhcpvaWgwbDBkveVzFlqRv-F_HTGuDHTIG9y5HlgdxJ6mvw1awrt3_ev7PKYvnzDZzNh/s320/222_final.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></li><li>Shy Of The Moon / <b>The Wallflowers</b></li><li>Love In Vain / <b>The Rolling Stones</b></li><li>Don't Pass Me By / <b>The Beatles</b></li><li>A Lifetime To Find / <b>Wilco</b></li><li>Love Is Nothing / <b>Liz Phair</b></li><li>I Get Weak / <b>Belinda Carlisle</b></li><li>A Little Love / <b>Mt Joy/feat Julia Pratt</b></li><li>As It Was / <b>Harry Styles</b></li><li>Linus & Lucy (take 1) / <b>Vince Guaraldi Trio</b></li><li>Deep Inside / <b>Mary J. Blige & Elton John</b></li><li>Say It Like You Mean It / <b>Sleater-Kinney</b></li><li>Baby I Need Your Loving / <b>The Four Tops</b></li><li>Simulation Swarm / <b>Big Thief</b></li><li>Fly By Night / <b>Rush</b></li><li>Birdbrain / <b>Buffalo Tom</b></li><li>Print The Legend / <b>The Paranoid Style</b></li><li>Streams Of Whiskey / <b>The Pogues</b></li><li>Hyena / <b>R.E.M.</b></li><li>Midnight In Harlem / <b>Tedeschi Trucks Band</b></li><li>Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (live) / <b>Cannonball Adderley</b></li></ol><p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-81781954824315349112024-01-15T08:54:00.171-05:002024-01-22T11:10:12.869-05:00The Boy And The Heron<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUQQo40lmPGQLqcvD-UnFMvoeR8RhmSN3merwq62sAJIIW5cbARxCyQcrl6UuLRE1wNAollP8srR3CtEdvqHvkvv-lslJGn4dKovQclfJS_vOF1h5X9t7mNKMBwzbuPIvfKE65Zi47KSn8LH5n1vM_9x4yemKpLKs4PqFyzU5vOEVN8C7J7V38ttyZr26/s755/kimitachi_wa_do_ikiru_ka_ver5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="516" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUQQo40lmPGQLqcvD-UnFMvoeR8RhmSN3merwq62sAJIIW5cbARxCyQcrl6UuLRE1wNAollP8srR3CtEdvqHvkvv-lslJGn4dKovQclfJS_vOF1h5X9t7mNKMBwzbuPIvfKE65Zi47KSn8LH5n1vM_9x4yemKpLKs4PqFyzU5vOEVN8C7J7V38ttyZr26/s320/kimitachi_wa_do_ikiru_ka_ver5.jpg" width="219" /></a></div>Director Hayao Miyazaki (<b>Spirited Away</b>, <b>Howl's Moving Castle</b>, and one of the finest movies for children ever made, <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2023/02/my-neighbor-totoro.html">My Neighbor Totoro</a>) is 83 years old, but he has made a beautiful movie about childhood and family.<p></p><p>Mahito is a ten-year-old boy who loses his mother in a wartime bombing raid, and who later moves out to the countryside, partly as an escape from the dangers of wartime. If this reminds you of the Pevensie children, the parallels continue when Mahito goes on a quest through a magical portal into a fantasy world.</p><p>Before he enters the fantasy world, some of the magic intrudes on our world. I loved that these moments were staged so that we don't know if only Mahito is experiencing these supernatural events and the adults don't, or if they also see them but don't comment on them? Miyazaki is deft at handling these moments so adult characters (and their rational minds) don't intrude/spoil Mahito's experience. Whether he's dreaming it or it's "really" happening is immaterial.</p><div>Ostensibly to rescue his dead mother- or is he rescuing his new stepmother? - the journey takes no straight lines. <b>The Boy and The Heron</b> is bursting with tangents, unexplained events, broad symbolism, and other moments that may be symbolic of something, but I didn't always know what. Much like the girl cursed with old age in <b>Howl's Moving Castle</b>, I appreciate that Mahito takes every unreal creature, charm, and curse he encounters at face value. This child does not have an adult's rational mind that asks for explanations or refuses to accept what can't be real.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my middle age, I have developed a taste for movies that don't have to explain everything. I mind loose ends less than I used to. I have learned to embrace Christopher Nolan's affinity for muddled dialog that I can't follow. In that spirit, I enjoyed this trip I was taken on, and the resolution was very satisfying. However, if the movie didn't offer so many metaphors, the remainder would have had more impact. A little more plot momentum, a little less wandering. The boy sometimes didn't show enough urgency. Somewhere between <b>Totoro's </b>86 minutes, and <b>Spirited Away's</b> 125 would have been stronger.</div><p><b>My Stub Hubby Grade: B-plus for wandering.</b> 2 hours, 4 minutes. Rated PG-13 for some violent content/bloody images and smoking. Several human characters are elderly nicotine addicts, and crave cigarettes. Not a flattering depiction of smoking! <i>(Regal Crossgates Albany with the whole fam)</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-76980670546306110112024-01-15T08:54:00.077-05:002024-01-22T10:41:45.247-05:00Rushmore<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXRjtCEfA6oO7laoLtog1NeYpDOqmgH-OahLDuF_sWKHa9_IhX4cUqqUPatVk0nZodBXKMC4bPFOukhgpyWLF04nCltSv5SwyVm5pUOFcPz-CdcnVys9R75MCKxGTCTD7Z8VQOuztQycrpD0bfa6erW4jonwaIJ3BZWFFMZTBy5gd2Pehfj-iWSYJVplg/s755/rushmore_ver1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="508" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXRjtCEfA6oO7laoLtog1NeYpDOqmgH-OahLDuF_sWKHa9_IhX4cUqqUPatVk0nZodBXKMC4bPFOukhgpyWLF04nCltSv5SwyVm5pUOFcPz-CdcnVys9R75MCKxGTCTD7Z8VQOuztQycrpD0bfa6erW4jonwaIJ3BZWFFMZTBy5gd2Pehfj-iWSYJVplg/s320/rushmore_ver1.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>One of my wife's favorite movies, I hadn't seen it in a long time when we put it on for the kids on a whim last week. After 25 years of Wes Anderson's precious twee filmmaking, I had forgotten all about the charms of <b>Rushmore</b>.<p></p><p><b>Rushmore</b> sings the praises of the ambitious misfit who can't get out of his own way, a love letter to a teenage boy who is just as ignorant as he is smart. You can find Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) insufferable if you want, but this movie succeeds in making a 15 year old boy - hard to admire, rarely cool, often a hard person to love - our hero.</p><p>Bill Murray delivers maybe his best-ever performance as Herman Blume, another school parent wallowing in a midlife crisis, and finds in Max the joy for life that he's missing. </p><p>Olivia Williams is the kindergarten teacher at Rushmore that forms the third player in the would-be love triangle. By 2024 standards, the friendship she allows to grow with a 15-year-old is completely inappropriate. By 1998 standards she should have known better, and she is unable to push Max away and keep him away. A thankless role, but necessary.</p><p>Wes Anderson is a Generation Xer, the movie is full of 60s and 70s rock, movies, and style choices, but our generation was already graduating from college when it came out in 1998. The late 90s were the Millennial formative years, <b>Rushmore</b> must be a keystone work for them?</p><p>If you haven't seen it, and you're weary of Anderson's rigid, stifling moviemaking, try and put those feelings aside and give <b>Rushmore</b> a chance. <i>On Prime Video, I guess we don't have Emily's old VHS tape anymore?</i></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-12933369759458946442024-01-08T09:15:00.214-05:002024-01-11T10:09:44.833-05:00The Holdovers<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRr4yGRL_DOh702w5eUEK3bqgJasZMkqRfA0aZL8zPuEcxLoYWpztznCwKudSn8KmC8SAkqKiCiGsYUAAZ6nxEaT1H4exsIoK1CjU7lzEBjzkyScW-fw6D_8dVu0lma5Ylt3VcBD1GPGbBCaOvE7dOzj_AXtmjxyaMScSpXCF-G7D-XM006Ko64gYhLU2i/s755/holdovers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRr4yGRL_DOh702w5eUEK3bqgJasZMkqRfA0aZL8zPuEcxLoYWpztznCwKudSn8KmC8SAkqKiCiGsYUAAZ6nxEaT1H4exsIoK1CjU7lzEBjzkyScW-fw6D_8dVu0lma5Ylt3VcBD1GPGbBCaOvE7dOzj_AXtmjxyaMScSpXCF-G7D-XM006Ko64gYhLU2i/s320/holdovers.jpg" width="216" /></a>Exquisite performances from Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti, genuine New England locations, actual winter weather, and a great debut by Dominic Sessa, <b>The Holdovers</b> is a fine example of the prep school coming-of-age drama, with comedy bits.</p><p>Giamatti is Paul Hunham, a cranky history teacher at a Deerfield-style remote New England prep school, who is punished for his assholery by babysitting the school's holdovers for the two-week Christmas break.</p><p>Hunham's prickly personality and mild drunkenness make him impossible to like: Hunham is hated by the rich white boys he teaches, for his coarse attitude and rigid grading standards; and he has pissed off the headmaster (a former student of his) by flunking the son of a rich patron who's also a US Senator. While taking a drink at a candlepin bowling joint, he nearly picks a fight with the bartender and Santa Claus by "actually"-ing them over the history of Santa Claus. When he attempts to defuse a potential bar fight earlier in the movie, his arcane sentence structure confounds the drunken louts and nearly makes it worse. His only two cordial relationships with adults reveal something of his character: they're both with non-faculty school staff. He has a crush on the cheery secretary Miss Crane (Carrie Preston), the kind of crush a lonely man has on a woman who is nice to everyone. He's also friends with the head of the kitchen, Mary (Randolph) - I wonder if Mary is friends with other men on the faculty, or whether these two see each other as fellow outsiders?</p><p>Paul Giamatti is an excellent actor, and he has no trouble making his character grouchy. I wonder if it was totally necessary to make him have a walleye, AND a congenital body odor problem. I suspect they wanted to make the cause of Hunham's lifetime of solitude - or loneliness - more obvious, by making him unappealing to look at <b>and</b> smell? </p><div>Sessa is Angus Tully, who we see at first as a arrogant jerk, but we soon learn is the only kid passing Hunham's class, a kid who uses arrogant jerkiness as a shield, to match the attitudes of <b>authentic</b> asshole classmates he has to live with. We learn everything about Tully as the story unfolds - that's what coming-of-age stories do, right?</div><p>Director Alexander Payne uses a light touch with the emotional development of the film. The pivotal Christmas Eve party is handled with sensitivity and the performances are allowed to do the important work. </p><p>The sensitive strummed guitar score and singer-songwriter needle drops did not help set the early 70s tone of the story, they only drew attention to how the director was obsessed with making an early-70s-style movie that needed guitars strummed sensitively. There's a Cat Stevens song, for crissake!</p><p>The only thing bigger than my hate for <b>fake</b> snow in movies is my love for <b>real</b> snow in movies, and the producers were blessed with an actual snowstorm during filming. Weather: The Ultimate Production Value! As a lifelong New Englander, I was pleased with their depiction of Massachusetts in 1970. They got the small-town looks right - how many neon signs are vintage, and how many were made for the movie? The Back Bay skyline was right (Prudential tower but no Hancock), the downtown Boston locations looked good, even where they had to use CGI to make Chinatown look right. We were tickled pink to see the interior of the Somerville Theater and the exterior of The Chateau in Waltham (aka "the fascist hash factory").</p><p>The plot conveniences were clunky in places. Sometimes <i>deux ex machina</i> had to pull hard on the rope to get the curtain to reveal everyone's character development. But no one's watching <b>The Holdovers</b> to see a movie with a perfectly assembled plot, are they? It's for the characters, and their journeys. <b>The Holdovers</b> ending is maybe a tiny bit too tidy without being too happy. I'm giving <b>The Holdovers</b> an <b>A-minus</b> for making me look at Hunham's walleye for two hours, and for the needle drops. </p><p>NOTE: I was sorry that the movie makes no comment on the most famous holdover of all time, a man who also made Christmas difficult for those under his power, Ebenezer Scrooge! This movie is set 30 years to early to cite the second most famous holdover, Harry Potter.</p><p><b>No Theater Notes</b>: I wanted to see this in the theater in December 2023, and my local Triplex was showing it for a week, but I was on the second week of a nasty virus, the whole family was ailing, and I just didn't/couldn't do it. It's showing for free on Peacock, check it out.</p><div><br /></div>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-62268942419769734592023-12-31T15:56:00.005-05:002023-12-31T15:57:29.186-05:00 2023 In Review<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmnpz9IKtjI0ej4US7Dpfviv3_jPC3y3dcgHUjWckEaXhTQTv0W8laP21mmjJ6ULCqaJALf7fAKi3h5AQ-g9LF3AjbzMtNgtmsgKDLucCScKfEXbRWMF3F8KObfjoZBGauacOu76L-ZieDZ-thkWn5LONl6xb7V6F8qQY0APrgAvHz3M5C85niVX0UgQfx/s4000/20231226_132522.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmnpz9IKtjI0ej4US7Dpfviv3_jPC3y3dcgHUjWckEaXhTQTv0W8laP21mmjJ6ULCqaJALf7fAKi3h5AQ-g9LF3AjbzMtNgtmsgKDLucCScKfEXbRWMF3F8KObfjoZBGauacOu76L-ZieDZ-thkWn5LONl6xb7V6F8qQY0APrgAvHz3M5C85niVX0UgQfx/s320/20231226_132522.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me watching Singin In The Rain, where<br />the characters are watching a movie<br />in the movie</td></tr></tbody></table>My moviegoing bounced back big time in 2023: in 2022 I only went to a theater once, to see <a href="https://stubhubby.blogspot.com/2022/12/wakanda-forever.html">Wakanda Forever</a> in December. But in 2023, I went <b>16 times</b>, right back in line with my typical attendance as a parent between 2010-2019.<p></p><p>No surprise here, 12 of the 16 were with the kids, but nine of those wanted to see anyway. I'm happy to be back on track, though I regret missing <b>The Holdovers</b> and <b>Killers Of The Flower Moon</b> - we were all sick in December, that put a crimp in my plans. I am hopeful I can still see <b>Maestro</b>, <b>Poor Things</b>, and <b>Past Lives</b> before the Oscars.</p><p>I'm proudest of how many times I sat down in front of the television and watched a movie I'd never seen before, like, all the way through: <b>24 times!</b> And seven of those were new movies! High-fiving a million angels!</p><p>My goal for 2024 is to go to The Triplex in Great Barrington as much as possible, to see movies for grown-ups on the big screen as much as I can. Wish me luck!</p><div><br /></div>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-69227948309694755812023-12-27T16:00:00.059-05:002024-01-01T12:03:22.983-05:00Ferrari<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHuKd0jE1LEN3DIY-enNYTPZNhU7ifEcfQe5Y35Zu2KcQf1npDR1bJYtEoXI3j_4KgACFWmSREjLCI4gK8yS98WTNlBvxMFBFzJ-MbczQ0Raz-s7wEOi-Jke1DXUp_45rqkvagrLlYoRdzq_L1UFmpN1uTjhX1UZ_E_ZUIxMDsQlSoWiKAlRrltUWmOdU2/s755/ferrari_ver3.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHuKd0jE1LEN3DIY-enNYTPZNhU7ifEcfQe5Y35Zu2KcQf1npDR1bJYtEoXI3j_4KgACFWmSREjLCI4gK8yS98WTNlBvxMFBFzJ-MbczQ0Raz-s7wEOi-Jke1DXUp_45rqkvagrLlYoRdzq_L1UFmpN1uTjhX1UZ_E_ZUIxMDsQlSoWiKAlRrltUWmOdU2/s320/ferrari_ver3.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>I don't think Michael Mann has ever seen a movie where a husband has a mistress with a child on the side. Half the movie is about this!<div>I like Adam Driver a lot, and I thought he was quite good. I was a bit distracted by an very tall, broad-shouldered 40 year-old playing a famously short 60 year-old. Driver literally ducks through doorways in this movie - couldn't they have pulled some <b>Lord Of The Rings</b> tricks and build oversized doorways like when Gandalf visits Bag End? I hope <b>Ferrari</b> wins Best Makeup because Driver's Silver Fox haircut looked perfect. I've never seen a dye job so authentic-looking, I can only assume it's a wig? <div>I wanted to like Penélope Cruz as Mrs. Ferrari, but besides chewing scenery, most of her performance seemed to consist of not brushing her hair or wearing any makeup. It doesn't help her performance that she's tasked with the age-old "powerful woman discovers she's been wronged" role.</div><div>The other half is about his efforts to save his bankrupt automotive business by entering the Mille Miglia race. The racing scenes are strong. Ferrari's lecture to his drivers on the fortitude and fearlessness required to win will surely be Driver's Oscars clip. A warning - Mann punishes our enjoyment of auto racing by showing us in explicit, gruesome, shocking detail, the results of two racing accidents in the era before safety was taken seriously. I've never seen anything like it. The first time I was so taken aback I said "O God!" out loud before literally clapping my hand to my mouth. <i>(at the Millerton MovieHouse, while the rest of the family saw Wonka)</i><p></p></div></div>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-74724053827430318852023-12-26T15:59:00.010-05:002024-01-01T11:47:04.096-05:00Singin In The Rain<p> </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4B8LG_1P6mDi5Bn-BP9GBHnlBsn1B6UEwqhz93H5zIR-QvFIBKpMCJ_c786KXMazRuA9Q9Z-bjy-KrtxTAwKfeBYc25Gh7aO866xNjXsurfeUv4f97w46eOntcGg3LFe5ypUfBTYISCpud2OWFvkhEzUcRfpQp3ffqK3Zn19pvNftdS3tZl_ZnH8G8thU/s4000/20231226_132522.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4B8LG_1P6mDi5Bn-BP9GBHnlBsn1B6UEwqhz93H5zIR-QvFIBKpMCJ_c786KXMazRuA9Q9Z-bjy-KrtxTAwKfeBYc25Gh7aO866xNjXsurfeUv4f97w46eOntcGg3LFe5ypUfBTYISCpud2OWFvkhEzUcRfpQp3ffqK3Zn19pvNftdS3tZl_ZnH8G8thU/s320/20231226_132522.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My photo of the audience watching a movie<br />of an audience watching a movie</td></tr></tbody></table>One of my favorite movies, I'll go see it anytime. Endlessly funny, romantic, exciting, and the Hollywood satire is as relevant as ever. <i>(At the triplex)</i><p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-48396544846589761692023-12-15T12:24:00.022-05:002023-12-20T12:30:45.488-05:00A Muppet Christmas Carol<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IQAcRLn4xtLyPSdUTOyiwA5NT3DfR9v55Os8aJWnLyzJeaf0BL5MXsFTJ5zO1PBraY3_1EBUechiurfaYHRxYJXfF-acwbQ1jkvDcfSSlooYz9_Yksn971q6hJs8Wi1glfD5YgZdcauQ8qx2EiwomxKxEmTEyA0T1L5PQFap5sF8iygY5FnlyeobWRLm/s4000/20231215_183953.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IQAcRLn4xtLyPSdUTOyiwA5NT3DfR9v55Os8aJWnLyzJeaf0BL5MXsFTJ5zO1PBraY3_1EBUechiurfaYHRxYJXfF-acwbQ1jkvDcfSSlooYz9_Yksn971q6hJs8Wi1glfD5YgZdcauQ8qx2EiwomxKxEmTEyA0T1L5PQFap5sF8iygY5FnlyeobWRLm/s320/20231215_183953.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Still delightful! We've been looking forward to seeing <b>Muppet Christmas Carol</b> on the big screen for weeks; it was tough to avoid watching it on television all this time. Some adaptations of <b>A Christmas Carol</b> feel more faithful to the novella than others. This version distinguishes itself by having Charles Dickens (Gonzo) narrate much of the action, giving us the opportunity to hear a lot more of Dickens' descriptions than most movies. <i>(At the Mahaiwe with a bunch of Pete's friends and peers)</i><p></p><p><b>Theater Notes</b>: The Mahaiwe is a performing arts theater that also shows movies; the seats are comfortable and the audio/video is adequate; I only wish they would take their concession stand more seriously. They could make a lot more money for their nonprofit if they invested in a popcorn machine and a complete selection of candy. </p><br /><p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-69966624923694933622023-12-09T15:58:00.016-05:002024-01-01T11:44:33.918-05:00Shop Around The Corner [1940]<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoeSZZGT703PfmjVOci5hcbm69aylTMTJJgnAvJSqONM3oTWrmsYRgdI7zUpWaEaCpH7ZPpleGrs-Xg_vlOboPwhL7Y-ZUEssNw5sSbMAQ3iQimOqMNW8Ctzd28CriNjHkarkt09DGXLVxJjOBkZon3aN7Yc3jLhQZ8t8Or_Xfs4LhtIyzsH3qr2GtR8ir/s4000/20231209_081229.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoeSZZGT703PfmjVOci5hcbm69aylTMTJJgnAvJSqONM3oTWrmsYRgdI7zUpWaEaCpH7ZPpleGrs-Xg_vlOboPwhL7Y-ZUEssNw5sSbMAQ3iQimOqMNW8Ctzd28CriNjHkarkt09DGXLVxJjOBkZon3aN7Yc3jLhQZ8t8Or_Xfs4LhtIyzsH3qr2GtR8ir/s320/20231209_081229.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Trying to recover my insights from watching this movie on December 9...three weeks ago now! I enjoyed it very much. Jimmy Stewart is always charming, Margaret Sullivan was very nice. Frank Morgan, whom I'd only seen as the Wizard of Oz (from the previous year) was touching, even if his "is the shopowner's wife stepping out" subplot was confusing for awhile.<br /> <p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7752246043379473418.post-89498871346478617422023-11-25T14:28:00.048-05:002024-01-31T14:35:17.312-05:00221 Lost Love's Last Licks<ol><li style="text-align: left;">Malibu, <b>Margo Price<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR1P88lFklFn1r6GrJ_LGYBWPt6DOlcbQ4_y4Dm5kYKYXf9GEk5d1Rq2OrfG1oT4e-tYzaIzzwyqghxa3ioDYonEd1eOiNTcJ7VRZ7QGNm5AhcRSpupUd402NdZWCh7JxDj7tawXzy5_qxC5zCpS08YYH1DaIVrqDKM49DPLedrb96OUOXKTY2Q10rpVyz/s490/221FiNAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="490" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR1P88lFklFn1r6GrJ_LGYBWPt6DOlcbQ4_y4Dm5kYKYXf9GEk5d1Rq2OrfG1oT4e-tYzaIzzwyqghxa3ioDYonEd1eOiNTcJ7VRZ7QGNm5AhcRSpupUd402NdZWCh7JxDj7tawXzy5_qxC5zCpS08YYH1DaIVrqDKM49DPLedrb96OUOXKTY2Q10rpVyz/s320/221FiNAL.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Evicted, <b>Wilco</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Tear My Stillhouse Down, <b>Gillian Welch</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Taillights Fade, <b>Buffalo Tom</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Truth Hits Everybody, <b>The Police</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Taxman, <b>The Beatles</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, <b>Nirvana</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Spellbound, <b>Siouxsie & The Banshees</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">You've Got Another Thing Coming, <b>Judas Priest</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Mad About You, <b>Belinda Carlisle</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Johnny Sunshine, <b>Liz Phair</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Dreamboat Annie,<b> Heart</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Purple Rain, <b>Dolly Parton</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Helplessly Hoping, <b>Crosby, Stills, & Nash</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">MUD, <b>Slow Pulp</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Telephone Line, <b>Juliana Hatfield</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing, <b>Stevie Wonder</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Susan, <b>Aimee Mann</b></li><li style="text-align: left;">Jungleland, <b>Bruce Springsteen</b></li></ol><br /><p></p>Nathaniel Woodwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03938599298339970729noreply@blogger.com