| Jackie님의 프로필carpe diem블로그리스트 |  도구  도움말 |
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9월 9일 Why Netflix Knows Me Better Than My MotherNo, that's not completely true. What I was trying to say is that Netflix knows me better than my mother, my best friend, and my OB/GYN combined. I've been subscribing to Netflix's service for a few years. Based on what movies I have rent in the past and how I rated them, Netflix makes guesses on what movies I would like and use it to customize its movie recommendations, through a statistical technique called "collaborative filtering." The general premise behind this is -- and ironically, this is exactly what I do for a living -- that each consumer, rather than an individual with unique, idiosyncratic tastes and preferences, is merely a mundane collection of data points to be mathematically analyzed, precisely targeted, and relentlessly exploited, all in the name of better serving you, Ma'am. So through the years Netflix has been assiduously refining its bets given more and more data points from me. In the beginning, it would make generic suggestions such as "Dramas" or "Critically Acclaimed Movies." Now they are more detailed and nuanced. And as you know, the devil's all in the details. So instead of "Dramas", it would recommend "Witty Dramas with a Strong Female Lead" for Dear Jackie. Do you see the difference? It's like the difference between having "Potato Salad" and having "Potato Salad with Pickled Pearl Onions and Garden Dill with Squire Hill Farm's Ameraucana Hen egg Emulsion", i.e., the potato salad you pay $26 for at Per Se! "Thrillers"? That's too vague. It should be"Romantic Crime Thrillers". "Foreign Movies"? No. We believe that Jackie only likes "Dark Foreign Movies". Wait, that isn't fair. Have YOU ever seen a Foreign Film that Isn't Dark? A "Foreign Slapstick", like a Swedish Ben Stiller or an Iranian version of "American Pie"? Apparently only American movies are blessed with the Eternal Sunshine of the Idiotic Mind. But I have to admit that, overall, the psychological profile depicted below fits the suspect. Who needs a therapist any more? So, my friends, I've bared my soul for you all to see. Take pity. Or go ahead and take advantage of me.  2월 21일 And the Oscar Goes to... the Dog?This year's Academy Awards ceremony is only a day away. For many years I've stood steadfastly as an apostle of the Oscars despite years of disappointments (see here and here) as fine subtle filmmaking kept giving way to glitz and schmaltz in the Best Picture's category (e.g., The Pianist lost to Chicago in 2003, Mystic River lost to Lord of the Rings in 2004, Brokeback Mountain to Crash in 2006, just to name a few) . Much as I have reconciled myself to this unrequited love with the Academy, this year I'm sensing a particularly dangerous threat. This is a line that must not be crossed. Ok. Let me spell it out: Don't let Slumdog Millionaire win the Best Picture -- Dear Academy, this is as far as I can retreat on the Western Front. This doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the movie. On the contrary, like most people, I enjoyed every minute watching the 2-hour movie while I was at it. The main plot is rather formulaic: boy meets girl (in this case, in the poverty-stricken slums of Mumbai), girl snatched away from boy (first by a brutal begging syndicate and then an abusive Mafia boss), boy rises to the challenge of his destiny (here by contesting in the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"), and finally boy and girl are happily united (conveniently, he also gets a million dollars to take care of the "ever after" part). If this were a Western version of the formula, it could not possibly have earned 10 Oscar nominations. So the real trick lies in the background of the story, which depicts a panorama of India's urban lower-class life: the squalor and poverty of its slums, sectarian violence, child exploitation, organized crimes, police brutality. Danny Boyle is undeniably a sensualist director: every scene is saturated in light and color and edited in a seamless pace, but despite all the cinematographic felicity, a sense of profound sorrow and grief lingers on your mind as you watch the young Jamal, the protagonist, struggles to survive in a dangerous city of millions in an unsympathetic universe. But in the end it's just another cliche rags-to-riches story, with an improbable fairy-tale-ish plot, and two cardboard-like main characters who are solely characterized by their puppy love for each other. The incongruity between the weight of its background and the frivolity of its theme is staggering. So that's why, after I spent two hours watching this feel-good movie and walked out of the theater, a bad after-taste akin to a gnawing hangover suddenly took over. So much effort for so little purpose! It feels like playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on a grand Steinway next to an ice cream truck to help sell Vanilla Millis. Or treading on a thorn-paved, travail-laden pilgrimage only to find out that the final destination is Disneyland. Well, you get the idea. So, dear Academy, please for once exercise your good judgment and let the Slumdog just be a dog. 7월 7일 WALL-E (2008) is a Bad MovieAll right. I know what I just said may be hugely unpopular: The average viewer rating of the movie on IMDB has surpassed Casablanca (1942) and Star Wars (1977). Even all the usually blockbuster-busting critics including Roger Elbert of the Chicago Sun-Times and Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal are chanting unanimous eulogies. It seems like animations, especially the ones made by Pixar, have the power, by evoking the little child deeply hidden in all of us, to win our hearts while secretly insulting our intelligence.
The story happens 700 years in the future, when the humans have deserted the trash-covered earth, leaving (perhaps inadvertently) a forlorn garbage-collecting robot, WALL-E (acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), roaming the planet and piling up garbage cubes into skyscrapers. No doubt that's a lonely life. Until one day he watches another robot, Eve, sleek and all-powerful, descending from the sky. Too bad our robotic protagonist can neither speak nor read Shakespeare; otherwise, he would know the perfect thing to say to her, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty until tonight." Apparently, the filmmakers did not think android romance alone would do justice to their world-class creativity. So the next thing you see: the robot lovers are on a journey to salvage the fate of the humankind.
I found the movie incredibly annoying. Tactically, it's awkward to watch robots fall in love (not the ones that look like humans or animals but the chunky-clunky kind of robot).Maybe it's just me. If you can happily imagine yourself watching your Roomba vacuum cleaner and your iPod spending hours trying to figure out how to hold hands and actually holding hands, you will probably find the movie intensely gratifying. Because that's basically what the movie is. (The sleek and minimalist Eve looks eerily like an iPod. I somehow got the feeling that the movie is a homage to Mr. Steve Jobs of Apple Inc., who also founded Pixar.)
But the movie is even more flawed on a fundamental level. Should children even be watching animations about robots (as apposed to animals and fairies?) In the past Pixar has produced deeply human tales such as Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and Ratatouille. In WALL-E, the robots are intelligent, sensitive, and courageous; the humans are obese and imbecile at their best, manipulative and evil at their worst. The concept of a social satire disguised as a children's animation is as disgusting as a vanilla ice cream with a topping of foie gras gone sour.
9월 3일 "Little Miss Sunshine"A surprisingly funny and heartwarming indie comedy. Honest-to-goodness and free of all Hollywood-style pretensions. Like the breath of fresh air you take when stepping out of a bar. It's an ensemble movie about a clearly dysfunctional family: all members have their frustrations, quirks, neuroses, yet all managed to hop in an old VW bus on a journey to California, in support of Olive, the seven-year-old daughter, to realize her dream of winning the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Olive's father, Richard (Greg Kinnear), is a motivational speaker who invented a nine-step program for success but has been mostly a disappointment himself. Richard and his wife, Sheryl, have just taken under their roof Sheryl's brother, Frank (Steve Carell), the number-one Marcel Proust scholar in the U.S., who fell in love with a male graduate student and recently attempted suicide when the student lept into the bed of the number-two Proust scholar. Olive's brother, Dwayne, a troubled, Niesche-adoring teenager, has taken a vow of silence and not spoken a word for months. Olive also has a drug-snorting, porn-loving grandpa (Alan Arkin) who coaches her on the dance routine. Given these colorful characters, it is not surprising their bus tour to California would be an eventful one. But what is amazing is how the director Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris made their life-size drama realistic, human, and hypnotically charming. The script is hilarious, but not a single line is out of character. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. And there are also moments of struggle and love that would make you cry (which I nevertheless refrained from doing in the theater, for it'd appear rather pathetic to sob when you watch a movie by yourself on a Saturday night). You'll end up loving all the characters despite their flaws. And you'll feel you've been in that bus too, stuck with failure, crushed dreams, and the realization that you were probably not one of the Beauty Queens of the world, but, fortunately, you still have the unconditional love from the people who are called your family. Trailer here. 8월 10일 "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006)The movie, based on Lauren Weisberger's best-selling debut novel, feels like the high fashion that saturates the movie: glamorous, lightweight, superficial and deliciously entertaining. (Trailer here.) Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), a bright yet naive young girl, comes to New York City and lands a job -- one that "a million girls would kill for" -- as assistant to Miranda Priesley (Meryl Streep), editor-in-chief of the leading fashion magazine, Runway. (It helps to know that Ms. Weisberger briefly worked as assistant to Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue.) Miranda is on top of her profession, powerful, celebrated, talented, razor-sharp, but she is also career-obsessed, selfish, manipulative, impossibly demanding and emotionally abusive -- a demonic boss in all senses. The story, for Andy, is one of transformation and reclamation. At the start of her job, she is a well-grounded, high-minded girl aspiring to be a journalist and barely knows anything about fashion. (She asks, "How do you spell Gabbana?" when taking a phone message. And her outfit on the first working day -- an Oxford blouse under a blue cable-knit sweater matched by a blue-and-grey argyle skirt -- is ridiculed by her coworkers -- Emily, Miranda's other assistant asks her, "do you have some prior commitment? Like some hideous skirt convention you have to go to?") But as Andy learns to survive in the fashion world and put up with Miranda's sadistic demands, she becomes a glossy girl snugly dressed in Chanel and Gucci and heeled with Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik, basks in the electrifying glamour of the fashion world, and gradually distances herself from her love, friendship, and, most importantly, her true self. As Miranda makes it increasingly clear to Andy that she has to compromise her principles to gain a professional edge, Andy realizes that to become another Miranda, despite the power and glamour that tempt her, would cost her integrity, loyalty, and personal relationships -- a price she cannot afford to pay. So the moral of the story is: the question of what you do is not as important as that of who you are, and it ultimately comes down to personal choices to stay true to oneself. It belongs to a school of urban coming-of-age stories -- an innocent and aspirant youth comes to a big city, becomes the protege of a powerful figure, who represents worldly success, corruption and evil, and eventually turns against his/her master when morally tormented. Another cinematic example would be Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), a much deeper and darker film than The Devil Wears Prada. But haute coutures and fashion models obviously look more appealing onscreen than stock indices, and this makes The Devil Wears Prada a more sartorially pleasing and cinematographically gratifying entertainment for a summer night -- not to mention that the director David Frankel and costume designer Patricia Field are both veterans of HBO's Sex and the City. The true highlight of the movie, though, is the stunning performance by Meryl Streep, who, with her silver hair, refined features, whispery speech, aristocratic gracefulness and impeccable poise, gives the female Mephistopheles a measure of sophistication, magnetism and humanity, and renders this movie - an otherwise gaudy showcase of shiny designer clothes, mannequins, and montages - clever, charming and enjoyable. 5월 30일 Mission: Impossible IIIThe movie is not much more memorable than the buttered popcorn I consumed when watching the movie last night, yet it did succeed in fully capturing the audience's attention and pumping up the adrenaline for an entire two hours. In that sense, M:i:III passes for a satisfying summer blockbuster. (Trailer here.) This time, special agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sets out for a mission to combat a global WMD-mongering kingpin Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in pursuit of a deadly, population-wiping serum nicknamed the Rabbit's Foot. I cannot remember now -- as no viewer should ever bother to understand -- exactly how the operation progressed, or regressed, from Berlin, to Rome, to Virginia, and finally, to Shanghai. But I do remember it involved car chases, helicopter crashes, (lots of) explosions, several exciting gravity-defying stunts, and smart, cool gadgets. The sequence in which Agent Hunt's team (Ving Rhames, Maggie Q, Jonathan Meyers) broke into the Holy City of Vatican is one of the best choreographed espionage scenes in recent years. And who could forget Cruise's signature upright sprinting as if he were holding a fish bowl on his head? What makes M:i:III work is its (almost) full confidence in being an action thriller and nothing more. It doesn't pretend to be a philosophical treatise (the "Matrix" trilogy), political agitprop ("X-Men 3"), or religious revisionist ("The Da Vinci Code"). However, at times it borders on mawkish emotionalism: unlike the first two Mission Impossible installments, Agent Hunt has a wife (Michelle Monaghan) now, and the sadistic villain Davian would take her hostage and demand the Rabbit's Foot from Hunt as the ransom. It sounds like an obviously lame idea for Agent Hunt to have a long-term relationship: we all know that wives are to action heroes (James Bond, Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt) what cellulite is to supermodels: unsightly and career-busting. Besides, every scene with the couple together has Cruise staring intensely at Monaghan with tears in his eyes, which led the audience to doubt whether the couple ever had a single day of fun together. Therefore, we had little sympathy when Davian blew up his wife's head in front of Hunt. (It turned out to be a different woman though. Anyhow.) In comparison, my heart wrenched when they blew up an orange Lamborghini. What a crime! Bottom line: not recommended if you aim for a more highbrow movie, or don't need an excuse to eat popcorn. But M:i:III provides solid, duty-free fun for an evening. Besides, as this summer's potpourri of cinematic duds goes, this is probably one of the best out there.  5월 21일 The Da Vinci Code (2006)Finally here comes the eagerly anticipated movie version of Dan Brown's blockbuster novel, "The Da Vinci Code," which has sold over 60 million copies worldwide and sparked a plethora of religious controversy over the past three years. When the thriller novel lingered on the Best Seller list month after month and everyone around seemed to be enthusiastically recommending it, the temptation became almost irresistible and I actually skimmed a few pages of the book. A captivating page-turner notwithstanding, Dan Brown's inability to write a single line of intelligent prose or decent dialog turned me cold. Watching the movie, in fact, confirmed my belief that anything so wildly popular cannot be great. As the story goes, characters are flat as cardboard, plot holes big enough for eighteen-wheelers to drive through, and the dialogs too frequently become downright boring expositions or tirades. All these flaws of the novel are faithfully inherited and magnified in Sony's new movie, directed by Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind). The opening of the movie is actually pretty decent for a thriller: the ruthless murder of a elderly curator in the after-hours Louvre. The camera work, lighting, and editing all work well to create a mysterious, ominous, imminent backdrop. But the pomp and preposterousness of the movie start to creep in from the second scene, when the camera takes us to Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a Harvard professor of religious symbology, giving a speech. The set is utterly pretentious and unabatedly Hollywood-ish: no professor -- not even a Harvard professor -- ever gives a lecture in front of a spectacular projection screen in a palatial auditorium like Steve Jobs would do. From there on, Langdon is unwillingly embroiled in a truth-finding mission with Sophie Neveu (Andrey Tautou), a French girl whose grandfather was the Louvre curator killed at the beginning of the movie, leaving a series of clues -- in the form of anagrams, number puzzles, and other mental games -- at his death scene for them. While puzzle-solving and game-playing may work well in a book with the reader being an intelligent participant, watching them arbitrarily unfold on screen is painful, because you are simply presented with the answer in the next second. And once a movie becomes driven by puzzles instead of characters, it risks distancing itself from the audience on the emotional level. Moreover, the puzzle-solving is not even that interesting here because, by now, most of us have already known the answer to the Holy Grail hunt, i.e., Mr. Brown's claim about Christianity's Feminine Mystique. This is the most unremarkable performance by Hanks I have ever seen: an expression of perpetual confusion is frozen on his face throughout the movie; the transition from a brooding scholar to an action hero never comes to pass; besides, the lamentable script has left him with neither brilliance nor charm. Also, there is zero chemistry between the two stars, who keep each other company like a middle-aged couple with two kids who have totally lost interest in each other whatsoever. When I saw the ending of the movie, I figured that maybe romance is thrown out of the equation by Mr. Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman for good reason: no self-respecting descendent of Jesus Christ would fall for a man with Hank's bad hairline. What the movie lacks in substance, it tries to make up for it in length. More often than not, Prof. Langdon would lash out a protracted lecture on Christian history -- with laughably superficial, frazzled, video-game-quality flashbacks to historical tableaus -- Ms. Neveu would be unmistakably amazed, and the boring scene would threaten to send you directly into REM. I almost cried with gratitude when, occasionally, Silas, the albino assassin from the order Opus Dei, suddenly jumped out and attacked our hero or heroine, because the boredom would be unbearable otherwise. In fact, Silas (played by Paul Bettany) seems the only character that the audience can genuinely sympathize with, because he at least shows passion. The last forty minutes, in particular, was painful to sit through; at least four times I thought (and wished) it would end, but it managed to throw itself into another faltering somersault --more twists, double twists, triple twists -- when I started asking myself: "Why the heck do I care?" If there is anything worthy about the movie, I have to say that the cinematography is extraordinary. Salvatore Totino ("Cinderella Man") artfully captures the dazzling beauty of European architecture in locations such as Westminster Abbey, the Louvre, Rosslyn Chapel of Scotland, and Temple Church in London. Besides, there are a few truly entertaining scenes that you wouldn't conjecture in your wildest imagination, like how Hanks solved anagrams with a ultra-bright mental highlighter flashing over various letters of the encrypted code, a power that might have involved divine intervention. Althought I'm not optimistic about the box-office outcome for the movie, at least some people would benefit from it, I guess: 1. Dan Brown. Some assiduous movie-goers who haven't read the book and terribly confused by the jumbled plot may end up buying the book. More money yet to Mr. Brown's copious coffer. 2. The Louvre. I have no doubt tourism will be boosted, given many of the splendid shots there. As long as no lunatic moron would start digging under the small pyramid below the inverted glass pyramid, the Louvre, and Paris for that matter, will be a winner from the international release of this summer blockbuster. 3. Vatican. The Catholic Church has denounced Dan Brown's novel as anti-Christ, and they were upset by the upcoming release of the movie weeks ago. But I think, if the pontiff and his men have watched the movie, they'll be totally relieved, since nobody with a brain will take such a ludicrously botched movie seriously. 5월 5일 "United 93"I entered the movie theater last night somewhat skeptical, waiting to see how Hollywood exploits the 9/11 tragedy for profits. I came out, awed and shaken. If you are not prepared for an emotional earthquake, don't see this movie -- because it is harrowing raw and deeply disturbing. On Sep. 11, 2001, four passenger airplanes were hijacked by Islamic terrorists. Two crashed into the World Trade Center; one hit the Pentagon. This movie retells what happened on the fourth airplane, which plunged into a coal field in rural Pennsylvania. The movie opens with a black screen and we hear the voices of several Muslims reading morning prayers from the Koran, who are later revealed to be the four hijackers of United Airlines' Flight 93. We then take a spectacular bird's-eye view of Manhattan at dawn: skyscrapers and streets slowly awakening -- the unhurried pacing of the editing adds pathos to the misty serenity and quiet grandeur of the scene -- a seemingly ordinary morning of New York City. Then we see the same ordinariness at Newark International Airport: the typical dull and claustrophobic feel inside a commercial airport; sleepy and weary morning travelers, yawning, sipping coffee, talking to cellphones, flipping newspapers, or sitting idly; the mundane chitchat between flight attendants and between pilots -- a quotidian scene that we are all familiar with. Except that all these people would shortly board United 93 and fly to a destination from where there's no return. The interplay between the normalcy of these shots and the preordained catastrophe yet to come, which the audience is keenly aware of, proves to be intensely powerful. For most thrillers, knowing the ending would spoil the movie-watching experience, but, in this case, knowing the ending (and that it happened in real life to real people) is exactly how the movie achieves its unparalleled psychological and emotional impact. We watch these people going about their businesses as if it were a routine day, as we watch, on the Animal Planet channel, a herd of antelopes casually drinking water and munching on grass, while a leopard is quietly approaching. We all know what happened in the end, but the movie scrupulously tells us what happened before it ended there, in an unadorned, unflinchingly verisimilar manner. The tempo gradually picks up and we learn, in the present tense, together with the confused air traffic control officers and the frightened passengers on United 93, how the other hijacked airplanes become suicidal weapons against the symbols of America's economic and political prowess, one after another, and how this plane is plunging into the same inexorable doom. These passengers, still struggling with disbelief and shivering in horror, realize that they face a choice: they can either die as powerless victims, or they can die fighting -- perhaps they could survive. They choose the latter -- "Let's roll," some unidentified guy said. The movie shows no Bruce Willis' kind of individual heroism; it portrays them as ordinarily people who react to an unprecedented crisis with courage and strength. And thanks to the filmmakers' wise decisions -- everything feels just about right, from the jittery camerawork, the naturalistic, overlapping dialogues, to the urgent yet unintruding score -- the movie turns out believable, visceral, gut-wrenching. This is a movie that you ought to watch in theaters, ceremonially, looking up at the canvas, lights off, phones shut, no popcorn. (Watching DVDs just wouldn't do.) Take off from there, and see where you might land. 5월 3일 All's Well That Ends WellWatched the play at the Yale Repertory Theatre last Wednesday with a friend (I later learned that Shakespeare was baptized on that day 442 years ago :). As always, it's great pleasure to watch a Shakespeare comedy -- as soon as our ears become accustomed to the Shakespearean verse ("Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,/Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky/Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull/Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."), our hearts begin to beat joyfully in iambic pentameter -- and the Yale Rep production has given it a modern flair --vivacious yet restrained -- in music, choreography and costume. I've never read the play before, but the story is fairly simple. Helena, a physician's daughter with both beauty and brains, became the ward of the Countess of Rousillon after her father died and fell hopelessly in love with her son, the handsome yet immature Count Bertram. In order to win his hand and love, Helena embarks on a painstaking expedition. First of all, she cures the languishing French King of his ailment at her life's risk, and, as a reward, gets to pick any man in the realm to marry. She chooses Bertram. Bertram, who is enraged at the arranged marriage because of Helena's lowly birth, flees to Florence after their wedding ceremony, and vows never to be her true husband, unless she can win the prized family ring on his finger and be pregnant with his child -- conditions he deems impossible for her to ever meet. Helena, shocked, heartbroken yet determined not to accept "He's Just Not That into You" for an answer, sets out for the war-trodden Florence in search of Bertram, where she learns that he is passionately courting a local maid called Diana. With the help of Diana, Helena plots a scheme that consummates in a perplexing 'bed-trick.' After the battle, Bertram goes back to Rossillion. In the final scene, before the King and the Countess, Helena confronts Bertram about his dishonorable deeds, produces his ring and declares that she is pregnant with his child. Bertram, confused, ashamed and amazed, affirms his love for Helena. So the festive music sets off, the ensemble dances, and the play ends merrily. Despite the mirth and flourish of the ending, I felt that something isn't quite right -- some hidden message that is deeper, darker, and more disturbing than its comedic surface suggests. This is atypical of Shakespeare's comedies, which are usually, in the Bard's own words, "too simple, too easy -- confections for the minds' eye; each so neatly finished, wrapped and tied with a bow; so resolved." Think of Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, or A Midsummer Night's Dream, and you have an idea why this play feels so different, with its grave themes of unrequited love, desertion, death, and deception. While Victorian critics found the most disturbing aspect about the play was the reversal of traditional gender roles -- here the woman is the suitor, hunter, commander-in-chief, whereas the man is the game and captive, I think gender is not the key point here; neither is class, for that matter. The modern audience is more likely to find a resonant admiration, sympathy as well as skepticism for Helena's single-minded quest for her desire. Helena's love for Bertram knows no bounds yet Bertram feels nothing but disdain for her. The hopeless unrequited love evokes many a tragic story in Greek mythology. For instnace, Apollo, the Sun God, fell in love with the nymph Daphne because of an arrow from Eros, the love god. Eros did so to revenge Apollo's mocking of his archery skills, and he also shot a hate arrow into Daphne, causing her to be repulsed by Apollo. Chased relentlessly by the passionate Apollo, Daphne begged Mother Earth to transform her into a laurel tree, which became sacred to Apollo for eternity. But Helena does not believe in fate, she believes in the pursuit of happiness (had she been born two centuries later and a man, she might well have been the author of Declaration of Independence). Unlike Hamlet, the tragic hero paralyzed by inaction and plagued by doubt, she is the heroine of passion, strong will and action. Her love for Bertram is ablaze despite her awareness of all his weaknesses ("I love him for his sake;/And yet I know him a notorious liar,/Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;/Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him") and she finally wins him against all odds. The play ends on a happy note of "all's well that ends well," but the audience has every reason to question the sincerity of Bertram's abrupt transformation and the couple's chance of "living happily ever after." Drama is more satisfying than reality because it can be concluded at any moment. Life is indefinitely long, and that's how drama becomes melodrama. George Bernard Shaw appeared rather misanthropic but he might actually hit a point when he said, "There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it." Maybe comedy comes as the exactly right point in between. And that moment, if it indeed exists, along with all the rosy illusions about it, gives "such color to the world so that you don't care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory," observed F. Scott Fitzgerald. Those words came to mind when I rode in my friend's lovely yellow MiniCooper on my way home. Because Helena reminded me of Gatsby. The green light he yearns for year after year. The colossal vitality, as well as the vulnerability, of that illusion. 4월 6일 Thank you for smokingWent to see the movie "Thank You for Smoking" last night. It wasn't quite a dynamite job as the trailer had made me believe, but I still enjoyed the movie an awful lot. The movie is a glib, sassy, fast-paced political satire that traces the ups and downs of Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the tobacco industry lobby in Washington, in his ingenious spin war to defend and to glorify cigarettes. Aaron Eckhart, who plays Nick Naylor with flawless precision and ease, makes him a perfect seductive villain, who charms as he repels. ("You know the guy who can get any girl he wants? I'm him... on crack.") Nick Naylor, in the face of overwhelming public concerns about the health hazards of smoking, prides himself on his "moral flexibility" and chants the cardinal importance of freedom of choice. Above all things, he is magnificently competent in what he does, that is, to spin the truth ("See? This is the beauty of arguments. If you argue correctly, you are never wrong." he told his young son). His charm and candor make it impossible for the audience not to view the well-trodden debate from a fresh perspective, which is further facilitated by the fact that his enemies are so much less lovable. The face-off between the intense, self-righteous, Birkenstock-wearing politician Senator Ortolan Finistirre, who's determined to put a 'poison' label on every cigarette pack, and the relaxed, winsome Nick, is immensely ironic and satisfying. The most funny part about the movie is Nick's weekly lunch meet with his two buddies, one lobbyist for the alcohol industry and one for the firearm industry -- a trio that they crowned as the MOD squad ("Merchants of Death"). Over lunch they would become competitive about the death tolls caused by their respective clients, a contest that Nick ultimately wins with the twelve hundred deaths attributable to cigarette smoking each day. There are other larger-than-life characters that make the movie a pungent satire, such as the tobacco industry 'Captain' (Robert Duvall), who, filled with gravity and gentility, is redolent of the Godfather character; also, a Hollywood super-agent, Jeff (Rob Lowe), who spends his day and night flying across the world meeting industry tycoons and nailing down multi-million deals over phone. ("When do you sleep, Jeff?" Nick asked when Jeff called him from Tokyo in the wee hours. "Sunday." Jeff replied.) So here we get a fascinating, almost caricature-like picture of big industries, glamorously charged with power, money, and excess. It reminds me of the line in Apocalypse Now: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning... Smelled like... victory." "Thank You for Smoking" is not the kind of thought-provoking, cliche-shredding iconoclast I would have hoped for. Also, the plot is a bit too formulaic, and Katie Holmes is a complete turn-off. Nevertheless, it's witty, nimble, and totally politically incorrect. 3월 6일 Oscar Wrap-UpSince I
jotted something down here in the run-up to the Oscar, I feel a trifle
obligated to also write something in the aftermath, just for the sake
of balance and conclusiveness. This year's Oscar had a theme "Return to Glamour," a grandiose, somewhat oxymoronic, mission that it was destined to fail. Less than 20 hours after the show, I could hardly recall any glamorous moment, except that Ang Lee, starting his acceptance speech for the Best Director win, looked at the gold-dipped statuette in his hand and sighed, with a good-humored self-deprecation, "I wish I knew how to quit you." Well, to be honest, there were a few other honorable mentions. First, Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep's Altmanesque homage to Robert Altman turned out to be an acting tour de force, effortless and brilliant, making this year's Best Actress winner Reese Witherspoon look lackluster and overwrought in comparison -- a sad revelation that Hollywood's finest actresses today are at the menopause stage. Second, Jon Stewart did a great job hosting as a weisenheimer. He called "Walk the Line" as "Ray, with white people," and suggested to the largely liberal audience that casting their academy ballots may well have been "the first time many of you have ever voted for a winner." Speaking about "Good Night, and Good Luck," he said it was not only a movie but also "how Mr. Clooney ends all his dates." O.K.. Now that I'm done with the credits, I feel kinda licensed to file a few complaints. First, what's the matter with the Hallmark-like soothing music performed by the orchestra during every acceptance speech, besides after it? It was annoying and felt like a mawkish movie. It seems that the Academy is favoring effort and sentiment over truth and subtlety, which might explain why Brokeback Mountain didn't win the Best Picture. Also, what's the point with all these montages of film clips? Each of the scores of films in every ensemble flashed away in a couple of seconds and evoked no deep feelings or memories in viewers' minds, except for making me feel guilty upon realizing I spent too much time watching movies rather than engaging in probably more productive pursuits. Jon Stewart cracked at one point, "I can't wait till we get Oscar's salute to montages." The joke, like many others Stewart told during the show, was wasted on the self-important audience. To my astonishment, the French directors for "March of the Penguins" brought stuffed penguin toys onstage when accepting the Best Documentary Feature award, ruining my long-standing admiration for French tastefulness. They also deserved an award for worst spoken English of the night, surpassing Ziyi Zhang. So now everything else doesn't matter except who became winners and who became losers. The Oscar winners, in addition to being one-piece-of-deco richer in their Beverly Hills mansions, will also bask in the golden light of fame for many years to come. Besides, there's some study showing that the Oscar winners live four years longer than losers on average. The finding is quite intriguing, but I always find this kind of apparently earnest yet totally irrelevant research study suffers from a sheer lack of proportionality. If the difference between being a winner and being a loser were just four years in life expectancy, many of us wouldn't mind trying a bit less hard. 3월 4일 And the Oscar Goes to...Tomorrow we shall see the annual Party Extravaganza of Hollywood, a.k.a. the Academy Awards ceremony. The much ballyhooed event -- with, as always, a red-carpet fashion show of celebrities glamorously clad in shiny, curve-hugging, strapless Versace, Chanel, or Carolina Herrera gowns; dazzling gold statuettes eminently displayed in the magnificent Kodak Theater; tearful acceptance speeches jammed with a thank-you list, usually to nobody's interest except for those on the list; a tuxedoed, sharp-tongued host (my beloved Jon Stewart this year) bantering front-seats guests and typically the President (most likely the Vice President this year); eulogies commemorating those who wrote, directed, starred, or stunted in some movie forty years ago and died in obscurity last year -- carries a mission that can be dated back to 1927, when Louis B. Mayer convinced the studio tycoons to start the event; that is, to "establish the industry in the public's mind as a respectable institution." Respectability is, indeed, a vital thing, especially for an industry that sells glamour and myths, and whose product quality has noticeably deteriorated through relentlessly catering to the lowest denominator of popular taste. It's enlightening to observe that the Oscar-nominated movies, e.g. Brokeback Mountain, Crash, and Capote, are such stark aberrations, or even rebels, from Hollywood's staple of productions: juvenile, kitshy, oftentimes imbecile, cultural cliches that top the box-office charts, e.g. Date Movie, The Pink Panther, Chronicles of the Nania, Batman Begins -- movies that offer instant gratification along with the coke and popcorn and slip off your mind the second you walk out of the theater. Just as the Detroit automakers hand out Environmentally Friendly Vehicle Awards albeit their obsessive reliance upon gas-guzzling SUVs, Hollywood uses the Oscars to establish an illusion of respectability in the public eye, despite the fact that where the Oscar goes to bears no resemblance whatsoever to where the industry is heading. P.S. This being said, am I gonna watch the award show? You bet. I'm an incorrigible sucker for haute couture and tearjerkers. 12월 17일 King KongJust saw the movie King Kong. It was a good three hours of entertainment. Peter Jackson did a great job in having the audience sit through 187 mins in the dark without feeling bored for a split second. Having spent the first half of his life shooting monster movies in New Zealand, Jackson made this one an extravaganza of spectacular monsters: dinosaurs, giant bats, man-eating worms, jumbo insects -- some of these creatures were so loathsome to the eyes that they sent the audience groaning with disgust. But the movie, at heart, is not about monsters; it's about beauty, kindness, and love. Naomi Watts gives a stunning performance as the charming and brave actress, first captured and then protected as well as loved by the giant ape, Kong. The two scenes with the two of them watching sunset together in the remote island and, later on, watching sunrise together on top of the Empire State Building, are magnificently beautiful. In the end of the movie, the movie producer and captor of Kong, Carl Danham (Jack Black), said, "It was beauty that killed the beast." But I think he was wrong. What kills the beast, together with beauty itself, is the greed, hypocrisy and trickery of men. It's against these iron machineries (along with the symbolic Army Air Corps) that Kong launches his battle and is doomed to fall. When we look into the innocent eyes of Kong, we understand the love, even in its most powerful incarnation, is so vulnerable. 12월 11일 Holiday-Season Movies I Plan to See1. King Kong (directed by Peter Jackson) Reason: I saw a promotional documentary about the movie on HBO and instantly got intrigued. Peter Jackson (of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) is undoubtedly among the very best of the trade. King Kong, the 25-feet-tall giant ape, is rendered amazingly realistic through flawless digital special effects. Despite Kong's enormous power, his tenderness towards his human captive, a young actress who looks negligibly miniature by his side, is touchingly beautiful. In an effort to make the set completely believable, the production crew recreated the 1930s New York City block by block. The end result is breathtaking, which is worth a theater ticket for its own sake. 2. Brokeback Mountain (directed by Ang Lee) Reason: A story of two men in love. The movie that has received the highest critical acclaim so far this year. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker commented, "This slow and stoic movie, hailed as a gay Western, feels neither gay nor especially Western: it is a study of love under siege." Love under siege, it turns out, most often makes the best literature and art. High expectations on this one. 3. Memoirs of a Geisha (directed by Rob Marshall) Reason: Ever since October I've been spotting everywhere the movie's poster graced by Ziyi Zhang's ghostlike face. This movie has been hyped up so much that it begs to disappoint now. Hollywood's takes on the oriental cultures have usually resulted in one-dimensional stereotypes, obsessive fetishism, or twee sentimentalism, from The Last Emperor, to The Last Samurai (and this movie can be conveniently re-titled "The Last Geisha"). But I plan to see the movie anyway; I'm simply too curious not to watch Ziyi Zhang in the role of an English-speaking Japanese geisha. 4. Casanova (directed by Lasse Hallstrom) Reason: In college I stumbled upon a fascinating book called "History of My Life" by Giacomo Casanova, a 18-century Venetian writer, who was also a diplomat, an espionage, and, as chiefly remembered, either the greatest romantic lover or the most debauched womanizer of all time. In a nutshell, Casanova was the James Bond of the 18 century. Casanova's memoir, an account of his adventures in numerous European courts and countless love affairs with the most important and most beautiful women of his time, is culturally rich as well as sensually enchanting. But rather than a playboy's diary, it is more of a journey to understand love. Upon losing his first great love, he asked, "what is love?" and concluded that love is an incurable illness and divine monster. Reflecting on love and pleasure, he said that "real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy." I'm really interested in seeing how Lasse Hallstrom would turn this fascinating and complex character into a movie. But I'm somewhat prepared to see a movie handicapped with pointless eroticism and sensationalism. The line between great filmmaking and laughable failure, in a case like this, is rather thin, and few directors (e.g., Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh) have passed the test. 11월 27일 Mamma Mia!Watched the musical Mamma Mia! at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway last Thursday night. Premium seating, eight rows down the central orchestra; so close that I could see the lace on an actress's skirt.
Money well spent, well, for a disco fan. The show is a flamboyant parade of over 20 pop hits originally performed by ABBA, the internationally famed Swedish rock band of the 1970s. The Thursday's show had a sold-out audience of 1,500, of whom a significant proportion was boomers. The nostalgic appeal seemed paramount. And there were greying ladies dancing to "Dancing Queen" and "Super Trooper" along the aisle at the coda.
Given that the musical was more of a showcase of pop songs than a thematically developed play, the story and characterization are of secondary value here. Nevertheless, the ingenious British playwright Catherine Johnson managed to stitch the nearly two dozen ABBA hits together with a plot (which is like the theatrical equivalent of Scrabble). A 20-year-old girl, Sophie, is to be married, and, like any other would-be bride, she wants her father to give her away at the wedding. The only problem is: she doesn't know who he is. Brought up by her independent single mom, Donna, Sophie has no clue about her dad, except that he could be any of three men, whose names Sophie has found out in Mom's diary. So Sophie secretly invites all of them to her wedding, in the hope that she can find her real dad.
Given the somewhat Procrustean nature of the play, it's surprising that many songs actually fit the plot seamlessly and render the characters deeply touching and the implausible story believable. Such as "Our Last Summer", a nostalgic celebration of the flower age and youthful love ("Our last summer/I still see it all/Walks along the Seine/Laughing in the rain/...In the tourist jam/Round the Notre Dame/Our last summer/Walking hand in hand/Paris restaurants/Morning croissants/Living for the day/Worries far away).
Another real gem is "Slipping through My Fingers", the song that depicts a mother's complex feeling as the daughter leaves for school in the morning ("She leaves home in the early morning/Waving goodbye/With an absent-minded smile/...The feeling that I'm loosing her forever/And without really entering her world/...Do I really see what's in her mind/Each time I think I'm close to knowing/She keeps on growing/Slipping through my fingers all the time"). Donna (Michele Pawk), sings the number with tenderness and melancholy, as she helps Sophie into the wedding gown. I haven't seen the mother-daughter bond conveyed better on stage.
Other ABBA songs that stand out in the score include Donna's fiery, vindictive "The Winner Takes it All" ("The gods may throw a dice/Their minds as cold as ice/And someone way down here/Loses someone dear"), the ecstatic duo between Sophie and her beau, Sky, "Lay All Your Love on Me" ("It was like shooting a sitting duck/A little small talk, a smile and, baby, I was stuck/I still don't know what you've done with me/A grown-up woman should never fall so easily/I feel a kind of fear/When I don't have you near/Unsatisfied"), and the fabulously comic number "Take a Chance on Me" sung by Donna's roly-poly sidekick, Rosie.
On the other hand, several songs seem to be totally out of context and character, and serve no purpose other than themselves, such as "Under Attack" and "Knowing You, Knowing Me".
Michele Pawk offers a once-wild-and-woolly, spunky and sexy Donna, and Carey Anderson is endearing, unpretentious, and well-sung in her Broadway debut role as Sophie. John Dossett's performance as Sam, Donna's yesteryear lover, is mature and solid but lacks in charisma.
If you're a serious theatergoer looking for something artful, deep, and cerebral, skip Mamma Mia! because, critically speaking, it is kitsch. The story is cheesy and cliche-ridden, characters almost as flat as wallpaper, and the lyrics flimsy and weightless (with song titles ranging from "Honey, Honey" and "Money, Money, Money", to "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do").
However, if you're looking for a fantastically fun night, with bouncy, eardrum-pounding electric music, upbeat and uplifting pop songs (some of them such as "Super Trooper" and "Voules-vous" are part of my emotional first-aid kit), eye-popping costumes, shirtless young men with fastidious abs, as well as the bonus of old ladies dancing in the aisle, Mamma Mia! is absolutely a great choice.
It is what you may call a "comfort musical"; what's more, despite the apparently colorful love history of Mom, Mamma Mia! is unexpectedly family-friendly and free of libido, except for certain minor transgressions such as an instruction conerning an inflatable bed.
11월 16일 StreetcarWatched the movie "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) the other day. A must-see classic, with ingenious screenplay by Tennessee Williams ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"), flawless direction under Elia Dazan, and superb acting by Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.
Blanche (Vivien Leigh) is an aging southern belle, fragile and oftentimes neurotic yet aristocratically refined and charming, who comes to the French Quarters of New Orleans to live with her sister and her blue-collar husband after being fired from her teaching job for seducing a 17-year-old student. As Blanche desperately searches for her own place in a world of dimming glamour after she has squandered away her youth and the family plantation, she finds herself confronted by her sinewy and brutal brother-in-law Stan (Brando). In the struggle and final collapse of Blanche, we see the demise of the Old South: its flimsy morality, the illusion of chivalry, the myth of eternal youth ---a fate as unavoidable as it is tragic.
BTW, Marlon Brando is perhaps the most handsome actor that has ever graced the silver screen. Well, at least before Brat Pitt. 11월 8일 Capote, the MovieWent to see Bennett Miller's new movie "Capote" last night, which depicts writer Truman Capote's six-year research and writing of In Cold Blood, a real-life account of the killing of a Kansas family in 1959. The new movie came out as a real delight, since I've fell head over heels about Capote's works and had taken his books as my companions during the last month of traveling.
Different from a typical biopic, the movie shuns sporadic childhood flashbacks and overwhelming narrative overflow; instead, it centers on Capote's research about the brutal murder and captures his relationships with the people around him, his love with his lifelong partner and lover Jack Dunphy (to whom Breakfast at Tiffany's was dedicated), his friendship with childhood friend Harper Lee (the celebrated author of To Kill a Mockingbird), and most importantly, his complex relationship with Perry Smith, one of the two killers.
The movie, shot in monochromatic starkness, does not attempt to sugarcoat the ambiguous nature of Capote's relationship with Perry Smith. On one hand, Capote selfishly exploits Perry for his "best work ever" -- fame is the best medicine for Capote's insecurity, growing out of his tragic childhood and homosexuality, as is evident in his zest for being the prima donna of Manhattan literati parties; on the other hand, he is emotionally drawn to Perry, for his deep sympathy with Perry ("It's as if Perry and I started life in the same house. One day he stood up and walked out the back door while I walked out the front.") as well as for his discovery in Perry a kindred soul, a soul endowed with artistic sensibilities and tattered by abandonment, a fiery yearning for understanding and acceptance, a heart devoured by guilt and devoid of hope. Capote is keenly aware of the ambiguity of their relationship and suffers tremendously as his writing ambition conflicts with his caring for Perry. The clash climaxes in the scene where Capote witnesses as Perry is hanged, an excruciating experience from which Capote never recovers. After In Cold Blood was published, Capote never finished another book and died of alcoholism and drug overdose at the age of 60.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Truman Capote is absolutely brilliant and deserves an Oscar nod. From his mannerism to his squinched voice, Hoffman's portrayal of the much televised writer-celebrity is obsessively flawless. The subdued yet powerful cinematography is also one of the best this year. The opening panorama of the midwest plain under a grey sky is breathtakingly beautiful.
If you're in the mood for some serious filmmaking this fall, check this out. Another movie I'd recommend is Paradise Now, a story of two Palestinian suicide bombers.
Avoid Joe Wright's remake of Pride and Prejudice
at all cost. I saw the trailer but there is nothing more to it than the
1995 production directed by Simon Langton. The 1995 version stars Colin
Firth as Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet, who are, in my
opinion, way out of the league of Keira Knightley andMatthew MacFadyen
. The only scene in the trailer that strikes me as a distinct addition
to the older movie is one with Elizabeth Bennett's silhouette on a cliff at dusk, which feels so bronte-ish that might send Jane
Austen turning and tossing in her grave. Seriously, skip this
movie; if you do want some review of Jane Austen's classic chick flick,
check out the DVD of the 1995 version. Or, even better, read the book. |
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